I had one person tell me I had no right to lock down my WiFi access points at my home and the 3 WiFi at my church
You have every right to try but why bother? I'd think that a church going person would know their neighbors well enough to trust or not trust them. In either case, there is little harm they can do to you through your wireless that could not be done to you by complete strangers anywhere on the internet. Unless you pay by the byte, you won't even notice your neighbor's traffic. I'd rather chat with my neighbors about our shared interests and see if there were any other resources we could share.
CYA from commercial software? You're shitting me, right? Saying that your software screwed up is about as good as telling your boss that the dog ate your homework. You picked it out, you spent company money and time setting it up, you get to fix it on your time every time. Why not chose something with a better service record to begin with?
I'm not sure what you mean by "cracking the whip", but it surely does not apply to commercial software. With closed source software, you take what the software company gives and can never expect more. You say, " When problems occur, corporations need to know when to expect a solution, so they can plan accordingly." I say corporations don't plan for problems and when problems happen, they think about getting rid of it and you.
This is especially true in the kind of blame shifting, no real product, rule by intimidation and bullshit world you think is a normal corporate workplace. It's not normal and companies like that don't last long without government protection because they make more than bad software decisions.
I'd be happy if all it does if force them to make good, secure, software that isn't insanely expensive.
I'll be happy when they quit using your money to fund jerks like the BSA, SCO and deTorq in their quest to FUD, DRM and DMCA free software out of existence. It would be nice if they were not spending billions of dollars trying to convince everyone that free software is a cancer made by spongers and boasting theives, that will cost 10X as much as Winblows, will never interact with any serious business, is responsible for offshoring and DRM, and other draconian "solutions". I'd be very happy if Microsoft's idea of competing was not "use our software" or we will sue you. If it were not for all of the above, I could care less what the jokers do. Because they seek to destroy my ability to help myself and others, I hope they go to the same place their obsolete software belongs.
If you don't mind software chains, please buy into Sun, Apple or anyone but Microsoft. If all you care about is having a choice of inexpensive masters, you already have it. You can get all of your work done without Microsoft and it will be much more stable and secure. You might even liberate yourself a little with some help from IBM.
This is just beautiful. Try telling your client that they should spend $5,000 or so for a machine that must be turned off all the time because the software is "free". They might go for it because their current Winblows is so flaky and they remember that redundant systems were good back when they were in the Navy. Alpha and Bravo in regular rotation. If they fail go to Charlie and Delta. Snicker knowing that closed source software can not be inspected like pumps and valves.
Fast forward a few months. Something mysterious has happend to your "main" server. Because you have diligently made daily DVDs of your data, you might only lose a day or so of work (snicker, some more!). So, you quickly run to the "standby" server and load it up with your data. Oh, you are so happy it boots. What happens then? The same software, faced with the same data on the same network quickly fails exactly the way the first one did.
Laugh out loud, you have been screwed. It's just like old times. You get to wait for patches and fixes but you have two virus infested messes to clean up and rebuild instead of one. Chances are the first box failed Thursday evening and you are going to have a long fruitless weekend.
Redhat? All official support was pulled after 16 months.
What exactly does that mean? How do you pull support of free software? What's keeping anyone from moving to Fedora or Debian? As another poster has mentioned, you can replace any part of any free system yourself anytime. Help is cheap and competent. Security seems like a non issue too.
Distributions like Debian make the version change as easy as apt-get upgrade. Fedora is moving in that direction, if it's not already there.
I've never suffered data loss due to changing software since changing over to Red Hat 5.1. The data grew from there through Red Hat 7 and then to Debian potato, woody and now sarge. I did this on two different computers, but it could just as easily have been one.
What kind of "support" did I need? Zero. How many support calls did I have make? None because I quickly learned that Google + LUG is a much faster way to get answers.
Before I knew what I was doing, I paid someone $50 to set something up for me. It was easy to find the help locally, even in 1998. If you live in a big enough town, you will have a magnet high school with a BSD or Linux lab and many cluefull people. University towns are crawling with CS students who also know what they are doing and need cash nights and weekends. When they graduate, they are worth their weight in M$ licenses and EULAs.
In the last six years, I've never had a security issue outside of Windows. This might be because I've continuously upgraded my software, but it still looks easier to protect old Linux boxes than Winblows. Even if I were so terribly lazy that I did not do security upgrades, I can still keep old machines from running dangerous services or make effective firewalls for them.
So, I don't understand the fuss. What trouble have you really had?
This just delays that, probably until longhorn where the choice between upgrading or Linux is to be made, in about 2 years.
Are you really going to sit through two more years of unstopable worms, bugs and other nonsense because Microsoft says the next version will once again be "the best windows ever"? The Microsoft solution has always been two years away but never arrived.
So Microsoft invests millions of dollars in FUD machines (SCO, the Alexis de Toqueville Institute, etc...) and continues on, business as usual.
We can be sure they also spend plenty of money trolling Slashdot and other BBS. They have been Astroturfing forever and will always do it. There's more to their efforts than paying people to skate around New York City in tacky butterfly suits and gum up the world with MSN stickers.
Microsoft's whole business model fails in a free software world. They are a vendor. They package free and non-free software into their own little system and sell it non-free. They use BSD when they feel like it, but they have sworn to be leaches by never entering a "market" before it is "mature". M$'s worst nightmare is to be surrounded by other companies who can not only package the same software better than they can, but who also make new software and want it to reach the end user finely packaged and free. It's already happened. As the former softie points out, Microsoft's work is markedly inferior, even to other non-free software. Stuff like Fedora, Knoppix, Mepis and other Linux distributions that replace everything Microsoft does must be giving Bill Gates a heart attack.
FUD is a delaying tactic and the weapon is the US Government and bogus laws. Microsoft is hoping to use DRM and the DMCA to make it legally impossible for others to compete on commodity hardware. I doubt hardware vendors will go along with it, because such schemes would give Microsoft too much power, but the intent is there. Perversely enough, the worse Microsoft makes the end user's experience of viruses, malware and the like, the faster they will get bad laws passed.
what other way to explain the fact that stories get repeated again and again?
Did you ever think that some stories might be so good you'd want to tell them twice? A guy who spent 8 years working for the Soft telling it like it is. I was a little dissappointed to see that yet another Softie has not decided to publish a well reasoned criticism of M$ bugs contrasted with the smooth and professional operation of any other platform. Never the less, it made my day to see it again. Could be a mistake, who cares?
Kunta Kinte berates the submitter as an Apple fanboy,
What is up with you people and Apple?!!... My God! Give it a rest.... Please. You're killing us here!... I can't get away from the Apple worship even if I block apple stories.... Apple though is worshipped to the point that it is frickin' nauseating to the rest of us.
I'm getting tired of such accusations. Realizing that someone else does something better than Microsoft does it does not make someone a fanboy. Only a M$ fanboy would think something like that. Had you read the article you might have noticed that the former Softie's main point was that he liked his Mac more than M$. The author is not a fanboy for noticing and the submitter is not a fanboy for paraphrasing the author.
It's not hard to beat the M$ experience, even for a traditional commercial software vendor. The author gives a list of unforgivable Microsoft performace issues, from Word woes to daily crashes with XP. His general impression is that M$ was getting so bad that he could not get his work done anymore. The author then lists some really neat goodies that the Mac gave him, all without technical difficulties. The opinion looked reasonable to me.
So why would anyone use the article as a chance to say nasty things about Apple? Oh yeah, looking at your latest journal entry, we see that you think you are a troll with style,
Shout-outs to 'Reminiscent Troll'. Tried to copy and adapt your trolling style a bit.
No style points, Toby.
Apple has enough sense to actually design interfaces, use GCC, X and other free and open software. They have done that and made a better end user experience that Microsoft can and made money. Kinda sucks for Microsoft to be beaten that way, but that's what happens when you get all wrapped up in your own presumed greatness and become your own biggest fanboy.
M$ would like to do the same for compilers and "unsigned" code. They would love to have more government support to stamp out any and all competition, especially free competition. They have come a long way towards having DRM inbeded in hardware and having trade secrets enforced by government under the DMCA. They will justify the next steps by the poor quality of their code and the damage malware does to their customers because of it. If owning a few petri dishes and ROM programmers can get you arrested and people don't question it, one day M$ may have it's way with basic software tools as well.
Yes, he had a lab, with biological agents, removed from their natural setting. So yes, he is suspected of breaking the law.
No, he broke the law by doing that.
... the PATRIOT act provides for uses of such labs for peacful purposes. The prosecution has to prove that it was not for peacful purposes.
No, the Patriot act outlaws labs not for "bona-fida" research. Let me quote the second paragraph of the linked code:
Whoever knowingly possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that, under the circumstances, is not
reasonably justified by a prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
And just like that, guilt is presumed. The good professor must now prove that his artwork was for a "reasonably justified" "peaceful purpose".
The same kinds of laws and language are applied to special nuclear materials. You can't own them, period. If you listen to what the prosecutors are saying, the same logic is guiding the above ban.
While the careful licensing of nuclear materials may be justified, banning people from collecting and breeding common bacteria is absurd.
This case would never have gotten as far as it had without the massive ignorance and presumption of the Patriot Act. The man's displays have been deemed safe enough for public exhibition by experts. His wife's autopsy exonerated the artwork. Yet, here he is going to trial for running a lab based on a few snips of satirical literature published by a group he belongs to. Before the Patriot Act, this case would have been laughed out of court because there was nothing wrong with a collection of moldy petri dishes and there's no evidence of any other wrongdoing. The Patriot act forces the accused to prove their innocence as if NO ONE BUT A TERRORIST WOULD RUN A LAB.
The real pain will be felt by people who have pirate coppies and don't know it. I worked for a local computer store that got burnt this way. The distributor passed on bogus coppies with the good ones and they were indistinguishable. Yes, they had all the holograms and spiffy printed material all shrink wrapped with keys that worked. It took him years to get out of a BSA lawsuit, and he almost lost his business and life savings doing it. I doubt anything has changed and the innocent will suffer the most.
That's the way DRM works. It never really hurts criminals who profit from publishing other's work, it simply burns the end user.
Er... he is innocent until proven guilty, that's why they're taking it to a jury. What is it about the whole court proccess that has people so confused?
The Patriot Act is confused. It has made non harmful activities criminal and subjects anyone who owns "biologic agents" to the whims of a jury trial and national infamy. The presumption of guilt inherent in the Patriot act makes a mockery of the presumption of innocence. There is potential for abuse beyond shutting up an artist, though that is bad enough.
By the letter of the Patriot Act, he IS guilty. He did have a lab with "biologic agents" removed from their natural setting. He can spend years in prison for that. He will have to spend years of his life fighting off the charges and his reputation has been irrevocably damaged. Yet it seems clear that his artwork was not a threat to anyone. The patriot act presumes guilt for innocent activities and forces people to prove that innocence.
The potential for abuse is huge. Once upon a time, you could found a company like HP in your garage. Today, the Patriot act stands in the way of anyone who would do the same with "biologic agents". The basic tools of research have been outlawed for an entire field. The same kinds of bogus arguments can be made about compilers and printed circuit board making equipment.
The Patriot Act is a truly unAmerican set of laws that will continue to harm us all.
He's an artist and an activist - so they shouldn't even investigate the bio-lab in his house, or his views on releasing mutant organisms in the wild!
Nice straw man, tbase. I've yet to see anyone but you say such a thing.
How about remembering that the good professor is innocent until proven guilty? I'd like to see real planning and materials pinned to the artist himself. What's being presented is petri dishes full of mold and literature, perhaps fantasy, from an organization the professor is a member of. It's all flimsy stuff that exposes problems with the Patriot Act.
Quoting Malcom X does not make you a terrorist any more than reprinting, "Give me liberty or give me death." does. Actions are what laws forbid, not thoughts.
A lab in your living room does not make you a terrorist either, but it looks like that will now get you into trouble with the Patriot act. While it seems clear that the "biological agents" found in the apartment were not harmful and not the cause of Hope's death, the lab itself is being treated as a weapon.
Where do you draw the line? If you can't breed bugs for art, what can you breed them for? Do you want to have to convince Big Brother you are politically correct when you want to grow brewer's yeast?
If you really want to be convinced of how harmless this group is, go visit their website yourself. The thing is a joke. The only thing that's disgusting is how far some prosecutor's clerk had to dig to find anything that looks threatening.
Sure, Microsoft is behind it, but it's not working. They can google bomb to promote Brown all they want, but it's empty. The rest of the world is marching along and it has nothing to do with Brown's or Bill Gates fantasy FUD world. The divergence is so great, anyone can see it.
Is this the best M$ can buy, a rehash of ancient GPL FUD? It's pathetic. It's so bad, Al Gore would recognize it as bullshit. There are no clear definition of terms, most of the statements contradict reality and it's clear that Ken Brown is a ranting lunatic without any kind of "intellectual" backing. The bozo can't even clearly summarize his arguments.
IBM, HP and others are making billions of dollars on Linux, but Ken tells us that Linux will ruin the US IT industry and destroy the US government's "IP" holdings. Right... Any government leader worried about wasting taxpayer dollars has only to call IBM and quit buying the eXPensive software offered by the sponsors of Tocqueville.
While he never mentions it, the GPL is the real object of his attack. It's so tiresome to read the same nonsense again and again. Free software is adding tremendous value to the US and world economy. No practical person can have failed to notice this by now. Besides insults and and old dire predictions that have failed to come true, Ken also never mentions specific drawbacks of free software nor tells us how non free source code does anything any better. While all charges of code theft that have been leveled at Linux have proved unfounded, many commercial companies have admitted to stealing free code. The whole notion that people who openly publish their code are theives somehow trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes is preposterous. We are supposed to trust people who hide their source code like a dirty secret instead?
Ken really had an impossible task, but it's one of his own making. All of his experts are calling his opinions for what they are. How can he do anything but shift around when confronted with it all? He tells us, " AdTI will continue to interview people within the open source profession about open source.... I have done this for years, and will continue to do so, regardless of what a source thinks of my theories. " Ken, baby, why bother asking questions if you are not going to listen to the answers?
Oh yeah, namecalling. "Linux is a leprosy.", "sponging", "'three monkeys' policy", "boasting about stealing, reverse engineering, and illegal copying", "theft of the Lions notes", give me a break. At least he's consistent with the mud he wants to throw at just about everyone in computer science.
The only real theft going on right now is Microsoft's attempt to extort money from Linux users through it's SCO proxy. How does that fit into Ken's worldview?
So long as ads are respectful of your browser... , their content doesn't concern me a whole lot.... Could there be exceptions? Yes.
So what do you think of advertisements that make blatantly false claims like Linux costs 10x as much to run as Winblows? That's the heart of the matter here. Shouldn't there be some editorial feedback when it comes to stuff like that? Publishing a lie is wrong.
By the way, the advertisements were also of the "eye poker" flash type.
I want to know... It just looks like he's flying off the handle irrationally, and that really detracts from the point he's trying to make.
No, you are detracting from the point he is trying to make without knowing anything. That's not good to do to your friends. There are many more flattering scenarios.
I personally would call upon the community to click every Microsoft ad they see. They get cheap advertising if nobody clicks on them.
Are you sure click through is how the advertiser gets paid? It's a method that's easy to defraud, as you pointed out.
In any case, DON'T DO IT. Regardless of how M$ is charged, people will count the click through. It makes the website, the advertiser and M$ think that people really have an interest in M$ cruft. People make real decisions based on that kind of information. You don't really know if you are harming them, and you really are helping them everytime you click.
The best way to make Microsoft go away is to ignore them.
...anyone who actually *goes* to the site will just laugh off anyhow
If it's bullshit, why would you publish it? Editors owe it to their readers to filter obvious frauds. Claiming that Winblows cost 1/10th what free software does is an outright lie and everyone knows it. Publishing such nonsense is close to taking money from Nigerian Oil scammers. That the lie is so detectable makes the publisher look that less informed or honest.
Are Linux Today's readers too stupid to think for themselves?
Rombuu, do you enjoy beating your wife? Come on, that's a really old troll. Ask a question that has no right answer and ignores clearly stated points. Here are those points:
Do we want to continue to support a Microsoft-friendly (and anti-Linux) website by continuing to read it daily?
Would we be comfortable sending our boss and/or other decision makers in our company to this website for Linux-related news and information?
Can we continue to trust this website with unbiased news, now that we see how close to Microsoft they are?
All are legitmate. Microsoft adds are irritating and I hate seeing them. Besides being blatantly false, they are as visually annoying as any porn add. Running such garbage casts doubt on your editorial integrity and lessens the impact of your content. Worse, they might become dependent on M$ and join the long line of worthless Wintel publications ready to say anything. These are issues worth considering.
Look, freak, I didn't fire the first salvo in this "tit-for-tat" personal battle you seem to have with me. Actually, it's not just with me. It's with anyone who has anything positive to say about Microsoft.
Actually, you did. You accused Reifman of being stupid and bitter because he dared point out software and cultural problems Microsoft. I've simply called you on it and you have yet to respond with anything but further insult and bile. It's nothing really personal, I've just noticed you are a Microsoft suck.
Instead, I'll give you some free advice: Instead of acting like a Nazi, you ought to consider that people should be able to make their OWN CHOICE about what software they run.
Yes, idiots like you are free to use whatever they feel like paying for. You deserve it.
The rest of us, however, are free to read the information you pointed us to and see that you are full of shit.
Failing that, the only other way I see for you to achieve happiness in your life is to recruit your own luftwaffe and lock up anyone who even considered a Microsoft product.
I'm afraid you are off by an order of magnitude. Microsoft burns through billions a quarter. If dissaster struck, and it has, they would have to cut back hard. Without billions in PR they would soon sink. At their current spending rate, they can be out of money in 5 quarters. See:
Quarterly operating expenses were in the range of 5 to 8 billion dollars, two of which are advertising. Revenues for the same period were 7 to 9 billion. Research is down, advertising is up and administrative costs have increased sixfold! While they trumpet increased revenue, their net is down by almost half over a year ago from 2.1 to 1.3 billion. If tomorrow everyone switched to free software, Microsoft would be out of business in less than two years.
It won't happen like that, but that's more realistic than expecting them to coast for a decade. The migration to free software is already on and mainstream. It won't take long for the Microsoft PR machine to self destruct. With enough free software deployment, the inferiority of Microsoft's line will be apparent to everyone regardless of all the feel good "potential" adverts and the gravy train will derail. You don't have to have worked for the Soft for 8 years to see the problems Word, Lookout, XP and all have. The tipping point is close.
I wonder if SCO "investments" are marketing or administrative costs. Soon it will go into their investment losses.
Microsoft ought to consider moving from the software industry into something new. They have the capital for anything. They have enough brainpower to do anything.
And they have proved their morals will keep them from nothing! Making up Apple switchers, writing letters to congressmen from dead people, extorting money from public school systems, astroturfing educational meetings, bbs, weblogs, and google bombing, calling free software an "unAmerican" "cancer" that will doom the US economy, hiring others to say the same and, of course, the SCO extortion.
Commercial space flight comes to mind as one of the most important contributions Bill and friends could make to Planet Earth.
Ahhhhhh! I can only imagine M$ $pace $uits, rockets, power systems and life support. They already did a bang upjob for the Navy.
Imagine playing Ender's game in space, with lasertag style suites that caused joints to lock.
The Microsoft space suit will need no lasers to lock up. Imagine Embrace, Extend and Extinguish applied to oxygen lines, HVAC and propulsion. "Where do you want to go today?" travelers will scream as they beat their did navigation computers. You just knew you should have paid extra for the "pro" version. In space, more than your screen will turn blue! What do you think the average spacer wrestling with a drill in hard vacuum would think of a little yellow light telling them their suit has "upgrades" that will be installed before they can finish their job?
Then think of science, and paying for lab time in space.
If it's anything like the Microsoft Bob, XBox, and other M$ Research efforts, I expect more from NASA. A company that publically proclaims it will not enter anything but "mature" markets is not really an innovator.
Still, your wish is noble. It would be nice if tomorrow Microsoft were struck by a wave of ethics and became a completely different company. It would be nice if they quit sucking money from government, utilities, public schools and other places where cluelessness is legally mandated. I'd love to see Bill Gates tear up his open letter and declare that he was wrong about free software and world domination.
IIS 6.0 did that by abandoning all registry settings and moved to an XML file structure - Everything actually. DotNet has moved in that direction too. Hopefully Longhorn will have a/etc/config folder.
Don't you worry! As soon as M$ perfects DRM BIOS (probably by moving the registry and Windoze update there) they will be able to adopt a rational configuration system once again. Of course, you won't be able to edit those files with anything but a signed copy of DRM enabled M$ Notepad (C ATT) or some other M$ controled tool. You won't be able to boot if you manage to modify, I mean tamper, you BIOS or config files in an unauthorized manner. Nor will you be able to boot alternate OS and all the stability Windows is famous for will be be exhibited by the hardware itself.
The configuration files, however, will look pretty at first. Because Microsoft has said that they will use XML as a binary container, they end up looking just like the mixed binary/text unspecified registry. I'll bet they even modify regedit to give you a graphical view of your new config files so that you won't be able to tell the difference.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Microsoft is moving towards more control over your computer, not less. The form that control takes does not matter because what you see is unreal. Any segregation of system information will be superficial at best.
Slashdot Mirror
You have every right to try but why bother? I'd think that a church going person would know their neighbors well enough to trust or not trust them. In either case, there is little harm they can do to you through your wireless that could not be done to you by complete strangers anywhere on the internet. Unless you pay by the byte, you won't even notice your neighbor's traffic. I'd rather chat with my neighbors about our shared interests and see if there were any other resources we could share.
I'm not sure what you mean by "cracking the whip", but it surely does not apply to commercial software. With closed source software, you take what the software company gives and can never expect more. You say, " When problems occur, corporations need to know when to expect a solution, so they can plan accordingly." I say corporations don't plan for problems and when problems happen, they think about getting rid of it and you.
This is especially true in the kind of blame shifting, no real product, rule by intimidation and bullshit world you think is a normal corporate workplace. It's not normal and companies like that don't last long without government protection because they make more than bad software decisions.
I'll be happy when they quit using your money to fund jerks like the BSA, SCO and deTorq in their quest to FUD, DRM and DMCA free software out of existence. It would be nice if they were not spending billions of dollars trying to convince everyone that free software is a cancer made by spongers and boasting theives, that will cost 10X as much as Winblows, will never interact with any serious business, is responsible for offshoring and DRM, and other draconian "solutions". I'd be very happy if Microsoft's idea of competing was not "use our software" or we will sue you. If it were not for all of the above, I could care less what the jokers do. Because they seek to destroy my ability to help myself and others, I hope they go to the same place their obsolete software belongs.
If you don't mind software chains, please buy into Sun, Apple or anyone but Microsoft. If all you care about is having a choice of inexpensive masters, you already have it. You can get all of your work done without Microsoft and it will be much more stable and secure. You might even liberate yourself a little with some help from IBM.
Fast forward a few months. Something mysterious has happend to your "main" server. Because you have diligently made daily DVDs of your data, you might only lose a day or so of work (snicker, some more!). So, you quickly run to the "standby" server and load it up with your data. Oh, you are so happy it boots. What happens then? The same software, faced with the same data on the same network quickly fails exactly the way the first one did.
Laugh out loud, you have been screwed. It's just like old times. You get to wait for patches and fixes but you have two virus infested messes to clean up and rebuild instead of one. Chances are the first box failed Thursday evening and you are going to have a long fruitless weekend.
How Microsoft is that?
What exactly does that mean? How do you pull support of free software? What's keeping anyone from moving to Fedora or Debian? As another poster has mentioned, you can replace any part of any free system yourself anytime. Help is cheap and competent. Security seems like a non issue too.
Distributions like Debian make the version change as easy as apt-get upgrade. Fedora is moving in that direction, if it's not already there.
I've never suffered data loss due to changing software since changing over to Red Hat 5.1. The data grew from there through Red Hat 7 and then to Debian potato, woody and now sarge. I did this on two different computers, but it could just as easily have been one.
What kind of "support" did I need? Zero. How many support calls did I have make? None because I quickly learned that Google + LUG is a much faster way to get answers.
Before I knew what I was doing, I paid someone $50 to set something up for me. It was easy to find the help locally, even in 1998. If you live in a big enough town, you will have a magnet high school with a BSD or Linux lab and many cluefull people. University towns are crawling with CS students who also know what they are doing and need cash nights and weekends. When they graduate, they are worth their weight in M$ licenses and EULAs.
In the last six years, I've never had a security issue outside of Windows. This might be because I've continuously upgraded my software, but it still looks easier to protect old Linux boxes than Winblows. Even if I were so terribly lazy that I did not do security upgrades, I can still keep old machines from running dangerous services or make effective firewalls for them.
So, I don't understand the fuss. What trouble have you really had?
Are you really going to sit through two more years of unstopable worms, bugs and other nonsense because Microsoft says the next version will once again be "the best windows ever"? The Microsoft solution has always been two years away but never arrived.
We can be sure they also spend plenty of money trolling Slashdot and other BBS. They have been Astroturfing forever and will always do it. There's more to their efforts than paying people to skate around New York City in tacky butterfly suits and gum up the world with MSN stickers.
Microsoft's whole business model fails in a free software world. They are a vendor. They package free and non-free software into their own little system and sell it non-free. They use BSD when they feel like it, but they have sworn to be leaches by never entering a "market" before it is "mature". M$'s worst nightmare is to be surrounded by other companies who can not only package the same software better than they can, but who also make new software and want it to reach the end user finely packaged and free. It's already happened. As the former softie points out, Microsoft's work is markedly inferior, even to other non-free software. Stuff like Fedora, Knoppix, Mepis and other Linux distributions that replace everything Microsoft does must be giving Bill Gates a heart attack.
FUD is a delaying tactic and the weapon is the US Government and bogus laws. Microsoft is hoping to use DRM and the DMCA to make it legally impossible for others to compete on commodity hardware. I doubt hardware vendors will go along with it, because such schemes would give Microsoft too much power, but the intent is there. Perversely enough, the worse Microsoft makes the end user's experience of viruses, malware and the like, the faster they will get bad laws passed.
what other way to explain the fact that stories get repeated again and again?
Did you ever think that some stories might be so good you'd want to tell them twice? A guy who spent 8 years working for the Soft telling it like it is. I was a little dissappointed to see that yet another Softie has not decided to publish a well reasoned criticism of M$ bugs contrasted with the smooth and professional operation of any other platform. Never the less, it made my day to see it again. Could be a mistake, who cares?
A nasty little Microsoft Apologist, like you bear a grudge against Slashdot? No, say it ain't so! Did you run out of bad things to say about Apple while begging people to not hate M$ from your last go at this story. I mean, why else would you berate Slashdot itself for a known and easily ignored problem?
Slashdot ... It's more of a slavery under a cult than a profession.
I doubt it, but even if it is you still won't get fired for saying something nice about Apple.
What is up with you people and Apple?!! ... My God! Give it a rest.... Please. You're killing us here! ... I can't get away from the Apple worship even if I block apple stories. ... Apple though is worshipped to the point that it is frickin' nauseating to the rest of us.
I'm getting tired of such accusations. Realizing that someone else does something better than Microsoft does it does not make someone a fanboy. Only a M$ fanboy would think something like that. Had you read the article you might have noticed that the former Softie's main point was that he liked his Mac more than M$. The author is not a fanboy for noticing and the submitter is not a fanboy for paraphrasing the author.
It's not hard to beat the M$ experience, even for a traditional commercial software vendor. The author gives a list of unforgivable Microsoft performace issues, from Word woes to daily crashes with XP. His general impression is that M$ was getting so bad that he could not get his work done anymore. The author then lists some really neat goodies that the Mac gave him, all without technical difficulties. The opinion looked reasonable to me.
So why would anyone use the article as a chance to say nasty things about Apple? Oh yeah, looking at your latest journal entry, we see that you think you are a troll with style,
Shout-outs to 'Reminiscent Troll'. Tried to copy and adapt your trolling style a bit.
No style points, Toby.
Apple has enough sense to actually design interfaces, use GCC, X and other free and open software. They have done that and made a better end user experience that Microsoft can and made money. Kinda sucks for Microsoft to be beaten that way, but that's what happens when you get all wrapped up in your own presumed greatness and become your own biggest fanboy.
it is probabley all teh m$ faults right twit??!!
M$ would like to do the same for compilers and "unsigned" code. They would love to have more government support to stamp out any and all competition, especially free competition. They have come a long way towards having DRM inbeded in hardware and having trade secrets enforced by government under the DMCA. They will justify the next steps by the poor quality of their code and the damage malware does to their customers because of it. If owning a few petri dishes and ROM programmers can get you arrested and people don't question it, one day M$ may have it's way with basic software tools as well.
No, he broke the law by doing that.
No, the Patriot act outlaws labs not for "bona-fida" research. Let me quote the second paragraph of the linked code:
Whoever knowingly possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that, under the circumstances, is not reasonably justified by a prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
And just like that, guilt is presumed. The good professor must now prove that his artwork was for a "reasonably justified" "peaceful purpose".
The same kinds of laws and language are applied to special nuclear materials. You can't own them, period. If you listen to what the prosecutors are saying, the same logic is guiding the above ban. While the careful licensing of nuclear materials may be justified, banning people from collecting and breeding common bacteria is absurd.
This case would never have gotten as far as it had without the massive ignorance and presumption of the Patriot Act. The man's displays have been deemed safe enough for public exhibition by experts. His wife's autopsy exonerated the artwork. Yet, here he is going to trial for running a lab based on a few snips of satirical literature published by a group he belongs to. Before the Patriot Act, this case would have been laughed out of court because there was nothing wrong with a collection of moldy petri dishes and there's no evidence of any other wrongdoing. The Patriot act forces the accused to prove their innocence as if NO ONE BUT A TERRORIST WOULD RUN A LAB.
That's the way DRM works. It never really hurts criminals who profit from publishing other's work, it simply burns the end user.
Er... he is innocent until proven guilty, that's why they're taking it to a jury. What is it about the whole court proccess that has people so confused?
The Patriot Act is confused. It has made non harmful activities criminal and subjects anyone who owns "biologic agents" to the whims of a jury trial and national infamy. The presumption of guilt inherent in the Patriot act makes a mockery of the presumption of innocence. There is potential for abuse beyond shutting up an artist, though that is bad enough.
By the letter of the Patriot Act, he IS guilty. He did have a lab with "biologic agents" removed from their natural setting. He can spend years in prison for that. He will have to spend years of his life fighting off the charges and his reputation has been irrevocably damaged. Yet it seems clear that his artwork was not a threat to anyone. The patriot act presumes guilt for innocent activities and forces people to prove that innocence.
The potential for abuse is huge. Once upon a time, you could found a company like HP in your garage. Today, the Patriot act stands in the way of anyone who would do the same with "biologic agents". The basic tools of research have been outlawed for an entire field. The same kinds of bogus arguments can be made about compilers and printed circuit board making equipment.
The Patriot Act is a truly unAmerican set of laws that will continue to harm us all.
Nice straw man, tbase. I've yet to see anyone but you say such a thing.
How about remembering that the good professor is innocent until proven guilty? I'd like to see real planning and materials pinned to the artist himself. What's being presented is petri dishes full of mold and literature, perhaps fantasy, from an organization the professor is a member of. It's all flimsy stuff that exposes problems with the Patriot Act.
Quoting Malcom X does not make you a terrorist any more than reprinting, "Give me liberty or give me death." does. Actions are what laws forbid, not thoughts.
A lab in your living room does not make you a terrorist either, but it looks like that will now get you into trouble with the Patriot act. While it seems clear that the "biological agents" found in the apartment were not harmful and not the cause of Hope's death, the lab itself is being treated as a weapon.
Where do you draw the line? If you can't breed bugs for art, what can you breed them for? Do you want to have to convince Big Brother you are politically correct when you want to grow brewer's yeast?
If you really want to be convinced of how harmless this group is, go visit their website yourself. The thing is a joke. The only thing that's disgusting is how far some prosecutor's clerk had to dig to find anything that looks threatening.
Is this the best M$ can buy, a rehash of ancient GPL FUD? It's pathetic. It's so bad, Al Gore would recognize it as bullshit. There are no clear definition of terms, most of the statements contradict reality and it's clear that Ken Brown is a ranting lunatic without any kind of "intellectual" backing. The bozo can't even clearly summarize his arguments.
IBM, HP and others are making billions of dollars on Linux, but Ken tells us that Linux will ruin the US IT industry and destroy the US government's "IP" holdings. Right... Any government leader worried about wasting taxpayer dollars has only to call IBM and quit buying the eXPensive software offered by the sponsors of Tocqueville.
While he never mentions it, the GPL is the real object of his attack. It's so tiresome to read the same nonsense again and again. Free software is adding tremendous value to the US and world economy. No practical person can have failed to notice this by now. Besides insults and and old dire predictions that have failed to come true, Ken also never mentions specific drawbacks of free software nor tells us how non free source code does anything any better. While all charges of code theft that have been leveled at Linux have proved unfounded, many commercial companies have admitted to stealing free code. The whole notion that people who openly publish their code are theives somehow trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes is preposterous. We are supposed to trust people who hide their source code like a dirty secret instead?
Ken really had an impossible task, but it's one of his own making. All of his experts are calling his opinions for what they are. How can he do anything but shift around when confronted with it all? He tells us, " AdTI will continue to interview people within the open source profession about open source. ... I have done this for years, and will continue to do so, regardless of what a source thinks of my theories. " Ken, baby, why bother asking questions if you are not going to listen to the answers?
Oh yeah, namecalling. "Linux is a leprosy.", "sponging", "'three monkeys' policy", "boasting about stealing, reverse engineering, and illegal copying", "theft of the Lions notes", give me a break. At least he's consistent with the mud he wants to throw at just about everyone in computer science.
The only real theft going on right now is Microsoft's attempt to extort money from Linux users through it's SCO proxy. How does that fit into Ken's worldview?
So what do you think of advertisements that make blatantly false claims like Linux costs 10x as much to run as Winblows? That's the heart of the matter here. Shouldn't there be some editorial feedback when it comes to stuff like that? Publishing a lie is wrong.
By the way, the advertisements were also of the "eye poker" flash type.
No, you are detracting from the point he is trying to make without knowing anything. That's not good to do to your friends. There are many more flattering scenarios.
Are you sure click through is how the advertiser gets paid? It's a method that's easy to defraud, as you pointed out.
In any case, DON'T DO IT. Regardless of how M$ is charged, people will count the click through. It makes the website, the advertiser and M$ think that people really have an interest in M$ cruft. People make real decisions based on that kind of information. You don't really know if you are harming them, and you really are helping them everytime you click.
The best way to make Microsoft go away is to ignore them.
If it's bullshit, why would you publish it? Editors owe it to their readers to filter obvious frauds. Claiming that Winblows cost 1/10th what free software does is an outright lie and everyone knows it. Publishing such nonsense is close to taking money from Nigerian Oil scammers. That the lie is so detectable makes the publisher look that less informed or honest.
Are Linux Today's readers too stupid to think for themselves?
Rombuu, do you enjoy beating your wife? Come on, that's a really old troll. Ask a question that has no right answer and ignores clearly stated points. Here are those points:
All are legitmate. Microsoft adds are irritating and I hate seeing them. Besides being blatantly false, they are as visually annoying as any porn add. Running such garbage casts doubt on your editorial integrity and lessens the impact of your content. Worse, they might become dependent on M$ and join the long line of worthless Wintel publications ready to say anything. These are issues worth considering.
Weird isn't he?
Actually, you did. You accused Reifman of being stupid and bitter because he dared point out software and cultural problems Microsoft. I've simply called you on it and you have yet to respond with anything but further insult and bile. It's nothing really personal, I've just noticed you are a Microsoft suck.
Instead, I'll give you some free advice: Instead of acting like a Nazi, you ought to consider that people should be able to make their OWN CHOICE about what software they run.
Yes, idiots like you are free to use whatever they feel like paying for. You deserve it.
The rest of us, however, are free to read the information you pointed us to and see that you are full of shit.
Failing that, the only other way I see for you to achieve happiness in your life is to recruit your own luftwaffe and lock up anyone who even considered a Microsoft product.
Now that is wack. I'm laughing at you.
Quarterly operating expenses were in the range of 5 to 8 billion dollars, two of which are advertising. Revenues for the same period were 7 to 9 billion. Research is down, advertising is up and administrative costs have increased sixfold! While they trumpet increased revenue, their net is down by almost half over a year ago from 2.1 to 1.3 billion. If tomorrow everyone switched to free software, Microsoft would be out of business in less than two years.
It won't happen like that, but that's more realistic than expecting them to coast for a decade. The migration to free software is already on and mainstream. It won't take long for the Microsoft PR machine to self destruct. With enough free software deployment, the inferiority of Microsoft's line will be apparent to everyone regardless of all the feel good "potential" adverts and the gravy train will derail. You don't have to have worked for the Soft for 8 years to see the problems Word, Lookout, XP and all have. The tipping point is close.
I wonder if SCO "investments" are marketing or administrative costs. Soon it will go into their investment losses.
And they have proved their morals will keep them from nothing! Making up Apple switchers, writing letters to congressmen from dead people, extorting money from public school systems, astroturfing educational meetings, bbs, weblogs, and google bombing, calling free software an "unAmerican" "cancer" that will doom the US economy, hiring others to say the same and, of course, the SCO extortion.
Commercial space flight comes to mind as one of the most important contributions Bill and friends could make to Planet Earth.
Ahhhhhh! I can only imagine M$ $pace $uits, rockets, power systems and life support. They already did a bang up job for the Navy.
Imagine playing Ender's game in space, with lasertag style suites that caused joints to lock.
The Microsoft space suit will need no lasers to lock up. Imagine Embrace, Extend and Extinguish applied to oxygen lines, HVAC and propulsion. "Where do you want to go today?" travelers will scream as they beat their did navigation computers. You just knew you should have paid extra for the "pro" version. In space, more than your screen will turn blue! What do you think the average spacer wrestling with a drill in hard vacuum would think of a little yellow light telling them their suit has "upgrades" that will be installed before they can finish their job?
Then think of science, and paying for lab time in space.
If it's anything like the Microsoft Bob, XBox, and other M$ Research efforts, I expect more from NASA. A company that publically proclaims it will not enter anything but "mature" markets is not really an innovator.
Still, your wish is noble. It would be nice if tomorrow Microsoft were struck by a wave of ethics and became a completely different company. It would be nice if they quit sucking money from government, utilities, public schools and other places where cluelessness is legally mandated. I'd love to see Bill Gates tear up his open letter and declare that he was wrong about free software and world domination.
Don't you worry! As soon as M$ perfects DRM BIOS (probably by moving the registry and Windoze update there) they will be able to adopt a rational configuration system once again. Of course, you won't be able to edit those files with anything but a signed copy of DRM enabled M$ Notepad (C ATT) or some other M$ controled tool. You won't be able to boot if you manage to modify, I mean tamper, you BIOS or config files in an unauthorized manner. Nor will you be able to boot alternate OS and all the stability Windows is famous for will be be exhibited by the hardware itself.
The configuration files, however, will look pretty at first. Because Microsoft has said that they will use XML as a binary container, they end up looking just like the mixed binary/text unspecified registry. I'll bet they even modify regedit to give you a graphical view of your new config files so that you won't be able to tell the difference.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Microsoft is moving towards more control over your computer, not less. The form that control takes does not matter because what you see is unreal. Any segregation of system information will be superficial at best.