capnkr - Slashdot User

Submission + - 2008: Year of Linux on the... Laptop!?!

Submitted by capnkr on Thursday December 06, 2007 @10:41AM

capnkr writes: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in his column for eWeek titled "Cheap Laptops Bad for Vista, Good for Linux": "The good news for everyone is that you can get a good, solid laptop for under a grand these days. The bad news for Vista users is that many of those laptops, even though they're sold with Vista, have nothing like enough resources to run Vista decently."

And that is exactly my own experience with a $398 (retail) Vista Home Basic laptop. My impression of the first Windows OS I've 'owned' in over 6 years is that it is rudimentary, slow, and, to my eye-candy chagrin, has no capability of *ever* running Aero. OTOH, Linux installed on the same laptop (w/100% hardware compatibility, no less) is current, complete, very fast, stable, and even runs Beryl.

"The Year of Linux on the Desktop" has been a standing /. joke of years, but given the turbulent economy and lackluster performance and uptake of Vista, might the low price point of these cheap laptops combined with the (increasing visibility and popularity) of a better, free operating system create significant gains in the numbers of Linux users? Perhaps Microsoft should not have 'pushed' Vista onto platforms not really suited to running it?

Submission + - Worst datacenter migration ever? (webhostingtalk.com)

Submitted by capnkr on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @09:36AM

capnkr writes: What do you do, what *can* you do, when your webhosting company has serious problems that result in downtimes of 70+ hours? Sue them? This is what some customers of Alabanza hosting are threatening.

Alabanza was acquired in August by now-parent company Navisite, and this datacenter migration was to have happened over a month ago. Despite several promises to the contrary, servers are still not up, and the complaints are still coming in.

If you were affected by this, if you'd lost paying customers due to the webhosts foul-up, what could the company offer you that would keep you out of the lawsuit? Free hosting for a time would not seem to be much of an incentive. Monetary compensation would be nice, but how would you prove your value lost, with factors like customers trust in your sites reliability not being easily factored?

Submission + - Anti-scammers become Storm Victims

Submitted by capnkr on Saturday September 08, 2007 @07:51AM

capnkr writes: It looks like the efforts of the anti-scammers at sites like 419eater, Scamwarners, Artists Against 419, and possibly others have become the target of the Storm botnet.

Spamnation has a post about it, and as of this writing none of the above listed sites are responding. Spamnation reports that CastleCops and other anti-spam forums are being DDOSed as well. Sounds like a massive, concerted effort against the folks who are fighting the good fight...
Although I hate it for the owners and admins of the above sites, I think it shows without a doubt that their efforts to 'get back' at the scammers are working, if the scammers have had to 'rent' Storm in an effort to try and knock them out.

I wonder if this had anything to do with the fake bank site I busted on Tuesday? ;)

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