If this article were about the US, the first 100 or so posts would have been about what a facist Bush is. But since it's aboot Canada, folks are actually debating the technical merits instead of pointing out what socialism gets you.
Ah, nothing like overwhelming ignorance to keep things going. Topped off with that good old ignorance "Canada is socialist" nuggest.
Transport Canada is involved in this case purely to certify a private initiative to be roadworthy - the same way that they certify cruise control, ABS, car RADAR, and other alterations of a traditional car. If you're a private business and you want to sell or install something that could affect the safety of a vehicle, you can't until you have it certified by Transport Canada.
In no way is this a government initiative. In fact, Transport Canada is a federal agency, while operational roadway safety is a provincial mandate. If this were going to be implemented as a mandatory method of roadway safety, it would have been the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (the MTO) that would have been involved.
The company involved likely wants to sell this device to transport companies, and perhaps rental fleet companies. It has nothing to do with your rights (especially one's rights online).
this is unacceptable! I am not going to buy any of these products until they can withstand being rolled over by a tank. And what is it with the primitive 8 bit processor?
The "run over by a car" thing is actually a really, really lame demonstration. The pressure per sq. inch really isn't that great.
Nonetheless, it's always the example that's brought up.
To complete my followup (this time with closing 'em's...)
The Cable company is in the business of making money And considering that it has a monopoly on wired cable TV, it shouldn't be that difficult.
Right - they want to get you to buy cable television, and all of the digital channels, and maybe high speed internet. I've got it all, and happily pay them $130 a month. They don't give a sheeit if I'm receiving that in my brain, on a rental box, or on a media PC with a cablecard. Their business is selling cable services, not renting quickly-obsolete DVRs, though they do the latter to facilitate the former.
My apartment complex requires all kinds of crap for 18"dishes... (Including something like $500K insurance). and they don't allow them to be mounted. They pretty much made it impossible for residents to have one. (Of about 1000 residents, nobody has one!)
Apartment buildings look like CRAP when they have dishes all over them, not to mention that morons usually end up screwing giant mounts into the structural cement/bricks of the building. There are a lot of reasons not to want dishes on a building, and I think it's pretty bizarre to imagine a conspiracy behind it.
Why do you say that? $18/month = $216/year == $648 over three years... Just how much does just the "tuner" cost??? Keep in mind that if you cancel it, they can still rent it out to someone else...
It's a dual-channel PVR. These things depreciate fairly quickly now - it isn't like the days of lore. In 3 years it will be an obsolete piece of junk, just like the DCT-6408 that they rented out for a year are now (no one wants them - they want a 6412).
Well, looks like they cost less than $300
Is that really how you value things? You look for dubious ebay auctions for uncertain items with uncertain limitations?
"Either that, or they can rent out the CableCards for the same price."
The cable company is in the business of selling content, not renting boxes. They rent boxes for the sole purpose of selling content (there is no other way to receive all of the digital channels - no standard existed, coupled with the fact that the sources - both movies and television networks - wanted some assurances of DRM). My cable company rents a Motorola 6812 - a dual-HDTV "tuner", very capable box for like $18 a month - I doubt that comes close to covering the depreciation on the box month over month.
Firstly, let me say that I completely believe that the rebate industry has a paid astroturfing group working on their behalf. It is remarkable how every real person I've ever spoken to has very negative opinions of rebates, but everytime a discussion breaks out a half the responses are glowing about rebates.
Marketing/Positioning..THIS is the big area of benefit. It DRIVES Sales by giving the product positive exposure over competing products not offering a rebate.
Yes, it gives it positive exposure because the post-likely-to-not-be-honoured rebate price is what is fraudulently advertised. I think that's pretty much the whole point of all of this -> It's largely a scam to undercut legitimate prices with an artificially low price.
So the rebated product appears to be a better value, which can also build brand loyalty. Oh yea, and consumers LOVE Rebates.
Consumers love rebates? What planet are you living on? Consumers HATE rebates, but it's such a pervasive activity that I think most just keep thinking "geesh - it can't be as big of a scam as it appears to be. Surely the government would stop these bastards. I'll give it one more try because boy am I a sucker for a B.S. artificial price." As far as brand loyalty - again, what world do you live on: Most rebate stories circle around bullshit redemption centers that bought the rebate rights for 20 cents on the dollar, and will screw you out of it anyway they can. I'm not fooled by the old "Oh gosh, we at Big MegaCo don't handle rebates - that's the evil rebate company": They're all a part of the same scammy scheme, and I have grown a very negative opinion of a couple of previously respectable companies because of this.
If they want to lower the price and undercut the competition, then LOWER THE PRICE AND UNDERCUT THE COMPETITION. Don't play the rebate game that everyone and their dog knows is a scam, and a waste of time (and postage). No one should be fooled by the B.S. split between manufacturer and rebate center, because that's just a bit of C.Y.A. on the behalf of business.
It is estimated that 20-30% of all retail sales are gift items; so if only 40% of rebates are turned in (the number nowadays is closer to 60%), that's more than half of the people who could file rebates.
First you claim that the prior poster is wrong, and breakage isn't an issue, but here you're telling us that >40% aren't claimed. A 40% non-payout rate, especially when rebates often account for 1/3 of the price or more, is SIGNIFICANT. Of course your numbers have no backing, and I highly doubt 60% of rebates are both sent in, and honoured. Personal anecdotes abound, but I've sent in 5 rebates over the years and have actually received one. I actually intentionally don't buy rebate products because I find the scam so offensive and dishonest.
This whole story is such a bunch of B.S. - Some guy gets a free computer, after rebates, and then talks to someone who tells us that rebates are good honest business: Right - their business model is really to give away free computers... uh huh...
I have a telco background so I'm understandably biased when it comes to defending them -- but no matter how much people hate the phone company I wish they would stop rooting for it's downfall. Do you really think it would be any better to have the cable company completely control your internet/voice/TV?
I worked at a telco as well, and left on good terms. Indeed, my post was simply an observation on the state of telcos (and what inspires things like this PHBs ridiculous suggestion) - I'm not rooting for anything (apart from good competition).
Hey, don't blame the whole industry for the actions of one dumbass PHB. I happen to have a lot of friends working for various telcos that are doubtless rolling their eyes at this bullshit.
I'm not blaming an industry, but it is invariably an industry that is subsidized by voice subscribers. A few of the Bells have credibly supplanted that with a good wireless cash flow, but for most there are some scary times ahead (as most have shown a tremendous inability to operate in any other market successfully).
That's a nice thought -- but I'm afraid that at one point your WiMax is going to need an uplink to the internet:(
The backbone and pipe provider market is actually very competitive - the LAST thing the telcos could do was screw around in a market where they really can be replaced with a phone call.
I suppose it doesn't matter to him--he makes enough money that he can afford to throw away an extra $200/mo. should policies like this ever become commonplace. As for the masses: Let them eat cake!
The telcos have a long and storied history of making money hand over fist, with no competition, in the telephone subscriber realm, so this is just another desperate attempt at doing something before that money trough is removed (it's rapidly disappearing). In a free market it should be the case that subscribers can say "FU!" this this man, going with competitors, but unfortunately there isn't enough competition in most areas yet (so you get the casual collusion where they all mirror the same restrictive policies). Maybe WiMax will change the landscape a bit.
No, They're trying to compare the same idea of a minority group trying to assert their will about what your rights are against the people who clearly have another idea entirely. No matter how many warehouses they raid and how mach DRM they place on their products the people are going to continue to play and view media how they choose.
Which is an amazingly terrible analogy. It is terrible on so many levels that it really doesn't merit even the beginning of discussion.
Next: Why have a bad USB cable is the same as getting brain cancer [hint: In both of them something is broken].
In three months, we will read about how Google created virus protection for web-based e-mail.
If only this wasn't true.
In three months a couple of clueless technical wannabes will coin a `new' acronym - IMAP : Internet Mail Antivirus Protection - and they'll declare that they defined this amazing and innovative new pattern that was just witnessed in the wild being used by Google.
Actually IMAP sounds too acceptable. Instead they'll come up with something like AJAZZY. Maybe SPANDEX. Just find some words that fit that that marginally have to do with filtering viruses out of email. They'll just use it for a broad range of uses anyways, so it really doesn't matter what the logical meaning is.
"Microsoft Windows servers and networked servers or NAS storage servers that are Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) certified automatically meet the data write ordering and write-through guarantees required to support a SQL Server storage device. Microsoft supports both application and storage-related issues in these configurations."
MS does not officially support it. In MSSQL 2000 at least.
Kinda hard to put critical data on a non supported platform.
Microsoft supports it (with compliant hardware), they just don't recommend it (for very obvious reasons, and they force you to enable a documented trace flag if you plan on doing it).
Why can't you use NAS with MSSQL? Lots of people do, so I'm not quite sure what your problem with it is.
Of course any large scale database is going to start spitting chunks if you are doing all I/O through an ethernet cable (versus a SAN fiber channel or the like).
yeah, Hemos says "The major issue is pricing", but then in another breath he says that "using Linux you could very easily put together a RAID 5, 1 TB machine for not that much more".
I took from that the premise that a general purpose machine would be a better choice than a NAS system (not really true, but I mean I think that's what he was implying).
$1300 isn't exactly expensive for an 1tb NAS device.
Hemos is catering to the crowd - a crowd that he knows will invariably say "I can buy a stack of 5 250GB drives for X...why would anyone buy this? I can do it myself!". Price might not seem to be a problem on a network admin site, but it is on a "techie" site.
Then again, more and more people on here are confused by ridiculously commonplace acronyms. RAID in this story (already we've seen the "OMG! DUMB IT DOWN FOR ME!" posts about this ridiculously pedestrian acronym), but the same thing is happening lately in every story that isn't written for a technical n00b just entering the industry to be a "HTML programmer".
I could very well be wrong, but I remember hearing it called Slate. This link correlates with that, though it appears to one of very few so it could be wrong.
Rather, it states that a real playing air guitar simulator has been developed as the primary point, and, hey, neat this is the technology it runs on by the way.
Anyone remember a venture Atari (back when they actually made computers like the Atari ST and TT) got into to make some sort of revolutionary instrument? I remember it being something similar - an "air harp" of some sort. It was so bizarre that all of the Atari computer mags were full of nonsense about this product just because Atari the company was flushing some money into it.
Just like the Atari Transputer. What ever became of that?
Tiger's real code-name was Slate. Apple was playing a bit of a game, and choosing actual retail names that they publicly disseminated as "code names". Of course they could be doing it with this product, but the instant hit on a competing product proves that close to impossible.
If they keep that name for production, I have a feeling these guys may have an issue with it. But I guess the way justice works in the US, whoever has more money is right, so Apple shouldn't be worried.
When's the last time a code name was also used for the retail product? I can't remember that ever happening. It's a "code name" for a reason - the developers and designers needed something to call it, without the hassle of all of the due diligence and legal work.
For a media center to really work, it needs to be anointed by the cable and satellite companies: If it's unable to work with the digital EDTV and digital HDTV signals on their networks, with all of their DRM, then it is close to useless. Microsoft recently got that blessing, though apparently it won't be supported in retail deliveries until next Christmas.
Oh please please/. stop posting opinions as news. Especially when it comes to this topic./. should be a news filter, not a metablog.
Slashdot posts opinions quite frequently - insightful opinion, and intepretations of facts, can make for some informative, lively conversations. Unfortunately I don't think the linked "blog entry" (the fact that it's a "blog entry" is entirely irrelevant - it's a web page with some content) is insightful or offering any valuable interpretation of the facts.
Thank you FOR YOUR reply ANONYMOUS coward. I GREATLY APPRECIATED the information you brought to the table, especially the ODDBALL FOCUS ON USB AND FIREWALL, even though I DIDN'T mention that in my POSTING, and actually said nothing about FUNCTIONALITY (instead I was addressing the BSOD issue, which you negate but in a completely factless way).
Could you point me to the CHEAPER computers out there that DON'T INCLUDE Windows from a LARGE VENDOR. No? WHY DO YOU think that IS? Of course if someone says that OFFICE ADDS $1000 to the COST OF A $300 pc, I'm sure YOU WOULD believe it.
Also by not providing an OS, it wouldn't cost most OEMs more because most OEMs will just tell you "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't support [Linux|FreeBSD|Whatever]"
But we've seen them do that - the few shops that offer boxes without Windows usually offer no discount at all. Even if they don't officially support alternate platforms, they will inevitably have to deal with the calls (and the increasingly disgruntled customer who'll eventually put up a XYZSucks.com website), and the likely scenario that the user will intentionally screw the hardware to return it as "defective".
I haven't used a new MS OS in quite a while, so you may be correct. Perhaps the red screen of death has replaced the blue screen of death, so you would be then quite correct:)
Actual, bonafide system crashes are virtually non-existent for most users, though of course they do occur for a small subset with shoddy hardware and/or shoddy drivers (though the same case exists for Linux as well. The OS can protect against crappy hardware, and both operating systems give kernel-mode drivers enough leeway to take down the system, which is why on both systems you need quality drivers. If one really wants super-stability, QNX is always available). I use both XP and 2003 daily, under very intense scenarios, and haven't seen an actual system crash in literally years. The same holds for my peers. Anecdotes suck, but I haven't heard from anyone (without an agenda) complaining about system crashes in a long, long time.
You're right that there still is a Microsoft tax, however that gets to the core of why I left the prior message: Linux has a tonne of things going for it, but instead of evangelizing the positives of Linux, somehow it always comes down to the negatives of Windows. To make matters worse, this hyperbolic evangelism oft resorts to gross exaggerations (the frequency of crashes and the cost of Windows) or completely made-up "facts". It diminishes the cause more than it helps it.
Slashdot Mirror
If this article were about the US, the first 100 or so posts would have been about what a facist Bush is. But since it's aboot Canada, folks are actually debating the technical merits instead of pointing out what socialism gets you.
Ah, nothing like overwhelming ignorance to keep things going. Topped off with that good old ignorance "Canada is socialist" nuggest.
Transport Canada is involved in this case purely to certify a private initiative to be roadworthy - the same way that they certify cruise control, ABS, car RADAR, and other alterations of a traditional car. If you're a private business and you want to sell or install something that could affect the safety of a vehicle, you can't until you have it certified by Transport Canada.
In no way is this a government initiative. In fact, Transport Canada is a federal agency, while operational roadway safety is a provincial mandate. If this were going to be implemented as a mandatory method of roadway safety, it would have been the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (the MTO) that would have been involved.
The company involved likely wants to sell this device to transport companies, and perhaps rental fleet companies. It has nothing to do with your rights (especially one's rights online).
this is unacceptable! I am not going to buy any of these products until they can withstand being rolled over by a tank. And what is it with the primitive 8 bit processor?
The "run over by a car" thing is actually a really, really lame demonstration. The pressure per sq. inch really isn't that great.
Nonetheless, it's always the example that's brought up.
To complete my followup (this time with closing 'em's...)
The Cable company is in the business of making money And considering that it has a monopoly on wired cable TV, it shouldn't be that difficult.
Right - they want to get you to buy cable television, and all of the digital channels, and maybe high speed internet. I've got it all, and happily pay them $130 a month. They don't give a sheeit if I'm receiving that in my brain, on a rental box, or on a media PC with a cablecard. Their business is selling cable services, not renting quickly-obsolete DVRs, though they do the latter to facilitate the former.
My apartment complex requires all kinds of crap for 18"dishes... (Including something like $500K insurance). and they don't allow them to be mounted. They pretty much made it impossible for residents to have one. (Of about 1000 residents, nobody has one!)
Apartment buildings look like CRAP when they have dishes all over them, not to mention that morons usually end up screwing giant mounts into the structural cement/bricks of the building. There are a lot of reasons not to want dishes on a building, and I think it's pretty bizarre to imagine a conspiracy behind it.
Why do you say that? $18/month = $216/year == $648 over three years... Just how much does just the "tuner" cost??? Keep in mind that if you cancel it, they can still rent it out to someone else...
It's a dual-channel PVR. These things depreciate fairly quickly now - it isn't like the days of lore. In 3 years it will be an obsolete piece of junk, just like the DCT-6408 that they rented out for a year are now (no one wants them - they want a 6412).
Well, looks like they cost less than $300
Is that really how you value things? You look for dubious ebay auctions for uncertain items with uncertain limitations?
They are going new for around $700-800.
"Either that, or they can rent out the CableCards for the same price."
The cable company is in the business of selling content, not renting boxes. They rent boxes for the sole purpose of selling content (there is no other way to receive all of the digital channels - no standard existed, coupled with the fact that the sources - both movies and television networks - wanted some assurances of DRM). My cable company rents a Motorola 6812 - a dual-HDTV "tuner", very capable box for like $18 a month - I doubt that comes close to covering the depreciation on the box month over month.
Firstly, let me say that I completely believe that the rebate industry has a paid astroturfing group working on their behalf. It is remarkable how every real person I've ever spoken to has very negative opinions of rebates, but everytime a discussion breaks out a half the responses are glowing about rebates.
Marketing/Positioning..THIS is the big area of benefit. It DRIVES Sales by giving the product positive exposure over competing products not offering a rebate.
Yes, it gives it positive exposure because the post-likely-to-not-be-honoured rebate price is what is fraudulently advertised. I think that's pretty much the whole point of all of this -> It's largely a scam to undercut legitimate prices with an artificially low price.
So the rebated product appears to be a better value, which can also build brand loyalty. Oh yea, and consumers LOVE Rebates.
Consumers love rebates? What planet are you living on? Consumers HATE rebates, but it's such a pervasive activity that I think most just keep thinking "geesh - it can't be as big of a scam as it appears to be. Surely the government would stop these bastards. I'll give it one more try because boy am I a sucker for a B.S. artificial price." As far as brand loyalty - again, what world do you live on: Most rebate stories circle around bullshit redemption centers that bought the rebate rights for 20 cents on the dollar, and will screw you out of it anyway they can. I'm not fooled by the old "Oh gosh, we at Big MegaCo don't handle rebates - that's the evil rebate company": They're all a part of the same scammy scheme, and I have grown a very negative opinion of a couple of previously respectable companies because of this.
If they want to lower the price and undercut the competition, then LOWER THE PRICE AND UNDERCUT THE COMPETITION. Don't play the rebate game that everyone and their dog knows is a scam, and a waste of time (and postage). No one should be fooled by the B.S. split between manufacturer and rebate center, because that's just a bit of C.Y.A. on the behalf of business.
It is estimated that 20-30% of all retail sales are gift items; so if only 40% of rebates are turned in (the number nowadays is closer to 60%), that's more than half of the people who could file rebates.
First you claim that the prior poster is wrong, and breakage isn't an issue, but here you're telling us that >40% aren't claimed. A 40% non-payout rate, especially when rebates often account for 1/3 of the price or more, is SIGNIFICANT. Of course your numbers have no backing, and I highly doubt 60% of rebates are both sent in, and honoured. Personal anecdotes abound, but I've sent in 5 rebates over the years and have actually received one. I actually intentionally don't buy rebate products because I find the scam so offensive and dishonest.
This whole story is such a bunch of B.S. - Some guy gets a free computer, after rebates, and then talks to someone who tells us that rebates are good honest business: Right - their business model is really to give away free computers... uh huh...
I have a telco background so I'm understandably biased when it comes to defending them -- but no matter how much people hate the phone company I wish they would stop rooting for it's downfall. Do you really think it would be any better to have the cable company completely control your internet/voice/TV?
I worked at a telco as well, and left on good terms. Indeed, my post was simply an observation on the state of telcos (and what inspires things like this PHBs ridiculous suggestion) - I'm not rooting for anything (apart from good competition).
Hey, don't blame the whole industry for the actions of one dumbass PHB. I happen to have a lot of friends working for various telcos that are doubtless rolling their eyes at this bullshit.
:(
I'm not blaming an industry, but it is invariably an industry that is subsidized by voice subscribers. A few of the Bells have credibly supplanted that with a good wireless cash flow, but for most there are some scary times ahead (as most have shown a tremendous inability to operate in any other market successfully).
That's a nice thought -- but I'm afraid that at one point your WiMax is going to need an uplink to the internet
The backbone and pipe provider market is actually very competitive - the LAST thing the telcos could do was screw around in a market where they really can be replaced with a phone call.
I suppose it doesn't matter to him--he makes enough money that he can afford to throw away an extra $200/mo. should policies like this ever become commonplace. As for the masses: Let them eat cake!
The telcos have a long and storied history of making money hand over fist, with no competition, in the telephone subscriber realm, so this is just another desperate attempt at doing something before that money trough is removed (it's rapidly disappearing). In a free market it should be the case that subscribers can say "FU!" this this man, going with competitors, but unfortunately there isn't enough competition in most areas yet (so you get the casual collusion where they all mirror the same restrictive policies). Maybe WiMax will change the landscape a bit.
No, They're trying to compare the same idea of a minority group trying to assert their will about what your rights are against the people who clearly have another idea entirely. No matter how many warehouses they raid and how mach DRM they place on their products the people are going to continue to play and view media how they choose.
Which is an amazingly terrible analogy. It is terrible on so many levels that it really doesn't merit even the beginning of discussion.
Next: Why have a bad USB cable is the same as getting brain cancer [hint: In both of them something is broken].
In three months, we will read about how Google created virus protection for web-based e-mail.
If only this wasn't true.
In three months a couple of clueless technical wannabes will coin a `new' acronym - IMAP : Internet Mail Antivirus Protection - and they'll declare that they defined this amazing and innovative new pattern that was just witnessed in the wild being used by Google.
Actually IMAP sounds too acceptable. Instead they'll come up with something like AJAZZY. Maybe SPANDEX. Just find some words that fit that that marginally have to do with filtering viruses out of email. They'll just use it for a broad range of uses anyways, so it really doesn't matter what the logical meaning is.
Which part are you pointing me to? This part:
"Microsoft Windows servers and networked servers or NAS storage servers that are Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) certified automatically meet the data write ordering and write-through guarantees required to support a SQL Server storage device. Microsoft supports both application and storage-related issues in these configurations."
MS does not officially support it. In MSSQL 2000 at least.
Kinda hard to put critical data on a non supported platform.
Microsoft supports it (with compliant hardware), they just don't recommend it (for very obvious reasons, and they force you to enable a documented trace flag if you plan on doing it).
unfortunatly we can't use NAS with MSSQL.
Why can't you use NAS with MSSQL? Lots of people do, so I'm not quite sure what your problem with it is.
Of course any large scale database is going to start spitting chunks if you are doing all I/O through an ethernet cable (versus a SAN fiber channel or the like).
yeah, Hemos says "The major issue is pricing", but then in another breath he says that "using Linux you could very easily put together a RAID 5, 1 TB machine for not that much more".
I took from that the premise that a general purpose machine would be a better choice than a NAS system (not really true, but I mean I think that's what he was implying).
$1300 isn't exactly expensive for an 1tb NAS device.
Hemos is catering to the crowd - a crowd that he knows will invariably say "I can buy a stack of 5 250GB drives for X...why would anyone buy this? I can do it myself!". Price might not seem to be a problem on a network admin site, but it is on a "techie" site.
Then again, more and more people on here are confused by ridiculously commonplace acronyms. RAID in this story (already we've seen the "OMG! DUMB IT DOWN FOR ME!" posts about this ridiculously pedestrian acronym), but the same thing is happening lately in every story that isn't written for a technical n00b just entering the industry to be a "HTML programmer".
Slate? Where did you get slate from?
I could very well be wrong, but I remember hearing it called Slate. This link correlates with that, though it appears to one of very few so it could be wrong.
Rather, it states that a real playing air guitar simulator has been developed as the primary point, and, hey, neat this is the technology it runs on by the way.
Anyone remember a venture Atari (back when they actually made computers like the Atari ST and TT) got into to make some sort of revolutionary instrument? I remember it being something similar - an "air harp" of some sort. It was so bizarre that all of the Atari computer mags were full of nonsense about this product just because Atari the company was flushing some money into it.
Just like the Atari Transputer. What ever became of that?
Uh...Tiger?
Tiger's real code-name was Slate. Apple was playing a bit of a game, and choosing actual retail names that they publicly disseminated as "code names". Of course they could be doing it with this product, but the instant hit on a competing product proves that close to impossible.
If they keep that name for production, I have a feeling these guys may have an issue with it. But I guess the way justice works in the US, whoever has more money is right, so Apple shouldn't be worried.
When's the last time a code name was also used for the retail product? I can't remember that ever happening. It's a "code name" for a reason - the developers and designers needed something to call it, without the hassle of all of the due diligence and legal work.
For a media center to really work, it needs to be anointed by the cable and satellite companies: If it's unable to work with the digital EDTV and digital HDTV signals on their networks, with all of their DRM, then it is close to useless. Microsoft recently got that blessing, though apparently it won't be supported in retail deliveries until next Christmas.
Oh please please /. stop posting opinions as news. Especially when it comes to this topic. /. should be a news filter, not a metablog.
Slashdot posts opinions quite frequently - insightful opinion, and intepretations of facts, can make for some informative, lively conversations. Unfortunately I don't think the linked "blog entry" (the fact that it's a "blog entry" is entirely irrelevant - it's a web page with some content) is insightful or offering any valuable interpretation of the facts.
Thank you FOR YOUR reply ANONYMOUS coward. I GREATLY APPRECIATED the information you brought to the table, especially the ODDBALL FOCUS ON USB AND FIREWALL, even though I DIDN'T mention that in my POSTING, and actually said nothing about FUNCTIONALITY (instead I was addressing the BSOD issue, which you negate but in a completely factless way).
Could you point me to the CHEAPER computers out there that DON'T INCLUDE Windows from a LARGE VENDOR. No? WHY DO YOU think that IS? Of course if someone says that OFFICE ADDS $1000 to the COST OF A $300 pc, I'm sure YOU WOULD believe it.
Also by not providing an OS, it wouldn't cost most OEMs more because most OEMs will just tell you "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't support [Linux|FreeBSD|Whatever]"
But we've seen them do that - the few shops that offer boxes without Windows usually offer no discount at all. Even if they don't officially support alternate platforms, they will inevitably have to deal with the calls (and the increasingly disgruntled customer who'll eventually put up a XYZSucks.com website), and the likely scenario that the user will intentionally screw the hardware to return it as "defective".
I haven't used a new MS OS in quite a while, so you may be correct. Perhaps the red screen of death has replaced the blue screen of death, so you would be then quite correct:)
Actual, bonafide system crashes are virtually non-existent for most users, though of course they do occur for a small subset with shoddy hardware and/or shoddy drivers (though the same case exists for Linux as well. The OS can protect against crappy hardware, and both operating systems give kernel-mode drivers enough leeway to take down the system, which is why on both systems you need quality drivers. If one really wants super-stability, QNX is always available). I use both XP and 2003 daily, under very intense scenarios, and haven't seen an actual system crash in literally years. The same holds for my peers. Anecdotes suck, but I haven't heard from anyone (without an agenda) complaining about system crashes in a long, long time.
You're right that there still is a Microsoft tax, however that gets to the core of why I left the prior message: Linux has a tonne of things going for it, but instead of evangelizing the positives of Linux, somehow it always comes down to the negatives of Windows. To make matters worse, this hyperbolic evangelism oft resorts to gross exaggerations (the frequency of crashes and the cost of Windows) or completely made-up "facts". It diminishes the cause more than it helps it.