You're right about the common platfrom, but the availability of new packages is, I think, not important for most businesses. Likewise, most businesses don't pay developers. The real cost for most businesses is in training and support.
No mistake. This distro targets the bunsiness community. It'll be lucky if potential customers recognize the word "Linux", much less KDE and Gnome.
If you're paying for IT support, choice equals cost.(If you aren't paying for support, you're in trouble.) If you let your employees decide to use either KDE or Gnome, then you must train your support staff in both, and you must ensure that someone versed in both is always on duty.
No financial benefit here, just downside. Pick Gnome or KDE and be happy.
I'm not saying a new funding mechanism isn't progress. Government funds things for its purposes, and the private sector funds things for its purposes. If the private sector can produce and sell cheap human space flight, it will be great and I'll buy tickets.
I hope the private sector can, first, develop innovative and inexpensive human spaceflight technology, and, two, manage to sell it. But, that remains an open question.
As for the Wrights: most people who deny their achievement don't know much about flying. Flying isn't building some contraption with wings and jumping off a cliff. Sure, with a bit of luck, the wings will generate some lift and you might survice the "flight". But, you won't have a controlled landing, you didn't get into the air under your own power, and you didn't control the pitch, yaw and roll of your aircraft. The Wrights did all that and more. (Especially designing the first true aircraft propellor.) That's what flying really is, and no one did it before the Wrights.
Many Slashdotters seem to have the attention span and the reasoning capacity of small moths, and consequently flock to the nearest shiny and cool object. This business about denying the Wright's achievement is just the latest.
SpaceShipOne is not a spaceship. It is an airplane designed to coast to an altitude of 100 km following a brief engine burn to get it to Mach 5. This is a very long way from reaching orbit and an especially long way from returning from orbit. (The "feathered" rentry mode won't work in a return from orbit.)
President Bush has said nothing -- nothing -- about returning to the moon. The White House ordered a reexamination of American space efforts following the Columbia disaster, and that effort has concluded.
There is no political support for a crash program such as Apollo, but there is support for methodically building the infratructure that will allow the U.S. to operate in trans-lunar space, to include manned Lunar missions and a small lunar base (although not necessarily permanently staffed.) The Pentagon's open involvement in this effort will increase, and the funding it brings with it will increase total spending on space travel by 2-3 percent annually. Much attention, and perhaps some real money, will be paid to boosting the private sector's ability to enter space, but the real story is that the procurement and contracting model will be the same as the Pentagon has used for years to bring weapon systems into the inventory.
NASA will be pointed in the direction of R&D, but without making a lot of noise about it. The Shuttle will be phased out sooner, rather than later, and NASA will stop pouring billions into the false dream of building spacecraft with wings.
The U.S. will continue to support the space station, but everyone will secretly wish we hadn't got into the mess in the first place.
Progess in aviation and space has been slow. Humans flew in 1903. They broke the sound barrier in a small rocket plane in 1947, 44 years later. They landed on the moon in 1969, 66 years later.
And....it's 2003, 31 years since the last lunar landing, people are getting excited about another small rocket plane that fired its engine for 15 seconds and coasted to 68,000 feet. What's different here is the funding mechanism, not the aviation technology.
Progress in aviation and space travel has been stuck in the muck and mire for 30 years.
Getting people into space -- no matter how you get there or who pays for it -- is of transcendent importance, so I'm not inclined to quibble about the efforts of the X-Prize competitors.
But, let's not get carried away. Using a small rocket to power a small aircraft to a tad over Mach 1 and then coasting up to 68,000 feet is not amazing. That's been going on for 50 years or so.
What happened today is important because it was the first time SpaceShipOne was powered up, if only for 15 seconds.
I'm waiting for privately funded manned orbital flight. That'll be the real deal.
In addition to all the bogus assertions about others being the first to fly (premised on an incorrect definition of "flying"), the Wrights are still inaccurately portrayed as two amateur tinkerers from the Midwest who got lucky.
That's wrong. They were educated and skilled engineers living in a city that was a focal point of technology in 1903. They attacked their problem logically nd methodically, and were well-versed in the technical literature of the day.
The Wrights did not tinker their way to flight. The insights that allowed them to design and build an aircraft that could be controlled in all 3 axis wasn't an accident or a stroke of luck. Nor was their design and construction of a propellor appropriate for flight. (This was, in fact, revolutionary, and is usually overlooked. Efforts prior to the Wrights' had assumed that an aircraft propellor would be a copy of the kind of propellor used to propel a ship. That's incorrect -- it doesn't work -- and the Wrights were the first to understand that and to design, test, and use a true aeronautical propellor.)
After Kitty Hawk, and until Wilbur's premature death at the age of 45 in 1915, the Wrights continued their research, their flying, and their engineering efforts. Not only can we trace the airplane's lineage to the brothers, we can also credit them for founding the aeronuatical industry.
Shheez. No, he's not saying that "being first" cannot be defined objectively. Read what he said and try using some brain cells. He's defining, correctly, what the Wrights did. There's a lot more to flying than just getting off the ground.
Nor did he say that "being first" requires publicity so people will "buy into it". Being "first" will have no impact if no one knows whast you've done, and no one is able to enhance and exploit your efforts.
The machines we fly in today trace their lineage directly to Kitty Hawk and the Wrights. They don't trace it to Brazil, or New Zealand or any place else.
An aircraft is a machine the takes off and lands under its own power and can be controlled in pitch, yaw, and roll by a pilot. The Wrights did that 100 years ago, and no one before had done that.
Sniping at the Wrights on/. is fueled by the same kind of self-alienated ill-informed vindictiveness that fuels much of what is posted here.
I'm arguing that Linux isn't successful on the desktop because it offers nothing that Windows doesn't offer. I like Linux, I use Linux, and I wish Linux was better than Windows on the desktop. but it isn't. If open source developers would stop blaming everyone but themselves for the market's reluctance to accept their products, they might start coding something better than Windows.
It is pointless to continue to assert that IT has the job of deciding what software a company should buy. In my experience, that has never been the case. Also, in my experience, IT managers and IT staffers maintained a studied and deliberate ignorance about the mission of the company and the tasks individual employees needed to perform. If someone doesn't know what an employee needs to do, they are not competent to buy or develop software designed to support that behavior. Again, in my experience, managements formed teams of employees and contractors, independent of IT, to determine requirements, test and select software, develop and test training curricula, etc. IT was brought in when necessary to answer specific questions, but we made the buy recommendations to management, who then gave direction and funding to IT.
Whether or not managers are technically competent to select software is, again, irrelevant. It's their responsibilty and it's their authority. They can ask for advice from anyone, including IT, but they make the call.
Your putting words in my mouth and generally behaving like an adolescent in a high school debate. Go score points somewhere else if it boosts your ego.
1. The IT staff is not supposed to pick software any more than the motor pool is supposed to decide what cars the company buys. The IT staff has a right to offer input, but not a right to make purchase decisions.
2. Managers are no more likely to buy software they've never heard of than they are to hire employees without an interview. That's just common sense. Familiarity breeds acceptance. Again, you are supposing that the only factor involved in choosing software is technical merit. That's wrong.
3. Applications don't run without an OS. Presumbably, you know this are and being deliberately sophistic. My obvious point is this: changing platforms incurs a ccan'tost, of which the purchase price of the OS is only a small part, even if the OS is priced at $0.00.
4. No, I did not say that managers only choose software they are familiar with. I said they are more likely to do so. (You can call it stupidity or ignorance, and I will still call it bigotry on your part because you are linking use of Wndows to stupidity and ignorance.) However, I did say that, in my experience, IT managers and staffers don't know enough about the business of the company that pays them and the actual on-the-job behavior of their fellow empoloyees to be trusted to choose software. I've had IT people removed from contracts for refusing to spend as little as 8 hours observing an employee.
5. Choice of software is not a technical decision. How can an IT staff possibly select software for a business if it doesn't know what the business does? IT managers are not competenmt to determine the software needed to run a business. Once purchased, employees have no ability to choose the software the use.
6. I didn't mention the public domain. Nor did I mention paying an open source developer.
7. If I'm not running X, why would I ask "Does this run on X?" If I had any sense, I'd ask: "Does this software left my employees do something they can't do now that will increase profit? If it does, can we install it, train for it, and use it at a cost that doesn't negate those profits?"
8. I'm not complaining about my perception of what open source people should do. I don't care what they do, any more than I care what MS employees do. I stated that it is hyprocritical to assert that open source is a better platform desktop users while also maintaining that it exists only to "scratch the itch" of developers who want to play with Unix.
>> Consultants and MBA's do that...The people in the know aren't making the decisions.
The people in charge make decisions. Most of them are busy running companies and are bored stiff by computers and software. You're implying that Windows is never a rational choice and its use is always the result of ignorant executives being influenced by "consultants and MBAs".
>> "Baggage is the applications requirements. If a new application requires me to be on windows, it's 'baggage'."
The OS isn't baggage. I'll agree that, for example, a calculator app that requires Oracle is an example of unnecessary bagge. But, then, I've seen a number of simple desktop open source apps that require Apachage, php and mysql.
>> I don't buy business applications 'off the shelf'.
No? Where do you buy them? Here's the point: A mFree is it. Why should I pay $100 per desktop for an application enabler?anager isn't likely to respond positively to a sotware brand if he's never heard of it. Windows is everywhere; he's heard of it; he probably uses it at home. For better or worse, that counts when trying to make a sale. (As for the "wrong" people making decisions, I suspect you mean that software types ought to be deciding what software a company uses. God forbid. In my own experience, "software types" ere even more clueless about what people really do on the job that managers. I've led several corporate-scale development efforts and the single most difficult task was always persuading the software folks to actually spend a few days on-the-job with the people they were being paid to write code for.)
>> Free is it. Why should I pay $100 per desktop for an application enabler?
$0.00 is better than $100.00, but both figures pale in comparison to the cost of sending employees off to training, lost revenue due to downtime during the transition, etc.Linux might be "free", but no one trains people for free and no one compensates a company for lost revenue.
>> The OS community exists to scratch an itch. The only time I see disdain is when a corporate employee says "I need this" and expects it done for them for free. (And then those same people complain there is no Open Source business model... ummm)
What itch? If it's the itch of developers and geeks to have a free Unix to play with, that's fine. But recognize that it is transparently hypocritical argue that Linux is a plaything of geeks and, as well, to argue that it meets business needs better than Windows. (If a user has a need for software that doesn't exist in the open source world, why should he not be insulted by a response that says "write it yourself"? )
>> There ARE better desktops (and servers), and there always have been.
An assertion, not a statement of fact. It certainly begs the questions of what defines a "good" desktop. I will assert that, beyond the "doesn't crash" threshold, technical merit is not important to users.
>>...the problem is stupid people are locking themselves into Windows.
Another unproven, and unprovable, assertion. Like so many others, you are associating use of Windows with "stupidity". This is simple bigotry.
>> Maybe if those corporate people weren't buying software off the shelf, and actually letting their IT staff do their jobs...
The job of the IT staff is to help the company make money. That means doing what the boss tells them to do. If they want to decide what software to buy, let them start their own company. The IT staff typically hasn't a clue about what the comany is in business to do.
Lots of sane people use Windows on servers, but little to do with the failure of Linux to make inroads on the desktop.
Don't understand your point about "baggage". I'm just asserting that it seems most Linux developers are ignorant of the needs of office workers, and don't show any interest in learning.
Linux is failing to make inroads on the office desktop because:
1. It's essentailly invisible to people who work in offices. When was the last time you saw a commercial for a shrinkwrapped Linux application? Or saw one sitting on a store shelf?
2. Linux doesn't offer any compelling reason for offices to abandon Windows as a desktop OS. If you are using a Windows app and someone tell you that Linux now has an app that is "just as good", your likely response will be "So what?"
3. The "free" aspect of Linux isn't a selling point in the office arena. Businesses typically aren't interested in RMS-inspired ideological arguments, and realize that the cost of buying software is a small part of the total cost of switching platforms.
4. The open source community evinces a strong disdain for corporate office employees and shows little understanding of their requirements.
5. The open source community often attributes Windows' success in the office to "evil" MS business practices, "stupid" workers, and "stupid" bosses. This blinds them to the reality that they need to start learning what their customers want.
You're highlighting the real issue with Linux and the offcie desktop: As long as it uses Windows as its yardstick, there is no compelling reason for people to switch from Windows to Linux.
If the Linux desktop is as good as but no better than Windows, why leave Windows?
Linux needs to be better than Windows to merit paying the price of switching. Being better doesn't simply mean doing everything Windows does two percent faster, it means giving office users tools to do things they need to do that Windows doesn't.
(And, I did mean that offices don't allow staffers to bring in hardware to plug into the company network. Most places I've worked, use of unauthorized gizmos would get you canned.)
Do you work in an office? Office workers use one or two applications all day long, every day. Everything else is a waste of space. Open sources vaunted "choice" is completely beside the point for them.
As for attaching a "randpm USB thing" to the boss's hardware...well, you must think that office workers can bring toys from home.
Before Linux stands a real chance in the office, Linux developers need to spend a lot of time with real office workers and their employers.
Yes, we do disagree. You want to talk about "ideas". But, I think ideas are ephemeral. non-corporeal things that cannot be owned and cannot be manifested physically . A book, on the other hand, is a physical collection of symbolic language and images that, when read, will cause ideas to be created in the mind of the reader.
A book, once created, is a physical entity that is owned. The presence, or non-presence, if symbolic language and images on the pages of the book do not impact that fact of its existence. I.e., a book comprised of blank pages is still a book.
An author who creates a book owns the original version -- the collection of language and images, not the ideas. That author initially retains all rights pertaining to copying and disseminating the book. No one may make a copy, no one may read the book, and no one may distribute copies of the book unless the author gives permission. That is what copyright protects.
Ideas, by their nature, cannot be owned, cannot appear in physical form, cannot be copied, cannot be published and disseminated. As such, copyright has nothing to do with ideas.
Consider this analogy: if an artist creates a painting, that painting will likely contain several different colors. No one can own those colors, but the artist owns the object he has created.
I'm not arguing that people aren't influenced by society. I'm stating that the person who creates something that hasn't existed before owns that "thing" and controls all rights to it until he. at his option, transfers some or all of tgose rights elsewhere. If something has never existed, it is impossible to own it. If a person is the sole creator of something, it is impossible for anyone else to own it unless ownership is transferred.
That is what copyright recognizes (not creates) and attempts to protect. Copyright has nothing to do with licensing, a subject which has become a fetish in certain circles.
I also agree that current U.S. copyright duration is too long. That, however, doesn't indicate the fallacy of copyright or intellectual property anymore than overly long (or overly short) prison terms indicates the fallacy of prisons.
But, I strongly disagree that natural rights need no laws to protect them. Those are the rights that specifically need legal protectoin, because they are the rights that have been most abused throughout human history.
I don't buy the notion that "ideas, music and stories" are of such overwhelming importance that "society" has some kind of automatic premptory right to them.
Certainly, there is no way to assert that, at the moment of its creation, a work is owned by any one other than its creator. Therefore, if you are to assert the ownership of that work by society, you must account for the transfer of ownership from the work's creator to that amorphous thing called "society". Obviously, you can't transfer ownership from someone without acknowledging the reality of that ownership. If the original owner isn't willing to transfer wonership, any transfer must be confiscatory.
Note, too, that we are talking about ownership of real, physical, entities: books, collections of bytes stored on physical media, etc. Such entities can be owned with as much authority as any other entity, and can never be thought of as devolving, by right, to the general populace.
Ideas are not physical. The copyright status of a work has no bearing at all on the spread of any ideas that might be outlined by that work.
Copyright protects a work's creators obvious rights of ownership to the physical entity he or she has created. The ideas, if any, manifested in that creation cannot be copyrighted. E.g., one can copyright a book about the weather, but one cannot copyright the weather.
The assertion that copyright restrains the spread of ideas is without merit. Copyright restrains the theft and misappropriation of a creator's inherent and natural right to control the copying and dissemination of that work. We call that kind of theft piracy, and it is just as illegal as any other kind of theft.
Attempts to justify piracy are simply self-interested attempted to justify theft.
Governments oppose piracy because it is illegal, not because piracy has an impact on music sales.
Copyright protects the right of authors to profit from their work and to distribute it as they see fit, whether by giving it away free on street corners or doing a deal with a publisher.
Blatantly self-interested groups on either extreme -- misdirected music corporations and greedy individuals who don't want to pay for music -- dominate this discussion. Both groups willfully abuse the purpose of copyright to advance their own economic interests.
If the U.S. was not justified in eliminating Saddam, who was justified? Terming U.S. actions in Iraq "unlawful" is an excercise in sophistry, since no international legislature exists with the legitimacy to make such laws. Current international "law" is simply an understanding by states to abide by an agreement until it becomes in their interest to ignore that agreement.
I believe the mere existence of regimes like Saddam pose a threat to democratic states everywhere. They can survive only be maintaining a constant state of hostility with civilized nations. The USSR posed a similar threat, even before it acquired nuclear weapons. Whether or not Saddam had current stockpiles of WMD is irrelevant. His previous behavior demonstrates his willingess to acquire and use WMD on his own citizens and to use WMD in wars of conquest he launched against two of his neighbors. The preponderance of evidence demonstrates Saddam was continuing to seek WMD and that he would have employed it against strategic Western interests.
In light of the utter failure of others to eliminate Saddam, the U.S. was fully justified in doing what it did.
Crimes against humanity require punishment, but the UN cannot speak legitimately for humanity. The UN serves many useful purposes, but it lacks the legitimacy to function as legislature, executive and judiciary.
I have no objection if the first Gulf War was fought over oil. I don't believe oil was a primary motivator, however. In any case, neither the first or second Gulf War would have been necessary had the UN actively engaged in the elimination of totalitarian and fascist regimes like Saddam's. Instead, these regimes are given seats and status in the UNGA, and treated as peers of legitimate governments. These kind of regimes threaten everyone's safety. The UN ought to be in the business of eliminating them, by military force if necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
...if an Amiga developer wants to port Mozilla to that platform.
No one is keeping score, you know.
You're right about the common platfrom, but the availability of new packages is, I think, not important for most businesses. Likewise, most businesses don't pay developers. The real cost for most businesses is in training and support.
No mistake. This distro targets the bunsiness community. It'll be lucky if potential customers recognize the word "Linux", much less KDE and Gnome.
If you're paying for IT support, choice equals cost.(If you aren't paying for support, you're in trouble.) If you let your employees decide to use either KDE or Gnome, then you must train your support staff in both, and you must ensure that someone versed in both is always on duty.
No financial benefit here, just downside. Pick Gnome or KDE and be happy.
I'm not saying a new funding mechanism isn't progress. Government funds things for its purposes, and the private sector funds things for its purposes. If the private sector can produce and sell cheap human space flight, it will be great and I'll buy tickets.
I hope the private sector can, first, develop innovative and inexpensive human spaceflight technology, and, two, manage to sell it. But, that remains an open question.
As for the Wrights: most people who deny their achievement don't know much about flying. Flying isn't building some contraption with wings and jumping off a cliff. Sure, with a bit of luck, the wings will generate some lift and you might survice the "flight". But, you won't have a controlled landing, you didn't get into the air under your own power, and you didn't control the pitch, yaw and roll of your aircraft. The Wrights did all that and more. (Especially designing the first true aircraft propellor.) That's what flying really is, and no one did it before the Wrights.
Many Slashdotters seem to have the attention span and the reasoning capacity of small moths, and consequently flock to the nearest shiny and cool object. This business about denying the Wright's achievement is just the latest.
let me guess...you're some arrogant phd type..right?
Nope. Did I use too many syllables for you?
i'd give $500 to see john carmack listen to your little speech, then kick you in the balls and crack your fucking head wide open.
John Carmack? John Carmack?
>>That's been going on for 50 years or so.
by governments
True, but so what? Technology is technology.
SpaceShipOne is not a spaceship. It is an airplane designed to coast to an altitude of 100 km following a brief engine burn to get it to Mach 5. This is a very long way from reaching orbit and an especially long way from returning from orbit. (The "feathered" rentry mode won't work in a return from orbit.)
President Bush has said nothing -- nothing -- about returning to the moon. The White House ordered a reexamination of American space efforts following the Columbia disaster, and that effort has concluded.
There is no political support for a crash program such as Apollo, but there is support for methodically building the infratructure that will allow the U.S. to operate in trans-lunar space, to include manned Lunar missions and a small lunar base (although not necessarily permanently staffed.) The Pentagon's open involvement in this effort will increase, and the funding it brings with it will increase total spending on space travel by 2-3 percent annually. Much attention, and perhaps some real money, will be paid to boosting the private sector's ability to enter space, but the real story is that the procurement and contracting model will be the same as the Pentagon has used for years to bring weapon systems into the inventory.
NASA will be pointed in the direction of R&D, but without making a lot of noise about it. The Shuttle will be phased out sooner, rather than later, and NASA will stop pouring billions into the false dream of building spacecraft with wings.
The U.S. will continue to support the space station, but everyone will secretly wish we hadn't got into the mess in the first place.
Progess in aviation and space has been slow. Humans flew in 1903. They broke the sound barrier in a small rocket plane in 1947, 44 years later. They landed on the moon in 1969, 66 years later.
And....it's 2003, 31 years since the last lunar landing, people are getting excited about another small rocket plane that fired its engine for 15 seconds and coasted to 68,000 feet. What's different here is the funding mechanism, not the aviation technology.
Progress in aviation and space travel has been stuck in the muck and mire for 30 years.
Getting people into space -- no matter how you get there or who pays for it -- is of transcendent importance, so I'm not inclined to quibble about the efforts of the X-Prize competitors.
But, let's not get carried away. Using a small rocket to power a small aircraft to a tad over Mach 1 and then coasting up to 68,000 feet is not amazing. That's been going on for 50 years or so.
What happened today is important because it was the first time SpaceShipOne was powered up, if only for 15 seconds.
I'm waiting for privately funded manned orbital flight. That'll be the real deal.
In addition to all the bogus assertions about others being the first to fly (premised on an incorrect definition of "flying"), the Wrights are still inaccurately portrayed as two amateur tinkerers from the Midwest who got lucky.
That's wrong. They were educated and skilled engineers living in a city that was a focal point of technology in 1903. They attacked their problem logically nd methodically, and were well-versed in the technical literature of the day.
The Wrights did not tinker their way to flight. The insights that allowed them to design and build an aircraft that could be controlled in all 3 axis wasn't an accident or a stroke of luck. Nor was their design and construction of a propellor appropriate for flight. (This was, in fact, revolutionary, and is usually overlooked. Efforts prior to the Wrights' had assumed that an aircraft propellor would be a copy of the kind of propellor used to propel a ship. That's incorrect -- it doesn't work -- and the Wrights were the first to understand that and to design, test, and use a true aeronautical propellor.)
After Kitty Hawk, and until Wilbur's premature death at the age of 45 in 1915, the Wrights continued their research, their flying, and their engineering efforts. Not only can we trace the airplane's lineage to the brothers, we can also credit them for founding the aeronuatical industry.
Shheez. No, he's not saying that "being first" cannot be defined objectively. Read what he said and try using some brain cells. He's defining, correctly, what the Wrights did. There's a lot more to flying than just getting off the ground.
Nor did he say that "being first" requires publicity so people will "buy into it". Being "first" will have no impact if no one knows whast you've done, and no one is able to enhance and exploit your efforts.
The machines we fly in today trace their lineage directly to Kitty Hawk and the Wrights. They don't trace it to Brazil, or New Zealand or any place else.
/. is fueled by the same kind of self-alienated ill-informed vindictiveness that fuels much of what is posted here.
An aircraft is a machine the takes off and lands under its own power and can be controlled in pitch, yaw, and roll by a pilot. The Wrights did that 100 years ago, and no one before had done that.
Sniping at the Wrights on
Your being inane.
I'm arguing that Linux isn't successful on the desktop because it offers nothing that Windows doesn't offer. I like Linux, I use Linux, and I wish Linux was better than Windows on the desktop. but it isn't. If open source developers would stop blaming everyone but themselves for the market's reluctance to accept their products, they might start coding something better than Windows.
It is pointless to continue to assert that IT has the job of deciding what software a company should buy. In my experience, that has never been the case. Also, in my experience, IT managers and IT staffers maintained a studied and deliberate ignorance about the mission of the company and the tasks individual employees needed to perform. If someone doesn't know what an employee needs to do, they are not competent to buy or develop software designed to support that behavior. Again, in my experience, managements formed teams of employees and contractors, independent of IT, to determine requirements, test and select software, develop and test training curricula, etc. IT was brought in when necessary to answer specific questions, but we made the buy recommendations to management, who then gave direction and funding to IT.
Whether or not managers are technically competent to select software is, again, irrelevant. It's their responsibilty and it's their authority. They can ask for advice from anyone, including IT, but they make the call.
Your putting words in my mouth and generally behaving like an adolescent in a high school debate. Go score points somewhere else if it boosts your ego.
1. The IT staff is not supposed to pick software any more than the motor pool is supposed to decide what cars the company buys. The IT staff has a right to offer input, but not a right to make purchase decisions.
2. Managers are no more likely to buy software they've never heard of than they are to hire employees without an interview. That's just common sense. Familiarity breeds acceptance. Again, you are supposing that the only factor involved in choosing software is technical merit. That's wrong.
3. Applications don't run without an OS. Presumbably, you know this are and being deliberately sophistic. My obvious point is this: changing platforms incurs a ccan'tost, of which the purchase price of the OS is only a small part, even if the OS is priced at $0.00.
4. No, I did not say that managers only choose software they are familiar with. I said they are more likely to do so. (You can call it stupidity or ignorance, and I will still call it bigotry on your part because you are linking use of Wndows to stupidity and ignorance.) However, I did say that, in my experience, IT managers and staffers don't know enough about the business of the company that pays them and the actual on-the-job behavior of their fellow empoloyees to be trusted to choose software. I've had IT people removed from contracts for refusing to spend as little as 8 hours observing an employee.
5. Choice of software is not a technical decision. How can an IT staff possibly select software for a business if it doesn't know what the business does? IT managers are not competenmt to determine the software needed to run a business. Once purchased, employees have no ability to choose the software the use.
6. I didn't mention the public domain. Nor did I mention paying an open source developer.
7. If I'm not running X, why would I ask "Does this run on X?" If I had any sense, I'd ask: "Does this software left my employees do something they can't do now that will increase profit? If it does, can we install it, train for it, and use it at a cost that doesn't negate those profits?"
8. I'm not complaining about my perception of what open source people should do. I don't care what they do, any more than I care what MS employees do. I stated that it is hyprocritical to assert that open source is a better platform desktop users while also maintaining that it exists only to "scratch the itch" of developers who want to play with Unix.
>> Consultants and MBA's do that...The people in the know aren't making the decisions.
...the problem is stupid people are locking themselves into Windows.
The people in charge make decisions. Most of them are busy running companies and are bored stiff by computers and software. You're implying that Windows is never a rational choice and its use is always the result of ignorant executives being influenced by "consultants and MBAs".
>> "Baggage is the applications requirements. If a new application requires me to be on windows, it's 'baggage'."
The OS isn't baggage. I'll agree that, for example, a calculator app that requires Oracle is an example of unnecessary bagge. But, then, I've seen a number of simple desktop open source apps that require Apachage, php and mysql.
>> I don't buy business applications 'off the shelf'.
No? Where do you buy them? Here's the point: A mFree is it. Why should I pay $100 per desktop for an application enabler?anager isn't likely to respond positively to a sotware brand if he's never heard of it. Windows is everywhere; he's heard of it; he probably uses it at home. For better or worse, that counts when trying to make a sale. (As for the "wrong" people making decisions, I suspect you mean that software types ought to be deciding what software a company uses. God forbid. In my own experience, "software types" ere even more clueless about what people really do on the job that managers. I've led several corporate-scale development efforts and the single most difficult task was always persuading the software folks to actually spend a few days on-the-job with the people they were being paid to write code for.)
>> Free is it. Why should I pay $100 per desktop for an application enabler?
$0.00 is better than $100.00, but both figures pale in comparison to the cost of sending employees off to training, lost revenue due to downtime during the transition, etc.Linux might be "free", but no one trains people for free and no one compensates a company for lost revenue.
>> The OS community exists to scratch an itch. The only time I see disdain is when a corporate employee says "I need this" and expects it done for them for free. (And then those same people complain there is no Open Source business model... ummm)
What itch? If it's the itch of developers and geeks to have a free Unix to play with, that's fine. But recognize that it is transparently hypocritical argue that Linux is a plaything of geeks and, as well, to argue that it meets business needs better than Windows. (If a user has a need for software that doesn't exist in the open source world, why should he not be insulted by a response that says "write it yourself"? )
>> There ARE better desktops (and servers), and there always have been.
An assertion, not a statement of fact. It certainly begs the questions of what defines a "good" desktop. I will assert that, beyond the "doesn't crash" threshold, technical merit is not important to users.
>>
Another unproven, and unprovable, assertion. Like so many others, you are associating use of Windows with "stupidity". This is simple bigotry.
>> Maybe if those corporate people weren't buying software off the shelf, and actually letting their IT staff do their jobs...
The job of the IT staff is to help the company make money. That means doing what the boss tells them to do. If they want to decide what software to buy, let them start their own company. The IT staff typically hasn't a clue about what the comany is in business to do.
Lots of sane people use Windows on servers, but little to do with the failure of Linux to make inroads on the desktop.
Don't understand your point about "baggage". I'm just asserting that it seems most Linux developers are ignorant of the needs of office workers, and don't show any interest in learning.
Linux is failing to make inroads on the office desktop because:
1. It's essentailly invisible to people who work in offices. When was the last time you saw a commercial for a shrinkwrapped Linux application? Or saw one sitting on a store shelf?
2. Linux doesn't offer any compelling reason for offices to abandon Windows as a desktop OS. If you are using a Windows app and someone tell you that Linux now has an app that is "just as good", your likely response will be "So what?"
3. The "free" aspect of Linux isn't a selling point in the office arena. Businesses typically aren't interested in RMS-inspired ideological arguments, and realize that the cost of buying software is a small part of the total cost of switching platforms.
4. The open source community evinces a strong disdain for corporate office employees and shows little understanding of their requirements.
5. The open source community often attributes Windows' success in the office to "evil" MS business practices, "stupid" workers, and "stupid" bosses. This blinds them to the reality that they need to start learning what their customers want.
You're highlighting the real issue with Linux and the offcie desktop: As long as it uses Windows as its yardstick, there is no compelling reason for people to switch from Windows to Linux.
If the Linux desktop is as good as but no better than Windows, why leave Windows?
Linux needs to be better than Windows to merit paying the price of switching. Being better doesn't simply mean doing everything Windows does two percent faster, it means giving office users tools to do things they need to do that Windows doesn't.
(And, I did mean that offices don't allow staffers to bring in hardware to plug into the company network. Most places I've worked, use of unauthorized gizmos would get you canned.)
Do you work in an office? Office workers use one or two applications all day long, every day. Everything else is a waste of space. Open sources vaunted "choice" is completely beside the point for them.
As for attaching a "randpm USB thing" to the boss's hardware...well, you must think that office workers can bring toys from home.
Before Linux stands a real chance in the office, Linux developers need to spend a lot of time with real office workers and their employers.
Who cares if KDE or Gnome is faster if it is just faster at things I don't want to do?
As far as I'm concerned, both are fast enough. Stop carping on speed and start giving me new and interesting software.
Yes, we do disagree. You want to talk about "ideas". But, I think ideas are ephemeral. non-corporeal things that cannot be owned and cannot be manifested physically . A book, on the other hand, is a physical collection of symbolic language and images that, when read, will cause ideas to be created in the mind of the reader.
A book, once created, is a physical entity that is owned. The presence, or non-presence, if symbolic language and images on the pages of the book do not impact that fact of its existence. I.e., a book comprised of blank pages is still a book.
An author who creates a book owns the original version -- the collection of language and images, not the ideas. That author initially retains all rights pertaining to copying and disseminating the book. No one may make a copy, no one may read the book, and no one may distribute copies of the book unless the author gives permission. That is what copyright protects.
Ideas, by their nature, cannot be owned, cannot appear in physical form, cannot be copied, cannot be published and disseminated. As such, copyright has nothing to do with ideas.
Consider this analogy: if an artist creates a painting, that painting will likely contain several different colors. No one can own those colors, but the artist owns the object he has created.
I'm not arguing that people aren't influenced by society. I'm stating that the person who creates something that hasn't existed before owns that "thing" and controls all rights to it until he. at his option, transfers some or all of tgose rights elsewhere. If something has never existed, it is impossible to own it. If a person is the sole creator of something, it is impossible for anyone else to own it unless ownership is transferred.
That is what copyright recognizes (not creates) and attempts to protect. Copyright has nothing to do with licensing, a subject which has become a fetish in certain circles.
I also agree that current U.S. copyright duration is too long. That, however, doesn't indicate the fallacy of copyright or intellectual property anymore than overly long (or overly short) prison terms indicates the fallacy of prisons.
But, I strongly disagree that natural rights need no laws to protect them. Those are the rights that specifically need legal protectoin, because they are the rights that have been most abused throughout human history.
I don't buy the notion that "ideas, music and stories" are of such overwhelming importance that "society" has some kind of automatic premptory right to them.
Certainly, there is no way to assert that, at the moment of its creation, a work is owned by any one other than its creator. Therefore, if you are to assert the ownership of that work by society, you must account for the transfer of ownership from the work's creator to that amorphous thing called "society". Obviously, you can't transfer ownership from someone without acknowledging the reality of that ownership. If the original owner isn't willing to transfer wonership, any transfer must be confiscatory.
Note, too, that we are talking about ownership of real, physical, entities: books, collections of bytes stored on physical media, etc. Such entities can be owned with as much authority as any other entity, and can never be thought of as devolving, by right, to the general populace.
Ideas are not physical. The copyright status of a work has no bearing at all on the spread of any ideas that might be outlined by that work.
Copyright protects a work's creators obvious rights of ownership to the physical entity he or she has created. The ideas, if any, manifested in that creation cannot be copyrighted. E.g., one can copyright a book about the weather, but one cannot copyright the weather.
The assertion that copyright restrains the spread of ideas is without merit. Copyright restrains the theft and misappropriation of a creator's inherent and natural right to control the copying and dissemination of that work. We call that kind of theft piracy, and it is just as illegal as any other kind of theft.
Attempts to justify piracy are simply self-interested attempted to justify theft.
Governments oppose piracy because it is illegal, not because piracy has an impact on music sales.
Copyright protects the right of authors to profit from their work and to distribute it as they see fit, whether by giving it away free on street corners or doing a deal with a publisher.
Blatantly self-interested groups on either extreme -- misdirected music corporations and greedy individuals who don't want to pay for music -- dominate this discussion. Both groups willfully abuse the purpose of copyright to advance their own economic interests.
If the U.S. was not justified in eliminating Saddam, who was justified? Terming U.S. actions in Iraq "unlawful" is an excercise in sophistry, since no international legislature exists with the legitimacy to make such laws. Current international "law" is simply an understanding by states to abide by an agreement until it becomes in their interest to ignore that agreement.
I believe the mere existence of regimes like Saddam pose a threat to democratic states everywhere. They can survive only be maintaining a constant state of hostility with civilized nations. The USSR posed a similar threat, even before it acquired nuclear weapons. Whether or not Saddam had current stockpiles of WMD is irrelevant. His previous behavior demonstrates his willingess to acquire and use WMD on his own citizens and to use WMD in wars of conquest he launched against two of his neighbors. The preponderance of evidence demonstrates Saddam was continuing to seek WMD and that he would have employed it against strategic Western interests.
In light of the utter failure of others to eliminate Saddam, the U.S. was fully justified in doing what it did.
Crimes against humanity require punishment, but the UN cannot speak legitimately for humanity. The UN serves many useful purposes, but it lacks the legitimacy to function as legislature, executive and judiciary.
I have no objection if the first Gulf War was fought over oil. I don't believe oil was a primary motivator, however. In any case, neither the first or second Gulf War would have been necessary had the UN actively engaged in the elimination of totalitarian and fascist regimes like Saddam's. Instead, these regimes are given seats and status in the UNGA, and treated as peers of legitimate governments. These kind of regimes threaten everyone's safety. The UN ought to be in the business of eliminating them, by military force if necessary.