I have two Brother Laser printers. I usually buy genuine Brother refills from Amazon. They come with a postage-paid return sticker. I just put the old item in the box the new one came in, attached the sticker and drop off at Post Office. There is a sticker for UPS also.
Your answer, while well intentioned, is way over simplified. I am in a position that I am able to talk with the person or persons involved in driver development in many companies. The general consensus is that developing a driver or drivers that offer the same usability that the ones developed for Microsoft is just too expensive and time consuming.
I recently had a conversation with a developer from Brother USA. The individual uses Linux on his person PC at home. He explained that one of the major stumbling blocks were the many flavors of *nix that are available. Developing for all of them, especially the niche market ones like FreeBSD is not feasible. With Microsoft, a driver developed for WinXP might very well still work on Win-8.1, whereas in the *nix world, a driver developed for one flavor of Linux is usually useless on another flavor. If the FOSS world came together and developed one uniform driver model that employed a uniform installation routine, etcetera, then the costs of developing drivers for *nix would no longer be the problem that the presently are.
Not mentioned here, but important to remember is that Microsoft develops drivers for many devices on their own. They are usually "universal" drivers, but at least they offer some limited use of the device it was developed for. In some case, even more than the one written by the device's developer. Microsoft also offers "in-house" support for authors attempting to write drivers for its operating system.
It is also worth noting, that in many instances, the operating system does not offer the support that the device needs to operate to begin with. In the FreeBSD word, it took nearly 10 years for them to get support for "n" protocol drivers, and it is still woefully incomplete.
As a user of FreeBSD, I can safely say that by the time they incorporate this person into their "ports system', Frameworks 7 will have been introduced.
Why does FreeBSD continue to develop two different versions rather than concentrate on making on superior product? They are years behind *nix and a decade behind Microsoft when it comes to drivers, wireless support and printer support. It just defies logic that they spread their all ready meager resources between to products rather than concentrate on making on superior product.
They are still running 5+ year old linux_base-f10. You would have thought by now they would have updated it. Check out their base system installations. Virtually all of them are old versions. You would have thought for a new release, they would have updated their application.
It IS A CRIME because it deprives the artist his rightful dues for the item. While I agree that the amount does seem excessive, if it deters others it is worth it. Sorry, but I don't lose sleep over the penalties that a thief has to pay..
First of all, this is old news. Secondly, has it occurred to anyone that if Microsoft had pulled this stunt, the resident "Slashdoter's" would have been up in arms crying over the inhuman policy of a tyrannical corporate entity. However, since it is Google, who personally I believe is far more evil than Microsoft, the posts are mostly low keyed and benign in nature.
I wouldn't be so sure his flawed understanding of rape and conception is his motivation for opposing abortion in the case of rape.
I understand women can get pregnant from a rape, but still think abortion in the case of rape should be outlawed. The child is still a life and isn't responsible for the rape. Therefore, the child doesn't deserve to be punished with death for a crime he or she didn't commit.
I am going to assume you are a male and therefore would never be put into the position of having to carry an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a rape to term. The entire question of abortion should be left to women since they are the only sector of the human race that actually has to perform that chore. If men and not women were the ones to become pregnant, the legality of abortion would never have been questioned.
Last I read, they were making a lot of money selling operating systems. It's their bread and butter. They're already also making a lot of money selling other things, so why change a formula that is successful? I think most linux users and definitely most osx users are using the other operating systems for reasons other than the cost of the OS license, so I wonder how many new users a move like that would really attract.
While there is no doubt some truth in your statement regarding "OS X", the vast majority of Linux users that I know are using it primarily because they either cannot afford to purchase a full MS License or are socialist and believe everything should be handed to them sans payment of any kind. If Microsoft were to sell its operating systems for a token amount, say $25 or $50 it would cut a huge hole through the *.nix user base.
How can this be legal and not an abuse of their monopoly power?
Aside from the fact you can turn it off ( for now ) it still sounds like a clear case of abuse to me and someone should be talking to an attorney about this.
The simple fact that it can be turned off defeats your argument. Plus, are you so naive to believe that no one, i.e. Microsoft, Symantec/Verisign, Red Hat, etcetera have not properly vetted this with legal counsel?
In any case, vendors who make the hardware are the only ones who could be sued. Microsoft can make any software they want. If the vendors don't make adjustments to their hardware to facilitate its operation, then that is the end of it. Second, vendors can make any hardware they want. They are under no legal obligation to make any specific hardware that suits any specific environment. Failure to do so may well cost them money; however, they are legally allowed to do so.
This is just another example of the FOSS being a day late and a dollar short again. This entire scenario was announced nearly 18 months ago. What did the FOSS do? As usually, nothing. Procrastination is its own punishment.
Wrong. At the most, you could accuse OO/LO of attempting to match the look and feel of MS Office circa 2003. They haven't bothered to copy that stupid new "ribbon" interface, and seem to be happy with the UI they presently have.
Seriously, that is what you are going with? That "ribbon" bullshit argument ended years ago. It was only started by FOSS users in a vain attempt to conceal their "sour grapes" attitude towards MS Office and the pathetic offerings being made available to the FOSS community.
By the way, when was the last time you attempted to do any serious OLE with LibreOffice? Or how about some conditional "mail merge" work? It is not pretty and certainly not as robust as that available in MS Office. Think about it. You give away a product that they charge $100 +/- for the home version (sans Outlook) yet they control 90% of the market. You can make up any excuse you want; the bottom line is no body is buying what you are selling.
Yeah, if you're going to mimic the UI of a better product, you may as well just use the better product.
That has always been one of my arguments against OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. They continue to attempt to match the look, feel and usefulness and robustness of MS Office, yet have barely managed to equal Office-97. Considering that they have a fully functioning example of what they are trying to improve on, yet cannot even manage to create something vague equal to is really scary.
The amount of voodoo required to get it to work the way you want it, and the ease with which someone can destroy all your work, are staggering.
For a moment there I thought you were describing a FreeBSD system with any modern hardware. Then I remembered that FreeBSD doesn't support the latest Intel Video cards or most high end "wireless N" cards either.
Imagine if those frigging a-holes had simple listened to Gen. George S. Patton and continued the war into the USSR and destroyed them out at the end of the war. We had the A-bomb, so that was certainly not a problem. No "cold war" would have ever existed. Rule #1: When you have an advantage, exploit or or you will pay dearly in the end.
I cannot believe that Google would ever do anything a nefarious as this. Only Microsoft is capable of this treachery.. Why next thing you know, they will be insinuating that there are security bugs in Firefox.
DNA samples should be required of all children born in the USA, period. It would help in the identification of accident victims as well as aid in the catching of criminals. The only possible privacy issue would be the one where a criminal could avoid identification. The hell with those assholes. If you are not committing a crime, you have nothing to fear.
Google is an expert at this. Convincing people that their open apis are the same as open source. They have and will never opensource their revenue generating products. They themselves don't believe in the open source economic model.
I have no idea what "They have and will never opensource their revenue generating products" is suppose to infer. In any case, "open source" aka "open sore" software is by definition unable to generate any substantial revenue. That is why it is the software of choice for devout socialist/fascist users throughout the software industry.
I assume you are aware that the Spam filters that both GMail and HotMail use are configurable. Since you did not post those configurations, your statement lacks any validity for comparison purposes. From personal experience, I find both GMail and HotMail to be comparatively equal; with the major exception that HotMail doesn't just discard mail I post to mail forums. Furthermore, if you had not checked your mail in over a year, HotMail would have no way of learning what mail you consider Spam to begin with. In any case, HotMail isn't reading my email like Google (GMail) is.
All this talk of fining a company 2% of its worldwide revenue is fine up to a point, but the point is how do you fine a group that gives it product away for free. Take FreeBSD (please) as an example. If they do not have a source of revenue, in other words they have a $0 based ROI, how can you fine them? Do you go after the individual authors and developers?
Your subject says it all, "I'm honestly confused...". If this action was illegal as you so boldly claim then why have the companies that have capitulated to these requests not use your claim as a legal defense against paying any monies? Could it be that (1) these companies don't have the money to hire competent legal representation, or (2) you claim are bogus?
The signing of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) (1) is a common business practice. I have signed several in my career, both dealing with business practices and law settlements. There is nothing nefarious about the practice.
A pen and paper are more credible than OpenOffice. Seriously, I would be embarrassed to admit that I developed or used that piece of useless garbage. Only die-hard MS haters actually use it and even some of those are really closet "MS Office" users.
Slashdot Mirror
I have two Brother Laser printers. I usually buy genuine Brother refills from Amazon. They come with a postage-paid return sticker. I just put the old item in the box the new one came in, attached the sticker and drop off at Post Office. There is a sticker for UPS also.
I hope your safety boat doesn't require anything more than the most rudimentary driver or system support.
Your answer, while well intentioned, is way over simplified. I am in a position that I am able to talk with the person or persons involved in driver development in many companies. The general consensus is that developing a driver or drivers that offer the same usability that the ones developed for Microsoft is just too expensive and time consuming.
I recently had a conversation with a developer from Brother USA. The individual uses Linux on his person PC at home. He explained that one of the major stumbling blocks were the many flavors of *nix that are available. Developing for all of them, especially the niche market ones like FreeBSD is not feasible. With Microsoft, a driver developed for WinXP might very well still work on Win-8.1, whereas in the *nix world, a driver developed for one flavor of Linux is usually useless on another flavor. If the FOSS world came together and developed one uniform driver model that employed a uniform installation routine, etcetera, then the costs of developing drivers for *nix would no longer be the problem that the presently are.
Not mentioned here, but important to remember is that Microsoft develops drivers for many devices on their own. They are usually "universal" drivers, but at least they offer some limited use of the device it was developed for. In some case, even more than the one written by the device's developer. Microsoft also offers "in-house" support for authors attempting to write drivers for its operating system.
It is also worth noting, that in many instances, the operating system does not offer the support that the device needs to operate to begin with. In the FreeBSD word, it took nearly 10 years for them to get support for "n" protocol drivers, and it is still woefully incomplete.
As a user of FreeBSD, I can safely say that by the time they incorporate this person into their "ports system', Frameworks 7 will have been introduced.
Why does FreeBSD continue to develop two different versions rather than concentrate on making on superior product? They are years behind *nix and a decade behind Microsoft when it comes to drivers, wireless support and printer support. It just defies logic that they spread their all ready meager resources between to products rather than concentrate on making on superior product.
They are still running 5+ year old linux_base-f10. You would have thought by now they would have updated it. Check out their base system installations. Virtually all of them are old versions. You would have thought for a new release, they would have updated their application.
You don't refuse the breathalyser; you just request a blood test.
It IS A CRIME because it deprives the artist his rightful dues for the item. While I agree that the amount does seem excessive, if it deters others it is worth it. Sorry, but I don't lose sleep over the penalties that a thief has to pay..
First of all, this is old news. Secondly, has it occurred to anyone that if Microsoft had pulled this stunt, the resident "Slashdoter's" would have been up in arms crying over the inhuman policy of a tyrannical corporate entity. However, since it is Google, who personally I believe is far more evil than Microsoft, the posts are mostly low keyed and benign in nature.
I wouldn't be so sure his flawed understanding of rape and conception is his motivation for opposing abortion in the case of rape.
I understand women can get pregnant from a rape, but still think abortion in the case of rape should be outlawed. The child is still a life and isn't responsible for the rape. Therefore, the child doesn't deserve to be punished with death for a crime he or she didn't commit.
I am going to assume you are a male and therefore would never be put into the position of having to carry an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a rape to term. The entire question of abortion should be left to women since they are the only sector of the human race that actually has to perform that chore. If men and not women were the ones to become pregnant, the legality of abortion would never have been questioned.
Last I read, they were making a lot of money selling operating systems. It's their bread and butter. They're already also making a lot of money selling other things, so why change a formula that is successful? I think most linux users and definitely most osx users are using the other operating systems for reasons other than the cost of the OS license, so I wonder how many new users a move like that would really attract.
While there is no doubt some truth in your statement regarding "OS X", the vast majority of Linux users that I know are using it primarily because they either cannot afford to purchase a full MS License or are socialist and believe everything should be handed to them sans payment of any kind. If Microsoft were to sell its operating systems for a token amount, say $25 or $50 it would cut a huge hole through the *.nix user base.
I like the alias feature myself. I don't have the time to completely check out the site now, but I will get around to it within the next few days.
How can this be legal and not an abuse of their monopoly power?
Aside from the fact you can turn it off ( for now ) it still sounds like a clear case of abuse to me and someone should be talking to an attorney about this.
The simple fact that it can be turned off defeats your argument. Plus, are you so naive to believe that no one, i.e. Microsoft, Symantec/Verisign, Red Hat, etcetera have not properly vetted this with legal counsel?
In any case, vendors who make the hardware are the only ones who could be sued. Microsoft can make any software they want. If the vendors don't make adjustments to their hardware to facilitate its operation, then that is the end of it. Second, vendors can make any hardware they want. They are under no legal obligation to make any specific hardware that suits any specific environment. Failure to do so may well cost them money; however, they are legally allowed to do so.
This is just another example of the FOSS being a day late and a dollar short again. This entire scenario was announced nearly 18 months ago. What did the FOSS do? As usually, nothing. Procrastination is its own punishment.
Wrong. At the most, you could accuse OO/LO of attempting to match the look and feel of MS Office circa 2003. They haven't bothered to copy that stupid new "ribbon" interface, and seem to be happy with the UI they presently have.
Seriously, that is what you are going with? That "ribbon" bullshit argument ended years ago. It was only started by FOSS users in a vain attempt to conceal their "sour grapes" attitude towards MS Office and the pathetic offerings being made available to the FOSS community.
By the way, when was the last time you attempted to do any serious OLE with LibreOffice? Or how about some conditional "mail merge" work? It is not pretty and certainly not as robust as that available in MS Office. Think about it. You give away a product that they charge $100 +/- for the home version (sans Outlook) yet they control 90% of the market. You can make up any excuse you want; the bottom line is no body is buying what you are selling.
Yeah, if you're going to mimic the UI of a better product, you may as well just use the better product.
That has always been one of my arguments against OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. They continue to attempt to match the look, feel and usefulness and robustness of MS Office, yet have barely managed to equal Office-97. Considering that they have a fully functioning example of what they are trying to improve on, yet cannot even manage to create something vague equal to is really scary.
The amount of voodoo required to get it to work the way you want it, and the ease with which someone can destroy all your work, are staggering.
For a moment there I thought you were describing a FreeBSD system with any modern hardware. Then I remembered that FreeBSD doesn't support the latest Intel Video cards or most high end "wireless N" cards either.
Imagine if those frigging a-holes had simple listened to Gen. George S. Patton and continued the war into the USSR and destroyed them out at the end of the war. We had the A-bomb, so that was certainly not a problem. No "cold war" would have ever existed. Rule #1: When you have an advantage, exploit or or you will pay dearly in the end.
I cannot believe that Google would ever do anything a nefarious as this. Only Microsoft is capable of this treachery.. Why next thing you know, they will be insinuating that there are security bugs in Firefox.
DNA samples should be required of all children born in the USA, period. It would help in the identification of accident victims as well as aid in the catching of criminals. The only possible privacy issue would be the one where a criminal could avoid identification. The hell with those assholes. If you are not committing a crime, you have nothing to fear.
Google is an expert at this. Convincing people that their open apis are the same as open source. They have and will never opensource their revenue generating products. They themselves don't believe in the open source economic model.
I have no idea what "They have and will never opensource their revenue generating products" is suppose to infer. In any case, "open source" aka "open sore" software is by definition unable to generate any substantial revenue. That is why it is the software of choice for devout socialist/fascist users throughout the software industry.
I assume you are aware that the Spam filters that both GMail and HotMail use are configurable. Since you did not post those configurations, your statement lacks any validity for comparison purposes. From personal experience, I find both GMail and HotMail to be comparatively equal; with the major exception that HotMail doesn't just discard mail I post to mail forums. Furthermore, if you had not checked your mail in over a year, HotMail would have no way of learning what mail you consider Spam to begin with. In any case, HotMail isn't reading my email like Google (GMail) is.
All this talk of fining a company 2% of its worldwide revenue is fine up to a point, but the point is how do you fine a group that gives it product away for free. Take FreeBSD (please) as an example. If they do not have a source of revenue, in other words they have a $0 based ROI, how can you fine them? Do you go after the individual authors and developers?
Immediately following the Year of Linux on Laptop.
Your subject says it all, "I'm honestly confused...". If this action was illegal as you so boldly claim then why have the companies that have capitulated to these requests not use your claim as a legal defense against paying any monies? Could it be that (1) these companies don't have the money to hire competent legal representation, or (2) you claim are bogus?
The signing of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) (1) is a common business practice. I have signed several in my career, both dealing with business practices and law settlements. There is nothing nefarious about the practice.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement
A pen and paper are more credible than OpenOffice. Seriously, I would be embarrassed to admit that I developed or used that piece of useless garbage. Only die-hard MS haters actually use it and even some of those are really closet "MS Office" users.