I suspect you called it exactly there, but it should be pointed out that even with the availability of IDE disk and a network, the answer would still be "disk".
Somebody who to me sounded knowledgeable wrote a month ago, somewhere on slashdot, a third reason:
3. Linux supported IDE long before *BSD did, and these were the inexpensive drives that the masses had.
To that, I would add, now that Linux is way ahead,
4. Linux is way ahead in market share, and just like the internal combustion engine, the incandescent bulb, Microsoft OSes, and other less than optimal technologies, once a product is entrenched with sales networks, R&D networks, customer support networks, etc., it takes a vast improvement in the underlying technology to overturn the economic advantage of sticking with the status quo.
Any open sourced kernel offered just that sort of advantage over windows (to developers) and with the internet paradigm shift to vastly increase the numbers of servers, open source (especially of unix) on the commodity platform offered a compelling enough functionality jump to create the new market/new standard. But since Linux won the initial sprint, expect it to continue its hegemony. The BSDs have a chance of gaining share by being very compatible and utilizing highly transferable skills, so all is not lost for them, but things are often the way they are for many small good reasons, not by random chance, nor for one reason.
Firstly, I reasoned it was probably black that gave mate as the problem did not state that it was white.
Much has been made here of trying to decide "white or black to mate" a priori. It's a puzzle! There're only 5 moves, it might be black, it might be white. Will that single extra tempo be "required"? Does e4 open a gap in the defense, or does it just open an attack against a truly unorthodox opening by black...
The only bit of cursory analysis that turns out to have bearing on the answer is "it takes 4 moves to get a knight all the way across the board, and e4 would "waste" the remaining tempo"... but a priori we don't know this will be the scenario.
Congratulations, though. Who am I to talk, I didn't solve it:)
Thank you for taking the time to reply so patiently. (I mean it!)
However, what I especially learned was that I didn't make my point clearly enough. It's no fun posting in a moribund thread so I'll mostly await the day that the topic comes up again. However, if you are here reading this, no point in sending you away empty handed:
You make a big deal that linux is a kernel, it can't run on another OS. Don't think so narrow mindedly, it's kinda like recursion: the x86 architecture is a virtual machine created by the microcode running on the hardware. MS has a kernel running on that which presents another virtual machine I like to call Win32. VMWare takes that virtual machine and turns it back into a virtual x86. linux-kernel is software that turns a x86 into "linux", and linux-kernel can also turn an SPARC or Alpha into "linux". All I'm saying is that it would be useful to turn Win32 into "linux".
For, after all, a linux kernel is mostly what it does, a black box, not what it is inside. Inside is memory management, scheduling, etc... all the stuff that gives geeks software-woodies. But none of that matters most of the time. It's a VM that apps run on.
To show you how you don't actually disagree with me: you should have replied to the main topic of the thread "What does linux need". You should have said, "nothing, linux is a kernel, it already has everything a kernel needs." Everyone else in this thread's been saying stuff about apps, ui, etc. What made my post different was that I was pointing out places on the bottom end, the back end, all of the places that linux needs to plug into and for some reason that always ruffles geek feathers. The network of MS Win installations, sys admins, people who know how to use it, etc. is extremely deep. The network is the computer, that network is the computer, that's the VM on which linux needs to run. Then, when users get used to the new black box, swap out the back end.
Wasn't this the original intent of the patent system -- to motivate people to strive for an achievement, with the temporary reward from the patent system as an incentive?
Actually, not really. First, I prefer the term rationale to intent, and, second, the justification for patents is actually a little more complicated (and, not necessarily true, either):
The rationale was that by having a patent system you would be granted a monopoly in order to preserve your profit from innovation while requiring you to disclose your secret.
The patent system was designed in the age of alchemy and craftsmanship, when you would produce products in your underground lair, while jealously guarding chemical secrets to keep your competitive advantage. When you died, your secret died with you. The system of patents was introduced with the aim of furthering the public good by granting you a monopoly for life (yep, 17 on top of age 30 would about cover it) so that you would tell everyone what your secret was.
I think it is important to bear in mind all sides of this rationale, because the premises do not necessarily hold today, especially in academic environments, and perhaps the timescales are all wrong. If geeks are incented to discover things anyway, and academicians to publish, or if reverse engineering is simple, we don't necessarily need patents to encourage innovation or to get public disclosure.
You may believe that extra incentives are necessary, or you choose to believe in patents as part of some libertarian/rationalist religion where you think it is "moral" to be rewarded for being smart, but from the perspective of society at large it may simply have the effect of amplifying rewards to the smart at the expense of the consumer.
freeing your other hand to hold a handheld, the telephone, etc.
For a desktop, I actually like having everthing in parallel. Touchscreen, mouse, trackball, stylus, trackpoint nubbin, and glidepad. I've never had them all at once, but I've had many of the combinations and they're all useful at times throughout the day. If my hands are on the keyboard, I don't want to take them off, but if I'm standing, talking to someone, on the phone, or my workspace is cluttered, I like to reach for more convenient or demonstrative devices.
We're talking about slightly different things here, and are thus talking past each other a bit. Our single difference is that I think that it is in the best interest of, to choose one example, Amazon.com to patent one-click shopping. I don't think it is good public policy to allow such a patent, but, unlike you, I don't think we have a national climate that will punish them for doing it. That said, I would like to see the "PR environment" that you describe, and I can still buy the rest of your argument: it may work to sit down with potential patenters and calmly convince them not to patent things, but I think you are convincing them to engage in public-minded self-sacrifice and charity. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it is the ultimate answer, and I don't think it would work with, for example, folks who are already unscrupulous monopolists.
VMWare? I already run it, though I use it in the other direction, to run W98 on top of linux.
The difference between it and what I'm talking about is weight, not to mention, VMWare is not free beer, which is essential for the Johnny Appleseed style evangelism I'm talking about. Once you install VMware, you have a long process of installing and configuring an entire OS... I'm not likely to do that while visiting a friend's house. What I'm looking for is a CD I can pop into a drive, launch, and have $command line from which I can run whois, nslookup, and traceroute... fdisk, mkfs, dd, find and grep... then, I could leave it behind and deliver other little applets to it, slowly converting my friends over to it.
Thanks for responding:) I just want to clarify your clarification. I found the Hardin Science article. What he describes as the tragedy of the commons (search for "herdsman" on that page) is exactly what I described in the traffic jam example I cited. I think you were trying to make the point that medieval cow grazing commons did not fail for this reason. IANAExpert, but we see that same sort of market failure with overfishing parts of the ocean, overgrazing in the West, etc., and I would find it hard to believe that it wouldn't affect cow grazing commons also if they did not first fail for the reasons you gave.
If the claim is that this software allows the circumvention of copyright restrictions on Real Networks encoded content, then the Ferret would seem to be akin to a photocopier: it allows copying, rather than engages in it. As long as users don't keep copies, where's the violation?
The problem lies with the PTO and the courts, not with lawyers, and not with corporations.
One of the things that we as a community misunderstand is that lawyers, evil Snidelies or not, are simply following the law and their code of ethics when they advise their clients of what is in the client's best interest. Among their clients are corporate executives who are required to act in the best interests of their shareholders.
If you sit down and calmly tell them, "don't do it, it's not in our best interest" then I hope what they do is calmly reply to you, "it is in our best interest." Let me [hyperspace topic jump] use an example from econ 101, one from the family of "the failures of the commons": traffic jams are bad, right? And yet traffic jams form because what is in one's personal interest is not in the best interests of the group. People are willing to add themselves to a clogged highway because it is still the fastest way for them to get to work at that moment. Yet, their personal time savings turns out to be less than the total time they add to everyone else's commute. It's called a negative externality. [hyperspace topic wormhole collapses... we are back] So, we as a community can be against these patents because of their negative externalities, but it is not feasible to convince individuals that it is not in their interest because patents simply are in their interest.
Sit down and calmly discuss it with your representative, with the PTO, with the judge... but the best way to convince an individual is probably to scream incoherently, to threaten, undermine, backstab and be otherwise civilly disobedient. Your reaction will need to be way out of proportion to change their equation.
Somehow our society at large needs to be shown that computers virtualize everything, and when the mouse click was invented, everything one could do with a mouseclick became obvious. Why isn't that obvious?
Gosh, I just love browsers that make me type "http://" on the front of everthing. Boy, it burns me when I type "slashdot.com" in Netscape and it takes me to the slashdot website when I so clearly want it to do nothing! And, overall, I think there is just not enough "http://" in my life, so I appreciate having the to opportunity, and silent reminder, type it.
Thank you, http://www.W3C.org (location: http://www.w3c.org/), for standing athwart the tide of them who would take shortcuts and shouting "enoughttp://"!
It needs to be easier for people to try Linux, and easier for people to take advantage of pieces of it. So, if a version of the linux kernel ran as an app under Microsoft's OSes, it would be simpler for people to make "try before buy NOT" evaluations and if there were compelling programs that linux provided, this method would also allow a gradual transition -- both for the user, and while linux added other functionality.
For starters, how about bootable linux cds? I routinely take hard disks from one machine to another with different motherboard, video, net NIC, etc. and within minutes, I'm up and running. Why not automate this? Take over 50 or 100 Meg of the harddisk, temporarily or not, but essentially a zero footprint and zero commitment (like the price!) I could then carry such a CD with me to demo/leave for friends.
Next step is for more or less the same thing, but without requiring a reboot, the ability to launch a trimmed down Linux kernel as an app running alongside the other MSWin apps. In this scenario, linux's distinct advantages would be more accessible. Evangelists like me could easily install it on my friend's computers and provide them with little tools. Heck, people are so blown away every time I do a "whois" for them. There are tons of little things like that, fips, fdisk, lilo... Linux could be the new what-the-old-Norton-Utilities-were. Also, MP3 tools I think are the Next (well, current) Big Thing and linux could be a big player.
With more extensive and low-level work, there are other short term opportunities. For example, network security, firewalls, NATs, etc. are much more transparent and fully developed under linux, and with the spread of cable modems and ADSL, there is a growing need for people at home. One architecture (not too complex?) might be a virtual network card for MSWin that redirects to the Linux TCP/IP stack (the way VMWare does). The same sort of scheme for Linux running under MS NT workstation (or even server, for that matter) could offer real server functionality for people trapped in the MS NT world. One idea is: port Samba to MSWin! MS OSes can only be in only one workgroup at a time! Samba offers many more possibilities. ("if I could get it working," I should add. Samba's author keeps pointing out all the ways that MS's implementations have bugs... well, how come they just work, and I have to keep squinting at smb.conf?)
BTW, this all would equally apply to *BSD, HURD, etc. running under MS OS or each other. Yeah, I know that these are all kernels and if you don't boot them you're not running the real thing. But perhaps they/you need to reinspect that notion: I want a platform or platforms that offer me APIs and services. I'd love to mix and match them. I'd love to run them on one machine. Do not overlook the value of exposing your platforms to future developers: if CS students or high school students are able to play with your stuff, they might start to love it.
One more thing about what Linux needs for acceptance: other people here are suggesting a "standard GUI". I would endorse that notion in the following sense at least: once I learn how to cut and paste text with the keyboard and with the mouse, it should work the same absolutely everywhere. Once I learn how to navigate the FileOpen filesystem browser, it should work absolutely the same everywhere. I experimented with Applixware a few years ago and threw it out in disgust. Paste didn't work in FileOpen... yikes! Someone mentioned printing: it's not just slowness that's the problem, it's that configing the printer once doesn't config it for all apps. That stuff should be part of the OS, not the app.
Setup and install need to be more flexible and friendly...do not make up titles for things and expect me to know what you mean RedHat asks some questions about printer services... I want to print, yes, but the printer is on another machine... so, do I want Printer Services? I still don't know the answer. And don't get me started with that business about "Networked Workstation"... ok, do not ask me questions I won't know the answers to till later: "do I want to run barfd?" I don't know. What does it do? Do I really need to answer this question now? Tell me how I can decide later, then I wouldn't have to agonize over the question. I'm making these suggestions as a relative expert: I configure ipchains, I configure hosts.deny, I know how to kernel-config, I know emacs, C++, java, perl, NSAPI blah blah... but I simply don't know what barfd is. How must the newbies feel?
Killer apps? I don't think new ones are needed in particular, but how about the following basics out of the box. No, I'm not being particularly original, but I think this is distilled down to the essence: a mail client that works with MS Exchange Server, and a relatively simple WYSIWYG word processor that can read and create.DOC mail attachments, and an.XLS compatible spreadsheet. These are staples in many offices.
La Scala loses "opera.com" domain! U.S Judge rules its non-profit nature and freely available public domain sources confused the public and threatened the viability of a commercial browser product.
The judge also went on to condemn the growing popularity of scripts displayed as subtitles, pointing out they "allow 'script-grown-ups' with no particular skills to sing along.
Too early? I said "prescient." By definition, prescience can't be too early. Narrow corner of the world? I said Human Genome: what could be more universal than that?
If you have a reason you think I'm wrong (I'm just playing here, what is "man of the century" if it's not for fun?) fire away:) but just saying, "nobody can tell the future" isn't all that interesting.
Look at the loophole in the naive "man of the century" rules: a huge swath of humanity spent the better part of this century living in various Marxist experiments, while the rest of the world experimented with ways to eliminate it (except for Stallman!:) But Karl Marx lived in the last century, so he can't be man of this century. But his thinking was significant enough that I think he ought to get man of the something... so, I think anybody who predicted at the end of the last century... you get the point.
First, why do you care about binary compatibility? Down that route lie viruses. Unix is a source compatible system, and is stronger because of that.
Given that I don't have time to read all the source code that I do compile and build, down the source route may lie viruses too. I think it's great that I can download a trusted binary RPM and use it so quickly that I don't forget what I was doing. And RedHat's performance in the marketplace is testimony to that sort of strength. That's not to say that I insist on binaries, but most OS's insist on them so I download them.
Source compatibility does make unix stronger as you say... heck, POSIX-esque source interchangeability, or perl-esque, with Microsoft OS's et al makes such portable source even stronger than simple unix source compatibility. But, the strength of unix source compatibility comes as soon as the code is built and tests OK one time. It's not like pushups, where the more I rebuild it the stronger it becomes.
Binary compatibility in the Java sense (hey, look, I'm back on the main topic) means that I can take a browser to a website and run their apps on my VM. If the security implementation can be worked out, etc., this capability will revolutionize our use of computers. I don't insist on binary compatibility: if the same thing can be done with perl source, great, I'll go for that, but the key is having the capability universally in clients. Maybe VMWare will do a plug in, maybe Citrix will out, maybe there will be competing standards... but to me it looks like Java is closest to giving us the capability, and it's a decent language.
He should take the idea to 3M: they think of themselves as the "flat stuff" company. They think (unless they got over it) that all of their successful ideas have been flat: sticky tape, recording tape, post-its, sandpaper. Their old promotional materials were designed to show the thin side of things so that everyone would subliminally learn to think of them that way.
I do have a problem with the complaints one hears in conspiracy discussions like this. The basic premise is: the people with money are dumber than the people without money. They must be, they can't see how good these ideas are! Come on! Not only are many people who have money plenty smart (some having founded technology companies), they can even afford to hire the smartest people to make investment decisions for them. You could take their message to heart: they think there is something wrong with the package. If not the idea, then the risk of the team, the risk of weak intellectual property protection, the risk of competition, the risk of substitute products... any explanation that starts out "I know better than everybody else" just falls flat. (I want points for that segue back to "flat":)
Anyway, the suggestions I read all have to do with government paper pushers. Look for applications that are driven by high demand in markets where tracking is really worth some dough, where there are a small number of players who are large and potentially willing to take the risk because they are in a position to reap the benefit. How about FedEx shipping labels, or NYSE buy and sell orders, or medical records. Could he whip up a version and stand on the floor of trade shows taking surveys with it? Many times, exposing technologies like this to many potential customers directly results in them thinking of the applications.
This comment illustrates the supreme self-importance of this "movement".
let me at least defend myself from criticism from another quarter: I am, no doubt, self-important, but I can take no credit for, nor would I even deign to bask in the reflected glory of, the free/open source movement. I speak as an outsider and observer, and a latecomer, at that.
Ok, so Stallman's still pissed that Xerox wouldn't give him the source to a printer driver and obsessed over it the rest of his life.
the American Revolution was started over some for-the-time-not-too-onerous taxes. That's right, "bean-counting." But it outgrew its origins, becoming first an experiment in self-governance, and eventually leading to the world's oldest democracy (so there, those who would keep pointing out that there is a rest of the world;), and a political system that has reexported its ideas to shake the foundations of governments around the world.
You compare that with putting Europe back together after WWII?
No, I would contrast it. I would compare putting Europe back together with a massive code review... glibc, maybe.
That affected REAL lives in serious ways.
So does the human genome, the overarching point I made that you chose to ignore, undoubtedly because it affects SO MANY REAL lives that it would be hard for you to deflate the importance of it.
Berners-Lee... Andreesen... Hopper...
C'mon, you are talking about foot soldiers, implementors... the direct equivalents of... hmmm... Marshall comes to mind. I'm writing about people with ideas, you are writing about people with day-planners.
As I recall there was plenty of public domain software around...now all people do is argue about license terms.
There were plenty of tax-dodgers around before the American Revolution, important people even. But the people we remember best, the men of the century, thought hard about changing the way people think.
If one wants to look prescient, choose Richard Stallman as the man of the century.
Long after people have forgotten about Marshall, simply the administrator in charge of a huge welfare program to rebuild the "Kosovo of 1945" ("Europe", that is, Kosovo on a grander scale), people will instead remember the ones who pioneered a new way to look at information, a way that reshaped the modern economies of the world.
You don't have to buy everything Stallman talks about or even like him, he's a fallible human like everyone else: the "give me liberty or give me death" squad of this age. But he was, early and often, the gazeteer of the movement, the wacky anarchist on the soapbox in the public square. In the next century, when technology is creating many marvelous possibilties and you are thankful that the human genome has been GPLed, you'll come to understand what I'm talking about.
Roosevelt was one of the ugliest people imaginable... he was no better than stalin
Stalin was a mass-murderer. He ordered the butchering of far more people than even Hitler. He even created a famine and starved millions of his fellow Russians, starved them to death. Teddy Roosevelt was not a saint by today's standards, but in his day he was quite popular, and was even considered an environmentalist. Whatever bad he might have done, directly or indirectly, does not compare with the evil perpetrated by Stalin.
You are probably a nice guy yourself, but I think your recollection of history is no better than Stalin's.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect you called it exactly there, but it should be pointed out that even with the availability of IDE disk and a network, the answer would still be "disk".
3. Linux supported IDE long before *BSD did, and these were the inexpensive drives that the masses had.
To that, I would add, now that Linux is way ahead,
4. Linux is way ahead in market share, and just like the internal combustion engine, the incandescent bulb, Microsoft OSes, and other less than optimal technologies, once a product is entrenched with sales networks, R&D networks, customer support networks, etc., it takes a vast improvement in the underlying technology to overturn the economic advantage of sticking with the status quo.
Any open sourced kernel offered just that sort of advantage over windows (to developers) and with the internet paradigm shift to vastly increase the numbers of servers, open source (especially of unix) on the commodity platform offered a compelling enough functionality jump to create the new market/new standard. But since Linux won the initial sprint, expect it to continue its hegemony. The BSDs have a chance of gaining share by being very compatible and utilizing highly transferable skills, so all is not lost for them, but things are often the way they are for many small good reasons, not by random chance, nor for one reason.
Much has been made here of trying to decide "white or black to mate" a priori. It's a puzzle! There're only 5 moves, it might be black, it might be white. Will that single extra tempo be "required"? Does e4 open a gap in the defense, or does it just open an attack against a truly unorthodox opening by black...
The only bit of cursory analysis that turns out to have bearing on the answer is "it takes 4 moves to get a knight all the way across the board, and e4 would "waste" the remaining tempo"... but a priori we don't know this will be the scenario.
Congratulations, though. Who am I to talk, I didn't solve it :)
However, what I especially learned was that I didn't make my point clearly enough. It's no fun posting in a moribund thread so I'll mostly await the day that the topic comes up again. However, if you are here reading this, no point in sending you away empty handed:
You make a big deal that linux is a kernel, it can't run on another OS. Don't think so narrow mindedly, it's kinda like recursion: the x86 architecture is a virtual machine created by the microcode running on the hardware. MS has a kernel running on that which presents another virtual machine I like to call Win32. VMWare takes that virtual machine and turns it back into a virtual x86. linux-kernel is software that turns a x86 into "linux", and linux-kernel can also turn an SPARC or Alpha into "linux". All I'm saying is that it would be useful to turn Win32 into "linux".
For, after all, a linux kernel is mostly what it does, a black box, not what it is inside. Inside is memory management, scheduling, etc... all the stuff that gives geeks software-woodies. But none of that matters most of the time. It's a VM that apps run on.
To show you how you don't actually disagree with me: you should have replied to the main topic of the thread "What does linux need". You should have said, "nothing, linux is a kernel, it already has everything a kernel needs." Everyone else in this thread's been saying stuff about apps, ui, etc. What made my post different was that I was pointing out places on the bottom end, the back end, all of the places that linux needs to plug into and for some reason that always ruffles geek feathers. The network of MS Win installations, sys admins, people who know how to use it, etc. is extremely deep. The network is the computer, that network is the computer, that's the VM on which linux needs to run. Then, when users get used to the new black box, swap out the back end.
what, pray tell, did you use the Ti-82 for?
the notation is less whacked, wacky, and wack if it's
1. e4 | b6
2. Ba6 | Bxa6
...
Actually, not really. First, I prefer the term rationale to intent, and, second, the justification for patents is actually a little more complicated (and, not necessarily true, either):
The rationale was that by having a patent system you would be granted a monopoly in order to preserve your profit from innovation while requiring you to disclose your secret.
The patent system was designed in the age of alchemy and craftsmanship, when you would produce products in your underground lair, while jealously guarding chemical secrets to keep your competitive advantage. When you died, your secret died with you. The system of patents was introduced with the aim of furthering the public good by granting you a monopoly for life (yep, 17 on top of age 30 would about cover it) so that you would tell everyone what your secret was.
I think it is important to bear in mind all sides of this rationale, because the premises do not necessarily hold today, especially in academic environments, and perhaps the timescales are all wrong. If geeks are incented to discover things anyway, and academicians to publish, or if reverse engineering is simple, we don't necessarily need patents to encourage innovation or to get public disclosure.
You may believe that extra incentives are necessary, or you choose to believe in patents as part of some libertarian/rationalist religion where you think it is "moral" to be rewarded for being smart, but from the perspective of society at large it may simply have the effect of amplifying rewards to the smart at the expense of the consumer.
turns out that my lynx on the machine I run DNS on was not using itself for DNS
It is a DNS problem for lookups on lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com
BTW, my Netscape, coincidentally or not, went into hyperspace during my testing.
- handwriting is a one-handed activity
freeing your other hand to hold a handheld, the telephone, etc.For a desktop, I actually like having everthing in parallel. Touchscreen, mouse, trackball, stylus, trackpoint nubbin, and glidepad. I've never had them all at once, but I've had many of the combinations and they're all useful at times throughout the day. If my hands are on the keyboard, I don't want to take them off, but if I'm standing, talking to someone, on the phone, or my workspace is cluttered, I like to reach for more convenient or demonstrative devices.
We're talking about slightly different things here, and are thus talking past each other a bit. Our single difference is that I think that it is in the best interest of, to choose one example, Amazon.com to patent one-click shopping. I don't think it is good public policy to allow such a patent, but, unlike you, I don't think we have a national climate that will punish them for doing it. That said, I would like to see the "PR environment" that you describe, and I can still buy the rest of your argument: it may work to sit down with potential patenters and calmly convince them not to patent things, but I think you are convincing them to engage in public-minded self-sacrifice and charity. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it is the ultimate answer, and I don't think it would work with, for example, folks who are already unscrupulous monopolists.
The difference between it and what I'm talking about is weight, not to mention, VMWare is not free beer, which is essential for the Johnny Appleseed style evangelism I'm talking about. Once you install VMware, you have a long process of installing and configuring an entire OS... I'm not likely to do that while visiting a friend's house. What I'm looking for is a CD I can pop into a drive, launch, and have $command line from which I can run whois, nslookup, and traceroute... fdisk, mkfs, dd, find and grep... then, I could leave it behind and deliver other little applets to it, slowly converting my friends over to it.
Thanks for responding :) I just want to clarify your clarification. I found the Hardin Science article. What he describes as the tragedy of the commons (search for "herdsman" on that page) is exactly what I described in the traffic jam example I cited. I think you were trying to make the point that medieval cow grazing commons did not fail for this reason. IANAExpert, but we see that same sort of market failure with overfishing parts of the ocean, overgrazing in the West, etc., and I would find it hard to believe that it wouldn't affect cow grazing commons also if they did not first fail for the reasons you gave.
What am I missing?
One of the things that we as a community misunderstand is that lawyers, evil Snidelies or not, are simply following the law and their code of ethics when they advise their clients of what is in the client's best interest. Among their clients are corporate executives who are required to act in the best interests of their shareholders.
If you sit down and calmly tell them, "don't do it, it's not in our best interest" then I hope what they do is calmly reply to you, "it is in our best interest." Let me [hyperspace topic jump] use an example from econ 101, one from the family of "the failures of the commons": traffic jams are bad, right? And yet traffic jams form because what is in one's personal interest is not in the best interests of the group. People are willing to add themselves to a clogged highway because it is still the fastest way for them to get to work at that moment. Yet, their personal time savings turns out to be less than the total time they add to everyone else's commute. It's called a negative externality. [hyperspace topic wormhole collapses... we are back] So, we as a community can be against these patents because of their negative externalities, but it is not feasible to convince individuals that it is not in their interest because patents simply are in their interest.
Sit down and calmly discuss it with your representative, with the PTO, with the judge... but the best way to convince an individual is probably to scream incoherently, to threaten, undermine, backstab and be otherwise civilly disobedient. Your reaction will need to be way out of proportion to change their equation.
Somehow our society at large needs to be shown that computers virtualize everything, and when the mouse click was invented, everything one could do with a mouseclick became obvious. Why isn't that obvious?
Thank you, http://www.W3C.org (location: http://www.w3c.org/), for standing athwart the tide of them who would take shortcuts and shouting "enoughttp://"!
For starters, how about bootable linux cds? I routinely take hard disks from one machine to another with different motherboard, video, net NIC, etc. and within minutes, I'm up and running. Why not automate this? Take over 50 or 100 Meg of the harddisk, temporarily or not, but essentially a zero footprint and zero commitment (like the price!) I could then carry such a CD with me to demo/leave for friends.
Next step is for more or less the same thing, but without requiring a reboot, the ability to launch a trimmed down Linux kernel as an app running alongside the other MSWin apps. In this scenario, linux's distinct advantages would be more accessible. Evangelists like me could easily install it on my friend's computers and provide them with little tools. Heck, people are so blown away every time I do a "whois" for them. There are tons of little things like that, fips, fdisk, lilo... Linux could be the new what-the-old-Norton-Utilities-were. Also, MP3 tools I think are the Next (well, current) Big Thing and linux could be a big player.
With more extensive and low-level work, there are other short term opportunities. For example, network security, firewalls, NATs, etc. are much more transparent and fully developed under linux, and with the spread of cable modems and ADSL, there is a growing need for people at home. One architecture (not too complex?) might be a virtual network card for MSWin that redirects to the Linux TCP/IP stack (the way VMWare does). The same sort of scheme for Linux running under MS NT workstation (or even server, for that matter) could offer real server functionality for people trapped in the MS NT world. One idea is: port Samba to MSWin! MS OSes can only be in only one workgroup at a time! Samba offers many more possibilities. ("if I could get it working," I should add. Samba's author keeps pointing out all the ways that MS's implementations have bugs... well, how come they just work, and I have to keep squinting at smb.conf?)
BTW, this all would equally apply to *BSD, HURD, etc. running under MS OS or each other. Yeah, I know that these are all kernels and if you don't boot them you're not running the real thing. But perhaps they/you need to reinspect that notion: I want a platform or platforms that offer me APIs and services. I'd love to mix and match them. I'd love to run them on one machine. Do not overlook the value of exposing your platforms to future developers: if CS students or high school students are able to play with your stuff, they might start to love it.
One more thing about what Linux needs for acceptance: other people here are suggesting a "standard GUI". I would endorse that notion in the following sense at least: once I learn how to cut and paste text with the keyboard and with the mouse, it should work the same absolutely everywhere. Once I learn how to navigate the FileOpen filesystem browser, it should work absolutely the same everywhere. I experimented with Applixware a few years ago and threw it out in disgust. Paste didn't work in FileOpen... yikes! Someone mentioned printing: it's not just slowness that's the problem, it's that configing the printer once doesn't config it for all apps. That stuff should be part of the OS, not the app.
Setup and install need to be more flexible and friendly...do not make up titles for things and expect me to know what you mean RedHat asks some questions about printer services... I want to print, yes, but the printer is on another machine... so, do I want Printer Services? I still don't know the answer. And don't get me started with that business about "Networked Workstation"... ok, do not ask me questions I won't know the answers to till later: "do I want to run barfd?" I don't know. What does it do? Do I really need to answer this question now? Tell me how I can decide later, then I wouldn't have to agonize over the question. I'm making these suggestions as a relative expert: I configure ipchains, I configure hosts.deny, I know how to kernel-config, I know emacs, C++, java, perl, NSAPI blah blah... but I simply don't know what barfd is. How must the newbies feel?
Killer apps? I don't think new ones are needed in particular, but how about the following basics out of the box. No, I'm not being particularly original, but I think this is distilled down to the essence: a mail client that works with MS Exchange Server, and a relatively simple WYSIWYG word processor that can read and create .DOC mail attachments, and an .XLS compatible spreadsheet. These are staples in many offices.
Hey, when did they become opera.com. They used to be "operasoftware" and "opera" really had something to do with singing.
If you have a reason you think I'm wrong (I'm just playing here, what is "man of the century" if it's not for fun?) fire away :) but just saying, "nobody can tell the future" isn't all that interesting.
Look at the loophole in the naive "man of the century" rules: a huge swath of humanity spent the better part of this century living in various Marxist experiments, while the rest of the world experimented with ways to eliminate it (except for Stallman! :) But Karl Marx lived in the last century, so he can't be man of this century. But his thinking was significant enough that I think he ought to get man of the something... so, I think anybody who predicted at the end of the last century... you get the point.
Given that I don't have time to read all the source code that I do compile and build, down the source route may lie viruses too. I think it's great that I can download a trusted binary RPM and use it so quickly that I don't forget what I was doing. And RedHat's performance in the marketplace is testimony to that sort of strength. That's not to say that I insist on binaries, but most OS's insist on them so I download them.
Source compatibility does make unix stronger as you say... heck, POSIX-esque source interchangeability, or perl-esque, with Microsoft OS's et al makes such portable source even stronger than simple unix source compatibility. But, the strength of unix source compatibility comes as soon as the code is built and tests OK one time. It's not like pushups, where the more I rebuild it the stronger it becomes.
Binary compatibility in the Java sense (hey, look, I'm back on the main topic) means that I can take a browser to a website and run their apps on my VM. If the security implementation can be worked out, etc., this capability will revolutionize our use of computers. I don't insist on binary compatibility: if the same thing can be done with perl source, great, I'll go for that, but the key is having the capability universally in clients. Maybe VMWare will do a plug in, maybe Citrix will out, maybe there will be competing standards... but to me it looks like Java is closest to giving us the capability, and it's a decent language.
I do have a problem with the complaints one hears in conspiracy discussions like this. The basic premise is: the people with money are dumber than the people without money. They must be, they can't see how good these ideas are! Come on! Not only are many people who have money plenty smart (some having founded technology companies), they can even afford to hire the smartest people to make investment decisions for them. You could take their message to heart: they think there is something wrong with the package. If not the idea, then the risk of the team, the risk of weak intellectual property protection, the risk of competition, the risk of substitute products... any explanation that starts out "I know better than everybody else" just falls flat. (I want points for that segue back to "flat":)
Anyway, the suggestions I read all have to do with government paper pushers. Look for applications that are driven by high demand in markets where tracking is really worth some dough, where there are a small number of players who are large and potentially willing to take the risk because they are in a position to reap the benefit. How about FedEx shipping labels, or NYSE buy and sell orders, or medical records. Could he whip up a version and stand on the floor of trade shows taking surveys with it? Many times, exposing technologies like this to many potential customers directly results in them thinking of the applications.
let me at least defend myself from criticism from another quarter: I am, no doubt, self-important, but I can take no credit for, nor would I even deign to bask in the reflected glory of, the free/open source movement. I speak as an outsider and observer, and a latecomer, at that.
Ok, so Stallman's still pissed that Xerox wouldn't give him the source to a printer driver and obsessed over it the rest of his life.
the American Revolution was started over some for-the-time-not-too-onerous taxes. That's right, "bean-counting." But it outgrew its origins, becoming first an experiment in self-governance, and eventually leading to the world's oldest democracy (so there, those who would keep pointing out that there is a rest of the world ;), and a political system that has reexported its ideas to shake the foundations of governments around the world.
You compare that with putting Europe back together after WWII?
No, I would contrast it. I would compare putting Europe back together with a massive code review... glibc, maybe.
That affected REAL lives in serious ways.
So does the human genome, the overarching point I made that you chose to ignore, undoubtedly because it affects SO MANY REAL lives that it would be hard for you to deflate the importance of it.
Berners-Lee... Andreesen... Hopper...
C'mon, you are talking about foot soldiers, implementors... the direct equivalents of... hmmm... Marshall comes to mind. I'm writing about people with ideas, you are writing about people with day-planners.
As I recall there was plenty of public domain software around ...now all people do is argue about license terms.
There were plenty of tax-dodgers around before the American Revolution, important people even. But the people we remember best, the men of the century, thought hard about changing the way people think.
Long after people have forgotten about Marshall, simply the administrator in charge of a huge welfare program to rebuild the "Kosovo of 1945" ("Europe", that is, Kosovo on a grander scale), people will instead remember the ones who pioneered a new way to look at information, a way that reshaped the modern economies of the world.
You don't have to buy everything Stallman talks about or even like him, he's a fallible human like everyone else: the "give me liberty or give me death" squad of this age. But he was, early and often, the gazeteer of the movement, the wacky anarchist on the soapbox in the public square. In the next century, when technology is creating many marvelous possibilties and you are thankful that the human genome has been GPLed, you'll come to understand what I'm talking about.
Stalin was a mass-murderer. He ordered the butchering of far more people than even Hitler. He even created a famine and starved millions of his fellow Russians, starved them to death. Teddy Roosevelt was not a saint by today's standards, but in his day he was quite popular, and was even considered an environmentalist. Whatever bad he might have done, directly or indirectly, does not compare with the evil perpetrated by Stalin.
You are probably a nice guy yourself, but I think your recollection of history is no better than Stalin's.