There's no need to look for ulterior motives (like antitrust) for supporting Mac - all you have to do is look at SEC filings to see that the Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is quite profitable as a standalone entity. That's plenty of direct motive to keep supporting the platform.
Considering that they really have no competition, unless you are so foolish as to actually believe that OpenOffice or it latest sibling LibreOffice is actually any real competition, they cannot be anything but profitable. Perhaps if MS Office were still stuck at Office97 that might be true but certainly not today.
The way to address these patents IMO is to fight the corrupt system that gave them validity in the first place.
What you really mean is that you want someone else to do the hard work of development and then you or some other slimy socialist/fascist wants to use said development for your own nefarious purposes sans payment. Thank God that there are hard working people who want to develop or invent something with hopes of recovering their investment and making a profit rather than a group of scum bags who just want to feed off the sweat of others.
So tell me, how many dollars has the *nix/BSD community contributed to society? Please list the hospitals they have build, the food they have supplied or other humanitarian deeds that they have preformed? I can see your problems with that question since the open-sore community is by and large a socialist/fascist group that expects to be serviced sans any reciprocity action of any kind.
It is worth noting that the great man produced little of scientific note later in life, mostly because he could not accept the evidence produced by the quantum scientists. If you allow your beliefs to interfeer with reality, you can no longer do science.
Most great scientific and mathematical breakthroughs are achieved by individuals before the age of 40. In fact, a large percentage is achieved before the age of thirty.. The mind, like everything else in the body, starts to slow down.
Most great scientists and mathematicians who are 50 years or more in age are living on their achievements accomplished decades earlier in their lifetime. It is consistent with virtually all athletes, etcetera.
If I am reading this correctly, the offender gets three warning (strikes) before any legitimate action is taken. May that should be extended to where the first to felony offenses are not counted against an individual. Show it be inferred that a burglar has two free attempts to ransack my home before I can call the police? Seriously, what moron conceived this idea?
Well, the update service is to make up for the lack of an update system built into the OS... The rest can really be done without.
Try Linux if you want sensible printer drivers, especially for HP printers... No helper apps, uses the update service already built into the OS etc.
Are you joking? Finding printer drivers compatible with Linux is hard enough. Finding ones that work with FreeBSD is virtually impossible. Good luck finding a Brother color laser printer driver that works on FreeBSD. I have had scores of ink-jet printers that have no drivers available under Linux.
And it gets worse. I have seen all to many cases where a printer will work under one applications but not another in Linux/*BSD. If I have a printer that absolutely, positive must work I use it via Windows. At least I am sure I can use the printer to its full capacity.
Without knowing anything about your father's work or home environment it is extremely difficult to ascertain how he might have contracted cancer. What amazes me is that your father died of cancer meaning that you are predisposed to developing it yourself and you continue to smoke yourself. I usually do not call people complete idiots; however, in your case I might make an exception. Seriously, are you suffering from depressions and trying to commit suicide? I mean this in the nicest possible way, get help and quite this smoking habit. It will be the nicest gift you can possibly give yourself or your family.
Wait - that went over my head. I drink coffee, and smoke cigarettes. I hate the government because the government taxes my cigarettes beyond any reasonable or rational expectation. Do I need any more reason to hate the government? I mean - anything else isn't even icing on the cake of hate, is it?
Cigarettes cause cancer. The user stands a good chance of ending up in a hospital or other medical facility. Whether in the US or some European country, this inevitably leads to others; id est tax payers, to foot the bill for these cigarette smoking morons. The very least any government can do is attempt to get as much money out of these parasites before they go on to become a ward of the state.
"Demand"? You and which army? In Germany you pay some "copyright tax" for your fax (presumably because you COULD copy books with it?) but if you DO COPY books and they catch you're still liable for that infringement.
In the US, I pay school taxes yet I do not have any children in school.
I love standards, there are so many to choose from. Actually, Microsoft had the first universally used standard in relation to word processing with its "DOC" format. As is the standard with open-sore software, they -- referring to open-sore developers -- they contrived to create a new standard which further confused the situation.
I do love the concept of "pirated copy" though. It is probably an extremely old version and I have no doubt but that you will not even take the time to update it before attempting to use it. Pathetic to say the least. By the way, would you mind if someone "pirated" your car for an evening?
You don't give the OS or Word version so it is not possible to diagnose your problems. In any case, I have used MS Word for over 10 years and have never experienced the problems you claim to be having. You remind me of a newbie using FreeBSD for the first time and not understanding why the sound card, etcetera does not work. If you lack the basic skills to operate the system or applications then there is no way you can experience satisfactory results.
FreeBSD is a joke. It has no support for wireless "N" devices and poor support for the remaining ones. Getting a simple sound card up and running in FreeBSD can be a serious PIA. In fact, the number of modern devices that don't work or don't work correctly in FreeBSD far exceeds those that do. FreeBSD is dedicated to finding the hardest way to do things and then doing it. It spends way to much time trying to reinvent the wheel rather than taking advantage of it. When you add in that the FreeBSD "INSTALLER" is straight out of the dinosaur age, I can not fathom why anyone other than a true masochist would bother with the OS. Even KDE and Gnome work poorly under FreeBSD. Not surprising when you consider that they have to extensively patch those desktops just to get them running all. Applications like LibreOffice work poorly under a FreeBSD environment.
It has been my experience that the best way to turn a prospective user away from OpenSource software is to let them spend 30 days attempting to install and configure a FreeBSD system and desktop. They soon come running back to Microsoft at light speed. When you then consider that FreeBSD offers no support other than its poorly maintained and often highly abusive "mail forum", I can see why it is easier to find a virgin in a whore house than finding a satisfied FreeBSD user.
I recently upgraded to a Cisco E4200 and have had excellent results with it. I have never seen any advantage to using "OpenWRT" and cannot say for sure if it would even works on this device, nor do I care.
If Yahoo were ever sold to that slimy, dirt bag Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation I would never use it again for anything.
From what I have read, the infrastructure at Yahoo is seriously dated. Selling to Microsoft with their large cash reserves might prove to be a wise decision. On the other hand, Microsoft tried once and failed. At this point in time Yahoo is by no means as an attractive commodity.
I have been using FreeBSD as a hobbyist tool since 2000. I am presently running Apache22 along with Postfix + Dovecot in conjunction with SQL back-ends, etcetera. FreeBSD claims to be a fully serviceable OS for both "server" and "individual" user use. Obviously, it is not.
Now, your requirements are are far more fundamental than many other users of FreeBSD. A simple perusal of their mailing list will prove that fact. FreeBSD has gotten to the point that they issue a new major version number every 18 months (+/-) regardless of what actual improvements have been made to the OS. There is not a dimes worth of difference from version 6 to versions 8.2. They have crossed a few "t's" and dotted an "i" or two, and that is about it. Every time FreeBSD issues an improvement which in reality is just playing catchup with the rest of the industry, they bump the major version number.
Now, you may not have any use fro "wireless" or its associated devices; however, you are not in the majority of users either. What type of moron would install an OS on a modern laptop that did not fully support modern wireless protocols. The fact that the protocol (N) is over 5 years old and FreeBSD still does not support it says a lot about FreeBSD and it relative worth in the modern market place.
I am glad that you find FreeBSD useful in your relatively limited environment. For many of use, that is not so.
Having done the linux thing for years (started with slackware in 96) i have to say I agree. FreeBSD is better in that respect (they generally don't break shit from release to release - linux on the other hand has previously swapped my DMZ and OUTSIDE nics when i upgraded the kernel due to different hardware detection order) but its still not exactly user friendly. Part of the problem with linux is no stable ABI for releasing binary only drivers. Yes. We get it. Open souce people would prefer to have source for drivers.
However, the alternative is less drivers available. Get the market share THEN demand open drivers. Trying to dictate to hardware vendors how they shall support your product when you have a miniscule market share is never going to get you anywhere.
FreeBSD doesn't break from release to release because they don't actually do anything between releases. Someone crosses a "T" or dots an "i" and they bump the version. They are in a race to reach version 20 by the end of the decade. Worse yet, FreeBSD doesn't actually have any drivers. They attempt to use those designed for Linux, but that is about it. After more than five years they still have no working support for "N" protocol wireless devices. "PATHETIC" to say the least. They have so totally screwed up their platform that they cannot reliable install LaTex, now TeX Live on their system. It requires a Computer Science Master's degree to get even some basic programming working correctly on that platform.
FreeBSD users are in lockstep with the other open-sore community in their refusal to blame themselves for their own misfortune and rather adhere to the "blame everyone else," specifically Microsoft" for their failures rhetoric.
Has anyone noticed how "News Corp", Murdoch's Fascist media operation has conveniently either avoided or slanted news concerning this news event? Hannity and Limbaugh have tried to paint the entire episode as the liberal media attacking Murdoch and his family over a media created event. Well it was a media staged event, and Murdoch and his media created it. Other News Corp Fascist commentators continue to spew propaganda that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud.
I am simply amazed that all the usually "Blame Microsoft" lunatics have not come out in force and blamed them for this outrage. Honestly, if Microsoft had pulled this brain dead move it would have been jumped over by the readers of this forum like a nude virgin in a men's prison. However, since it is Google, it is basically getting a pass.
Google is everything the Microsoft haters have been accusing Microsoft of and worse. I would not trust Google as far as I would trust a pedophile around a young child. They both have the same intentions.
If Microsoft produced a driver that ran at less the the speed of a official proprietary 'Catalyst' driver, Slashdot posters would be rolling in the isles laughing and criticizing Microsoft for its failure to produce a quality driver. When the FOSS community does the same thing, it is heralded as the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. However, as surely as day follows night, a poster(s) did involved Microsoft into the mix. The creed of the FOSS and *.nix/*BSD lovers everywhere, "When in doubt, blame Microsoft". It is easier to blame others than to get off your dead ass and do something constructive to correct a problem.
I will now yield the floor to Anonymous Coward who will thrill us with his vocabulary skills.
There is a requirement, although rarely enforced, that states that before making an assumption you should first investigate the issue. Why you have come to the totally incorrect assumption that I live in a city is an example of your inability to properly analyses facts. Yes, I have been in NY City, as well as at least LA, San Francisco, Chicago and a few other smaller communities. Then again, I was a US Marine and got to visit a great many cities in the world.
The fact is that I presently live in NC, in an extremely small town, less than 400, although I still do maintain a residency in NY. I move here, not because I hate cities; actually I love them. The depth of culture and facilities available totally overshadow anything a small rural area could provide. However, cities do not provide me with the privacy I have come to desire. I have a large track of land and no one within sight of my home. The affords me the opportunity to avoid coming in contact with an ignoramus like you. Your very signature line regarding "piss" and "subway" exemplify your prejudicial nature, not to mention its basic gross inaccuracy.
By the way, if you are going to use an all inclusive statement such as "we" like you did in your opening remark, you had better be prepared to qualify it.
You stated: Ho-hum. Yes, here in Rural America, we are aware of your biased misconceptions in the cities.
Your use of "we" is grossly inaccurate and offensive to us who are capable of independent thought.
You have in a rather convoluted fashion answered my question. You are not interested in the "best" or "highest quality" but rather in what you perceive as adequate or readily available. You conveniently ignored the "price" factor I had based my original question on. I would agree with you if I was buying a car for instance. I really don't need a Royals Royce so I would not spend the money on one. However, in most situations, I buy the best available product I can afford.
I am not sure where you get your definition for "country bumpkin" from. This is the one I consider the most commonly understood meaning:
A person, usually from a rural area, the south or small town; who speaks or behaves in a manner that indicates a lack of understanding of the ever changing, modern world. Country bumpkins tend to speak in terms of social overtones indicative of pre-civil rights America and characteristically speak in offensive terms without knowledge of doing so. A bumpkin is more ignorant than uneducated, though most are probably uneducated. Either way, educated or not, country bumpkins are necessarily ignorant. Country bumpkins come in every ethnicity and in both genders. People who practice southern "good ole boy" politics are country bumpkins.
People who still say "colored" when referring to African Americans or say "heya, heya,... heya, heya" when referring to Native Americans are country bumpkins.
"Did you hear that country bumpkin call the people on the nearby reservation, 'injuns'?"
Slashdot Mirror
Will slashdot ever do away with the anonymous coward abilty to post? That would eliminate most of the trolls.
+1
There's no need to look for ulterior motives (like antitrust) for supporting Mac - all you have to do is look at SEC filings to see that the Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is quite profitable as a standalone entity. That's plenty of direct motive to keep supporting the platform.
Considering that they really have no competition, unless you are so foolish as to actually believe that OpenOffice or it latest sibling LibreOffice is actually any real competition, they cannot be anything but profitable. Perhaps if MS Office were still stuck at Office97 that might be true but certainly not today.
Oh come on. Even Apple only supports OS/X for blatantly self serving purposes.
True, but you will never get anyone here on Slashdot to publicly state that.
The way to address these patents IMO is to fight the corrupt system that gave them validity in the first place.
What you really mean is that you want someone else to do the hard work of development and then you or some other slimy socialist/fascist wants to use said development for your own nefarious purposes sans payment. Thank God that there are hard working people who want to develop or invent something with hopes of recovering their investment and making a profit rather than a group of scum bags who just want to feed off the sweat of others.
The fact is that their products are way ahead of the curve which is why KDE, Gnome and others are always playing catch-up.
So tell me, how many dollars has the *nix/BSD community contributed to society? Please list the hospitals they have build, the food they have supplied or other humanitarian deeds that they have preformed? I can see your problems with that question since the open-sore community is by and large a socialist/fascist group that expects to be serviced sans any reciprocity action of any kind.
It is worth noting that the great man produced little of scientific note later in life, mostly because he could not accept the evidence produced by the quantum scientists. If you allow your beliefs to interfeer with reality, you can no longer do science.
Most great scientific and mathematical breakthroughs are achieved by individuals before the age of 40. In fact, a large percentage is achieved before the age of thirty.. The mind, like everything else in the body, starts to slow down.
Most great scientists and mathematicians who are 50 years or more in age are living on their achievements accomplished decades earlier in their lifetime. It is consistent with virtually all athletes, etcetera.
If I am reading this correctly, the offender gets three warning (strikes) before any legitimate action is taken. May that should be extended to where the first to felony offenses are not counted against an individual. Show it be inferred that a burglar has two free attempts to ransack my home before I can call the police? Seriously, what moron conceived this idea?
Well, the update service is to make up for the lack of an update system built into the OS...
The rest can really be done without.
Try Linux if you want sensible printer drivers, especially for HP printers... No helper apps, uses the update service already built into the OS etc.
Are you joking? Finding printer drivers compatible with Linux is hard enough. Finding ones that work with FreeBSD is virtually impossible. Good luck finding a Brother color laser printer driver that works on FreeBSD. I have had scores of ink-jet printers that have no drivers available under Linux.
And it gets worse. I have seen all to many cases where a printer will work under one applications but not another in Linux/*BSD. If I have a printer that absolutely, positive must work I use it via Windows. At least I am sure I can use the printer to its full capacity.
Without knowing anything about your father's work or home environment it is extremely difficult to ascertain how he might have contracted cancer. What amazes me is that your father died of cancer meaning that you are predisposed to developing it yourself and you continue to smoke yourself. I usually do not call people complete idiots; however, in your case I might make an exception. Seriously, are you suffering from depressions and trying to commit suicide? I mean this in the nicest possible way, get help and quite this smoking habit. It will be the nicest gift you can possibly give yourself or your family.
Wait - that went over my head. I drink coffee, and smoke cigarettes. I hate the government because the government taxes my cigarettes beyond any reasonable or rational expectation. Do I need any more reason to hate the government? I mean - anything else isn't even icing on the cake of hate, is it?
Cigarettes cause cancer. The user stands a good chance of ending up in a hospital or other medical facility. Whether in the US or some European country, this inevitably leads to others; id est tax payers, to foot the bill for these cigarette smoking morons. The very least any government can do is attempt to get as much money out of these parasites before they go on to become a ward of the state.
"Demand"? You and which army?
In Germany you pay some "copyright tax" for your fax (presumably because you COULD copy books with it?) but if you DO COPY books and they catch you're still liable for that infringement.
In the US, I pay school taxes yet I do not have any children in school.
I love standards, there are so many to choose from. Actually, Microsoft had the first universally used standard in relation to word processing with its "DOC" format. As is the standard with open-sore software, they -- referring to open-sore developers -- they contrived to create a new standard which further confused the situation.
I do love the concept of "pirated copy" though. It is probably an extremely old version and I have no doubt but that you will not even take the time to update it before attempting to use it. Pathetic to say the least. By the way, would you mind if someone "pirated" your car for an evening?
You don't give the OS or Word version so it is not possible to diagnose your problems. In any case, I have used MS Word for over 10 years and have never experienced the problems you claim to be having. You remind me of a newbie using FreeBSD for the first time and not understanding why the sound card, etcetera does not work. If you lack the basic skills to operate the system or applications then there is no way you can experience satisfactory results.
FreeBSD is a joke. It has no support for wireless "N" devices and poor support for the remaining ones. Getting a simple sound card up and running in FreeBSD can be a serious PIA. In fact, the number of modern devices that don't work or don't work correctly in FreeBSD far exceeds those that do. FreeBSD is dedicated to finding the hardest way to do things and then doing it. It spends way to much time trying to reinvent the wheel rather than taking advantage of it. When you add in that the FreeBSD "INSTALLER" is straight out of the dinosaur age, I can not fathom why anyone other than a true masochist would bother with the OS. Even KDE and Gnome work poorly under FreeBSD. Not surprising when you consider that they have to extensively patch those desktops just to get them running all. Applications like LibreOffice work poorly under a FreeBSD environment.
It has been my experience that the best way to turn a prospective user away from OpenSource software is to let them spend 30 days attempting to install and configure a FreeBSD system and desktop. They soon come running back to Microsoft at light speed. When you then consider that FreeBSD offers no support other than its poorly maintained and often highly abusive "mail forum", I can see why it is easier to find a virgin in a whore house than finding a satisfied FreeBSD user.
Oh, sort of like Opera only they influence the USSREC, ahem EC into making ridiculous ruling solely based on Opera's desires.
I recently upgraded to a Cisco E4200 and have had excellent results with it. I have never seen any advantage to using "OpenWRT" and cannot say for sure if it would even works on this device, nor do I care.
If Yahoo were ever sold to that slimy, dirt bag Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation I would never use it again for anything.
From what I have read, the infrastructure at Yahoo is seriously dated. Selling to Microsoft with their large cash reserves might prove to be a wise decision. On the other hand, Microsoft tried once and failed. At this point in time Yahoo is by no means as an attractive commodity.
I have been using FreeBSD as a hobbyist tool since 2000. I am presently running Apache22 along with Postfix + Dovecot in conjunction with SQL back-ends, etcetera. FreeBSD claims to be a fully serviceable OS for both "server" and "individual" user use. Obviously, it is not.
Now, your requirements are are far more fundamental than many other users of FreeBSD. A simple perusal of their mailing list will prove that fact. FreeBSD has gotten to the point that they issue a new major version number every 18 months (+/-) regardless of what actual improvements have been made to the OS. There is not a dimes worth of difference from version 6 to versions 8.2. They have crossed a few "t's" and dotted an "i" or two, and that is about it. Every time FreeBSD issues an improvement which in reality is just playing catchup with the rest of the industry, they bump the major version number.
Now, you may not have any use fro "wireless" or its associated devices; however, you are not in the majority of users either. What type of moron would install an OS on a modern laptop that did not fully support modern wireless protocols. The fact that the protocol (N) is over 5 years old and FreeBSD still does not support it says a lot about FreeBSD and it relative worth in the modern market place.
I am glad that you find FreeBSD useful in your relatively limited environment. For many of use, that is not so.
Having done the linux thing for years (started with slackware in 96) i have to say I agree. FreeBSD is better in that respect (they generally don't break shit from release to release - linux on the other hand has previously swapped my DMZ and OUTSIDE nics when i upgraded the kernel due to different hardware detection order) but its still not exactly user friendly. Part of the problem with linux is no stable ABI for releasing binary only drivers. Yes. We get it. Open souce people would prefer to have source for drivers.
However, the alternative is less drivers available. Get the market share THEN demand open drivers. Trying to dictate to hardware vendors how they shall support your product when you have a miniscule market share is never going to get you anywhere.
FreeBSD doesn't break from release to release because they don't actually do anything between releases. Someone crosses a "T" or dots an "i" and they bump the version. They are in a race to reach version 20 by the end of the decade. Worse yet, FreeBSD doesn't actually have any drivers. They attempt to use those designed for Linux, but that is about it. After more than five years they still have no working support for "N" protocol wireless devices. "PATHETIC" to say the least. They have so totally screwed up their platform that they cannot reliable install LaTex, now TeX Live on their system. It requires a Computer Science Master's degree to get even some basic programming working correctly on that platform.
FreeBSD users are in lockstep with the other open-sore community in their refusal to blame themselves for their own misfortune and rather adhere to the "blame everyone else," specifically Microsoft" for their failures rhetoric.
Has anyone noticed how "News Corp", Murdoch's Fascist media operation has conveniently either avoided or slanted news concerning this news event? Hannity and Limbaugh have tried to paint the entire episode as the liberal media attacking Murdoch and his family over a media created event. Well it was a media staged event, and Murdoch and his media created it. Other News Corp Fascist commentators continue to spew propaganda that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud.
I am simply amazed that all the usually "Blame Microsoft" lunatics have not come out in force and blamed them for this outrage. Honestly, if Microsoft had pulled this brain dead move it would have been jumped over by the readers of this forum like a nude virgin in a men's prison. However, since it is Google, it is basically getting a pass.
Google is everything the Microsoft haters have been accusing Microsoft of and worse. I would not trust Google as far as I would trust a pedophile around a young child. They both have the same intentions.
If Microsoft produced a driver that ran at less the the speed of a official proprietary 'Catalyst' driver, Slashdot posters would be rolling in the isles laughing and criticizing Microsoft for its failure to produce a quality driver. When the FOSS community does the same thing, it is heralded as the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. However, as surely as day follows night, a poster(s) did involved Microsoft into the mix. The creed of the FOSS and *.nix/*BSD lovers everywhere, "When in doubt, blame Microsoft". It is easier to blame others than to get off your dead ass and do something constructive to correct a problem.
I will now yield the floor to Anonymous Coward who will thrill us with his vocabulary skills.
There is a requirement, although rarely enforced, that states that before making an assumption you should first investigate the issue. Why you have come to the totally incorrect assumption that I live in a city is an example of your inability to properly analyses facts. Yes, I have been in NY City, as well as at least LA, San Francisco, Chicago and a few other smaller communities. Then again, I was a US Marine and got to visit a great many cities in the world.
The fact is that I presently live in NC, in an extremely small town, less than 400, although I still do maintain a residency in NY. I move here, not because I hate cities; actually I love them. The depth of culture and facilities available totally overshadow anything a small rural area could provide. However, cities do not provide me with the privacy I have come to desire. I have a large track of land and no one within sight of my home. The affords me the opportunity to avoid coming in contact with an ignoramus like you. Your very signature line regarding "piss" and "subway" exemplify your prejudicial nature, not to mention its basic gross inaccuracy.
By the way, if you are going to use an all inclusive statement such as "we" like you did in your opening remark, you had better be prepared to qualify it.
You stated:
Ho-hum. Yes, here in Rural America, we are aware of your biased misconceptions in the cities.
Your use of "we" is grossly inaccurate and offensive to us who are capable of independent thought.
You have in a rather convoluted fashion answered my question. You are not interested in the "best" or "highest quality" but rather in what you perceive as adequate or readily available. You conveniently ignored the "price" factor I had based my original question on. I would agree with you if I was buying a car for instance. I really don't need a Royals Royce so I would not spend the money on one. However, in most situations, I buy the best available product I can afford.
I am not sure where you get your definition for "country bumpkin" from. This is the one I consider the most commonly understood meaning:
A person, usually from a rural area, the south or small town; who speaks or behaves in a manner that indicates a lack of understanding of the ever changing, modern world. Country bumpkins tend to speak in terms of social overtones indicative of pre-civil rights America and characteristically speak in offensive terms without knowledge of doing so. A bumpkin is more ignorant than uneducated, though most are probably uneducated. Either way, educated or not, country bumpkins are necessarily ignorant. Country bumpkins come in every ethnicity and in both genders. People who practice southern "good ole boy" politics are country bumpkins.
People who still say "colored" when referring to African Americans or say "heya, heya,... heya, heya" when referring to Native Americans are country bumpkins.
"Did you hear that country bumpkin call the people on the nearby reservation, 'injuns'?"