Anti-trust legislation hinges on how company X affects *consumers* -- if the gov't deems that company X is a monopoly but does not hinder or harm consumers than it can go on -- business as usual. Competitors have to fend for themselves and can only get help from Uncle Sam if they can prove that the monopoly us hurting consumers.
...so the only way to "convict" Microsoft is to prove that they have been hurting consumers, which I believe is true and can be proven. On the other hand, proving that Microsoft crushes all competitors is gray area between capitalism, darwanism, and government control.
Proposal 1 (require MS to open all APIs) has already been rejected by capatalist pundits as being more of an advantage to Microsoft's competitors rather than helping consumers.
I refer you to this article (parts of which may annoy you) for the capitalresearch.org perspective on DOJ vs. MS in respect to OSS:
RMS proposals 2 and 3 are good -- I especially like 3 (requiring hardware vendors to release specs to get the MS seal of approval). Proposal 3 demonstrates how MS could apply pressure to help consumers rather than just using pressure to boost it's own market share.
Gee, I haven't much hoopla about ActiveX lately yet Java is still going strong.
PNG is supposedly better than GIF and JPG, yet still the web is dominated by GIF images.
Even if M$ throws all it's R&D into a proven better format, Real and MP3 have too strong a foothold to push aside.
Wake me up when it's ready for prime time
on
Mozilla M4 is Out
·
· Score: 1
Reading through the list of "Known Issues" tells me it's still very very very beta. I'm anxiously awaiting for Mozilla to be closer to the Communicator functionality, such as mail/news client fully functional, menus and toolbars enabled.
Suggestion:
Someone in the Windows crowd (which doesn't include me anymore, thank God) should whip out InstallSheild Express and make a nice install package for the Windoze people -- they seem to having some trouble installing and running the Mozilla betas. Help take a big bite out of IE market share!
...although at least the Windows people have the Gecko-based NeoMagic browser to look forward to soon.
Mindcraft is not only an NT-biased shop it also has unlimited assistance and total attention from Microsoft -- certainly not the kind of attention a typical NT admin would get from Microsoft.
...and still they didn't bother hiring a Linux guru to help them -- so in that respect Linux did pretty good considering it was not configured well *and* was setup by newbies.
I'm sorry but I've tried more than once to install GNOME and KDE and had to give up in both cases. I use Red Hat, so I try to get away with installing just binary RPMs if I can, but the GNOME RPM required me to install a dozen other RPMs, which each needed various upgrades and further RPM dependencies which I had trouble locating and installing...
...so then I tried installing KDE. I plowed my way through the CVS setup then ran CVS to install KDE, again confronted with dozens of missing dependencies and other things that needed to be installed and upgraded and configured and reconfigured and recompiled and installed and setup and reinstall and download this patch and...
Oh my aching head!! I'm sticking with plain ol' WindowMaker!!
Am I confused or are the ZDNet boys still refusing to acknowledge that SMP support is *not* a new feature in kernel 2.2.x -- if I recall SMP support was part of kernel 2.0.36 on the Red Hat CD -- you just need to install the kernel sources from the CD and recompile.
So Ballmer and Muth aren't reading off the same PR script this week, no big deal, but you can at least see that Microsoft is flirting with the Open Source idea, tossing around the ol' boardroom and debating about it internally. They won't fully pursue it but they do know how much it really matters to real IT people.
I expect Microsoft will release some code soon, certainly not enough to apease the Open Source advocacy crowd, but enough for Microsoft to get some PR points from clueless tech journalists.
I'm not big Mac fan but the G3 case design is sweet. Click a latch on the side of the case and the whole motherboard panel drops down (all connectors still intact) -- everything is right there for easy picking, the hard drive, RAM simms, adapters. Very nice case design.
So this is what you do with millions of bucks big companies throw at you? "Well, we're holding off the integrated desktop thing but hey you should see this killer beach house we bought! We're going to give it away in a contest!"
Just kidding -- I like Red Hat. Using it right now, in fact.
The most chilling comment is at the end of the article that M$ is "looking to get into open source initiatives"...
...I interpret that chilling comment as:
"We're going to see if we can f*ck with the Apache group and maybe throw a few wrenches into Perl and the Linux kernel..."
I say let M$ stay the way it is so it can die a natural death -- otherwise if we encourage them they'll keep pumping crap into the market and being the same damn nuisance to us all.
Explain to me why I was able to run Windows for three years solid without any filesystem corruption, then when disks are reformatted to run Linux, after a few months of light usage and proper shutdowns, the/var/log/messages start gathering "Bad SuperBlock" and "Error in directory" messages??? Could be flaky RAM or bad disk controllers. Fine, but bear in the same machines ran Windows without my files being trashed.
Yes, ext2 is far superior to FAT16 or FAT32.
Yes, shame on me for using old hardware.
Yes, I run 6 newer Linux boxen without a single filesystem hiccup yet. I hope they remain so...
So as usual the/. consensus is "Linux is fine. Windows sucks."
I'll use Red Hat as an example, that installing Linux is easy, if...
If your modem has a real UART (many don't)
If your LAN adapter is on the compatibility list
If you know the gritty technical specs of your video card and monitor
If your video card is in the XFree86 compatibility list
If your hardware does not meet these conditions, then it could hold any newbie back for weeks before they are able to solve the issue. It's easy for an experienced Linux user, but I've been stuck back there in newbieville will incompatible mystery hardware and it's frustrating, but also a great learning experience.
As far as an honest discussion of Linux drawbacks, lets talk about the instability of the ext2 filesystem for starters. I'm sorry but I've hard three disks go south on my in three different Linux boxes which before these same three systems ran three different flavors of Windows for years without any corruptions in the filesystem. True maybe my RAM was flaky, bad disk controller, whatever, but I wish ext2 was less prone to such errors, like power failures. (Thank God for UPS supplies)
The real shocking news here is Bill Gates was using email in 1989. What a visionary! He should write book teaching all corporate titans of industry about this newfangled thing called email, and "networking"...oh wait, he already did! WOW! What a visionary!
This story has appeared at least three times here on/. over the past month or two. Microsoft is simply reorganizing it's internal departments -- no big deal.
A rose by any other name is still a shark infested corporate behemoth Orwellian nuisance.
You have to love a show where the opening line for a cute retro tin-toy looking robot is "Bite my shiny metal ass, meat bag!"... I couldn't stop laughing. Bender got in at least 4 more very funny lines during the whole episode.
I loved it. I hope it stays in the same sweet time slot so I won't be forced to have a life on Sunday nights.
It's been a long time since I laughed that hard watching the Simspons.
That's the attitude I've adopted! The only way to kill Microsoft is to simply ignore them. It's their worst nightmare that everyone will grow tired of their games and move on to better platforms and more robust tools. Migrating to other platforms is always a pain but it's soooooo worth it. Things are so much easier to manage over here in Linux land.
Microsoft just doesn't matter to me anymore. Let Bill and gain talk out of their ass -- who cares. They only expose their own ignorance even further.
As long as Red Hat doesn't break standards
on
Red Hat Backlash?
·
· Score: 1
Red Hat is still favorite distro but one major annoyance is that Red Hat sticks things in odd directories -- they seem to totally ignore the /usr/local directory and stick everything in /usr instead.
Another RedHat-ism is this linuxconf tool -- I don't like the smell of it, so I disabled it on all my boxes.
I hope Red Hat doesn't try to bully new "standards" on Linux.
Well the countingdown.com server is having some load difficulties. If anyone gets in please post a short description (in text) of what the new trailer contains -- save lots of us the trouble of downloading it.
Slashdot Mirror
Glad someone here is paying attention before
over-reacting.
d0nch yoo gno how 2 sp3ll l1k3 a r3al h4cker?
By sp3lling l1ke th15 u c4n av01d fB1 w1r3t4pz.
Anti-trust legislation hinges on how company X
affects *consumers* -- if the gov't deems that
company X is a monopoly but does not hinder or
harm consumers than it can go on -- business as
usual. Competitors have to fend for themselves
and can only get help from Uncle Sam if they
can prove that the monopoly us hurting consumers.
...so the only way to "convict" Microsoft is
to prove that they have been hurting consumers,
which I believe is true and can be proven. On the
other hand, proving that Microsoft crushes all
competitors is gray area between capitalism,
darwanism, and government control.
My point is better formats don't always win,
regardless of where they came from.
My point about ActiveX is Microsoft can't shove
another technology aside just by flooding the market with hype about it's own competing
technology.
Proposal 1 (require MS to open all APIs)
h tml
has already been rejected by
capatalist pundits as being more of an
advantage to Microsoft's competitors rather
than helping consumers.
I refer you to this article (parts of which
may annoy you) for the capitalresearch.org perspective on DOJ vs. MS in respect to OSS:
http://www.capitalresearch.org/trends/ot-0499a.
RMS proposals 2 and 3 are good -- I especially like
3 (requiring hardware vendors to release specs to
get the MS seal of approval). Proposal 3
demonstrates how MS could apply pressure to
help consumers rather than just using pressure
to boost it's own market share.
Gee, I haven't much hoopla about ActiveX lately
yet Java is still going strong.
PNG is supposedly better than GIF and JPG, yet
still the web is dominated by GIF images.
Even if M$ throws all it's R&D into a proven
better format, Real and MP3 have too strong a
foothold to push aside.
Reading through the list of "Known Issues" tells
me it's still very very very beta. I'm anxiously
awaiting for Mozilla to be closer to the
Communicator functionality, such as mail/news
client fully functional, menus and toolbars
enabled.
Suggestion:
Someone in the Windows crowd (which
doesn't include me anymore, thank God) should
whip out InstallSheild Express and make a nice
install package for the Windoze people -- they
seem to having some trouble installing and running
the Mozilla betas. Help take a big bite out of
IE market share!
...although at least the Windows people have
the Gecko-based NeoMagic browser to look forward
to soon.
The link you put there is just another copy
of the ZDNet article on the excite.com web site.
Mindcraft is not only an NT-biased shop it also
has unlimited assistance and total attention
from Microsoft -- certainly not the kind of
attention a typical NT admin would get from
Microsoft.
...and still they didn't bother hiring a Linux
guru to help them -- so in that respect Linux
did pretty good considering it was not
configured well *and* was setup by newbies.
1. A copy of the Kernel recompile How-To
2. Some typical Apache httpd.conf settings for
enterprise web sites.
3. A detailed list of which Apache modules can
be disabled on a plain vanilla web site
4. Ethernet driver recompile and tuning guides.
5. Which network services you can disable on
a plain vanilla Linux web server
6. Web server tuning tips regarding file I/O
and how NFS, RAID, SCSI, and multiple disks
affect file I/O performance.
7. Real world perfromance testimonials.
8. Slashdt style Q&A forums
9. Ethernet and network topology advice
10. Explanation of DNS tricks such as round-robin
and gateway switching.
I'm sorry but I've tried more than once to
install GNOME and KDE and had to give up in both
cases. I use Red Hat, so I try to get away with
installing just binary RPMs if I can, but the
GNOME RPM required me to install a dozen other
RPMs, which each needed various upgrades and
further RPM dependencies which I had trouble
locating and installing...
...so then I tried installing KDE. I plowed my way
through the CVS setup then ran CVS to install
KDE, again confronted with dozens of missing
dependencies and other things that needed to
be installed and upgraded and configured and
reconfigured and recompiled and installed and
setup and reinstall and download this patch and...
Oh my aching head!! I'm sticking with plain
ol' WindowMaker!!
Am I confused or are the ZDNet boys still refusing to
acknowledge that SMP support is *not* a new feature
in kernel 2.2.x -- if I recall SMP support was
part of kernel 2.0.36 on the Red Hat CD -- you
just need to install the kernel sources from the
CD and recompile.
So Ballmer and Muth aren't reading off the
same PR script this week, no big deal, but
you can at least see that Microsoft is flirting
with the Open Source idea, tossing around the
ol' boardroom and debating about it internally.
They won't fully pursue it but they do know
how much it really matters to real IT people.
I expect Microsoft will release some code soon,
certainly not enough to apease the Open Source
advocacy crowd, but enough for Microsoft to get
some PR points from clueless tech journalists.
I'm not big Mac fan but the G3 case design
is sweet. Click a latch on the side of the
case and the whole motherboard panel drops
down (all connectors still intact) -- everything
is right there for easy picking, the hard drive,
RAM simms, adapters. Very nice case design.
So this is what you do with millions of bucks
big companies throw at you? "Well, we're holding
off the integrated desktop thing but hey you
should see this killer beach house we bought!
We're going to give it away in a contest!"
Just kidding -- I like Red Hat. Using it right
now, in fact.
The most chilling comment is at the end of
the article that M$ is "looking to get into
open source initiatives"...
...I interpret that chilling comment as:
"We're going to see if we can f*ck with the
Apache group and maybe throw a few wrenches
into Perl and the Linux kernel..."
I say let M$ stay the way it is so it can
die a natural death -- otherwise if we
encourage them they'll keep pumping crap
into the market and being the same damn
nuisance to us all.
Explain to me why I was able to run Windows /var/log/messages
/. consensus is "Linux is
for three years solid without any filesystem
corruption, then when disks are reformatted
to run Linux, after a few months of light
usage and proper shutdowns, the
start gathering "Bad SuperBlock" and "Error
in directory" messages??? Could be flaky
RAM or bad disk controllers. Fine, but bear
in the same machines ran Windows without my
files being trashed.
Yes, ext2 is far superior to FAT16 or FAT32.
Yes, shame on me for using old hardware.
Yes, I run 6 newer Linux boxen without a single
filesystem hiccup yet. I hope they remain so...
So as usual the
fine. Windows sucks."
Very nice.
- If your modem has a real UART (many don't)
- If your LAN adapter is on the compatibility list
- If you know the gritty technical specs of your video card and monitor
- If your video card is in the XFree86 compatibility list
If your hardware does not meet these conditions, then it could hold any newbie back for weeks before they are able to solve the issue. It's easy for an experienced Linux user, but I've been stuck back there in newbieville will incompatible mystery hardware and it's frustrating, but also a great learning experience.As far as an honest discussion of Linux drawbacks, lets talk about the instability of the ext2 filesystem for starters. I'm sorry but I've hard three disks go south on my in three different Linux boxes which before these same three systems ran three different flavors of Windows for years without any corruptions in the filesystem. True maybe my RAM was flaky, bad disk controller, whatever, but I wish ext2 was less prone to such errors, like power failures. (Thank God for UPS supplies)
The real shocking news here is Bill Gates was ...oh wait, he already
using email in 1989. What a visionary! He
should write book teaching all corporate titans
of industry about this newfangled thing called
email, and "networking"
did! WOW! What a visionary!
Most of it is underground to protect the true
geek from evil things like sunlight, nature,
fresh air, and human interaction.
This story has appeared at least three times /. over the past month or two. Microsoft
here on
is simply reorganizing it's internal departments
-- no big deal.
A rose by any other name is still a shark
infested corporate behemoth Orwellian nuisance.
You have to love a show where the opening ... I couldn't stop laughing.
line for a cute retro tin-toy looking robot
is "Bite my shiny metal ass, meat bag!"
Bender got in at least 4 more very funny lines
during the whole episode.
I loved it. I hope it stays in the
same sweet time slot so I won't be forced to
have a life on Sunday nights.
It's been a long time since I laughed that
hard watching the Simspons.
That's the attitude I've adopted! The only way
to kill Microsoft is to simply ignore them.
It's their worst nightmare that everyone will
grow tired of their games and move on to better
platforms and more robust tools. Migrating to
other platforms is always a pain but it's soooooo
worth it. Things are so much easier to manage
over here in Linux land.
Microsoft just doesn't matter to me anymore.
Let Bill and gain talk out of their ass -- who
cares. They only expose their own ignorance
even further.
Red Hat is still favorite distro but one major
annoyance is that Red Hat sticks things in odd
directories -- they seem to totally ignore the
/usr/local directory and stick everything in
/usr instead.
Another RedHat-ism is this linuxconf tool --
I don't like the smell of it, so I disabled
it on all my boxes.
I hope Red Hat doesn't try to bully new "standards"
on Linux.
Well the countingdown.com server is having some
load difficulties. If anyone gets in please
post a short description (in text) of what the
new trailer contains -- save lots of us the
trouble of downloading it.