I see. So having a sense of entitlement is a good thing for the country? Thinking your government owes you and is supposed to take care of you from the cradle to grave is good for the country? Just how is that? Mind explaining how thinking that your government owes you builds a strong nation?
Too bad so large a segment of our population today doesn't think like JFK did. He made sense when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." That paradigm makes for a strong, vibrant nation as its citizens are looking to build/contribute_to something greater than themselves, rather than looking for a handout, and is the same paradigm held by the founding fathers of our nation.
I wonder just how the Revolutionary War would have progressed with everyone asking for a handout rather than making sacrifices for the common good. Well, I really don't wonder, as I already know. There would have been no volunteers, except to criticize the Continental Congress for not feeding, clothing, and taking care of everyone's medical costs, and the British army would have sliced us up like a hot knife through butter.
I've watched this mentality being pushed by governments more and more over the years. It's a move toward the old Soviet Union days in which nobody knew who was spying on them. Everyone had to live in secret and tell no one their inner thoughts and desires.
It was an old Soviet diplomat who said that, while the Soviet Union was becoming more like the Western countries all the time, the Western countries were becoming more like the Soviets at the same time. That time has now come.
This will lead to parents against children, children against parents, brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, stranger against stranger. Nobody will be able to trust anyone. We will become nations full of spies, only we will be spying on another.
OK. I didn't realize you were being sarcastic, as there are so many shills on this site who would post something like that seriously that it's hard to tell sometimes....
I'm sorry, but your post just cracked me up. Microsoft being choosing honesty?
[sarcasme] The next thing Ballmer will be telling us is that when they send the BSA around to different businesses that MS is having to refund licensing costs based on the holes in their legalese.
Poor MS. With all their billions of dollars they can't find a lawyer capable of writing a licensing scheme that isn't so full of holes that MS isn't being driven to the poor house by their predatory customers.... [/sarcasm]
At one small business I worked for the boss was so paranoid about seeing the attacks in the fail2ban email alerts that he ordered me to stop the attacks. I changed the SSH port and that stopped 100% of the attacks.
I was surprised by that. I thought it would stop the script kiddies but someone else would scan the ip address and find it.
This guy also had a cobbled-together desktop application he sold that was hard coded to download software updates via non-anonymous ftp. Well, surprise, surprise, we had a ton of attacks against the ftp port too. fail2ban was our only defense there. He would regularly call me agitated to the point of almost having a heart attack about seeing the fail2ban-generated emails--he insisted on having a copy of them sent to him--and would tell me I needed to stop those attacks from happening.
I can't tell you how many times I had to explain to him that I couldn't magically control internet traffic to open ports on the firewall. I don't think he ever really understood that. I think he always sort of had the idea in the back of his head that I was being less than truthful about that.
He was also too cheap to buy/let_me_build a decent firewall and a business class switch with vlans so we could actually implement some type of network security.
He just couldn't understand how having every machine he owned on the same network segment was a bad idea. He thought the fact that a switch doesn't broadcast traffic like a hub does was all the separation he needed. There was no convincing him otherwise either as I tried to many times.
Damn, where'd all that come from? I guess I'm still frustrated with that idiot even though I'm long gone from there.
And public keys aren't always that secure either. There are probably still plenty of servers with weak keys from the Debian debacle. What do you do with those users if password authentication is disallowed? Just lock them out and make them call you for a key reset?
Your assumption about Debian's problems with ssh is rather unlikely. The only way weak keys still exist is if the system hasn't been updated in the last couple of years.
When Debian pushed out the ssh update they also pushed out an automated check for weak passwords that ran before the update was finished. The script told the admin if any weak keys existed on the machine and that they needed to be updated immediately.
Of course, you could be right that there are admins stupid enough to have ignored all that. I saw a request for help on how to enable root login for ssh just a couple of weeks ago, and the poster didn't reply to posts saying that allowing root login was a very bad idea.
is who are these "security experts" going to be "defending" against? The way our government is going they are going to be working on removing the privacy of our own citizens, not defending against the threats out there in the big bad world-at-large.
It's very difficult to distinguish screw thread type by just looking at the head of screw. I've spent most of my life using one type of mechanical fastener or another, and there is no way I could swear what type of threads were on those screws just by looking at the heads.
Just because a screw has Phillips or Frearson flat head does not automatically mean it is a wood screw. Those heads are also very common on metal screws too, as a countersink is often used so screw heads will sit flush with the surface metal. Anyone who has ever worked with metal knows this.
Did the heads sit up a little in the picture? Yes, but that's because the mounting plate screw holes hadn't been countersunk yet. That's something that could easily happen on a very early prototype, and very easily be taken care of during the manufacturing process as the drilling of the holes and the countersinking would most likely be done in one process.
move of some patents originally held by Microsoft to the Open Invention Network, where they will join a portfolio whose purpose is to inoculate open source companies against patent trolls.
Doesn't seem a lot like patent trolling from MS. They've pretty much always just cared about protecting their own ass from patent trolls - and now moving the patents to Open Invention Network, that does it for them and keep the technologies open to everyone else too.
Say what? MS "allowed" those patents to move to the OIN? What a misstating of the facts.
MS sold those patents, with instructions as to how they could be used by patent trolls, to a 3rd party known to deal with patent trolls. That 3rd party, without MS's knowledge, then contacted the OIN and told them about the patents. That led to the OIN buying the patents.
When doing a LSR run at Bonneville you have something like a half hour between runs. They let you refuel and check the vehicle over between runs for safety reasons. If you have a problem and can't make it back to the starting line on time you're toast. You one-way run doesn't count for anything.
MD's are no good at all at diagnosing back ailments. I'm disabled due to my back and not a single MD could find a problem with it. However, I went to a chiropractor and he found the problem on the first visit. Why? Because a chiropractor takes back xrays with the patient standing upright which loads the spine as it is during everyday life. MD's take back xrays only with the patient lying down. This unloads the spine and makes not only my particular problem, but many more back problems invisible to an MD.
Now, why wouldn't an MD take an xray of a patient's back with it properly stressed? You got me, but no doctor I went to would do it. When an MD, an orthopedic surgeon, did see the xrays the chiropractor took his first question was "how long have your legs been numb?". After seeing those xrays he took me seriously, the only MD to do so.
Now, if all chiropractors are quacks how is it that a chiropractor diagnosed my problems immediately--the first visit--when I had already spent well in excess of $5,000 with MD's and all of them wrote me off a drug addict looking for pain meds because those idiots couldn't find a damn thing wrong with me.
Only an idiot would look for structural problems with the structure unloaded. The way the MD's look for back problems is like trying to diagnose an weakened beam without a stress test and no load on it. It's plain old stupid.
Also, that chiropractor's treatments allowed me to at least be able to walk more than a few yards at a time. He alleviated a lot of my pain, and was able to locate the exact points on my back which were painful. He used plain old common sense and took temperature measurements because where there is a lot of pain, there will be excess blood flow, which creates heat. No MD would have stooped to such logical ideas.
MD's, other than the orthopedic surgeon, did nothing but take lots of my money and then insult me because their diagnostic skills were lousy.
So what you're saying is that every OS ever released needs to have absolutely 0 lines of exploitable code; if it doesn't, then the OS maker needs to repair bug ever to appear on it. If you believe that, you should be foaming at the mouth just as much over Apple.
Every current OS needs to be supported by the manufacturer. MS refusing to fix security vulnerabilities in just because XP code has been around a long time is just wrong. They are still selling XP to customers so they still need to support it. If they had stopped selling XP entirely a few years ago that would be another matter. The way things are they are abandoning users of one of the products they currently sell.
Speaking of straw men, Microsoft doesn't sell computers.
Who said they did?
As I understand it, GM has partial ownership in its dealerships. That's why GM is closing down dealerships because it can't meet demands. The dealership I bought my last GM car from is closing... I'm don't remember when, but they sent letters out to all their customers about it.
So?
See what I said about GM and partial ownership.
Microsoft sells boxed copies to Best Buy and NewEgg. Once they have those copies, they own them until they re-sell them. Under the doctrine of first sale, Microsoft can't say "Stop selling these and throw them away." MS can offer to buy them back, but BB can choose whether or not to do that.
Dell buys licenses in bulk. The same rule as above applies to those. Microsoft can try to pressure them, but Dell is a gigantic company with lots of resources... and lawyers./quote?
So, you're claiming the doctrine of first sale says MS doesn't have to support its products? Wow. What a masterpiece of irrefutable logic. I guess that means that any product a retailer buys from a manufacturer to sell to consumers is never covered by any warranty. You do know that every household appliance, piece of computer hardware, garment, TV, stereo, entertainment center, piece of furniture, etc... would fall under your idiotic claim don't you? Every retailer of manufactured goods purchases every product they sell, before they sell it to their customers. So, I guess you'll never make a single warranty claim on any product you buy now from on as you believe every product you buy is covered by the doctrine of first sale. Thus no matter what you're buying, you're buying it second hand.
I can't believe the imbicilic arguments I see put forth when people try to defend the indefensible.
Stop beating your straw man to death. Your argument is not only irrelevant, it's completely misleading. Why? Because MS is still selling XP on new computers.
If you could go down to your local Chevy dealer today and buy a brand new 1998 Chevy Impala, and the AC broke on your new Impala Chevrolet the day after you drove it off the lot, General Motors would have to repair the AC under warranty. What's more, they would still have to be manufacturing replacement parts. How long a product has been on the market is irrelevant, if it is still being sold as a new product on a daily basis.
The above example holds true for XP. I can go down to BB, go online to NewEgg, or to any one of hundreds of different retailers, and buy a brand new netbook with XP on it. That means MS is still selling shiny new copies of XP. That makes the the age of the code in XP irrelevant as XP is still a current product.
that all depends on what Ramji means when he refers to MS's "positive momentum". Did MS become viewed more as more positively against open source because they tried to sell patents to patent trolls? Did they become viewed more positively against open source when instead of joining the existing open source community at large they created their own "open source" foundation?
I would have to say, yes. So, in that aspect Ramji is correct. MS has created increasing distrust of them. So, I guess that is a positive movement, as it is an increase, not a decrease.
DRM is a (partial) solution to a very real problem. That is without something in place to limit their ability to do so, people are, in general, selfish bastards who'll happily take advantage of someone elses work without compensating them for it. Again if you have a better means of solving this problem, then by all means tell us!
DRM removes the rights of honest people. For hundreds of years people have been buying books, and after reading them have either given them to someone else, sold them to a used book dealer, kept them on the shelf for decades, or bought books entirely as an investment. In spite of all these lawful activities publishers and authors have been writing books and making money the entire time. Now both publishers and authors seem to think they have some special right to stop all these lawful activities simply because the format has changed. Why? Do you think trampling on the rights of the consumer is the ethical solution to theft? If so, then I guess you are OK with being punished for things you've never done. You'll happily go to jail with your neighbor when he gets caught selling dope. Fair is fair. We have to put a stop to illegal activity don't we? Right? The best way to do that is to remove the rights of the individual. Right?
But punishing honest users seem wrong to me. Dont try and manage your users rights, they don't need your management. Instead turn your users into allies and make them LOYAL to you, and they'll flip you dollars every single time.
This is absolutely correct. I will not buy anything with DRM in it.
Why should I pay good money to encourage the eroding of my rights as an individual? I cannot see any possible outcome in which encouraging the eroding my own rights as an individual is in my best interest. That's just cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Why should I support someone whose first thought is that I'm a thief? I see no reason to pay for the dubious "privilege" of being insulted. Any merchant who attacks my integrity will never get any money from me.
I will, and do, go without rather than support anything to do with DRM. I vote with my wallet, and my wallet stays in my back pocket, when DRM involved.
It's not the fault of Linux that a commercial enterprise deliberately cripples the OS on the computer they manufacture. Had you been running something like Ubuntu NBR you would have found all those python packages in the Ubuntu repositories, and had your choice of versions. It wouldn't have been a problem at all.
Blame Asus, not Linux. Linux has all those things taken care of, but Asus doesn't think you need them so they don't provide them. They don't plan on their netbook being used in the way you wanted to use it. An "apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8" inside Ubuntu would have installed all the base packages for wxwidgets and also shown you any extra packages you might need for extended functionality by listing them as suggested packages.
In other words, your problem was caused by a combination of OEM's actions and your lack of knowledge about Linux, not Linux itself. There was a ready-made solution available, you just didn't know it existed. The same thing happens under Windows too when you don't know an option exists.
The problem with your line of logic is that it's off the mark/incomplete.
When a blind person walked into BK did you and your fellow employees throw stumbling blocks in his way? Did you make sure that if he wanted whopper he got a whopper junior, or somebody had dropped his food in on the floor or spit in it? Did BK teach you to do that?
Basically that's what MS and BB are teaching BB's employees to do. An ignorant user--a blind man--comes in and asks for help. Does the BB employee he asks for help have a moral obligation to honestly help that blind man? If not, why not? And if not, why don't they have a moral obligation to someone who can't "see" for themselves? Has honesty become such a discarded concept that society at large thinks no one has a moral obligation to be honest with their fellow man, especially those who are in need of honest help?
I haven't had to compile a piece of software more than 4 or 5 times in the 5 years--been MS-free for 3 of those 5--I've used Linux, and then the majority of those times it was because I wanted a custom kernel. I'm a Debian user and right now there are well in excess of 20,000 software packages available in Squeeze. Even when I can't find the exact version of software I want in the official Debian repositories I can usually find a.deb package out on the internet which I can download and install with dpkg, or the developers will have a repository which I can point to in/etc/apt/sources.list and then just import their gpg key and use apt-get just like I would from the Debian repositories.
All you do is show how ignorant about the current state of Linux maturity you really are to make such an argument. Nobody who is an experienced Linux user will accept your argument as valid. But, then again, knowledgeable Linux users aren't the real target for your posts. It must be quite an experience to blatantly play on people's ignorance and fears like that.
In my opinion, the number of people slamming Linux by saying nobody uses it, are shills, and they certainly aren't Linux shills/fanboys/trolls. The mantra is too frequently used to be used by chance. It's also no secret that that many of these posters point to sources known to "revise" their numbers downward for everything/everyone who competes with MS while simultaneously "revising" the MS numbers upwards. Think that's just by happenstance? Think that those companies also accidentally take most of their statistics from corporations that are MS shops, thus guaranteeing that MS products will show little decline in numbers and Linux numbers will show little advancement? Now, tell me, what type of poster would you think would cite those stats as accurate and use them as being representative of reality? I see only type: a shill. And whom do those posters support? None other than MS. So, imo, the term "MS shill" is an accurate description.
When I first started using Linux about 5 years ago the online reports showed Linux with the same marketplace percentages then as now. However, anyone who is even halfway aware of Linux usage knows that Linux usage has grown a lot since then. I would even say it's grown exponentially in the last 5 years by my anecdotal experience and online observation. I see it being used locally many times more than I did 5 years ago. I also see many times more Linux help forums than there were back then, and those forums are busy too. That type of growth in numbers of sites and users/posters doesn't happen without a great growth in the numbers of Linux users.
Funny how both the online reports, and those who quote them, like to bury all evidence contrary to their assertions and point to obviously flawed methodologies for their support.
Has anyone really looked at the systems Dell is putting Linux on?
I'm not so sure that Dell's choice of systems for Linux is not a sign of them wanting this project to fail. The vast majority of people who have requested Linux will have greater hardware needs/wants than what the basic entry-level Dell system provides as they are not entry level users. Yet, Dell is shipping only the most basic of systems available. IOW's, Dell is not selling systems designed to fulfill the needs/wants of the portion of the market that asked for Linux. From my experience of looking at bottom end Dell's I'd lay odds that the cheapest of the desktop systems available won't allow you to add something as basic an extra internal hard drive, and will have very few if any available PCI slots. What computer enthusiast/geek is going to be interested in that? I'm certainly not. I wouldn't recommend a system like to anyone I know if it had Windows on it, so why would I recommend it just because it now has Linux on it?
How about their available notebooks? Not a wide screen format notebook available, and how many people actually buy a notebook with a 12" screen? I wouldn't. I wouldn't find it usable for my needs at all, and I do not see an abundance of notebooks with 12" screens in the area in which I live. I also doubt you'll sell many 12" notebooks to anyone over 30 as the eye strain gets to be a problem.
It looks to me like they are trying to pass off their junk on the Linux community, and then if the Linux community says "I'm not interested" by not purchasing the few bottom end systems they are offering they can justify saying, "There is no market for computers with Linux on them." and MS will get an opportunity for more FUD about Linux.
On the same day we have/. articles about how Bill Gates predicted how content would be available for fair use and about how the DRM in MCE is shafting users by keeping them from viewing content.
Way to go Bill. You killed your own prediction. That is brilliant business planning....
Slashdot Mirror
I see. So having a sense of entitlement is a good thing for the country? Thinking your government owes you and is supposed to take care of you from the cradle to grave is good for the country? Just how is that? Mind explaining how thinking that your government owes you builds a strong nation?
Too bad so large a segment of our population today doesn't think like JFK did. He made sense when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." That paradigm makes for a strong, vibrant nation as its citizens are looking to build/contribute_to something greater than themselves, rather than looking for a handout, and is the same paradigm held by the founding fathers of our nation.
I wonder just how the Revolutionary War would have progressed with everyone asking for a handout rather than making sacrifices for the common good. Well, I really don't wonder, as I already know. There would have been no volunteers, except to criticize the Continental Congress for not feeding, clothing, and taking care of everyone's medical costs, and the British army would have sliced us up like a hot knife through butter.
I've watched this mentality being pushed by governments more and more over the years. It's a move toward the old Soviet Union days in which nobody knew who was spying on them. Everyone had to live in secret and tell no one their inner thoughts and desires.
It was an old Soviet diplomat who said that, while the Soviet Union was becoming more like the Western countries all the time, the Western countries were becoming more like the Soviets at the same time. That time has now come.
This will lead to parents against children, children against parents, brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, stranger against stranger. Nobody will be able to trust anyone. We will become nations full of spies, only we will be spying on another.
re: I'm sorry, but your post just cracked me up.
That was the intent
OK. I didn't realize you were being sarcastic, as there are so many shills on this site who would post something like that seriously that it's hard to tell sometimes....
Damn typos.
Microsoft being choosing honesty, should be Microsoft choosing honesty.
I'm sorry, but your post just cracked me up. Microsoft being choosing honesty?
[sarcasme]
The next thing Ballmer will be telling us is that when they send the BSA around to different businesses that MS is having to refund licensing costs based on the holes in their legalese.
Poor MS. With all their billions of dollars they can't find a lawyer capable of writing a licensing scheme that isn't so full of holes that MS isn't being driven to the poor house by their predatory customers....
[/sarcasm]
At one small business I worked for the boss was so paranoid about seeing the attacks in the fail2ban email alerts that he ordered me to stop the attacks. I changed the SSH port and that stopped 100% of the attacks.
I was surprised by that. I thought it would stop the script kiddies but someone else would scan the ip address and find it.
This guy also had a cobbled-together desktop application he sold that was hard coded to download software updates via non-anonymous ftp. Well, surprise, surprise, we had a ton of attacks against the ftp port too. fail2ban was our only defense there. He would regularly call me agitated to the point of almost having a heart attack about seeing the fail2ban-generated emails--he insisted on having a copy of them sent to him--and would tell me I needed to stop those attacks from happening.
I can't tell you how many times I had to explain to him that I couldn't magically control internet traffic to open ports on the firewall. I don't think he ever really understood that. I think he always sort of had the idea in the back of his head that I was being less than truthful about that.
He was also too cheap to buy/let_me_build a decent firewall and a business class switch with vlans so we could actually implement some type of network security.
He just couldn't understand how having every machine he owned on the same network segment was a bad idea. He thought the fact that a switch doesn't broadcast traffic like a hub does was all the separation he needed. There was no convincing him otherwise either as I tried to many times.
Damn, where'd all that come from? I guess I'm still frustrated with that idiot even though I'm long gone from there.
And public keys aren't always that secure either. There are probably still plenty of servers with weak keys from the Debian debacle. What do you do with those users if password authentication is disallowed? Just lock them out and make them call you for a key reset?
Your assumption about Debian's problems with ssh is rather unlikely. The only way weak keys still exist is if the system hasn't been updated in the last couple of years.
When Debian pushed out the ssh update they also pushed out an automated check for weak passwords that ran before the update was finished. The script told the admin if any weak keys existed on the machine and that they needed to be updated immediately.
Of course, you could be right that there are admins stupid enough to have ignored all that. I saw a request for help on how to enable root login for ssh just a couple of weeks ago, and the poster didn't reply to posts saying that allowing root login was a very bad idea.
is who are these "security experts" going to be "defending" against? The way our government is going they are going to be working on removing the privacy of our own citizens, not defending against the threats out there in the big bad world-at-large.
Yes, he is. The burden of proof is on the accuser.
Does an assertion require supporting evidence? In a formal debate, yes.
On /.? If having logically supportable arguments were a requirement to post on /. even your post would fail to make the grade.
Why? You failed to post evidence from a recognized authority on debating to support your position....
It's very difficult to distinguish screw thread type by just looking at the head of screw. I've spent most of my life using one type of mechanical fastener or another, and there is no way I could swear what type of threads were on those screws just by looking at the heads.
Just because a screw has Phillips or Frearson flat head does not automatically mean it is a wood screw. Those heads are also very common on metal screws too, as a countersink is often used so screw heads will sit flush with the surface metal. Anyone who has ever worked with metal knows this.
Did the heads sit up a little in the picture? Yes, but that's because the mounting plate screw holes hadn't been countersunk yet. That's something that could easily happen on a very early prototype, and very easily be taken care of during the manufacturing process as the drilling of the holes and the countersinking would most likely be done in one process.
Microsoft Letting Patents Move To Linux Firms
move of some patents originally held by Microsoft to the Open Invention Network, where they will join a portfolio whose purpose is to inoculate open source companies against patent trolls.
Doesn't seem a lot like patent trolling from MS. They've pretty much always just cared about protecting their own ass from patent trolls - and now moving the patents to Open Invention Network, that does it for them and keep the technologies open to everyone else too.
Say what? MS "allowed" those patents to move to the OIN? What a misstating of the facts.
MS sold those patents, with instructions as to how they could be used by patent trolls, to a 3rd party known to deal with patent trolls. That 3rd party, without MS's knowledge, then contacted the OIN and told them about the patents. That led to the OIN buying the patents.
When doing a LSR run at Bonneville you have something like a half hour between runs. They let you refuel and check the vehicle over between runs for safety reasons. If you have a problem and can't make it back to the starting line on time you're toast. You one-way run doesn't count for anything.
I will disagree.
MD's are no good at all at diagnosing back ailments. I'm disabled due to my back and not a single MD could find a problem with it. However, I went to a chiropractor and he found the problem on the first visit. Why? Because a chiropractor takes back xrays with the patient standing upright which loads the spine as it is during everyday life. MD's take back xrays only with the patient lying down. This unloads the spine and makes not only my particular problem, but many more back problems invisible to an MD.
Now, why wouldn't an MD take an xray of a patient's back with it properly stressed? You got me, but no doctor I went to would do it. When an MD, an orthopedic surgeon, did see the xrays the chiropractor took his first question was "how long have your legs been numb?". After seeing those xrays he took me seriously, the only MD to do so.
Now, if all chiropractors are quacks how is it that a chiropractor diagnosed my problems immediately--the first visit--when I had already spent well in excess of $5,000 with MD's and all of them wrote me off a drug addict looking for pain meds because those idiots couldn't find a damn thing wrong with me.
Only an idiot would look for structural problems with the structure unloaded. The way the MD's look for back problems is like trying to diagnose an weakened beam without a stress test and no load on it. It's plain old stupid.
Also, that chiropractor's treatments allowed me to at least be able to walk more than a few yards at a time. He alleviated a lot of my pain, and was able to locate the exact points on my back which were painful. He used plain old common sense and took temperature measurements because where there is a lot of pain, there will be excess blood flow, which creates heat. No MD would have stooped to such logical ideas.
MD's, other than the orthopedic surgeon, did nothing but take lots of my money and then insult me because their diagnostic skills were lousy.
So what you're saying is that every OS ever released needs to have absolutely 0 lines of exploitable code; if it doesn't, then the OS maker needs to repair bug ever to appear on it. If you believe that, you should be foaming at the mouth just as much over Apple.
Every current OS needs to be supported by the manufacturer. MS refusing to fix security vulnerabilities in just because XP code has been around a long time is just wrong. They are still selling XP to customers so they still need to support it. If they had stopped selling XP entirely a few years ago that would be another matter. The way things are they are abandoning users of one of the products they currently sell.
Speaking of straw men, Microsoft doesn't sell computers.
Who said they did?
As I understand it, GM has partial ownership in its dealerships. That's why GM is closing down dealerships because it can't meet demands. The dealership I bought my last GM car from is closing... I'm don't remember when, but they sent letters out to all their customers about it.
So?
See what I said about GM and partial ownership.
Microsoft sells boxed copies to Best Buy and NewEgg. Once they have those copies, they own them until they re-sell them. Under the doctrine of first sale, Microsoft can't say "Stop selling these and throw them away." MS can offer to buy them back, but BB can choose whether or not to do that.
Dell buys licenses in bulk. The same rule as above applies to those. Microsoft can try to pressure them, but Dell is a gigantic company with lots of resources... and lawyers./quote?
So, you're claiming the doctrine of first sale says MS doesn't have to support its products? Wow. What a masterpiece of irrefutable logic. I guess that means that any product a retailer buys from a manufacturer to sell to consumers is never covered by any warranty. You do know that every household appliance, piece of computer hardware, garment, TV, stereo, entertainment center, piece of furniture, etc... would fall under your idiotic claim don't you? Every retailer of manufactured goods purchases every product they sell, before they sell it to their customers. So, I guess you'll never make a single warranty claim on any product you buy now from on as you believe every product you buy is covered by the doctrine of first sale. Thus no matter what you're buying, you're buying it second hand.
I can't believe the imbicilic arguments I see put forth when people try to defend the indefensible.
Stop beating your straw man to death. Your argument is not only irrelevant, it's completely misleading. Why? Because MS is still selling XP on new computers.
If you could go down to your local Chevy dealer today and buy a brand new 1998 Chevy Impala, and the AC broke on your new Impala Chevrolet the day after you drove it off the lot, General Motors would have to repair the AC under warranty. What's more, they would still have to be manufacturing replacement parts. How long a product has been on the market is irrelevant, if it is still being sold as a new product on a daily basis.
The above example holds true for XP. I can go down to BB, go online to NewEgg, or to any one of hundreds of different retailers, and buy a brand new netbook with XP on it. That means MS is still selling shiny new copies of XP. That makes the the age of the code in XP irrelevant as XP is still a current product.
that all depends on what Ramji means when he refers to MS's "positive momentum". Did MS become viewed more as more positively against open source because they tried to sell patents to patent trolls? Did they become viewed more positively against open source when instead of joining the existing open source community at large they created their own "open source" foundation?
I would have to say, yes. So, in that aspect Ramji is correct. MS has created increasing distrust of them. So, I guess that is a positive movement, as it is an increase, not a decrease.
DRM is a (partial) solution to a very real problem. That is without something in place to limit their ability to do so, people are, in general, selfish bastards who'll happily take advantage of someone elses work without compensating them for it. Again if you have a better means of solving this problem, then by all means tell us!
DRM removes the rights of honest people. For hundreds of years people have been buying books, and after reading them have either given them to someone else, sold them to a used book dealer, kept them on the shelf for decades, or bought books entirely as an investment. In spite of all these lawful activities publishers and authors have been writing books and making money the entire time. Now both publishers and authors seem to think they have some special right to stop all these lawful activities simply because the format has changed. Why? Do you think trampling on the rights of the consumer is the ethical solution to theft? If so, then I guess you are OK with being punished for things you've never done. You'll happily go to jail with your neighbor when he gets caught selling dope. Fair is fair. We have to put a stop to illegal activity don't we? Right? The best way to do that is to remove the rights of the individual. Right?
But punishing honest users seem wrong to me. Dont try and manage your users rights, they don't need your management. Instead turn your users into allies and make them LOYAL to you, and they'll flip you dollars every single time.
This is absolutely correct. I will not buy anything with DRM in it.
Why should I pay good money to encourage the eroding of my rights as an individual? I cannot see any possible outcome in which encouraging the eroding my own rights as an individual is in my best interest. That's just cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Why should I support someone whose first thought is that I'm a thief? I see no reason to pay for the dubious "privilege" of being insulted. Any merchant who attacks my integrity will never get any money from me.
I will, and do, go without rather than support anything to do with DRM. I vote with my wallet, and my wallet stays in my back pocket, when DRM involved.
It's not the fault of Linux that a commercial enterprise deliberately cripples the OS on the computer they manufacture. Had you been running something like Ubuntu NBR you would have found all those python packages in the Ubuntu repositories, and had your choice of versions. It wouldn't have been a problem at all.
Blame Asus, not Linux. Linux has all those things taken care of, but Asus doesn't think you need them so they don't provide them. They don't plan on their netbook being used in the way you wanted to use it. An "apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8" inside Ubuntu would have installed all the base packages for wxwidgets and also shown you any extra packages you might need for extended functionality by listing them as suggested packages.
In other words, your problem was caused by a combination of OEM's actions and your lack of knowledge about Linux, not Linux itself. There was a ready-made solution available, you just didn't know it existed. The same thing happens under Windows too when you don't know an option exists.
The problem with your line of logic is that it's off the mark/incomplete.
When a blind person walked into BK did you and your fellow employees throw stumbling blocks in his way? Did you make sure that if he wanted whopper he got a whopper junior, or somebody had dropped his food in on the floor or spit in it? Did BK teach you to do that?
Basically that's what MS and BB are teaching BB's employees to do. An ignorant user--a blind man--comes in and asks for help. Does the BB employee he asks for help have a moral obligation to honestly help that blind man? If not, why not? And if not, why don't they have a moral obligation to someone who can't "see" for themselves? Has honesty become such a discarded concept that society at large thinks no one has a moral obligation to be honest with their fellow man, especially those who are in need of honest help?
This is such a weak argument.
I haven't had to compile a piece of software more than 4 or 5 times in the 5 years--been MS-free for 3 of those 5--I've used Linux, and then the majority of those times it was because I wanted a custom kernel. I'm a Debian user and right now there are well in excess of 20,000 software packages available in Squeeze. Even when I can't find the exact version of software I want in the official Debian repositories I can usually find a .deb package out on the internet which I can download and install with dpkg, or the developers will have a repository which I can point to in /etc/apt/sources.list and then just import their gpg key and use apt-get just like I would from the Debian repositories.
All you do is show how ignorant about the current state of Linux maturity you really are to make such an argument. Nobody who is an experienced Linux user will accept your argument as valid. But, then again, knowledgeable Linux users aren't the real target for your posts. It must be quite an experience to blatantly play on people's ignorance and fears like that.
Ummmm....
In my opinion, the number of people slamming Linux by saying nobody uses it, are shills, and they certainly aren't Linux shills/fanboys/trolls. The mantra is too frequently used to be used by chance. It's also no secret that that many of these posters point to sources known to "revise" their numbers downward for everything/everyone who competes with MS while simultaneously "revising" the MS numbers upwards. Think that's just by happenstance? Think that those companies also accidentally take most of their statistics from corporations that are MS shops, thus guaranteeing that MS products will show little decline in numbers and Linux numbers will show little advancement? Now, tell me, what type of poster would you think would cite those stats as accurate and use them as being representative of reality? I see only type: a shill. And whom do those posters support? None other than MS. So, imo, the term "MS shill" is an accurate description.
When I first started using Linux about 5 years ago the online reports showed Linux with the same marketplace percentages then as now. However, anyone who is even halfway aware of Linux usage knows that Linux usage has grown a lot since then. I would even say it's grown exponentially in the last 5 years by my anecdotal experience and online observation. I see it being used locally many times more than I did 5 years ago. I also see many times more Linux help forums than there were back then, and those forums are busy too. That type of growth in numbers of sites and users/posters doesn't happen without a great growth in the numbers of Linux users.
Funny how both the online reports, and those who quote them, like to bury all evidence contrary to their assertions and point to obviously flawed methodologies for their support.
Has anyone really looked at the systems Dell is putting Linux on? I'm not so sure that Dell's choice of systems for Linux is not a sign of them wanting this project to fail. The vast majority of people who have requested Linux will have greater hardware needs/wants than what the basic entry-level Dell system provides as they are not entry level users. Yet, Dell is shipping only the most basic of systems available. IOW's, Dell is not selling systems designed to fulfill the needs/wants of the portion of the market that asked for Linux. From my experience of looking at bottom end Dell's I'd lay odds that the cheapest of the desktop systems available won't allow you to add something as basic an extra internal hard drive, and will have very few if any available PCI slots. What computer enthusiast/geek is going to be interested in that? I'm certainly not. I wouldn't recommend a system like to anyone I know if it had Windows on it, so why would I recommend it just because it now has Linux on it? How about their available notebooks? Not a wide screen format notebook available, and how many people actually buy a notebook with a 12" screen? I wouldn't. I wouldn't find it usable for my needs at all, and I do not see an abundance of notebooks with 12" screens in the area in which I live. I also doubt you'll sell many 12" notebooks to anyone over 30 as the eye strain gets to be a problem. It looks to me like they are trying to pass off their junk on the Linux community, and then if the Linux community says "I'm not interested" by not purchasing the few bottom end systems they are offering they can justify saying, "There is no market for computers with Linux on them." and MS will get an opportunity for more FUD about Linux.
On the same day we have /. articles about how Bill Gates predicted how content would be available for fair use and about how the DRM in MCE is shafting users by keeping them from viewing content.
Way to go Bill. You killed your own prediction. That is brilliant business planning....