Opensource is useless when it's patent encumbered. While it's nice that the details will be available, it sucks to think that I can't use them except to serve Sun for the next 17 years. Such disclosure, of course, is what the patent system is supposed to provide but does not. What the patent is providing is ownership of ideas. How obvious those ideas are and if there's prior art is impossible to say from the linked puff piece.
This article is shocking. I'm used to much less hype and far more technical details from Sun. Software patents and bullshit are not what I expect when I follow a link to them.
If you leave your computer running until it needs a reboot, your "failure rate" by their definition is 100%, even if you reboot only once every 6 months.
Most people reboot their Windoze computers once a day and only call for help when they can't keep it up that long. The statistics reflect what people will put up with and have learned to deal with to get their work done.
The low number of session failures reflects the fact that most people at work turn their computers off at night. That's about the kind of performance I've gotten from w2k at a fortune 500 company, one crash requiring a reboot every two weeks. I gotten the same thing at smaller companies too. Crashes of programs, of course are more frequent but only a small portion required a reboot before the end of the day. Trying to run for more than one day at a time was futile. It's a low bar, but a Windoze computer will be used until it crashes every day, then help is called for.
The loss of placekeeping is a significant costs that businesses and individuals bear using such crappy software. Every day, every employee has to wait for their computer to boot and then must redo all of their previous navigation to open all of the information they need to complete whatever task they are working on. The boot itself takes five to ten minutes, depending on what kind of virus protection is used. Depending on the complexity of the company's data systems, and most are a nightmare of legacy junk, getting started can take about 1/2 hour. That's like the company throwing away 6% of of it's salary budget. I can compare that to uptime with Debian unstable that's on the order of months and Debian testing and stable uptimes that last longer than the electricity to my house.
I'd want to pop in a provision stating that they can't rip me off every time I add a new feature to one of my biggest products.
There is nothing reasonable about M$'s patent portfolio. It contains patents on obvious things with a long line of prior art. Generally, they "rip off" other people and then try to drive them out of the market.
I think it ironic that people are saying this is Microsoft's FUD
Of course it's FUD. Microsoft is telling the word that they are going to sue OO users and they have a contract with it's maker that requires the maker to assist them in the judicial extortion.
The obvious explanation is that M$ wants to scare business away from free and open software, especially applications that are drop in replacements for their core earners. That's what they paid SCO to do and that's why they are patenting stupid things like their XML schemes. Just the idea expressed in this contract will drive many PHB back under the M$ yoke. More judicial extortion is planned.
It's not a matter of people copying M$, it's a matter of market dominance. If someone at M$ had an original idea, they would be fired for not doing their job which is to develop and dominate proven markets, aka, stealing other people's ideas and business models. The engineers copy, the lawyers harass and the marketing people try to convince you that the M$ junk is better junk, M$ invented it all to begin with and nothing could be better than M$ domination. There is no M$ interface of software component I know of that was not done some other place first. In particular, every element of Office that's worth a damn came from other office suits. Tabs, check quatro pro. Formula editor, check Correl Word Perfect. For general interfaces, see Mac, Next and CDE. For all the stealing, you would think their junk would work better, but flunkies never do well.
People typically put in smaller CF devices and sell the result on ebay. What do 512MB media payers go for these days? You may have to copy system files using a laptop. I don't have a Carbon so I don't know.
Set NTFS encryption on all sensitive files and directories. Boot away, all those files are directories are now gibberish.
What's to keep someone from saving the info in another file? Nothing, at least nothing on M$.
This is just a band-aid for Microsoft's crummy networking. A competent system would all operate on a remote server in such a way that the "sensitive" data is never on the the user's machine except as display windows that don't contain more than a few kB at a time. This significantly reduces the number of machines you have to worry about. Microsoft can't handle tasks like that because their software usually requires a local copy of the information to work.
Those most likely to use this will really have the least amount of information that's useful to others in the first place. Ignorance goes hand in hand with such worries.
I cannot recommend enough that you use a distribution supported by the vendor of any software you want to run.
Vendor A likes Distro 1, vendor B wants winblows, vendor C wants Solaris. What to do? Want to support all of those platforms knowing that they will never get along? That's the commercial nightmare and the further you get away from it the better. In the end, you please yourself. If your vendor is not working for you, dump them.
The whole thing's a red hearing anyway. In this case, IBM does not specify a single distribution and does work hard to please their customers. All the distros use the same packages because the free ones end up being the best in the long run. Debian has been getting things done and companies like IBM are going to be using it and liking what their customers use and like. This guy is just ahead of the heard and IBM is not going to punish him for it. When you buy an IBM thingy, IBM will help you use it, regardless.
"MSN Radio promotes these online channels as being "like'' a favorite local station, "but with fewer ads, no DJ chatter and less repetition.'" They're using the actual call letters from the stations.
Ah yes, what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours, the typical M$ behavior. Nothing new here.
The question then, is if the links all point to the same stream. That would prove that you can't tell the difference.
Of course they can't really because some stations really are different. The music industry actually lets a few "target" markets have some music variety. Cities like New York, LA, Chicago are used as measures of how well music sells and other stations in "secondary markets" slavishly follow. Things get really annoying when all the local radio stations are owned by one company like Clear Channel. Going from a town like that to New York is like leaving a cave.
Microsoft's piggy back is typical of their disregard of other people's IP, their laziness and their arrogant contempt for the legal system. Because most people know how the music market works, M$ can get the same result by ditching the letters and just going with descriptions like "NY Progressive Jazz". It's such a small change that they should do it but they won't. That's part of their never admit a mistake attitude so often expressed by their legal staff. My bet is they waste time and money in court rather than change things or figure out some kind of cross licensing. You would think that radio stations would pay for the M$N advertising. Going at it this way, without asking permission, is going to turn a lot of that good will into animosity.
So you think sydb will be okay when he busts out a good ol' 486 with 16MB of RAM and gets all of his mission critical services on it? I mean, shit, Linux runs great on any hardware you throw it at, right?
Right. Woody will do that well and such a machine could be used for light duty file service without a problem. I'd recommend at least 24 MB of RAM for Woody and 32 for Sarge. Given that any company has much better hardware lying around, sydb will have plenty of material for testing. Once performace is demonstrated on the waste machine, sydb will be able to dedicate better hardware.
Linux turns trash into a new computer.
Winblows turns a new computer into trash. It's funny how that junk won't run on either end of the hardware spectrum and only runs on it's limited hardware for a short period. All commercial software is like that to one extent or another, Winblows is just more obvious.
Sorry to not really answer your question but hobbies and personal preference shouldn't take the place of a better solution (e.g. whatever distro of Linux IBM prefers for their hardware)
Thoughts like that would have kept IBM themselves from Linux. Insulting and lacking in detail. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
The posts that follow below by the likes of Ars-Fartsica are simply insulting. "Silly fanboy justifications..." nice. What a nasty bunch of flames. All because this guy wants to see if anyone has experience doing something and if not, to try what he knows works.
Go for it, sydb. These turkeys are full of shit. Stick to your guns, what you know is right really is. You are not the only person who's noticed that Debian is generally easier to maintain. Also, Debian does have very good quality and excellent configuration.
The best way to do it is to try it out small scale yourself. See how much time you can get for experimentation. It looks promissing for all the reasons you give, but a study can give you a real feel for it.
"MSN Radio promotes these online channels as being "like'' a favorite local station, "but with fewer ads, no DJ chatter and less repetition.'" They're using the actual call letters from the stations.
Ah yes, what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours, the typical M$ behavior.
The question then, is if the links all point to the same stream. That would prove that you can't tell the difference.
Of course they can't really because some stations really are different. The music industry actually lets a few "target" markets have some music variety. Cities like New York, LA, Chicago are used as measures of how well music sells and other stations in "secondary markets" slavishly follow. Things get really annoying when all the local radio stations are owned by one company like Clear Channel. Going from a town like that to New York is like leaving a cave.
Microsoft's piggy back is typical of their disregard of other people's IP, their laziness and their arrogant contempt for the legal system. Because most people know how the music market works, M$ can get the same result by ditching the letters and just going with descriptions like "NY Progressive Jazz". It's such a small change that they should do it but they won't. That's part of their never admit a mistake attitude so often expressed by their legal staff. My bet is they waste time and money in court rather than change things or figure out some kind of cross licensing. You would think that radio stations would pay for the M$N advertising. Going at it this way, without asking permission, is going to turn a lot of that good will into animosity.
You either have a good reference library or Google. Most people have google and it works better. Real library hours are very limited on most campuses and looking things up there takes forever and a day next to a google search.
Sharing computing resources, that's what the internet was for, right? A database or a web page of facts, unit conversions or literature is a computing resource.
Not having a good network is an inexcusable flaw in a modern university.
I don't really consider wireless access a freebie, as that is part of the school's network.
Ditto here in Baton Rouge, TANSTAAFL, what's offered as "free" is pathetic and getting more costly and dumber all the time. LSU has charged a "tech fee" for years that's a significant percentage of the actual tuition. This fee is getting larger and they are now considering a laptop requirement on top of it.
The money is being spent but it's all controlled tightly and not very flexible. They have more computers than they can shake a stick out, most running Winblows, monitored and wired to your account. Linux is making a showing, and may take off, but you must press "I submit" every time you use one. They also have Internet2, federally funded, and a great local net, even wireless, but all of it is non free and strictly controlled. IT won't let you put so much as a hub onto a line and the wifi requires some goofy client. In short, I do better and feel less monitored elsewhere.
For all the control, you would think things would run well. Nope. Worms actually shut down their email system this summer and they have banned attachments. The control does little other than inconvenience honest users.
Napster? I hope LSU is not dumb enough to pay that extortion, but they keep talking like greed heads. A great emphasis has recently been placed on "IP" and they now claim ownership of all student ideas as well as faculty and staff. Well, OK, you can keep your poetry and other work of marginal monetary value because the RIAA or big publishers will get it. Chummy, eh? You rape these, I'll rape those.
The dumbest thing I think I've heard so far is that the student government is considering a laptop requirement. They think they can hook everyone up to a M$ Active Directory, so Winblows is part of the requirement and neither of my fully functional laptops will do. Yes, this ignores the excellent Paws system run by IBM, but don't all clueless "I want M$ crap" initiatives like that ignore less costly and superior available services? While I can't imagine any network able to hold 50,000 instances of Active directory, I can imagine what will happen when 50,000 wormy laptops hit the net every fall. NOTHING. No email, no class registration, nothing but mass pandemonium and sleepless nights for the campus IT staff.
apt-get is great, but at the moment, there's no X-windows super-idiot-proof GUI friendly way to manage this - OR any other 3rd party apps that want to take a walk on the system
Try Synaptic. It's not really idiot proof because package management in testing/unstable is not easy. When Sarge goes stable, things will be much easier.
In the mean time, I test upgrades on my own machines but don't do much of that for my clients. If there's a security update or some program that's a must have, I can do it for them myself with ssh. Most people's needs, however, are well covered with a basic install of Sarge.
Out of interest, what type of company do you work for? Do you work for an open source company?
I'm a student, again. Entergy was the last big company I worked for. In the last year or so, I've done independent consulting and worked tech/retail/wholesale. A month or so ago, I worked the chain gang of a Windoze XP upgrade at a bank and thought it was the biggest cluster fuck I'd ever seen. I've done programming for two university research labs and nuclear transport. I'm now a grad student in Health Physics and hope to get into medical imaging.
I got into free software because g77 worked better than a commercial package that set me back $200. While using it, I noticed that the programming tools were better all around. Networking was also better than most commercial software I was using. Since then, free GUIs have vastly overtaken the commercial ones and everything else seems to have held onto it's lead.
You know it's a good idea when companies start screaming, "But that would put us out of business!"
That depends entirely on the business and what's done to get rid of it. I don't like this without assurances that it won't be abused but I can imagine things getting worse rather than better. Measures that reduce freedom are always bad, even if the public is thrown some free beer in the process.
Once again, government is increasing it's power to fix a mess that excessive government power created to begin with. It would make much more sense for government to reduce copyright to reasonable terms, like 14 years, than it does for them to mandate how you publish results. The problem is copyright and this fix, while nice, does not undo what run away government imposition created in the first place.
One obvious problem is that everything published yesterday will still be locked up for 100 years or so. Text books won't be able to quote it. Authors themselves will have to create new layouts and words to avoid infringing or, worse, irritating the keeper of 100 years of work in your field. Wouldn't it be better to simply free older works?
Powerful publications are government creatures. Government mandated publication and publication guidelines are sure to create a new crop of abusive publishers. Surely, the new publishers will be able to demand that practitioners do all the work: review, edit, write and then pay for all of it. The only difference will be that the public will be able to read it. That's good, but what terms will that reading be under? Will the public be able to share the information freely or will it be in some kind of nasty DRM format?
How fitting the article is on a registration required site.
who the hell has the balls to rip off **APPLE**'s icon set?
You must not understand the difference between using an icon and distributing it. People post screen shots of their Mac and Windoze desktops all day long. If I owned a Mac, I would help myself to all the icons I wanted and then be happy to post shots of my beautiful desktop. I might even do the same if someone I knew gave me those icons. Hell, I might even cut and paste them from a website. All is fair under copyright so long as I don't publish the work myself, right?
God will be on the sidelines taking notes on how to be "truly wrathful?"
God does not cry because His creation offends Him. He cries because He can not save us from ourselves.
Just run your kde kicker and other goodies under Window Maker. With X itself dealing with transparency, it should all work together and be very cool. I think it's grand right now without transparency.
I have a hard time imagining a non free set up equivalent to my current one. I have one kicker from each computer on a different named workspace and individual named workspaces for each project I'm working on make a very productive work environment. Is it cluttered? No, I have plenty of screens for each task. Does it require great hardware? No, I run garbage. I run my Window Maker on an old laptop with all the "real" computers in another room. It's quiet, easy to read and leaves plenty of room on my nice looking desk actually read and write the paper that the world still forces on me.
Having set up my next door neighbor with Mepis, I can believe that Linux on the desktop is here. She is an interior design teacher at a state university who claims to hate computers. For years, she was a Mac person. Her daughter convinced her to get a PC, which finally crashed and burned without hope due to lost original CDs and their utter obsolescence. I gave her an old PII with 64MB of RAM and a stock install of Mepis. She loves it.
Anyone can use and will love KDE or Gnome. Commercial software is so far behind there will be no recovery. It will take a year or two for people like her to tell her friends and widespread adoption to occur but there are plenty of people like me out there ready to help them all.
My stress used to come from the not so always on world of Winblows. Simple things, like uptime greater than a day without lost work, getting files to different physical locations without elaborate set up, filtering email without losing any, email and other work that just vanished from the "servers" and other little things that the computers and the network was supposed to do. Knowing that my tools could let me down at any instant added much to daily stress. It all adds to the lack of control most people feel at work, even when they are the boss or owner.
My world is soooooo much easier with software like KDE that uses ssh, sftp graphically without crashes, worms or other losing stuff. I don't know how people get by without easy and secure access to their data.
ahhh, but then you have the stress of making others do your will. They never do. Just look to the low quality of commercial software for a proof. That low quality is more than a small part of the feeling most people have of a complete lack of control in the workplace that leads to stress.
Um, your own chart shows that IE6 usage has barely budged in the past year and holds firm around 70%, near its high. Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only.
That's some funny math. The way I see it, IE has gone from close to 90% to close to 75%. That's a big difference, 9/10 to 3/4. You are also ignoring the rate of change, which is accelerating significantly. It's surprising when you consider the AOL (you know, world's biggest ISP) inclusion of IE and other changes which should have favored IE usage.
Predictions of more non M$ use are easier to make. These people are the kinds of "decision makers" that are going to tell people of their positive experiences. Web developers are obviously sick of M$, despite it's "market share" and are learning that other software works better.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is shocking. I'm used to much less hype and far more technical details from Sun. Software patents and bullshit are not what I expect when I follow a link to them.
I don't like any of this.
Most people reboot their Windoze computers once a day and only call for help when they can't keep it up that long. The statistics reflect what people will put up with and have learned to deal with to get their work done.
The loss of placekeeping is a significant costs that businesses and individuals bear using such crappy software. Every day, every employee has to wait for their computer to boot and then must redo all of their previous navigation to open all of the information they need to complete whatever task they are working on. The boot itself takes five to ten minutes, depending on what kind of virus protection is used. Depending on the complexity of the company's data systems, and most are a nightmare of legacy junk, getting started can take about 1/2 hour. That's like the company throwing away 6% of of it's salary budget. I can compare that to uptime with Debian unstable that's on the order of months and Debian testing and stable uptimes that last longer than the electricity to my house.
I'd want to pop in a provision stating that they can't rip me off every time I add a new feature to one of my biggest products.
There is nothing reasonable about M$'s patent portfolio. It contains patents on obvious things with a long line of prior art. Generally, they "rip off" other people and then try to drive them out of the market.
I think it ironic that people are saying this is Microsoft's FUD
Of course it's FUD. Microsoft is telling the word that they are going to sue OO users and they have a contract with it's maker that requires the maker to assist them in the judicial extortion.
It's not a matter of people copying M$, it's a matter of market dominance. If someone at M$ had an original idea, they would be fired for not doing their job which is to develop and dominate proven markets, aka, stealing other people's ideas and business models. The engineers copy, the lawyers harass and the marketing people try to convince you that the M$ junk is better junk, M$ invented it all to begin with and nothing could be better than M$ domination. There is no M$ interface of software component I know of that was not done some other place first. In particular, every element of Office that's worth a damn came from other office suits. Tabs, check quatro pro. Formula editor, check Correl Word Perfect. For general interfaces, see Mac, Next and CDE. For all the stealing, you would think their junk would work better, but flunkies never do well.
You must have missed the Surgeon General's warning:
Use of Microsoft software has been shown to cause severe data corruption and loss.
Of course it does. Just drop it into a Zaurus or other handheld running Debian. I can imagine using partitions as /usr and /var.
What's to keep someone from saving the info in another file? Nothing, at least nothing on M$.
This is just a band-aid for Microsoft's crummy networking. A competent system would all operate on a remote server in such a way that the "sensitive" data is never on the the user's machine except as display windows that don't contain more than a few kB at a time. This significantly reduces the number of machines you have to worry about. Microsoft can't handle tasks like that because their software usually requires a local copy of the information to work.
Those most likely to use this will really have the least amount of information that's useful to others in the first place. Ignorance goes hand in hand with such worries.
Vendor A likes Distro 1, vendor B wants winblows, vendor C wants Solaris. What to do? Want to support all of those platforms knowing that they will never get along? That's the commercial nightmare and the further you get away from it the better. In the end, you please yourself. If your vendor is not working for you, dump them.
The whole thing's a red hearing anyway. In this case, IBM does not specify a single distribution and does work hard to please their customers. All the distros use the same packages because the free ones end up being the best in the long run. Debian has been getting things done and companies like IBM are going to be using it and liking what their customers use and like. This guy is just ahead of the heard and IBM is not going to punish him for it. When you buy an IBM thingy, IBM will help you use it, regardless.
Ah yes, what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours, the typical M$ behavior. Nothing new here.
The question then, is if the links all point to the same stream. That would prove that you can't tell the difference.
Of course they can't really because some stations really are different. The music industry actually lets a few "target" markets have some music variety. Cities like New York, LA, Chicago are used as measures of how well music sells and other stations in "secondary markets" slavishly follow. Things get really annoying when all the local radio stations are owned by one company like Clear Channel. Going from a town like that to New York is like leaving a cave.
Microsoft's piggy back is typical of their disregard of other people's IP, their laziness and their arrogant contempt for the legal system. Because most people know how the music market works, M$ can get the same result by ditching the letters and just going with descriptions like "NY Progressive Jazz". It's such a small change that they should do it but they won't. That's part of their never admit a mistake attitude so often expressed by their legal staff. My bet is they waste time and money in court rather than change things or figure out some kind of cross licensing. You would think that radio stations would pay for the M$N advertising. Going at it this way, without asking permission, is going to turn a lot of that good will into animosity.
So you think sydb will be okay when he busts out a good ol' 486 with 16MB of RAM and gets all of his mission critical services on it? I mean, shit, Linux runs great on any hardware you throw it at, right?
Right. Woody will do that well and such a machine could be used for light duty file service without a problem. I'd recommend at least 24 MB of RAM for Woody and 32 for Sarge. Given that any company has much better hardware lying around, sydb will have plenty of material for testing. Once performace is demonstrated on the waste machine, sydb will be able to dedicate better hardware.
Linux turns trash into a new computer.
Winblows turns a new computer into trash. It's funny how that junk won't run on either end of the hardware spectrum and only runs on it's limited hardware for a short period. All commercial software is like that to one extent or another, Winblows is just more obvious.
Thoughts like that would have kept IBM themselves from Linux. Insulting and lacking in detail. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
The posts that follow below by the likes of Ars-Fartsica are simply insulting. "Silly fanboy justifications..." nice. What a nasty bunch of flames. All because this guy wants to see if anyone has experience doing something and if not, to try what he knows works.
Go for it, sydb. These turkeys are full of shit. Stick to your guns, what you know is right really is. You are not the only person who's noticed that Debian is generally easier to maintain. Also, Debian does have very good quality and excellent configuration.
The best way to do it is to try it out small scale yourself. See how much time you can get for experimentation. It looks promissing for all the reasons you give, but a study can give you a real feel for it.
Ah yes, what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours, the typical M$ behavior.
The question then, is if the links all point to the same stream. That would prove that you can't tell the difference.
Of course they can't really because some stations really are different. The music industry actually lets a few "target" markets have some music variety. Cities like New York, LA, Chicago are used as measures of how well music sells and other stations in "secondary markets" slavishly follow. Things get really annoying when all the local radio stations are owned by one company like Clear Channel. Going from a town like that to New York is like leaving a cave.
Microsoft's piggy back is typical of their disregard of other people's IP, their laziness and their arrogant contempt for the legal system. Because most people know how the music market works, M$ can get the same result by ditching the letters and just going with descriptions like "NY Progressive Jazz". It's such a small change that they should do it but they won't. That's part of their never admit a mistake attitude so often expressed by their legal staff. My bet is they waste time and money in court rather than change things or figure out some kind of cross licensing. You would think that radio stations would pay for the M$N advertising. Going at it this way, without asking permission, is going to turn a lot of that good will into animosity.
Sharing computing resources, that's what the internet was for, right? A database or a web page of facts, unit conversions or literature is a computing resource.
Not having a good network is an inexcusable flaw in a modern university.
Ditto here in Baton Rouge, TANSTAAFL, what's offered as "free" is pathetic and getting more costly and dumber all the time. LSU has charged a "tech fee" for years that's a significant percentage of the actual tuition. This fee is getting larger and they are now considering a laptop requirement on top of it.
The money is being spent but it's all controlled tightly and not very flexible. They have more computers than they can shake a stick out, most running Winblows, monitored and wired to your account. Linux is making a showing, and may take off, but you must press "I submit" every time you use one. They also have Internet2, federally funded, and a great local net, even wireless, but all of it is non free and strictly controlled. IT won't let you put so much as a hub onto a line and the wifi requires some goofy client. In short, I do better and feel less monitored elsewhere.
For all the control, you would think things would run well. Nope. Worms actually shut down their email system this summer and they have banned attachments. The control does little other than inconvenience honest users.
Napster? I hope LSU is not dumb enough to pay that extortion, but they keep talking like greed heads. A great emphasis has recently been placed on "IP" and they now claim ownership of all student ideas as well as faculty and staff. Well, OK, you can keep your poetry and other work of marginal monetary value because the RIAA or big publishers will get it. Chummy, eh? You rape these, I'll rape those.
The dumbest thing I think I've heard so far is that the student government is considering a laptop requirement. They think they can hook everyone up to a M$ Active Directory, so Winblows is part of the requirement and neither of my fully functional laptops will do. Yes, this ignores the excellent Paws system run by IBM, but don't all clueless "I want M$ crap" initiatives like that ignore less costly and superior available services? While I can't imagine any network able to hold 50,000 instances of Active directory, I can imagine what will happen when 50,000 wormy laptops hit the net every fall. NOTHING. No email, no class registration, nothing but mass pandemonium and sleepless nights for the campus IT staff.
Try Synaptic. It's not really idiot proof because package management in testing/unstable is not easy. When Sarge goes stable, things will be much easier.
In the mean time, I test upgrades on my own machines but don't do much of that for my clients. If there's a security update or some program that's a must have, I can do it for them myself with ssh. Most people's needs, however, are well covered with a basic install of Sarge.
I'm a student, again. Entergy was the last big company I worked for. In the last year or so, I've done independent consulting and worked tech/retail/wholesale. A month or so ago, I worked the chain gang of a Windoze XP upgrade at a bank and thought it was the biggest cluster fuck I'd ever seen. I've done programming for two university research labs and nuclear transport. I'm now a grad student in Health Physics and hope to get into medical imaging.
I got into free software because g77 worked better than a commercial package that set me back $200. While using it, I noticed that the programming tools were better all around. Networking was also better than most commercial software I was using. Since then, free GUIs have vastly overtaken the commercial ones and everything else seems to have held onto it's lead.
That depends entirely on the business and what's done to get rid of it. I don't like this without assurances that it won't be abused but I can imagine things getting worse rather than better. Measures that reduce freedom are always bad, even if the public is thrown some free beer in the process.
Once again, government is increasing it's power to fix a mess that excessive government power created to begin with. It would make much more sense for government to reduce copyright to reasonable terms, like 14 years, than it does for them to mandate how you publish results. The problem is copyright and this fix, while nice, does not undo what run away government imposition created in the first place.
One obvious problem is that everything published yesterday will still be locked up for 100 years or so. Text books won't be able to quote it. Authors themselves will have to create new layouts and words to avoid infringing or, worse, irritating the keeper of 100 years of work in your field. Wouldn't it be better to simply free older works?
Powerful publications are government creatures. Government mandated publication and publication guidelines are sure to create a new crop of abusive publishers. Surely, the new publishers will be able to demand that practitioners do all the work: review, edit, write and then pay for all of it. The only difference will be that the public will be able to read it. That's good, but what terms will that reading be under? Will the public be able to share the information freely or will it be in some kind of nasty DRM format?
How fitting the article is on a registration required site.
You must not understand the difference between using an icon and distributing it. People post screen shots of their Mac and Windoze desktops all day long. If I owned a Mac, I would help myself to all the icons I wanted and then be happy to post shots of my beautiful desktop. I might even do the same if someone I knew gave me those icons. Hell, I might even cut and paste them from a website. All is fair under copyright so long as I don't publish the work myself, right?
God will be on the sidelines taking notes on how to be "truly wrathful?"
God does not cry because His creation offends Him. He cries because He can not save us from ourselves.
I have a hard time imagining a non free set up equivalent to my current one. I have one kicker from each computer on a different named workspace and individual named workspaces for each project I'm working on make a very productive work environment. Is it cluttered? No, I have plenty of screens for each task. Does it require great hardware? No, I run garbage. I run my Window Maker on an old laptop with all the "real" computers in another room. It's quiet, easy to read and leaves plenty of room on my nice looking desk actually read and write the paper that the world still forces on me.
Anyone can use and will love KDE or Gnome. Commercial software is so far behind there will be no recovery. It will take a year or two for people like her to tell her friends and widespread adoption to occur but there are plenty of people like me out there ready to help them all.
My world is soooooo much easier with software like KDE that uses ssh, sftp graphically without crashes, worms or other losing stuff. I don't know how people get by without easy and secure access to their data.
That's some funny math. The way I see it, IE has gone from close to 90% to close to 75%. That's a big difference, 9/10 to 3/4. You are also ignoring the rate of change, which is accelerating significantly. It's surprising when you consider the AOL (you know, world's biggest ISP) inclusion of IE and other changes which should have favored IE usage.
Predictions of more non M$ use are easier to make. These people are the kinds of "decision makers" that are going to tell people of their positive experiences. Web developers are obviously sick of M$, despite it's "market share" and are learning that other software works better.