First, I can't believe the swedish government would be so foolish as to yield to an unsubstantiated letter from a powerless congressman.
Secondly, if the letter was real, any country, or even any group could bring that congressman a world of pain if he wasn't acting within the law, which clearly he wasn't if this was real (which I doubt)
If you can find a link, I'd be interested to read more, but it sounds very much like something which has been made up.
ok, what the fuck is up with that? doens't Microsoft have the obligation to prove they pirated the software? Someone please explain to me how they can "force" them to prove they own software without any proof to the contrary.
I've been a linux user for about a year now, so I think even though I don't classify myself as an expert, I can safely say I have much more experience than someone who is picking up a box for the first time from wal mart.
I tried to install Mandrake 7.2 (downloaded version) And ran into a couple serious problems.
First, it wouldn't allow me to run X on my V3. Basically horking it up badly. No amount of tweaking and configuration seemed to fix the setup it tried to install. So, no X.
Even more critical, The installer threw a boot loader on there which wouldn't allow me to get into windows. Just hanging when I tried to select windows instead of linux.
Bad news.
So, now I have no linux on this machine. Maybe I just happen to have a configuration the installer didn't plan on seeing, or it was a fluke of some type, but at least in my case, mandrake was a bad experience and I won't be trying again anytime soon.
My point is, that if someone's first experience with Linux was the same as my first experience with mandrake 7.2, it would be their last experience with linux, and they'd tell their friends how much linux sucks, and would probably not be likely to venture out of the windows camp again for many years.
But, as many have pointed out, NEARLY ALL OF HIS POINTS ARE VALID!
One thing that the Linux community needs to keep doing is looking at weaknesses and eliminating them. The author of this "email" has done an excellent job of not only pointing out a few of open source weaknesses, but he also managed to position the information as if to appear that Bill Gates himself was the one who found it.
Excellent. If people take it seriously, they will look at fixing the problems in an effort to "prove him wrong" and even if they recognize the true source, they will still take a more objective look at the points mentioned than if some average joe had written the same article, to the benefit of everyone.
I love it.
whoever you are, I know you are reading this, and enjoying every respons, you have 2 thumbs up from me. Excellent writing.
using the default netscape in Redhat, you can't change the homepage... well, you can, but it doesn't work correctly once it's changed from the redhat default.
Microsoft's email network was taken down by the "I love you" virus.
It's amazing that they hadn't put in security measures to keep this type of attack from happening again.
Or is it just not possible to lock down windows, due to it's lack of security? If the manufacturer can't do it in their own buildings... what chance has a normal person got?
________
Re:I had a toy that worked like this
on
Air-Powered Cars
·
· Score: 1
just what I was thinking. a lot of stored energy there. BOOM!
I guess it'd be safer than a full gas tank though.
"And how long do you think until M$ files a cease & desist order now?"
That would be amusing to me. (at least on some level) since Corel is supporting Wine development, and Microsoft owns a large part of Corel. so... they'd be going after themselves.
make sure you try the newest version of star office (now called open office)... They finally got rid of that godawful desktop, and now it runs closer to microsoft office...
I like to see this. Commercial, closed source retail software is a big step for linux, and I for one would love to see it. Walking into a software store and having more software for linux than just the OS itself isn't something you can do without an EB in your town (loki's only major retail outlet iirc.)
But, this is an unknown company, and their products might be crap. Then the nay-sayers would just love to hold them up as an example if they fail, proclaiming "Selling retail software for linux won't work!" and discouraging other companies from trying the same thing.
Will be interesting to watch. I hope the benefits end up outweighing the potential costs.
till we see news reports of people crashing into the 20th floor of skyscrapers because they were trying to fly and talk on their cell phone at the same time?
What are the risks? Well, we could destroy the earth. Oh well.
Just like a little experiment they did to africanize some honey bees so they could make more honey.
oops, the bees got out. Guess what, they attack and kill people, they kill "good" honey bees, and they don't produce any honey. Now they have spread across south and central america, and are spreading through the united states.
oops. Guess that was a bad idea.
Scientists can't cure the common cold. If a bacteria capable of destroying the human, or other species is unleased, there would be little if anything we could do to stop it.
And for your "don't bang rocks, or you'll get shards in your eyes" example doesn't prove your point, it proves mine. If you are going to bang rocks together, find out about the rocks first to see if there will be shards, then put on some safety glasses and bang them together behind a protective screen. If you just bang them together, you'll be blind, and you'll have gained besides the knowledge that it was a stupid thing to do.
Humans have the capability to make choices, study facts, and weigh options. Humans also have the ability to destroy the planet in less than 20 minutes.
There are no second chances, and although a planet filled with nothing but bacteria may evolve back into intelligent life in a few billion years if the planet is still around, it's doubtful they would learn anything from the stupid choices of one scientist in the year 2000 which killed everyone on the planet.
Stephen J Hawking when asked on a theory why we have never, and possibly will never obtain contact with another intelligent species anywhere else in the universe is that whenever any society reaches the technological level to achieve interstellar communication, they also would be technologically advanced enough to easily destroy themselves... and they probably end up doing just that.
People who say "it's worth the risk" without having any benefit in mind, scare me. a lot.
This initiative is a continuation of Red Hat's University Program, announced in June, to bring the benefits of open
source software to educational facilities worldwide
It doesn't suprise me at all that the first post in this topic is a redhat-bashing post. Yet, Redhat is again taking some really positive steps to promote linux, and help bring it to the next level.
Sure, they slap the Redhat name on it, but you know it's gonna be some highly customized installation set up by the school that has little if anything to do with the regular retail install.
But, they are again putting a lot of effort, dedicating people to promote linux in areas where it needs it most, and again, they seem to get nothing but contempt in return.
"why not debian" "why not slackware" I'm sure we'll see dozens of times in this thread. The facts are that noone connected with those distributions are doing anything along these lines to promote Linux.
You may not like Redhat as a company. You may not like Redhat linux as a distribution. But you should recognize, and give them credit for at least some of the efforts they are making, because we all benefit in the long run.
the ONE thing I absolutely hated about star office was the unified desktop.
and it's now GONE!
Each app is it's own window now, just like it should be. Now, if the just allow each to be started independantly, it will be excellent.
I'd put star, er oops, openoffice at least equal to KDE and Gnome to the success of Linux on the desktop. This is one application we need to hang our hats on, and now that it's GPL'd, it's safe to do it.
Whatever your feelings for sun are, buying SO, and GPL'ing it were hugely beneficial to the linux community, and I'd like to thank them for it.
If it was slashdotted before, it's all fixed now. I just downloaded the binaries at over 250k/sec
I really hope everyone can get behind this and recognize just how important it is to linux to have a great (not just good) office suite.
I can't even count the number of times I've had "supposedly" knowledgable people tell me that Linux is doomed unless Microsoft releases office for it. And we've all heard the same thing said about the macintosh.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I can't believe the swedish government would be so foolish as to yield to an unsubstantiated letter from a powerless congressman.
Secondly, if the letter was real, any country, or even any group could bring that congressman a world of pain if he wasn't acting within the law, which clearly he wasn't if this was real (which I doubt)
If you can find a link, I'd be interested to read more, but it sounds very much like something which has been made up.
________
________
________
Redhat, or somebody, should come in on a white horse, and show the benefits of open source.
"This will never happen to you again with open sourece software."
________
________
just like the local best buy, the local office max, the local k mart, the local pizza hut, and just about every other store.
nobody seems to buy them, and there is no other linux software (no loki games, no linux productivity software)
I don't know why some wal marts would have it while others didn't.
________
I tried to install Mandrake 7.2 (downloaded version) And ran into a couple serious problems.
First, it wouldn't allow me to run X on my V3. Basically horking it up badly. No amount of tweaking and configuration seemed to fix the setup it tried to install. So, no X.
Even more critical, The installer threw a boot loader on there which wouldn't allow me to get into windows. Just hanging when I tried to select windows instead of linux.
Bad news.
So, now I have no linux on this machine. Maybe I just happen to have a configuration the installer didn't plan on seeing, or it was a fluke of some type, but at least in my case, mandrake was a bad experience and I won't be trying again anytime soon.
My point is, that if someone's first experience with Linux was the same as my first experience with mandrake 7.2, it would be their last experience with linux, and they'd tell their friends how much linux sucks, and would probably not be likely to venture out of the windows camp again for many years.
________
But, as many have pointed out, NEARLY ALL OF HIS POINTS ARE VALID!
One thing that the Linux community needs to keep doing is looking at weaknesses and eliminating them. The author of this "email" has done an excellent job of not only pointing out a few of open source weaknesses, but he also managed to position the information as if to appear that Bill Gates himself was the one who found it.
Excellent. If people take it seriously, they will look at fixing the problems in an effort to "prove him wrong" and even if they recognize the true source, they will still take a more objective look at the points mentioned than if some average joe had written the same article, to the benefit of everyone.
I love it.
whoever you are, I know you are reading this, and enjoying every respons, you have 2 thumbs up from me. Excellent writing.
________
________
________
________
It's amazing that they hadn't put in security measures to keep this type of attack from happening again.
Or is it just not possible to lock down windows, due to it's lack of security? If the manufacturer can't do it in their own buildings... what chance has a normal person got?
________
I guess it'd be safer than a full gas tank though.
________
That would be amusing to me. (at least on some level) since Corel is supporting Wine development, and Microsoft owns a large part of Corel. so... they'd be going after themselves.
________
make sure you try the newest version of star office (now called open office) ... They finally got rid of that godawful desktop, and now it runs closer to microsoft office...
________
Good work wine team. You guys are amazing!
Now, please fix wine so it will run Tribes like the old Wine versions used to. :) :)
________
But, this is an unknown company, and their products might be crap. Then the nay-sayers would just love to hold them up as an example if they fail, proclaiming "Selling retail software for linux won't work!" and discouraging other companies from trying the same thing.
Will be interesting to watch. I hope the benefits end up outweighing the potential costs.
________
________
What are the benefits here? there are none.
What are the risks? Well, we could destroy the earth. Oh well.
Just like a little experiment they did to africanize some honey bees so they could make more honey.
oops, the bees got out. Guess what, they attack and kill people, they kill "good" honey bees, and they don't produce any honey. Now they have spread across south and central america, and are spreading through the united states.
oops. Guess that was a bad idea.
Scientists can't cure the common cold. If a bacteria capable of destroying the human, or other species is unleased, there would be little if anything we could do to stop it.
And for your "don't bang rocks, or you'll get shards in your eyes" example doesn't prove your point, it proves mine. If you are going to bang rocks together, find out about the rocks first to see if there will be shards, then put on some safety glasses and bang them together behind a protective screen. If you just bang them together, you'll be blind, and you'll have gained besides the knowledge that it was a stupid thing to do.
Humans have the capability to make choices, study facts, and weigh options. Humans also have the ability to destroy the planet in less than 20 minutes.
There are no second chances, and although a planet filled with nothing but bacteria may evolve back into intelligent life in a few billion years if the planet is still around, it's doubtful they would learn anything from the stupid choices of one scientist in the year 2000 which killed everyone on the planet.
Stephen J Hawking when asked on a theory why we have never, and possibly will never obtain contact with another intelligent species anywhere else in the universe is that whenever any society reaches the technological level to achieve interstellar communication, they also would be technologically advanced enough to easily destroy themselves... and they probably end up doing just that.
People who say "it's worth the risk" without having any benefit in mind, scare me. a lot.
________
There you go.
What are the chances that it's harmless? I don't know. Is it 50% harmless? 75% likely to be harmless? 90% likely to be completely harmless...
There is no possible way to know for sure, no organisms from that long ago can be guaranteed to act a certain way.
And there is a very real possibility that it could be something which would completely wipe the planet of life as we know it.
And they are bringing it to life for no reason other than "well... that's kind of neat."
People take too much for granted. The last words uttered on this planet will be "oops"
________
why the FUCK are they messing with that kind of stuff?
If that got out, and happened to be dangerous to humans, or plants, or any species at all... it would be devastating.
There is absolutely no way to justify the risk of doing something as reckless as that.
________
It doesn't suprise me at all that the first post in this topic is a redhat-bashing post. Yet, Redhat is again taking some really positive steps to promote linux, and help bring it to the next level.
Sure, they slap the Redhat name on it, but you know it's gonna be some highly customized installation set up by the school that has little if anything to do with the regular retail install.
But, they are again putting a lot of effort, dedicating people to promote linux in areas where it needs it most, and again, they seem to get nothing but contempt in return.
"why not debian" "why not slackware" I'm sure we'll see dozens of times in this thread. The facts are that noone connected with those distributions are doing anything along these lines to promote Linux.
You may not like Redhat as a company. You may not like Redhat linux as a distribution. But you should recognize, and give them credit for at least some of the efforts they are making, because we all benefit in the long run.
________
Just a thought.
________
the ONE thing I absolutely hated about star office was the unified desktop.
and it's now GONE!
Each app is it's own window now, just like it should be. Now, if the just allow each to be started independantly, it will be excellent.
I'd put star, er oops, openoffice at least equal to KDE and Gnome to the success of Linux on the desktop. This is one application we need to hang our hats on, and now that it's GPL'd, it's safe to do it.
Whatever your feelings for sun are, buying SO, and GPL'ing it were hugely beneficial to the linux community, and I'd like to thank them for it.
________
I really hope everyone can get behind this and recognize just how important it is to linux to have a great (not just good) office suite.
I can't even count the number of times I've had "supposedly" knowledgable people tell me that Linux is doomed unless Microsoft releases office for it. And we've all heard the same thing said about the macintosh.
________