People all over the planet fuss about whether this healthy and democratic or corrupting and dehumanizing,
American culture is all of those things.
The tidal wave of American culture is frightening and Borg like.
As long as it is seen this way, reactionary forces will gain support from the many who watch with despair as traditional culture and values developed over many centuries are replaced within a generation with what comes over satellite television from America.
It's too bad we're incapable of giving the Afghans freedom, democracy and human rights without simultaneously injecting a huge dose of
consumerism laced with appeals to lust and violence.
Oh well, I suppose I can't fault the rest of the world for falling into the same traps that my fellow Americans have for decades. Don't like it? Don't watch it.
Their punishment is to help ensure that the monopoly they have continues to the next generation?
Almost.
The other part of the punishment is to get some kind of credit for billions of dollars worth of settlement with an actual cost to them that is signficantly less.
Oh, the other part of the punishment is the terrible public relations they are getting as a result of "donating software to disadvantaged schools". As an aside, you can well imagine in what light will be seen any lawyers who oppose such a "magnanimous offer".
Sigh. File this settlement offer alongside all those positive PR spin advertisements you've been hearing where Philip Morris bails out a desperate and deserving charity by contributing macaroni or dollars - and then spends an equal or greater amount trumpeting their good gesture.
It will join the ranks of publicity that the drug companies have been doing lately, with tear-jearking heart-warming stories of people whose lives are a direct result of a wonder drug developed in our private laboratories, with definite needs for the kinds of 17 year patent protection that we currently enjoy. What legislator could be against wonder drugs that help people to live and not die?
All my misgivings about motives notwithstanding, however, I won't criticize the act itself. No, no more than I would criticize a drug dealer for giving money to a homeless shelter. It's a good thing in itself, even if the underlying motives or the agent may not be the best and most honorable.
Meanwhile, though, do recognize a publicity stunt that has been so carefully crafted and so brilliant that it makes earlier blunders, like Bill's air-supply emails and video tape testimony, but a faint memory of incompetence past.
Machiavelli would have given Microsoft an "A" for this move.
here are two fundamentally different approaches to Open Source: capitalistic and communal. In the capitalistic approach, people and companies attempt to earn money by using open source software.
Quite so.
The capitalistic bent on open source is most successful in the use of open source as a lower cost alternative to proprietary software, much of which benefits from various lock-in aspects to increase its price.
It seems like attempts to make money by producing open source software as a sole line of business are fundamentally difficult. The markup is constrained by the costs of making CDs and internet connections, which are constantly improving (this bodes well for the long term future of open source software distribution).
Such companies and ventures are inexorably moved into a position where they sell their expertise as a service to those who wish to use open source solutions in ways that are technically beyond what their organization can muster internally in terms of people resources.
The communist bent is almost what I would call artistic in the sense that open source programmers almost feel compelled to produce a magnum opus. If others recognize their efforts, so much the better. If they get a lot of money for their effort, great. But, like artists in other sectors such as painting, sculpture, poetry, music, acting, and mathematics, most programmers of open source software are not going to become as famous as for their work as Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman have for theirs.
I think many, if not most, open source projects are worked upon by people pursuing something that interests them, which may or may not bear directly on their main occupation or business. Like many musicians or actors, they have a "day job" to pay the bills.
It will be very interesting to see how increased usage of open source software in the corporate world feeds back into development. The existing base foundation is considerable, a very attractive framework on which to build a high quality and low cost software solution to many a difficult business problem. How many of the ranks of corporate IT citizens catch the fever to contribute further to building the community's assetts will be interesting to see. That "fever", to produce something useful, is what will drive the success of open source software to ever greater levels.
Despite partial cloudiness, we got up at 0230 MST to venture a few miles out onto the eastern plains, away from the light pollution from Abq.
It was worth it, despite the cold weather!
Like the other poster said - I saw more meteors in the first few minutes than in all my life up to that point.
Put the futon into the back of the pick-up truck so we wouldn't crick our necks.
Saw bursts of several in as many seconds, with intervals of no activity for no more than 20 seconds at a time.
Two or three were pretty spectacular and bright, but not discernable as fireballs by my admittedly poor eyesight.
About 2 or 3 years ago on a summer evening about 11pm MDT driving back from the city my wife saw a fireball - I thought it was lightning because of the flash, but then noticed there weren't any clouds!
I'm still hoping to experience a total eclipse one of these years. I presume I'll have to venture away from North America to see it?
I had figured that chaining together rand48() with libpcap to generate random packets was the first step in creating an artificial life form out of the Internet at large.
If you'd just not exposed me prematurely like this I soon would have been successful in my attempt to create this life form.
I hate spam, but I don't really think the government should be getting involved. They take enough liberties away from us.
I agree with you.
I detest the inconvenience of wading through UBE, setting up procmail, etc. There are counterparts, too, such as the time I spend at the counter in my post office, removing catalogs, credit card offers, magazine subscription offers, supermarket flyers, etc.
But I would feel more inconvenienced if various fundamental liberties for free expression were eliminated by legislation. Oh, it's not an issue as long as you have a government with policies that are not too abhorent.
But consider if you had a government that sorely needed to be changed (say you're a resident of Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq or some authoritarian regime that punishes any expression of dissent).
In that case, an effective means for change would be the ability to broadcast anti-government propaganda to a wide audience and do it anonymously. Anti-spam legislation would effectively close those avenues. Which is fine, as long as you're willing to bet that you will never need those channels of communication in the future.
As it stands, it makes me nervous whenever censorship and limits on free expression are put into place. The current inconvenience is worth it IMHO.
It's not much really other than a vague, ill-defined term that can be used variously as a catch-all for accepting your hopes or your hates.
Want everyone to get along? Then, say that a "global" perspective and common global agreement are essential.
Have your individual rights been trampled? Someone not accepted your desire to be different? Then, blame everyone else that advocates a one-size-fits-all global straightjacket on you and your behavior.
I think the term is so wide and nebulous that it encompasses the full millenia old debate about how much the individuals contribute and conform to some collective behavior.
Last time I checked, there was considerable controversy and disagreement about this.
P.S. Katz always seems to have this penchant for wandering around in thunderstorms holding lightning rods. What's the deal? To get excited? I don't see much chance for any progress toward resolution of what really comes down to personal psychological issues.
Well, you've been reading Slashdot too long if you don't think this is newsworthy.
The Register thought it newsworthy, and I agree.
The reason is that the news is different. We're not talking about the typical sales pep drive where company X tries to beat company Y. No. Here we're talking about where Company X is attempting to drive out A Movement. That's different.
Not to mention the news worthiness of anything that Microsoft is doing. After all, they are the world's single largest software company and their product is placed on over 90% of computer desktops worldwide. And, recently they have been involved in some court proceedings where the outcome of those proceedings could have far-reaching effects on the company and on computing in general.
I think so. I always got the impression that Rik is an extremely intelligent programmer with not enough time on his hands to do the enormous job of VM writer for all of Linux.
Which was important, because it seemed, too, like he was one of a handful of people in the world that really understood how his VM system worked and, more importantly, was the ONLY one in the world that understood what needed to be done to it get it to work right.
This is always the misleading statistic when evaluating open source based software solutions. The costs, the prices, the values require a different mindset.
I could easily say that this year I'll only spend $1.95 on Linux based solutions (pocket change) and install the same ISO copy image on dozens of servers doing different dedicated tasks very nicely.
Because the equivalent deployment in the Windows based world with licensing terms costs hundreds or thousands of times as much money, should I then conclude the Linux is failing to catch on in the enterprise?
I think you're getting hammered by your choice of major to the point where it ceases to be fun. That's a real pity.
Your predicament vis-a-vis IT is different from my situation. I got started in engineering, but used computers a lot and found them to be fascinating. They were supposed to be ancillary tools and devices for helping an engineer to do a job, but, gosh darn, they're just so interesting in their own right!
It's funny. Some of the reasons I did not pick CS as a major early in my career were as a result of influence from my father.
My father was a EE and he, not wanting to unduly influence me, assured me repeatedly that I did not need to pick the same career as he. (I date myself - in those days CS and EE were closer than now.)
Second, my father told me scary stories about people he had met up with (during the 1960's) who seemed to be consumed by the computer, who were addicted to the computer, who forgot to eat, to sleep, to have any personal relationships because of the computer. From that point of view, choosing a career in CS was like choosing to be an alcoholic. So that indulging in CS and IT are morally equivalent to scoring a hit of $INTOXICANT.
So now I'm doing programming most of the time. It was not my major or what I got my degree doing. But graduate school and my job has allowed me to drift towards doing what I love. You can do that too.
If you're close to getting a degree, then go ahead and get the sheepskin. It's a useful lever just like finishing high school, knowing how to type, etc. But don't feel compelled to choose a comfortable high-paying job in your degreed subject. Rather, look for a job (or graduate school, as you see fit) in an area closer to where your love lies (archaelogy, astronomy, aerospace, charitable organization, university computer center, high performance automobiles, etc.). Then, just continue to make choices and drift towards doing the things you love to do. It's the only way.
They're not. Corporations would most likely get the "Corporate" version, which doesn't require WPA. WPA is primarily an issue for home users.
It's not the WPA that's the problem for corporate users. It's the terms of the Licensing, which "encourage" you to upgrade to XP to save on future licensing and support costs associated with sticking to 2K until you decide you're good and ready to upgrade from 2K. Now, however, the pricing structure has been used like a mallet to ever-so-subtly encourage the "upgrade".
Home users do have to contend with WPA, but I'm not certain they even need to do that since the OS installation on new computers was likely done at the factory.
No, the typical casual home user only has to worry about the nagware for MSN and Passport and the MP3 encoding degradation.
Going from Sun to Linux is much easier than *NIX to Windows.
Quite so.
I'm positive that the software migration costs were a compelling factor in Amazon's decision to migrate from *NIX to Linux. So Linux becomes entrenched in a high visibility mission-critical application where its benefits can be proven.
That steals the new servers from MS that might have gone to NT/2K, but that's not the difficult fight.
What will be really difficult, as we all know very well, is in 2-3 years time when the decision needs to be made again. Change from Linux to Windows - why? Linux works like a champ and costs dirt cheap to run. Result: Stick with Linux.
Change Windows to Linux? Ummm...well everything on the Windows side is cross-linked between multiple MS applications, OS, authentication schemes that haven't made it into Samba yet, need a Passport, etc. so that a change is a significant undertaking. Result: Stick with Windows.
Summing up:
Going from Sun to Linux is much easier than *NIX to Windows and both are easier than going from Windows to *NIX.
I think it's mostly a people problem, with all the newthink lessons required of the Windows IT support staff.
How many native Windows IT guys have been able to unplug one part of a large Windows shop operation and replug a Linux solution and have it just play? What motivation do they have to do so?
As a diehard Linux user I bought a copy of 95 just due to its sheer ubiquity. Not stable, not secure, but useful due to how much shrink-wrapped consumer software will run on it.
First thing I did when I heard about XP coming with its licensing and registration was to immediately get my 2nd and last MS OS - Win 2K.
I'm incredulous that corporations are giving in to the License Agreement arm-twisting to "upgrade" from 2K to XP. Win 2K seems like a fine, stable, good performing OS. It's being retired before its time, if you ask me. Guess it was too good to become obsolete sufficiently fast. Now that MS OS are of tolerable stability and quality they don't want anyone using them for any indefinite length of time.
Because its smaller and runs faster - nuff said, I'm a speed freak.
Excuse me - are we talking about the same CDE?
When CDE first came out and I had to run it on a SPARCStation 2 it was slower and bloatier than anything. It might be tolerable on current era UltraSPARC II hardware, but I got so burned up about the speed and size back then that I still run fvwm to this very day on my UltraSPARC II.
Probably I'm being unfair - I'm sure that running Gnome on a 486 is a different experience from running it on a 1.4 GHz Athlon.
Yeah, after the earlier consent decree in 1995 I think we can all rest easily knowing that our government has vigorously pursued the case against abusive monopolists.
The terms are probably just as likely as the terms of the earlier decree to correct bad behavior.
Senior executives of Microsoft have been seen shaking and shivering in their boots at the prospects of this new decree.
Oops, my mistake - they had smiles on their faces. They were laughing.
It seems to me that optical links can be spatially focussed much more than RF links.
While RF might be great for in-home networking, assuming you can surmount the security worries, optical seems like a much better bet for completing the famous Last Mile.
So I wonder with Bayonne Project and Open H323 if it would be possible for someone to setup a few IP to local phone gateways in major cities and thereby provide alternative long distance service?
Would it be competitively priced and would the typical performance be adequate?
I can't say enough good things about the potential for this project to bring open source operating systems to the public at large.
Backwards compatibility to previous versions of (closed) Windows is the biggest obstacle most casual users have with migrating to Linux. All that shrink-wrapped software purchased over the past 15 years - it has to work.
Sheesh, even MS has backwards compatibility as its biggest obstacle to getting users to upgrade to the "next" OS.
...take your traffic, ad-viewing eyes, and attention elsewhere. Don't even tell them...
Would that such action be so effective!
At MSN in the trenches:
MSN Manager:Bob, I notice that our web traffic has dropped to only 98.3 per cent of its previous value since you instituted that blockage procedure on non - IE browsers. This is terrible. We can't have such a drastic impact on our business. You're fired.
At MS Corporate Hdqrts:
VP of *:Bob, I notice that since you've instituted that customer-aggravating blockage of non-IE browsers that the number of downloads of IE upgrades has shot up by 1000 hits per day. Our Passport implementation strategy depends on market saturation with IE. Good work.
Slashdot Mirror
People all over the planet fuss about whether this healthy and democratic or corrupting and dehumanizing,
American culture is all of those things.
The tidal wave of American culture is frightening and Borg like.
As long as it is seen this way, reactionary forces will gain support from the many who watch with despair as traditional culture and values developed over many centuries are replaced within a generation with what comes over satellite television from America.
It's too bad we're incapable of giving the Afghans freedom, democracy and human rights without simultaneously injecting a huge dose of consumerism laced with appeals to lust and violence.
Oh well, I suppose I can't fault the rest of the world for falling into the same traps that my fellow Americans have for decades. Don't like it? Don't watch it.
Their punishment is to help ensure that the monopoly they have continues to the next generation?
Almost.
The other part of the punishment is to get some kind of credit for billions of dollars worth of settlement with an actual cost to them that is signficantly less.
Oh, the other part of the punishment is the terrible public relations they are getting as a result of "donating software to disadvantaged schools". As an aside, you can well imagine in what light will be seen any lawyers who oppose such a "magnanimous offer".
Sigh. File this settlement offer alongside all those positive PR spin advertisements you've been hearing where Philip Morris bails out a desperate and deserving charity by contributing macaroni or dollars - and then spends an equal or greater amount trumpeting their good gesture.
It will join the ranks of publicity that the drug companies have been doing lately, with tear-jearking heart-warming stories of people whose lives are a direct result of a wonder drug developed in our private laboratories, with definite needs for the kinds of 17 year patent protection that we currently enjoy. What legislator could be against wonder drugs that help people to live and not die?
All my misgivings about motives notwithstanding, however, I won't criticize the act itself. No, no more than I would criticize a drug dealer for giving money to a homeless shelter. It's a good thing in itself, even if the underlying motives or the agent may not be the best and most honorable.
Meanwhile, though, do recognize a publicity stunt that has been so carefully crafted and so brilliant that it makes earlier blunders, like Bill's air-supply emails and video tape testimony, but a faint memory of incompetence past.
Machiavelli would have given Microsoft an "A" for this move.
here are two fundamentally different approaches to Open Source: capitalistic and communal. In the capitalistic approach, people and companies attempt to earn money by using open source software.
Quite so.
The capitalistic bent on open source is most successful in the use of open source as a lower cost alternative to proprietary software, much of which benefits from various lock-in aspects to increase its price.
It seems like attempts to make money by producing open source software as a sole line of business are fundamentally difficult. The markup is constrained by the costs of making CDs and internet connections, which are constantly improving (this bodes well for the long term future of open source software distribution).
Such companies and ventures are inexorably moved into a position where they sell their expertise as a service to those who wish to use open source solutions in ways that are technically beyond what their organization can muster internally in terms of people resources.
The communist bent is almost what I would call artistic in the sense that open source programmers almost feel compelled to produce a magnum opus. If others recognize their efforts, so much the better. If they get a lot of money for their effort, great. But, like artists in other sectors such as painting, sculpture, poetry, music, acting, and mathematics, most programmers of open source software are not going to become as famous as for their work as Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman have for theirs.
I think many, if not most, open source projects are worked upon by people pursuing something that interests them, which may or may not bear directly on their main occupation or business. Like many musicians or actors, they have a "day job" to pay the bills.
It will be very interesting to see how increased usage of open source software in the corporate world feeds back into development. The existing base foundation is considerable, a very attractive framework on which to build a high quality and low cost software solution to many a difficult business problem. How many of the ranks of corporate IT citizens catch the fever to contribute further to building the community's assetts will be interesting to see. That "fever", to produce something useful, is what will drive the success of open source software to ever greater levels.
Despite partial cloudiness, we got up at 0230 MST to venture a few miles out onto the eastern plains, away from the light pollution from Abq.
It was worth it, despite the cold weather!
Like the other poster said - I saw more meteors in the first few minutes than in all my life up to that point.
Put the futon into the back of the pick-up truck so we wouldn't crick our necks.
Saw bursts of several in as many seconds, with intervals of no activity for no more than 20 seconds at a time.
Two or three were pretty spectacular and bright, but not discernable as fireballs by my admittedly poor eyesight.
About 2 or 3 years ago on a summer evening about 11pm MDT driving back from the city my wife saw a fireball - I thought it was lightning because of the flash, but then noticed there weren't any clouds!
I'm still hoping to experience a total eclipse one of these years. I presume I'll have to venture away from North America to see it?
Every time? I suspect each cat would only be able to do this once. How many cats do you have?
Heh. I dunno 'bout you, but I always have V cats running under mine!
Oughta be modded up +2 for Funny.
Moderators asleep again...
Alright, it was me that has been doing this.
I had figured that chaining together rand48() with libpcap to generate random packets was the first step in creating an artificial life form out of the Internet at large.
If you'd just not exposed me prematurely like this I soon would have been successful in my attempt to create this life form.
I hate spam, but I don't really think the government should be getting involved. They take enough liberties away from us.
I agree with you.
I detest the inconvenience of wading through UBE, setting up procmail, etc. There are counterparts, too, such as the time I spend at the counter in my post office, removing catalogs, credit card offers, magazine subscription offers, supermarket flyers, etc.
But I would feel more inconvenienced if various fundamental liberties for free expression were eliminated by legislation. Oh, it's not an issue as long as you have a government with policies that are not too abhorent.
But consider if you had a government that sorely needed to be changed (say you're a resident of Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq or some authoritarian regime that punishes any expression of dissent).
In that case, an effective means for change would be the ability to broadcast anti-government propaganda to a wide audience and do it anonymously. Anti-spam legislation would effectively close those avenues. Which is fine, as long as you're willing to bet that you will never need those channels of communication in the future.
As it stands, it makes me nervous whenever censorship and limits on free expression are put into place. The current inconvenience is worth it IMHO.
It's not much really other than a vague, ill-defined term that can be used variously as a catch-all for accepting your hopes or your hates.
Want everyone to get along? Then, say that a "global" perspective and common global agreement are essential.
Have your individual rights been trampled? Someone not accepted your desire to be different? Then, blame everyone else that advocates a one-size-fits-all global straightjacket on you and your behavior.
I think the term is so wide and nebulous that it encompasses the full millenia old debate about how much the individuals contribute and conform to some collective behavior.
Last time I checked, there was considerable controversy and disagreement about this.
P.S. Katz always seems to have this penchant for wandering around in thunderstorms holding lightning rods. What's the deal? To get excited? I don't see much chance for any progress toward resolution of what really comes down to personal psychological issues.
I don't see why this is newsworthy..
Well, you've been reading Slashdot too long if you don't think this is newsworthy.
The Register thought it newsworthy, and I agree.
The reason is that the news is different. We're not talking about the typical sales pep drive where company X tries to beat company Y. No. Here we're talking about where Company X is attempting to drive out A Movement. That's different.
Not to mention the news worthiness of anything that Microsoft is doing. After all, they are the world's single largest software company and their product is placed on over 90% of computer desktops worldwide. And, recently they have been involved in some court proceedings where the outcome of those proceedings could have far-reaching effects on the company and on computing in general.
So, yes, it is newsworthy.
Makes you wonder if their machines are connected to siesmic sensors.
Maybe they are connected to seismic sensors these days, but in the good old days they were connected to Ronald Reagan's EKG.
but it may have simply been a bridge too far
I think so. I always got the impression that Rik is an extremely intelligent programmer with not enough time on his hands to do the enormous job of VM writer for all of Linux.
Which was important, because it seemed, too, like he was one of a handful of people in the world that really understood how his VM system worked and, more importantly, was the ONLY one in the world that understood what needed to be done to it get it to work right.
This is always the misleading statistic when evaluating open source based software solutions. The costs, the prices, the values require a different mindset.
I could easily say that this year I'll only spend $1.95 on Linux based solutions (pocket change) and install the same ISO copy image on dozens of servers doing different dedicated tasks very nicely.
Because the equivalent deployment in the Windows based world with licensing terms costs hundreds or thousands of times as much money, should I then conclude the Linux is failing to catch on in the enterprise?
I don't think so.
I think you're getting hammered by your choice of major to the point where it ceases to be fun. That's a real pity.
Your predicament vis-a-vis IT is different from my situation. I got started in engineering, but used computers a lot and found them to be fascinating. They were supposed to be ancillary tools and devices for helping an engineer to do a job, but, gosh darn, they're just so interesting in their own right!
It's funny. Some of the reasons I did not pick CS as a major early in my career were as a result of influence from my father.
My father was a EE and he, not wanting to unduly influence me, assured me repeatedly that I did not need to pick the same career as he. (I date myself - in those days CS and EE were closer than now.)
Second, my father told me scary stories about people he had met up with (during the 1960's) who seemed to be consumed by the computer, who were addicted to the computer, who forgot to eat, to sleep, to have any personal relationships because of the computer. From that point of view, choosing a career in CS was like choosing to be an alcoholic. So that indulging in CS and IT are morally equivalent to scoring a hit of $INTOXICANT.
So now I'm doing programming most of the time. It was not my major or what I got my degree doing. But graduate school and my job has allowed me to drift towards doing what I love. You can do that too.
If you're close to getting a degree, then go ahead and get the sheepskin. It's a useful lever just like finishing high school, knowing how to type, etc. But don't feel compelled to choose a comfortable high-paying job in your degreed subject. Rather, look for a job (or graduate school, as you see fit) in an area closer to where your love lies (archaelogy, astronomy, aerospace, charitable organization, university computer center, high performance automobiles, etc.). Then, just continue to make choices and drift towards doing the things you love to do. It's the only way.
They're not. Corporations would most likely get the "Corporate" version, which doesn't require WPA. WPA is primarily an issue for home users.
It's not the WPA that's the problem for corporate users. It's the terms of the Licensing, which "encourage" you to upgrade to XP to save on future licensing and support costs associated with sticking to 2K until you decide you're good and ready to upgrade from 2K. Now, however, the pricing structure has been used like a mallet to ever-so-subtly encourage the "upgrade".
Home users do have to contend with WPA, but I'm not certain they even need to do that since the OS installation on new computers was likely done at the factory.
No, the typical casual home user only has to worry about the nagware for MSN and Passport and the MP3 encoding degradation.
Going from Sun to Linux is much easier than *NIX to Windows.
Quite so.
I'm positive that the software migration costs were a compelling factor in Amazon's decision to migrate from *NIX to Linux. So Linux becomes entrenched in a high visibility mission-critical application where its benefits can be proven.
That steals the new servers from MS that might have gone to NT/2K, but that's not the difficult fight.
What will be really difficult, as we all know very well, is in 2-3 years time when the decision needs to be made again. Change from Linux to Windows - why? Linux works like a champ and costs dirt cheap to run. Result: Stick with Linux.
Change Windows to Linux? Ummm...well everything on the Windows side is cross-linked between multiple MS applications, OS, authentication schemes that haven't made it into Samba yet, need a Passport, etc. so that a change is a significant undertaking. Result: Stick with Windows.
Summing up:
Going from Sun to Linux is much easier than *NIX to Windows and both are easier than going from Windows to *NIX.
I think it's mostly a people problem, with all the newthink lessons required of the Windows IT support staff.
How many native Windows IT guys have been able to unplug one part of a large Windows shop operation and replug a Linux solution and have it just play? What motivation do they have to do so?
Same here.
As a diehard Linux user I bought a copy of 95 just due to its sheer ubiquity. Not stable, not secure, but useful due to how much shrink-wrapped consumer software will run on it.
First thing I did when I heard about XP coming with its licensing and registration was to immediately get my 2nd and last MS OS - Win 2K.
I'm incredulous that corporations are giving in to the License Agreement arm-twisting to "upgrade" from 2K to XP. Win 2K seems like a fine, stable, good performing OS. It's being retired before its time, if you ask me. Guess it was too good to become obsolete sufficiently fast. Now that MS OS are of tolerable stability and quality they don't want anyone using them for any indefinite length of time.
Because its smaller and runs faster - nuff said, I'm a speed freak.
Excuse me - are we talking about the same CDE?
When CDE first came out and I had to run it on a SPARCStation 2 it was slower and bloatier than anything. It might be tolerable on current era UltraSPARC II hardware, but I got so burned up about the speed and size back then that I still run fvwm to this very day on my UltraSPARC II.
Probably I'm being unfair - I'm sure that running Gnome on a 486 is a different experience from running it on a 1.4 GHz Athlon.
Yeah, after the earlier consent decree in 1995 I think we can all rest easily knowing that our government has vigorously pursued the case against abusive monopolists.
The terms are probably just as likely as the terms of the earlier decree to correct bad behavior.
Senior executives of Microsoft have been seen shaking and shivering in their boots at the prospects of this new decree.
Oops, my mistake - they had smiles on their faces. They were laughing.
It seems to me that optical links can be spatially focussed much more than RF links.
While RF might be great for in-home networking, assuming you can surmount the security worries, optical seems like a much better bet for completing the famous Last Mile.
So I wonder with Bayonne Project and Open H323 if it would be possible for someone to setup a few IP to local phone gateways in major cities and thereby provide alternative long distance service? Would it be competitively priced and would the typical performance be adequate?
mmbrflglkmm...barn doors...horse.
I can't say enough good things about the potential for this project to bring open source operating systems to the public at large.
Backwards compatibility to previous versions of (closed) Windows is the biggest obstacle most casual users have with migrating to Linux. All that shrink-wrapped software purchased over the past 15 years - it has to work.
Sheesh, even MS has backwards compatibility as its biggest obstacle to getting users to upgrade to the "next" OS.
WINE can make a serious upgrade happen.
Would that such action be so effective!
At MSN in the trenches:
MSN Manager:Bob, I notice that our web traffic has dropped to only 98.3 per cent of its previous value since you instituted that blockage procedure on non - IE browsers. This is terrible. We can't have such a drastic impact on our business. You're fired.
At MS Corporate Hdqrts:
VP of *:Bob, I notice that since you've instituted that customer-aggravating blockage of non-IE browsers that the number of downloads of IE upgrades has shot up by 1000 hits per day. Our Passport implementation strategy depends on market saturation with IE. Good work.
Pick the more likely scenario:)
I thought Microsoft was interested in gaining developer support for their new initiative.
I can hardly see where setting trolls for .NET would help gain developer goodwill.
Besides, posters on Slashdot will troll for free - but I doubt they'd pay for the privilege to troll .NOT