Folks, I know this is flogging a dead horse, but let's see
if this time the suggestion takes hold. How about this plan
for dealing with spam spewing botnets:
1) If you're a Microsoft Power User (MPU) and you do the
normal security precautions go ahead and use your Microsoft
OS of choice -- you know *your* box isn't going to get
infected because you're on top of the security issues.
2) If you're a MPU and you've got family or friends who
are *NOT* MPUs and they ask you for advice why not make
the "reasonable" suggestion:
a) Get a Mac OS X box if they're looking for a new computer
and you want them to have a decent Desktop environment with
decent default network security. This minimizes *your* sysadmin
requirements and *increases* their odds of not becoming yet
another Windows Spam Spewing bot (WSSB).
b) If they already have a Windows PC or have recently purchased
a windows PC why not suggest that
i) for *non-networking* activities go ahead and use the Windows
OS *if* that is what they are comfortable with, things like say
spreadsheets, or word processing, Adobe Photoshop, etc.
ii) for *networking* activities like web browsing, checking
e-mail, watching flash videos, irc, etc. go ahead and install say
Ubuntu, or Open SuSe or whatever Linux flavor *you* are familiar
with and teach them how to use it. That way you have reduced for
*you* the sysadmins network security headaches.
Ideally, I would recommend to make the base OS a Linux distro,
and run the Window OS in VMware or Xen virtual box. That way they
don't have to reboot when switching between network based
activities (Linux) and non-network based stuff (Windows).
Microsoft should be happy they still get a sale. You should be
happy that your family and/or friends are still using Windows for
most stuff. And the rest of us who don't use windows in any
networking capacity can be happy that there is 1 (or more) fewer
WSSB out there spamming us with stuff we don't care about.
>What makes anyone think that the next release of an OS is going to be faster?
I can't speak for everyone, but as a Linux user I've been conditioned to expect the OS to get better (and yeah that does include the OS to be faster) with each iteration. I don't know if you follow Linux kernel developments but some of the big changes over the years in Linux were things such as how to deal with multiprocessors (when to migrate, how to migrate processes, load balancing, spin locks, semaphores, etc.) and how to schedule processes so each process gets its fair share of the cpu resources (completely fair schedule), what to do with processes that request gigawatts of ram that doesn't exist on the machine, and what to do if the system finally runs out of memory + swap (out of memory killer "oom").
These aren't all new things, but as a Linux user for 11 years I can tell you that the history I've observed has been for the most part to make things 1) work then 2) work better then 3) work faster.
> But for 98% of the population, they don't *want* to touch that.
You're not the first to say something like this and I tended to accept statements like that at face value. No longer. Based on my personal experience and those of my friends and coworkers, GUIS are nothing more than eye candy designed to "convince" people they know how to use computers.
I would argue that GUIS are to computers as a TV Show is to Reality: Glamorous, Cool, but not the real thing. All that guis do in my opinion is to teach people how to be helpless when the solution to a problem can't be found by clicking on a button.
So please, can anybody cite a real survey in which the majority of people when asked whether or not having access to a console terminal was useful said "no, it was not." I can't imagine people saying, "Damn it! I refuse to use SuperOS until they remove all console terminals from their OS!"
That just doesn't make sense. That's like saying "Damn it! I refuse to drive a Ferari until they remove the GPS unit!!"
Based on the announcements on Windows 7 and the reviews I thought too that they had improved the performance of Windows 7 vs. Vista. Then I found an article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols that might explain the "glowing" reviews at Microsoft's PDC. It seems that Microsoft may have permanently "loaned" $2,000 laptops with 2.4GHz Intel dual cores + 3GB ram to the "reviewers" to review Windows 7. If so, that's not the first time they tried that stunt (Vista was the first that I recall). So in the answer to the question, "Can a leopard change its spots?" if the above is correct then the answer in Microsoft's case seems to be "No."
Here's the url:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_bribes_again
The thing that gets me is: was this a bait and switch to get people to install siverlight to see something that sounded really interesting? When I saw the "Need to upgrade browser/install siverlight" I felt nothing but digust.
Here is an opportunity for Microsoft to demonstrate something cool and what do they do to all the folks who can never get silverlight to run on their operating systens? Yeah, tell them "Piss off! You're unclean! You can't watch our video!" That's a great way Microsoft to try convince folks to give your technology a try. Way to go Ohio.
The second thing I noticed was the sudden feeling that this was a poor imitation of Google Tech talks, in which you can watch the videos in any operating system, because google is more interested in getting the word out than trying to "sell" or "slip under the radar" some new multimedia transport mechanism.
Problem is, that this could *still* become another worm if enough Windows users don't apply the patch. Does windows update guarantee that this patch will eventually be applied to every Windows machine?
I think the better way to look at the problem is to start with this question:
"How do you know you can trust *any* software project?"
Well, how do you do answer that question? There are lots of ways of answering this question but the one that stands out for me is this: 1) Trust, like respect, has to be earned. Has Project "foo" screwed me over in the past? Yes or no, no equivocation? 2) If the answer is Yes, was it an isolated event? Was it an accident? Did the project people repair their mistake quickly, or did they let it linger and left me hanging?
a) If it was an isolated event, and they stayed on top of it, then yeah, I'll give them a second chance.
b) If it was an isolated event and they left me hanging, screw them, they're out. Next!
c) If it was not an isolated event, then that's it, they're out permanently. My time is limited and I can't afford to wait for them to reform themselves.
Now that's *my* criteria for deciding. Your criteria is... your criteria. Based upon *my* criteria and my *experience* I can say the following:
1) Most of the Free Software (GPL, MPL, BSD, etc. licensed) that *I* use is excellent --- it does what I want, it's well documented *for me*, it has a good *publicly documented* record of fixing bugs and staying on top of things.
2) Most of the Proprietary Licensed software that *I* have used has been crap in the sense either it does *not* do what I require, or it's buggy, or it's poorly documented, or it has legal encumbrances that make it problematic to use, etc.
I want to be very careful here. I am *not* asserting that most Free Software is awesome and most proprietary software is crap. I'm only asserting that the software that *I* have *tried* from those models of software licensing have pretty much been: Free Software == Awesome, and Proprietary == Crap.
Now *why* is this true? Because I don't use Joe Random Free Software and don't use much Joe Proprietary Software.
The Free Software has been vetted by my OS of choice: Debian Linux. If it's in Debian's repositories then I'll give the software a shot. If it's not in Debian's repositories I don't want to look at it. I'm not interested in ever having to manually download, configure, make, make install software. I trust Debian as my big ass filter of crapware. If some Debian developer took the time to package some Free Software then it must be good, because Debian's guidelines for getting software into the repository is not for the faint of heart. That and the fact that their bucket brigade of QA ensures that when the software makes it into Debian's stable branch it might be obsolete but it's rock hard stable.
I don't use much proprietary software today. The only thing that comes to mind is Adobe's flash player. I used Microsoft Windows before Windows 2000 came out and by that point I had given up on them for being flaky once too many times. I used NVidia's kernel module for accelerated 3D graphics, and it was ok for a while, until I got burned once too many times when I upgraded Linux kernels and Nvidia hadn't kept up with Linux. The final straw was when Nvidia declared my hardware as legacy. In the case of Adobe's flash player, it's gotten better I think. The only thing that bothered me about it was its tendency to crash iceweasel, and not work very well with konqueror, and stealing audio (oss sound driver I think). The only reason it's still with me is because of youtube and because I'm waiting for gnash (Free Software) to be stable enough and not suck up too much CPU usage.
Baldness is not a disease. It's a physical trait that distinguishes some males from others. You can find baldness in pretty much any ethnic group. The big question to ask is: Does being bald help you get some sex, or does it hurt your chances? If it hurt, you would expect it to die out as most women would turn down a bald guy *if* being bald was a turn off. If it helped excessively, then the (vast) majority of men would have the baldness gene. If it neither helped nor hindered a guy's chance to get sex then you would expect the percentage of baldness to be stable. Anyone got statistics on the percentage of men who were bald for say the past 2 centuries?
The deal is this: 1 in 7 males will start having significant hair loss in late teens/early twenties. 3 out 7 males will *eventually* go bald (either early or eventually assuming they make it to their 50's/60's.)
The point of this article is that a) if you've got the baldness gene on the X chromosone, you're one of the 3 out 7 guys. b) if you *also* have the 2 variants on chromosone 20 then you're in the 1 out 7 guys who's going to lose his early and severely. c) if you don't have the baldness gene on the X chromosone and the 2 variants on chromosone 20, you're one of those 4 out 7 bastards who will have a full head of hair until they die (unless they shave it off of course out of sympathy for the rest of us who are follicle challenged.)
>Then there's Microsoft Research, which actually comes >up with some great stuff, though most of it is not >(yet) implementable on a commercial scale.
I first heard about Microsoft Research somewhere around Jan. 2008. A friend had informed me that some brilliant math guy, a winner of the Field's medal (Math equivalent to a Nobel Prize) had gone off to work at Microsoft Research. I was impressed and appalled at the same time. That a Field's medalist would go to work there gave Microsoft Research prestige. That a Field's medalist would go to work for Microsoft given the nasty history of Microsoft's business practices at the time was depressing. It was all about the money I guess.
Fast forward almost 11 years. 11 years ok. Let me say it one more time: 11 YEARS. What exactly has Microsoft Research produced in those 11 years that is truly noteworthy? Please don't tell me about some pie in the sky ideas. Just name 1 application that's actually used in the field that they have produced that's actually impressive. As a comparison, Bell Labs produced, I don't know, the integrated circuit, or say a bazillion Nobel prize winners.
Yes, I'm sure that there are Nobel prize winners working at Microsoft Research, but how many got their prizes *by* working there? Is it a farm to produce great new ideas, or is it a resting home for famous people to lend their names and prestige?
I'm ignorant here. Please help me to disspell any misconceptions I have about Microsoft Research. Show me that I'm not being fair to them, that I'm holding them to a higher standard than say Bell Labs, or IBM research, or Cray Research, or Xerox's Palo Alto research. Help me to understand.
>By keeping it simple and compatible, we avoid boring rewrites and promote sharing
I was with you up until this point. I respect folks who use or develop for the BSD family of operating systems, especially the OpenSSH folks. But on the point of promoting sharing you're just plain wrong.
The BSD licenses do *not* promote sharing. They promote *taking*. Sharing and taking, don't they mean the same thing? No, they don't. This guy's company is a beautiful example. They *can* take but they don't want and they don't HAVE to share. In fact, they are trying to *ensure* the developer does *not* share further.
GPL licenses promote sharing and therefore taking. The folks who don't like the GPL can be described succintly as follows: "The assholes who want to take without giving back." That's why I prefer the GPL license over the BSD. In the BSD world you have to *hope* that everyone is a good person and not an asshole. In the GPL world, the assholes are automatically kept out.
Hey,
Well let's consider IBM. Would you agree that IBM is a for-profit organization? Yes? They do like making money? Yes?
What about eclipse, a development environment that was begun with by IBM that's platform neutral under an open source license no requirement to use IBM products tied in.
Maybe *you* should tell the IBM shareholders about this.
How about SUN inc. Are they a for profit company? Yes? How about OpenOffice, java, Open Solaris? Hmmm?
Any mandatory tie ins to SUN products? Yes? Are they available in a Community friendly license? Yes? Maybe *you* should tell the SUN shareholders about it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story
The key thing here is this article is about the *Gates Foundation*, but __notice__ what the Gates Foundation is concerned about:
The foundation did not respond to written questions about the problems of patients who cannot obtain needed AIDS drugs due to pharmaceutical company policies.
Meanwhile, the foundation holds its grant recipients to a far higher standard than the drug companies on which it bets large portions of its endowment. Its grant form says it expects recipients "to exercise their intellectual property rights in a manner consistent with the stated goals of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote the ⦠availability of inventions for public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost."
Some critics say the foundation's failure to use its own investments "to promote ⦠public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost" might trace back to the source of most of its money â" Microsoft â" which Bill Gates serves as chairman.
"The Gates Foundation is in a position to change the dynamic, to make sure that drugs get first to the places they are most needed," said Daniel Berman, deputy director in South Africa for Doctors Without Borders. "But it conflicts with the interests of Microsoft."
>for all their evils and wrongs, there's >been a few good things that have come from them (Microsoft).
I've been keeping an eye on the shenanigans that Microsoft has been pulling for about 12 years. I would say I'm pretty current on their bad behavior, but to be honest, can you (or anyone for that matter) give me some example of "good things" to come out of Microsoft that were a) Not hostile to Open Source Licenses, with GPL being the primary victim. b) Didn't have strings attached, aka, can only be used on Microsoft products, or Microsoft gets a $$ cut of every unit.
I guess the problem is what do you mean by "good things"? Good things *to me* mean things that are friendly to the community, share and share-alike for example. It's why I love the GPL and why I prefer Linux over any proprietary OS no matter how much eye candy it might have.
An obvious example might be the "Bill and Melinda Foundation" or as I prefer to think of it, the "Melinda and Bill Foundation.". There's a couple of problems with it though: 1) It's not Microsoft's charity, it's the Gates' foundation. 2) It has strings attached --- you have to use Microsoft products regardless of whether or not cheaper, better products can be found with the donated money.
Which part of the population are you talking about?
If it's *Joe User* then all that the user needs is something that he/she can use to view webpages, read e-mail, listen to music, maybe watch video. These are all things that this device can do right now + wireless and for just $98!!! Holy crap!! It's a keeper! Joe User doesn't do much with computers, that's why.... they're called "Joe User".
If you mean Geekdom, do you mean all *geeks* or just geeks mind melded to Microsoft? Linux users don't need Microsoft on this product. Apple users, well, they have Apple and they can take or leave this product. Microsoft hardcore folks would probably rather gnaw off their right arms than let go of Microsoft. Ditto, the hardcore gamers.
So, just to give some estimates of how many people this product could potentially be useful to:
"Geeks" (Linux, Apple, hard core Microsoft, hard core gamers): 10% of the population. "Joe User": 90%
It looks to me that it's a no-brainer with a potential customer base of 90% of the population, that hell yeah, this is a winner!
I've never worked on Dell's production line, but I'm pretty the installation of the Operating System is fairly well automated. I don't the robots give a damn which iso image they are installing, so I just don't buy the "production line" costs.
Nor do I buy the "every" linux image is costing them "$120". What, you think XP is installed by some automated industrial robot production line, but Linux is installed by hiring some people who are going to manually install Linux one-at-a-time on a computer? If I was Michael I would fire the person who made that decision to piss away profits.
Whatever Any PC OEM says, they are the manufacturer so they ARE left holding the bag on the refund. Giving you a Linux install disk does *NOT* release them from the Windows refund since the Microsoft EULA says *nothing* about any other operating system being an acceptable substitute for a refund.
Slashdot Mirror
Folks, I know this is flogging a dead horse, but let's see if this time the suggestion takes hold. How about this plan for dealing with spam spewing botnets:
1) If you're a Microsoft Power User (MPU) and you do the normal security precautions go ahead and use your Microsoft OS of choice -- you know *your* box isn't going to get infected because you're on top of the security issues.
2) If you're a MPU and you've got family or friends who are *NOT* MPUs and they ask you for advice why not make the "reasonable" suggestion:
a) Get a Mac OS X box if they're looking for a new computer and you want them to have a decent Desktop environment with decent default network security. This minimizes *your* sysadmin requirements and *increases* their odds of not becoming yet another Windows Spam Spewing bot (WSSB).
b) If they already have a Windows PC or have recently purchased a windows PC why not suggest that
i) for *non-networking* activities go ahead and use the Windows OS *if* that is what they are comfortable with, things like say spreadsheets, or word processing, Adobe Photoshop, etc.
ii) for *networking* activities like web browsing, checking e-mail, watching flash videos, irc, etc. go ahead and install say Ubuntu, or Open SuSe or whatever Linux flavor *you* are familiar with and teach them how to use it. That way you have reduced for *you* the sysadmins network security headaches.
Ideally, I would recommend to make the base OS a Linux distro, and run the Window OS in VMware or Xen virtual box. That way they don't have to reboot when switching between network based activities (Linux) and non-network based stuff (Windows).
Microsoft should be happy they still get a sale. You should be happy that your family and/or friends are still using Windows for most stuff. And the rest of us who don't use windows in any networking capacity can be happy that there is 1 (or more) fewer WSSB out there spamming us with stuff we don't care about.
Is that a reasonable nonflaming suggestion?
>What makes anyone think that the next release of an OS is going to be faster?
I can't speak for everyone, but as a Linux user I've been conditioned to expect the OS to get better (and yeah that does include the OS to be faster) with each iteration. I don't know if you follow Linux kernel developments but some of the big changes over the years in Linux were things such as how to deal with multiprocessors (when to migrate, how to migrate processes, load balancing, spin locks, semaphores, etc.) and how to schedule processes so each process gets its fair share of the cpu resources (completely fair schedule), what to do with processes that request gigawatts of ram that doesn't exist on the machine, and what to do if the system finally runs out of memory + swap (out of memory killer "oom").
These aren't all new things, but as a Linux user for 11 years I can tell you that the history I've observed has been for the most part to make things 1) work then 2) work better then 3) work faster.
> But for 98% of the population, they don't *want* to touch that. You're not the first to say something like this and I tended to accept statements like that at face value. No longer. Based on my personal experience and those of my friends and coworkers, GUIS are nothing more than eye candy designed to "convince" people they know how to use computers. I would argue that GUIS are to computers as a TV Show is to Reality: Glamorous, Cool, but not the real thing. All that guis do in my opinion is to teach people how to be helpless when the solution to a problem can't be found by clicking on a button. So please, can anybody cite a real survey in which the majority of people when asked whether or not having access to a console terminal was useful said "no, it was not." I can't imagine people saying, "Damn it! I refuse to use SuperOS until they remove all console terminals from their OS!" That just doesn't make sense. That's like saying "Damn it! I refuse to drive a Ferari until they remove the GPS unit!!"
Based on the announcements on Windows 7 and the reviews I thought too that they had improved the performance of Windows 7 vs. Vista. Then I found an article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols that might explain the "glowing" reviews at Microsoft's PDC. It seems that Microsoft may have permanently "loaned" $2,000 laptops with 2.4GHz Intel dual cores + 3GB ram to the "reviewers" to review Windows 7. If so, that's not the first time they tried that stunt (Vista was the first that I recall). So in the answer to the question, "Can a leopard change its spots?" if the above is correct then the answer in Microsoft's case seems to be "No." Here's the url: http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_bribes_again
The thing that gets me is: was this a bait and switch to get people to install siverlight to see something that sounded really interesting? When I saw the "Need to upgrade browser/install siverlight" I felt nothing but digust.
Here is an opportunity for Microsoft to demonstrate something cool and what do they do to all the folks who can never get silverlight to run on their operating systens? Yeah, tell them "Piss off! You're unclean! You can't watch our video!" That's a great way Microsoft to try convince folks to give your technology a try. Way to go Ohio.
The second thing I noticed was the sudden feeling that this was a poor imitation of Google Tech talks, in which you can watch the videos in any operating system, because google is more interested in getting the word out than trying to "sell" or "slip under the radar" some new multimedia transport mechanism.
Problem is, that this could *still* become another worm if enough Windows users don't apply the patch. Does windows update guarantee that this patch will eventually be applied to every Windows machine?
I think the better way to look at the problem is to start with this question:
"How do you know you can trust *any* software project?"
Well, how do you do answer that question? There are lots of ways of answering this question
but the one that stands out for me is this:
1) Trust, like respect, has to be earned. Has Project "foo" screwed me over in the past?
Yes or no, no equivocation?
2) If the answer is Yes, was it an isolated event? Was it an accident? Did the project people repair their mistake quickly, or did they let it linger and left me hanging?
a) If it was an isolated event, and they stayed on top of it, then yeah, I'll give them a second
chance.
b) If it was an isolated event and they left me hanging, screw them, they're out. Next!
c) If it was not an isolated event, then that's it, they're out permanently. My time is limited and I can't afford to wait for them to reform themselves.
Now that's *my* criteria for deciding. Your criteria is ... your criteria. Based upon *my* criteria and my *experience* I can say the following:
1) Most of the Free Software (GPL, MPL, BSD, etc. licensed) that *I* use is excellent --- it does what I want, it's well documented *for me*, it has a good *publicly documented* record of fixing bugs and staying on top of things.
2) Most of the Proprietary Licensed software that *I* have used has been crap in the sense either it does *not* do what I require, or it's buggy, or it's poorly documented, or it has legal encumbrances that make it problematic to use, etc.
I want to be very careful here. I am *not* asserting that most Free Software is awesome and most proprietary software is crap. I'm only asserting that the software that *I* have *tried* from those models of software licensing have pretty much been: Free Software == Awesome, and Proprietary == Crap.
Now *why* is this true? Because I don't use Joe Random Free Software and don't use much Joe Proprietary Software.
The Free Software has been vetted by my OS of choice: Debian Linux. If it's in Debian's repositories then I'll give the software a shot. If it's not in Debian's repositories I don't want to look at it. I'm not interested in ever having to manually download, configure, make, make install software. I trust Debian as my big ass filter of crapware. If some Debian developer took the time to package some Free Software then it must be good, because Debian's guidelines for getting software into the repository is not for the faint of heart. That and the fact that their bucket brigade of QA ensures that when the software makes it into Debian's stable branch it might be obsolete but it's rock hard stable.
I don't use much proprietary software today. The only thing that comes to mind is Adobe's flash player. I used Microsoft Windows before Windows 2000 came out and by that point I had given up on them for being flaky once too many times. I used NVidia's kernel module for accelerated 3D graphics, and it was ok for a while, until I got burned once too many times when I upgraded Linux kernels and Nvidia hadn't kept up with Linux. The final straw was when Nvidia declared my hardware as legacy. In the case of Adobe's flash player, it's gotten better I think. The only thing that bothered me about it was its tendency to crash iceweasel, and not work very well with konqueror, and stealing audio (oss sound driver I think). The only reason it's still with me is because of youtube and because I'm waiting for gnash (Free Software) to be stable enough and not
suck up too much CPU usage.
Baldness is not a disease. It's a physical trait that distinguishes some males from others. You can find baldness in pretty much any ethnic group. The big question to ask is: Does being bald help you get some sex, or does it hurt your chances? If it hurt, you would expect it to die out as most women would turn down a bald guy *if* being bald was a turn off. If it helped excessively, then the (vast) majority of men would have the baldness gene. If it neither helped nor hindered a guy's chance to get sex then you would expect the percentage of baldness to be stable. Anyone got statistics on the percentage of men who were bald for say the past 2 centuries?
The deal is this:
1 in 7 males will start having significant hair loss in late teens/early twenties. 3 out 7 males will *eventually* go bald (either early or eventually assuming they make it to their 50's/60's.)
The point of this article is that
a) if you've got the baldness gene on the X chromosone, you're one of the 3 out 7 guys.
b) if you *also* have the 2 variants on chromosone 20 then you're in the 1 out 7 guys who's going to lose his early and severely.
c) if you don't have the baldness gene on the X chromosone and the 2 variants on chromosone 20, you're one of those 4 out 7 bastards who will have a full head of hair until they die (unless they shave it off of course out of sympathy for the rest of us who are follicle challenged.)
>Then there's Microsoft Research, which actually comes
>up with some great stuff, though most of it is not
>(yet) implementable on a commercial scale.
I first heard about Microsoft Research somewhere around Jan. 2008. A friend had informed me that some brilliant math guy, a winner of the Field's medal (Math equivalent to a Nobel Prize) had gone off to work at Microsoft Research. I was impressed and appalled at the same time. That a Field's medalist would go to work there gave Microsoft Research prestige. That a Field's medalist would go to work for Microsoft given the nasty history of Microsoft's business practices at the time was depressing. It was all about the money I guess.
Fast forward almost 11 years. 11 years ok. Let me say it one more time: 11 YEARS. What exactly has Microsoft Research produced in those 11 years that is truly noteworthy? Please don't tell me about some pie in the sky ideas. Just name 1 application that's actually used in the field that they have produced that's actually impressive. As a comparison, Bell Labs produced, I don't know, the integrated circuit, or say a bazillion Nobel prize winners.
Yes, I'm sure that there are Nobel prize winners working at Microsoft Research, but how many got their prizes *by* working there? Is it a farm to produce great new ideas, or is it a resting home for famous people to lend their names and prestige?
I'm ignorant here. Please help me to disspell any misconceptions I have about Microsoft Research. Show me that I'm not being fair to them, that I'm holding them to a higher standard than say Bell Labs, or IBM research, or Cray Research, or Xerox's Palo Alto research. Help me to understand.
>By keeping it simple and compatible, we avoid boring rewrites and promote sharing
I was with you up until this point. I respect folks who use or develop for the BSD family of operating systems, especially the OpenSSH folks. But on the point of promoting sharing you're just plain wrong.
The BSD licenses do *not* promote sharing. They promote *taking*. Sharing and taking, don't they mean the same thing? No, they don't. This guy's company is a beautiful example. They *can* take but they don't want and they don't HAVE to share. In fact, they are trying to *ensure* the developer does *not* share further.
GPL licenses promote sharing and therefore taking. The folks who don't like the GPL can be described succintly as follows: "The assholes who want to take without giving back." That's why I prefer the GPL license over the BSD. In the BSD world you have to *hope* that everyone is a good person and not an asshole. In the GPL world, the assholes are automatically kept out.
Hey, Well let's consider IBM. Would you agree that IBM is a for-profit organization? Yes? They do like making money? Yes? What about eclipse, a development environment that was begun with by IBM that's platform neutral under an open source license no requirement to use IBM products tied in. Maybe *you* should tell the IBM shareholders about this. How about SUN inc. Are they a for profit company? Yes? How about OpenOffice, java, Open Solaris? Hmmm? Any mandatory tie ins to SUN products? Yes? Are they available in a Community friendly license? Yes? Maybe *you* should tell the SUN shareholders about it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story The key thing here is this article is about the *Gates Foundation*, but __notice__ what the Gates Foundation is concerned about: The foundation did not respond to written questions about the problems of patients who cannot obtain needed AIDS drugs due to pharmaceutical company policies. Meanwhile, the foundation holds its grant recipients to a far higher standard than the drug companies on which it bets large portions of its endowment. Its grant form says it expects recipients "to exercise their intellectual property rights in a manner consistent with the stated goals of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote the ⦠availability of inventions for public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost." Some critics say the foundation's failure to use its own investments "to promote ⦠public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost" might trace back to the source of most of its money â" Microsoft â" which Bill Gates serves as chairman. "The Gates Foundation is in a position to change the dynamic, to make sure that drugs get first to the places they are most needed," said Daniel Berman, deputy director in South Africa for Doctors Without Borders. "But it conflicts with the interests of Microsoft."
>for all their evils and wrongs, there's
>been a few good things that have come from them (Microsoft).
I've been keeping an eye on the shenanigans that Microsoft has been pulling for about 12 years. I would say I'm pretty current on their bad behavior, but to be honest, can you (or anyone for that matter) give me some example of "good things" to come out of Microsoft that were
a) Not hostile to Open Source Licenses, with GPL being the primary victim.
b) Didn't have strings attached, aka, can only be used on Microsoft products, or Microsoft gets a $$ cut of every unit.
I guess the problem is what do you mean by "good things"? Good things *to me* mean things that are friendly to the community, share and share-alike for example. It's why I love the GPL and why I prefer Linux over any proprietary OS no matter how much eye candy it might have.
An obvious example might be the "Bill and Melinda Foundation" or as I prefer to think of it, the "Melinda and Bill Foundation.". There's a couple of problems with it though: 1) It's not Microsoft's charity, it's the Gates' foundation. 2) It has strings attached --- you have to use Microsoft products regardless of whether or not cheaper, better products can be found with the donated money.
>I've seen plenty of people who criticize
>that open source software will never
>succeed on the desktop until it's more business-like.
I have too. They tend to have names like Gates, Ballmer, MonkeyBoy, Gartner,
PCWorld,BSA, etc.
Which part of the population are you talking about?
If it's *Joe User* then all that the user needs is something that he/she can use to view webpages, read e-mail, listen to music, maybe watch video. These are all things that this device can do right now + wireless and for just $98!!! Holy crap!! It's a keeper! Joe User doesn't do much with computers, that's why.... they're called "Joe User".
If you mean Geekdom, do you mean all *geeks* or just geeks mind melded to Microsoft?
Linux users don't need Microsoft on this product. Apple users, well, they have Apple and they can take or leave this product. Microsoft hardcore folks would probably rather gnaw off their right arms than let go of Microsoft. Ditto, the hardcore gamers.
So, just to give some estimates of how many people this product could potentially be useful to:
"Geeks" (Linux, Apple, hard core Microsoft, hard core gamers): 10% of the population.
"Joe User": 90%
It looks to me that it's a no-brainer with a potential customer base of 90% of the population,
that hell yeah, this is a winner!
I've never worked on Dell's production line, but I'm pretty the installation of the Operating System is fairly well automated. I don't the robots give a damn which iso image they are installing, so I just don't buy the "production line" costs. Nor do I buy the "every" linux image is costing them "$120". What, you think XP is installed by some automated industrial robot production line, but Linux is installed by hiring some people who are going to manually install Linux one-at-a-time on a computer? If I was Michael I would fire the person who made that decision to piss away profits.
Whatever Any PC OEM says, they are the manufacturer so they ARE left holding the bag on the refund. Giving you a Linux install disk does *NOT* release them from the Windows refund since the Microsoft EULA says *nothing* about any other operating system being an acceptable substitute for a refund.