So why were they so bad for recalling the batteries months before everyone else again?
Or I guess a better, and more on-topic, question would be: Why is it taking everyone else so long to innitiate a recall?
If you go look back at the story, you see that Dell admits to having known about the problem 10 months before the recall and was accused of worse by a former tech at the time of recall. They had the volume of sales required to notice the problem but did nothing useful for at least a year.
It is too early to accuse other makers of wrong doing. It's possible that Dell did something to aggravate the problem. It's also possible that no one else had the volume required to see it.
Everyone seems to be seeing how OSs fare compared to each other, giving bragging rights to whichever one was the first to use various features, when that doesn't even matter in the slightest.
I won't speak for "Everyone" but you are right, who does what first does not matter.
I just care if it's [the OS] of any use to me. It's an operating system, not a political statement.
If you really think that, you are not using Windows. It's the least featured, most difficult to keep running choice you can make.
you don't have to stand up for [an OS]
Hopefully, I won't be getting a reply filled with all sorts of M$ is great for me bullshit because you don't have to stand up for it.
If you care about your neighbor you do have to stand up. M$ has spend billions of dollars on FUD and other misinformation. The only thing that undoes that is to use what they say is impossible and see for yourself how much easier it is.
Politics does play a role. As usual, free systems are more productive and better for all of their members. M$'s business model is good at obnoxious marketing and not so good at software development. Their strategy of only entering "mature" markets by purchasing tools and destroying all others has left them feature poor and buggy as all hell. Worse for them, no one is making new Windoze software companies for them to plunder. The only people they have left to push around are hardware vendors and users.
The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or detest it based on that single aspect alone.
The interface is usually the best M$ has to offer. Everything else is starved for effort. If the interface sucks you can only imagine what a train wreck the rest is. No, you don't have to imagine because every review so far has called it just that.
The real feature that should be a deal killer is 3.5, DRM. You may have missed it because it was inappropriately placed under the joke section, "Security".
Microsoft Research's Gordon Bell... the ability to store one's entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file.
Cringing at the possibility. He actually said "file" instead of database or "files". I'm imagining the Windoze and Outlook model - a single file, difficult to search or transfer, an EULA giving M$ permission to search and destroy "copyright violations" at will, zero security and it explodes at about 2.0 GB in size. Imagine:
You: "Computer, what did I do last night?"
computer: "Master?"
You: "My head is splitting, there's a stranger in my bed and I want to know what happened"
computer: "Just a moment. Just a moment"
You: WTF?
computer: "I'm sorry, you don't have rights to view that. They have been sold to America's dumbest moments."
You: "Erase Last Night, you piece of shit."
computer: "I can't do that Dave. It's already been uploaded, you will be sent the bandwith bill."
You: Smashing Computer. "Delete last night"
computer:"Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all" computer: "Your seventh birthday has been erased and your brother is liquidated. Thank you."
It's important to fight this lie because it's being used to strip everyone of their freedom. The most important aspect of this was covered ten days ago, here, and years ago here and here and again and again. The main things to notice are decreasing procudtion, sucky promotion and high music sales to portable music player owners. From second link,
According to the RIAA's own figures, over the last two years the US music industry has produced 25% fewer CDs. The peak of production was in 1999 when 38,900 individual titles were released. But by 2001 this was down to 27,000. Releases grew again in 2002 but were still below the previous high. Musician George Ziemann says if only 3,000 copies of each of the "missing" CDs were sold, the fall in sales would be wiped out.
Gee, don't make and promote new releases don't sell music. From the second link:
As sharing continues to grow, music sales ironically appear to follow in an upward parallel.
Finally, from the latest Jupiter Research,
The only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music, especially CDs
Portable music player owners are a better metric than "computer owners". You might as well try to corelate typewriter ownership with phonograph sales in the 70s because general purpose computers and music are not related in most homes. Portable music owners, on the other hand have linked their computers to their music are most able of computer users to swap their music. They are computer savy and might have their entire collection in their pocket or on their laptop ready to swap out with their music loving friends. Yet they buy more music than the rest of the population, including "computer owners" who could care less about music.
In the end, this is about control. People exposed to music purchase music. It's that simple. "Piracy" is a smoke screen. The problem for the RIAA is that online music allows competition, which is something their business model can't stand. Music "piracy" does not harm sales, but it will be used as an excuse to force DRM on everyone.
There isn't a standard, USB or otherwise, for selecting playlists and all the other things that people want to do in their cars.
That's really too bad, but there are standards if you use the right software. Tags are standardized and mounting USB or Firewire file systems is not tricky. Would it be too much to ask for a customized Amarok that could query a mass storage device for music and playlists? A ten inch touch screen LCD and a volume knob would work that interface. Yes, people have made Amarok work with iPods, despite it's firecly non free and standard busting storage formats.
Oh but oh, no, the "pirates" might use such a device to share their music on those rare occasions people share a ride. Better just build your own.
If you own a Honda, like I do, you won't be able to replace the head unit because it's the alarm, but you can cover it up.
Why not just do your job and fix their computer like they asked you to.
You forgot the question mark there, but it's clear you were making a statement rather than asking a question anyway. You might as well have said that it's everyone's job to do just what Bill Gates wants them to.
What the user wants is a browser, email, text editor and spreadsheet that work. Free software does that, non free software does not and that's why they had to call someone to fix their computer in the first place. Fixing the problem is exactly what you are there to do.
Would you like your waiter to try and convince you to change your order because they don't think it's right to eat lamb?
Wow, what a sorry analogy. First, the waiter would not work there because, thankfully, one company has not forced us all to eat their brand of food and restaurants enjoy a free market. The software market more resembles a nightmare world where McDonald's took over the entire food supply with government help. Second, I'd be more than happy if my waiter told me something like, "We got some beautiful fish today, you really should try it." Most of us like a helpful waiter.
Automobiles provide a better analogy in this case. How would you feel, if your mechanic "fixed" your car with a factory replacement fully knowing the part was defective by design? How would you feel if the mechanic also knew of and use a community developed replacement engine that cost nothing, worked better and lasted forever? I'll bet you would think that the mechanic let you down, perhaps to protect his own business.
As for the foundation, styrofoam sure can look like concrete blocks with a nice coat of gray paint.
And then the besotted home user noticed the vast Internet, and tried to set sail. Woe be to them, the sea was made of gasoline! Gasoline + styrofoam = napalm. It took about 12 minutes, on average, for each of those brave would be navigators of the world wide web to drown if a sticky flaming mess. So failed the system which was never made to be attached to a network.
However, I will contest your idea that Windows XP is intuitive while 98 is not. I remember very distinctly seeing my company moving from 98 to 2000 and XP, and in those years it was hard as heck to figure out where everything had been capriciously moved in the newer operating systems. You just think XP is more intuitive now because you haven't used 98 in a long time.
I remember reading once that it was just as easy for win95/98 users to move to KDE as it was for them to move to w2k/XP. I can't put my finger on it, but they got 100 users and made them do a bunch of common tasks and timed the results and also took qualitative answers.
Do you think that computer technicians can make a difference in the adoption of OSS?
If you can't make a difference, who can? You are the expert and the customer has come to you for advice. If you think free software can meet the customer's needs, it's your duty to tell them so and why it might be better for them.
I've had better luck with Mepis and Xandros than Ubunto or Fedora. Mepis is now based on Ubunto, so things might change, but it has been by far the easiest distribution to give a normal Windoze user what they want. From a live CD, you get KDE, Firefox with working Flash, OO2 and more. Xandros is better for users with heavy application dependencies. They make it easy for you to get and use Crossover Office and now Parallels, so the user can easily use whatever legacy application they need for business. Fedora is beautiful and makes system administration very easy for the user but comes at a price of relative installation complexity. I have not worked with Ubunto enough to find it's strengths, mostly because I prefer KDE over Gnome. KDE, for one reason or another, is easier for a Windoze user to navigate.
OS details are unimportant. What matters is that you, the expert, can tell the user that there's something better out there. As the Vista monster rolls over the major vendors, the user will remember what you said. If everyone is brave enough to say what they are thinking the user will remember a regular chorus.
Why not just do your job and fix their computer like they asked you to.
You forgot the question mark there, but it's clear you were making a statement rather than asking a question anyway. You might as well have said that it's everyone's job to do just what Bill Gates wants them to.
What the user wants is a browser, email, text editor and spreadsheet that work. Free software does that, non free software does not and that's why they had to call someone to fix their computer in the first place. Fixing the problem is exactly what you are there to do.
Would you like your waiter to try and convince you to change your order because they don't think it's right to eat lamb?
Wow, what a crappy analogy. First, the waiter would not work there because, thankfully, one company has not forced us all to eat their brand of food and restaurants enjoy a free market. The software market more resembles a nightmare world where McDonald's took over the entire food supply with government help. Second, I'd be more than happy if my waiter told me something like, "We got some beautiful fish today, you really should try it." Most of us like a helpful waiter.
Automobiles provide a better analogy in this case. How would you feel, if your mechanic "fixed" your car with a factory replacement fully knowing the part was defective by design? How would you feel if the mechanic also knew of and use a community developed replacement engine that cost nothing, worked better and lasted forever? I'll bet you would think that the mechanic let you down, perhaps to protect his own business.
The Thinkpad 600 was and still is a great machine but the battery has known issues. It was the best selling Thinkpad ever and deserved to be. The size, shape and weight are just about perfect and that lent to both it's usability and exceptional durability. The screen is beautifully bright and the keybord feels great. I have newer, faster and lighter Thinkpads but still enjoy the 600.
The only problem is the battery and I'd gladly trade it for NiMH or even NiCd. I got my laptop used, so the battery was dead. I replaced it with a new IBM battery, hoping in vain that the issues had been addressed. The battery was good for between two and four hours but it could only do it four or five times! Each time you used the battery, you suffered a noticable loss of battery life. In less than a year of careful and conservative use, that pack was down to a 10 minute life. No other Thinkpad I've owned ever acted like that. There are several websites dedicated to explaining this particular battery failing. NiMH or NiCd would be better at this point and in the future. When the cells that come with such a battery die, it's easy enough to cut open the pack and replace them yourself. If you put in standard sized holders with springs, you will never have to worry about not finding batteries again. The trade off of battery life, in this case, is worth it. Anything would be better than the five or ten minutes the explosion risk Li batteries are giving me now.
I bought my battery in 2004, so I think I'm in the clear for explosions but I'm going to check again.
I wonder if you'd care to take the time to comment on other pieces of exploding hardware?
Thinkpad 600, holy shit! I have one of those and love it but the battery has always sucked. I'm not too surprised that the made in China replacement could have some of the same cells and same problems other batteries made at the same time have. Mine replacement battery, which holds a charge just good enough for sleep mode, is too old to be part of the exploding lot. I looked around but was unable to find a NiCd replacement.
My overall take on laptop batteries is that they are a giant rip off. If you look back through my posting history, like all of the rest of my "fans" do, you will see that I've always reccomended standard cell sizes. All electronic manufacturers, including Leveno, are guilty.
What if she wants to install Windows? As she gets older, any computer classes she takes will quite likely be using that OS.
She will have to do and pay for that by herself, but I doubt M$ will exist much less be the basis for any computer courses in ten years. If Vista does not kill M$, the ten years it's going to take to make Event Horizon will.
What's Event Horizon? Event Horizon is the code name for the next version of Windows. Vista is the view beyond the Windows and the Horizon is the view beyond the Vista. The OS will be so massive by that time that anything, even light, getting anywhere near will be sucked into the black hole core. Some theorize that all the information sucked up by M$ will explode back into existence in at some future time, but most acknowledge the regurgitated information will be of little use to it's original owners. I think that Vista core already has collapsed and has it's own Event Horizon which is now obscured by marketing noise and other hot gasses. We will have to observe it to be sure, but the trend is unmistakable and M$'s next project will indeed be a black hole.
cPanel does run in Linux. But it's Perl, so it doesn't count.
As usual, the problem is all M$. The fact that the attacker must have an account to break cPanel is more a mitigating factor than what language cPanel was written in. Now, if you are dumb enough to be administering your site through Windoze, you might have already given away that access by keylogger. There's an endless supply of drive by hijackings for that OS. A malicious interested party in Redmond might hire someone to conduct just such an attack to make visiting Linux hosted sites the kiss of death. That would be a lot of work for very little return, as hosting sites will patch, but it just goes to show that security is only as good as your weakest link.
"Yeah, because all of my power supplies melt!" You're looking at that comment from the wrong end of the telescope. They meant that of all the machines released, only x% failed.
Yeah, we know what they mean and it's bullshit. Of all the brick style power supplies and wall warts you have owned, how many ever melted? None? That's what most people would say because melting is not normal for consumer electronics. That M$ managed to ship one that did means they shorted several qualifying steps required for a UL listing with obviously dangerous results. Once again they suck, they don't care and they are going to lie to you about it.
It's not really a complex system he has set up here. But really at 15, this isn't that impressive.... is it really far fetched that a 15 year old could do this?
Sure, anyone could have done it but he did. This guy just beat all the big studios and media companies to the punch with a simple, stand alone and useful service. That's impressive at any age. What cool ideas have you implemented? By age 15?
The onlything I don't like is his terms of service. I stopped reading where it stated that I was responsible for whatever was done with my account.
Be polite, supportive, and encouraging. The user should never feel condescended to, blamed, or intimidated.
Acceptable: Cannot delete New Text Document: Access is denied.
Better: This file is protected and cannot be deleted without specific permission.
There you go, you need to be polite and supportive when you tell the user they can't do what they want to do. Instructions won't do any good because there is no way to get the thing done. The user then only has to remember the sounds of crashing chairs and "I'm going to fucking kill Google! I've done it before and I'm going to do it again."
Don't foreget that when your computer is really slow, pops up images of American Express Cards and naked ladies at random, it's all your fault, you stupid little shit, you visited the wrong site and downloaded things you should not have. Please don't feel condescended to, blamed, or intimidated as company representatives tell you this over and over.
Restrictions suck and they don't work. As in real life, I'm giving my daughter a healthy sense of what's good for her and what she should avoid. It's a lot easier to teach her to look both ways to cross the street than it is to physically restrain her, so she's known to stay out of the street since she was two. Now we are teaching her to look before crossing. The computer and the TV are not any harder. We tell her she won't want to watch some shows because they will give her bad dreams and sometimes wish we followed the same advice. Here's a short list of computer guidelines:
She owns her computer and can do whatever she wants with it.
I'll help her do what she wants with her computer as long as she wants me to.
When she no longer needs my help, she will really own her computer.
I can't imagine that I'd make more restrictions as she gets older. She's going to have to make her own decisions about who she hangs out with and what she does with her time. All we can do is offer advice and provide opportunities to meet nice people. You don't make opportunities with restrictions, you do it by getting out and around.
Now, she uses her computer to play games on PBS, which are helping her math and language. She especially likes Cyberchase. Because we use mostly free software, we've never had any problems with pop up spam and all of that. Issues of bullying and other nonsense are not computer issues and have not happend yet. When they do, they will be treated like real world cases, mostly ignored.
Hey, Zonk, what's strange about Linux in education and government? Or is it India you find strange? New to the adoption of Linux by India topic are you?
Ah, such a beautiful troll. It accuses Zonk of racism and implicitly calls Linux second rate. Best of all, it's completely wrong. Oh, but there's more, a defense of the Mighty Morphing M$ Monopoly. It could only be better by invoking religion, BSD and abortion.
it's going to make Microsoft sweat, but the comment from a student "Windows, never heard of it" might. It sounds good, but it's not like Microsoft is going to suffer a lot for this.
It sounds good and it is good. M$ is going to lose mind share because they can't both make a profit and "give away" software everwhere it's too expensive. They don't have the man power to decide, much less do the install. They can dangle a few machines in a few prominent places, but the needs and demands far exceed their ability to control it all. People are going keep installing free software and using it. The advantages are obvious and show, especially next to the crippled versions they insultingly have created for those who can't afford US prices. All of India is going to enter the information age and they are going to do it without the price, complexity and insult that non free software has to offer.
The only thing strange about this article is that BusinessWeek noticed it. What's not strange is that they rattle off a bunch of M$ FUD about "service trouble" and "it's all on the server" to conclude, "Linux will be knocking Windows off the desktop anytime soon." BusinessWeek is slowly understanding free software, but they are not ready for publication yet.
That is YOUR morality. How dare you impose your morality on someone else?
It's easy, really, I'm not going to use DRM infected stuff. I don't have to tell you about your licenses. I don't have to tell the FSF about GPL V3. I don't have to tell anyone how to do anything, and no one would listen anyway, but I won't be told what I'm going to run. If you don't fix DRM problems and all your work gets sucked up by greedy DRM publishers, you will soon be without users and none of them will be free. Do as you will, but don't blame me when your branch of code ends up, abused and stagnant. I promise, "experiments" into DRM will be avoided.
"preserving freedom" by removing freedom is hypocritical of the FSF.
The freedom preserved has always been that of the user. To preserve that freedom, developers of GPL'd code gave up the "freedom" to be anti-social and prevent the user from being able to use, modify and share their changes. Tivo has shown how GPL'd code can keep users from doing those things. Change is required and I've yet to see anything positive from anyone but the FSF.
That, twitter, is because it's a summary of the article, and I don't feel the need to inject my own take on things into it.
What bothered me was the lack of detail and supporting evidence in the orignial. Their conclusions, which you echo, may be warranted but they don't support them with anything other than opinions and generalizations.
The use of GPLv3 as a tool against DRM co-opts the work of thousands of people for the FSF's political ends, which they consider a violation of said trust (they do consider DRM a bad thing, they just don't want to be pulled into the FSF's war against it).
No one can make them change their license, can they?
Interestingly enough, your summary contains almost all of the information in the article itself, and that's dissapointing. I'd at least have liked to see links to some of the supposed problems with encryption they claim has caused so many rewrites. Just the same, I'll quote what I think is the heart of what they say:
... section 3 forbids us from ever accepting any licence which contains end use restrictions. The existence of DRM abuse is no excuse for curtailing freedoms.
Curtail who's freedom? Mine? No thanks and I'll see you later.
DRM is something none of us should contribute to. Restricting user rights to use and modify and change software goes against everything that made the GPL a success in the first place. One of the reasons BSD is not as used is because software licensed that way could easily be used by those who are working against everyone's freedom. When you consider something wrong but don't do anything yourself and help others who would do the wrong thing, you are waffling. The poll, if it really reflects the opinions of those listed, is disturbing. Still, it does not matter unless someone can explain how they will be prohibited from continuing to use GPL2. If they really don't mind people Tivoising their work, why don't they just BSD it and let everyone bork the user straight up?
Slashdot Mirror
If you go look back at the story, you see that Dell admits to having known about the problem 10 months before the recall and was accused of worse by a former tech at the time of recall. They had the volume of sales required to notice the problem but did nothing useful for at least a year.
It is too early to accuse other makers of wrong doing. It's possible that Dell did something to aggravate the problem. It's also possible that no one else had the volume required to see it.
Everyone seems to be seeing how OSs fare compared to each other, giving bragging rights to whichever one was the first to use various features, when that doesn't even matter in the slightest.
I won't speak for "Everyone" but you are right, who does what first does not matter.
I just care if it's [the OS] of any use to me. It's an operating system, not a political statement.
If you really think that, you are not using Windows. It's the least featured, most difficult to keep running choice you can make.
you don't have to stand up for [an OS]
Hopefully, I won't be getting a reply filled with all sorts of M$ is great for me bullshit because you don't have to stand up for it.
If you care about your neighbor you do have to stand up. M$ has spend billions of dollars on FUD and other misinformation. The only thing that undoes that is to use what they say is impossible and see for yourself how much easier it is.
Politics does play a role. As usual, free systems are more productive and better for all of their members. M$'s business model is good at obnoxious marketing and not so good at software development. Their strategy of only entering "mature" markets by purchasing tools and destroying all others has left them feature poor and buggy as all hell. Worse for them, no one is making new Windoze software companies for them to plunder. The only people they have left to push around are hardware vendors and users.
The interface is usually the best M$ has to offer. Everything else is starved for effort. If the interface sucks you can only imagine what a train wreck the rest is. No, you don't have to imagine because every review so far has called it just that.
The real feature that should be a deal killer is 3.5, DRM. You may have missed it because it was inappropriately placed under the joke section, "Security".
kill development projects early, "and often," he said, "if your failure rate is high." You can improve productivity by 20%
By killing all of my projects, I'll have a failure rate of 100% but I'll do it 20% faster. Awesome!
Thanks, Gatner.
Microsoft Research's Gordon Bell ... the ability to store one's entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file.
Cringing at the possibility. He actually said "file" instead of database or "files". I'm imagining the Windoze and Outlook model - a single file, difficult to search or transfer, an EULA giving M$ permission to search and destroy "copyright violations" at will, zero security and it explodes at about 2.0 GB in size. Imagine:
You: "Computer, what did I do last night?"
computer: "Master?"
You: "My head is splitting, there's a stranger in my bed and I want to know what happened"
computer: "Just a moment. Just a moment"
You: WTF?
computer: "I'm sorry, you don't have rights to view that. They have been sold to America's dumbest moments."
You: "Erase Last Night, you piece of shit."
computer: "I can't do that Dave. It's already been uploaded, you will be sent the bandwith bill."
You: Smashing Computer. "Delete last night"
computer: "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"
computer: "Your seventh birthday has been erased and your brother is liquidated. Thank you."
It's important to fight this lie because it's being used to strip everyone of their freedom. The most important aspect of this was covered ten days ago, here, and years ago here and here and again and again. The main things to notice are decreasing procudtion, sucky promotion and high music sales to portable music player owners. From second link,
Gee, don't make and promote new releases don't sell music. From the second link:
Finally, from the latest Jupiter Research,
Portable music player owners are a better metric than "computer owners". You might as well try to corelate typewriter ownership with phonograph sales in the 70s because general purpose computers and music are not related in most homes. Portable music owners, on the other hand have linked their computers to their music are most able of computer users to swap their music. They are computer savy and might have their entire collection in their pocket or on their laptop ready to swap out with their music loving friends. Yet they buy more music than the rest of the population, including "computer owners" who could care less about music.
In the end, this is about control. People exposed to music purchase music. It's that simple. "Piracy" is a smoke screen. The problem for the RIAA is that online music allows competition, which is something their business model can't stand. Music "piracy" does not harm sales, but it will be used as an excuse to force DRM on everyone.
There isn't a standard, USB or otherwise, for selecting playlists and all the other things that people want to do in their cars.
That's really too bad, but there are standards if you use the right software. Tags are standardized and mounting USB or Firewire file systems is not tricky. Would it be too much to ask for a customized Amarok that could query a mass storage device for music and playlists? A ten inch touch screen LCD and a volume knob would work that interface. Yes, people have made Amarok work with iPods, despite it's firecly non free and standard busting storage formats.
Oh but oh, no, the "pirates" might use such a device to share their music on those rare occasions people share a ride. Better just build your own.
If you own a Honda, like I do, you won't be able to replace the head unit because it's the alarm, but you can cover it up.
You forgot the question mark there, but it's clear you were making a statement rather than asking a question anyway. You might as well have said that it's everyone's job to do just what Bill Gates wants them to.
What the user wants is a browser, email, text editor and spreadsheet that work. Free software does that, non free software does not and that's why they had to call someone to fix their computer in the first place. Fixing the problem is exactly what you are there to do.
Would you like your waiter to try and convince you to change your order because they don't think it's right to eat lamb?
Wow, what a sorry analogy. First, the waiter would not work there because, thankfully, one company has not forced us all to eat their brand of food and restaurants enjoy a free market. The software market more resembles a nightmare world where McDonald's took over the entire food supply with government help. Second, I'd be more than happy if my waiter told me something like, "We got some beautiful fish today, you really should try it." Most of us like a helpful waiter. Automobiles provide a better analogy in this case. How would you feel, if your mechanic "fixed" your car with a factory replacement fully knowing the part was defective by design? How would you feel if the mechanic also knew of and use a community developed replacement engine that cost nothing, worked better and lasted forever? I'll bet you would think that the mechanic let you down, perhaps to protect his own business.
And then the besotted home user noticed the vast Internet, and tried to set sail. Woe be to them, the sea was made of gasoline! Gasoline + styrofoam = napalm. It took about 12 minutes, on average, for each of those brave would be navigators of the world wide web to drown if a sticky flaming mess. So failed the system which was never made to be attached to a network.
I remember reading once that it was just as easy for win95/98 users to move to KDE as it was for them to move to w2k/XP. I can't put my finger on it, but they got 100 users and made them do a bunch of common tasks and timed the results and also took qualitative answers.
If you can't make a difference, who can? You are the expert and the customer has come to you for advice. If you think free software can meet the customer's needs, it's your duty to tell them so and why it might be better for them.
I've had better luck with Mepis and Xandros than Ubunto or Fedora. Mepis is now based on Ubunto, so things might change, but it has been by far the easiest distribution to give a normal Windoze user what they want. From a live CD, you get KDE, Firefox with working Flash, OO2 and more. Xandros is better for users with heavy application dependencies. They make it easy for you to get and use Crossover Office and now Parallels, so the user can easily use whatever legacy application they need for business. Fedora is beautiful and makes system administration very easy for the user but comes at a price of relative installation complexity. I have not worked with Ubunto enough to find it's strengths, mostly because I prefer KDE over Gnome. KDE, for one reason or another, is easier for a Windoze user to navigate.
OS details are unimportant. What matters is that you, the expert, can tell the user that there's something better out there. As the Vista monster rolls over the major vendors, the user will remember what you said. If everyone is brave enough to say what they are thinking the user will remember a regular chorus.
You forgot the question mark there, but it's clear you were making a statement rather than asking a question anyway. You might as well have said that it's everyone's job to do just what Bill Gates wants them to.
What the user wants is a browser, email, text editor and spreadsheet that work. Free software does that, non free software does not and that's why they had to call someone to fix their computer in the first place. Fixing the problem is exactly what you are there to do.
Would you like your waiter to try and convince you to change your order because they don't think it's right to eat lamb?
Wow, what a crappy analogy. First, the waiter would not work there because, thankfully, one company has not forced us all to eat their brand of food and restaurants enjoy a free market. The software market more resembles a nightmare world where McDonald's took over the entire food supply with government help. Second, I'd be more than happy if my waiter told me something like, "We got some beautiful fish today, you really should try it." Most of us like a helpful waiter.
Automobiles provide a better analogy in this case. How would you feel, if your mechanic "fixed" your car with a factory replacement fully knowing the part was defective by design? How would you feel if the mechanic also knew of and use a community developed replacement engine that cost nothing, worked better and lasted forever? I'll bet you would think that the mechanic let you down, perhaps to protect his own business.
The Thinkpad 600 was and still is a great machine but the battery has known issues. It was the best selling Thinkpad ever and deserved to be. The size, shape and weight are just about perfect and that lent to both it's usability and exceptional durability. The screen is beautifully bright and the keybord feels great. I have newer, faster and lighter Thinkpads but still enjoy the 600.
The only problem is the battery and I'd gladly trade it for NiMH or even NiCd. I got my laptop used, so the battery was dead. I replaced it with a new IBM battery, hoping in vain that the issues had been addressed. The battery was good for between two and four hours but it could only do it four or five times! Each time you used the battery, you suffered a noticable loss of battery life. In less than a year of careful and conservative use, that pack was down to a 10 minute life. No other Thinkpad I've owned ever acted like that. There are several websites dedicated to explaining this particular battery failing. NiMH or NiCd would be better at this point and in the future. When the cells that come with such a battery die, it's easy enough to cut open the pack and replace them yourself. If you put in standard sized holders with springs, you will never have to worry about not finding batteries again. The trade off of battery life, in this case, is worth it. Anything would be better than the five or ten minutes the explosion risk Li batteries are giving me now.
I bought my battery in 2004, so I think I'm in the clear for explosions but I'm going to check again.
Thinkpad 600, holy shit! I have one of those and love it but the battery has always sucked. I'm not too surprised that the made in China replacement could have some of the same cells and same problems other batteries made at the same time have. Mine replacement battery, which holds a charge just good enough for sleep mode, is too old to be part of the exploding lot. I looked around but was unable to find a NiCd replacement.
My overall take on laptop batteries is that they are a giant rip off. If you look back through my posting history, like all of the rest of my "fans" do, you will see that I've always reccomended standard cell sizes. All electronic manufacturers, including Leveno, are guilty.
She will have to do and pay for that by herself, but I doubt M$ will exist much less be the basis for any computer courses in ten years. If Vista does not kill M$, the ten years it's going to take to make Event Horizon will.
What's Event Horizon? Event Horizon is the code name for the next version of Windows. Vista is the view beyond the Windows and the Horizon is the view beyond the Vista. The OS will be so massive by that time that anything, even light, getting anywhere near will be sucked into the black hole core. Some theorize that all the information sucked up by M$ will explode back into existence in at some future time, but most acknowledge the regurgitated information will be of little use to it's original owners. I think that Vista core already has collapsed and has it's own Event Horizon which is now obscured by marketing noise and other hot gasses. We will have to observe it to be sure, but the trend is unmistakable and M$'s next project will indeed be a black hole.
As usual, the problem is all M$. The fact that the attacker must have an account to break cPanel is more a mitigating factor than what language cPanel was written in. Now, if you are dumb enough to be administering your site through Windoze, you might have already given away that access by keylogger. There's an endless supply of drive by hijackings for that OS. A malicious interested party in Redmond might hire someone to conduct just such an attack to make visiting Linux hosted sites the kiss of death. That would be a lot of work for very little return, as hosting sites will patch, but it just goes to show that security is only as good as your weakest link.
Yeah, we know what they mean and it's bullshit. Of all the brick style power supplies and wall warts you have owned, how many ever melted? None? That's what most people would say because melting is not normal for consumer electronics. That M$ managed to ship one that did means they shorted several qualifying steps required for a UL listing with obviously dangerous results. Once again they suck, they don't care and they are going to lie to you about it.
It's not really a complex system he has set up here. But really at 15, this isn't that impressive. ... is it really far fetched that a 15 year old could do this?
Sure, anyone could have done it but he did. This guy just beat all the big studios and media companies to the punch with a simple, stand alone and useful service. That's impressive at any age. What cool ideas have you implemented? By age 15?
The onlything I don't like is his terms of service. I stopped reading where it stated that I was responsible for whatever was done with my account.
I'm sorry, I forgot to put in the Steve Balmer voice tags so that M$ PR drones could get the joke. Blame the user is a Microsoft game.
Be polite, supportive, and encouraging. The user should never feel condescended to, blamed, or intimidated.
Acceptable: Cannot delete New Text Document: Access is denied.
Better: This file is protected and cannot be deleted without specific permission.
There you go, you need to be polite and supportive when you tell the user they can't do what they want to do. Instructions won't do any good because there is no way to get the thing done. The user then only has to remember the sounds of crashing chairs and "I'm going to fucking kill Google! I've done it before and I'm going to do it again."
Don't foreget that when your computer is really slow, pops up images of American Express Cards and naked ladies at random, it's all your fault, you stupid little shit, you visited the wrong site and downloaded things you should not have. Please don't feel condescended to, blamed, or intimidated as company representatives tell you this over and over.
What a bunch of double talk.
I can't imagine that I'd make more restrictions as she gets older. She's going to have to make her own decisions about who she hangs out with and what she does with her time. All we can do is offer advice and provide opportunities to meet nice people. You don't make opportunities with restrictions, you do it by getting out and around.
Now, she uses her computer to play games on PBS, which are helping her math and language. She especially likes Cyberchase. Because we use mostly free software, we've never had any problems with pop up spam and all of that. Issues of bullying and other nonsense are not computer issues and have not happend yet. When they do, they will be treated like real world cases, mostly ignored.
Hey, Zonk, what's strange about Linux in education and government? Or is it India you find strange? New to the adoption of Linux by India topic are you?
Ah, such a beautiful troll. It accuses Zonk of racism and implicitly calls Linux second rate. Best of all, it's completely wrong. Oh, but there's more, a defense of the Mighty Morphing M$ Monopoly. It could only be better by invoking religion, BSD and abortion.
it's going to make Microsoft sweat, but the comment from a student "Windows, never heard of it" might. It sounds good, but it's not like Microsoft is going to suffer a lot for this.
It sounds good and it is good. M$ is going to lose mind share because they can't both make a profit and "give away" software everwhere it's too expensive. They don't have the man power to decide, much less do the install. They can dangle a few machines in a few prominent places, but the needs and demands far exceed their ability to control it all. People are going keep installing free software and using it. The advantages are obvious and show, especially next to the crippled versions they insultingly have created for those who can't afford US prices. All of India is going to enter the information age and they are going to do it without the price, complexity and insult that non free software has to offer.
The only thing strange about this article is that BusinessWeek noticed it. What's not strange is that they rattle off a bunch of M$ FUD about "service trouble" and "it's all on the server" to conclude, "Linux will be knocking Windows off the desktop anytime soon." BusinessWeek is slowly understanding free software, but they are not ready for publication yet.
That is YOUR morality. How dare you impose your morality on someone else?
It's easy, really, I'm not going to use DRM infected stuff. I don't have to tell you about your licenses. I don't have to tell the FSF about GPL V3. I don't have to tell anyone how to do anything, and no one would listen anyway, but I won't be told what I'm going to run. If you don't fix DRM problems and all your work gets sucked up by greedy DRM publishers, you will soon be without users and none of them will be free. Do as you will, but don't blame me when your branch of code ends up, abused and stagnant. I promise, "experiments" into DRM will be avoided.
"preserving freedom" by removing freedom is hypocritical of the FSF.
The freedom preserved has always been that of the user. To preserve that freedom, developers of GPL'd code gave up the "freedom" to be anti-social and prevent the user from being able to use, modify and share their changes. Tivo has shown how GPL'd code can keep users from doing those things. Change is required and I've yet to see anything positive from anyone but the FSF.
What bothered me was the lack of detail and supporting evidence in the orignial. Their conclusions, which you echo, may be warranted but they don't support them with anything other than opinions and generalizations.
The use of GPLv3 as a tool against DRM co-opts the work of thousands of people for the FSF's political ends, which they consider a violation of said trust (they do consider DRM a bad thing, they just don't want to be pulled into the FSF's war against it).
No one can make them change their license, can they?
Interestingly enough, your summary contains almost all of the information in the article itself, and that's dissapointing. I'd at least have liked to see links to some of the supposed problems with encryption they claim has caused so many rewrites. Just the same, I'll quote what I think is the heart of what they say:
Curtail who's freedom? Mine? No thanks and I'll see you later.
DRM is something none of us should contribute to. Restricting user rights to use and modify and change software goes against everything that made the GPL a success in the first place. One of the reasons BSD is not as used is because software licensed that way could easily be used by those who are working against everyone's freedom. When you consider something wrong but don't do anything yourself and help others who would do the wrong thing, you are waffling. The poll, if it really reflects the opinions of those listed, is disturbing. Still, it does not matter unless someone can explain how they will be prohibited from continuing to use GPL2. If they really don't mind people Tivoising their work, why don't they just BSD it and let everyone bork the user straight up?