[continuation of Microsoft's dominance which I have found through experience indirectly hinders my ability to choose the software and hardware that I can make use of]
"Sorry, not seeing it."
So your saying, you don't want the choice over which operating system you use, even if an alternative is faster, more secure, cheaper, more flexible, etc...
I'm not saying that the above alternative exists yet (though I think Ubuntu is it), the point is, if it ever did exist, the near monopoly of MS means you won't be able to make use of it (at least not without considerable pain). Surely the ability to choose what OS you run is of benefit to everyone (yes including MS users). After all, competition fosters innovation.
The music industry thinks it has it bad, wow that's rich! Think how the film processing industry is feeling about the internet and the digit revolution in general. There business is all but gone, are they complaining? No they are just getting down to the business of surviving in this new market place. Admittedly the sue your customers option isn't there, as they are doing nothing illegal, but lets be honest this approach isn't really helping the music industry anyway, is it?
The whole problem here, is that rather than accepting that the market place was changing, because of the internet, they tried desperately to cling on to obsolete business models. The results are, as they always are, disappointing on all fronts. If I was a majority shareholder in a Music label, I would go on a board of directors firing spree!!! How did they not see this coming? Their inept decisions have addicted an entire generation of their customers to free, illegal alternatives. Now over time the price of a thing should tend to its marginal cost, assuming a free market for the goods, so in terms of price for digital music, it was never looking good long term. However the potential for digital products comes from scale. If they made it easy and convenient to download music over the internet, people would buy far more music. What does it matter whether people spend £15 a month on 2 CDs or £15 a month on 150 MP3 downloads?
Now the really funny thing about all this, is that the movie and TV industries are basically following the same path as the music industry, but the markets changes are delayed, because the files are that much bigger. However in a lot of ways the Video industry is making all the same mistakes as the Music industry. They are using DRM 100% of the time, they are finding it difficult to monetise a product that is still very difficult to use due to incompatibility issues, lack of perceived value (due to the DRM again) and generally inconvenient as you usually have to install a different program for each media source. Come on guys, its not to late to pull your heads out of your a**es! There is money just waiting to be made, you just have to do it the internet way!
On a side note there is one other thing that the music industry could do to maintain the status quo, at least for a while. If they could just find a way of making the video files bigger so they take longer to download. I know, lets push High Definition!!! So maybe they do know something, but mark my words boys, your only delaying the inevitable.
I use Ubuntu on my only computer, I don't dual boot, etc...
This means that whether I want to pay or not I can't.
There is simply no way for me to legally buy a watchable copy of any TV shows to watch on my computer. As an example of my willingness to pay for things I want to see on my computer, yesterday I bought webisodes 1-8 of Sanctuary (www.sanctuaryforall.com) for $6.99. The downloads are either quicktime or windows media, neither with DRM so they work just fine on my Ubuntu laptop and I am a happy customer waiting for the next episodes to be made.
That's the point, if you can't buy something, then your illegally downloading it can't cost them money, can it?
Yep I sent them an email, quoting the legal (implied warranty) legal bits above and stating quite flatly that as far as I am concerned this sort of behaviour in unacceptable from a business that counts me as their customer.
I also have a personal interest in this as I have recently (last three months) bought two Acer laptops from PC World and have installed Ubuntu on both of them.
I think the point here is that swapping one region over from LAMP to MS will cost money, sure, but so will having to try and work around LAMP every time you try to implement anything Globally.
The obvious answer, is that they should consider MONO very carefully, as it is available for Windows as well and the applications they create will be truly cross platform. In addition the coding differences between MONO and.NET are small, so developers don't have to start from scratch either. I am guessing that they may not know or have looked in detail at MONO and here is where you come in. They need to have MONO described to them in language they understand, including the negatives points. When they compare the situation with the costs and benefits of MS, I am sure they will go with MONO, which will allow them to consider using other Desktop and Server platforms in the future, should the IT market shift.
Well that's what I would say anyway.
As an added tip, I would try to steer clear of talking about things from the software point of view. For example, don't even mention open source until asked, just talk in terms of MONO, supported and provided by "XXXXX". If they ask about the license, tell them it is open source obviously, but ensure that they know what this is in business terms, not software terms. This means no saying "we can fix bugs ourselves" or "community support forums", etc... As these sound like they will cost money, by taking people away from other activities, they won't get a good reception with upper management.
Of course what upper management frequently don't understand, is that with MS, when you have problems, as you invariably do with all software solutions, it still costs you time (and therefor money), just more of it. After all, at least with LAMP, you didn't pay for the problem, in stead you just pay for the solution. Though even here, half the time your own engineers and developers will come up with the answer, before the technical support service gets back to them.
I think that often the problem with evangelizing LAMP in the business environment, is that Geeks don't speak good "business" and upper management don't speak good "geek". Just to compound the problem, both sides are convinced that they know what the other side is talking about.
Absolutely, I buy music from emusic.com every month, but wouldn't touch the DRM'd rubbish that passes for music, from the "big four" record labels. In fact I wouldn't even download it from a P2P network. Personally I think this whole campaign by the music industry would go a lot better if they presented it as public health advise.
"Our music will rot your brain and turn your ears to mush! DON'T DOWNLOAD our music at all, it is VERY bad for your health!!!!!!!!!!!!!" BTW music industry, feel free to use this in your up coming ads!
Why people don't just have a look around at some of the good music that is available from independent labels I don't know, but if it isn't on national radio every 5 minutes they just don't seem to be able to buy (or download) it. Lemmings!
In Dell.com click on any link, for example "Dell Home and Home Office", then hover your mouse over either either "Desktops" or "Notebooks" in the menu bar-like thing, towards the top of the web page and you will see an option called "Open-Source PCs". That's the magic link!
In addition to this, every five or six refreshes (the banner changes automatically every few seconds on Windows, but not on my Ubuntu laptop for some reason) of the Dell.com front page shows a banner thingy saying, Ubuntu by popular demand, or something like that. If you click on the banner, then it takes you straight there!
Yeh, but currently Nvidia's Linux drivers have a problem with turbocache and Beryl (Black Windows Bug).
This was driving me crazy for ages, so I would rather have the Intel graphics chip anyway, it will work better with the only application that I use that really taxes the graphics card at all on my laptop (Beryl).
On top of that Intel have open source drivers, so the support will only get better (even if the chips don't).
There appears to be $100 price difference between the base Windows and Linux notebook model (with the Linux model being cheaper obviously).
In my opinion this a very substantial price difference, especially when you consider that the Linux laptop will ship with the modem drivers paid for and installed by Dell (according to Direct2Dell). Sounds like a very good deal to me!
IMHO Dell are trying to really have a go at fulfilling the needs of their Linux using customers, ok they aren't pushing these to Windows users, but why should they, they make their money by selling hardware, not operating systems and I am quite sure that provided you buy Dell, they don't care what the OS is.
I reckon that the notebook in particular will sell better than they expect, because in the past a lot of people installed linux on an ex-Windows notebook they already had. If it doesn't work, it is annoying, but not the end of the world. If you shell out $600 -$700 for a new notebook, how annoyed would you be to find that you couldn't get the wireless working. After all, it isn't like you can easily change the offending bit of hardware, like you can on a desktop. On top of all that if you install Linux on a new notebook, most of the time, you void the warranty. So what happens when you need to replace the old Linux installed Windows notebook with a new one, that you now know you want Linux on, instead of Windows? Well it looks like you buy Dell, if you want a good deal.
For people that want a Linux notebook this a safe bet that actually costs $100 less than the Windows equivalent and everything will work, even the modem. Dell should be congratulated on their efforts for Linux users and the speed with which they have made this happen.
Once these are released in the UK, I am absolutely going to buy one, no question!
Slashdot Mirror
[continuation of Microsoft's dominance which I have found through experience indirectly hinders my ability to choose the software and hardware that I can make use of]
"Sorry, not seeing it."
So your saying, you don't want the choice over which operating system you use, even if an alternative is faster, more secure, cheaper, more flexible, etc...
I'm not saying that the above alternative exists yet (though I think Ubuntu is it), the point is, if it ever did exist, the near monopoly of MS means you won't be able to make use of it (at least not without considerable pain). Surely the ability to choose what OS you run is of benefit to everyone (yes including MS users). After all, competition fosters innovation.
The music industry thinks it has it bad, wow that's rich! Think how the film processing industry is feeling about the internet and the digit revolution in general. There business is all but gone, are they complaining? No they are just getting down to the business of surviving in this new market place. Admittedly the sue your customers option isn't there, as they are doing nothing illegal, but lets be honest this approach isn't really helping the music industry anyway, is it?
The whole problem here, is that rather than accepting that the market place was changing, because of the internet, they tried desperately to cling on to obsolete business models. The results are, as they always are, disappointing on all fronts. If I was a majority shareholder in a Music label, I would go on a board of directors firing spree!!! How did they not see this coming? Their inept decisions have addicted an entire generation of their customers to free, illegal alternatives. Now over time the price of a thing should tend to its marginal cost, assuming a free market for the goods, so in terms of price for digital music, it was never looking good long term. However the potential for digital products comes from scale. If they made it easy and convenient to download music over the internet, people would buy far more music. What does it matter whether people spend £15 a month on 2 CDs or £15 a month on 150 MP3 downloads?
Now the really funny thing about all this, is that the movie and TV industries are basically following the same path as the music industry, but the markets changes are delayed, because the files are that much bigger. However in a lot of ways the Video industry is making all the same mistakes as the Music industry. They are using DRM 100% of the time, they are finding it difficult to monetise a product that is still very difficult to use due to incompatibility issues, lack of perceived value (due to the DRM again) and generally inconvenient as you usually have to install a different program for each media source. Come on guys, its not to late to pull your heads out of your a**es! There is money just waiting to be made, you just have to do it the internet way!
On a side note there is one other thing that the music industry could do to maintain the status quo, at least for a while. If they could just find a way of making the video files bigger so they take longer to download. I know, lets push High Definition!!! So maybe they do know something, but mark my words boys, your only delaying the inevitable.
I use Ubuntu on my only computer, I don't dual boot, etc...
This means that whether I want to pay or not I can't.
There is simply no way for me to legally buy a watchable copy of any TV shows to watch on my computer. As an example of my willingness to pay for things I want to see on my computer, yesterday I bought webisodes 1-8 of Sanctuary (www.sanctuaryforall.com) for $6.99. The downloads are either quicktime or windows media, neither with DRM so they work just fine on my Ubuntu laptop and I am a happy customer waiting for the next episodes to be made.
That's the point, if you can't buy something, then your illegally downloading it can't cost them money, can it?
Yep I sent them an email, quoting the legal (implied warranty) legal bits above and stating quite flatly that as far as I am concerned this sort of behaviour in unacceptable from a business that counts me as their customer.
I also have a personal interest in this as I have recently (last three months) bought two Acer laptops from PC World and have installed Ubuntu on both of them.
I think the point here is that swapping one region over from LAMP to MS will cost money, sure, but so will having to try and work around LAMP every time you try to implement anything Globally.
.NET are small, so developers don't have to start from scratch either. I am guessing that they may not know or have looked in detail at MONO and here is where you come in. They need to have MONO described to them in language they understand, including the negatives points. When they compare the situation with the costs and benefits of MS, I am sure they will go with MONO, which will allow them to consider using other Desktop and Server platforms in the future, should the IT market shift.
The obvious answer, is that they should consider MONO very carefully, as it is available for Windows as well and the applications they create will be truly cross platform. In addition the coding differences between MONO and
Well that's what I would say anyway.
As an added tip, I would try to steer clear of talking about things from the software point of view. For example, don't even mention open source until asked, just talk in terms of MONO, supported and provided by "XXXXX". If they ask about the license, tell them it is open source obviously, but ensure that they know what this is in business terms, not software terms. This means no saying "we can fix bugs ourselves" or "community support forums", etc... As these sound like they will cost money, by taking people away from other activities, they won't get a good reception with upper management.
Of course what upper management frequently don't understand, is that with MS, when you have problems, as you invariably do with all software solutions, it still costs you time (and therefor money), just more of it. After all, at least with LAMP, you didn't pay for the problem, in stead you just pay for the solution. Though even here, half the time your own engineers and developers will come up with the answer, before the technical support service gets back to them.
I think that often the problem with evangelizing LAMP in the business environment, is that Geeks don't speak good "business" and upper management don't speak good "geek". Just to compound the problem, both sides are convinced that they know what the other side is talking about.
To point 4
Absolutely, I buy music from emusic.com every month, but wouldn't touch the DRM'd rubbish that passes for music, from the "big four" record labels. In fact I wouldn't even download it from a P2P network. Personally I think this whole campaign by the music industry would go a lot better if they presented it as public health advise.
"Our music will rot your brain and turn your ears to mush! DON'T DOWNLOAD our music at all, it is VERY bad for your health!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
BTW music industry, feel free to use this in your up coming ads!
Why people don't just have a look around at some of the good music that is available from independent labels I don't know, but if it isn't on national radio every 5 minutes they just don't seem to be able to buy (or download) it. Lemmings!
In Dell.com click on any link, for example "Dell Home and Home Office", then hover your mouse over either either "Desktops" or "Notebooks" in the menu bar-like thing, towards the top of the web page and you will see an option called "Open-Source PCs". That's the magic link!
In addition to this, every five or six refreshes (the banner changes automatically every few seconds on Windows, but not on my Ubuntu laptop for some reason) of the Dell.com front page shows a banner thingy saying, Ubuntu by popular demand, or something like that. If you click on the banner, then it takes you straight there!
Yeh, but currently Nvidia's Linux drivers have a problem with turbocache and Beryl (Black Windows Bug).
This was driving me crazy for ages, so I would rather have the Intel graphics chip anyway, it will work better with the only application that I use that really taxes the graphics card at all on my laptop (Beryl).
On top of that Intel have open source drivers, so the support will only get better (even if the chips don't).
There appears to be $100 price difference between the base Windows and Linux notebook model (with the Linux model being cheaper obviously).
In my opinion this a very substantial price difference, especially when you consider that the Linux laptop will ship with the modem drivers paid for and installed by Dell (according to Direct2Dell). Sounds like a very good deal to me!
IMHO Dell are trying to really have a go at fulfilling the needs of their Linux using customers, ok they aren't pushing these to Windows users, but why should they, they make their money by selling hardware, not operating systems and I am quite sure that provided you buy Dell, they don't care what the OS is.
I reckon that the notebook in particular will sell better than they expect, because in the past a lot of people installed linux on an ex-Windows notebook they already had. If it doesn't work, it is annoying, but not the end of the world. If you shell out $600 -$700 for a new notebook, how annoyed would you be to find that you couldn't get the wireless working. After all, it isn't like you can easily change the offending bit of hardware, like you can on a desktop. On top of all that if you install Linux on a new notebook, most of the time, you void the warranty. So what happens when you need to replace the old Linux installed Windows notebook with a new one, that you now know you want Linux on, instead of Windows? Well it looks like you buy Dell, if you want a good deal.
For people that want a Linux notebook this a safe bet that actually costs $100 less than the Windows equivalent and everything will work, even the modem. Dell should be congratulated on their efforts for Linux users and the speed with which they have made this happen.
Once these are released in the UK, I am absolutely going to buy one, no question!