The original poster is putting forward the idea in his scenario that the consumer was not aware of the DRM (the chain) until after the purchase had been completed. So he's using the Hymn glass to overcome some perceived swindling that's occurred. That's bullshit.
I don't think it is necessarily any kind of "swindling." It is just the simple fact that they have no right to make you drink the Coke on the premises, or in the case of iTunes, only play music in iTunes/iPod. Sure, they have the right try to make it difficult for you to drink the coke off teh premisis or to play iTMS music on other devices... but I believe the consumer has just as much right to try to bypass the restrictions (DMCA be damned). Whether or not the consumer knew of the restriction beforehand is completely irrelevent.
The restrictions on tracks purchased from the iTMS has been talked about enough in the media now it's common knowledge. What's really happening is the consumer is buying something they know very well they don't want (a soda chained to a store) with the intent of using the Hymn glass already decided. But now that the Hymn glass is no longer available they're threatening to shop somewhere else.
Right. What's the problem with that? If the store makes it too difficult for you to do what you want with the product you purchase, they should expect people to shop elsewhere.
The store has already decided they aren't interested in selling sodas to drink outdoors, their addition of the chain shows this. Some people have trouble accepting that their segment of consumers is so small the company literally doesn't care if they have your business or not.
If it is so small, why do they bother hassling the Hymn developers in the first place? I think they do care. DRM is proving to be a big problem for consumers.
I think people just like to brag about their "awesome" jobs that allow them to travel the world.
Imagine this Ask Slashdot:
"So, I got this new job in the sewers of New York. I need a laptop that is waterproof and can emit ultrasonic noise to scare the rats away while I do my surveying..."
Oh, wait, that might actually be interesting (the laptop selection, not the job).
While read this this "Ask Slashdot" I kept hearing the voice of some flaky blond chick asking her friends what top she should wear to go clubbing. WHO CARES! Just pick something and wear it. It doesn't really matter.
I kinda got the impression that the author was looking for an excuse to brag about how he gets to travel the world for a living. It least that is why I hope he submitted this question. Because if he can't do a little shopping around for himself... well, that would just be sad.
Your analogy is also flawed. Because the fact the Coke was chained to the store was no secret. It's not something you didn't find out after you bought it. It's more like you bought the Coke knowing full well it was chained to the store but also knew that if you bought this special Hymn glass you could take the Coke outside, and you assumed you'd always be able to do that. But suddenly Apple came along and sent a C&D to the company making Hymn glasses.
What difference does it make whether or not you knew that Coke was chained to the store?
Actually if your ISP has a decent proxy server and especially if you are using HTTP keepalive, your web traffic gets consolidated before the NAT kicks in.
How common is this? I know AOL does it, but when I tried to implement transparent proxying it seemed problematic. From what I understand, it violates the way HTTP is supposed to work.
Anyway, even without proxying, clients generally don't keep many simutaneous connections. And even if they did, I believe most NAT gateways can overload external ports as well as addresses. You can match up a destination IP with a port and have two translations using the same external port as long as they are to different destinations.
One for each of the two redundant routers the gateway VIP is on ?
Nah, the addresses are for the NSA and DHS wiretaps. Turns out that listening to your internet traffic isn't enough. They want to know what's on your LAN!
300 people means an average of 218 TCP connections per person at peak. That sounds reasonable, actually.
No, it is totally unreasonable. It just doesn't happen. I just checked the translation table of our firewall with in excess of 100 users and there's only 216 translations open. This includes connections to our web server in the DMZ. You're telling me that it is reasonable for that number to increase 2 orders of magnitude?
You just also need a router than can support this. Cisco's original presentation was "years ago" so even though webpages were simpler and needed for ports, the hardware was lacking. No idea how recent the hardware the GP used for his presentation was, but I can confirm that facebook, especially with a bunch of apps, can be CRAZY.
I saw a Cisco presentation years ago on their experiences from rolling out NAT internally. They started with an address overload of a/24 (251 usable addresses) into a single external IP address. For an office with about 120 active machines, the NAT box (biggest, beefiest box they made at the time) completely fell over. With only light internet use, the NAT tables filled to take over all of the outgoing 65k ports in short time. That was in 1998, when most internet use was web pages, some email and simple IM. At the time, they recommended no more than a/26 (59 usable addresses) per external address.
Really? We currently NAT well over 160 machines to a single external IP address and have had 0 problems in years. Users have unrestricted internet access (and they use it).
If 160 machines are filling up 64k of ports, something is seriously wrong with the translation algorithm. Perhaps old connections aren't being reaped properly?
t is much worse for ISPs with home users, who are not limited by workplace rules against peer-2-peer for popular TV shows or looking at pr0n pages.
Is it worse for ISPs? I used to work for an ISP that would NAT whole high rise condominium/apartments of home users with no problems other than pure bandwidth.
If you look at the typical pr0n page (it was a tough job, but I did it in the spirit of improving my understanding of the industry;-), there will be between 200 and 300 embedded elements or links to affiliate sites and advertising partners. So every pr0n page view going through NAT takes 200 new external ports, with associated timeouts and state tables.
It is a good thing browsers limit themselves to the number of simutaneous requests, isn't it? What is it, like 6? An intelligent NAT gateway will close a translation when the client does. A pr0n page will NOT take up 200 external ports.
Remember, you have 65,533 maximum entries in the state table for a single external IP, or for a typical saturday night in basement-dweller-land, about 4 machines.
Bullshit.
Don't get me started about how many NAT states a typical 3Mbyte facebook page can open, and leave open for quite a while.
How many? I'd really like to know how braindead your router is that it doesn't know how to close translations when the TCP connection is terminated.
If you think you can hide many ISP customers behind NAT, there are limits if you don't want a ton of calls to the support lines when your users can't effectively use the net.
Again, bandwidth was our only limitation.
For modern home connections, that already have a NAT box with a handful of machines behind the NAT (Mom keeping 20 eBay pages open and doing Skype, Dad doing gaming, teenage son looking at pr0n and daughter with 20 different IM chats going while she P2Ps the latest TV episode and looks at 50 different bebo and facebook pages), you just can't NAT much more than that.
You can. You're full of shit. (Or is it FUD?)
That post was the voice of experience,
No, it was the voice of someone who just pulled a bunch of numbers out of his ass. 4 user limit behind a residential gateway? Come on, you can't possibly believe that.
Seriously, my comment was most definitely not as silly as some might think. There's a heck of a lot of truth to it. More than I thought. I recently talked to my sister (heavy Democrat) about politics and I was shocked at just what she admitted to believing as a Democrat.
Ok, mind if I generalize about all Republicans based on Ann Coulter? (though she's probably not as "heavy" as your sister)
Windows would never have succeeded, if it didn't start by offering compatibility with the existing DOS ecosystem Native Windows programs flourished, and even outnumbered DOS programs, *after* Windows gained market share.
But Microsoft owned DOS. They weren't competing with anyone. Plus, DOS isn't really much of and OS anyway. Windows, or something like it, was inevitable. Users and developers really had choice but to adopt Windows.
Remember OS/2 and how it advertised "A better WIndows than Windows" and a "Better DOS than DOS?" How'd that work out for IBM? It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to try and be compatible with their own products, but for anyone else it is suicide to try to play catch-up with Microsoft in terms of compatibility.
For people to use Linux, it must support Windows programs.
You're wrong.I used Linux exclusively with no Windows programs for years just fine. And there's plenty of other who do the same. Can everyone do it? Nope. But why is it important? Why must Linux be everything to everyone?
Market share is the number one reason why native Linux programs are not as many as we wished it would be.
Depends on what kind of programs you want. Market share isn't necessarily going to give you more F/OSS applications. More proprietary apps, sure. But not F/OSS. F/OSS is not driven by supply and demand. It is driven by motivated developers who love doing what they do and enjoy sharing their work with the public.
I know it is cliche' by now and it isn't meant to be mean, but if you want more programs on Linux, start coding! That is what Linux is all about. Linux users who value the F/OSS spirit don't want Windows apps to fill the gaps. They want to find ways to accomplish it with F/OSS software in teh community.
There is no way that we can make native Linux applications will outnumber Windows applications by spreading the ideology alone.
Who said anything about outnumbering Windows applications? That is far too ambitious, and quite frankly, unnecessary. All that is required is a critical mass. And linux has it.
I think of ReactOS as "Windows done right" with the potential to have features that users had demanded for years that Microsoft had refused to implement. Real virtual desktops (supported at the graphics layer, not a broken hack like MSVDM), a decent shell, good network interoperability (ssh/nfs servers), safe ActiveX support, a repository-based update manager, etc.
I just don't think it is realistic to want both good compatibility with Windows AND a better system than Windows. Just getting full (or nearly full) compatibility is hard enough, if not impossible. Also, keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons that Windows is the steaming pile that it is is because of compatibility and all the legacy crap they have to support.
On a more aesthetic level, why would you want to clone a system that you don't even like in the first place? It has all the appeal of a DOS clone. If you're going to clone something, why not something that is worth cloning? OS X is a pretty decent system... and there's already GNUStep to get your started.
Running a virtualized ReactOS that knew how to play nice with the host system would give people something like Parallel's "coherence" interface on the Mac.
Coherence mode is overrated. I'd much rather use Terminal Server to get Windows apps... at least at work. Virtualizing a second OS is a huge waste of resources. Unless we're talking about software testing where you need to maintain several sandboxes, each with a different configuration... in which case ReactOS doens't help much. You need the Real Thing to do any meaningful tests.
But if you still want a "coherence" like feature on Linux, you should demand it from VMWare. They already provide it on OS X (VMWare Fusion). I'm sure they could figure something out for X11.
It would be really nice to have that one vertical-market application that will never leave Windows available for Linux/BSD/Mac users.
Use Terminal Server. Works for us.
Or even Microsoft apps -- Excel is still the high bar for charting in spreadsheets.
The type of people use tend to use the advanced features of Excel dont' really care about LInux and don't really have much motivation to ditch Windows. So why cater to them?
Where NATIVE means GNOME/GTK/QT3/QT4/KDE4/KDE3/OSS/ALSA/Compiz/XFCE runing all at once? At least WINAPI32 has some sort of internal coherence. If REACTOS(and so, WINE) had half the developers in KDE4 we would have a free, usable and easy to develop for Desktop right now.
What would be the point in having a Windows clone that is always playing catch-up with Windows? Is it really worth saving $100? Classic example of reinventing the wheel. Only in this case you're reinventing a broken wheel and not bothering to improve upon it. The reason things like ReactOS and Wine haven't gone very far is because most people recognize what a dead end it is to always be playing catch-up with MS. You can't win. It is futile. Apple was smart enough to not bother with Windows compatibility and sell their product on its own merits. I'm sure they could have tried to build something like Wine into OS X, but they knew that they couldn't compete head to head with MS. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Linux could learn a lot from OS X.
What is it with the Linux users' obsession with Microsoft and Microsoft compatability, anyway? Sometimes it seems like a closeted homosexual secretly lusting after his arch nemesis.;-)
But you cannot have more users if you don't have the applications they want. It's a vicious cycle. Wine has the potential to break that cycle by making 99% of the world's existing applications Linux-compatible. Improve one piece of software, get a hundred thousand applications Linux-compatible.
Well, i think 99% compatibility is a little too ambitious. I don't even think Microsoft has gotten that good with Vista.
Trying to market an alternative OS based on compatibility with another OS is a mistake. A big mistake. You can't compete with Microsoft on compatibility. I love Linux, but even I wouldn't be dumb enough to make a business depend on Wine or whatever. I'd take the quirks Windows over compatibility headaches any day.
For one thing you'd probably lose support from vendors if you aren't running their software on Windows. Also, you're betting a lot on continued and consistent compatibility for future products you might have to use. Just because you can run Accounting Package 2.0 under Wine doesn't mean 3.0 will run when your CFO needs to upgrade. You never know when MS is going to pull something funny their their API's. I wouldn't want to be the IT guy who has to tell the C*O that we can't run X piece of software because saving $90 per station on a Windows license was so important.
That said, terminal services is not a bad option. Terminal Server (don't even need to invest in Citrix) is a decent way to give users of non-windows machines access to Windows programs. We use it for our Mac users where I work. For the most part it is transparent and even makes it convenient to give access to apps through a VPN so users can run programs from home. So in some ways it is actually better than having the app running locally.
For my own work, I run Windows in VMware. Partially because I don't want to deal with Wine, but also because if I'm using Windows it is probably because I'm testing soem website in IE or something like that. Much nicer to have Windows in a sandbox.
Then Windows and Native applications, commercial and open-source, can duke it out on a level playing field. Well... almost level, the native open-source Linux applications will be free (as in beer) and are likely to come pre-installed (e.g. Firefox, Open Office, etc). Does that remind you of something?
Firefox and OpenOffice already run on Windows just fine. Why would anyone switch to Linux to run them and then have to worry about whether or not Wine will run their Windows apps? To someone who isn't already a fan of Linux, it doesn't make any sense. Hell, it doesn't make sense to me and I *am* a Linux fan. I guess viruses and such might be one reason, but I can honestly say that it hasn't been a big deal where I work.
The best way to get Linux more native software is to get it more users.
No, that will merely get more native proprietary software. WHich isn't necessary the best thing for Linux. What is needed is more users who are more likely to contribute to the community.
The best way to get it more users is to reduce the cost of transitioning off Windows.
Maybe, maybe not. Again, you don't want just any user. It is important to target a specific audience as Apple has. Apple has been successful at getting people to switch because they provide a compelling *new* experience for a relatively narrow audience. Emulating Windows apps is a dead end. Notice how Apple has managed to get away with not emulating Windows software? Linux should not go that route for similar reasons. You can run VMware or dual-boot. That has to be enough.
The best way to reduce the cost of transitioning of Windows is to make it so users don't have to go through on OS transition and a transition in critical applications simultaneously.
That is exactly what Microsoft wants potential competitors to try. You can't compete with MS on that front.
The best way to avoid that double transition is to assure that the Windows-based applications that large numbers of users rely on in their business run on Linux.
I don't think people want Linux to run Windows applications. I know I don't. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot bcause you'll eventually run up against some piece of Windows software that doesn't run quite right. No matter how bad Windows might seem, trying to emulate WIndows on Linux is even worse. It is a dead end.
What we do where I work when our Mac users need to access Windows applications is use Terminal Services.
The better Linux (through Wine, etc.; Mono, unpopular as may be with some because of the unhealthy relationship the project is perceived as having with MS, may have a role here, too) is at supporting popular Windows applications, the lower the cost and risk of transitioning to Windows is for users that rely on applications that are currently designed for Windows only. And the lower that cost and risk is, the more likely those people are to try Linux. And the more of them that use Linux, the more demand there will be for new native Linux software. And, presuming that those users have a good experience with Linux and its F/OSS nature, the more resources will flow into supporting quality, Linux-based F/OSS rather than purchasing closed-source software.
Ah, but F/OSS software isn't driven by demand. It is driven by developers who enjoy sharing ideas. F/OSS developers generally don't respond well to having millions of people making demands of them. They do what they do because they enjoy it, not because people demand it. High demand will inevitably be filed by proprietary software. Linux needs to keep a healthy ratio of users vs. contributors. If you attract the attention of the masses, that ratio will be broken.
The masses don't give a crap about F/OSS. And putting them on Linux won't change that.
But you can't make desktop Linux more popular with business if the initial cost/risk barriers to adopting Linux on the desktop are too high for most businesses to consider, because the OS transition is unavoidably linked to a transition away from their current application set, as well.
There's just no compelling reason to adopt Linux just to run Windows software. Even if you COULD technically run your critical Windows apps on Linux under Wine or whatever, why would you? For one thing, you'd probably lose any support for the application from the vendor. Imagine calling up Adobe support and asking them to help you solve a problem your having with Photoshop CS3 under Wine. They'd laugh in your face. Things would be even worse with smaller vendors. You also risk losing forw
That would be a problem, considering that the sun was created only on the fourth day.
Which is, of course, a problem in itself because you have plants before a sun. Ignoring suggestions that God could sustain the plants without the sun, it is clearly contrary to any reasonable scientific sequence of events.
Bottom line is that Genesis has a lot of obvious problems if understood literally... the least of which is the length of a "day."
That may very well happen. Like I said in my first post. Sometimes scientist prove what they once thought to be true to actually be false. Could the same not possibly happen with evolution?
Sure it is possible, but it isn't likely. It is much more likely that we'll merely fine the theory as new evidence comes in. Very few theories as well supported as Evolution get completely overturned. They may be superceded like Newtonian physics was superceded by Relativity, but that doesn't mean Newtonian physics was completely wrong. We still use Newtonian physics because it does a good enough job at explaining physical interactions under ordinary circumstances. And the math is a lot easier.
I choose to believe in God. I believe him to exist.
Acceptance of the Evolution is not mutually exclusive with belief in God.
Yes it does. But let's imagine for a moment that God is telling Moses the story of creation as though the observer's point of view were on Earth itself. The early solar system is coalescing into planets, the Sun, etc. When the Sun ignites the planets are already largely coalesced. The solar wind sweeps the system clear of the remaining gas and dust. So our (long-lived and surprisingly hardy) observer on the newborn Earth sees the Earth in the dark, then sees the Sun come in to view as it ignites and clears the solar system of obscuring clouds of dust and gas.
Even allowing for the possibility that the sun was not emitting any light before the Earth had coalesced, there would still have been stars in the sky, and hence, light. Genesis has the stars created after the Earth, which is in directly conflict with modern science.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it is necessarily any kind of "swindling." It is just the simple fact that they have no right to make you drink the Coke on the premises, or in the case of iTunes, only play music in iTunes/iPod. Sure, they have the right try to make it difficult for you to drink the coke off teh premisis or to play iTMS music on other devices... but I believe the consumer has just as much right to try to bypass the restrictions (DMCA be damned). Whether or not the consumer knew of the restriction beforehand is completely irrelevent.
Right. What's the problem with that? If the store makes it too difficult for you to do what you want with the product you purchase, they should expect people to shop elsewhere.
If it is so small, why do they bother hassling the Hymn developers in the first place? I think they do care. DRM is proving to be a big problem for consumers.
-matthew
I think people just like to brag about their "awesome" jobs that allow them to travel the world.
Imagine this Ask Slashdot:
"So, I got this new job in the sewers of New York. I need a laptop that is waterproof and can emit ultrasonic noise to scare the rats away while I do my surveying..."
Oh, wait, that might actually be interesting (the laptop selection, not the job).
While read this this "Ask Slashdot" I kept hearing the voice of some flaky blond chick asking her friends what top she should wear to go clubbing. WHO CARES! Just pick something and wear it. It doesn't really matter.
I kinda got the impression that the author was looking for an excuse to brag about how he gets to travel the world for a living. It least that is why I hope he submitted this question. Because if he can't do a little shopping around for himself... well, that would just be sad.
What difference does it make whether or not you knew that Coke was chained to the store?
Have you ever tried using satellite internet before? You'll soon realize that speed isn't everything.
-matthew
Don't most people just use the standalone update tool? Or is that only good for autoupdate?
-matthew
Yes, their "high level of activity"
How common is this? I know AOL does it, but when I tried to implement transparent proxying it seemed problematic. From what I understand, it violates the way HTTP is supposed to work.
Anyway, even without proxying, clients generally don't keep many simutaneous connections. And even if they did, I believe most NAT gateways can overload external ports as well as addresses. You can match up a destination IP with a port and have two translations using the same external port as long as they are to different destinations.
Nah, the addresses are for the NSA and DHS wiretaps. Turns out that listening to your internet traffic isn't enough. They want to know what's on your LAN!
I, for one, welcome our bikini clad, oiled up, spring break taking overlords!
No, it is totally unreasonable. It just doesn't happen. I just checked the translation table of our firewall with in excess of 100 users and there's only 216 translations open. This includes connections to our web server in the DMZ. You're telling me that it is reasonable for that number to increase 2 orders of magnitude?
Numbers, please.
Really? We currently NAT well over 160 machines to a single external IP address and have had 0 problems in years. Users have unrestricted internet access (and they use it).
If 160 machines are filling up 64k of ports, something is seriously wrong with the translation algorithm. Perhaps old connections aren't being reaped properly?
Is it worse for ISPs? I used to work for an ISP that would NAT whole high rise condominium/apartments of home users with no problems other than pure bandwidth.
It is a good thing browsers limit themselves to the number of simutaneous requests, isn't it? What is it, like 6? An intelligent NAT gateway will close a translation when the client does. A pr0n page will NOT take up 200 external ports.
Bullshit.
How many? I'd really like to know how braindead your router is that it doesn't know how to close translations when the TCP connection is terminated.
Again, bandwidth was our only limitation.
You can. You're full of shit. (Or is it FUD?)
No, it was the voice of someone who just pulled a bunch of numbers out of his ass. 4 user limit behind a residential gateway? Come on, you can't possibly believe that.
-matthew
Ok, mind if I generalize about all Republicans based on Ann Coulter? (though she's probably not as "heavy" as your sister)
If only there was a "-1 Stupid Political Stereotype" mod
Well, you can fault people for what they do to make money. But just making money?
But Microsoft owned DOS. They weren't competing with anyone. Plus, DOS isn't really much of and OS anyway. Windows, or something like it, was inevitable. Users and developers really had choice but to adopt Windows.
Remember OS/2 and how it advertised "A better WIndows than Windows" and a "Better DOS than DOS?" How'd that work out for IBM? It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to try and be compatible with their own products, but for anyone else it is suicide to try to play catch-up with Microsoft in terms of compatibility.
You're wrong.I used Linux exclusively with no Windows programs for years just fine. And there's plenty of other who do the same. Can everyone do it? Nope. But why is it important? Why must Linux be everything to everyone?
Depends on what kind of programs you want. Market share isn't necessarily going to give you more F/OSS applications. More proprietary apps, sure. But not F/OSS. F/OSS is not driven by supply and demand. It is driven by motivated developers who love doing what they do and enjoy sharing their work with the public.
I know it is cliche' by now and it isn't meant to be mean, but if you want more programs on Linux, start coding! That is what Linux is all about. Linux users who value the F/OSS spirit don't want Windows apps to fill the gaps. They want to find ways to accomplish it with F/OSS software in teh community.
Who said anything about outnumbering Windows applications? That is far too ambitious, and quite frankly, unnecessary. All that is required is a critical mass. And linux has it.
-matthew
I just don't think it is realistic to want both good compatibility with Windows AND a better system than Windows. Just getting full (or nearly full) compatibility is hard enough, if not impossible. Also, keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons that Windows is the steaming pile that it is is because of compatibility and all the legacy crap they have to support.
On a more aesthetic level, why would you want to clone a system that you don't even like in the first place? It has all the appeal of a DOS clone. If you're going to clone something, why not something that is worth cloning? OS X is a pretty decent system... and there's already GNUStep to get your started.
Coherence mode is overrated. I'd much rather use Terminal Server to get Windows apps... at least at work. Virtualizing a second OS is a huge waste of resources. Unless we're talking about software testing where you need to maintain several sandboxes, each with a different configuration... in which case ReactOS doens't help much. You need the Real Thing to do any meaningful tests.
But if you still want a "coherence" like feature on Linux, you should demand it from VMWare. They already provide it on OS X (VMWare Fusion). I'm sure they could figure something out for X11.
Use Terminal Server. Works for us.
The type of people use tend to use the advanced features of Excel dont' really care about LInux and don't really have much motivation to ditch Windows. So why cater to them?
-matthew
Haskell malware is the best!
What would be the point in having a Windows clone that is always playing catch-up with Windows? Is it really worth saving $100? Classic example of reinventing the wheel. Only in this case you're reinventing a broken wheel and not bothering to improve upon it. The reason things like ReactOS and Wine haven't gone very far is because most people recognize what a dead end it is to always be playing catch-up with MS. You can't win. It is futile. Apple was smart enough to not bother with Windows compatibility and sell their product on its own merits. I'm sure they could have tried to build something like Wine into OS X, but they knew that they couldn't compete head to head with MS. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Linux could learn a lot from OS X.
What is it with the Linux users' obsession with Microsoft and Microsoft compatability, anyway? Sometimes it seems like a closeted homosexual secretly lusting after his arch nemesis.
Well, i think 99% compatibility is a little too ambitious. I don't even think Microsoft has gotten that good with Vista.
Trying to market an alternative OS based on compatibility with another OS is a mistake. A big mistake. You can't compete with Microsoft on compatibility. I love Linux, but even I wouldn't be dumb enough to make a business depend on Wine or whatever. I'd take the quirks Windows over compatibility headaches any day.
For one thing you'd probably lose support from vendors if you aren't running their software on Windows. Also, you're betting a lot on continued and consistent compatibility for future products you might have to use. Just because you can run Accounting Package 2.0 under Wine doesn't mean 3.0 will run when your CFO needs to upgrade. You never know when MS is going to pull something funny their their API's. I wouldn't want to be the IT guy who has to tell the C*O that we can't run X piece of software because saving $90 per station on a Windows license was so important.
That said, terminal services is not a bad option. Terminal Server (don't even need to invest in Citrix) is a decent way to give users of non-windows machines access to Windows programs. We use it for our Mac users where I work. For the most part it is transparent and even makes it convenient to give access to apps through a VPN so users can run programs from home. So in some ways it is actually better than having the app running locally.
For my own work, I run Windows in VMware. Partially because I don't want to deal with Wine, but also because if I'm using Windows it is probably because I'm testing soem website in IE or something like that. Much nicer to have Windows in a sandbox.
Firefox and OpenOffice already run on Windows just fine. Why would anyone switch to Linux to run them and then have to worry about whether or not Wine will run their Windows apps? To someone who isn't already a fan of Linux, it doesn't make any sense. Hell, it doesn't make sense to me and I *am* a Linux fan. I guess viruses and such might be one reason, but I can honestly say that it hasn't been a big deal where I work.
No, that will merely get more native proprietary software. WHich isn't necessary the best thing for Linux. What is needed is more users who are more likely to contribute to the community.
Maybe, maybe not. Again, you don't want just any user. It is important to target a specific audience as Apple has. Apple has been successful at getting people to switch because they provide a compelling *new* experience for a relatively narrow audience. Emulating Windows apps is a dead end. Notice how Apple has managed to get away with not emulating Windows software? Linux should not go that route for similar reasons. You can run VMware or dual-boot. That has to be enough.
That is exactly what Microsoft wants potential competitors to try. You can't compete with MS on that front.
I don't think people want Linux to run Windows applications. I know I don't. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot bcause you'll eventually run up against some piece of Windows software that doesn't run quite right. No matter how bad Windows might seem, trying to emulate WIndows on Linux is even worse. It is a dead end.
What we do where I work when our Mac users need to access Windows applications is use Terminal Services.
Ah, but F/OSS software isn't driven by demand. It is driven by developers who enjoy sharing ideas. F/OSS developers generally don't respond well to having millions of people making demands of them. They do what they do because they enjoy it, not because people demand it. High demand will inevitably be filed by proprietary software. Linux needs to keep a healthy ratio of users vs. contributors. If you attract the attention of the masses, that ratio will be broken.
The masses don't give a crap about F/OSS. And putting them on Linux won't change that.
There's just no compelling reason to adopt Linux just to run Windows software. Even if you COULD technically run your critical Windows apps on Linux under Wine or whatever, why would you? For one thing, you'd probably lose any support for the application from the vendor. Imagine calling up Adobe support and asking them to help you solve a problem your having with Photoshop CS3 under Wine. They'd laugh in your face. Things would be even worse with smaller vendors. You also risk losing forw
Which is, of course, a problem in itself because you have plants before a sun. Ignoring suggestions that God could sustain the plants without the sun, it is clearly contrary to any reasonable scientific sequence of events.
Bottom line is that Genesis has a lot of obvious problems if understood literally... the least of which is the length of a "day."
-matthew
How dare you associate addiction with Ludacris!
Sure it is possible, but it isn't likely. It is much more likely that we'll merely fine the theory as new evidence comes in. Very few theories as well supported as Evolution get completely overturned. They may be superceded like Newtonian physics was superceded by Relativity, but that doesn't mean Newtonian physics was completely wrong. We still use Newtonian physics because it does a good enough job at explaining physical interactions under ordinary circumstances. And the math is a lot easier.
Acceptance of the Evolution is not mutually exclusive with belief in God.
-matthew
Even allowing for the possibility that the sun was not emitting any light before the Earth had coalesced, there would still have been stars in the sky, and hence, light. Genesis has the stars created after the Earth, which is in directly conflict with modern science.