"He noted that Oracle's commitment to Unix would simply provide greater opportunity for Microsoft's software."

Well, then MS should call themselves lucky. If Oracle would sell Windows there would simply be a greater opportunity for Unix/Linux.

Beefing up the old OS?

Switching to Maemo?

Or beef up the old UI to represent Maemo, so that old users wont even notice the change?

it´ll save the Americans a whole lot of embaresment. Just think about it.

Flash back a couple of years....

"Dude, we got hacked because we didnt change the passwords."

"Damn, what do we tell the general?"

"Tell him something about a superhacker."

Years later the general tells McKinnon

"Now hack the chinese!"

"I cant, they changed the default passwords."

Check your reality distortion field.

Why isnt Windows ready for your mum? I dont know, how about asking teachers that TRY to teach elderly people how to use a computer (Windows of course). And no, i dont mean some 80+ years old senile people, more those state founded courses for unemployed people aged around 50. They get a couple of weeks of training and dont know how to turn on a computer. Obviously Windows isnt ready for your mum.

Probably not even a VCR or a mobile phone is ready for your mum. Well, who cares.

Strangely enough i have already installed Linux distros for people with no prior computer knowledge and just asked them what they want to do, showed them how to do it and they are happy.

Oh hell, i already installed DOS for my mongoloid uncle, just added a simple repeating batch file that accepted the keys 0-9 and would start simple games or a slide shows with bare breasted women. Doesnt get much more user friendly than that, eh?

to spread 24 songs 80.000 times.

24*4MB (songsize)*80000=7,68TB

At an average upstream of, say, 20KB/sec this would require more than 12 years of uninterrupted seeding.

Next up, man gets sentanced for contaminating all oceans by having a piss in a river.

a lot of users arent ready for linux, though.

No, thats not a misunderstanding. Windows users dont care about the fact which OS they use. But they know certain applications, which they use frequently. And they dont know which open source equivalents there are. I've already installed Linux for quite a few users, and most of them are very happy with it. No, not IT pro's, normal casual users, quite a few without any previous experiences with PC's too. All thats usually required is just a quick check ("What do you do with your PC? What kind of peripherals do you have?") and a quick tutorial to the menus and programs.

So, am i some zealot? No, but i sure as hell dont want to have to run around to newbs every other day to fix some stupid virus problem.

Well,

usually people keep saying "this will be the year of the linux desktop". And while i doubt Linux while be shipped on more desktops than Windows it will probably be installed more often than mac-osx this year, or maybe next.

Nonetheless it has been year of Linux for quite a while. I'm pretty sure Linux is installed on more devices than Windows, though i would really like to see some hard numbers to back my assumption. Most DSL-routers run Linux, most NAS-devices run Linux, quite a few cameras and video recorders run Linux, a growing number of smart phones, GPS-systems and who knows what else. Sure that stuff doesnt have a "Powered by Linux" sticker or anything, but its running Linux nonetheless. Its more like the desktop is the last bastion of Windows.

Wasnt able to use Linux and dropped out of technical college. Excactly what should be expected.

A lot of Vista boxes take two or three minutes to boot.

Now take an underspeced ("Vista capabable") machine with 512MB Ram swapping already during startup. Put the home directory on a SMB share. Have, say, a couple hundred people switch on their boxes pretty simultanously. Network lag, server lagging, probably misconfigured anway.

I would expect something more like 5-10 minutes, but i guess the 15 minutes are pretty much the maximum time it ever took.

1.) Why check for radio waves? The question is not how long we have been using radio waves for communication, but how long we still will. Is it really that likely, that we will be using radio waves in a thousand years? Might well be replaced by something we dont yet know.

2.) Why havent we been visited by aliens? Maybe we have been, and they got bored of us. Just imagine Odin having a beer with Zeus and saying "Good one, but now let me tell who how i told them the planet was created."

3.) Why should aliens visit us? Earth. A boring planet at the edge of the milky way that no intelligent life form would even consider visiting. Nothin here, nothin to see and do, nothin worth visiting even near here. Add the fact that nobody wants to waste their money on dilitium crystals during the recession anyway its clear that we wont be visited.

I fail to see the problem here.

If i want to install software on my linux box i need my root password. Sure, i can set up yum, apt-get etc.. to automaticly update or install software via cron. But again i would need root access for that in the first place. Java MIDlets also require user consent to install.

Ok, so where is the problem?

Faulty hard drive? Pretty unlikely, would mean either the controller electronics are defective or by tough luck the some code in the swap file was read incorrectly.

PSU? Never saw a bluescreen due to a PSU, usually the the box crashes directly or reboots.

RAM? Yupp, thats the most likely cause. May be the reason that every linux distro comes with memcheck. And even if you find some defective bits and havent got spare parts you can allways have the kernel reserve the defective parts so they wont get used...

Geesh, i'll be staying at sourceforge.

Well, nice search engine guys, but

i wont use your site for code development,

i dont fancy learning new pseudo java apis for a cell phone.

While i appreciate having an alternative, that move is about as fruitless a MS spending megabucks to improve their online advertising buisiness.

Both "Help->About" and "firefox --version" show version 3.0, without any rc-whatsoever under Ubuntu. Well i guess some people may have to wait longer...

I'm puzzled nobody came up with the obvious question yet.

What happens if you forget the keyphrase? I dont think i'm the only one who has already forgotten passwords for seldom used accounts and had to have them reset.

What then, do they start with brain surgery then? Inject drugs? Send you to Guantanamo?

Paris Hilton, because she is an obvious example for a person who would never forget a pass phrase.

<logic bubble>

Well, i consider my self an atheist but i _believe_ you dont know what atheist means. A=Without and Theos=belief. </logic bubble>

<quote>

It's been how long? 2000 years, All he/she has to do is come down and show themselves and speak to us,Thats all we ask, I would convert in a heartbeat!

</quote>

Ok, so some hairy guy comes along and tells you he is a reincarnation of Jesus and you believe him? Last time he was born as well, so why would you believe him?

Ah right, you mean something else of course, right?

During a gathering of the UN a bright portal pops up und some hairy guy comes through and proclaims "After 2000 years i must now reveal myself too ...", hmm, dont know what he should say.

Would that be proof? Probably a lot of people would consider the transimission photo shopped or something. Or it might be an alien invasion! While technologicly superior they would still expect to many losses to use violance to conquer us and just make use of believes.

Face it, there is no such thing as proof for a religion, which by definition is based upon faith.

While techies will understand that price difference is based upon a greater storage most consumers will interpret this differently. They will see that the Windows EePC is cheaper. However they will "only" get Windows instead of a customized Linux version. Its the normal "if its more expensive it has to be better", which es probably true anyway for the Linux EePC.

Geesh, distorting scientific measurement results.

I always heard that we, for the sake of the children, should have less violance and Gore on TV. The reason for the latter is now obvious.

Ok this capacitor has a current of 400mA. Given DC a capacitor doesnt have a current, it has an electrical charge (measured in coulomb). Given the numbers, 330V and 440mA, the resistance of that capicator would be 750ohm, so no capacitor.

FFS, he wasnt even measuring anything, he was short cuirciting the capacitor.

Dont touch anything that a paranoid wheel chair guy couldnt touch ;)

Argueing about the amount of binaries delivered by Microsoft and Nvidia is´nt a good measure either. Probably only code in ring 0 and 1 can cause fatal crashes, thats kernel code and drivers. Given that graphics drivers are the biggest and most complicated drivers i can well understand that a big portion of the crashes gets attributed to NVidia. On the other hand, if Microsofts portion of the crashes were even bigger that would really awfull, after all they wrote it.

Well, i guess he might have good chances of being elected... do they use voting machines over there?

>Try finding another job now sucker... unless he joins an anti virus/malware firm

So, what is he supposed to do there? Protect us from virii that dont work?

... dunno, mafia ...., cartell, hmm. Doesnt sound right. And even having enjoyed an old Sid Meier game staged in the 16th and 17th in CGA graphics back then i cant find an appropriate word.

"It is not only fragmentation. Linux is also in danger of becoming the operating system that "does everything"."

I think we´re talking about the kernel here, that runs pretty much everywhere. Pretty good thing i would say. While the kernel looks very different, depending what device you compile it for, all the features and drivers exist over all devices.

But i think we want to talk about the OS.

"While such broad flexibility could be a good thing, and will be welcomed by enthusiasts, it complicates development of Linux in the world of desktop software..."

Now this is a bit wierd. I dont know how you define "Linux desktop software". I know GTK-apps and KDE-apps. Usually all of these can be developed and compiled on every Linux-distro. Or Solaris. Or BSD. Or Windows (with the appropriate libraries).

The only complication i can see is deploying applications in binary form.

MS patented the act of laughing about Ballmer.

He´s their inhouse joke and they will sue you if you infringe.