Not really. When MSIE came bundled with Windows, Netscape Communications was resting on their collective laurels. They had the best browser, then MSIE 4 quickly passed them by - and with its being bundled with the OS AND Netscape 4.x's being a piece of crud, Netscape struggled to create Netscape 5.0 (of which an official 5.x binary doesn't exist), realized it was bound to fail, and so they opened up the source and begat a rewrite which was christened Mozilla. Mozilla then begat Netscape 6.0, which wasn't so much of a turd, but by then four years of stagnation had gone by and MSIE 5.0, 5,5, and 6.0 had already come out and continued to dominate the market. Netscape eventually (for all intents and purposes) dissolved and became a "me too" portal which offers a skinned Mozilla bundled with spyware, and Firefox and Thunderbird now carry the torch.
The royalties are paid to RIAA members on CDs by the manufacturers (on the customer's behalf) and (in the US) only CDs marketed for music, not data, are affected. It's interesting to note that by paying the royalty, you have in effect paid for any music you choose to download or copy from others, so it should be argued that it is legal, and suing the customer for downloading content which is burned onto the media on which royalties have been paid legally amounts to racketeering, since they're extorting money from you (the royalties) which pays for the content, and then they have the f'n nerve to tell you that you are not entitled to anything for the money you pay.
Last time I checked, billing someone for product and/or services and then refusing to fulfill that (implied) contract amounts to fraud.
Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time,
Note what I bolded very carefully.
Windows bumped Unix in SALES. Downloads do not count as sales. Whether they (Microsoft) like it or not, Linux, BSD, and (Open)Solaris are still going strong.
But to the OSS zealots (not the normal OSS proponents - the extreme fanatics e.g., Stallman) are always great because it means more choice. While it may be a nice ideal that is true in some areas, when it comes to a core component getting everyone to come together and come to a consensus - even if it means two "official" forks - is much better than two completely different solutions that have no hope of interoperating with the same apps with the same level of functionality.
Let's be realistic - for a moment, that's all I ask.
Installing hardware in Linux is easier? Is installing say, the latest ATI card in a system then installing ATI's driver and tweaking xorg.conf easier than on Windows where you click "install driver" when you put the ATI CD in the drive?
Is installing a Scanner easier in Linux, in general? "Oops, you need the firmware file. Oops, you need to edit/etc/sane.d/mustek.conf. OOps, nope that firmware doesn't work. What chipset does this scanner use? Oh great, you need a DIFFERENT firmware file because there were three revisions of this scanner" whereas on Windows you click "setup.exe" -- bang! Dead! Done!
Reliability? Sure, Linux will be a heck of a lot more reliable once it's set up but to be fair, hardware from some vendors is a royal PITA to configure in Linux, and a relative breeze in Windows.
Now, if you want to bring up motherboard or other hardware UPGRADES, sure! You won't run into stability issues on Linux if you switch from say, a VIA chipset with a Pentium III to an Intel chipset with a Pentium 4 - at worst you might have to recompile the kernel before the swap if you don't have the modules for the Intel chipset already installed. I've taken drives out of a Pentium II and Pentium III and put them in a Dual Xeon box and had the system boot right up without any problem - and no fuss with having to run driver cleaners, manually remove drivers, or worst case, OS reinstall. None of that BS. Granted, to get X up even with the same video card I have to lspci and edit one line in xorg.conf but that's a far cry from changing motherboards on Windows. Also, I shouldn't even NEED to mention this, but I will for the anti-DRM crowd. Linux won't accuse me of being a criminal and require a phone call to a Microsoft phone grunt to reactivate because I decided to upgrade my entire system but use the same OS instance in the new machine.
In every Windows vs. Linux/Unix/*nix {insert your *nix variant of choice here) I never, ever see this addressed:
Microsoft redefines "downtime" for their studies. Downtime, in their terms, does not include "scheduled maintenance windows" during which a system needs to be taken down for a backup, integrity checks, defrags (e.g., the Exchange info store), or reboot for configuration changes or patch installation. Where you might have to reboot a *nix box once a year for kernel patches (on rare occasion more often), it's not like the weekly or biweekly frequency of Windows patches which more often than not require a reboot, which can lead to downtime of a critical system service such as your DBMS, mail server, DNS server, or an active directory global catalog server.
Why do no studies make mention of this, and at minimum compare the "scheduled maintenance windows" and how the REAL downtime is affected? Windows, if PROPERLY maintained to avoid future disasters, will be nowhere near five nines' worth of downtime. No way, no how, unless it's on a LAN where you KNOW access is controlled, patches are unnecessary, and you run an intranet mail server which allows for live maintenance.
Better yet, let's have a study which ignores Microsoft's redefinition of "downtime" and instead uses what the rest of the real world regards as "downtime" - let's compare THOSE numbers.
Don't get me wrong; Microsoft produces some damn fine products and the Exchange/Outlook pair is a perfect example of that - it answers a business need that only recently has been addressed in the *nix world with Scalix, OpenExchange, and Zybil (which I only discovered when reading the latest Linux Journal). Sure there have been so-called groupware solution such as Lotus Notes for a while, but anyone who has used both Exchange and Notes will tell you that Notes sucks. It's bloated, slow, and downright painful, even if your database is well-designed; and not only that, it IS proprietary.
They do have a great selection but they are WAY overpriced. Take the price that Radio Trash USED to sell parts for, quadruple that price, and add on 3% to cover the merchant account fees then you'll get an idea what U-Do-It charges for components.
I still shop there because if I need something TODAY they're the only realistic solution in Taxachusetts.:(
Want to know what's worse? They sell replacement soldering gun tips for Weller soldering guns but not for their own brand. WTF?
Soldering irons, no problem, they carry their own tips -- I wouldn't buy their irons though - I bought one and the filament burnt out (I didn't even get to wear out or otherwise damage the tip in that time) within weeks. Piece of crap. Their soldering guns? they're all right, I just use plain old 10ga copper wire for a replacement tip.
Radio Shack dug their own grave when they killed off the realistic, archer, and optimus lines and got away from stocking a wide selection of components. Now I know this is redundant, but now they're just another me-too electronics botique.
I used to do something similar. Terribly annoying, especially when I just went in to get a CR2032 battery.
Name?
Cash "I can't put that down, that's fraud". Street?
123 Main Street
And so forth. Finally the idiot got the hint that I didn't want to be on the mailing list and just wanted to buy the fucking battery and get on with my life.
It couldn't be that they've effectively become miniature Circuit City stores, only with a fraction of the selection and higher prices It couldn't be that they dropped the Archer, Realistic, Optimus, etc. brands and instead of their crap house brand they now offer crap brands like RCA It couldn't possibly be that they dropped the catalog AND dropped their meat-and-potatoes market (electronic components for hobbyists, etc.) by drastically limiting their component selections?
Nah, it couldn't be that. Maybe illegal P2P networks are somehow to blame?
But if the FTL drive becomes reality, couldn't a probe get out there and back in just a few months? I'd say quit spending money on the moon, mars, ISS, and other useless missions and put all of NASA's development resources into possible FTL technologies.
They should grant this one! If the theory is sound and it works, it is unlikely we'll see an operable FTL engine before the patent runs out - which means that ANYONE can offer an FTL drive based on this design when they become feasible. This would be a patent working against itself because they will not be able to patent the same thing again later on.:)
Of course, if Disney gets involved, expect "limited time" to be equated to "eternity" where patent terms are concerned.:(
That post should be +5 Informative - CPU utilization was always one of SCSI's biggest benefits over IDE (thank GOD the ATAPI folks have finally almost resolved that issue!) and it's the same with Firewire vs. USB - Firewire boasts a more SCSI-like architecture, including less dependence upon the CPU.
The Gimp is not a Photoshop replacement and won't be until they add layer effects and improve layer transformation tools, and also toss in droplets (Script Fu is not really a direct replacement).
Don't get me wrong; I like The Gimp and I use it all the time, but let's be realistic here.
LinuxCAD looks pretty bad, both from a GUI point of view and in terms of licensing. It's $199 just to _try_ it; the demo link says: http://www.linuxcad.com/demo_WE_DO_NOT_OFFER_DEMO_ THIS_WEB_SITE_PROVIDES_SUFFIUCIENT_DEMO.html [linuxcad.com] Please excuse me for not putting all my faith in that.
If by "sufficient demo" they mean "gives you enough of a headache to know that our application stinks so don't buy it" then they might be right.
If they do ALL of the following:
- put online videos of the application in use (like Scalix did)
- Clean up their 1994-style web page
- use consistent colors on the web site (the red/white/blue just doesn't work)
- organize the web site
- offer a messageboard for some level of interactivity, allowing for open discussions of the product's features
- more screenshots of specific features
THEN I would agree that their "online demo" is sufficient.
Ah, yet another newbie with mod points doesn't have a sense of humor. Focus on modding up not down, moron. amd if you think "flamebait" "funny" and "troll" all might apply, consider that the person might have a sense of humor (possibly even dry humor if it is sarcastic or cynical) and you don't, and that you might want to save your mod points to mark up +5 insightful-worthy posts.
Are they independent labels, or are they "independent" labels which are simply shell companies owned by the big 5 labels. You cannot assume that Sony, EMI, etc. don't own the label just because it doesn't say Sony, EMI, Capitol, BMG, etc. on the label.
This one is THE best single not-so-independent "independent" label family tree I have seen. There are yet more "independent" labels owned by the big guys that are not in this diagram, but from this you can't assume that an "independent" label is independent.
If you want to get into music, you're best off fronting the cash yourself to record, produce, and master your record, and then find a good independent PROMOTER and work out a contract on that basis. That way, you go into it making money (not an advance, another word for "loan") right away and the record company cannot charge you inflated costs for recording, engineering, and mastering your music - and this is also the best and sometimes ONLY way to retain full ownership of your work.
Queen didn't set up Queen Music, Ltd. for no reason. Pink Floyd didn't set up Pink Floyd Music Publishers, Ltd. on a whim. They got fucked over at first, then got smart about how they dealt with the record companies. Acts like MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice weren't so savvy - especially Vanilla Ice. Because he was in hock to the record companies, they called the shots, and when they made up the whole "gangsta" bit he had no choice but to go with it. A lot of artists who hit it big on the charts are getting f'd over royally in the process, and generally only the ones who produce hit after hit become savvy enough to know how to deal with the record companies. Heck, Prince was in so bad with the record companies (on the creative control aspect, not so much financial in his case) he changed his name and pulled a lot of other crap in order to try to get his label to drop him so he could work out a better deal with a different label.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. When MSIE came bundled with Windows, Netscape Communications was resting on their collective laurels. They had the best browser, then MSIE 4 quickly passed them by - and with its being bundled with the OS AND Netscape 4.x's being a piece of crud, Netscape struggled to create Netscape 5.0 (of which an official 5.x binary doesn't exist), realized it was bound to fail, and so they opened up the source and begat a rewrite which was christened Mozilla. Mozilla then begat Netscape 6.0, which wasn't so much of a turd, but by then four years of stagnation had gone by and MSIE 5.0, 5,5, and 6.0 had already come out and continued to dominate the market. Netscape eventually (for all intents and purposes) dissolved and became a "me too" portal which offers a skinned Mozilla bundled with spyware, and Firefox and Thunderbird now carry the torch.
With Linux you can choose mplayer, xine, vlc, real media player, all of the above, or you can elect to install NONE of them.
Can the average person uninstall Windows Media Player from Windows?
Isn't their business model obvious? It's the American business model of the new millennium: if you can do, then sue your way to success!
The royalties are paid to RIAA members on CDs by the manufacturers (on the customer's behalf) and (in the US) only CDs marketed for music, not data, are affected. It's interesting to note that by paying the royalty, you have in effect paid for any music you choose to download or copy from others, so it should be argued that it is legal, and suing the customer for downloading content which is burned onto the media on which royalties have been paid legally amounts to racketeering, since they're extorting money from you (the royalties) which pays for the content, and then they have the f'n nerve to tell you that you are not entitled to anything for the money you pay.
Last time I checked, billing someone for product and/or services and then refusing to fulfill that (implied) contract amounts to fraud.
Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time,
Note what I bolded very carefully.
Windows bumped Unix in SALES. Downloads do not count as sales. Whether they (Microsoft) like it or not, Linux, BSD, and (Open)Solaris are still going strong.
But to the OSS zealots (not the normal OSS proponents - the extreme fanatics e.g., Stallman) are always great because it means more choice. While it may be a nice ideal that is true in some areas, when it comes to a core component getting everyone to come together and come to a consensus - even if it means two "official" forks - is much better than two completely different solutions that have no hope of interoperating with the same apps with the same level of functionality.
You're looking to ATI for better support on Linux? BWAHAHAHA! Thanks, I needed a laugh. I really did. You just made my day!
Let's be realistic - for a moment, that's all I ask.
/etc/sane.d/mustek.conf. OOps, nope that firmware doesn't work. What chipset does this scanner use? Oh great, you need a DIFFERENT firmware file because there were three revisions of this scanner" whereas on Windows you click "setup.exe" -- bang! Dead! Done!
Installing hardware in Linux is easier? Is installing say, the latest ATI card in a system then installing ATI's driver and tweaking xorg.conf easier than on Windows where you click "install driver" when you put the ATI CD in the drive?
Is installing a Scanner easier in Linux, in general? "Oops, you need the firmware file. Oops, you need to edit
Reliability? Sure, Linux will be a heck of a lot more reliable once it's set up but to be fair, hardware from some vendors is a royal PITA to configure in Linux, and a relative breeze in Windows.
Now, if you want to bring up motherboard or other hardware UPGRADES, sure! You won't run into stability issues on Linux if you switch from say, a VIA chipset with a Pentium III to an Intel chipset with a Pentium 4 - at worst you might have to recompile the kernel before the swap if you don't have the modules for the Intel chipset already installed. I've taken drives out of a Pentium II and Pentium III and put them in a Dual Xeon box and had the system boot right up without any problem - and no fuss with having to run driver cleaners, manually remove drivers, or worst case, OS reinstall. None of that BS. Granted, to get X up even with the same video card I have to lspci and edit one line in xorg.conf but that's a far cry from changing motherboards on Windows. Also, I shouldn't even NEED to mention this, but I will for the anti-DRM crowd. Linux won't accuse me of being a criminal and require a phone call to a Microsoft phone grunt to reactivate because I decided to upgrade my entire system but use the same OS instance in the new machine.
I'm not expecting IE7 to be very capable since Microsoft stated repeatedly that they are not going to make it standards-compliant.
In every Windows vs. Linux/Unix/*nix {insert your *nix variant of choice here) I never, ever see this addressed:
Microsoft redefines "downtime" for their studies. Downtime, in their terms, does not include "scheduled maintenance windows" during which a system needs to be taken down for a backup, integrity checks, defrags (e.g., the Exchange info store), or reboot for configuration changes or patch installation. Where you might have to reboot a *nix box once a year for kernel patches (on rare occasion more often), it's not like the weekly or biweekly frequency of Windows patches which more often than not require a reboot, which can lead to downtime of a critical system service such as your DBMS, mail server, DNS server, or an active directory global catalog server.
Why do no studies make mention of this, and at minimum compare the "scheduled maintenance windows" and how the REAL downtime is affected? Windows, if PROPERLY maintained to avoid future disasters, will be nowhere near five nines' worth of downtime. No way, no how, unless it's on a LAN where you KNOW access is controlled, patches are unnecessary, and you run an intranet mail server which allows for live maintenance.
Better yet, let's have a study which ignores Microsoft's redefinition of "downtime" and instead uses what the rest of the real world regards as "downtime" - let's compare THOSE numbers.
Don't get me wrong; Microsoft produces some damn fine products and the Exchange/Outlook pair is a perfect example of that - it answers a business need that only recently has been addressed in the *nix world with Scalix, OpenExchange, and Zybil (which I only discovered when reading the latest Linux Journal). Sure there have been so-called groupware solution such as Lotus Notes for a while, but anyone who has used both Exchange and Notes will tell you that Notes sucks. It's bloated, slow, and downright painful, even if your database is well-designed; and not only that, it IS proprietary.
The thing is, they were in business for what, 80 years catering primarily to the hobbyist market?
They do have a great selection but they are WAY overpriced. Take the price that Radio Trash USED to sell parts for, quadruple that price, and add on 3% to cover the merchant account fees then you'll get an idea what U-Do-It charges for components.
:(
I still shop there because if I need something TODAY they're the only realistic solution in Taxachusetts.
Want to know what's worse? They sell replacement soldering gun tips for Weller soldering guns but not for their own brand. WTF?
Soldering irons, no problem, they carry their own tips -- I wouldn't buy their irons though - I bought one and the filament burnt out (I didn't even get to wear out or otherwise damage the tip in that time) within weeks. Piece of crap. Their soldering guns? they're all right, I just use plain old 10ga copper wire for a replacement tip.
Radio Shack dug their own grave when they killed off the realistic, archer, and optimus lines and got away from stocking a wide selection of components. Now I know this is redundant, but now they're just another me-too electronics botique.
I used to do something similar. Terribly annoying, especially when I just went in to get a CR2032 battery.
Name?
Cash
"I can't put that down, that's fraud". Street?
123 Main Street
And so forth. Finally the idiot got the hint that I didn't want to be on the mailing list and just wanted to buy the fucking battery and get on with my life.
It couldn't be that they've effectively become miniature Circuit City stores, only with a fraction of the selection and higher prices
It couldn't be that they dropped the Archer, Realistic, Optimus, etc. brands and instead of their crap house brand they now offer crap brands like RCA
It couldn't possibly be that they dropped the catalog AND dropped their meat-and-potatoes market (electronic components for hobbyists, etc.) by drastically limiting their component selections?
Nah, it couldn't be that. Maybe illegal P2P networks are somehow to blame?
But if the FTL drive becomes reality, couldn't a probe get out there and back in just a few months? I'd say quit spending money on the moon, mars, ISS, and other useless missions and put all of NASA's development resources into possible FTL technologies.
They should grant this one! If the theory is sound and it works, it is unlikely we'll see an operable FTL engine before the patent runs out - which means that ANYONE can offer an FTL drive based on this design when they become feasible. This would be a patent working against itself because they will not be able to patent the same thing again later on. :)
:(
Of course, if Disney gets involved, expect "limited time" to be equated to "eternity" where patent terms are concerned.
No, it doesn't hurt sony until he and all of his friends each decide to buy three or four of these things to run as cheap-but-fast media servers. :)
Mod the $10 quip +5 Insightful! :D
That post should be +5 Informative - CPU utilization was always one of SCSI's biggest benefits over IDE (thank GOD the ATAPI folks have finally almost resolved that issue!) and it's the same with Firewire vs. USB - Firewire boasts a more SCSI-like architecture, including less dependence upon the CPU.
He's saying the 62 Chrysler would be really fast, but in the end it'll just crash. :-D
The Gimp is not a Photoshop replacement and won't be until they add layer effects and improve layer transformation tools, and also toss in droplets (Script Fu is not really a direct replacement).
Don't get me wrong; I like The Gimp and I use it all the time, but let's be realistic here.
If by "sufficient demo" they mean "gives you enough of a headache to know that our application stinks so don't buy it" then they might be right.
If they do ALL of the following:
- put online videos of the application in use (like Scalix did)
- Clean up their 1994-style web page
- use consistent colors on the web site (the red/white/blue just doesn't work)
- organize the web site
- offer a messageboard for some level of interactivity, allowing for open discussions of the product's features
- more screenshots of specific features
THEN I would agree that their "online demo" is sufficient.
Ah, yet another newbie with mod points doesn't have a sense of humor. Focus on modding up not down, moron. amd if you think "flamebait" "funny" and "troll" all might apply, consider that the person might have a sense of humor (possibly even dry humor if it is sarcastic or cynical) and you don't, and that you might want to save your mod points to mark up +5 insightful-worthy posts.
Dumbass.
Are they independent labels, or are they "independent" labels which are simply shell companies owned by the big 5 labels. You cannot assume that Sony, EMI, etc. don't own the label just because it doesn't say Sony, EMI, Capitol, BMG, etc. on the label.
. html
http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/record
And:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho2.html
This one is THE best single not-so-independent "independent" label family tree I have seen. There are yet more "independent" labels owned by the big guys that are not in this diagram, but from this you can't assume that an "independent" label is independent.
Another page on that site ( http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/ - "Some of your friends are already this fucked" ) is a great read.
If you want to get into music, you're best off fronting the cash yourself to record, produce, and master your record, and then find a good independent PROMOTER and work out a contract on that basis. That way, you go into it making money (not an advance, another word for "loan") right away and the record company cannot charge you inflated costs for recording, engineering, and mastering your music - and this is also the best and sometimes ONLY way to retain full ownership of your work.
Queen didn't set up Queen Music, Ltd. for no reason. Pink Floyd didn't set up Pink Floyd Music Publishers, Ltd. on a whim. They got fucked over at first, then got smart about how they dealt with the record companies. Acts like MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice weren't so savvy - especially Vanilla Ice. Because he was in hock to the record companies, they called the shots, and when they made up the whole "gangsta" bit he had no choice but to go with it. A lot of artists who hit it big on the charts are getting f'd over royally in the process, and generally only the ones who produce hit after hit become savvy enough to know how to deal with the record companies. Heck, Prince was in so bad with the record companies (on the creative control aspect, not so much financial in his case) he changed his name and pulled a lot of other crap in order to try to get his label to drop him so he could work out a better deal with a different label.