If they are afraid they have personal issues. Never trust a vendor -- but also know that the instances of vendors
breaking legs is very rare and more likely to occurr with an Open Source advocate than a public company that
needs to show a profit to the street.
Um, WTF are you smoking? I can't recall ever hearing of any Open Source company using any sort of pressure on customers - the whole point of Open Source is that the customer can go somewhere else if they're not satisfied, so you have to try harder.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is well known for pressuring OEMs and customers on licensing issues. Being a public company doesn't seem to have stopped them from employing those tactics at all, nor has the bad publicity that they've gained from it. You've got a much better chance of falling afoul of Microsoft than you do of having Linus or some other geek stopping by to "persuade" you.
I agree that it would help if the company would identify themselves, but it seems likely to me that the author is one of their IT guys and isn't allowed to bring the company's name into the discussion without permission. You can't give the article 100% credence, but considering that the licensing issues described have been verified by other posters here, it appears to be at least partially truthful.
That's funny, because what you said was exactly the point of the article, I thought. The company as described did not find cost to be an issue when they switched to Microsoft solutions, but once they were (supposedly) locked in to the Microsoft way, costs increased dramatically.
It's great that you get a discount now, but you have to realize that such a discount isn't guaranteed for the future. Don't get so locked in that you can't make the switch later:)
Do you know how many states of water there are? Not to mention somewhere you are going to have to define a
pressure, a temperature etc. You don't exactly want to end up with a circular reference in there....
How is changing the state of the water going to change its mass? Volume will change, but the number of H20 molecules will not. Pressure and temperature will likewise change the volume and/or state of the water, but not the mass.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you've said somehow...
That didn't stop them from defining other physical constants in terms of atomic diameter, etc., though. If macroscopic measurement was the only criterion, then the meter would still be a stick in a safe next to the kilogram.
That sounds like a good plan, but don't you think it will be a little confusing for a newbie to get "RedHat Linux for Dummies" with a Progeny Linux disc inside? Most of the Linux books I've seen come with ancient versions of RedHat or Slackware. Heck, if you installed Linux from a book you found at the library, you might be getting code that's three or four years old at this point, and get a very different impression of how easy to install it is.
It's, quite frankly, more than a little bit easier for existing FreeBSD developers to write a given driver than it is
for them to teach someone what to do.
That's an easy way to write that device driver. That's not the best way to get a whole lot of device drivers written, or to get a whole lot of new developers. Which is fine if you don't want a lot of new developers; but then people shouldn't complain when your next release gets pushed back a year:)
...Your trash can icon in its full 3-D splendor sits upright until a
sudden blast of wind blows it over, partially spilling its contents on to the ground.
So, I have to ask: does this mean that you just got r00ted, or is your disk full?
That doesn't make sense to me - if I bought a copy of a book, there's no law and no license that prevents me from selling it a page at a time, rather than all together. By the first sale doctrine, you should be able to sell your copy as little shards of pulverized plastic, a little round hat, or as Windows NT sans manuals. What legal control did Microsoft say that they had over you in this regard? Their EULA can only apply to your use of the software; I don't see how they can restrict your first-sale rights to resell any part of it.
Now, if someone buys the medium without the license, that person would be in legal trouble if they still used the software, but I don't see how it's your responsibility to sell any media in a "manufacturer's recommended" configuration as long as you aren't selling extra copies of it.
Wow, I even used the smiley and it still didn't work. You're right - I suppose I don't dislike George Will any more than your average right wing pundit. But just wishing that he was deprived of his convenient soapbox, as well as the attention and assent of millions of people, doesn't quite have the same ring.
I suppose I'll have to be more careful to say what I mean in the future.
I'm not sure how you can accuse the guy of payola if he's flaming them at the same time that he's taking their money. That's the very difference of a "chinese wall" between editorial and advertising departments, isn't it? I guess you can wonder how many other products turned out to be similarly bad but didn't receive an appropriate poor review, but in this case I don't see how Anand should have done something different. It's not like TV stations stop taking ads for the Ab Roller just because they didn't tame AnchorGuy Bob's flab problem.
It is surprising that MSI would keep paying to have their ads on the site, but maybe they don't read it too often:)
The front page caching is pretty screwed up here too (NS 4.7x on Solaris) - the P2P article has been displayed as 3 of 8 comments for an hour or so now, which definitely doesn't match the actual story. Did somebody's perl cron job choke?:)
It's important if it allows you to replace Microsoft Outlook, which is one of the last reasons people are stuck with Windows desktops. Or at least it was supposed to replace Outlook; I don't know if it really does or not.
If you get on the bad side of the WTO, though, you can end up in a huge trade war pretty quickly. I imagine no country wants to be cut off from exporting to the West and/or Western tourism; revoking copyrights would be a big step in that direction.
I kind of agree with that, and by extension with Microsoft's point on this: you should use the best tool for the job. I would be satisfied to see open source software/free software get an equal shot at government contracts, with preference given to no one. I'm not sure how absolutely prohibiting Microsoft is good for anyone; I'd like to think that open source/free software can win on its own merits more often than not.
This assumes a level playing field without any under-the-table kickbacks from Microsoft, and disregards questions of whether you want to run your country's government on a foreign company's software, of course. National security would be one good reason that I could see for instituting a total ban on foreign software, at least in sensitive parts of the government.
To each his own, I guess. It's funny that you mention Netscape; I've had web pages that when viewed in Netscape on Solaris will crash the X server (not just Netscape) reliably every time. To date I don't think I've ever hit a web page in Netscape under Linux that will crash the X server, although Netscape itself will take a hit and go down.
I haven't had a whole lot of problems with the thread problems that you mention, but maybe I'm just not very aware of them or are so used to them that I don't notice. On both platforms, I mostly wait for Netscape to draw pages that have lots of tables; I haven't noticed the other Netscape processes to behave appreciably better during this draw delay on Solaris vs. Linux.
Of course, I have no idea if the IT guys here at work have kept our Solaris installs up to date; I'm much more confident that my Linux box at home has all the latest fixes:)
You make it sound like a hammock is a bad thing, but in fact it's one of the most comfortable places to get serious work done from. It's automatically more ergonomically correct than that cheap office chair you're sitting in, for example.
IIRC Scott Adams worked for Pac Bell, which may not be quite multinational but is definitely right up there on the bureaucracy scale:)
(in response to other comments about Scott Adams) I've always understood the "work avoidance" aspect of Dilbert to be a way of coping rather than an actual dislike of work; if you've lived with ever-shifting deadlines, incompetent management, employee mistreatment, and complete corporate disorganization for long enough, I imagine you'd try to find something to do at work that didn't involve running in circles as well. Dilbert isn't fantasy or escapism at all; people really are like that in the great big world of work, and if you just can't bring yourself to believe that, then thank your lucky stars that you work at somewhere small, nimble, and non-meeting-oriented. Me, I'm definitely loosing my laser-like focus on the customer:)
Dilbert's a good guy, not a slacker; he's just surrounded by other people who are well past their Peter Principle level of incompetence.
Maybe you should take another cue from Dilbert, store your belongings in a shopping cart for portability, and develop an interest in tagging other people's cubes:)
That kind of reminds me of Dan Simmons' Hyperion series. After finding a cross-shaped organism that can resurrect the dead, the Catholic Church devizes a great plan for sending emissaries somewhere fast: accellerate them fast enough to turn them into people jam, and then just resurrect them again on the other side. I'm not sure I'd want to go through that, but maybe for interstellar travel that might be the only practicable way to get there in a reasonable amount of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, WTF are you smoking? I can't recall ever hearing of any Open Source company using any sort of pressure on customers - the whole point of Open Source is that the customer can go somewhere else if they're not satisfied, so you have to try harder.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is well known for pressuring OEMs and customers on licensing issues. Being a public company doesn't seem to have stopped them from employing those tactics at all, nor has the bad publicity that they've gained from it. You've got a much better chance of falling afoul of Microsoft than you do of having Linus or some other geek stopping by to "persuade" you.
I agree that it would help if the company would identify themselves, but it seems likely to me that the author is one of their IT guys and isn't allowed to bring the company's name into the discussion without permission. You can't give the article 100% credence, but considering that the licensing issues described have been verified by other posters here, it appears to be at least partially truthful.
That's funny, because what you said was exactly the point of the article, I thought. The company as described did not find cost to be an issue when they switched to Microsoft solutions, but once they were (supposedly) locked in to the Microsoft way, costs increased dramatically.
It's great that you get a discount now, but you have to realize that such a discount isn't guaranteed for the future. Don't get so locked in that you can't make the switch later :)
That makes a lot more sense. Guess I should read more carefully.
How is changing the state of the water going to change its mass? Volume will change, but the number of H20 molecules will not. Pressure and temperature will likewise change the volume and/or state of the water, but not the mass.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you've said somehow...
That didn't stop them from defining other physical constants in terms of atomic diameter, etc., though. If macroscopic measurement was the only criterion, then the meter would still be a stick in a safe next to the kilogram.
Oh, come on, if that was off-topic then so's the whole thread. Phooey.
That sounds like a good plan, but don't you think it will be a little confusing for a newbie to get "RedHat Linux for Dummies" with a Progeny Linux disc inside? Most of the Linux books I've seen come with ancient versions of RedHat or Slackware. Heck, if you installed Linux from a book you found at the library, you might be getting code that's three or four years old at this point, and get a very different impression of how easy to install it is.
That's an easy way to write that device driver. That's not the best way to get a whole lot of device drivers written, or to get a whole lot of new developers. Which is fine if you don't want a lot of new developers; but then people shouldn't complain when your next release gets pushed back a year :)
C3P0: "Doesn't look like the princess to me."
Miss Piggy: "Watch it, hardware."
[humor courtesy of http://moviescript.scriptmania.com/starwars/muppet .html]
This is great! Maybe now people will quit bitching about /. not posting any Windows stories and find something else to complain about :)
So, I have to ask: does this mean that you just got r00ted, or is your disk full?
Translation:
That doesn't make sense to me - if I bought a copy of a book, there's no law and no license that prevents me from selling it a page at a time, rather than all together. By the first sale doctrine, you should be able to sell your copy as little shards of pulverized plastic, a little round hat, or as Windows NT sans manuals. What legal control did Microsoft say that they had over you in this regard? Their EULA can only apply to your use of the software; I don't see how they can restrict your first-sale rights to resell any part of it.
Now, if someone buys the medium without the license, that person would be in legal trouble if they still used the software, but I don't see how it's your responsibility to sell any media in a "manufacturer's recommended" configuration as long as you aren't selling extra copies of it.
Wow, I even used the smiley and it still didn't work. You're right - I suppose I don't dislike George Will any more than your average right wing pundit. But just wishing that he was deprived of his convenient soapbox, as well as the attention and assent of millions of people, doesn't quite have the same ring.
I suppose I'll have to be more careful to say what I mean in the future.
I'm not sure how you can accuse the guy of payola if he's flaming them at the same time that he's taking their money. That's the very difference of a "chinese wall" between editorial and advertising departments, isn't it? I guess you can wonder how many other products turned out to be similarly bad but didn't receive an appropriate poor review, but in this case I don't see how Anand should have done something different. It's not like TV stations stop taking ads for the Ab Roller just because they didn't tame AnchorGuy Bob's flab problem.
It is surprising that MSI would keep paying to have their ads on the site, but maybe they don't read it too often :)
You have to admit that probably a lot of Juanita's problems are involved in the whole "perjury before a grand jury" problem, though.
Not that I wouldn't like to see George Will get it right between the eyes :)
The front page caching is pretty screwed up here too (NS 4.7x on Solaris) - the P2P article has been displayed as 3 of 8 comments for an hour or so now, which definitely doesn't match the actual story. Did somebody's perl cron job choke? :)
It's important if it allows you to replace Microsoft Outlook, which is one of the last reasons people are stuck with Windows desktops. Or at least it was supposed to replace Outlook; I don't know if it really does or not.
If you get on the bad side of the WTO, though, you can end up in a huge trade war pretty quickly. I imagine no country wants to be cut off from exporting to the West and/or Western tourism; revoking copyrights would be a big step in that direction.
I kind of agree with that, and by extension with Microsoft's point on this: you should use the best tool for the job. I would be satisfied to see open source software/free software get an equal shot at government contracts, with preference given to no one. I'm not sure how absolutely prohibiting Microsoft is good for anyone; I'd like to think that open source/free software can win on its own merits more often than not.
This assumes a level playing field without any under-the-table kickbacks from Microsoft, and disregards questions of whether you want to run your country's government on a foreign company's software, of course. National security would be one good reason that I could see for instituting a total ban on foreign software, at least in sensitive parts of the government.
To each his own, I guess. It's funny that you mention Netscape; I've had web pages that when viewed in Netscape on Solaris will crash the X server (not just Netscape) reliably every time. To date I don't think I've ever hit a web page in Netscape under Linux that will crash the X server, although Netscape itself will take a hit and go down.
I haven't had a whole lot of problems with the thread problems that you mention, but maybe I'm just not very aware of them or are so used to them that I don't notice. On both platforms, I mostly wait for Netscape to draw pages that have lots of tables; I haven't noticed the other Netscape processes to behave appreciably better during this draw delay on Solaris vs. Linux.
Of course, I have no idea if the IT guys here at work have kept our Solaris installs up to date; I'm much more confident that my Linux box at home has all the latest fixes :)
You make it sound like a hammock is a bad thing, but in fact it's one of the most comfortable places to get serious work done from. It's automatically more ergonomically correct than that cheap office chair you're sitting in, for example.
Falling asleep == bad. Hammock != bad.
IIRC Scott Adams worked for Pac Bell, which may not be quite multinational but is definitely right up there on the bureaucracy scale :)
(in response to other comments about Scott Adams) I've always understood the "work avoidance" aspect of Dilbert to be a way of coping rather than an actual dislike of work; if you've lived with ever-shifting deadlines, incompetent management, employee mistreatment, and complete corporate disorganization for long enough, I imagine you'd try to find something to do at work that didn't involve running in circles as well. Dilbert isn't fantasy or escapism at all; people really are like that in the great big world of work, and if you just can't bring yourself to believe that, then thank your lucky stars that you work at somewhere small, nimble, and non-meeting-oriented. Me, I'm definitely loosing my laser-like focus on the customer :)
Dilbert's a good guy, not a slacker; he's just surrounded by other people who are well past their Peter Principle level of incompetence.
Maybe you should take another cue from Dilbert, store your belongings in a shopping cart for portability, and develop an interest in tagging other people's cubes :)
That kind of reminds me of Dan Simmons' Hyperion series. After finding a cross-shaped organism that can resurrect the dead, the Catholic Church devizes a great plan for sending emissaries somewhere fast: accellerate them fast enough to turn them into people jam, and then just resurrect them again on the other side. I'm not sure I'd want to go through that, but maybe for interstellar travel that might be the only practicable way to get there in a reasonable amount of time.