Aside from a novelty, what's the point? In a PDA that stores appointments, to do lists, etc., what do you need color for? THe way I see it color gets in the way. Sure it looks purety and everything, but it doesn't make me any more productive. The reason most of us like Palms better is because the interface is tailored for exactly what it does, and nothing else. It was designed from the ground up to be a PDA -- not an MP3 player, a voice recorder, a pager, or what have you.
Don't get me wrong, Color Palms are cool and all, I just question why 3com is adding this. Microsoft added color to their WinCEs to make them look cooler, not to make them more useful. It'd be a shame to see 3com, which so far has kept Palm Computing useful and productive (as opposed to clunky, annoying, and slow, a la WinCE) go down that same road. I'd love to be wrong on this one, but somehow I just wonder why in the heck they spent all their time doing this instead of enhancing core functions to make Palm a better PDA and forget about what WinCE does.
That software under a license like the GPL is better. Think about it. If you buy a GPL program with support, and then pirate it, what profit has been lost? YOU bought the support. No one else. Therefore no potential money has been lost. Software that is released under a truly open source license simply cannot be pirated. So Microsoft wants the magic bullet that will kill software piracy. I believe I just gave it to them.
Okay I can a reason why more and more of this is happening...Let's think about it. Personal computers are getting faster and faster -- we'll soon be seeing consumer gigahertz CPUs and so on. Further 24/7 connections to the internet are becoming more and more common with satellite, xDSL, and cable flooding the market. So in a few years we'll have hundreds of thousands ridiculously fast computers connected to the internet all the time used by parents who type letters on them once a day or something. So what we do is get all these people to run distributed computing apps like crack RC5, Seti@home, and as many others as we can get. So we'll have lots of high powered PCs clogging the internet trying to break x problem. THEN, with a little luck we should be able to crash the internet and the infrastructure will finally get upgraded!!!
And you said these projects were a waste of time...
You know this wasn't too bright for the folks over at Xi. Let's look at who would buy this stuff. Anyone dealing with X servers HAS to know quite a bit by the nature of X windows; that has always been the case and from what I've seen in Xfree 4 will continue to remain the case. So let's establish one thing, that anyone who deals with 30 workstations all running X knows their stuff. It's something no amateur could do, period.
Now that we've established that the people setting up UNIX (Or Linux in this case) workstations have to be knowledgable, most of these people will have worked with the various servers that come with Xfree 3.3 or whatever version is public and stable right now. From what I've seen throwing X at numerous S3, Trident, and Cirrus Logic chipsets the SVGA server has performed _flawlessly_, its only flaw being that on the older 2.0.x series it was none too speedy. On 2.2 the speed difference was dramatic enough to make this a non issue; I never got Xfree to crash regardless of the 3 video card manufactures above with 3 or 4 different chipsets from each. So now we've established that yes, Xfree, even if it is fairly large, is fairly stable as well and for standard apps its speed is fine. (My tests were on Pentium/200s, K5/133s, K6/200s, and PII/400s with the above video cards.)
Now where does it leave this ad? You have a company proclaiming that free X servers suck to a bunch of people who know X fairly well and have probably been using free X servers for quite awhile. So where does that leave this ad? I believe it gets demoted to FUD, and we all know what we think of that...
You know, maybe someone else has said this before (I wasn't going to read through the 400+ comments to find out!) but in my opinion censorship is bad, plain and simple. Why? Because it doesn't address the real problem. Aside from terminating the lives of the handicapped (which I'm not even sure on; I need to think it over before I've made up my mind) there are plenty of issues where the solution always seems to be censorship. Clearly, it's not working.
1. Child Pornography is illegal and currently censored in a manner of speaking. Yes it is absolutely disgusting. Most of America would agree it sickens us. We've made it illegal and lock up those who violate the law and publish / purvey such stuff. And what good has it done. Every year we lock up several thousand child pornographers. Next year we will lock up just as many in prison. Did making it illegal and censoring it affect the rate of it happening? Absolutely not. We come up with punishments for those who commit such things. But we never target the underlying problem -- why is it happening? How can we prevent it from happening? Treatment and analysis are skipped for the quick fix of locking them up in prison. Just like the handicapped babies: instead of discussing and analysing, we revile, ignore, and refuse to even discuss the idea.
2. 'Offensive' television. I love the use of the word 'Offensive' in this context. SouthPark obviously made itself worthy of the 'Offensive' label. So in response, instead of raising children with good morals to recognize that this was TV and not real, and that we shouldn't act like that EVER, Networks in their infinite wisdom censor the show, move it to a late time slot, what have you. All they did was made a martyr out of it.
I could come up with more I guess. But I'm sick and tired of seeing censorship as the answer. It doesn't work. It's a surface cure so we can get around addressing the real problem. As long as we continue to promote censorship as the answer to our problems civilization will not advance one iota. God bless America!
Hmm, so MS is playing the 'ease of use' card again. Here's a little antecedote from personal experience.
I install an app and try to load it on someone's NT workstation. It promptly won't load due to a corrupt DLL. I go looking for this DLL. Where to look? Let's see, NT stores DLLs in the following locations...
1. \WINDOWS 2. \SYSTEM 3. \SYSTEM32 4. Program Directory
Then I try and delete the offending DLL. No good. NT won't let me delete it claiming the file is in use. I flip to task manager and try and kill everything that might be using the DLL. Still no good. Finally I get out my DOS based boot disk with NTFS read/write tools, reboot the workstation with this and delete the DLL. Then I reboot. NT blue screens saying it can't find the file I just deleted. In goes my ERU. The ERU promptly asks me to do a recovery reinstall of the OS. Fine, I reload. NT comes back up 45 minutes later. I grab my NT CD and drive over it a few times to release a little tension. Then I go buy another copy of this 'easy to use and manage' operating system.
Yeah, I guess Linux's method of storing everything in/lib is pretty complex, much harder to deal with than Windows NT.
You know, the sad truth is that patents aren't necessarily a bad thing. I remember the original patent RCA held on the TV; that was a good thing. Their engineers spent thousands of man hours, millions of dollars, and frittered away their lives to design the time waster we know today called television. Had there been no patent to protect their specific invention, everyone would have ripped off and reverse engineered RCA's TVs and made their own. Their competitors were forced to come up with their own televisions, and the competition eventually led to color TV. There was a PBS documentary on the whole thing, in which the narrator said that had RCA NOT patented their original B&W TV, it'd have taken considerably longer to get where we are today in terms of television. So in that instance a patent did what it was supposed to do -- it encouraged competition, protected YEARS of nonstop work from being ripped off, and ended up benefiting us all.
However the situation today is much different. RCA patented an object, something their engineers poured their lives into. Today we're seeing ludicrous patents, not on inventions, but on concepts and processes. Had RCA patented the process, you can imagine what would have happened. Who's fault is it? Is it the Greedy Corporation (tm) or the patent office? I believe it is the patent office. The agency itself hasn't changed, only those running it. In this case we can see it's morally bankrupt people who sell out to the highest bidder. Patents themselves (at least how they were intended) are not evil. Those that administer the patent office, however, are. Plain and simple. So when we call for change, let's take the first step before changing the underlying system (which is idealogically sound) and boot the corrupt sell outs who run the patent office out on the street where they belong.
What amazes me the most about this guy is his arrogance. He knows he was dead wrong here; downloading RH RPMs and installing them is work a blind chimp could do. To imply that it's too difficult is just a cop out. It disgusts me that this guy simply refuses to come out and say "Okay, I didn't do everything I could have done because it seemed like too much work and I didn't know enough. My bad." He doesn't. Instead he BSes and makes up excuses. Forgetting his skills as a journalist he's a priggish bastard in my opinion with no more spine than your average amoeba. The best, most objective journalists are the ones who aren't above admitting they were wrong. From what I've read here this guy obviously is not one of them.
I have to use IE on my home computer for my parents, and I've dodged this Microsoft Wallet crap since it first started back with IE3. Sure in theory it sounds nice, but in practice it is just too insecure. Can you imagine what would happen if Microsoft Passport servers got hacked? And let's face it, they would be prime targets for script kiddies. Why try to capture a credit card number as it goes across the wire when you can hack a public server storing THOUSANDS of credit card numbers! Sure Microsoft boasts the system will be secure, but we all know how secure their products are.
This idea doesn't sound like they are really interested in helping the public for online shopping so much as it is another way to increase Microsoft's revenue stream. Here's a thought...Microsoft knows they can't keep the prices of their products artificially inflated forever...this is just another stab at replacing the cash cow, perhaps. I'm not one given to conspiracy theories and all, but it sounds like a strong possibility to me.
Not to beat the GPL Zealot drum too much, but their philosophy disturbs me. I wouldn't buy any of their proprietary extensions to Linux. Not because it makes it so I can't fix problems (I can't; I'm not a programmer) but because it is a LOCK IN. No one except TurboLinux can fix any problems that happen with their cluster server. That's not good any way you look at it. I for one won't support a company that has no problem locking in customers Microsoft-style to their products by using the classic embrace and extend tactic. So let's all do the right thing, and stick it to TurboLinux with dollars by not contributing a cent to their enterprise. If they won't play by our rules, then let's do our best to ensure they don't play at all.
Just my.02
Let's not get too worked up about this..
on
KDE Looks Ahead
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· Score: 1
I see a lot of people up in arms because the KDE people are changing directions in how they are developing this thing. Now, I realize you are worked up with good reasons - we all want KDE and GNOME to work and play well with each other, for each to open, etc.
However, to that I say this: let the KDE people do whatever the heck they want. The beauty of open source is we DON'T have to stick with whatever they produce. If KDE2 sucks bigtime, we can all go back to GNOME, WindowMaker, or what have you. So we have choice, which is what makes the whole open source movement so fantastic. So let's applaud the KDE developers on the work they are doing, and when they are done, we'll see what works best and work with that. If in the end it is subpar, we don't have to stick with it. This isn't Windows, people.
I've worked with the Windows version of Opera before and I wasn't impressed. It is small, true, but so is Mozilla. And the KDE browser isn't half bad either. So why they think a non-free commercial browser will thrive in a free OS with equally good free browsers is beyond me, but I'm not a marketing droid. Opera will, I predict, die off as their business model crumbles. Times are changing, and openness is the new rules to play by. Closed source products have their days numbered. Opera could change, but they won't. And that's why they'll be just another has-been in the long run.
Far be it from me to post yet another response to what looks like a very lengthy discussion, but I don't understand for the life of me why we can't seem to reconcile evolution with creationism. Obviously the seperation of church and state should keep this more homogenous view out of schools, no doubt, but let me ask a few questions and hopefully not step on too many people's toes.
1. Is it implausible to assume that some deity(God, Buddah, whatever you choose to believe in)could have initiated the big bang, and in turn evolution?
2. In the Old Testament of the Bible the creation of the Universe is depicted to have taken place in 7 days. Then in Revelations we see that 1 day to God = 1000 years to man. But what is a day, exactly, to some omniscient, omnipotent being? Does time have any meaning, or were these 'days' in question simply used to give us lowly mortals something we could relate to? Obviously the Old Testament would make far less sense if it said 'And God collided 6.7 trillion quarks with 5.5 million leptons as the oceans formed, further colliding to form primitive hydrogen isotops which later decayed into hydrogen and oxygen, combining to form the seas of the earth.' It would certainly not have the mass-audience appeal it has had over a millenium. So can we say that maybe, just maybe, what is stated in the Old Testament and Revelations aren't necessarily supposed to be taken literally?
3. Is it again too much to assume that some deity ALLOWED evolution to happen along a course that eventually produced mankind?
I could be wrong here, and I'm always open to alterative viewpoints. But people always seem to seperate creationism and evolutionism as opposite sides of the spectrum - why? Creationism doesn't pretend to answer all the questions as to how things came to be, and the scientists who most ardently argue that the big bang occured freely admit they don't know why or how it occured.
My main point is simple -- these two viewpoints don't have to be so polarized. Combining the two together actually fills in a lot of gaps depending on how you look at it.
It's a quagmire we're placed in from what I can see in the discussion so far -- what direction do we go in? Do we conquer the server with a superior, though complex server OS, or do we conquer the desktop with an easier to use OS?
This discussion of client/server attack is a moot point. The distributors will take care of that. For instance Mandrake, Caldera and Corel are clearly targetting the client, while Debian, Slackware, and RH are going for the more advanced and server spaces. So as to which direction Linux as a whole should go in, I say it shouldn't have a central direction like that. Honing things like SMP, firewalling, and fault tolerance make it great in the server space. Polishing the GUI makes it a great distributed computing system thanks to the power of X Windows. So when someone says we need to change direction, I respectfully disagree. Linux is moving in all directions -- something only open source software can do due to the size of the development pool. So let's beat the desktop by introducing a better desktop paradigm, and at the same time let's stomp the server space by coming out with better ideas and technologies for servers. But by targetting a single niche with Linux (okay, we'll be the web development platform everyone will use!) we'll end up being just a small niche player like BeOS.
As always I could be wrong, and I'm sure there will be those who will gleefully tell me I am. But the great thing about Linux is we're going everywhere with it, and that, in a nutshell, is one of the keys that makes it as popular as it is.
Sure these chips are nice -- better performance is always great I suppose. But I think we've reached the point where before designing yet another CPU with yet another instruction set we should go and change the design of the PC a bit. If the Itanium includes any of the following, then it speaks for itself on just how crappy the PC is regardless of speed.
1. IRQs. The IRQ controller in most PCs was designed by IBM if I remember correctly, circa *1982* or so. If we have to recompile and redesign all our apps and OSes anyway, can't we go ahead and redesign the other aspects of the circuitry to drive this thing?
2. Don't tell me this thing will have a AT style keyboard port. Or a PS/2 port for that matter. Something that is supposed to represent bleeding edge technology built with a keyboard controller designed around 1980. Bravo Intel.
3. ISA: don't even get me started. For a "Next Generation" system to include ISA slots is a joke. Why not build it on a MCA bus while you are at it.
4. Floppy drive controller. Enough said. A 1.44 MB drive in a system attached to a 80 GB raid array. Great for backups, right?
The sad thing is that all these wonderfully annoying and archaic antiques will likely be part of the "Next Generation" PCs built on Intel architecture. Says how far we've really come, doesn't it?
It's a weak attempt to enter the commodity PC market. Over the years big iron machines (with the exception of things like IBM's S/390, and so on) are no longer having any benefits over commodity x86/PPC hardware. Sun finds itself having harder time convincing buyers that yes, its equipment is really THAT much better to warrant the outrageous prices. And this price slashing (even though it is on crappy hardware) is evidence that they aren't doing a very good job of that anymore. With Pentium IIIs and AMD Athlons to be had relatively cheaply by comparison, Sun is no longer able to convince enterprise customers that yes, SPARC & Solaris is the way to go. This is a sign that yes, Sun is dying. They are trying to take their proprietary business down to the commodity market, where surprise, surprise, it will crash and burn.
Somehow I am not surprised. Politicians lie, pure and simple. Perhaps the bigger question is who is supplying the dollars to get this legislation through Austrailia's government? I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but let's examine the bigger question...Politicians as a whole either represent the people who elected them or company(s) who are paying out tons of money to get what they want...I am sure he is not representing the people -- so who is he representing? Who so badly wants the net censored that they'll pay off a politician to make it happen?
Now I'm not disputing that the NAACP means well by registering these names - racial hatred is a bad thing after all, no matter how you look at it. But just going out and buying up a bunch of offensive domain names certainly won't fix the problem. It's a weak attempt at curing a much deeper problem -- why the racism exists in the first place. I commend their efforts, however I believe that unless they change the mindset of those that create the hate they will ultimately fail.
As the article said, Linux can help get Apple into markets it simply couldn't penetrate. Yes, OS X is UNIX-based, but there is still considerable porting that has to be done in order to make it work, and the app availability is pretty low. Linux, OTOH, has thousands of apps that require minor changes to get running on PPC.
I think LinuxPPC will get Macintoshes into markets Apple never thought unreachable, like, dare I say it, ISPs. Think about it though, with a really good networking OS those Macs would actually make great file / print (SAMBA) / web / mail servers due to their design - small form factor, integrated components, low heat, etc. Sure it wouldn't fit every need, but it looks like a Good Thing to me, that Apple would be a fool to crush. While software sales is important to them, it's pennies compared to what they make on hardware. Crushing LinuxPPC to fend off potential loss in software sales (Forget the gains in higher-margin hardware sales!) would cut off another revenue stream and do them more harm in the long run.
I don't believe this will change Slashdot regardless of what happens with Andover's stock. If Slashdot were ordered to cater to a different crowd or change WHATEVER in order to boost revenue many of us who frequent this site would leave in droves. It would cease to be the community builder Slashdot is. Andover knows this, that is why they purchased this site and agreed not to change it except to rake in the banner ads. They know that if they force some mandatory changes on Slashdot, the community built up around it will go elsewhere. So take heart people and don't worry, I predict that regardless of the stock, Slashdot will not have any mandatory changes made to its content in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from a novelty, what's the point? In a PDA that stores appointments, to do lists, etc., what do you need color for? THe way I see it color gets in the way. Sure it looks purety and everything, but it doesn't make me any more productive. The reason most of us like Palms better is because the interface is tailored for exactly what it does, and nothing else. It was designed from the ground up to be a PDA -- not an MP3 player, a voice recorder, a pager, or what have you.
Don't get me wrong, Color Palms are cool and all, I just question why 3com is adding this. Microsoft added color to their WinCEs to make them look cooler, not to make them more useful. It'd be a shame to see 3com, which so far has kept Palm Computing useful and productive (as opposed to clunky, annoying, and slow, a la WinCE) go down that same road. I'd love to be wrong on this one, but somehow I just wonder why in the heck they spent all their time doing this instead of enhancing core functions to make Palm a better PDA and forget about what WinCE does.
Just my own slightly off ideas...
That software under a license like the GPL is better. Think about it. If you buy a GPL program with support, and then pirate it, what profit has been lost? YOU bought the support. No one else. Therefore no potential money has been lost. Software that is released under a truly open source license simply cannot be pirated. So Microsoft wants the magic bullet that will kill software piracy. I believe I just gave it to them.
Okay I can a reason why more and more of this is happening...Let's think about it. Personal computers are getting faster and faster -- we'll soon be seeing consumer gigahertz CPUs and so on. Further 24/7 connections to the internet are becoming more and more common with satellite, xDSL, and cable flooding the market. So in a few years we'll have hundreds of thousands ridiculously fast computers connected to the internet all the time used by parents who type letters on them once a day or something. So what we do is get all these people to run distributed computing apps like crack RC5, Seti@home, and as many others as we can get. So we'll have lots of high powered PCs clogging the internet trying to break x problem. THEN, with a little luck we should be able to crash the internet and the infrastructure will finally get upgraded!!!
And you said these projects were a waste of time...
You know this wasn't too bright for the folks over at Xi. Let's look at who would buy this stuff. Anyone dealing with X servers HAS to know quite a bit by the nature of X windows; that has always been the case and from what I've seen in Xfree 4 will continue to remain the case. So let's establish one thing, that anyone who deals with 30 workstations all running X knows their stuff. It's something no amateur could do, period.
Now that we've established that the people setting up UNIX (Or Linux in this case) workstations have to be knowledgable, most of these people will have worked with the various servers that come with Xfree 3.3 or whatever version is public and stable right now. From what I've seen throwing X at numerous S3, Trident, and Cirrus Logic chipsets the SVGA server has performed _flawlessly_, its only flaw being that on the older 2.0.x series it was none too speedy. On 2.2 the speed difference was dramatic enough to make this a non issue; I never got Xfree to crash regardless of the 3 video card manufactures above with 3 or 4 different chipsets from each. So now we've established that yes, Xfree, even if it is fairly large, is fairly stable as well and for standard apps its speed is fine. (My tests were on Pentium/200s, K5/133s, K6/200s, and PII/400s with the above video cards.)
Now where does it leave this ad? You have a company proclaiming that free X servers suck to a bunch of people who know X fairly well and have probably been using free X servers for quite awhile. So where does that leave this ad? I believe it gets demoted to FUD, and we all know what we think of that...
You know, maybe someone else has said this before (I wasn't going to read through the 400+ comments to find out!) but in my opinion censorship is bad, plain and simple. Why? Because it doesn't address the real problem. Aside from terminating the lives of the handicapped (which I'm not even sure on; I need to think it over before I've made up my mind) there are plenty of issues where the solution always seems to be censorship. Clearly, it's not working.
1. Child Pornography is illegal and currently censored in a manner of speaking. Yes it is absolutely disgusting. Most of America would agree it sickens us. We've made it illegal and lock up those who violate the law and publish / purvey such stuff. And what good has it done. Every year we lock up several thousand child pornographers. Next year we will lock up just as many in prison. Did making it illegal and censoring it affect the rate of it happening? Absolutely not. We come up with punishments for those who commit such things. But we never target the underlying problem -- why is it happening? How can we prevent it from happening? Treatment and analysis are skipped for the quick fix of locking them up in prison. Just like the handicapped babies: instead of discussing and analysing, we revile, ignore, and refuse to even discuss the idea.
2. 'Offensive' television. I love the use of the word 'Offensive' in this context. SouthPark obviously made itself worthy of the 'Offensive' label. So in response, instead of raising children with good morals to recognize that this was TV and not real, and that we shouldn't act like that EVER, Networks in their infinite wisdom censor the show, move it to a late time slot, what have you. All they did was made a martyr out of it.
I could come up with more I guess. But I'm sick and tired of seeing censorship as the answer. It doesn't work. It's a surface cure so we can get around addressing the real problem. As long as we continue to promote censorship as the answer to our problems civilization will not advance one iota. God bless America!
Hmm, so MS is playing the 'ease of use' card again. Here's a little antecedote from personal experience.
/lib is pretty complex, much harder to deal with than Windows NT.
I install an app and try to load it on someone's NT workstation. It promptly won't load due to a corrupt DLL. I go looking for this DLL. Where to look? Let's see, NT stores DLLs in the following locations...
1. \WINDOWS
2. \SYSTEM
3. \SYSTEM32
4. Program Directory
Then I try and delete the offending DLL. No good. NT won't let me delete it claiming the file is in use. I flip to task manager and try and kill everything that might be using the DLL. Still no good. Finally I get out my DOS based boot disk with NTFS read/write tools, reboot the workstation with this and delete the DLL. Then I reboot. NT blue screens saying it can't find the file I just deleted. In goes my ERU. The ERU promptly asks me to do a recovery reinstall of the OS. Fine, I reload. NT comes back up 45 minutes later. I grab my NT CD and drive over it a few times to release a little tension. Then I go buy another copy of this 'easy to use and manage' operating system.
Yeah, I guess Linux's method of storing everything in
You know, the sad truth is that patents aren't necessarily a bad thing. I remember the original patent RCA held on the TV; that was a good thing. Their engineers spent thousands of man hours, millions of dollars, and frittered away their lives to design the time waster we know today called television. Had there been no patent to protect their specific invention, everyone would have ripped off and reverse engineered RCA's TVs and made their own. Their competitors were forced to come up with their own televisions, and the competition eventually led to color TV. There was a PBS documentary on the whole thing, in which the narrator said that had RCA NOT patented their original B&W TV, it'd have taken considerably longer to get where we are today in terms of television. So in that instance a patent did what it was supposed to do -- it encouraged competition, protected YEARS of nonstop work from being ripped off, and ended up benefiting us all.
However the situation today is much different. RCA patented an object, something their engineers poured their lives into. Today we're seeing ludicrous patents, not on inventions, but on concepts and processes. Had RCA patented the process, you can imagine what would have happened. Who's fault is it? Is it the Greedy Corporation (tm) or the patent office? I believe it is the patent office. The agency itself hasn't changed, only those running it. In this case we can see it's morally bankrupt people who sell out to the highest bidder. Patents themselves (at least how they were intended) are not evil. Those that administer the patent office, however, are. Plain and simple. So when we call for change, let's take the first step before changing the underlying system (which is idealogically sound) and boot the corrupt sell outs who run the patent office out on the street where they belong.
What amazes me the most about this guy is his arrogance. He knows he was dead wrong here; downloading RH RPMs and installing them is work a blind chimp could do. To imply that it's too difficult is just a cop out. It disgusts me that this guy simply refuses to come out and say "Okay, I didn't do everything I could have done because it seemed like too much work and I didn't know enough. My bad." He doesn't. Instead he BSes and makes up excuses. Forgetting his skills as a journalist he's a priggish bastard in my opinion with no more spine than your average amoeba. The best, most objective journalists are the ones who aren't above admitting they were wrong. From what I've read here this guy obviously is not one of them.
I have to use IE on my home computer for my parents, and I've dodged this Microsoft Wallet crap since it first started back with IE3. Sure in theory it sounds nice, but in practice it is just too insecure. Can you imagine what would happen if Microsoft Passport servers got hacked? And let's face it, they would be prime targets for script kiddies. Why try to capture a credit card number as it goes across the wire when you can hack a public server storing THOUSANDS of credit card numbers! Sure Microsoft boasts the system will be secure, but we all know how secure their products are.
This idea doesn't sound like they are really interested in helping the public for online shopping so much as it is another way to increase Microsoft's revenue stream. Here's a thought...Microsoft knows they can't keep the prices of their products artificially inflated forever...this is just another stab at replacing the cash cow, perhaps. I'm not one given to conspiracy theories and all, but it sounds like a strong possibility to me.
Not to beat the GPL Zealot drum too much, but their philosophy disturbs me. I wouldn't buy any of their proprietary extensions to Linux. Not because it makes it so I can't fix problems (I can't; I'm not a programmer) but because it is a LOCK IN. No one except TurboLinux can fix any problems that happen with their cluster server. That's not good any way you look at it. I for one won't support a company that has no problem locking in customers Microsoft-style to their products by using the classic embrace and extend tactic. So let's all do the right thing, and stick it to TurboLinux with dollars by not contributing a cent to their enterprise. If they won't play by our rules, then let's do our best to ensure they don't play at all.
.02
Just my
I see a lot of people up in arms because the KDE people are changing directions in how they are developing this thing. Now, I realize you are worked up with good reasons - we all want KDE and GNOME to work and play well with each other, for each to open, etc.
.02
However, to that I say this: let the KDE people do whatever the heck they want. The beauty of open source is we DON'T have to stick with whatever they produce. If KDE2 sucks bigtime, we can all go back to GNOME, WindowMaker, or what have you. So we have choice, which is what makes the whole open source movement so fantastic. So let's applaud the KDE developers on the work they are doing, and when they are done, we'll see what works best and work with that. If in the end it is subpar, we don't have to stick with it. This isn't Windows, people.
Just my
I've worked with the Windows version of Opera before and I wasn't impressed. It is small, true, but so is Mozilla. And the KDE browser isn't half bad either. So why they think a non-free commercial browser will thrive in a free OS with equally good free browsers is beyond me, but I'm not a marketing droid. Opera will, I predict, die off as their business model crumbles. Times are changing, and openness is the new rules to play by. Closed source products have their days numbered. Opera could change, but they won't. And that's why they'll be just another has-been in the long run.
Far be it from me to post yet another response to what looks like a very lengthy discussion, but I don't understand for the life of me why we can't seem to reconcile evolution with creationism. Obviously the seperation of church and state should keep this more homogenous view out of schools, no doubt, but let me ask a few questions and hopefully not step on too many people's toes.
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1. Is it implausible to assume that some deity(God, Buddah, whatever you choose to believe in)could have initiated the big bang, and in turn evolution?
2. In the Old Testament of the Bible the creation of the Universe is depicted to have taken place in 7 days. Then in Revelations we see that 1 day to God = 1000 years to man. But what is a day, exactly, to some omniscient, omnipotent being? Does time have any meaning, or were these 'days' in question simply used to give us lowly mortals something we could relate to? Obviously the Old Testament would make far less sense if it said 'And God collided 6.7 trillion quarks with 5.5 million leptons as the oceans formed, further colliding to form primitive hydrogen isotops which later decayed into hydrogen and oxygen, combining to form the seas of the earth.' It would certainly not have the mass-audience appeal it has had over a millenium. So can we say that maybe, just maybe, what is stated in the Old Testament and Revelations aren't necessarily supposed to be taken literally?
3. Is it again too much to assume that some deity ALLOWED evolution to happen along a course that eventually produced mankind?
I could be wrong here, and I'm always open to alterative viewpoints. But people always seem to seperate creationism and evolutionism as opposite sides of the spectrum - why? Creationism doesn't pretend to answer all the questions as to how things came to be, and the scientists who most ardently argue that the big bang occured freely admit they don't know why or how it occured.
My main point is simple -- these two viewpoints don't have to be so polarized. Combining the two together actually fills in a lot of gaps depending on how you look at it.
Just my
It's a quagmire we're placed in from what I can see in the discussion so far -- what direction do we go in? Do we conquer the server with a superior, though complex server OS, or do we conquer the desktop with an easier to use OS?
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This discussion of client/server attack is a moot point. The distributors will take care of that. For instance Mandrake, Caldera and Corel are clearly targetting the client, while Debian, Slackware, and RH are going for the more advanced and server spaces. So as to which direction Linux as a whole should go in, I say it shouldn't have a central direction like that. Honing things like SMP, firewalling, and fault tolerance make it great in the server space. Polishing the GUI makes it a great distributed computing system thanks to the power of X Windows. So when someone says we need to change direction, I respectfully disagree. Linux is moving in all directions -- something only open source software can do due to the size of the development pool. So let's beat the desktop by introducing a better desktop paradigm, and at the same time let's stomp the server space by coming out with better ideas and technologies for servers. But by targetting a single niche with Linux (okay, we'll be the web development platform everyone will use!) we'll end up being just a small niche player like BeOS.
As always I could be wrong, and I'm sure there will be those who will gleefully tell me I am. But the great thing about Linux is we're going everywhere with it, and that, in a nutshell, is one of the keys that makes it as popular as it is.
Just my
Sure these chips are nice -- better performance is always great I suppose. But I think we've reached the point where before designing yet another CPU with yet another instruction set we should go and change the design of the PC a bit. If the Itanium includes any of the following, then it speaks for itself on just how crappy the PC is regardless of speed.
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1. IRQs. The IRQ controller in most PCs was designed by IBM if I remember correctly, circa *1982* or so. If we have to recompile and redesign all our apps and OSes anyway, can't we go ahead and redesign the other aspects of the circuitry to drive this thing?
2. Don't tell me this thing will have a AT style keyboard port. Or a PS/2 port for that matter. Something that is supposed to represent bleeding edge technology built with a keyboard controller designed around 1980. Bravo Intel.
3. ISA: don't even get me started. For a "Next Generation" system to include ISA slots is a joke. Why not build it on a MCA bus while you are at it.
4. Floppy drive controller. Enough said. A 1.44 MB drive in a system attached to a 80 GB raid array. Great for backups, right?
The sad thing is that all these wonderfully annoying and archaic antiques will likely be part of the "Next Generation" PCs built on Intel architecture. Says how far we've really come, doesn't it?
Just my
It's a weak attempt to enter the commodity PC market. Over the years big iron machines (with the exception of things like IBM's S/390, and so on) are no longer having any benefits over commodity x86/PPC hardware. Sun finds itself having harder time convincing buyers that yes, its equipment is really THAT much better to warrant the outrageous prices. And this price slashing (even though it is on crappy hardware) is evidence that they aren't doing a very good job of that anymore. With Pentium IIIs and AMD Athlons to be had relatively cheaply by comparison, Sun is no longer able to convince enterprise customers that yes, SPARC & Solaris is the way to go. This is a sign that yes, Sun is dying. They are trying to take their proprietary business down to the commodity market, where surprise, surprise, it will crash and burn.
Somehow I am not surprised. Politicians lie, pure and simple. Perhaps the bigger question is who is supplying the dollars to get this legislation through Austrailia's government? I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but let's examine the bigger question...Politicians as a whole either represent the people who elected them or company(s) who are paying out tons of money to get what they want...I am sure he is not representing the people -- so who is he representing? Who so badly wants the net censored that they'll pay off a politician to make it happen?
Now I'm not disputing that the NAACP means well by registering these names - racial hatred is a bad thing after all, no matter how you look at it. But just going out and buying up a bunch of offensive domain names certainly won't fix the problem. It's a weak attempt at curing a much deeper problem -- why the racism exists in the first place. I commend their efforts, however I believe that unless they change the mindset of those that create the hate they will ultimately fail.
As the article said, Linux can help get Apple into markets it simply couldn't penetrate. Yes, OS X is UNIX-based, but there is still considerable porting that has to be done in order to make it work, and the app availability is pretty low. Linux, OTOH, has thousands of apps that require minor changes to get running on PPC.
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I think LinuxPPC will get Macintoshes into markets Apple never thought unreachable, like, dare I say it, ISPs. Think about it though, with a really good networking OS those Macs would actually make great file / print (SAMBA) / web / mail servers due to their design - small form factor, integrated components, low heat, etc. Sure it wouldn't fit every need, but it looks like a Good Thing to me, that Apple would be a fool to crush. While software sales is important to them, it's pennies compared to what they make on hardware. Crushing LinuxPPC to fend off potential loss in software sales (Forget the gains in higher-margin hardware sales!) would cut off another revenue stream and do them more harm in the long run.
Just my
I don't believe this will change Slashdot regardless of what happens with Andover's stock. If Slashdot were ordered to cater to a different crowd or change WHATEVER in order to boost revenue many of us who frequent this site would leave in droves. It would cease to be the community builder Slashdot is. Andover knows this, that is why they purchased this site and agreed not to change it except to rake in the banner ads. They know that if they force some mandatory changes on Slashdot, the community built up around it will go elsewhere. So take heart people and don't worry, I predict that regardless of the stock, Slashdot will not have any mandatory changes made to its content in any way.
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Just my