Right, and that really doesn't matter because as a whole product, Skype is complete, UI and network. Unless some opensource alternative can do the same thing, they'll never really be an alternative.
And the pitfalls of opensource software is lacking innovation and the will to be better than Skype. We still have nothing that comes close to Skype in the opensource world. All the opensource alternatives are difficult to use for the average joe, especially dealing with video and audio issues. I have no problem setting up my own sip service or my own teamspeak server, but trying to explain to my mother how to connect to that is difficult when I can just say, "Find my username on Skype" and in 5 minutes I'm talking to her.
Ekiga is a freaking mess compared to Skype. I don't understand why they don't simplify it and make it nice to use. It's one of those Opensource programs who refuse to be better, like Gimp. In the meantime, the only good alternative to Skype I found viable is Google.
I've never heard of them. You can go onto their forums and their community is pretty much nill compared to the other sites. All I see is a bunch of spam posts. I don't know why this is newsworthy. It sounds more like a troll and theguardian bought into it without actually researching the entire story.
"Mark Radcliffe, an IP expert and senior partner at DLA Piper who specializes in open source licensing issues, has analyzed the case—and argued that it underscores the need for companies to implement internal GPL compliance processes. 'Fantec is a reminder that companies should adopt a formal FOSS use policy which should be integrated into the software development process,'"
Yeah, because that's gonna work!
No, what's actually going to happen at businesses, they're going to implement a policy of "NO GPL" in their policy. Why? Because it's easier. This is why it's hard for businesses to accept GPL based code. When it now requires I hire a lawyer and consultant to actually figure out if I'm in "compliance", because I may obviously not have all the legal knowledge to figure it all out myself, I'm just not going to bother. Basically this has made the situation even worse and businesses are just going to look at GPL based code as a time bomb waiting to go off on them and refuse to deal with it. I'd rather hire another programmer to rewrite the piece of software I need, as it will be cheaper for me in the long run.
I agree, but some things are extremely annoying. I wouldn't mind metro so much if I didn't have to really aim for the precise position on multi-monitor setups to get to it from the Desktop. However, with this in mind, I learned about the quick keys to access the same stuff, however, I would want to disable the onscreen menus if I'm going to use the hotkeys because I inadvertently trigger these menus when I don't want them at the time.
I actually like the taskbar going across multiple monitors. However, I agree, they need an option to turn it off. What's especially annoying with multi-monitor support is the side option screen that shows up when you least expect it and when you want to access it, it's hard to access it.
I hope Microsoft patches some of these annoyances for plain desktop use. Why add a "DESKTOP" option that functions like a broken Windows 7 Desktop?
Because wikileaks is bullshit:
http://cryptome.org/0002/wikileaks-unlike.htm
I don't need to say more. John Young has more credibility than Assange or his wikileak group will ever have.
Only 7% running ICS because the majority of people don't want to purchase a new phone ever since google screwed us over with updates. Considering we can't run ICS on the majority of Android phones on sale right now, why bother upgrading? Forcing us to buy some new battery hungry phone isn't gonna do it.
Wasn't the whole point of TOR to encourage illicit usage in the first place for countries with draconian laws? Seems pretty silly to encourage dissidents in another country, create a tool just for it, and then expect it not to be used for illegal means.
There's a lot of cooperation in a free market society, or else you wouldn't even have half the things you have right now, nor would you be here replying to a message. Just look at how many companies are involved to build an airplane, car or machines, quite a lot of different companies working cooperatively for the better good and of course more profit.
This is just plain dirty fighting between one technology company vs. the other.
Some reason, I don't see anyone filling the gap, and Facebook will probably just close their offices in said country, while continuing to offer services from across their borders. They'll have to block access to their site completely if they want people to stop using it. Then good luck trying to enforce these new laws.
This attitude is typical through out the world, not just Russians. Just that the Russians allowed it to overtake them that everyone is doing it on a regular basis that no one cares to belittle them about it.
but there are people that prefer systems such as FreeBSD and Gentoo (yes, amazing, Gentoo Linux functions in a similar fashion, so it's not even a FreeBSD vs Linux issue here, it's a matter of packaging philosophy).
Ever been on the Gentoo forums? Notice how less hostile people are on the forums compared to the freeBSD forum and mailing list? People will reply to anyone with problems without getting hostile on gentoo. There's quite a huge difference.
I've been using freebsd as a desktop for the last 3 years and I do enjoy it, but getting help from the forum or mailing list is next to impossible. My last problem with a freebsd port was with gnome trying to install evolution and forcing install heimdal. Of course after installing heimdal, it broke every port I had installed on my system and I was unable to ever upgrade again until I removed it (removing also evolution and gnome along with it). When I asked on the freebsd forum and mailing list about this, I was met with hostility and absolutely no solutions to this. After searching the mailing lists for about a couple weeks, I finally ran into someone with the same problem and we discovered this was a problem because krb is installed in the base system so either replacing it or removing whatever Kerberos port I had installed was the only solution. That's all it was, I could have saved a ton of time if I knew this before hand or if someone was kind enough to tell me this instead of calling me to dumb to use freebsd (because apparently none of them use a GUI or gnome and everyone knows how to fix these nuances except me).
As much as I try to love freeBSD, this kind of hostile community isn't really helping freeBSD get anywhere or any support.
My mother for example uses the computer VERY little and doesn't do much with it. When it is time to upgrade (which is fast approaching) I am seriously considering ninja-installing a distro onto her machine and simply saying "This is the new computer, things are a little different" rather than going through the same thing while installing the latest and greatest from Microsoft. For her, there isn't any difference in finding all the buttons going from XP to Win 7 or Win 8. I may as well get her onto another OS totally.
I tried that before, and it ended disastrously. My mother uses Skype a lot and Skype is an utter mess in *nix, crashes a lot, not updated at all, and is just not as usable as it is on Windows. And no, using alternatives to Skype was not an option considering the alternatives are complete utter crap and not many people use them. I was thinking of getting her an Apple, but I just reinstalled Windows and she was happy again.
Why should I have to log back in to a compiz-free session? Why can't it be disabled/enabled on the fly anymore as it used to be? Just seems like a really dumb idea to me.
Cool story, ever tried to turn off desktop effects in the new version of Ubuntu? It's not in the usual place where you'd find it, in fact, that option is completely gone! So people unfamiliar with the terminal can't turn off compiz so easily. Thus you end up with a completely buggy desktop that's supposed to have been stable upon release (or at least close too).
Starting to be pretty common in opensource communities. I think it's time to start forking these projects with these well entrenched developers with stupid ideas who throw out every good idea to implement their bad ideas *cough* Gnome. I'm not liking this direction of someone telling what I need and don't need.
Quite a lot of people lately. Management wants to see their production on their office computers. They're easy to network and of course easy to hack. Siemens is not the only one vulnerable here, *cough* Schneider *cough* Schweitzer *cough* ABB...
And why can't ISP's provide you with 40mbps for $55 a month in the city but in other parts of the country they can? And why don't we see more startup ISP's coming out where service is bad? I bet you there's some more deeply buried city/state/federal regulations, city ordinances, bureaucratic permit process (which makes anyone turn away) and backroom deals that we don't see here preventing these companies from providing better services. Public service won't solve anything when you still have those kind of road blocks in place. I live in a semi rural area in southern California and I have 60mbps with Charter, if I lived in any of the local cities, I would have a far lesser chance of getting close to that kind of service where the majority is ruled by AT&T's crap network.
That's pretty much what I did with my parents, just gave them big icons of their commonly used applications (Firefox, skype, pidgin, film manager), so I'm sure it wouldn't make any difference if it was openbox or gnome, the problem with me was the new interface is crashing all the time with skype unless I explicitly turn off desktop effects (have fun finding that option, metacity --replace in the terminal). So I uninstalled ubuntu and comes Mint to the rescue.
I actually had to uninstall ubuntu from my mothers computer because she hated it (Upgraded from 10 to 11, I know big mistake). It kept crashing with skype (it never did before), the interface is messed up, there's no option to turn off desktop effects other than manually setting up metacity --replace, and a host of other stuff. And yes, this is after using the "classic desktop" option. I ended up installing Mint and she's not calling me anymore about problems.
So my parents don't like it, so it didn't pass their test.
MS Office is a frustrating and infuriating product for my users. I have to teach them how to use it and advise them of its limitations daily. MS Office is not "the best thing" out there.
I find Openoffice/Libreoffice just as infuriating when you get to its limitations. You have to teach people how to use OO the same was you would Word. Neither OO or Word is the best thing out there, since OO is basically just copying the old interface of Word which isn't really that great to begin with.
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Right, and that really doesn't matter because as a whole product, Skype is complete, UI and network. Unless some opensource alternative can do the same thing, they'll never really be an alternative.
And the pitfalls of opensource software is lacking innovation and the will to be better than Skype. We still have nothing that comes close to Skype in the opensource world. All the opensource alternatives are difficult to use for the average joe, especially dealing with video and audio issues. I have no problem setting up my own sip service or my own teamspeak server, but trying to explain to my mother how to connect to that is difficult when I can just say, "Find my username on Skype" and in 5 minutes I'm talking to her.
Ekiga is a freaking mess compared to Skype. I don't understand why they don't simplify it and make it nice to use. It's one of those Opensource programs who refuse to be better, like Gimp. In the meantime, the only good alternative to Skype I found viable is Google.
I've never heard of them. You can go onto their forums and their community is pretty much nill compared to the other sites. All I see is a bunch of spam posts. I don't know why this is newsworthy. It sounds more like a troll and theguardian bought into it without actually researching the entire story.
"Mark Radcliffe, an IP expert and senior partner at DLA Piper who specializes in open source licensing issues, has analyzed the case—and argued that it underscores the need for companies to implement internal GPL compliance processes. 'Fantec is a reminder that companies should adopt a formal FOSS use policy which should be integrated into the software development process,'"
Yeah, because that's gonna work!
No, what's actually going to happen at businesses, they're going to implement a policy of "NO GPL" in their policy. Why? Because it's easier. This is why it's hard for businesses to accept GPL based code. When it now requires I hire a lawyer and consultant to actually figure out if I'm in "compliance", because I may obviously not have all the legal knowledge to figure it all out myself, I'm just not going to bother. Basically this has made the situation even worse and businesses are just going to look at GPL based code as a time bomb waiting to go off on them and refuse to deal with it. I'd rather hire another programmer to rewrite the piece of software I need, as it will be cheaper for me in the long run.
I agree, but some things are extremely annoying. I wouldn't mind metro so much if I didn't have to really aim for the precise position on multi-monitor setups to get to it from the Desktop. However, with this in mind, I learned about the quick keys to access the same stuff, however, I would want to disable the onscreen menus if I'm going to use the hotkeys because I inadvertently trigger these menus when I don't want them at the time.
I just realized you can disable the taskbar on multiple monitors, there's an option to do it.
I actually like the taskbar going across multiple monitors. However, I agree, they need an option to turn it off. What's especially annoying with multi-monitor support is the side option screen that shows up when you least expect it and when you want to access it, it's hard to access it. I hope Microsoft patches some of these annoyances for plain desktop use. Why add a "DESKTOP" option that functions like a broken Windows 7 Desktop?
Because wikileaks is bullshit: http://cryptome.org/0002/wikileaks-unlike.htm I don't need to say more. John Young has more credibility than Assange or his wikileak group will ever have.
Only 7% running ICS because the majority of people don't want to purchase a new phone ever since google screwed us over with updates. Considering we can't run ICS on the majority of Android phones on sale right now, why bother upgrading? Forcing us to buy some new battery hungry phone isn't gonna do it.
Wasn't the whole point of TOR to encourage illicit usage in the first place for countries with draconian laws? Seems pretty silly to encourage dissidents in another country, create a tool just for it, and then expect it not to be used for illegal means.
There's a lot of cooperation in a free market society, or else you wouldn't even have half the things you have right now, nor would you be here replying to a message. Just look at how many companies are involved to build an airplane, car or machines, quite a lot of different companies working cooperatively for the better good and of course more profit. This is just plain dirty fighting between one technology company vs. the other.
Some reason, I don't see anyone filling the gap, and Facebook will probably just close their offices in said country, while continuing to offer services from across their borders. They'll have to block access to their site completely if they want people to stop using it. Then good luck trying to enforce these new laws.
This attitude is typical through out the world, not just Russians. Just that the Russians allowed it to overtake them that everyone is doing it on a regular basis that no one cares to belittle them about it.
but there are people that prefer systems such as FreeBSD and Gentoo (yes, amazing, Gentoo Linux functions in a similar fashion, so it's not even a FreeBSD vs Linux issue here, it's a matter of packaging philosophy).
Ever been on the Gentoo forums? Notice how less hostile people are on the forums compared to the freeBSD forum and mailing list? People will reply to anyone with problems without getting hostile on gentoo. There's quite a huge difference.
I've been using freebsd as a desktop for the last 3 years and I do enjoy it, but getting help from the forum or mailing list is next to impossible. My last problem with a freebsd port was with gnome trying to install evolution and forcing install heimdal. Of course after installing heimdal, it broke every port I had installed on my system and I was unable to ever upgrade again until I removed it (removing also evolution and gnome along with it). When I asked on the freebsd forum and mailing list about this, I was met with hostility and absolutely no solutions to this. After searching the mailing lists for about a couple weeks, I finally ran into someone with the same problem and we discovered this was a problem because krb is installed in the base system so either replacing it or removing whatever Kerberos port I had installed was the only solution. That's all it was, I could have saved a ton of time if I knew this before hand or if someone was kind enough to tell me this instead of calling me to dumb to use freebsd (because apparently none of them use a GUI or gnome and everyone knows how to fix these nuances except me).
As much as I try to love freeBSD, this kind of hostile community isn't really helping freeBSD get anywhere or any support.
My mother for example uses the computer VERY little and doesn't do much with it. When it is time to upgrade (which is fast approaching) I am seriously considering ninja-installing a distro onto her machine and simply saying "This is the new computer, things are a little different" rather than going through the same thing while installing the latest and greatest from Microsoft. For her, there isn't any difference in finding all the buttons going from XP to Win 7 or Win 8. I may as well get her onto another OS totally.
I tried that before, and it ended disastrously. My mother uses Skype a lot and Skype is an utter mess in *nix, crashes a lot, not updated at all, and is just not as usable as it is on Windows. And no, using alternatives to Skype was not an option considering the alternatives are complete utter crap and not many people use them. I was thinking of getting her an Apple, but I just reinstalled Windows and she was happy again.
Why should I have to log back in to a compiz-free session? Why can't it be disabled/enabled on the fly anymore as it used to be? Just seems like a really dumb idea to me.
Cool story, ever tried to turn off desktop effects in the new version of Ubuntu? It's not in the usual place where you'd find it, in fact, that option is completely gone! So people unfamiliar with the terminal can't turn off compiz so easily. Thus you end up with a completely buggy desktop that's supposed to have been stable upon release (or at least close too).
Starting to be pretty common in opensource communities. I think it's time to start forking these projects with these well entrenched developers with stupid ideas who throw out every good idea to implement their bad ideas *cough* Gnome. I'm not liking this direction of someone telling what I need and don't need.
Quite a lot of people lately. Management wants to see their production on their office computers. They're easy to network and of course easy to hack. Siemens is not the only one vulnerable here, *cough* Schneider *cough* Schweitzer *cough* ABB...
And why can't ISP's provide you with 40mbps for $55 a month in the city but in other parts of the country they can? And why don't we see more startup ISP's coming out where service is bad? I bet you there's some more deeply buried city/state/federal regulations, city ordinances, bureaucratic permit process (which makes anyone turn away) and backroom deals that we don't see here preventing these companies from providing better services. Public service won't solve anything when you still have those kind of road blocks in place. I live in a semi rural area in southern California and I have 60mbps with Charter, if I lived in any of the local cities, I would have a far lesser chance of getting close to that kind of service where the majority is ruled by AT&T's crap network.
That's pretty much what I did with my parents, just gave them big icons of their commonly used applications (Firefox, skype, pidgin, film manager), so I'm sure it wouldn't make any difference if it was openbox or gnome, the problem with me was the new interface is crashing all the time with skype unless I explicitly turn off desktop effects (have fun finding that option, metacity --replace in the terminal). So I uninstalled ubuntu and comes Mint to the rescue.
Good question. Luckily Mint provides an XFCE version, so I'm not too worried about it.
I actually had to uninstall ubuntu from my mothers computer because she hated it (Upgraded from 10 to 11, I know big mistake). It kept crashing with skype (it never did before), the interface is messed up, there's no option to turn off desktop effects other than manually setting up metacity --replace, and a host of other stuff. And yes, this is after using the "classic desktop" option. I ended up installing Mint and she's not calling me anymore about problems. So my parents don't like it, so it didn't pass their test.
MS Office is a frustrating and infuriating product for my users. I have to teach them how to use it and advise them of its limitations daily. MS Office is not "the best thing" out there.
I find Openoffice/Libreoffice just as infuriating when you get to its limitations. You have to teach people how to use OO the same was you would Word. Neither OO or Word is the best thing out there, since OO is basically just copying the old interface of Word which isn't really that great to begin with.