Assume Linux and Windows marketshare was 50/50 and that your roommate had a daughter:
His daughter wants to experiment with some simple ideas in automatically manipulating media files, and can choose her father's Windows partition or the SuSE partition on the same machine.
(We'll ignore that that SuSE installer will change the C: partition to 'hidden' which causes the XP disk checker to freeze on bootup, a Redmond "oops". Assume the installation works.)
Over a period of, say 3-4 years returning repeatedly to several of her different dalliances in programming.... Which OS is she likely to settle on? I say she'll tend to settle on Windows, particularly as she becomes more ambitious and career-oriented toward programming. You see... Her Linux friends couldn't even run the Linux code she sent them. That was a real downer... all that sense of accomplishment and no one to SHOW it to!
Her Windows pals could run her programs easily. This resulted in a networked, social reinforcing of her endeavors on that platform. Whereas SuSE has no desktop platform to offer, because the other Linux distros do not include many of the same pieces. Someone told her to learn "packaging" for RPM or DEB, but that got complicated very quickly and the problems were all confusingly different depending on which Linux pal tried it. She read something about 'LSB' being a standard she could write for, but it didn't include the graphics or audio she needed.
Oh well...
This budding programmer will go on to write marvelous applications that will draw many users to the Windows platform. She could have stayed with "Linux" if it had nurtured her with a stable environment; if there were a reasonably modern framework she could count on, and a beginner-intermediate IDE that was promoted and supported by RedHat, Novel, etc.
For that matter: Mac OS has none of the problems (viruses and dependency hell) that you mention. We should be asking why, and why desktop Linux isn't learning much from the quintessential modern PC.
Doesn't seem all that vigorous from where I'm standing. For applications, its *anemic*.
A Windows user posted elsewhere that he wanted to try Linux, but having a USB stopped him cold from using the installer. That's not a sign of robustness or vigor. Again, no real obstacle to the admin types who do enjoy robust features in Linux intended for that audience. For everyone else, its the same story: Endless prickly details that must be tended from the CLI before basic things like keyboards, displays and sound not only WORK... but can be RELIED upon.
What's reliable in Linux is Ethernet, ATA, etc. Interfaces you need to run a headless server.
Mainly because when you distribute for Windows you know you're normally going to have administrator access
As usual, the existence and relative success of OS X negates such claims.
Automatic package managers + huge repository seem nice at first. Until you realize there are Zero independant application developers offering great stuff for your OS, because the distro differences and their PMs continually massaging/tossing around system components have scared off those types of developers. Want your stuff to install and keep working on the PCs of users A, B and X? Then find out what their distros are and surrender your code so that a 'maintainer' middle-man (with probably no interest or real experience with anything more high-level than Firefox) can manage it for you. Ha. There goes control over your code. There go modes of distribution like application on a CDROM or a ZIP file. There goes the close relationships you might have formed with most users who cannot/willnot operate a compiler. All out the window.
None of this is really an obstacle to nerdy sysadmins or those to write software targeted at them, because they have IT insight and experience. But for everyone else, such as authors/users of PC applications, its lethal.
Mac and Windows serve as relatively stable environments, where PC developers and users meet. Or if you prefer, they "interface". That is how a PC software platform has to work. To our Linux community, this direct interfacing without a distro 'maintainer' between them is treated as 'unclean'. And if Linux distros were as carelessly written as Windows, the author/user seperation habit probably would improve cleanliness (less malware); however that is not necessarily so and it is proven untrue in the case of Mac OS X, which has the PC software model without a malware epidemic.
GNU/Linux IS an operating system, and it is standardized, but it doesn't have any "handles" that end-users can (or would want to) grab hold of. So the ones that try to use it get a distro, with all sort of non-standard (non-LSB) stuff like X11, a window manager and the like.
What Linux isn't is a PC platform. MacOS and Windows are PC platforms, NOT mainly because of their GUIs are standardized (in fact, they shift in usually understandable ways). Its because you can learn to program complex applications on Windows/Mac, and expect a relatively stable platform where other people can easily acquire and run your stuff when you start to get really ambitious. They are mediums of creativity that produce applications which draw users to those platforms.
Linux distros comprise a desert of shifting sand by comparison. Its too hostile for anyone to thrive off it except for career geologists and the like. In our case, Linux is like a candy store for system-level coders and admins, and things are standardized mainly for their benefit and convenience. Rarely, we will get a system hacker who has some skills in writing higher-level functionality, but even so they have spent too much in time/experience/habit into lower layers and lack the experience to compete.
Also, how do they offer tech support when the underlying OS could be different in so many ways? The answer is usually either A) reduce capabilities/ambition of your code and rely on mainly common system services, or B) give it to the repository priests (for free) and let them stand between you and your users (instead of forging more direct relationships with them).
"Linux" is not a Personal Computing platform. It's a kernel that's wedded to the GNU toolchain, which is meaningless to most end-users and young developers starting out. Its a boon for people who 'do infrastructure' (including managed thin-clients) or gizmos with custom UIs. But thin-clients != personal computing. This only looks like a platform if you're a sysadmin or systems-oriented coder.
To anyone just wanting to run their PC, get user-oriented applications on CD or downloaded as a file... or experiment with some code that their teachers and pals across town can download as a file and run... "Linux" (nee Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Linspire, Xandros, etc, etc) feels like a big headache. Your friends are trying out "Linux" too? Well, you've probably got to learn packaging, dependencies, repositories, etc. before you can expect your experiements to run at all on anyone else's system. The fragmented distro scene is like chlorine against budding application developers needing platform stability in order to express their creative urge.
So in the crucial desktop PC space, Windows and Mac will continue to have a considerable edge.
People here often forget what makes the PC experience special: The uniformity of a platform aimed at *their* needs (not just those wanting to experiment with new encryption and packet-switching schemes), primarily the ability to install apps and drivers at will (and before you issue the kneejerk response, no Mac OS does NOT suffer by advancing these essential platform qualities).
Anyone wanting GNU/Linux + Whatever to shine as an alternative for PC users should get behind the new LSB Desktop spec. that is due this December/January. At least then ISVs (not just system hackers) will have something uniform to target as far as APIs and other features are concerned, and we should see more creative and wonderful applications that can draw end users to the platform.
To those who don't care or hate the idea, perhaps because of the notion that elitism is what keeps GNU/Linux good and secure, I suggest adopting a tolerant and polite attitude instead; No one will be forcing you at gunpoint to use distros conforming to LSB Desktop. The desktop PC needs a workable free alternative, and we're looking to geeks to either help or get out of the way.
A paper on cross-site tracking is available here, along with two preventative extensions called SafeHistory and SafeCache.
To help safeguard from scripting attacks, I also use NoScript extension.
The CookieSafe extension will block and help you manage cookies better than Firefox's built-in manager....other interesting privacy tools are... Stealther (prevents recording of history and blocks ReferentHeader) Tor anonymizer + Foxyproxy extension ImgLikeOpera can switch image prefs with ease Flashblock (stops flash animations from running until you click them)
In short, just be a pompous ass. Don't let the facts or manners get in your way. The converts will come running. Or walk away laughing. Either way: believe you win. The truth is really far too sad.
Comparing your response to the text of the original article, I'd say there is probably some projecting going on here.
A persuasive Linux tech like him does indeed win. Being a pompous contrarian among tech peers is entirely different than having customers who, when they come to you for expert and authoritative advice, want and expect you to GIVE it to them and usually to ACT on it; Don't inpterpret the latter as being the former.
Of course, if providing a solution that better fits certain people makes your own fanboy-ism look arrogant and out of touch, then you may feel threatened (and prone to react with hyperbole) but you would have no one to blame other than yourself.
I didn't see any mention of holding in RHAT or particular capacity to make more money from FOSS than from Windows.
On the contrary, he obviously knows and works on Windows and all of its maladies spell $$$ for techs who are willing to slog away at it.
His interest is social: He sees benefits that won't immediately or necessarily return to him with material rewards. Which is fine, as long as his customers and colleagues can see benefits in switching and agree to do so.
What ARE you talking about? Walmart still sells 'em and the list of vendors is growing. You can even get Linux from Sears and KMart now.
Of course, how dare us geeks as mere individuals suggest that we could offer anything nearly as brilliant as the meglomania of Microsoft (where all IT roads rightly, royally lead). To even think about challenging an outlaw monopoly, we must be uppity indeed and should remember to stay in our place, keeping our sorry deluded heads down and running malware scrubbers day-and-night on Windows infestations.
Or... We can stick it to patheitc Microsoft toadies who feel threatened that people can be persuaded to use a different OS.
People are much more likely to have a good experience with FOSS if a knowledgeable person introduces it to them. A typical user trying it on their own is just asking for frustration.
Its even better if the introducer who services can be purchased when they are needed. That way, the user is less likely to be left stymied by some unforseen (possible simple) obstacle and they won't feel insecure in their new environment knowing that formal help is available.
The answer to those questions is: How attractive and accessible are OSS coders making their products to the next generation?
As an example: If Apache hasn't improved much in the last couple years, then I'd say they are in trouble. Their source code may be clean and nice, but getting hit with the experience of vi and httpd.conf is bound to scare-off budding sysadims and web coders; people who might otherwise take an interest in the innards of their web server given some time.
The **AA are trying to stamp out a tradition of Fair Use by locking-down the devices we own and making the mere reprogramming of such a device (whether shared or not) an instant crime.
Are OSS advocates doing the same for their works? No.
In skankazoid D-Link's case, I doubt their bias has much to do with protecting the interests of the end-user. Their capacity for respect stops at anything smaller than the size of an office park, with a seven-figure market cap and a team of lawyers flying a commercial banner.
In other words, if manufacturers start selling PCs with Linux installed, complete source for their version of Linux, but no ability to actually modify, compile, and upgrade the kernel due to the hardware enforcing DRM authentication (and the necessary keys being kept secret), this is fine by the Linux developers. This leads to precisely the sort of problem that led RMS to create the GPL in the first place -- he wanted to fix a printer driver but couldn't because the code was proprietary. Is it any different if the code is available but you can't install your fixes anyway?
It is different.
A situation where the user is physically and legally prevented (via DRM) from so much as flipping a bit in the distributed binary is far, far worse than what RMS originally experienced (which was merely a lack of source code and/or an inability to redistribute changes).
Perhaps kernel developers, now ensconsed in their corporate offices, think that the eventual lockdown of all mass-marketed hardware is some unlikely pipedream. If so, they should really get out some to the company wingdings and meet more and varied people for the companies they work for, and actually absorb what they are saying about the direction of their lobbying and marketing efforts. As it is now, they seem to be projecting their geek instincts on the people they work for, and I think they are in for some kind of rude disillusionment.
They also don't seem to care about ensuring that future generations have the same opportunity to discover and hack as they did. That seems a tragic (almost inhuman) flaw in their character.
Maybe they are less naive, and think that having the market go through a phase with locked-down devices will somehow spur the growth of open source hardware. In that case, you are looking at a reactionary gamble that is much riskier than proactively offering a new software license.
Having worked for Rational supporting the 'signature' product line, I can vouch for the lousy quality. As far as their UML tools go the company totally, completely, utterly lost touch with their customers wants and needs. They chose to "Xtremeify" and "Webify" successor products to Rose, in a cloud of marketing-buzzword-driven bloat that almost no one would use unless forced. When the dust settled, there were no less than TWO successive replacements for Rose, and they were awful enough that Rose had to be marketed concurrently with the other two with NO outward indication that it was on the backburner. Each product came from a different team, had drastically different architechtures, and the customers were lured into "upgrading" between them only to find that moving their new work back to the former product was nearly impossible.
It really was like watching a slow train wreck. They turned themselves into another Lotus just as IBM started to size them up for acquisition. The UML community that buzzed around Rose became disgusted and dissembled.
I admire the process they claim to promote with their products (and early-on, they did honestly promote best practices). But it got to the point where many of their own products were avoided internally and one couldn't tell that Rational developers were following any of the company's own vaunted methodologies.
Nowadays Rational seems to rely on Eclipse as a crutch. It helps "make the sale" and gets developers to start using all the (closed-source, decrepit) proprietary stuff they layer on top.
They probably had someone leak the video on purpose to generate controversy (publicity) and so Al could whine even more intensely about "Intellectual Property" theft ruining the business.
Media consolidation (and enterprises which conglomerate news media 'product' into a larger money-and-influence concerns) is at the heart of what has gone wrong in this country. They propagandize heavily and with impunity, especially after they've helped install their favorite corporate errand-boys (BushCo) into public office.
So of course, no one who isn't himself a corporate executive is going to be portrayed favorably in the media. The favored halo will go to the politician who has to most friends working at Exxon and Disney and GE, especially if they can be expected to appoint those corporate friends to government agencies that regulated them.
We have all the economic underpinnings of fascism in place. Now. Only the general public still have not yet been pumped with enough irrational fear to make the nation Nazi-esque. The test-marketing of the new domestic scapegoat (not Jews... Chicanos) has not exactly cristalized, although we do already have something of a vigilante-brownshirt-fascisti in the form the Minutemen. I don't think enough media executives or shareholders see much profit potential yet for their oil/military/prison-building interests by scouring the country for Mexicans and deporting them.
But hey... you never know, someone might come up with a great new angle...
"False" whatever. That's a non-sequitir. Go back and re-read his message.
There's no reason why a Saudi who is angry about SA being a client state wouldn't want to lead Afghans who felt used and victimized by the superpowers, and to make the Afghans' cause his own. You would have to have blinders on to think that mere entrainment to US interests has created this mess; binLaden and his cause would be nothing today if the west hadn't been largely responsible for repeatedly throwing those countries into the gutter of despair.
-alienated every other country on the globe; -infringed on every article in the Constitution; -wasted untold trillions of dollars in the pursuit of terrorists.
There's probably more I'm missing, but that's what comes to mind right about now.
What I'm not cleared to^W^W^Wwanna know is why the DoJ went to the trouble of demanding Google for a billion random search records last year when it could have just politeley asked NSA for all of 'em.
There is the imperialist attitude in a nutshell: Cynically rationalize wifebeater diplomacy to the point where respect automatically requires scare-quotes.
Here is something for the bible-thumpers and the corporatists and cheap-oil-lovers of our Empire to think about: You cultivate an anti-humanist worldview (where people are automatically assumed to be and treated as unworthy, evil, etc. unless they belong to your in-groups) at all our peril, and have every reason to expect that relations with the rest of humankind will continue to deteriorate accordingly.
What I'm not cleared to^W^W^Wwanna know is why the DoJ went to the trouble of demanding Google for a billion random search records last year when it could have just politeley asked NSA for all of 'em.
There would be no better way for the government to check the quality of surveilance on search engines than to get a listing straight from Google for comparison.
2) In effect, they've managed to convince consumers to go out and pick up HDMI-equipped HDTVs
My first reaction to Sony dropping HDMI from cheaper units was: "Huh?? Sony is passing-up the promotion of their new copy protection scheme? Can't be!"
Now your message puts it into nice perspective. Threatening to take it out made a chorus of resolution-fiends sing "Gimme!"... and lo, Sony is really gonna give it to 'em and HDMI is now cherished without reservation by high-end gamers.
The wireless GUI in XandrOS 4 is similar in function and capability to the one in Windows XP, with its own system tray icon/menu. You can select networks, store passwords, configure WEP and WPA, etc. Its the absolute best there is for wireless in Linux right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Assume Linux and Windows marketshare was 50/50 and that your roommate had a daughter:
His daughter wants to experiment with some simple ideas in automatically manipulating media files, and can choose her father's Windows partition or the SuSE partition on the same machine.
(We'll ignore that that SuSE installer will change the C: partition to 'hidden' which causes the XP disk checker to freeze on bootup, a Redmond "oops". Assume the installation works.)
Over a period of, say 3-4 years returning repeatedly to several of her different dalliances in programming.... Which OS is she likely to settle on? I say she'll tend to settle on Windows, particularly as she becomes more ambitious and career-oriented toward programming. You see... Her Linux friends couldn't even run the Linux code she sent them. That was a real downer... all that sense of accomplishment and no one to SHOW it to!
Her Windows pals could run her programs easily. This resulted in a networked, social reinforcing of her endeavors on that platform. Whereas SuSE has no desktop platform to offer, because the other Linux distros do not include many of the same pieces. Someone told her to learn "packaging" for RPM or DEB, but that got complicated very quickly and the problems were all confusingly different depending on which Linux pal tried it. She read something about 'LSB' being a standard she could write for, but it didn't include the graphics or audio she needed.
Oh well...
This budding programmer will go on to write marvelous applications that will draw many users to the Windows platform. She could have stayed with "Linux" if it had nurtured her with a stable environment; if there were a reasonably modern framework she could count on, and a beginner-intermediate IDE that was promoted and supported by RedHat, Novel, etc.
For that matter: Mac OS has none of the problems (viruses and dependency hell) that you mention. We should be asking why, and why desktop Linux isn't learning much from the quintessential modern PC.
Doesn't seem all that vigorous from where I'm standing. For applications, its *anemic*.
A Windows user posted elsewhere that he wanted to try Linux, but having a USB stopped him cold from using the installer. That's not a sign of robustness or vigor. Again, no real obstacle to the admin types who do enjoy robust features in Linux intended for that audience. For everyone else, its the same story: Endless prickly details that must be tended from the CLI before basic things like keyboards, displays and sound not only WORK... but can be RELIED upon.
What's reliable in Linux is Ethernet, ATA, etc. Interfaces you need to run a headless server.
Mainly because when you distribute for Windows you know you're normally going to have administrator access
As usual, the existence and relative success of OS X negates such claims.
Automatic package managers + huge repository seem nice at first. Until you realize there are Zero independant application developers offering great stuff for your OS, because the distro differences and their PMs continually massaging/tossing around system components have scared off those types of developers. Want your stuff to install and keep working on the PCs of users A, B and X? Then find out what their distros are and surrender your code so that a 'maintainer' middle-man (with probably no interest or real experience with anything more high-level than Firefox) can manage it for you. Ha. There goes control over your code. There go modes of distribution like application on a CDROM or a ZIP file. There goes the close relationships you might have formed with most users who cannot/willnot operate a compiler. All out the window.
None of this is really an obstacle to nerdy sysadmins or those to write software targeted at them, because they have IT insight and experience. But for everyone else, such as authors/users of PC applications, its lethal.
Mac and Windows serve as relatively stable environments, where PC developers and users meet. Or if you prefer, they "interface". That is how a PC software platform has to work. To our Linux community, this direct interfacing without a distro 'maintainer' between them is treated as 'unclean'. And if Linux distros were as carelessly written as Windows, the author/user seperation habit probably would improve cleanliness (less malware); however that is not necessarily so and it is proven untrue in the case of Mac OS X, which has the PC software model without a malware epidemic.
GNU/Linux IS an operating system, and it is standardized, but it doesn't have any "handles" that end-users can (or would want to) grab hold of. So the ones that try to use it get a distro, with all sort of non-standard (non-LSB) stuff like X11, a window manager and the like.
What Linux isn't is a PC platform. MacOS and Windows are PC platforms, NOT mainly because of their GUIs are standardized (in fact, they shift in usually understandable ways). Its because you can learn to program complex applications on Windows/Mac, and expect a relatively stable platform where other people can easily acquire and run your stuff when you start to get really ambitious. They are mediums of creativity that produce applications which draw users to those platforms.
Linux distros comprise a desert of shifting sand by comparison. Its too hostile for anyone to thrive off it except for career geologists and the like. In our case, Linux is like a candy store for system-level coders and admins, and things are standardized mainly for their benefit and convenience. Rarely, we will get a system hacker who has some skills in writing higher-level functionality, but even so they have spent too much in time/experience/habit into lower layers and lack the experience to compete.
Also, how do they offer tech support when the underlying OS could be different in so many ways? The answer is usually either A) reduce capabilities/ambition of your code and rely on mainly common system services, or B) give it to the repository priests (for free) and let them stand between you and your users (instead of forging more direct relationships with them).
LSB Desktop could be an answer. We'll see.
"Linux" is not a Personal Computing platform. It's a kernel that's wedded to the GNU toolchain, which is meaningless to most end-users and young developers starting out. Its a boon for people who 'do infrastructure' (including managed thin-clients) or gizmos with custom UIs. But thin-clients != personal computing. This only looks like a platform if you're a sysadmin or systems-oriented coder.
To anyone just wanting to run their PC, get user-oriented applications on CD or downloaded as a file... or experiment with some code that their teachers and pals across town can download as a file and run... "Linux" (nee Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Linspire, Xandros, etc, etc) feels like a big headache. Your friends are trying out "Linux" too? Well, you've probably got to learn packaging, dependencies, repositories, etc. before you can expect your experiements to run at all on anyone else's system. The fragmented distro scene is like chlorine against budding application developers needing platform stability in order to express their creative urge.
So in the crucial desktop PC space, Windows and Mac will continue to have a considerable edge.
People here often forget what makes the PC experience special: The uniformity of a platform aimed at *their* needs (not just those wanting to experiment with new encryption and packet-switching schemes), primarily the ability to install apps and drivers at will (and before you issue the kneejerk response, no Mac OS does NOT suffer by advancing these essential platform qualities).
Anyone wanting GNU/Linux + Whatever to shine as an alternative for PC users should get behind the new LSB Desktop spec. that is due this December/January. At least then ISVs (not just system hackers) will have something uniform to target as far as APIs and other features are concerned, and we should see more creative and wonderful applications that can draw end users to the platform.
To those who don't care or hate the idea, perhaps because of the notion that elitism is what keeps GNU/Linux good and secure, I suggest adopting a tolerant and polite attitude instead; No one will be forcing you at gunpoint to use distros conforming to LSB Desktop. The desktop PC needs a workable free alternative, and we're looking to geeks to either help or get out of the way.
A paper on cross-site tracking is available here, along with two preventative extensions called SafeHistory and SafeCache.
...other interesting privacy tools are...
To help safeguard from scripting attacks, I also use NoScript extension.
The CookieSafe extension will block and help you manage cookies better than Firefox's built-in manager.
Stealther (prevents recording of history and blocks ReferentHeader)
Tor anonymizer + Foxyproxy extension
ImgLikeOpera can switch image prefs with ease
Flashblock (stops flash animations from running until you click them)
and probably much more
Comparing your response to the text of the original article, I'd say there is probably some projecting going on here.
A persuasive Linux tech like him does indeed win. Being a pompous contrarian among tech peers is entirely different than having customers who, when they come to you for expert and authoritative advice, want and expect you to GIVE it to them and usually to ACT on it; Don't inpterpret the latter as being the former.
Of course, if providing a solution that better fits certain people makes your own fanboy-ism look arrogant and out of touch, then you may feel threatened (and prone to react with hyperbole) but you would have no one to blame other than yourself.
I didn't see any mention of holding in RHAT or particular capacity to make more money from FOSS than from Windows.
On the contrary, he obviously knows and works on Windows and all of its maladies spell $$$ for techs who are willing to slog away at it.
His interest is social: He sees benefits that won't immediately or necessarily return to him with material rewards. Which is fine, as long as his customers and colleagues can see benefits in switching and agree to do so.
What ARE you talking about? Walmart still sells 'em and the list of vendors is growing. You can even get Linux from Sears and KMart now.
Of course, how dare us geeks as mere individuals suggest that we could offer anything nearly as brilliant as the meglomania of Microsoft (where all IT roads rightly, royally lead). To even think about challenging an outlaw monopoly, we must be uppity indeed and should remember to stay in our place, keeping our sorry deluded heads down and running malware scrubbers day-and-night on Windows infestations.
Or... We can stick it to patheitc Microsoft toadies who feel threatened that people can be persuaded to use a different OS.
People are much more likely to have a good experience with FOSS if a knowledgeable person introduces it to them. A typical user trying it on their own is just asking for frustration.
Its even better if the introducer who services can be purchased when they are needed. That way, the user is less likely to be left stymied by some unforseen (possible simple) obstacle and they won't feel insecure in their new environment knowing that formal help is available.
The answer to those questions is: How attractive and accessible are OSS coders making their products to the next generation?
As an example: If Apache hasn't improved much in the last couple years, then I'd say they are in trouble. Their source code may be clean and nice, but getting hit with the experience of vi and httpd.conf is bound to scare-off budding sysadims and web coders; people who might otherwise take an interest in the innards of their web server given some time.
The **AA are trying to stamp out a tradition of Fair Use by locking-down the devices we own and making the mere reprogramming of such a device (whether shared or not) an instant crime.
Are OSS advocates doing the same for their works? No.
In skankazoid D-Link's case, I doubt their bias has much to do with protecting the interests of the end-user. Their capacity for respect stops at anything smaller than the size of an office park, with a seven-figure market cap and a team of lawyers flying a commercial banner.
If the worm is supposed to be assumed as being for Windows, then by all means change the name of this site to "news for Windows nerds".
Otherwise stop wasting people's time!
It is different.
A situation where the user is physically and legally prevented (via DRM) from so much as flipping a bit in the distributed binary is far, far worse than what RMS originally experienced (which was merely a lack of source code and/or an inability to redistribute changes).
Perhaps kernel developers, now ensconsed in their corporate offices, think that the eventual lockdown of all mass-marketed hardware is some unlikely pipedream. If so, they should really get out some to the company wingdings and meet more and varied people for the companies they work for, and actually absorb what they are saying about the direction of their lobbying and marketing efforts. As it is now, they seem to be projecting their geek instincts on the people they work for, and I think they are in for some kind of rude disillusionment.
They also don't seem to care about ensuring that future generations have the same opportunity to discover and hack as they did. That seems a tragic (almost inhuman) flaw in their character.
Maybe they are less naive, and think that having the market go through a phase with locked-down devices will somehow spur the growth of open source hardware. In that case, you are looking at a reactionary gamble that is much riskier than proactively offering a new software license.
I agree.
What's equally disturbing is all the clucking being heard on behalf of preserving maximum freedom for.... who? Users? No! Large corporations!
The GPL was inspired by a lack of USER freedom.
I think this post says it best.
Having worked for Rational supporting the 'signature' product line, I can vouch for the lousy quality. As far as their UML tools go the company totally, completely, utterly lost touch with their customers wants and needs. They chose to "Xtremeify" and "Webify" successor products to Rose, in a cloud of marketing-buzzword-driven bloat that almost no one would use unless forced. When the dust settled, there were no less than TWO successive replacements for Rose, and they were awful enough that Rose had to be marketed concurrently with the other two with NO outward indication that it was on the backburner. Each product came from a different team, had drastically different architechtures, and the customers were lured into "upgrading" between them only to find that moving their new work back to the former product was nearly impossible.
It really was like watching a slow train wreck. They turned themselves into another Lotus just as IBM started to size them up for acquisition. The UML community that buzzed around Rose became disgusted and dissembled.
I admire the process they claim to promote with their products (and early-on, they did honestly promote best practices). But it got to the point where many of their own products were avoided internally and one couldn't tell that Rational developers were following any of the company's own vaunted methodologies.
Nowadays Rational seems to rely on Eclipse as a crutch. It helps "make the sale" and gets developers to start using all the (closed-source, decrepit) proprietary stuff they layer on top.
According to Netcraft, Apache has lost significant marketshare to IIS/.NET this year:
e mber_2006_web_server_survey.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/09/05/sept
Since you're speculating, I might as well also:
They probably had someone leak the video on purpose to generate controversy (publicity) and so Al could whine even more intensely about "Intellectual Property" theft ruining the business.
Media consolidation (and enterprises which conglomerate news media 'product' into a larger money-and-influence concerns) is at the heart of what has gone wrong in this country. They propagandize heavily and with impunity, especially after they've helped install their favorite corporate errand-boys (BushCo) into public office.
So of course, no one who isn't himself a corporate executive is going to be portrayed favorably in the media. The favored halo will go to the politician who has to most friends working at Exxon and Disney and GE, especially if they can be expected to appoint those corporate friends to government agencies that regulated them.
We have all the economic underpinnings of fascism in place. Now. Only the general public still have not yet been pumped with enough irrational fear to make the nation Nazi-esque. The test-marketing of the new domestic scapegoat (not Jews... Chicanos) has not exactly cristalized, although we do already have something of a vigilante-brownshirt-fascisti in the form the Minutemen. I don't think enough media executives or shareholders see much profit potential yet for their oil/military/prison-building interests by scouring the country for Mexicans and deporting them.
But hey... you never know, someone might come up with a great new angle...
"False" whatever. That's a non-sequitir. Go back and re-read his message.
There's no reason why a Saudi who is angry about SA being a client state wouldn't want to lead Afghans who felt used and victimized by the superpowers, and to make the Afghans' cause his own. You would have to have blinders on to think that mere entrainment to US interests has created this mess; binLaden and his cause would be nothing today if the west hadn't been largely responsible for repeatedly throwing those countries into the gutter of despair.
Then there is the cost in human life.
What I'm not cleared to^W^W^Wwanna know is why the DoJ went to the trouble of demanding Google for a billion random search records last year when it could have just politeley asked NSA for all of 'em.
There is the imperialist attitude in a nutshell: Cynically rationalize wifebeater diplomacy to the point where respect automatically requires scare-quotes.
Here is something for the bible-thumpers and the corporatists and cheap-oil-lovers of our Empire to think about: You cultivate an anti-humanist worldview (where people are automatically assumed to be and treated as unworthy, evil, etc. unless they belong to your in-groups) at all our peril, and have every reason to expect that relations with the rest of humankind will continue to deteriorate accordingly.
What I'm not cleared to^W^W^Wwanna know is why the DoJ went to the trouble of demanding Google for a billion random search records last year when it could have just politeley asked NSA for all of 'em.
There would be no better way for the government to check the quality of surveilance on search engines than to get a listing straight from Google for comparison.
2) In effect, they've managed to convince consumers to go out and pick up HDMI-equipped HDTVs
My first reaction to Sony dropping HDMI from cheaper units was: "Huh?? Sony is passing-up the promotion of their new copy protection scheme? Can't be!"
Now your message puts it into nice perspective. Threatening to take it out made a chorus of resolution-fiends sing "Gimme!"... and lo, Sony is really gonna give it to 'em and HDMI is now cherished without reservation by high-end gamers.
The wireless GUI in XandrOS 4 is similar in function and capability to the one in Windows XP, with its own system tray icon/menu. You can select networks, store passwords, configure WEP and WPA, etc. Its the absolute best there is for wireless in Linux right now.