Just open a gmail account, forward e-mail from Windows Live and use the free POP.
They won't let you, so you are forced to use something that can use Windows Live or miss out on University communications.
Even LSU had enough sense to outsource to a mail service that had POP and IMAP and works with kmail. Why does it work with kmail? Because the service is based on free software and coded to REAL STANDARDS, not some M$ crap d'jour.
all Linux had to do was update its zone info stuff. Why is Windows so much harder? Didnt they do it properly?
As an end user, it was even easier. All I did was apt-get update/upgrade.
The difference between the free and non free worlds is never more glaring than when you "upgrade". Because non free companies don't trust each other or their users, they can't really co-operate. When they have to co-operate, things get sticky. Mechanisms, like the Windows registry, are so bad that it's easier to wipe and reload than it is to actually update software. What's a pain for individual users is multiplied by thousands for businesses and then compounded by the number of applications updated. A whole industry exists to help banks and other businesses do trivial things like change out versions of text editors and mail clients on ordinary workstations. It's a process that's excruciatingly manual, bandwith intensive and slow, with each person able to do less than ten machines a night. Add some smoke an mirrors timing "security"* into the mix and you have something even worse.
*-there is no security on a platform with a one in four botnet ownership. The pain and expense are all for nothing.
the official purposes of a REAL ID license to those listed by Congress in the law: accessing a Federal facility; boarding Federally-regulated commercial aircraft; and entering nuclear power plants.
You are safer on a bus and outside of nuclear power plants than you are on an airplane or inside a nuclear power plant. See, big brother is watching out for you after all.
Getting spammed by bars, and crushing political opposition, free speech and the American way, are an unfortunate side effects of insuring your safety. Be grateful, so grateful that you do as you are told.
"Restrictions, other than those imposed by M$, had nothing to do with the success of iTunes. "
You care to clarify this fanboi? If DRM is MS it's bad but for Apple it's A-OK? What a fucking fagboi.
and a more direct answer would not hurt.
M$'s greed and incompetence were key factors in the success of iPod. M$ restrictions were and still are much worse so all of their services have failed. Between that and their attack on ogg format, iPod was the path of least resistance.
Tell me I'm not alone in wanting to shoot people who use [M$].
I'm sure a few brainwashed chair throwers in Redmond would agree with you, but they are all sad and angry people. Why don't you take a nice little iPod break to calm your nerves? Visit the archive.org live music collection and pick up some cool new tracks in your choice of ogg, flac, mp3 and others. Free culture is soothing like that.
The legitimate download industry has a problem. Their products can't compete with the freely available infringing versions of the same content.
They can't compete with CDs either. Study after study shows that portable music player owners buy more CDs than other people do, but avoid restricted music. It's not the price, it's the overall convenience and lack of trust that people have for restrictions that keep restricted music sales down in the dirt.
... the argument is that iTunes has succeeded in spite of DRM, not because of DRM.
Restrictions kill business and it's a lack of those restrictions which make iPod what it is. Restrictions, other than those imposed by M$, had nothing to do with the success of iTunes. Good hardware design, compatibility with existing CD collections and a lot of bad decisions from M$ are what made iPod and iPod made iTunes. Restrictions can and will kill iTunes and iPod if Apple is not careful.
Without iPod, no one would ever have bought anything from iTunes and restrictions have hurt it. People load their iPods with CDs, not restricted tracks from the iTunes music store. iPod is responsible for the success of iTunes, but that is tiny trickle of what it could be without restrictions. People took more time and trouble to purchase the same thing on CDs. If they really could have exactly the same thing from iTunes as they get from CDs, they would have bought much more.
Both iPod and iTunes would have been a flop like WMP and "Plays for Sure" if Apple had put restrictions on music that originally had none. People got angry when they learned that WMP made it impossible for them to transfer their CD based music collections, had to rip everything again if Windoze flaked out, and when WMP itself was not stable due to all the paranoid checks and M$ using it as a conduit for advertising. All of the M$ imposed restrictions made media on M$ decidedly second rate. M$'s suppression of the ogg format probably spared both M$ and Apple of early Linux competition, but that did not make WMP any better. Apple won because they had the easiest to use and least restrictive package.
Competition will continue to threaten non free music. iTunes sales will collapse as people continue to discover legal and restrictionless music online. If Apple makes it difficult for people to buy and load restrictionless music though iTunes, iPod will die. iPod also faces a significant threat as makers of music players embrace ogg and free software. M$ let those makers down by not delivering on sales, stabbed them in the back by eliminating the whole "Plays for Sure" DRM and all of them are now under the mp3 patent litigation cloud. Music player makers who deliver a quality product that works with all file formats and does what the user wants can and will supplant iPod.
... laptop makers are always trying to cut corners on power usage.
OS choice is important too and this has harmed power savings for everyone.
Laptops have to keep up with crazy stuff from M$ that now requires a 350 watt video card for it's interface. Laptop power consumption has dramatically increased over the last ten years, which is why they can burn your lap. My five year old laptop needs twice the power supply my ten year old laptop did. The proportional increase is just like desktops.
Laptop power usage is still much less than desktops and the increased power consumption is offset by power management that has worked, at least under GNU/Linux. The best way to save power is to have sleep and hibernation working when you don't really need the computer. On desktops, that has not always worked because M$ never pushed it or could even use it due to various OS and application problems. Vista finally has power management and desktops may finally work right.
The best solution, of course, is to combine the best efficiencies in one place. I'm easily able to get along with older thinkpads because GNU/Linux is efficient. You can get the same kinds of components for desktop systems and they will save power as long as sleep and hibernation work, but Vista won't run on them. A bonus is that your system is quit and cool.
I wish they would at least move to IE7 if they are not going to move to Firefox/Mozilla. To stay with IE6 is just unfair.
From the fine article:
Among the options the Transportation Department is weighing as a possible alternative or complement to Windows Vista are Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware and software, he says.
With an open mind like that, I'd be surprised if they were not running some kind of Netscape browser already. Give him some time and he's discover Firefox, Debian, Open Office and all sorts of great stuff.
Don't you even feel a little silly about mis-characterizing the attitude of MS employees that way?
No, I don't feel silly. What matters is what they wrote and how they act, not what they say or what you think they feel deep down inside where they long to be free.
The author is a fanboy and says what you do.
on
Is Vista a Trap?
·
· Score: 1
the fanboys shout 'you shoulda known' and 'get new hardware'. Let's call Vista not an upgrade but a wholesale replacement of your computer and many of your applications. Most of your data will work in the new system but that's about it.
The BBC author concludes the same thing, and that's what sucks. He says to wait and get Vista pre-installed. Doing that won't fix his webcam or his pocket PC. Those and his old computer, which is twice as nice as anything I have, will become more toxic waste. What has he gotten that he did not have? Nothing but a prettier interface and a false promise of better security. Upgrading non free software is like that, difficult, costly and unnecessary. Replacing everything only marginally decreases your difficulty because you then have to purchase, install and relearn the new interfaces for all the programs that actually do your work and play. When you are through with that, you can begin the long and non transferable process of making your desktop comfortable and retrieving the old data that your masters allow you to keep. The fanboy part of this equation is thinking you need non free software to begin with. The author's conclusion is basically, M$ at any cost.
I don't see how this is possible, or credible speculation even for a company a evil as MS...
Sorry, that's their EULA. You have two choices when you purchase anything M$, return the package unopened for a full refund or use it. They do not and can not promise it will work and they are not responsible for the actions of others. They regard anything they do beyond the EULA a favor for which you should be grateful, just like they regard anything their software ever does for you. They think you should be so grateful that you do as they say. This is the nature of non free software. Your master may take care of you or they may not and those are the conditions you must agree to if you want to use non free software.
They don't trust you. They made the registration key in the first place to restrict the number of computers you can use before you pay them more. When you call and claim your key does not work, they can't tell the difference between you and someone who's shared their key. Once again, this is the nature of non free software.
First, very few developers explicitly said "I wrote this on behalf of my employer" in the changelogs. I believe that is what the article is referring to - the difficulty of automatically determining who paid for what.
Gah! If they did not do it on behalf of the employer, the company did not pay for it.
... most corporations would prefer that you use their company address only for company work.
Got a survey? It may be that most companies are like that but reasonable companies are not.
The terrible thing about character assassination is that the event never had to happen. All you have to do is start a rumor about travel expenses and the victim is as good as blacklisted at big dumb companies where lip service is given to leadership but obedience and conformity are valued above all else.
A brief summary by users. There's nothing really new here, except the depressing insistence that they have no choice.
Describes serious driver and power management issues that make Vista unusable. Thinks he's going to get it because he does not have a choice. Hates Vista DRM even though he believes in DRM. Thinks new interface will cost retraining dollars. Likes root better than uac. Likes drive encryption.
Loves it so much he describes himself as a "Microsoft Vista evangelist", but is unable to name a feature other than better looks and "security" as reasons. He also does not tell us if any of his broken software ever came back to life.
Serious driver issues with pre-release code and released code does not have all the drivers he needs. No sound, welcome back to the early 90s. Slower than XP. Likes KDE and Gnome, but says his civil engineering business can't switch to gnu/Linux because there are no legal DVD players available. Vista won't work for him either because AutoCAD won't work.
Hates elimination of old shortcuts. Vowed to steer clear of Vista because it does not work with M$ SQL and other services. Is disappointed by drive encryption and predicts many more showstoppers.
The printable version of this article still displays. Pages 2 and 3 of the article did not display when I looked at it. The opinions of Bill Flanagan and David Gray were lost to formatting errors and merged with the others.
If the RIAA wrote laws about speeding they would look like this:
You could only purchase a RIAA approved automobile, which was incapable of speeding and included a fee for speeding.
It would be against the law to roll up the windows, cut off the parachute shaped spoiler, or replace the solid rubber wheels on that vehicle, because that would increase the chance you would speed.
The hood would be welded shut and only RIAA authorized, indoctrinated, licensed and bonded mechanic would be allowed to look under the hood.
Depictions of pistons in cylinders and other anti-speeding circumvention paraphernalia would be against the law.
Walking, bike riding, public transportation, carpooling and water craft would be against the law. It's hard to speed with them but they would be considered an anti-speeding circumvention because they avoid automotive fees.
Everyone would pay a small fee for speeding with every gallon of gas purchased, which triples the cost.
The road would contain speed bumps every 20 yards.
Ownership of 99% of all roads would revert to RIAA companies.
There would be a camera with police authority for full body cavity search on every corner to catch the speeders.
Innocent people who pay their speeding tickets early will get a significant rebate.
The penalty for speeding would be $250,000 or life. Those accused of speeding would be thrown out of school immediately.
Before driving, you would be forced to view the RIAA/FBI speeder warning to remind you of the steep penalties speeding carries.
Speed limits would not be posted, there would be no central repository of speed limits and your vehicle would not have a speedometer. The only way to know that you were speeding would be notification of your crime in writing by an RIAA member company.
None of these laws would apply to RIAA members, their family or anyone they thought well of.
Everyone knows that automobiles are just a repository for speeders and the RIAA deserves it's cut of the action.
As crazy as the above appears, it's not nearly as damaging as copyright laws that do the same things are. The above would only inhibit your ability to get from A to B. Copyright laws make it hard for you to share your culture, or quote it to make a point and limits your mind.
They might have had a different kind of feedback in mind, like new models with a different hardware feature set.
In that case, they really were not interested in giving customers what they want. Why pretend you are interested if you are not?
It's worth waiting for them to get it. Tens of thousands of users asking for Linux might really have surprised them. I'm surprised they published the results. The reasons given by the Wintel press for Dell not installing Linux right away are bogus and I'm not sure they are shared by Dell. In time, Dell may understand which way the wind is blowing and where they should be making their money.
M$ forbade ogg to users of their "plays for sure" DRM. This blatantly anti-competitive action was slapped down in the EU, and lamely explained as a "mistake", but is a reason every cheap "mp3 player" does not also play ogg vorbis like my Trekstore or my Zaurus does. The hardware issue is spurious and there are low resource vorbis codecs.
Software patents suck and I'm happy I have mostly avoided mp3. It was a pain to get in the first place and it's still a pain. Too lame will give you "mp3" for your cheap player without patent problems, but vorbis is technically superior. Most of my music is ogg and I don't have any real problems enjoying it.
They gotta cut costs somewhere when you are expecting other operating costs to go through the roof. Like M$ says, the purchase price is just the start of TCO. Science, who needs science when we can have mid 90s style INNOVATION. Whooo.
The only problem with that "big step forward" assessment is that it's not true. Windoze is not going to replace all of the unreliable equipment, it's going to interpret and control it. In that capacity, it could only make things better if it were perfect.... ha! Reliability is multiplicative. If the embedded systems give you the right answer 3/4 of the time, and windoze does not make a mistake 3/4 of the time, the result is something that won't sink you 0.56, or a little better than half of the time.
When you consider the cascading style failures seen with Windoze before, this choice is a real disaster. It is going to kill a lot of good people if there's any real conflict.
I've been using Vista for a month. There were color differences?
As people have noticed, M$ has made UAC such a psychotic pain that no one is going to use it. They are all going to be running as root all the time. People have also speculated that this is so M$ can blame the user later. Vista is going to have the same kind of four minute half life on any network as XP did, regardless of market share, and no user action will be required.
The problems the current article points out are just icing on the cake and will always exist for a non free OS. Users are forced to trust software companies that don't trust each other and despise the user. These companies refuse to co-operate and frequently sabotage each other to gratify themselves. The net result is systems crawling with easily exploited ad, spy and malware. Community inspected free software, like Debian, is the only kind of software users will ever be able to trust.
Slashdot Mirror
Just open a gmail account, forward e-mail from Windows Live and use the free POP.
They won't let you, so you are forced to use something that can use Windows Live or miss out on University communications.
Even LSU had enough sense to outsource to a mail service that had POP and IMAP and works with kmail. Why does it work with kmail? Because the service is based on free software and coded to REAL STANDARDS, not some M$ crap d'jour.
all Linux had to do was update its zone info stuff. Why is Windows so much harder? Didnt they do it properly?
As an end user, it was even easier. All I did was apt-get update/upgrade.
The difference between the free and non free worlds is never more glaring than when you "upgrade". Because non free companies don't trust each other or their users, they can't really co-operate. When they have to co-operate, things get sticky. Mechanisms, like the Windows registry, are so bad that it's easier to wipe and reload than it is to actually update software. What's a pain for individual users is multiplied by thousands for businesses and then compounded by the number of applications updated. A whole industry exists to help banks and other businesses do trivial things like change out versions of text editors and mail clients on ordinary workstations. It's a process that's excruciatingly manual, bandwith intensive and slow, with each person able to do less than ten machines a night. Add some smoke an mirrors timing "security"* into the mix and you have something even worse.
*-there is no security on a platform with a one in four botnet ownership. The pain and expense are all for nothing.
From the QA:
the official purposes of a REAL ID license to those listed by Congress in the law: accessing a Federal facility; boarding Federally-regulated commercial aircraft; and entering nuclear power plants.
You are safer on a bus and outside of nuclear power plants than you are on an airplane or inside a nuclear power plant. See, big brother is watching out for you after all.
Getting spammed by bars, and crushing political opposition, free speech and the American way, are an unfortunate side effects of insuring your safety. Be grateful, so grateful that you do as you are told.
A rude AC asks:
"Restrictions, other than those imposed by M$, had nothing to do with the success of iTunes. "
You care to clarify this fanboi? If DRM is MS it's bad but for Apple it's A-OK? What a fucking fagboi.
and a more direct answer would not hurt.
M$'s greed and incompetence were key factors in the success of iPod. M$ restrictions were and still are much worse so all of their services have failed. Between that and their attack on ogg format, iPod was the path of least resistance.
Tell me I'm not alone in wanting to shoot people who use [M$].
I'm sure a few brainwashed chair throwers in Redmond would agree with you, but they are all sad and angry people. Why don't you take a nice little iPod break to calm your nerves? Visit the archive.org live music collection and pick up some cool new tracks in your choice of ogg, flac, mp3 and others. Free culture is soothing like that.
The legitimate download industry has a problem. Their products can't compete with the freely available infringing versions of the same content.
They can't compete with CDs either. Study after study shows that portable music player owners buy more CDs than other people do, but avoid restricted music. It's not the price, it's the overall convenience and lack of trust that people have for restrictions that keep restricted music sales down in the dirt.
Restrictions kill business and it's a lack of those restrictions which make iPod what it is. Restrictions, other than those imposed by M$, had nothing to do with the success of iTunes. Good hardware design, compatibility with existing CD collections and a lot of bad decisions from M$ are what made iPod and iPod made iTunes. Restrictions can and will kill iTunes and iPod if Apple is not careful.
Without iPod, no one would ever have bought anything from iTunes and restrictions have hurt it. People load their iPods with CDs, not restricted tracks from the iTunes music store. iPod is responsible for the success of iTunes, but that is tiny trickle of what it could be without restrictions. People took more time and trouble to purchase the same thing on CDs. If they really could have exactly the same thing from iTunes as they get from CDs, they would have bought much more.
Both iPod and iTunes would have been a flop like WMP and "Plays for Sure" if Apple had put restrictions on music that originally had none. People got angry when they learned that WMP made it impossible for them to transfer their CD based music collections, had to rip everything again if Windoze flaked out, and when WMP itself was not stable due to all the paranoid checks and M$ using it as a conduit for advertising. All of the M$ imposed restrictions made media on M$ decidedly second rate. M$'s suppression of the ogg format probably spared both M$ and Apple of early Linux competition, but that did not make WMP any better. Apple won because they had the easiest to use and least restrictive package.
Competition will continue to threaten non free music. iTunes sales will collapse as people continue to discover legal and restrictionless music online. If Apple makes it difficult for people to buy and load restrictionless music though iTunes, iPod will die. iPod also faces a significant threat as makers of music players embrace ogg and free software. M$ let those makers down by not delivering on sales, stabbed them in the back by eliminating the whole "Plays for Sure" DRM and all of them are now under the mp3 patent litigation cloud. Music player makers who deliver a quality product that works with all file formats and does what the user wants can and will supplant iPod.
OS choice is important too and this has harmed power savings for everyone.
Laptops have to keep up with crazy stuff from M$ that now requires a 350 watt video card for it's interface. Laptop power consumption has dramatically increased over the last ten years, which is why they can burn your lap. My five year old laptop needs twice the power supply my ten year old laptop did. The proportional increase is just like desktops.
Laptop power usage is still much less than desktops and the increased power consumption is offset by power management that has worked, at least under GNU/Linux. The best way to save power is to have sleep and hibernation working when you don't really need the computer. On desktops, that has not always worked because M$ never pushed it or could even use it due to various OS and application problems. Vista finally has power management and desktops may finally work right.
The best solution, of course, is to combine the best efficiencies in one place. I'm easily able to get along with older thinkpads because GNU/Linux is efficient. You can get the same kinds of components for desktop systems and they will save power as long as sleep and hibernation work, but Vista won't run on them. A bonus is that your system is quit and cool.
I wish they would at least move to IE7 if they are not going to move to Firefox/Mozilla. To stay with IE6 is just unfair.
From the fine article:
With an open mind like that, I'd be surprised if they were not running some kind of Netscape browser already. Give him some time and he's discover Firefox, Debian, Open Office and all sorts of great stuff.
Don't you even feel a little silly about mis-characterizing the attitude of MS employees that way?
No, I don't feel silly. What matters is what they wrote and how they act, not what they say or what you think they feel deep down inside where they long to be free.
the fanboys shout 'you shoulda known' and 'get new hardware'. Let's call Vista not an upgrade but a wholesale replacement of your computer and many of your applications. Most of your data will work in the new system but that's about it.
The BBC author concludes the same thing, and that's what sucks. He says to wait and get Vista pre-installed. Doing that won't fix his webcam or his pocket PC. Those and his old computer, which is twice as nice as anything I have, will become more toxic waste. What has he gotten that he did not have? Nothing but a prettier interface and a false promise of better security. Upgrading non free software is like that, difficult, costly and unnecessary. Replacing everything only marginally decreases your difficulty because you then have to purchase, install and relearn the new interfaces for all the programs that actually do your work and play. When you are through with that, you can begin the long and non transferable process of making your desktop comfortable and retrieving the old data that your masters allow you to keep. The fanboy part of this equation is thinking you need non free software to begin with. The author's conclusion is basically, M$ at any cost.
that kills it's host. Botnet owners would never do anything that stupid.
I don't see how this is possible, or credible speculation even for a company a evil as MS...
Sorry, that's their EULA. You have two choices when you purchase anything M$, return the package unopened for a full refund or use it. They do not and can not promise it will work and they are not responsible for the actions of others. They regard anything they do beyond the EULA a favor for which you should be grateful, just like they regard anything their software ever does for you. They think you should be so grateful that you do as they say. This is the nature of non free software. Your master may take care of you or they may not and those are the conditions you must agree to if you want to use non free software.
They don't trust you. They made the registration key in the first place to restrict the number of computers you can use before you pay them more. When you call and claim your key does not work, they can't tell the difference between you and someone who's shared their key. Once again, this is the nature of non free software.
First, very few developers explicitly said "I wrote this on behalf of my employer" in the changelogs. I believe that is what the article is referring to - the difficulty of automatically determining who paid for what.
Gah! If they did not do it on behalf of the employer, the company did not pay for it.
Got a survey? It may be that most companies are like that but reasonable companies are not.
That's not a valid summary of TFSummary. Nice troll though.
The terrible thing about character assassination is that the event never had to happen. All you have to do is start a rumor about travel expenses and the victim is as good as blacklisted at big dumb companies where lip service is given to leadership but obedience and conformity are valued above all else.
A brief summary by users. There's nothing really new here, except the depressing insistence that they have no choice.
The printable version of this article still displays. Pages 2 and 3 of the article did not display when I looked at it. The opinions of Bill Flanagan and David Gray were lost to formatting errors and merged with the others.
Everyone knows that automobiles are just a repository for speeders and the RIAA deserves it's cut of the action.
As crazy as the above appears, it's not nearly as damaging as copyright laws that do the same things are. The above would only inhibit your ability to get from A to B. Copyright laws make it hard for you to share your culture, or quote it to make a point and limits your mind.
They might have had a different kind of feedback in mind, like new models with a different hardware feature set.
In that case, they really were not interested in giving customers what they want. Why pretend you are interested if you are not?
It's worth waiting for them to get it. Tens of thousands of users asking for Linux might really have surprised them. I'm surprised they published the results. The reasons given by the Wintel press for Dell not installing Linux right away are bogus and I'm not sure they are shared by Dell. In time, Dell may understand which way the wind is blowing and where they should be making their money.
Looks like M$ is going to have a problem threatening free software with bogus patents in the EU.
They have WMA.
and they can keep it. Low quality, large file size, DRM, mixed content executable, what's to love?
M$ forbade ogg to users of their "plays for sure" DRM. This blatantly anti-competitive action was slapped down in the EU, and lamely explained as a "mistake", but is a reason every cheap "mp3 player" does not also play ogg vorbis like my Trekstore or my Zaurus does. The hardware issue is spurious and there are low resource vorbis codecs.
Software patents suck and I'm happy I have mostly avoided mp3. It was a pain to get in the first place and it's still a pain. Too lame will give you "mp3" for your cheap player without patent problems, but vorbis is technically superior. Most of my music is ogg and I don't have any real problems enjoying it.
They gotta cut costs somewhere when you are expecting other operating costs to go through the roof. Like M$ says, the purchase price is just the start of TCO. Science, who needs science when we can have mid 90s style INNOVATION. Whooo.
The only problem with that "big step forward" assessment is that it's not true. Windoze is not going to replace all of the unreliable equipment, it's going to interpret and control it. In that capacity, it could only make things better if it were perfect .... ha! Reliability is multiplicative. If the embedded systems give you the right answer 3/4 of the time, and windoze does not make a mistake 3/4 of the time, the result is something that won't sink you 0.56, or a little better than half of the time.
When you consider the cascading style failures seen with Windoze before, this choice is a real disaster. It is going to kill a lot of good people if there's any real conflict.
I've been using Vista for a month. There were color differences?
As people have noticed, M$ has made UAC such a psychotic pain that no one is going to use it. They are all going to be running as root all the time. People have also speculated that this is so M$ can blame the user later. Vista is going to have the same kind of four minute half life on any network as XP did, regardless of market share, and no user action will be required.
The problems the current article points out are just icing on the cake and will always exist for a non free OS. Users are forced to trust software companies that don't trust each other and despise the user. These companies refuse to co-operate and frequently sabotage each other to gratify themselves. The net result is systems crawling with easily exploited ad, spy and malware. Community inspected free software, like Debian, is the only kind of software users will ever be able to trust.