Most of it is in Oregon, where most of the IA-32 stuff is designed. Klamath, Deschutes, Coppermine, Tilamook, and Willamette are all rivers in Oregon. Cascades is a mountain range in Oregon (actually it's probably a river too).
Merced and Mendocino are counties (?) in California.
Katmai and McKinley are mountains in Alaska. Why those are so-named is beyond me. (Katmai is from Oregon, but McKinley is from California).
I don't know where/what some of the others, such as Tanner, Foster, Timna, Dixon, Deerfield, Madison, and Northwood are.
Since that has happened I have not bought one new CD(thats about 1 year now). I dont want to buy a whole CD for one song, I want to Download other Songs by an artist and hear the Songs in FULL before I waste $12-$16 on a CD that cost MAYBE $5 to make.
Your first step is to listen to something else besides Top 40 pop music (the only kind of music which has one good song per album).
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by
the percentage of downloads of his music.
Wow you are clueless. So, if 12 million people download Britney Spears, and 5 people download Koshmi Arguituro, that Spears gets $12,000,000 and Arguituro gets $5 (proportionally correct).
FYI, in the current system Spears gets approximately $500,000 (from record sales) and Arguituro gets approximately $50,000. This is because virtually all of the profits made from Spears are pumped into the 1000 unprofitable acts which went into the production of Spears.
So in the system you are proposing, only the extremely dominant and successful players will get money. Moreover, they will become much more dominant than they are today.
How is this better than the current system? Did you forget to think when you posted that or are you just generally clueless?
Are you really new to the music industry? This is exactly how it has worked for the past 50 years. Britney Spears sells 12 million records, which goes into a pool, and pays for 1,000 other acts which were not popular enough to pay for themselves. Why is this better, and, moreover, why should the current system be replaced?
But old software is written for old hardware. Software vendors take advantage of new hardware to make software easier, to add features, and to make it faster. Just compare an old version of WordPerfect, which runs in a character cell screen, to the modern version, with the GUI, etc. New software is easier to use, more powerful, and more efficient, even if it is less well proven and less well tested.
Actually, regular Pentium II's and III's can only be used in 1 and 2 processor configurations. You need Xeon for 4-way and up.
The other main difference is that the L2 cache runs at the processor speed, whereas regular Pentium II's and III's L2 cache run at 1/2 speed.
There are some other small differences. I believe that 36 bit addressing is only available on Xeon (but I'm not positive).
However, for Pentium II (and I believe Pentium III, but I'm not postive) the actual processor die is the same between Xeon and the regular model. The difference is the packaging. However, there is a real technical difference to this, it is not just a marketing difference. For 4-way and up, the electrical connections in the package are much more complicated and more expensive to get to work together in one bus. And obviously all of that L2 cache is very expensive.
Of course the main reason Microsoft wants to give year-based versions it to quicken planned obsolescence. It doesn't take a lot of insight to figure that out. One of the reasons I hope that Intel moves to year-based naming is for the same reason. The Pentium was originally released in 1994, and if it was sold as Pentium 1994 it would seem very obsolete today (even though a fair number of people still run the original Pentium's). However, Intel also has the megahertz label which is fairly good substitute.
But, anyways, anything which helps sell new software is GOOD! Most Slashdot readers are professional software developers and/or own stock in software companies. Building the tool is only half of the job. You still have to find a way to sell it. Even if you are a Linux user, you certainly don't want people to be running some ancient version of Linux, you want them to try the latest and greatest. What better way than year-based version?
Microprocessors have code names also, but they are hard to remember:
P6 -> Pentium Pro Klamath -> Pentium II at slower speeds Deschutes -> Pentium II at faster speeds Katmai -> Pentium III at slower speeds Tanner -> Pentium III Xeon at slower speeds Coppermine -> Pentium III at fast speeds Cascades -> Pentium III Xeon at fast speeds Dixon -> Some mobile Pentium Mendocino -> Some Celeron version Etc. Etc.
Personally, I think Pentium Pro/II/III (etc.) are much eaiser to deal with than the code names are.:-)
I think year versioning makes sense, especially since software revisions tend to be every year or every couple of years. It is easy to pinpoint exactly which products go together, and how up-to-date your package is (which is good from a marketing standpoint). On something like VMS, the current OS version is 7.2, the current DEC C is 5.6, the LSE editor is something like 11.2. The version numbers are all out of sync. A number like 7.2 is meaningless. With Linux it is even worse, especially with the kernel version and distribution version out of sync, and all other product versions out of sync. For Microsoft products, it is obvious that Windows 2000 is the most up to date version, that Office 2000 goes with Windows 2000, etc., so I think that's good. I hope that VMS and Unix products go towards year versioning. The bottom line is that a year version means something, while an ordinary version is meaningless and arbitrary.
I also hope hardware goes to year versioning also. What does 21264 mean? What makes Pentium II newer than Pentium Pro? It would be much easier if it was "Pentium 2000", "Alpha 2000", etc.
Cars use that convention. As computers become consumer type appliances, it makes sense that they use the conventions also.
Real geeks don't need customer service, because they already know all about the product, and should really be able to read the specifications on the box.
People don't go to Fry's to be social and talk to other geeks, they go to Fry's to buy new stuff. Fry's sells electronic components, testing equipment, tools, and anti-static equipment, and few other stores carry these items. Try walking into your local CompUSA and getting a logic analyzer or some grounding equipment. Those items are inherently geeky.
Plus, an Alpha cluster is so much cooler than just another cluster of PIII's...
A 21264 uses about 50 watts. A Pentium III is low power enough to be used in laptops (which the Alpha hasn't done since a special version of the 21064 many years ago). Multiply this by the number of machines in a cluster, and I think you will find that the Pentium III cluster is significantly cooler than the Alpha cluster and will require significantly less cooling for the room it operates in.
Yes, VMS is the most stable OS in production (and the most powerful, easiest to use, easiest to program for, etc.). Unfortunately, it is not very chic with the fashionable slashdot brand of geek who tend to care very little about technical quality, and more about the politics and culture of the OS. With VMS, you can install a new version of the OS, install new RAM, install new disks, etc., etc. without rebooting. All of these tasks require constant reboots in the more primitive systems.
VMS is by far the most stable general purpose operating system, and puts Unix and Windows to shame.
At DECUS '97 some power company announced that they had a VAX which was up since 1985, which easily stomps out FreeBSD and the other little Unix computers on this little survey. Show me a Unix machine which has been up for 12 years!
Of course, the failure to pay the $35.00 registration fee has little to do with Microsoft's core business, producing software.
But that won't stop the Microsoft haters from adding this to their arsenal. They will just see the headline on slashdot and assume Microsoft released some faulty software.
Sort of like how the APPLICATION which ran the naval ship crashed because of a divide by zero error, and Microsoft got to take the blame because the application happened to be running on Windows NT.
Or maybe it will be placed alongside the "fact" that Microsoft attempted to move Hotmail to Windows NT servers, but failed because Windows NT couldn't handle the load (a myth, which never happened).
Or maybe this will be right next to the Melissa virus in the Microsoft Hall of Shame, when a security bug in Microsoft products caused a minor security problem (though completely dwarfed by the internet worm, a hack which exploited a bug in sendmail, and literally brought the internet to its knees 10 years ago...and only exploited Unix clients).
But, most of all, I'm certain that this new Hotmail failure will go down as being far, far, far more signficant than the $2,500,000,000.00 which eBay lost in market capitalization due to a bug in the operating system it is based on (Solaris). Since Microsoft was to blame and not the saintly and meek Sun Microsystems, we can be sure that this will be added to the never-ending list of Microsoft failures, while MacOS, Solaris, Oracle, Linux, and all othe non-Microsoft software enjoy their 100% bug-free, 100% crash-free reign.
But you're not here to do the industry any favors. You're just here to rag on Microsoft. Microsoft's position in the marketplace does not increase their responsibility for any single product. A bug in Windows NT is not more severe than the same bug in Solaris. But the mass-cultural media is so biased against Microsoft, that they get much more press (even though bugs in Solaris have been demonstrably more costly).
Microsoft is the scapegoat of the computer industry. Every problem which occurs in the industry is blamed on Microsoft, if the company was involved in any means at all; if there is a problem which does not involve Microsoft, it will be ignored by the media. Practically every element of the media, from the most non-technical columinst in the daily newspaper, to the editor of the most elite technical consultant publication, rats on Microsoft, and only Microsoft, continuously.
It is not an issue of open source vs. closed source. It is an issue of Microsoft vs. non-Microsoft. Companies such as Sun, Oracle, Apple, and IBM are primarily closed source, but are 100% immune to blame.
Blaming the Melissa virus on Microsoft was just an example of Microsoft as the scapegoat. Much more serious security problems have occurred in the past which should have been blamed on the appropriate vendor (e.g. the internet worm). However, since these didn't fit into the media's convenient definition of who is to blame for every problem in the industry, they received little press, and were blamed on "hackers", instead of the irresponsible vendors.
A prime example the media using Microsoft as a scapegoat was yesterday's Hotmail outage. Here, the problem was blamed on Microsoft since it owns Hotmail. The fact that the Hotmail servers run Unix was ignored. Had Hotmail been run by another company, but used Microsoft servers, the problem would again have been blamed on Microsoft, absolutely regardless of who really was to blame.
An excellent example of a problem being ignored because Microsoft wasn't involved is eBay's continuing problems with Solaris. eBay's market capitalization has dropped by literally several billion dollars because of outages which were caused by bugs in the Solaris operating system. However, this is never brought up in the media, because Sun is considered a holy company by the media, and the perception is that no problem could POSSIBLY ever be Sun's fault. (Ironically, since eBay uses Microsoft products as the front end for its servers, Microsoft received blame very early when the problem first appeared -- though the critics quickly shut up when they realized that in fact Sun was to blame and the Microsoft products were chugging along nicely. Note that they didn't switch to blaming Sun, they merely stopped blaming Microsoft.)
An extreme example of Microsoft as the scapegoat has been Judge Jackson's ruling that failed products such as Netscape Navigator and OS/2 all owe their failure to Microsoft. It is now commonly thought by many people that ANY product which fails in the marketplace owes its failure to Microsoft, and not lack of marketing, lack of quality, etc.
So, no, open source software will never receive blame if it fails or has technology flaws. At least not now. The media is having a field day blaming Microsoft. If ten years down the line, open source becomes the standard, then it will likely begin receiving the blame, as the media seems to be only pick on whatever is popular.
Fortunately, every implementation of file versioning has options to effectively turn it off. So, if you think it "sucks", you can turn it off. Unfortunately, OS'es which do not implement versioning do not have options to turn it on. So, if you support choice, file versioning is clearly the way to go.
Furthermore, versioning is not needed because of "rm"; it is needed by any program which writes files. Any programmer who has written a program which is even remotely non-trivial realizes that versioning is aboslutely integral to finding bugs. (And, no, CVS/RCS/etc. do not come close). Since you are obviously not a programmer, it will be harder to convince you and other non-programmers or the usefulness of versioning.
Lack of file versions is BY FAR the biggest problem in Linux (and Unix and Windows and...). I can not understand why somebody would even consider using an OS which doesn't support file versions.
If you REALLY NEED to use Linux/Windows/Unix (e.g. forced by an employer), the correct solution is use a VMS machine connected with DECnet as the filesystem. Otherwise you are subject to Linux/Windows/Unix's complete brainlessness for writing files, and any file is liable to be randomly deleted at any time.
Which part of VMS do you consider to not be "new technology"? It is about nine years younger than Unix (which Linux is based on), and several features are still unmatched in todays operating systems. Most Unix and Windows users continue to lust after VMS's clustering technology, for example.
Linux has been by far the number one buzzword in the industry since about summer 1998. It is the trendiest subject for mainstream computing. Every journallist has flocked to it, and every single mass-cultural computer media outlet has published extensive, glowing press on it. Practically all of the main computer companies fully support Linux. Every where you go in the industry, you hear little about anything but Linux. Most computer stores have much bigger sections for Linux distributions than copies of Windows, and have large, elaborate displays, and lots of Linux books. Which detractors, exactly, are they targetting? There was the article Microsoft published a bit ago, the Mindcraft benchmarks (which as we all know were sponsored by Microsoft). So - I ask - what's the point of this? Who exactly is being targetted, aside from one or two annual articles published by the one single obvious Linux detractor? It sounds like they are living in about 1995, when there WAS a lot of anti-Linux sentiment out there, but there isn't now - it is by far the trendiest thing in the industry.
3) a good engineering student could hack together a compact disc player, but even with a suite of standard components, would have difficulty building a bare-bones dvd player... when dvd media becomes obsolete, some audio may be effectively lost due to the encryption.
A good engineering student could hack together a PDP-11 processor with relative ease, but coupldn't come close to hacking together a Pentium III processor. Should we stop using Pentium III computers and switch back to PDP-11's because they are easier for engineering students to build?
I've been thinking about this a bit though and I do see one big thing that will keep the record companies in business. There seems to be a pretty huge segment of the music-buying population that only wants music that's "safe." By "safe" I don't mean the opposite of dangerous. I mean that they want something that will be deemed acceptable by their peer groups. They tend to choose their music like I chose my clothes.
I doubt anybody outside of high school is concerned about the social acceptability of the music they listen to. I don't think anybody older than about 15 cares about that.
However, most people DO care about "safety" in terms of accessibility. The reason most people will never dig around MP3.com and find (legal) music which they want is because it is TIME CONSUMING. Most people have careers, kids, car trouble, etc. and have way too much stuff to do in order to have time to wade around MP3.com and find music. So they'll set for music played on the radio, and sold at mainstream stores such as Best Buy.
For these people, the music companies do a great service. They pre-select music such that most people are interested in most of the music which is promoted. Everybody's happy - the people jget their music, the companies get their money, etc.
For the rest of us who want an alternative to the norm, and want to go through lots of different stuff, there are options for us also. But don't assume what's right for you is right for everybody.
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Most of it is in Oregon, where most of the IA-32 stuff is designed. Klamath, Deschutes, Coppermine, Tilamook, and Willamette are all rivers in Oregon. Cascades is a mountain range in Oregon (actually it's probably a river too).
Merced and Mendocino are counties (?) in California.
Katmai and McKinley are mountains in Alaska. Why those are so-named is beyond me. (Katmai is from Oregon, but McKinley is from California).
I don't know where/what some of the others, such as Tanner, Foster, Timna, Dixon, Deerfield, Madison, and Northwood are.
Since that has happened I have not bought one new CD(thats about 1 year now). I dont want to buy a whole CD for one song, I want to Download other Songs by an artist and hear the Songs in FULL before I waste $12-$16 on a CD that cost MAYBE $5 to make.
Your first step is to listen to something else besides Top 40 pop music (the only kind of music which has one good song per album).
RIAA (and MPAA) is scared about their future profits too.
This is incorrect. The RIAA is a non-profit organization.
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by
the percentage of downloads of his music.
Wow you are clueless. So, if 12 million people download Britney Spears, and 5 people download Koshmi Arguituro, that Spears gets $12,000,000 and Arguituro gets $5 (proportionally correct).
FYI, in the current system Spears gets approximately $500,000 (from record sales) and Arguituro gets approximately $50,000. This is because virtually all of the profits made from Spears are pumped into the 1000 unprofitable acts which went into the production of Spears.
So in the system you are proposing, only the extremely dominant and successful players will get money. Moreover, they will become much more dominant than they are today.
How is this better than the current system? Did you forget to think when you posted that or are you just generally clueless?
Are you really new to the music industry? This is exactly how it has worked for the past 50 years. Britney Spears sells 12 million records, which goes into a pool, and pays for 1,000 other acts which were not popular enough to pay for themselves. Why is this better, and, moreover, why should the current system be replaced?
If 80% of the songs on a CD suck, then why should I have to pay full price?
The same reason why you have to buy a full loaf of bread, even though you may only eat 4-5 pieces a week.
In other words: you can only buy what someone is willing to sell you. The record companies are in charge. You're not.
But old software is written for old hardware. Software vendors take advantage of new hardware to make software easier, to add features, and to make it faster. Just compare an old version of WordPerfect, which runs in a character cell screen, to the modern version, with the GUI, etc. New software is easier to use, more powerful, and more efficient, even if it is less well proven and less well tested.
Actually, regular Pentium II's and III's can only be used in 1 and 2 processor configurations. You need Xeon for 4-way and up.
The other main difference is that the L2 cache runs at the processor speed, whereas regular Pentium II's and III's L2 cache run at 1/2 speed.
There are some other small differences. I believe that 36 bit addressing is only available on Xeon (but I'm not positive).
However, for Pentium II (and I believe Pentium III, but I'm not postive) the actual processor die is the same between Xeon and the regular model. The difference is the packaging. However, there is a real technical difference to this, it is not just a marketing difference. For 4-way and up, the electrical connections in the package are much more complicated and more expensive to get to work together in one bus. And obviously all of that L2 cache is very expensive.
Of course the main reason Microsoft wants to give year-based versions it to quicken planned obsolescence. It doesn't take a lot of insight to figure that out. One of the reasons I hope that Intel moves to year-based naming is for the same reason. The Pentium was originally released in 1994, and if it was sold as Pentium 1994 it would seem very obsolete today (even though a fair number of people still run the original Pentium's). However, Intel also has the megahertz label which is fairly good substitute.
But, anyways, anything which helps sell new software is GOOD! Most Slashdot readers are professional software developers and/or own stock in software companies. Building the tool is only half of the job. You still have to find a way to sell it. Even if you are a Linux user, you certainly don't want people to be running some ancient version of Linux, you want them to try the latest and greatest. What better way than year-based version?
Microprocessors have code names also, but they are hard to remember:
P6 -> Pentium Pro
Klamath -> Pentium II at slower speeds
Deschutes -> Pentium II at faster speeds
Katmai -> Pentium III at slower speeds
Tanner -> Pentium III Xeon at slower speeds
Coppermine -> Pentium III at fast speeds
Cascades -> Pentium III Xeon at fast speeds
Dixon -> Some mobile Pentium
Mendocino -> Some Celeron version
Etc. Etc.
Personally, I think Pentium Pro/II/III (etc.) are much eaiser to deal with than the code names are. :-)
I think year versioning makes sense, especially since software revisions tend to be every year or every couple of years. It is easy to pinpoint exactly which products go together, and how up-to-date your package is (which is good from a marketing standpoint). On something like VMS, the current OS version is 7.2, the current DEC C is 5.6, the LSE editor is something like 11.2. The version numbers are all out of sync. A number like 7.2 is meaningless. With Linux it is even worse, especially with the kernel version and distribution version out of sync, and all other product versions out of sync. For Microsoft products, it is obvious that Windows 2000 is the most up to date version, that Office 2000 goes with Windows 2000, etc., so I think that's good. I hope that VMS and Unix products go towards year versioning. The bottom line is that a year version means something, while an ordinary version is meaningless and arbitrary.
I also hope hardware goes to year versioning also. What does 21264 mean? What makes Pentium II newer than Pentium Pro? It would be much easier if it was "Pentium 2000", "Alpha 2000", etc.
Cars use that convention. As computers become consumer type appliances, it makes sense that they use the conventions also.
Real geeks don't need customer service, because they already know all about the product, and should really be able to read the specifications on the box.
People don't go to Fry's to be social and talk to other geeks, they go to Fry's to buy new stuff.
Fry's sells electronic components, testing equipment, tools, and anti-static equipment, and few other stores carry these items. Try walking into your local CompUSA and getting a logic analyzer or some grounding equipment. Those items are inherently geeky.
Plus, an Alpha cluster is so much cooler than just another cluster of PIII's...
A 21264 uses about 50 watts. A Pentium III is low power enough to be used in laptops (which the Alpha hasn't done since a special version of the 21064 many years ago). Multiply this by the number of machines in a cluster, and I think you will find that the Pentium III cluster is significantly cooler than the Alpha cluster and will require significantly less cooling for the room it operates in.
Yes, VMS is the most stable OS in production (and the most powerful, easiest to use, easiest to program for, etc.). Unfortunately, it is not very chic with the fashionable slashdot brand of geek who tend to care very little about technical quality, and more about the politics and culture of the OS. With VMS, you can install a new version of the OS, install new RAM, install new disks, etc., etc. without rebooting. All of these tasks require constant reboots in the more primitive systems.
Correct.
VMS is by far the most stable general purpose operating system, and puts Unix and Windows to shame.
At DECUS '97 some power company announced that they had a VAX which was up since 1985, which easily stomps out FreeBSD and the other little Unix computers on this little survey. Show me a Unix machine which has been up for 12 years!
The Alpha is strictly a *Nix box now (Linux for low end, Tru64 for high end).
You are clueless. VMS has 40% share of the Alpha market, and is not Unix.
Of course, the failure to pay the $35.00 registration fee has little to do with Microsoft's core business, producing software.
But that won't stop the Microsoft haters from adding this to their arsenal. They will just see the headline on slashdot and assume Microsoft released some faulty software.
Sort of like how the APPLICATION which ran the naval ship crashed because of a divide by zero error, and Microsoft got to take the blame because the application happened to be running on Windows NT.
Or maybe it will be placed alongside the "fact" that Microsoft attempted to move Hotmail to Windows NT servers, but failed because Windows NT couldn't handle the load (a myth, which never happened).
Or maybe this will be right next to the Melissa virus in the Microsoft Hall of Shame, when a security bug in Microsoft products caused a minor security problem (though completely dwarfed by the internet worm, a hack which exploited a bug in sendmail, and literally brought the internet to its knees 10 years ago...and only exploited Unix clients).
But, most of all, I'm certain that this new Hotmail failure will go down as being far, far, far more signficant than the $2,500,000,000.00 which eBay lost in market capitalization due to a bug in the operating system it is based on (Solaris). Since Microsoft was to blame and not the saintly and meek Sun Microsystems, we can be sure that this will be added to the never-ending list of Microsoft failures, while MacOS, Solaris, Oracle, Linux, and all othe non-Microsoft software enjoy their 100% bug-free, 100% crash-free reign.
But you're not here to do the industry any favors. You're just here to rag on Microsoft. Microsoft's position in the marketplace does not increase their responsibility for any single product. A bug in Windows NT is not more severe than the same bug in Solaris. But the mass-cultural media is so biased against Microsoft, that they get much more press (even though bugs in Solaris have been demonstrably more costly).
Microsoft is the scapegoat of the computer industry. Every problem which occurs in the industry is blamed on Microsoft, if the company was involved in any means at all; if there is a problem which does not involve Microsoft, it will be ignored by the media. Practically every element of the media, from the most non-technical columinst in the daily newspaper, to the editor of the most elite technical consultant publication, rats on Microsoft, and only Microsoft, continuously.
It is not an issue of open source vs. closed source. It is an issue of Microsoft vs. non-Microsoft. Companies such as Sun, Oracle, Apple, and IBM are primarily closed source, but are 100% immune to blame.
Blaming the Melissa virus on Microsoft was just an example of Microsoft as the scapegoat. Much more serious security problems have occurred in the past which should have been blamed on the appropriate vendor (e.g. the internet worm). However, since these didn't fit into the media's convenient definition of who is to blame for every problem in the industry, they received little press, and were blamed on "hackers", instead of the irresponsible vendors.
A prime example the media using Microsoft as a scapegoat was yesterday's Hotmail outage. Here, the problem was blamed on Microsoft since it owns Hotmail. The fact that the Hotmail servers run Unix was ignored. Had Hotmail been run by another company, but used Microsoft servers, the problem would again have been blamed on Microsoft, absolutely regardless of who really was to blame.
An excellent example of a problem being ignored because Microsoft wasn't involved is eBay's continuing problems with Solaris. eBay's market capitalization has dropped by literally several billion dollars because of outages which were caused by bugs in the Solaris operating system. However, this is never brought up in the media, because Sun is considered a holy company by the media, and the perception is that no problem could POSSIBLY ever be Sun's fault. (Ironically, since eBay uses Microsoft products as the front end for its servers, Microsoft received blame very early when the problem first appeared -- though the critics quickly shut up when they realized that in fact Sun was to blame and the Microsoft products were chugging along nicely. Note that they didn't switch to blaming Sun, they merely stopped blaming Microsoft.)
An extreme example of Microsoft as the scapegoat has been Judge Jackson's ruling that failed products such as Netscape Navigator and OS/2 all owe their failure to Microsoft. It is now commonly thought by many people that ANY product which fails in the marketplace owes its failure to Microsoft, and not lack of marketing, lack of quality, etc.
So, no, open source software will never receive blame if it fails or has technology flaws. At least not now. The media is having a field day blaming Microsoft. If ten years down the line, open source becomes the standard, then it will likely begin receiving the blame, as the media seems to be only pick on whatever is popular.
Fortunately, every implementation of file versioning has options to effectively turn it off. So, if you think it "sucks", you can turn it off. Unfortunately, OS'es which do not implement versioning do not have options to turn it on. So, if you support choice, file versioning is clearly the way to go.
Furthermore, versioning is not needed because of "rm"; it is needed by any program which writes files. Any programmer who has written a program which is even remotely non-trivial realizes that versioning is aboslutely integral to finding bugs. (And, no, CVS/RCS/etc. do not come close). Since you are obviously not a programmer, it will be harder to convince you and other non-programmers or the usefulness of versioning.
Correct.
...). I can not understand why somebody would even consider using an OS which doesn't support file versions.
Lack of file versions is BY FAR the biggest problem in Linux (and Unix and Windows and
If you REALLY NEED to use Linux/Windows/Unix (e.g. forced by an employer), the correct solution is use a VMS machine connected with DECnet as the filesystem. Otherwise you are subject to Linux/Windows/Unix's complete brainlessness for writing files, and any file is liable to be randomly deleted at any time.
Which part of VMS do you consider to not be "new technology"? It is about nine years younger than Unix (which Linux is based on), and several features are still unmatched in todays operating systems. Most Unix and Windows users continue to lust after VMS's clustering technology, for example.
Linux has been by far the number one buzzword in the industry since about summer 1998. It is the trendiest subject for mainstream computing. Every journallist has flocked to it, and every single mass-cultural computer media outlet has published extensive, glowing press on it. Practically all of the main computer companies fully support Linux. Every where you go in the industry, you hear little about anything but Linux. Most computer stores have much bigger sections for Linux distributions than copies of Windows, and have large, elaborate displays, and lots of Linux books. Which detractors, exactly, are they targetting? There was the article Microsoft published a bit ago, the Mindcraft benchmarks (which as we all know were sponsored by Microsoft). So - I ask - what's the point of this? Who exactly is being targetted, aside from one or two annual articles published by the one single obvious Linux detractor? It sounds like they are living in about 1995, when there WAS a lot of anti-Linux sentiment out there, but there isn't now - it is by far the trendiest thing in the industry.
3) a good engineering student could hack together a compact disc player, but even with a suite of standard components, would have difficulty building a bare-bones dvd player... when dvd media becomes obsolete, some audio may be effectively lost due to the encryption.
A good engineering student could hack together a PDP-11 processor with relative ease, but coupldn't come close to hacking together a Pentium III processor. Should we stop using Pentium III computers and switch back to PDP-11's because they are easier for engineering students to build?
I've been thinking about this a bit though and I do see one big thing that will keep the record companies in business. There seems to be a pretty huge segment of the music-buying population that only wants music that's "safe." By "safe" I don't mean the opposite of dangerous. I mean that they want something that will be deemed acceptable by their peer groups. They tend to choose their music like I chose my clothes.
I doubt anybody outside of high school is concerned about the social acceptability of the music they listen to. I don't think anybody older than about 15 cares about that.
However, most people DO care about "safety" in terms of accessibility. The reason most people will never dig around MP3.com and find (legal) music which they want is because it is TIME CONSUMING. Most people have careers, kids, car trouble, etc. and have way too much stuff to do in order to have time to wade around MP3.com and find music. So they'll set for music played on the radio, and sold at mainstream stores such as Best Buy.
For these people, the music companies do a great service. They pre-select music such that most people are interested in most of the music which is promoted. Everybody's happy - the people jget their music, the companies get their money, etc.
For the rest of us who want an alternative to the norm, and want to go through lots of different stuff, there are options for us also. But don't assume what's right for you is right for everybody.