Well according to the logic here, microsoft could start pooring huge amounts of pages into one of the web service they own that all mention the linux kernel repeatedly in hopes of making it harder for users to find the real information they're looking for...
MSN could delete all entries to Linux in it's database, or redirect them all to the Windows 2000 homepage...
According to the reasoning being given here, that would be all fine and dandy. I don't think it would go over too well for anyone here if the tables were turned like that...
Re:Some rules don't deserve to be respected.
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
Do not even compare the holocaust, slavery, or either of your other examples to the fight over DeCSS... You're hallucinating badly if you feel that all those cases are to be treated in the same light as the DeCSS case. No one's dying over the decryption codes in DVD's...
This is a property lawsuit, with the MPAA trying to control their property... The OSS movement has tried to make it into a freedom of speech movement, though for many of them, i doubt they really trully believe it themselves.
The fact of the matter is that the case is about Linux users wanting to watch movies in Linux, and the MPAA saying "you can, but you just stole something from us that everyone else has to pay for". That's it.
If people were dying over this, then yes, take matters into your own hands to do what's right. But people aren't dying. they just want to watch movies in Linux. Why don't you take more of a stand and try to rally america into rebuilding Kosovo, stopping the russian slaughter of the Chechnyans, or one of so many other more worthwhile causes?
Because they don't affect you. This is the only movement you can think to join...
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for watching DVD's whereever I'd like, but i'm not about to scream it's a free speech issue... It's not, in my eyes.
No, you're right, it is completely legal to write any program you'd like and call it whatever you wish... It's just that, in case you hadn't noticed, there's a lawsuit going on... If you feel the as strongly as you do about it, why don't you just post the DeCSS source everywhere? Because that's wrong, illegal, and you know it. So basically, you're trying to give the real "DeCSS" security though obscurity... which for one, we all know doesn't work all that well... except, say, if the case is won by the defendants, in which case legitamate users will have to surf through 12000 sites that all contain this De Cascading Style Sheets utility when they actually want something else.
Maybe I should start a movement to have everyone start naming their software "linux", "apache", "windows 2000", etc... It's never been done before today, but hey... this is the open source movement and they don't need to obey rules, laws, or respect anything.
Maybe MOSR has realized all the slashdot traffic adds revenue to their pockets and is just publishing stories on their site in hopes of it getting picked up...
Either it's complete spoof, or Connectix is looking to the open source community to provide them legal protection, just as it's been trying to do with DeCSS...
I'll be really sad if connectix does this. They spent quite a long time developing this peice of software, withstood the first of two lawsuits standing, and are basically about to throw the money they could have earned to the wind...
Of course the 2nd lawsuit is a patent case, so maybe they know they've violated some patents... In which case, again, OSS seems to be the savior for projects which are dependant on other companies patents.
If their product is legit, they should keep it for themselves and make some money. If it's not, then it certainly shouldn't be open sourced. It'll just tarnish the whole OSS movements repuatation.
And don't anyone tell me they can earn money from it after open sourcing it... Maybe they can, but not enough to offset their costs... Open source software sells (when it does) for multitudes of times cheaper than commercial software. It's all fine and dandy for programmers with day jobs, but i don't think it meshes well with a company's economics, bills, and shareholders.
Rather than just acting with complete disregard for the laws and whatever, why doesn't everybody here just ADVOCATE why they think DeCSS is okay, and let the court systems decide...
If the answer comes back in a form that you disagree with, THEN disregard their decision and do what you wish...
It only seems that you're all making the lives much more difficult for everyone involved by acting like... dare a say the word?... children.
"you can't catch me! neener neener!"
Write letters to your representatives. Write letters to the companies. Write letters to the judge. Put informational web pages as to why you think DeCSS is okay.
Look at Connectix as an example... Things are going good for them. Yes, they've barely sold their software yet, but they're setting a very important precedent. You too could set a precedent, but in the end it will all be remembered as acting in complete disregard of the "rules" that everyone is made to obey...
They're not written in stone, you know... It's just easier to justify everything when you wish they were.
Where I work, I believe we have around 400 seats for Photoshop, a site license for Quark Xpress, etc... i don't hear a complaint about the costs of software.
And unless they've changed in the past year, I've called Adobe on numerous occasions to ask about premiere... never a single charge... and i've even received call backs from their people.
Lots of companies ship much more functional software than they'ed like users to believe... You just have to buy the right to use the advanced featueres, or the ability to use the software after a pre determined amount of time.
The key you buy directly corresponds to what priveledges you are expected to want and have.
If all you wanted was a free unix, you could have gone the LInux or BSD route... But you turned into the "theif" because you're NOT using what you paid for... You PAID for one thing and are USING a completely different thing.
I assume you're thinking that Intel's going to block the market from receiving utilities that capture what's displayed on your screen? No they aren't, and that'd be the easiest way to circumvent this scheme...
From my angle i'd think that we're going to see a "new" DVD player soon. One that stores it's data in a different format than today's DVDs, encrypted stronger with two ciphers, and without any way to interface it to a computer.
There are too many wild cards in a PC to effectively block copying, the MPAA just discovered. IF they start selling boxes where you slip the disk in, it decodes the first layer (to circumvent DVD writers), and sends a still encoded signal to a digital television, which decodes it and displays it... Unless the TV has video out ports, there's not going to be a clear way to catch the signal in a clear form... Hence, no more copying.
I'd bet your users could sue you if you sold their names to marketers, and the marketers themselves would get off scot free at worst and at best could launch a suit against you for giving them now what they wanted... "We requested names not from colorado, when infact we received only names from colorodo..."
You'd be sued, fined, and sent jail for that manuever.
Do you guys honestly believe what you say? Or is that why your'e all AC's...
"it shouldn't be a proble if people want to pirate it since they won't buy it"
When you buy software you expect the best, yet don't want to pay for the best... Why didn't you just buy the multiuser version of OpenServer or Unixware? You get what you pay for... otherwise it's just theft.
And the last one... If they unbundled support fromthe software everyone in their right mind would go for the $20 version... They could just ask friends to help with their problems. Maybe people would team together to get one full version, so they could share the support.
If you want free softwarem, use free software... Don't steal non-free software... your justifications are completely absurd...
no, it's not... I'd reckon that adobe makes much more money selling photoshop for $450 to 500,000 people than it would selling it for $45 to 5,000,000 people... Sure it looks the same, but there's fixed costs (cd pressing, documentation, packaging) that eat a ways into it...
Besides that, they'ed get flooded with phone calls from people who have no business trying to use their software asking "what's a TIFF? okay... what about an EPS? How do i enlarge my image?"... More support calls equals more employees equals less margins.
By keeping their price high, they insure that only people that are trully interested in learning and using the software get their hands on it.
If you're not interested in using it to make money... i'd guess you're a student... get the student discounted version... Buy a scanner and get Photoshop LE, it's basically the same thing less a few options (CMYK color spaces... which you shouldn't care about if you're using it in an unprofessional context)...
Don't be so conspiratory... or at least think of more plausible conspiracies... Intel opted out of firewire in favor of USB because it allowed them to own their entire platform rather than licensing a very important element of it from an outside company.
I don't think this technology is even meant for computers... Probably more for digital TV's and DVD players. It's a content protection tool... One of the ways that a DVD could be copied would be just to hook the DVD player to a VCR, press play and record, and there you go... A lower quality movie... but a copy none the less.
If you try it with an encrypted signal, you can't record movies that way. You only get an encrypted stream. The DVD player would just send encrypted data) to the TV which would decode there, rather than how currently, the DVD does the decoding itself.
That's the only feasible use for this technology... It's useless for computer users... How many of use care than the signal going from the video card to monitor isn't encryped? How many of us would care if it were? It wouldn't stop coworkers from looking over shoulders, people with binoculars peering through windows, hidden cameras, etc...
Just because it's from Intel does not mean it's meant for the PC world... IMO, at least.
Before you run off on your assumptions, let me assure you that I too have an desk, office, and name plate...
Here's my new track: Like Napster with just a couple of Beam-It users, network bandwidth is going to get sucked dry... 128 kbps adds up pretty quickly. I'd just as rather see users put the files on their hard drives than see 30 or 40 128 kb streams flowing through the network just to satisfy everyone's listening neeeds... This will be even more important as businesses switch more and more of their systems to IP... Video conferencing, Voice over IP... as well as regular network tasks, should not have to suffer because people want to have access to their entire CD collection online.
I mean, a year ago it was unthinkable that this would be possible. Today, already, people take the bandwidth for granted.
No... I actually am not 100% fond of Linux... I'd much prefer Macs any day of the week for anything that requires me to actually interact with a computer.
It seems a bit off to me because even if Microsoft did produce the most streamlined OS in the world... I simply doubt that Sun, IBM, Oracle, and all the other "enterprize" class vendors would be unable to to beat Microsofts results using what they have available to themselves -
Multitudes of more CPU's, each of which is more powerful than anything Intel offers, 64 bit memory addressing = enough memory to conceivably hold the database in RAM. Years more experience in that arena...
No... SOmething seems greatly wrong, to me. I KNOW linux can't match any of those numbers, simply because it doesn't run, or isn't optimized to run, on those classes of machines, and the software isn't available for them at that level...
Yeah... I definetly don't like the idea that Microsoft magically appeared at the top of the list using software that's yet to be released. It does seem rather fishy, to see it there and here nothing of it from them... Is this part of a stealth marketting effort on microsofts part? Or is it them doing what they've accused Oracle Sybase Informix and IBM for quite a while now? (Doctoring their applications to perform the TPC benchmarks exceptionally well).
It just doesn't seem convievable that an 8CPU system from Microsoft could compete head one with one with 64 processors from sun or 128 processors for SGI... ESPECIALLY given the later two's 64 bit operating systems and Windows 2000's decidedly 32 bit addressing.
Gnome and KDE are windowing environments that are meant for more up-to-date systems. The easy thing to do if you don't like the bloat is simply don't run the environment. You can run lestif, afterstep, or the command line (don't take as being a command line bigot here... i'm just pointing out alternatives).
If the applications you want to use only work with KDE or Gnome, then there's a reason to upgrade. If they do work under other window managers, then you didn't really need KDE or Gnome in the first place.But if you want all the spiffiness that the later window managers offer, you'll need to get a machine that's up to the task of that.
I can't imagine a reason why developers would want to target the capabilities of their software to those of machines that are already out dated.
Yes, Linux can run on 486's from 1992. So will all the rest of the software from 1992. But why constrain software that's written in 2000 to the capabilities of a 1992 machine? All this extra horsepower that 90% of us don't need might as well be used in making a system that's more attractive than what was considered state of the art in the early 90's.
If switching between OSes could be as simple as it was for Mac users to switch to completely different CPU architecturers, a compelling argument could be made to switch to Linux.
If Linux had seemless compatibility with 100% of Windows applications, but the underlying OS was much more stable, people would flock to Linux in droves. Developers could then create native, Linux versions of their applications as they saw where the real demand was. And if people were already using linux in order and running windows applications on it, they'ed be very likely to begin investigating "native" linux applications that took further advantage of the services provided by the OS.
Actually, a friend of mine just picked up a Mac Portable (pre-powerbook), running Mac OS 6.something.
Anythings better than that these days... YOu can only run application at a time, plus desk accessories. Double clicking an icon opens it. Double clicking a name sets you to rename it. Duplicating files creates "Copy of " files, so they don't appear in order anymore...
But back then, Windows wasn't where it's gotten today... But don't give System 6 too much credit.
Most people use windows because they're required to.
Company's standardize on windows because the programs they want are available. Schools standardize on windows to help students use what they'll one day use. Homes standardize on windows because so students can stay compatible with their schools computers, parents can bring home work. That plus when they have problems, there's huge amounts more of Windows users that may be able to help them out...
I don't think people use Linux because they're lazy... Unless laziness is not wanting to switch from what gets the job done to something they've just been hearing about for the past year...
A good GUI means next to nothing until WINE is more up to the task of emulating windows... Pretty interfaces don't win desktops, plentiful, usable applications do. Witness Windows 3.1: Aweful in terface compared to Macs and OS/2... Incredibly unstable. Lots more apps. Guess who won the battle for the desktop?
It sounds like they're building extensions to GNOME... And it's all GPLed... GNOME people can grab whatever theyed like from it. So can KDE people. So if it makes good progress, expect to see pieces of it pop up all over the place, or even see Gnome co-opt it.
An effort like this has needed to be started for a long time... Unfortunately it doesn't seem like enough of an idea to base a business on. Look: If it doesn't amount to anything, then no one want's it. IF it becomes the greatest thing since sliced bread, then it ends up being taken over or absorbed into Gnome, and in turn gets distributed with all the major distro's... Not much revenue for the original authors/concept people.
I'm almost puzzled at the idea of why Oracle hasn't announced anything for Mac OS X based systems... I mean, Larry Elison is on Apple's board of directors, so he obviously believes in Apple. OS X will be *probably* the easiest Unix for non-unix literate people to set up... WebObjects is one of the most popular application servers... The G4 is a great chip... Apple supposedly has SMP G4 systems in the works... That all makes for an awesome turnkey internet/intranet server, if they just had a high quality SQL database.
In Elison's position, h knows probably better than 99.9% of the industry what apples plans, intents, and capabilities will be a year from now... It'd almost be comical if Informix beat Oracle to the OS X punch.
Slashdot Mirror
Well according to the logic here, microsoft could start pooring huge amounts of pages into one of the web service they own that all mention the linux kernel repeatedly in hopes of making it harder for users to find the real information they're looking for...
MSN could delete all entries to Linux in it's database, or redirect them all to the Windows 2000 homepage...
According to the reasoning being given here, that would be all fine and dandy. I don't think it would go over too well for anyone here if the tables were turned like that...
Do not even compare the holocaust, slavery, or either of your other examples to the fight over DeCSS... You're hallucinating badly if you feel that all those cases are to be treated in the same light as the DeCSS case. No one's dying over the decryption codes in DVD's...
This is a property lawsuit, with the MPAA trying to control their property... The OSS movement has tried to make it into a freedom of speech movement, though for many of them, i doubt they really trully believe it themselves.
The fact of the matter is that the case is about Linux users wanting to watch movies in Linux, and the MPAA saying "you can, but you just stole something from us that everyone else has to pay for". That's it.
If people were dying over this, then yes, take matters into your own hands to do what's right. But people aren't dying. they just want to watch movies in Linux. Why don't you take more of a stand and try to rally america into rebuilding Kosovo, stopping the russian slaughter of the Chechnyans, or one of so many other more worthwhile causes?
Because they don't affect you. This is the only movement you can think to join...
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for watching DVD's whereever I'd like, but i'm not about to scream it's a free speech issue... It's not, in my eyes.
No, you're right, it is completely legal to write any program you'd like and call it whatever you wish... It's just that, in case you hadn't noticed, there's a lawsuit going on... If you feel the as strongly as you do about it, why don't you just post the DeCSS source everywhere? Because that's wrong, illegal, and you know it. So basically, you're trying to give the real "DeCSS" security though obscurity... which for one, we all know doesn't work all that well... except, say, if the case is won by the defendants, in which case legitamate users will have to surf through 12000 sites that all contain this De Cascading Style Sheets utility when they actually want something else.
Maybe I should start a movement to have everyone start naming their software "linux", "apache", "windows 2000", etc... It's never been done before today, but hey... this is the open source movement and they don't need to obey rules, laws, or respect anything.
Maybe MOSR has realized all the slashdot traffic adds revenue to their pockets and is just publishing stories on their site in hopes of it getting picked up...
Either it's complete spoof, or Connectix is looking to the open source community to provide them legal protection, just as it's been trying to do with DeCSS...
I'll be really sad if connectix does this. They spent quite a long time developing this peice of software, withstood the first of two lawsuits standing, and are basically about to throw the money they could have earned to the wind...
Of course the 2nd lawsuit is a patent case, so maybe they know they've violated some patents... In which case, again, OSS seems to be the savior for projects which are dependant on other companies patents.
If their product is legit, they should keep it for themselves and make some money. If it's not, then it certainly shouldn't be open sourced. It'll just tarnish the whole OSS movements repuatation.
And don't anyone tell me they can earn money from it after open sourcing it... Maybe they can, but not enough to offset their costs... Open source software sells (when it does) for multitudes of times cheaper than commercial software. It's all fine and dandy for programmers with day jobs, but i don't think it meshes well with a company's economics, bills, and shareholders.
Rather than just acting with complete disregard for the laws and whatever, why doesn't everybody here just ADVOCATE why they think DeCSS is okay, and let the court systems decide...
... children.
If the answer comes back in a form that you disagree with, THEN disregard their decision and do what you wish...
It only seems that you're all making the lives much more difficult for everyone involved by acting like... dare a say the word?
"you can't catch me! neener neener!"
Write letters to your representatives. Write letters to the companies. Write letters to the judge. Put informational web pages as to why you think DeCSS is okay.
Look at Connectix as an example... Things are going good for them. Yes, they've barely sold their software yet, but they're setting a very important precedent. You too could set a precedent, but in the end it will all be remembered as acting in complete disregard of the "rules" that everyone is made to obey...
They're not written in stone, you know... It's just easier to justify everything when you wish they were.
Where I work, I believe we have around 400 seats for Photoshop, a site license for Quark Xpress, etc... i don't hear a complaint about the costs of software.
And unless they've changed in the past year, I've called Adobe on numerous occasions to ask about premiere... never a single charge... and i've even received call backs from their people.
Lots of companies ship much more functional software than they'ed like users to believe... You just have to buy the right to use the advanced featueres, or the ability to use the software after a pre determined amount of time.
The key you buy directly corresponds to what priveledges you are expected to want and have.
If all you wanted was a free unix, you could have gone the LInux or BSD route... But you turned into the "theif" because you're NOT using what you paid for... You PAID for one thing and are USING a completely different thing.
I assume you're thinking that Intel's going to block the market from receiving utilities that capture what's displayed on your screen? No they aren't, and that'd be the easiest way to circumvent this scheme...
From my angle i'd think that we're going to see a "new" DVD player soon. One that stores it's data in a different format than today's DVDs, encrypted stronger with two ciphers, and without any way to interface it to a computer.
There are too many wild cards in a PC to effectively block copying, the MPAA just discovered. IF they start selling boxes where you slip the disk in, it decodes the first layer (to circumvent DVD writers), and sends a still encoded signal to a digital television, which decodes it and displays it... Unless the TV has video out ports, there's not going to be a clear way to catch the signal in a clear form... Hence, no more copying.
I'd bet your users could sue you if you sold their names to marketers, and the marketers themselves would get off scot free at worst and at best could launch a suit against you for giving them now what they wanted... "We requested names not from colorado, when infact we received only names from colorodo..."
You'd be sued, fined, and sent jail for that manuever.
Do you guys honestly believe what you say? Or is that why your'e all AC's...
"it shouldn't be a proble if people want to pirate it since they won't buy it"
When you buy software you expect the best, yet don't want to pay for the best... Why didn't you just buy the multiuser version of OpenServer or Unixware? You get what you pay for... otherwise it's just theft.
And the last one... If they unbundled support fromthe software everyone in their right mind would go for the $20 version... They could just ask friends to help with their problems. Maybe people would team together to get one full version, so they could share the support.
If you want free softwarem, use free software... Don't steal non-free software... your justifications are completely absurd...
no, it's not... I'd reckon that adobe makes much more money selling photoshop for $450 to 500,000 people than it would selling it for $45 to 5,000,000 people... Sure it looks the same, but there's fixed costs (cd pressing, documentation, packaging) that eat a ways into it...
Besides that, they'ed get flooded with phone calls from people who have no business trying to use their software asking "what's a TIFF? okay... what about an EPS? How do i enlarge my image?"... More support calls equals more employees equals less margins.
By keeping their price high, they insure that only people that are trully interested in learning and using the software get their hands on it.
If you're not interested in using it to make money... i'd guess you're a student... get the student discounted version... Buy a scanner and get Photoshop LE, it's basically the same thing less a few options (CMYK color spaces... which you shouldn't care about if you're using it in an unprofessional context)...
Don't be so conspiratory... or at least think of more plausible conspiracies... Intel opted out of firewire in favor of USB because it allowed them to own their entire platform rather than licensing a very important element of it from an outside company.
I don't think this technology is even meant for computers... Probably more for digital TV's and DVD players. It's a content protection tool... One of the ways that a DVD could be copied would be just to hook the DVD player to a VCR, press play and record, and there you go... A lower quality movie... but a copy none the less.
If you try it with an encrypted signal, you can't record movies that way. You only get an encrypted stream. The DVD player would just send encrypted data) to the TV which would decode there, rather than how currently, the DVD does the decoding itself.
That's the only feasible use for this technology... It's useless for computer users... How many of use care than the signal going from the video card to monitor isn't encryped? How many of us would care if it were? It wouldn't stop coworkers from looking over shoulders, people with binoculars peering through windows, hidden cameras, etc...
Just because it's from Intel does not mean it's meant for the PC world... IMO, at least.
I apparently took the wrong angle on this one.
Before you run off on your assumptions, let me assure you that I too have an desk, office, and name plate...
Here's my new track: Like Napster with just a couple of Beam-It users, network bandwidth is going to get sucked dry... 128 kbps adds up pretty quickly. I'd just as rather see users put the files on their hard drives than see 30 or 40 128 kb streams flowing through the network just to satisfy everyone's listening neeeds... This will be even more important as businesses switch more and more of their systems to IP... Video conferencing, Voice over IP... as well as regular network tasks, should not have to suffer because people want to have access to their entire CD collection online.
I mean, a year ago it was unthinkable that this would be possible. Today, already, people take the bandwidth for granted.
I'm done.
No... I actually am not 100% fond of Linux... I'd much prefer Macs any day of the week for anything that requires me to actually interact with a computer.
It seems a bit off to me because even if Microsoft did produce the most streamlined OS in the world... I simply doubt that Sun, IBM, Oracle, and all the other "enterprize" class vendors would be unable to to beat Microsofts results using what they have available to themselves -
Multitudes of more CPU's, each of which is more powerful than anything Intel offers,
64 bit memory addressing = enough memory to conceivably hold the database in RAM.
Years more experience in that arena...
No... SOmething seems greatly wrong, to me. I KNOW linux can't match any of those numbers, simply because it doesn't run, or isn't optimized to run, on those classes of machines, and the software isn't available for them at that level...
Yeah... I definetly don't like the idea that Microsoft magically appeared at the top of the list using software that's yet to be released. It does seem rather fishy, to see it there and here nothing of it from them... Is this part of a stealth marketting effort on microsofts part? Or is it them doing what they've accused Oracle Sybase Informix and IBM for quite a while now? (Doctoring their applications to perform the TPC benchmarks exceptionally well).
It just doesn't seem convievable that an 8CPU system from Microsoft could compete head one with one with 64 processors from sun or 128 processors for SGI... ESPECIALLY given the later two's 64 bit operating systems and Windows 2000's decidedly 32 bit addressing.
I'll stop now...WAY OFF TOPIC, I'm sorry!!!
Gnome and KDE are windowing environments that are meant for more up-to-date systems. The easy thing to do if you don't like the bloat is simply don't run the environment. You can run lestif, afterstep, or the command line (don't take as being a command line bigot here... i'm just pointing out alternatives).
If the applications you want to use only work with KDE or Gnome, then there's a reason to upgrade. If they do work under other window managers, then you didn't really need KDE or Gnome in the first place.But if you want all the spiffiness that the later window managers offer, you'll need to get a machine that's up to the task of that.
I can't imagine a reason why developers would want to target the capabilities of their software to those of machines that are already out dated.
Yes, Linux can run on 486's from 1992. So will all the rest of the software from 1992. But why constrain software that's written in 2000 to the capabilities of a 1992 machine? All this extra horsepower that 90% of us don't need might as well be used in making a system that's more attractive than what was considered state of the art in the early 90's.
I'll disagree with you, then! :)
If switching between OSes could be as simple as it was for Mac users to switch to completely different CPU architecturers, a compelling argument could be made to switch to Linux.
If Linux had seemless compatibility with 100% of Windows applications, but the underlying OS was much more stable, people would flock to Linux in droves. Developers could then create native, Linux versions of their applications as they saw where the real demand was. And if people were already using linux in order and running windows applications on it, they'ed be very likely to begin investigating "native" linux applications that took further advantage of the services provided by the OS.
Actually, a friend of mine just picked up a Mac Portable (pre-powerbook), running Mac OS 6.something.
Anythings better than that these days... YOu can only run application at a time, plus desk accessories. Double clicking an icon opens it. Double clicking a name sets you to rename it. Duplicating files creates "Copy of " files, so they don't appear in order anymore...
But back then, Windows wasn't where it's gotten today... But don't give System 6 too much credit.
Most people use windows because they're required to.
Company's standardize on windows because the programs they want are available. Schools standardize on windows to help students use what they'll one day use. Homes standardize on windows because so students can stay compatible with their schools computers, parents can bring home work. That plus when they have problems, there's huge amounts more of Windows users that may be able to help them out...
I don't think people use Linux because they're lazy... Unless laziness is not wanting to switch from what gets the job done to something they've just been hearing about for the past year...
A good GUI means next to nothing until WINE is more up to the task of emulating windows... Pretty interfaces don't win desktops, plentiful, usable applications do. Witness Windows 3.1: Aweful in terface compared to Macs and OS/2... Incredibly unstable. Lots more apps. Guess who won the battle for the desktop?
It sounds like they're building extensions to GNOME... And it's all GPLed... GNOME people can grab whatever theyed like from it. So can KDE people. So if it makes good progress, expect to see pieces of it pop up all over the place, or even see Gnome co-opt it.
An effort like this has needed to be started for a long time... Unfortunately it doesn't seem like enough of an idea to base a business on. Look: If it doesn't amount to anything, then no one want's it. IF it becomes the greatest thing since sliced bread, then it ends up being taken over or absorbed into Gnome, and in turn gets distributed with all the major distro's... Not much revenue for the original authors/concept people.
I'm almost puzzled at the idea of why Oracle hasn't announced anything for Mac OS X based systems... I mean, Larry Elison is on Apple's board of directors, so he obviously believes in Apple. OS X will be *probably* the easiest Unix for non-unix literate people to set up... WebObjects is one of the most popular application servers... The G4 is a great chip... Apple supposedly has SMP G4 systems in the works... That all makes for an awesome turnkey internet/intranet server, if they just had a high quality SQL database.
In Elison's position, h knows probably better than 99.9% of the industry what apples plans, intents, and capabilities will be a year from now... It'd almost be comical if Informix beat Oracle to the OS X punch.