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  1. Comment - Windows 2002: What's in a Name?

    (May 7, 2001 - 1:27 AM)

    Having some ties to some poeple that work for netscape has it perks..espcecially this question...what happened to Netscape 5?
    Mozilla, the open source browser, in essance is Netscape 5. Netscape 5 is based off of the netscape 4 code, which is in turn based off of netscape 3, which is in turn based off of netscape 2. Which explains why netscape 4 kinda sucks. And Netscape began to realize the out dated code just wasn't going to cut it against IE. The side steped some already existant Netscape 5 products, open sourced it and moved to netscape 6. Now they could have just called netscape 6 netscape 5...but it was all marketing. Netscape 6.0 sounds better than IE 5.0 in retrospect to the people that really know nothing about computers but use one any how for thier basic IM, e-mai, and porn needs.

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    Spoony

  2. Comment - AOL Marshals Troops Against MS XP Offensive

    (May 7, 2001 - 1:19 AM)

    correction...cheifly 3 not 4 things that I believe will happen...please excuse me....I have more blood in my caffine stream than the norm right now.

  3. Comment - AOL Marshals Troops Against MS XP Offensive

    (May 7, 2001 - 1:14 AM)

    AOL vs Microsoft. Sure it didn't seem all that important and big until I really sat down and thought about it, and read a few others opions. I believe that there are chiefly 4 different situations that could take place here.

    1) Nothing changes...this whole thing about Microsoft excluding AOL from Windows XP is just hype and rumor, and AOL stuff works fine on the new M$ OS. This whole flame war is soon forgotten and the flag is once again raised up against M$ as if nothing has happened.

    2) M$ exlcudes AOL...aol brings out patches so that AOL does work with XP....yada yada

    3) M$ excludes AOL completey from the desktop...AOL launches its AOL OS...which could do what Apple did. Take some powerfull open source OS (BSDi) already in existance, bas****ize it, change it (slap Apple logo here, here, and here...more smiley faces....happy colours...happy, happy, happy...ect...) Close the source, call it proprietary, slap your logo on it (yeah! more happy colours, faces, ect...) and sell it. Charge OEMs less for it, making PCs cheaper. Launch ad campains to tell people that AOL OS is more userfriendly, more helpful, and (given apple's stand point) smiles back at you when it throws you errors. I doubt AOL OS would catch on...but it might cause some ripples. An AOL OS would definatly not work, and would cause the down fall of AOL.

    I am going with AOL for this one for really one main reason. WMA (windows media). This is what we REALLY have to fear. Although .wma files offer high quality at a lower size than .mp3 files, .wma files have the ability to be more controlled than .mp3 files. Less file sharing, limited listening time (ie can only play file 3 times than it becomes corrupt, ect...) And .wma will not work from Linux...now that hurts me, and I'm sure alot of you. I have heard rumors (and a posting on slashdot a few months ago about this) of M$ having IE, Windows Media Player and (possibly) M$ Office ported to Linux. Which is something I'm all in favor of. Granted I don't like M$, but IE is a better product than Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Netpositive(BeOS), ect... I welcome IE and office to Linux. I use Star Office on my Linux box at work, windows 2k pro Laptop, and windows 98se home computer. I'd like it better if Star Office didn't try to control the desktop, and just do individual programs losely binded together like M$ Office. Now getting back on topic...AOL has Winamp. Winamp is synonimous (spelling, I know...but its 1am, give me a break...no caffiene in a few hours...it sucks) with mp3 by the mass market. Keeping AOL in the game means keeping Winamp in the game, and windows media player out of the game. And keeping mp3 in the game, .wma files out...keeping music in linux...keeping file sharing available (the napster debate is another story...lets just keep it in the back of our minds for brevity sake).

    Yeah I don't like this situation any more than any of you guys do. Hell, I'd rather have everyone just switch over to Linux and be done with it. Open Source benifits everyone else. But for open source to be profitable, we have to change the monetary business model that we have been using for the past umpteen years. We are doing it, slowly but surely. Thanks to the .com frenzy, and failure...investors realized you can't sell a dollar for 95 cents.

    Yeah so I ranted...I rant alot. And yeah I got side tracked...I get side tracked alot (more often in differnt ways when I'm with women :-) but then again I'm a Net Admin that runs his stuff on Linux...we consume alot of caffiene, and play alot of ut/quake/frisbee football with the coders down the hall. The twitch factor (and 1:21am factor) certainly has alot to play right now.

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    Spoony