Ya, if intended that way it would have been a bad analogy, because you have IT staff to maintain computers regardless of going with LTSP or windows, you sure would not want to leave it to the poor teachers. Just like you have maintainance staff for the windows.
You are so right that while LTSP installs are a bit frusterating for the teachers who have to adapt to a non windows world, it sure takes away a LOT of admin headaches, hardware repair, reimaging and malware removal.
The school that I help build the LTSP servers for went with LTSP because the head of the computer department had taught at a private school. There he had spent so much time and money on building images, patching, installing new proprietary software, licence audits, reimaging and more reimaging that he thought there had to be a better way(small school, he was IT, lol). He found LTSP, and it worked so well, he took it to the next school he went to. He figures that they now spend under 33% of what they would otherwise, and have a system that is easier to manage. The rest of the budget can now go to things like a computerized music lab (keyboards, mics, soundboards etc) and other luxury items.
You are right, as a rule Core Duo's do use a bit less power than the Turions, BUT, once you take into account that the memory controller is built into the Turion, it is usually a wash. (of course this varies from model to model)
Thanks for your Info! These are diskless "PXE boot" stations. In the first years we used the inherited hardware with boot floppies.
Last year we built a server for two more classrooms of 20 each.
For the processor we just had an Athlon 3200+ 4 gigs of ram 200 gig SATA drive Gigabit Ethernet
I build the servers, but I don't run them. So while I am regularly pushing the administrator for feedback and usage statistics, I hear the not too helpful "ya, it seems to be running well", a lot more than "we were using GIMP and.... seemed to be pegged at 95%". I guess it is a sign that it is working well, but I still like input on the weak spots for the next build.
I know we could use a dual core like your server has(we will drop one in to the athlon 64 Server this year), and even though we have a lot more ram per student than you, Linux seems to use it all, though it is often just for dish cache I believe.
I don't know if the network ever saturates, but to try to keep that from happening we have started implementing Switches that are Gigabit to the server and 10/100 to the terminals.
I don't think we have ever had more than 80 Gigs used on a drive, but we don't have more than 40 stations on a server currently.
For the new server I had wanted to go with a Dual socket server board, but looking at them they seemed to all require registered ECC ram and that is sure not cheap or fast. (I thought having two dual core processors might allow us to consolidate some of the old servers) If I go with a dual core Athlon 64 I can populate it with 8 gigs ( regular 2 Gig sticks are so cheap now) but I don't have ECC or an extra socket.
I have also been wondering about RAID vs a WD raptor vs More RAM for disk cache. I would lean toward more RAM, but I have a problem in that I cannot seem to fit more than 8 gigs on a reasonably priced board with reasonably priced RAM.
I agree about the AnandTech guides. You are on the money.
The advice about Laptops is a bit simplistic. The only Intel Laptop processor that dominates is the Core 2 duo. The Pentium, celeron laptops that I still see are often not a good choice, and the dual core AMD Turions are overall as good or better than the respectable Core Duo's. (depends if you are ever going to run 64 bits etc.)
I have beaten this thread to death, so this is my last post.
The "gamer" who benefits from Dual video cards is NOT the gamer who keeps the PC for 5 years. Only the hard core gamer could properly appreciate dual or Quad SLI cards, and those guys ONLY keep the PC for a Year, and a couple I know don't even keep it that long.
And thanks for confirming that you have plenty of money (an extra thousand is not a big deal), unfortuneately most people out there are not in your situation so it is still important for them to get a good deal on what they need. (Most people keep themselves a couple of months from bankrupcy--not a smart idea)
As an aside, the extra thousand you are willing to spend is enough for me to build 2 computers with dual core processors and 2 gigs of ram each, and a nice case and PS. I would even rather take those PC's and give them to kids who need them (parent died, and the family a little short on cash etc.) than have it depreciate in my computer room without being really used, but that is just me. (btw, those two PC's would be able to even play BattleField 2)
Nope, I from his post I obviously DON'T believe "that being 'optimal' is important to him."
I was simply replying to the fact that he/she seemed to believe that the best computer was the most expensive, and the price told you how good a computer is.
The fact remains that this is a poor way to buy a PC, and even more so a notebook. If he found a good site, or had a good friend the appropriate questions would be asked. (Is this ever going to be used for games, are photos going to be stored or videos going to be ripped,is it a media center...etc.) By asking these questions he could get a processor or storage or GPU that can meet his needs(the processor was only an example) If he does not "Game" the most expensive E-machines PC (or whatever) is not likely any better than the one two price points lower. A thousand dollars worth of SLI'd video cards don't do any good in Photoshop.
My ego is not determined by my core either, but as a IT professional, I should be able to quickly absorb enough information to make a judgement call on more than price, or know someone that can. (And even if I don't really care about my processor, Visual Studio sure does! lol)
Having been involved in a LTSP project, I really don't know what you are talking about. We don't have problems with congestion, and I don't know why individual students want to directly access swap space? And this is on single core P4's and Athlons.
In the next month we are building a server to handle two new classrooms, and while I am VERY interested in finding the perfect hardware configuration, I am not worried about all the issues you talk about. (by the way, I would invest the hundered bucks on a UPS regardless of having data loss from power failure or not)
Sorry, I consider Sun Rays to be nice equipment, but NOT inexpensive. The real "thin clients" on the desktop of the LTSP school I work with are $150 US each.
They work well, and they are very green (very low current draw).
A close relitive of mine set up a high school in Turkey, and at first they used the K-12 LTSP project which is Fedora Based, he switched to Mandriva and likes it a lot better.
He found a bit of a learning curve as well, but had the time to spend since he was spending so much less time administrating.
What I would find interesting is what they found the optimal size for the servers, how many terminals they support, how the ram and the drives were configured optimally, are there dual Gigabit nics, or do they find the network doesn't saturate?
I have been asked to build a new Server to run two additional classrooms. To keep costs low, I was initially thinking of a dual core, with another socket to be populated if needed, with 8 gigs of ram. Any pearls of wisdom are appreciated.
Since the WTO keeps ruling against the US on gambling, he should have said "We need to abide by the trade rules we have forced down the throats of the rest of the world, instead of holding others accountable and ignoring the rules ourselves"
How like the US to continue to ignore the way we screw the rest of the world and focus on how we can encourage our people destroy themselves best.
Yes, as I have stated before I work mostly in the GAMING industry (read gambling) so I have seen the carnage. The younger we get people started, the more addiction we can create. The internet is good for this.
Back in the early days, it was very common for terms to differ from location to location. Even the pronunciation of some names tended to be "variable". That is why I prefaced my comment with "in our area".
I cannot really blame IBM, they called it the IBM PC, which is what it was. I guess if I had to blame someone in this era it would be the editors of Byte etc. who used the term PC Clone once in a while. But when I go back through the Byte back issues I see them useing the simple term "clone" most of the time.
I appreciate your comment about an individual having to be quite familiar with hardware to distinguish between some PC's or servers, but really, when you are in the middle of a computer room of about ten thousand square feet with air conditoning, high security, glass walls, row after row of rack mounted screaming 1&2U computers Power 4 and Alpha computers and you see a KVM displaying windows, you are showing a bit of ignorance always refering to it as a PC. (as one apple fanboy kept doing)
I think the reason you cannot compare to those Dell prices is because it is a rare occasion where one would buy a Dell at full price. The computers I have bought from them have been MASSIVELY discounted. Including Servers for $250 that listed around $1000.
Hmmm, I wish I could share your enthusiasm about Apples build quality, but it is not that good. I think the new shorter lead times on designs since moving to the x86 has hurt them even more. Support? Deny deny deny, runaround, deny deny.(example, My iMac had a bulging CAP so I knew it would fail, they would NOT replace it until it did, which was a real pain as I was in the middle of a project when it did go) While I don't think the build quality on the Toshibas are much better, I have had better luck dealing with them.
You are partially right about second tier being worse. It sometimes is. Talking service? If you want bad customer service you need to try to get help on an ECS motherboard, on the other hand I've had great service from little players like Hann-Star.
Apple products WERE definitely better than ACER, but watch the Tiawaneese giant form.(Acer is outgrowing everyone else in the industry for a reason) The build quality on ACER Laptaps is rapidly improving, wait till you see the next generation. They are so much nicer the company is holding them back till this generation sells out, because they will kill themselves otherwise. Remember when Korean Cars were Junk? It didn't take Hyundai long to equal Honda on Quality did it?
As for Tosiba, IBM Stinkpads and Apple? They are often built well, but there have been huge problems with all those brands. Toshiba seemed to have an excessivly high failure rate for a while. IBM, we couldn't keep any of our screens going there for a while... failure after failure. And Apple? The tech guys at work have been complaining that they are now unresponsive, and deny deny deny every time they call with a problem. (This started around the bad capacitor era and now seems to be Standard Operating Mode)
OK, so you have more money than you know what to do with, and you really don't care about computers?
It takes about 15 minutes to an hour to find a REALLY smart person or good website to tell you what to look for. Thats what saved many people from buying a P4 instead of the better Core or Athlon 64 processors.
If you do the homework, you might have even find out that the Vista "Performance Index" is close to useless.
I would actually find a person who knows every nuance of every processor, etc, and have them just go and buy the PC for me if I were in your place. They will do a heck of a better job than you can by "buying the most expensive E-machine"
Around here, especally in the early days people called the Apple PC's - PC's. It was not really until the advent of the masses getting connected to the Internet that the whole (elitist?)Mac vs PC naming thing took hold. And then (must I say) it seemed to get more traction with the less computer savy of the apple community.
The word PC really started taking a beating when some Apple fans started believing that it meant a computer running Windows, I have heard one fanboy calling a expensive SERVER a "PC" just because it was running windows. Almost like "PC" was a term that MS gave it.(believe it or not, I met one who did believe this)
Lets take back the term PC to mean --- PC. Power or x86 to refer to the instruction set of the processor. (no longer as relevant as x86 seems to rule the PC world) And then let people specify the OS(s) being run.
Oh, Give me a freaking break "Anything that suggests Microsoft is doing something good is immediately shot down."?
I am one of many/. readers that would love to jump up and down praising MS (or any other vendor) for doing good. The problem is that so few do "good". MS in particular has kept a smile off my face much longer that and human should let a corporation affect them. It is just as a developer who uses the products on a semi regular basis, I can't totaly escape (yes, I even have a MSDN sub).
New kids??? I wish I was new! I am not even new to Apple.
I typed on my first apple in 1978 or 1979 (I can't lock it down closer than that) and I still have my last Apple ][ like computer in the basement, a Laser 128 (It was an apple IIe clone).
I'm sorry, you are obviously not one of the offenders, but many of us posters know from personal experience that writing a post that does not worship Apple or Jobs is one of the quickest ways to be modded to hell. So, you may not be a fanboi, but they are sure out there.
Lets continue the recent slashdot apple lovefest. Really, we just had to suffer through slashdot announcing the old news of apple getting a new chipset, like how is that worthy of news?
Now we get a slanted piece about purchase price that holds true in a couple of instances, but will have many holes poked in it.
As a user of Apple, Linux and MS I must state that none are perfect but there seems to be a spike in "ferver" in the apple camp, more than even MS or Linux. (it is usually MS or Linux that gets accused of having zelots) BUT is that true? I often wonder if the exclusive apple users really feel more threatened, or if it is just that the apple world is so small that somehow a new chipset(etc) is worthy of slasdot, and thus it only APPEARS that the adherents are harder core.
(sorry BSD people, I do not use it, but it is not personal)
I don't think MS has realized what it is really doing. They think that by picking off a couple of the weaker Linux players they will force the progressive distros to follow suit. (the weaker Corproate distro was Novell, and Xandros is weak as well)
All that this is going to do is make Redhat, Ubuntu and Mandriva stronger, and maybe creating a spot for Linspire to prosper in. They are encouraging the consolidation of Linux, a little of this is not a bad thing.
By the way, who thinks that this was either almost free OR MS payed Xandros because they had a cash crunch or something?
And if you are running Knoppix or similar, and keep your sessions short(less than 12 hours), it may still be a theretical possibility, but the chance is 99.9999999% that you are secure as a average user. (my guess)
It was a response to your comment "Just like the historical reason for the name "America" is not that the United States of America were suggesting they were the entire American continent."
The US tried to take over the whole continent, and still has designs on it. So ya, we kind of do think we are the entire continent. (and certainly wanted to be in the past)
Revisonist history would allow us to think the USA did not try to take over the entire continent. The original colonies held very litte land. Our country was VERY aggesive at expanding our borders. I am sure this is something most "USers" like to forget, but Mexicans and Canadians don't. (and as some slashdotters like to remind us, the US tried to invade Canada not once, but twice)
Add to that the fact the Bush government has now armed the coast guard ships in the great lakes (the only enemy there is Canada) and our military does practice INVASIONS of Canada*, and you can see why they don't believe our "We never tried to take over the whole continent". You do realize the reason we have problems with Cuba is that we held them by force, even making them write it into the Cuban constitution.
By the way, I am actually a conservitive, but that does not mean I have to agree with the Neo Faciests (sorry they prefer Neo Conservative) or some of the US imperialist moves of the past. We need to hold onto what made our country great, and ditch the rubbish.
*(The last practice invasion that I know of was a couple of years ago in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the military brought up a bunch of portable floating bridges and moved the equipment to Sugar Island. The excersize was some morons attempt to send a message, and yes, they heard it loud and clear)
Slashdot Mirror
Ya, if intended that way it would have been a bad analogy, because you have IT staff to maintain computers regardless of going with LTSP or windows, you sure would not want to leave it to the poor teachers. Just like you have maintainance staff for the windows.
You are so right that while LTSP installs are a bit frusterating for the teachers who have to adapt to a non windows world, it sure takes away a LOT of admin headaches, hardware repair, reimaging and malware removal.
The school that I help build the LTSP servers for went with LTSP because the head of the computer department had taught at a private school. There he had spent so much time and money on building images, patching, installing new proprietary software, licence audits, reimaging and more reimaging that he thought there had to be a better way(small school, he was IT, lol). He found LTSP, and it worked so well, he took it to the next school he went to. He figures that they now spend under 33% of what they would otherwise, and have a system that is easier to manage. The rest of the budget can now go to things like a computerized music lab (keyboards, mics, soundboards etc) and other luxury items.
You are right, as a rule Core Duo's do use a bit less power than the Turions, BUT, once you take into account that the memory controller is built into the Turion, it is usually a wash. (of course this varies from model to model)
Thanks for your Info! These are diskless "PXE boot" stations. In the first years we used the inherited hardware with boot floppies.
.... seemed to be pegged at 95%". I guess it is a sign that it is working well, but I still like input on the weak spots for the next build.
Last year we built a server for two more classrooms of 20 each.
For the processor we just had an Athlon 3200+
4 gigs of ram
200 gig SATA drive
Gigabit Ethernet
I build the servers, but I don't run them. So while I am regularly pushing the administrator for feedback and usage statistics, I hear the not too helpful "ya, it seems to be running well", a lot more than "we were using GIMP and
I know we could use a dual core like your server has(we will drop one in to the athlon 64 Server this year), and even though we have a lot more ram per student than you, Linux seems to use it all, though it is often just for dish cache I believe.
I don't know if the network ever saturates, but to try to keep that from happening we have started implementing Switches that are Gigabit to the server and 10/100 to the terminals.
I don't think we have ever had more than 80 Gigs used on a drive, but we don't have more than 40 stations on a server currently.
For the new server I had wanted to go with a Dual socket server board, but looking at them they seemed to all require registered ECC ram and that is sure not cheap or fast. (I thought having two dual core processors might allow us to consolidate some of the old servers)
If I go with a dual core Athlon 64 I can populate it with 8 gigs ( regular 2 Gig sticks are so cheap now) but I don't have ECC or an extra socket.
I have also been wondering about RAID vs a WD raptor vs More RAM for disk cache.
I would lean toward more RAM, but I have a problem in that I cannot seem to fit more than 8 gigs on a reasonably priced board with reasonably priced RAM.
I agree about the AnandTech guides. You are on the money.
The advice about Laptops is a bit simplistic. The only Intel Laptop processor that dominates is the Core 2 duo. The Pentium, celeron laptops that I still see are often not a good choice, and the dual core AMD Turions are overall as good or better than the respectable Core Duo's. (depends if you are ever going to run 64 bits etc.)
I have beaten this thread to death, so this is my last post.
The "gamer" who benefits from Dual video cards is NOT the gamer who keeps the PC for 5 years. Only the hard core gamer could properly appreciate dual or Quad SLI cards, and those guys ONLY keep the PC for a Year, and a couple I know don't even keep it that long.
And thanks for confirming that you have plenty of money (an extra thousand is not a big deal), unfortuneately most people out there are not in your situation so it is still important for them to get a good deal on what they need. (Most people keep themselves a couple of months from bankrupcy--not a smart idea)
As an aside, the extra thousand you are willing to spend is enough for me to build 2 computers with dual core processors and 2 gigs of ram each, and a nice case and PS. I would even rather take those PC's and give them to kids who need them (parent died, and the family a little short on cash etc.) than have it depreciate in my computer room without being really used, but that is just me. (btw, those two PC's would be able to even play BattleField 2)
Nope, I from his post I obviously DON'T believe "that being 'optimal' is important to him."
I was simply replying to the fact that he/she seemed to believe that the best computer was the most expensive, and the price told you how good a computer is.
The fact remains that this is a poor way to buy a PC, and even more so a notebook. If he found a good site, or had a good friend the appropriate questions would be asked. (Is this ever going to be used for games, are photos going to be stored or videos going to be ripped,is it a media center...etc.)
By asking these questions he could get a processor or storage or GPU that can meet his needs(the processor was only an example)
If he does not "Game" the most expensive E-machines PC (or whatever) is not likely any better than the one two price points lower. A thousand dollars worth of SLI'd video cards don't do any good in Photoshop.
My ego is not determined by my core either, but as a IT professional, I should be able to quickly absorb enough information to make a judgement call on more than price, or know someone that can. (And even if I don't really care about my processor, Visual Studio sure does! lol)
Most school districts DO have staff to maintain boilers and wash windows. I bet over 50% of schools never see snow, so that is optional.
Having been involved in a LTSP project, I really don't know what you are talking about. We don't have problems with congestion, and I don't know why individual students want to directly access swap space? And this is on single core P4's and Athlons.
In the next month we are building a server to handle two new classrooms, and while I am VERY interested in finding the perfect hardware configuration, I am not worried about all the issues you talk about. (by the way, I would invest the hundered bucks on a UPS regardless of having data loss from power failure or not)
Sorry, I consider Sun Rays to be nice equipment, but NOT inexpensive. The real "thin clients" on the desktop of the LTSP school I work with are $150 US each.
They work well, and they are very green (very low current draw).
No, and that would be somewhat interesting.
A close relitive of mine set up a high school in Turkey, and at first they used the K-12 LTSP project which is Fedora Based, he switched to Mandriva and likes it a lot better.
He found a bit of a learning curve as well, but had the time to spend since he was spending so much less time administrating.
What I would find interesting is what they found the optimal size for the servers, how many terminals they support, how the ram and the drives were configured optimally, are there dual Gigabit nics, or do they find the network doesn't saturate?
I have been asked to build a new Server to run two additional classrooms. To keep costs low, I was initially thinking of a dual core, with another socket to be populated if needed, with 8 gigs of ram. Any pearls of wisdom are appreciated.
Since the WTO keeps ruling against the US on gambling, he should have said
"We need to abide by the trade rules we have forced down the throats of the rest of the world, instead of holding others accountable and ignoring the rules ourselves"
How like the US to continue to ignore the way we screw the rest of the world and focus on how we can encourage our people destroy themselves best.
Yes, as I have stated before I work mostly in the GAMING industry (read gambling) so I have seen the carnage. The younger we get people started, the more addiction we can create. The internet is good for this.
THanks for the well thought out reply.
Back in the early days, it was very common for terms to differ from location to location. Even the pronunciation of some names tended to be "variable". That is why I prefaced my comment with "in our area".
I cannot really blame IBM, they called it the IBM PC, which is what it was. I guess if I had to blame someone in this era it would be the editors of Byte etc. who used the term PC Clone once in a while. But when I go back through the Byte back issues I see them useing the simple term "clone" most of the time.
I appreciate your comment about an individual having to be quite familiar with hardware to distinguish between some PC's or servers, but really, when you are in the middle of a computer room of about ten thousand square feet with air conditoning, high security, glass walls, row after row of rack mounted screaming 1&2U computers Power 4 and Alpha computers and you see a KVM displaying windows, you are showing a bit of ignorance always refering to it as a PC. (as one apple fanboy kept doing)
Hello again Drinkypoo
I think the reason you cannot compare to those Dell prices is because it is a rare occasion where one would buy a Dell at full price. The computers I have bought from them have been MASSIVELY discounted. Including Servers for $250 that listed around $1000.
Hmmm, I wish I could share your enthusiasm about Apples build quality, but it is not that good. I think the new shorter lead times on designs since moving to the x86 has hurt them even more. Support? Deny deny deny, runaround, deny deny.(example, My iMac had a bulging CAP so I knew it would fail, they would NOT replace it until it did, which was a real pain as I was in the middle of a project when it did go) While I don't think the build quality on the Toshibas are much better, I have had better luck dealing with them.
You are partially right about second tier being worse. It sometimes is. Talking service? If you want bad customer service you need to try to get help on an ECS motherboard, on the other hand I've had great service from little players like Hann-Star.
Hmm
Apple products WERE definitely better than ACER, but watch the Tiawaneese giant form.(Acer is outgrowing everyone else in the industry for a reason) The build quality on ACER Laptaps is rapidly improving, wait till you see the next generation. They are so much nicer the company is holding them back till this generation sells out, because they will kill themselves otherwise. Remember when Korean Cars were Junk? It didn't take Hyundai long to equal Honda on Quality did it?
As for Tosiba, IBM Stinkpads and Apple? They are often built well, but there have been huge problems with all those brands. Toshiba seemed to have an excessivly high failure rate for a while. IBM, we couldn't keep any of our screens going there for a while... failure after failure. And Apple? The tech guys at work have been complaining that they are now unresponsive, and deny deny deny every time they call with a problem. (This started around the bad capacitor era and now seems to be Standard Operating Mode)
Fine, I'll bite.
OK, so you have more money than you know what to do with, and you really don't care about computers?
It takes about 15 minutes to an hour to find a REALLY smart person or good website to tell you what to look for. Thats what saved many people from buying a P4 instead of the better Core or Athlon 64 processors.
If you do the homework, you might have even find out that the Vista "Performance Index" is close to useless.
I would actually find a person who knows every nuance of every processor, etc, and have them just go and buy the PC for me if I were in your place. They will do a heck of a better job than you can by "buying the most expensive E-machine"
It is nice to see this confusion addressed.
Around here, especally in the early days people called the Apple PC's - PC's. It was not really until the advent of the masses getting connected to the Internet that the whole (elitist?)Mac vs PC naming thing took hold. And then (must I say) it seemed to get more traction with the less computer savy of the apple community.
The word PC really started taking a beating when some Apple fans started believing that it meant a computer running Windows, I have heard one fanboy calling a expensive SERVER a "PC" just because it was running windows. Almost like "PC" was a term that MS gave it.(believe it or not, I met one who did believe this)
Lets take back the term PC to mean --- PC.
Power or x86 to refer to the instruction set of the processor. (no longer as relevant as x86 seems to rule the PC world)
And then let people specify the OS(s) being run.
This cruisade seperates the wheat from the chaff in the Linux world, and makes it clearer to all what MS has become.(sadly)
When the moral decay and corruption breaks through the glossy corporate veneer, we finally have to address what they really are, this is a good thing!
Oh, Give me a freaking break "Anything that suggests Microsoft is doing something good is immediately shot down."?
/. readers that would love to jump up and down praising MS (or any other vendor) for doing good. The problem is that so few do "good". MS in particular has kept a smile off my face much longer that and human should let a corporation affect them. It is just as a developer who uses the products on a semi regular basis, I can't totaly escape (yes, I even have a MSDN sub).
I am one of many
New kids??? I wish I was new! I am not even new to Apple.
I typed on my first apple in 1978 or 1979 (I can't lock it down closer than that) and I still have my last Apple ][ like computer in the basement, a Laser 128 (It was an apple IIe clone).
I'm sorry, you are obviously not one of the offenders, but many of us posters know from personal experience that writing a post that does not worship Apple or Jobs is one of the quickest ways to be modded to hell. So, you may not be a fanboi, but they are sure out there.
This is not meant as flamebait...
Lets continue the recent slashdot apple lovefest.
Really, we just had to suffer through slashdot announcing the old news of apple getting a new chipset, like how is that worthy of news?
Now we get a slanted piece about purchase price that holds true in a couple of instances, but will have many holes poked in it.
As a user of Apple, Linux and MS I must state that none are perfect but there seems to be a spike in "ferver" in the apple camp, more than even MS or Linux. (it is usually MS or Linux that gets accused of having zelots) BUT is that true? I often wonder if the exclusive apple users really feel more threatened, or if it is just that the apple world is so small that somehow a new chipset(etc) is worthy of slasdot, and thus it only APPEARS that the adherents are harder core.
(sorry BSD people, I do not use it, but it is not personal)
Watch my karma burn
I don't think MS has realized what it is really doing. They think that by picking off a couple of the weaker Linux players they will force the progressive distros to follow suit. (the weaker Corproate distro was Novell, and Xandros is weak as well)
All that this is going to do is make Redhat, Ubuntu and Mandriva stronger, and maybe creating a spot for Linspire to prosper in. They are encouraging the consolidation of Linux, a little of this is not a bad thing.
By the way, who thinks that this was either almost free OR MS payed Xandros because they had a cash crunch or something?
And if you are running Knoppix or similar, and keep your sessions short(less than 12 hours), it may still be a theretical possibility, but the chance is 99.9999999% that you are secure as a average user. (my guess)
lol
It was a response to your comment "Just like the historical reason for the name "America" is not that the United States of America were suggesting they were the entire American continent."
The US tried to take over the whole continent, and still has designs on it. So ya, we kind of do think we are the entire continent. (and certainly wanted to be in the past)
Revisonist history would allow us to think the USA did not try to take over the entire continent. The original colonies held very litte land. Our country was VERY aggesive at expanding our borders. I am sure this is something most "USers" like to forget, but Mexicans and Canadians don't.
(and as some slashdotters like to remind us, the US tried to invade Canada not once, but twice)
Then you have sites like http://www.invadecanada.us/ helping them feel even more secure.
Add to that the fact the Bush government has now armed the coast guard ships in the great lakes (the only enemy there is Canada) and our military does practice INVASIONS of Canada*, and you can see why they don't believe our "We never tried to take over the whole continent". You do realize the reason we have problems with Cuba is that we held them by force, even making them write it into the Cuban constitution.
By the way, I am actually a conservitive, but that does not mean I have to agree with the Neo Faciests (sorry they prefer Neo Conservative) or some of the US imperialist moves of the past. We need to hold onto what made our country great, and ditch the rubbish.
*(The last practice invasion that I know of was a couple of years ago in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the military brought up a bunch of portable floating bridges and moved the equipment to Sugar Island. The excersize was some morons attempt to send a message, and yes, they heard it loud and clear)