I am not sure that is the only reason. In software, being the " big player" on a given market is very important (m$ office comes to mind). Given the relative size of the US, who owns that market, can expect others to follow, because they fear, rightly or wrongly, the cost of eccentricity. Hence, compete in the US, and then reap vast profits from Europeans.
maybe I don't quite get marketing, but I would prefer not to measure the success of advertising in terms of 'feeling engaged', but rather in terms of 'units sold'.
One of the reasons I have been using KDE is that I CAN change the looks of it entirely, and I do not need to have it look the way it came, unlike OSX, Vista or, to a lesser extent, Gnome. I have no reason at all to believe this is going to change in 4. So what if it's ugly? You can make it ugly in exactly the way you want!
Plastik & Slackware? My friend, you do have a discerning taste.
It so happens that I speak five, large, languages, and am currently working on Japanese, which will make it a glorious six (yes, I am quite proud of it). In the neighborhood I grew up in, two tiny languages (Gronings and Sranantongo), were widely spoken. Today, I speak neither of those, and this is certainly a loss. On the other hand, the kids who spoke those languages had far fewer opportunities to attend universities, move around the world, and ultimately learn more, and larger languages.
Languages are beautiful and nice to know, and are certainly part of the human heritage. However, to preserve near-extinct (or rather, near-abandoned) languages, means that children have to learn them as their native language, which in many cases severely inhibits their opportunities further down the road. I think their parents, or societies, would do them a disservice by allowing this to happen. It certainly isn't a sacrifice you've had to make.
Bear in mind, moreover, that the fact that many tiny languages are abandoned does not mean that we will end up with only one or two. A language with a few million speakers can uphold a decent educational system, literature and, crucially, allow people to become polyglots. Sure, I am happy with Dutch as my native language, but I would be much less so if I couldn't have learned English through Dutch in a vast Dutch-speaking educational system. Indeed, in that case, I would not even have been able to reply to your post.
For a while, we have had electric cars and motorcycles that could go fast and reasonably far. Being able to crash them stupidly was probably the final thing needed to make them a success. And now that electric bikes have grown up to this level, linux on the desktop cannot be far off, can it?
Because the EU isn't afraid to regulate when the market fails its citizens?
Actually, as far as I recall, European standardization was well under way before the EU played a role in it. Generally, I think being "one country" need not have much impact on standardization if the country is large and business is free. Hell, I live in Osaka, and we don't even have the same AC here as in Tokyo.
Really? I have been living in Japan for a while now. I guarantee that breaking your arm rather than letting go of a dumb arcade game would be considered a sign of astounding stupidity by the vast majority of the population.
I'd wager that this has nothing to do with culture, manhood and honor, and everything with some dumb drunk salarymen egging each other on. Fratboy-type dumbasses are, depressingly, a universal occurrence around the world.
To a college student, already scared by stories about DRM, and influenced by the FUD-ish Mac vs PC ads, the beer $50 will buy may very well be the extra incentive needed. For now, they'll probably still buy a discount laptop loaded with good ol' XP, but as that will get more difficult over time, sure, $50 will probably help. Why not?
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I am not sure that is the only reason. In software, being the " big player" on a given market is very important (m$ office comes to mind). Given the relative size of the US, who owns that market, can expect others to follow, because they fear, rightly or wrongly, the cost of eccentricity. Hence, compete in the US, and then reap vast profits from Europeans.
It's just a hunch.
maybe I don't quite get marketing, but I would prefer not to measure the success of advertising in terms of 'feeling engaged', but rather in terms of 'units sold'.
One of the reasons I have been using KDE is that I CAN change the looks of it entirely, and I do not need to have it look the way it came, unlike OSX, Vista or, to a lesser extent, Gnome. I have no reason at all to believe this is going to change in 4. So what if it's ugly? You can make it ugly in exactly the way you want!
Plastik & Slackware? My friend, you do have a discerning taste.
As a Dutchman, being given a dam by a company seemed quite appealing to me....
As a non-native, I'd like to inform you that the correct spelling is "lose". We owns English!
It so happens that I speak five, large, languages, and am currently working on Japanese, which will make it a glorious six (yes, I am quite proud of it). In the neighborhood I grew up in, two tiny languages (Gronings and Sranantongo), were widely spoken. Today, I speak neither of those, and this is certainly a loss. On the other hand, the kids who spoke those languages had far fewer opportunities to attend universities, move around the world, and ultimately learn more, and larger languages. Languages are beautiful and nice to know, and are certainly part of the human heritage. However, to preserve near-extinct (or rather, near-abandoned) languages, means that children have to learn them as their native language, which in many cases severely inhibits their opportunities further down the road. I think their parents, or societies, would do them a disservice by allowing this to happen. It certainly isn't a sacrifice you've had to make. Bear in mind, moreover, that the fact that many tiny languages are abandoned does not mean that we will end up with only one or two. A language with a few million speakers can uphold a decent educational system, literature and, crucially, allow people to become polyglots. Sure, I am happy with Dutch as my native language, but I would be much less so if I couldn't have learned English through Dutch in a vast Dutch-speaking educational system. Indeed, in that case, I would not even have been able to reply to your post.
For a while, we have had electric cars and motorcycles that could go fast and reasonably far. Being able to crash them stupidly was probably the final thing needed to make them a success. And now that electric bikes have grown up to this level, linux on the desktop cannot be far off, can it?
Actually, as far as I recall, European standardization was well under way before the EU played a role in it. Generally, I think being "one country" need not have much impact on standardization if the country is large and business is free. Hell, I live in Osaka, and we don't even have the same AC here as in Tokyo.
Really? I have been living in Japan for a while now. I guarantee that breaking your arm rather than letting go of a dumb arcade game would be considered a sign of astounding stupidity by the vast majority of the population. I'd wager that this has nothing to do with culture, manhood and honor, and everything with some dumb drunk salarymen egging each other on. Fratboy-type dumbasses are, depressingly, a universal occurrence around the world.
To a college student, already scared by stories about DRM, and influenced by the FUD-ish Mac vs PC ads, the beer $50 will buy may very well be the extra incentive needed. For now, they'll probably still buy a discount laptop loaded with good ol' XP, but as that will get more difficult over time, sure, $50 will probably help. Why not?