I never meant to sugest that you or anyone refrain from expressing your opinions. I was merely reacting to my perception that many of the posts that I read arbitrarily dismissed Mossberg's points because they were predisposed towards a pro-linux view.
My point was that if "we" (the open source community) don't remain objective in our response to criticism then we are only hurting ourselves.
We're not doing Zaurus and favors by dismissing Mossberg's comments as ignorant bunk. Mossberg is very well regarded and, more importantly, influences a huge section of Zaurus' intended market segment. From what I've seen, behind articles that have been dumbed-down to the technical level of the average WSJ reader is a journalist that really understands his stuff.
This is a first iteration product and if it only manages to appeal to the folks here on/. we might not get to see it in an improved second iteration. Let's drop the assumption that Linux products can do no bad, start accepting constructive criticism and focus on making products, software, etc. that will force praise for Linux and our community from even the most skeptical.
Closed Source is good for corporations, bad for us
on
Opposing Open Source?
·
· Score: 1
Simple rules:
1) Open Source is good for the consumer.
2) If companies can pull it off they are better off with a proprietary solution.
I'm as big a fan of open source as anyone but I'll laugh at anyone who tells me that Microsoft could be making more money for its shareholders by putting all of its software under open source licenses.
Open is great for building support, closed is great for holding control and making money. Look to the formation of standards - most are a compromise between open and closed.
Most companies balance open with closed - giving up what they have to in order to gain market acceptance but holding on to what they can in order to generate excess profits. Look to the Java standard or even the new.NET standards.
Open Source Software provides a more efficient business model: better software for less investment and less cost. However, any company that chooses open source when it can suceed with a closed model (not many companies can do this) is foregoing profit and neglecting their shareholders.
It becomes obvious how difficult it would be to legislate this issue when you first try to define what spam is. I'm sure there won't be a consensus to be found on this forum.
If I email a friend but got his/her email from another friend, is that spam? What if I email someone who posts to slashdot in order to talk about the new version of Perl? What if I email everyone who posts on slashdot for the same reason?
If I email a professor who's class I attended 4 years ago to ask a question/say hello, is that spam? Does it matter where I got the email address from? Does it matter if I'm calling just to chat or if I want to sell something?
If it matters whether or not I'm trying to sell things, then is all economic-related email not spam? What about students sending out an invitation to fill out an on-line survey for academic purposes?
Where do you draw the line between conversation/speech and selling porn?
Thanks alot. That took care of the problem. I assume this is a known bug that they are working on? This seems like a good way to turn off lots of potential users.
Well, just installed M6 and I can't get the thing to start! The mighty mozilla intro picture comes up and then the program freezes.
I've been using the nightly builds all along and have been pretty happy and life has been progressing nicely. When Netscape 6 came out I took it for a spin and had the same freeze problem, I wrote that off as the fault of those Netscape idiots and never worried about it. Now its obvious that the same N6 code that was causing me problems has found its way into M6.
Does anyone know what might be going on? How can I fix this? I'm going to have to go back to an older install in the meantime, but I want my M6 fix. I'm having this problem w a Win 98 laptop. Thanks for any advice (and let me know what board I ought to be turning to for this help outside of/.)
I've lived in China for the last four years. I can verify the comments made by Serf (many sites are blocked) and add that there were originally attempts to block porn sites in addition to news sites. I beleive Beijing gave up because 1. there were too many sites to keep up with and more importantly, 2. they really didn't care that much. I think that some major sites such as playboy might still be blocked. Beijing is currently trying to control the content of sites within China. There was lots of controversy over Chinese sites with foreign investment such as China.com, Zhaodaole, and many more. After the WTO agreement was made there was supposed to be moves made to allow foreign investment in such ventures. However, Beijing is now trying to control content by two ways: 1. All sites with content must be majority owned by the Ministry of Information (I might be wrong about the exact bureau but you get the idea) and 2. All "journalists" posting content on the net must be certified by Beijing. However, it looks like anything that might possibly irritate Beijing might be labeled as content. So you might have to be a journalist in order to post your own web page. I really don't see how Beijing thinks it will be able to control all of this as the internet continues to spread. I'm convinced the only reason they are not even more parinoid is because they don't really understand the power of the web. I think it is just a matter of time before the routers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (the three international routers) are changed from blocking a certain list of sites to having a list of approved sites that can be passed through.
Slashdot Mirror
I never meant to sugest that you or anyone refrain from expressing your opinions. I was merely reacting to my perception that many of the posts that I read arbitrarily dismissed Mossberg's points because they were predisposed towards a pro-linux view.
My point was that if "we" (the open source community) don't remain objective in our response to criticism then we are only hurting ourselves.
We're not doing Zaurus and favors by dismissing Mossberg's comments as ignorant bunk. Mossberg is very well regarded and, more importantly, influences a huge section of Zaurus' intended market segment. From what I've seen, behind articles that have been dumbed-down to the technical level of the average WSJ reader is a journalist that really understands his stuff.
/. we might not get to see it in an improved second iteration. Let's drop the assumption that Linux products can do no bad, start accepting constructive criticism and focus on making products, software, etc. that will force praise for Linux and our community from even the most skeptical.
This is a first iteration product and if it only manages to appeal to the folks here on
Simple rules:
.NET standards.
1) Open Source is good for the consumer.
2) If companies can pull it off they are better off with a proprietary solution.
I'm as big a fan of open source as anyone but I'll laugh at anyone who tells me that Microsoft could be making more money for its shareholders by putting all of its software under open source licenses.
Open is great for building support, closed is great for holding control and making money. Look to the formation of standards - most are a compromise between open and closed.
Most companies balance open with closed - giving up what they have to in order to gain market acceptance but holding on to what they can in order to generate excess profits. Look to the Java standard or even the new
Open Source Software provides a more efficient business model: better software for less investment and less cost. However, any company that chooses open source when it can suceed with a closed model (not many companies can do this) is foregoing profit and neglecting their shareholders.
It becomes obvious how difficult it would be to legislate this issue when you first try to define what spam is. I'm sure there won't be a consensus to be found on this forum.
If I email a friend but got his/her email from another friend, is that spam? What if I email someone who posts to slashdot in order to talk about the new version of Perl? What if I email everyone who posts on slashdot for the same reason?
If I email a professor who's class I attended 4 years ago to ask a question/say hello, is that spam? Does it matter where I got the email address from? Does it matter if I'm calling just to chat or if I want to sell something?
If it matters whether or not I'm trying to sell things, then is all economic-related email not spam? What about students sending out an invitation to fill out an on-line survey for academic purposes?
Where do you draw the line between conversation/speech and selling porn?
The mighty mozilla logo in the upper right has been replaced with the Netscape N. Why?
Thanks alot. That took care of the problem. I assume this is a known bug that they are working on? This seems like a good way to turn off lots of potential users.
Well, just installed M6 and I can't get the thing to start! The mighty mozilla intro picture comes up and then the program freezes.
/.)
I've been using the nightly builds all along and have been pretty happy and life has been progressing nicely. When Netscape 6 came out I took it for a spin and had the same freeze problem, I wrote that off as the fault of those Netscape idiots and never worried about it. Now its obvious that the same N6 code that was causing me problems has found its way into M6.
Does anyone know what might be going on? How can I fix this? I'm going to have to go back to an older install in the meantime, but I want my M6 fix. I'm having this problem w a Win 98 laptop. Thanks for any advice (and let me know what board I ought to be turning to for this help outside of
I've lived in China for the last four years. I can verify the comments made by Serf (many sites are blocked) and add that there were originally attempts to block porn sites in addition to news sites. I beleive Beijing gave up because 1. there were too many sites to keep up with and more importantly, 2. they really didn't care that much. I think that some major sites such as playboy might still be blocked. Beijing is currently trying to control the content of sites within China. There was lots of controversy over Chinese sites with foreign investment such as China.com, Zhaodaole, and many more. After the WTO agreement was made there was supposed to be moves made to allow foreign investment in such ventures. However, Beijing is now trying to control content by two ways: 1. All sites with content must be majority owned by the Ministry of Information (I might be wrong about the exact bureau but you get the idea) and 2. All "journalists" posting content on the net must be certified by Beijing. However, it looks like anything that might possibly irritate Beijing might be labeled as content. So you might have to be a journalist in order to post your own web page. I really don't see how Beijing thinks it will be able to control all of this as the internet continues to spread. I'm convinced the only reason they are not even more parinoid is because they don't really understand the power of the web. I think it is just a matter of time before the routers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (the three international routers) are changed from blocking a certain list of sites to having a list of approved sites that can be passed through.