I don't need the Supreme Court to tell me what I believe is right and wrong. The First Amendment does not guarantee absolute free speech.
It is hard for to me to understand how you can't see pornography -- the deliberate degradation of individuals -- as a threat to any society premised on the right of an individual to live a free and nurturing life. Pornographers are criminal scum, like drug dealers.
Instead, report your findings and suspicions to the school. That's where your responsibility ends. It is not your responsibility to find a way to counter the exploit or to expose those behind it.
When people take the law into their own hands they're called vigilantes, and they expose themselves to unknown legal risks.
THe right to free speech is not absolute. A community has the right to criminalize "literature" it considers obscene. People have a right to disagree with that,but that right doesn't absolve them of responsibility to obey the law or pay the consequences if they don't.
Frankly, the republic is threatened less by states that prosecute people for possessing pornography than it is by geeks who like to read it.
Hemos should at least get his facts right before he goes off on a tangent about the threat to the republic posed by getting in trouble reading dirty comic books.
The First Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution. It isn't a state law or a federal law; it's part of the framework which gives Congress the power to legislate and the Supreme Court te power to judge.
God knows what this has to do with computing, but it is certainly indicative of the kind of audience Slashdot draws: Adults Who Read Comic Books. Now, there's something that can threaten the republic.
I value and protect my privacy as much as anyone, maybe more. But, opposition to government collection and correlation of public data is not opposition to decreased privacy. It's opposition to using information that is already public. Frankly, I'd rather the government did that themselves, rather than let some unaccountable corporation in the private sector do the job.
(If you're in the U.S.: Quick, tell me the names of the corporations that track your financial transactions and determine your credit rating, and then tell me if you're really comfortable with that.)
To paraphrase, get over it. The only way to be private is to avoid being public. Got a job? Got a driver's license? A bank account? Buying a house? Renting an apartment? Go to a public school? Use the mail? Ever take a commercial flight? Get married? Get divorced? Ever take out a loan...
You get the idea. Threats to our privacy do not from improved access to information that's already in the public domain.
Re:Only True Within the Developer Community
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Since you're tryng to put words in my mouth and I'm pushing back. no wonder you're losing interest.
I'm not talking about Joe Schmoe buyinmg one copy of Windows at his local office supply store. I'm talking about companies with multi-million dollar annual IT budgets. If you can't see the difference between a software vendor under a contractual obligation to another company to support, maintain,and develop code for a specific amount of time versus a company depending on unknown members of an unknown "community" to do the same, then I can't help you. The latter does, in fact, depend on the developers' personal interest, while the former depends on the legal obligations incurred by both companies when the signed that contract.
If a business needs a bug fixed or a feature added to an open source program, they can either wait for someone else to get around to doing that, or they can hire a developer to do it. The first option is a non-starter, and the second eliminates the financial advantage of going with open source. (If you have to pay for it, who cares if it is open or proprietary?)
On the other hand, if they have a contract with a proprietary vendor that covers fixing bugs in the software that vendor wrote, they simply order the fix. If the vendor fails to respond, they have recourse to options spelled out in the contrat and, eventually, to legal actions. Whether or not developers employed by that vendor have a "personal" interest in writing that fix is irrelevant. They have to do it, whereas open source developers have the choice not to do it. Business can't depend on software developers who may or may not do what the business needs them to do.
>> The only reason I'm correcting the submitter here is that it makes no sense to put words in people's mouth, even if you hate them. It is counter-productive to legitimate debate and argument.
Actually, the only reason you needed to make than correction is because Slashdot still refuses to hire editors. Any competent editor would at least verify the facts and the veracity of those quotes.
Slashdot doesn't do that, claiming that they just pass on the submissions as written, warts and all.
Of course, that's a bogus assertion, because Slashdot does perform the most basic functiom of an editor: it decides what submissions get published.
By claiming it doesn't edit, Slashdot is (A) lieing; and (B) playing Slashdot readers for suckers.
>>...the site caught the ire of the FBI for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Yeah, that'll do it. Fomenting revolution is usually against the law.
Where do these people come from?
Re:Only True Within the Developer Community
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>>...you are arguing that an additional choice offered by free software is actually a liability.
No, I'm not. I am saying that the use of either open or proprietary software brings with it the potential for additional, often unexpected. costs. The costs arise when the business wants its current software to do something it can't do. Open source adds one more option, but it doesn't eliminate the cost.
Arguing that buying Microsoft is risky because Microsoft might go out of business is, frankly, a high school debating tactic. The business buying from Microsoft is also at risk of going out of business, or of being bought by Microsoft, or of being wiped out by corrupt managers. There is risk inherent in every business venture, and decisions must balance risks and benefits.
>> Are you trying to imply that proprietary software vendors do have a personal interest in the kinds of software that many businesses need?
Why would I care if a proprietary vendor has a "personal" interest in my software? (I'm not even sure a business can have a "personal" interest in anything.)Remember, I'm not talking about buying shrink-wrapped boxes off a store shelf. I'm talking about entering into a contractual relationship with a vendor to support/modify/develop code for my business. That contract means we both have taken on legal obligations to each other.
You seem to be assuming that I'm pro-proprietary and anti-open source. I'm neither. I'm just asserting that neither the choices offered by open source or its "openness" eliminate the risk and costs inherent in changing a business's legacy software base. The choice will come down to: "Spend you money here, or spend your money there." The salient fact that will be discussed in the board room is not the choice, but the spending.
Re:Only True Within the Developer Community
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I did not say having fewer options is better than having more options. I simply said, based on my own experience, what the reaction is likely to be when the managers of a business are told that they need to pay someone to modify their open source code. The assumption -- and it is not necessarily an accurate assumption -- will be that this problem would not have arisen with Microsoft software.
As for the second, any company can go bust, but with just about $50 billion in cash reserves, Microsoft is in an enviable position. If asked to estimate Microsoft chances for long life versus its competitors, I think most business people would readily opt for Microsoft. Compared with financially shaky open source startups, it's no contest.
And, yes, Microsoft could drop or sell the software a business needs, or alter how it works. But that's a risk with any software, open or proprietary. Businesses, however, can raise their comfort level significantly by engaging in a contractural relationship with a proprietary software firm that ensures support for the duration of the contract. They can't sign a similar contract with the open source community, which means their open software is maintained based on the interests and whims of people who are not obligated to them in any fashion. That is not a good position for a business.
It's also important to remember that many business depend on the kind of vertical and integration software that isn't common in the open source community, Open source developers -- not customers -- make the decisions about what kind of new open source code is written, and those developers are unlikely to have a personal interest in the kind of software that many businesses need.
Finally, I did not say that buying Microsoft provides a magic solution. It doesn't, and neither does going with open source.
Re:Only True Within the Developer Community
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Your points are well taken, but we should not imagine that open source provides a perfect business solution simply because it is open. Having access to the source may or may not be important to a business, but any business will certainly place primary emphasis on the cost of software, whether it is open or proprietary. In a business of any size, the cost of acquiring the software is a small percentage of the expenditures that software will drive during its lifetime.
The crunch will come, of course, when the business wants to do something that its current software can't support. This happens with regularity. Whether the business uses open or proprietary software, their primary focus will be on the required functionality and the cost. If they have a base of legacy open source code, they have a choice between paying for code rewrites, the creation of entirely new open code, or bringing in proprietary code. All these options cost something. Likewise, the obverse choices are available of they have a base of legacy proprietary code: they can buy different proprietary code, or move to open source and bear those costs, plus any costs associated with potential code modificiation.
So, there really is no free lunch. Each business should evaluate their choices according to their own needs.
In truth, unless all the capabilities they need can be provided by off-the-shelf software (open or proprietary), business typically incur major costs paying for new code written exclusively for them, if only to pass data between independent programs.
Only True Within the Developer Community
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>> If they are OSS, the community can take over. I thought that was the whole benefit to OSS in the first place.
That only applies within the narrow developer community. It is quite unreasonable to expect end users to start writing code just to turn an annoying piece of software into something they will use. Instead, they will simply look for a better program.
In addition, consider a business that's evaluating Ximian. If Ximian goes bust, the fact that the code they leave behind is open source doesn't do that business any good unless one or both of these two conditions are met:
1) They pay developers to maintain and support the code.
2) They depend on the "community" to maintain and support the code.
The first option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "You know, if we'd bought Windows, we wouldn't be in this spot right now. Why should we start hiring developers? We're not a software company. This open source stuff is going to cost too much."
The second option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "We need this code to keep our business running. How can we depend on some anonymous and amorphous bunch of developers to support our requirements? What happens if they walk away from this code? Face it, we either need to spend money to move back to Windows or spend money to pay some people to maintain this code ourselves. Either way, we're spending money we wouldn't be spending if we'd stuck with Microsoft."
Support and credibility as a business with staying power are the Achille's heels for any company marketing open source. Being purchased by Novell will give Ximian needed credibility among the corporate and business clients they are going after.
One overlooked reason why more people aren't adopting Linux is that they can't get Linux applications at the same place they buy their software -- from stores.
Take a look around a CompUSA, a Walmart, a Best Buy, an Office Depot, or Amazon, or any other franchise that sells software. You might see a few boxes of RedHat or Mandrake, but if you start looking for specific kinds of applications that run on Linux, you won't find any. (Yerah, I know Linux distros are chocked full of apps, but most people don't know that; even if they do, they'll get a confusing array of applications with overlapping functionality.)
It's all well and good to have bunches of free Linux applications available for people who know how to find them and install them. And, how to get rid of them if and when they turn out to be unsatisfactory.
That's not the case for most people. They already own Windows (or a Mac). They only need new software very occasionally, and then they can afford to pay for it. If that's the case, why dump Windows and spend hours getting up to speed on Linux just to get one free app? That's a high-risk approach.his is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
his is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
The heritage of Linux and Gnu is a double-edged sword. It enables a flowering of talent among the developer community, but it also isolates Linux from the mainstream.
>> "...this is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
Gee, d'ya think?
Hopeless, hopeless.
Re:Slashdot Kicks Another Pointless Can
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I'm not arguing that the recording industry is populated with saints. The examples you cite are only the latest.
I am arguing that anyone in the business of selling their music is subject to the same laws of te marketplace. That's true whether your Sony or some struggling bar band. I am arguing that it is a rare musician, indeed, who isn't as subject to the lure of money as the rest of us. I really do think it is naive to expect musicians to be impervious to the lure of wealth, or to automatically cast as a "whore" any musician who oursues wealth.
I also think it just isn't all that important unless you're involved in the industry. That's expecially true of pop and rock music, which is about as important as yesterday's comics. It's entertainment, nothing more. No one would be harmed if it all vanished tomorrow.
Re:Slashdot Kicks Another Pointless Can
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>>...it's not just me that thinks the labels are misguided...
I didn't say they weren't. (So, who are these other folks that support you?)
CD sales are dropping like a rock. The labels haven't changed their approach or their thinking. They've just turned to extortion and litigation to force people to buy their dredge.
Please explain how the recording industry is forcing people into stores and extorting them to buy things they don't want. By attempting to sue people they believe are violating their rights? Maybe tht's smart, mayeb it isn't, but please explain how that is extortion? Why is anyone forced to buy a CD against their will because the recording industry is trying to stop people from giving away their product? The only reasonable way to paint that as extortion is if you believe you have a right to take things that don't belong to you.
>> You don't believe a culture existed? That doesn't even deserve a response.
Or, you couldn't think of a response. Again, what culture are you talking about? The culture of bad bar bands?
>> The recording industry represents less than 10 percent of the country's recording artists.
That doesn't make sense. If someone is being recorded, they are -- by definition -- being recorded by soeone in the recording industry. They might label themselves as "independent", but they are still part of the same industry.
When I think of "independent" music labels, I think of musicians whose music dont like and wouldn't buy. I think of bar bands populated by people barely old enough to vote who can't get a contract with a major player because they won't sell enough CD's to make it worthwhile. An indpendent label's overhead is usually small enough that they can find a way to make a profit selling these kind of niche artists. And, if you fantasize, the major players disappear, they will be rapidly replaced by some of those independents who will buy up the catalogs and -- poof -- turn themselves into the same kind of profitable corporate engines you seem to loathe. Remember, the independents are in it for the money, too. (Or else they go bankrupt and disappear.)
>> The musicians are fed up with it and so is the American public.
Can't speak for all musicians because I don't know them all. Maybe you do. As for the public...well, my assumption is that you're equating the public with the little demographic slice you populate. The real public has real things to worry about, not techniques used in a record studio or the business practices of recrding labels. Again, CD's are an unneccessary entertainment luxury. They're pretty low on most the list of priorities of most adults.
>> When money comes first, you're not an artist -- you're a whore.
How naive.
Re:Slashdot Kicks Another Pointless Can
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The purpose of a recording label is to maximize the revenue they derive for marketing product, not to ensure that the "best" music is recorded. Obviously, labels choose to spend money and other resources to create and boost demand for the artists they think are likely to sell the most products. That's why you don't see much advertising for Bing Crosby CD's. No matter how much is spent on advertising Bing Crosby music, the financial return will be greater if the money is spent on advertising something else.
Labels do promote new acts, but you will have noticed that all new acts are not promoted, and that if an act's debut CD doesn't sell, they may never release a second CD. Like all businesses, recording labels are not charities, and are not going to throw good money after bad.
Whether or not "everything" today is overproduced, etc., is a matter of opinion. What I call overproduced might sound "just right" to someone else. If these "overproduced" CD's are unpopular, they won't sell and the labels will stop making them. (Two points: 1: Just because you don't like something doesnt necessarily make it the epitome of evil. 2: CD's are entertainment. There's no requirement to buy them. Ranting about recording lables and the RIAA dims considerably in importance if you consider this from the proper perspective, which is rather like deciding which sit com rerun you'll watch on TV tonight)
Record labels sign acts they think will make money. If enough people share your view that labels today are signing bad acts, CD sales will drop and the labels will start signing other acts. That's how a market works.
There's plenty of music out there that doesn't sound like Spears. Spears' music is deliberately created to cater to the demographic that buys the most CD's. That's why they spend so much money hyping her.You wouldn't expect labels to hype Beethoven to 12-year-old's, would you? Buy and listen to whatever you like; there's a lot more music out there than ypu migvht think.
Finally, I don't believe a "culture" ever existed, so I'm not sure what your point is. Destroying the recording industry will just create space in the market for a new one to develop.
Tjis long-winded question seems just one more juvenile attempt to argue that recording labels are blocking progress to some kind of pop music utopia in which muse-inspired musicians would play and sing for free, but, that said::
You're buying the same thing you buy when you purchase a book:
1. A copy of the organized information created by the works author, expressed in ordinary printed language in the book and in a digitzed code on the CD.
2. The material required to contain that organized information: paper for the book, plastic for the CD.
3. The legal right to access and use the organized information as specified by law and the terms of the sale.
Slashdot Kicks Another Pointless Can
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Well, the obvious response is "better than what?", but, for the life of me, I can't figure out what this has to do with computing.
I suspect this piece of doggerel has been foisted on us as one more/. manipulation of its readership designed to boost ad revenue.
One really wonders if/. readers are sophisticaed enough to simply ask "Does this guy know what he's talking about? Does he prove what he says?"
First of all, musicians sign contract with recording labels. That's their choice. If they don't like some of the things done by the label down the road, they need to remember that they signed that contract of their own free will.
That said, look at these assertions from Rip Rowan's piece:
Record labels have never really understood what makes a record "sound good" and frankly, few even care. Many of the people who sign artists don't understand their music at all. Instead, they are able to pick up on musical trends, and replicate those trends across the ranks of their artists. Artists that fit into the trend are fed, the rest are starved.
Labels are in the business of creating and meeting demand. That's why musicians sign with them: to sell CD's and make money. If there's a demand for one kind of music, it makes sense that labels would focus on musicians who make that kind of music. What else would they do? Spend their advertising and promotion budgets on musicians that no one listens to?
Mastering engineers are caught in a Catch-22. If they do not deliver a product that is appropriately LOUD, then they are consdered inept by the labels and are shunned. If they refuse to destroy the artist's music, then they aren't being "team players" and quickly fall out of favor. But if they provide what the customer demands (and remember, the label, not the band, is the customer) then they ruin a perfectly good piece of music,
Why should we believe this assertion? It might be true, but, then again, it might not be. If writers expect readers to take them seriously,, they need to back up their assertions with evidence and facts.
This guy "Rip" is just whining in public, and happened to give the/. crew another pointless can to kick.
If they can afford it, organizations ought to support the use of Linux on employee desktops.
In turn, employees ought to be reasonable and not insist on using Linux exclusively if that means they can't fulfill their job responsibilities.
That said, I onced worked at a place that locked down desktop configurations, and policed it by running periodic inventories of all the software on every desktop. If someone was running software that wasn't on the approved list, they got called to the principal's office.
I don't see much reason to play endless "what if" games.
Back in reality land, if someone wants to violate a Micrsoft license, or anyone's license, for that matter, they'd better be prepared to deal with the legal consequences. Contrary to the commonly held opinion around here, a firm moral conviction isn't enough to win in court. The other side might just think they're right.
Microsoft could write a license that says developers using their products must wear funny clothes and send all their money to Bill Gates, but it would be meaningless until tested in court.
Open source developers would be better off coding better apps than Microsoft instead of playing amateur lawyers. Give users something they think is better than Microsot and the market will settle these "what if" questions.
>> Please install xp on 100 identical computer systems...
No thanks. You can't pay me enough to administer someone else's PC's.
>> type apt-get install appname...
Debian has a fine packaging system. So does RedHat. And, going the configure-make-install route is fine, too. Trouble is, each method is unaware of the other. Mixing packaging systems is a recipe for a very bad cake. Meanwhile, in my book, you get no extra points for running apt at the command line instead of clicking on an icon in Windows. Conceptually, it's the same thing.
>> ..much like windows, except all the apps are listed....
If a developer follows Microsoft's rules, your app will be listed in the install/deinstall panel. If you don't, it probably won't be. Ditto apt, which can't correctly uninstall something it didn't install.
>> As for uninstalling the system, whether you find it easy or difficult really doesn't matter. Under linux I don't have to do it.
Well, deleting a partition works pretty much the same for any OS. I'm happy you can upgrade in place. My point was simply that arguing about which OS is easier to uninstall is silly. They're all easy to uninstall if you delete their partitions.
A couple releases later when microsoft drops support for winXP like they did win95, do you really think they will keep the activation hotlines open for you? Another bit of news for you... if you change hardware and break your activation, they will only give you a reactivation code once... upgrade that pc twice, come on buddy try it
I'm not using XP, so I don't really care when MS stops supporting it. (By the way, how's RedHat's support for their 4.0 release these days?). As for that reactiviation nonsense, I do have am XP CD that I've installed and activated on 3 different machines. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. And, while ere at it, why is "activating" XP any different than signing up for the "RedHat Network" so you can get updates, or signing up for whatever weird "club" Mandrake is running these days? I'll give you points for Debian not wanting to know your life history before you use apt, but they certainly know you IP.
I know this is Slashdot, but don't mistake my little criticisms of little pieces of Linux for slavish adoration of Microsoft. Dealing with the truth is a better policy than slavish adoration of anything, even Linux.
I've found the best way to uninstall Windows -- the entire OS -- is to delete the partition. Poof, it's gone.
You're correct about registry woes. That's what I meant by playing by the rules. If an uninstall routine backs out all the registry entries made during installation, plus the links, shortcuts and what-not, you should be fine. It's simply a matter of recording everything the install routine did and backing out of each of those actions.
The same principle applies in any OS. I've found that Linux install routines often don't track everything they do. And, certainly, the "Configure, Make, Install" mantra leaves it up to the user to remember what's where.
The profusion of different and incompatible packaging schemes in Linux, combined with manual compilation and installation, does have a down side.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't need the Supreme Court to tell me what I believe is right and wrong. The First Amendment does not guarantee absolute free speech.
It is hard for to me to understand how you can't see pornography -- the deliberate degradation of individuals -- as a threat to any society premised on the right of an individual to live a free and nurturing life. Pornographers are criminal scum, like drug dealers.
You should not have written any code.
Instead, report your findings and suspicions to the school. That's where your responsibility ends. It is not your responsibility to find a way to counter the exploit or to expose those behind it.
When people take the law into their own hands they're called vigilantes, and they expose themselves to unknown legal risks.
THe right to free speech is not absolute. A community has the right to criminalize "literature" it considers obscene. People have a right to disagree with that,but that right doesn't absolve them of responsibility to obey the law or pay the consequences if they don't.
Frankly, the republic is threatened less by states that prosecute people for possessing pornography than it is by geeks who like to read it.
Hemos should at least get his facts right before he goes off on a tangent about the threat to the republic posed by getting in trouble reading dirty comic books.
The First Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution. It isn't a state law or a federal law; it's part of the framework which gives Congress the power to legislate and the Supreme Court te power to judge.
God knows what this has to do with computing, but it is certainly indicative of the kind of audience Slashdot draws: Adults Who Read Comic Books. Now, there's something that can threaten the republic.
I value and protect my privacy as much as anyone, maybe more. But, opposition to government collection and correlation of public data is not opposition to decreased privacy. It's opposition to using information that is already public. Frankly, I'd rather the government did that themselves, rather than let some unaccountable corporation in the private sector do the job.
(If you're in the U.S.: Quick, tell me the names of the corporations that track your financial transactions and determine your credit rating, and then tell me if you're really comfortable with that.)
To paraphrase, get over it. The only way to be private is to avoid being public. Got a job? Got a driver's license? A bank account? Buying a house? Renting an apartment? Go to a public school? Use the mail? Ever take a commercial flight? Get married? Get divorced? Ever take out a loan...
You get the idea. Threats to our privacy do not from improved access to information that's already in the public domain.
Since you're tryng to put words in my mouth and I'm pushing back. no wonder you're losing interest.
I'm not talking about Joe Schmoe buyinmg one copy of Windows at his local office supply store. I'm talking about companies with multi-million dollar annual IT budgets. If you can't see the difference between a software vendor under a contractual obligation to another company to support, maintain,and develop code for a specific amount of time versus a company depending on unknown members of an unknown "community" to do the same, then I can't help you. The latter does, in fact, depend on the developers' personal interest, while the former depends on the legal obligations incurred by both companies when the signed that contract.
If a business needs a bug fixed or a feature added to an open source program, they can either wait for someone else to get around to doing that, or they can hire a developer to do it. The first option is a non-starter, and the second eliminates the financial advantage of going with open source. (If you have to pay for it, who cares if it is open or proprietary?)
On the other hand, if they have a contract with a proprietary vendor that covers fixing bugs in the software that vendor wrote, they simply order the fix. If the vendor fails to respond, they have recourse to options spelled out in the contrat and, eventually, to legal actions. Whether or not developers employed by that vendor have a "personal" interest in writing that fix is irrelevant. They have to do it, whereas open source developers have the choice not to do it. Business can't depend on software developers who may or may not do what the business needs them to do.
>> The only reason I'm correcting the submitter here is that it makes no sense to put words in people's mouth, even if you hate them. It is counter-productive to legitimate debate and argument.
Actually, the only reason you needed to make than correction is because Slashdot still refuses to hire editors. Any competent editor would at least verify the facts and the veracity of those quotes.
Slashdot doesn't do that, claiming that they just pass on the submissions as written, warts and all.
Of course, that's a bogus assertion, because Slashdot does perform the most basic functiom of an editor: it decides what submissions get published.
By claiming it doesn't edit, Slashdot is (A) lieing; and (B) playing Slashdot readers for suckers.
I am.
What's your point?
Inciting revolution is not protected speech.
>> ...the site caught the ire of the FBI for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Yeah, that'll do it. Fomenting revolution is usually against the law.
Where do these people come from?
>> ...you are arguing that an additional choice offered by free software is actually a liability.
No, I'm not. I am saying that the use of either open or proprietary software brings with it the potential for additional, often unexpected. costs. The costs arise when the business wants its current software to do something it can't do. Open source adds one more option, but it doesn't eliminate the cost.
Arguing that buying Microsoft is risky because Microsoft might go out of business is, frankly, a high school debating tactic. The business buying from Microsoft is also at risk of going out of business, or of being bought by Microsoft, or of being wiped out by corrupt managers. There is risk inherent in every business venture, and decisions must balance risks and benefits.
>> Are you trying to imply that proprietary software vendors do have a personal interest in the kinds of software that many businesses need?
Why would I care if a proprietary vendor has a "personal" interest in my software? (I'm not even sure a business can have a "personal" interest in anything.)Remember, I'm not talking about buying shrink-wrapped boxes off a store shelf. I'm talking about entering into a contractual relationship with a vendor to support/modify/develop code for my business. That contract means we both have taken on legal obligations to each other.
You seem to be assuming that I'm pro-proprietary and anti-open source. I'm neither. I'm just asserting that neither the choices offered by open source or its "openness" eliminate the risk and costs inherent in changing a business's legacy software base. The choice will come down to: "Spend you money here, or spend your money there." The salient fact that will be discussed in the board room is not the choice, but the spending.
I did not say having fewer options is better than having more options. I simply said, based on my own experience, what the reaction is likely to be when the managers of a business are told that they need to pay someone to modify their open source code. The assumption -- and it is not necessarily an accurate assumption -- will be that this problem would not have arisen with Microsoft software.
As for the second, any company can go bust, but with just about $50 billion in cash reserves, Microsoft is in an enviable position. If asked to estimate Microsoft chances for long life versus its competitors, I think most business people would readily opt for Microsoft. Compared with financially shaky open source startups, it's no contest.
And, yes, Microsoft could drop or sell the software a business needs, or alter how it works. But that's a risk with any software, open or proprietary. Businesses, however, can raise their comfort level significantly by engaging in a contractural relationship with a proprietary software firm that ensures support for the duration of the contract. They can't sign a similar contract with the open source community, which means their open software is maintained based on the interests and whims of people who are not obligated to them in any fashion. That is not a good position for a business.
It's also important to remember that many business depend on the kind of vertical and integration software that isn't common in the open source community, Open source developers -- not customers -- make the decisions about what kind of new open source code is written, and those developers are unlikely to have a personal interest in the kind of software that many businesses need.
Finally, I did not say that buying Microsoft provides a magic solution. It doesn't, and neither does going with open source.
Your points are well taken, but we should not imagine that open source provides a perfect business solution simply because it is open. Having access to the source may or may not be important to a business, but any business will certainly place primary emphasis on the cost of software, whether it is open or proprietary. In a business of any size, the cost of acquiring the software is a small percentage of the expenditures that software will drive during its lifetime.
The crunch will come, of course, when the business wants to do something that its current software can't support. This happens with regularity. Whether the business uses open or proprietary software, their primary focus will be on the required functionality and the cost. If they have a base of legacy open source code, they have a choice between paying for code rewrites, the creation of entirely new open code, or bringing in proprietary code. All these options cost something. Likewise, the obverse choices are available of they have a base of legacy proprietary code: they can buy different proprietary code, or move to open source and bear those costs, plus any costs associated with potential code modificiation.
So, there really is no free lunch. Each business should evaluate their choices according to their own needs.
In truth, unless all the capabilities they need can be provided by off-the-shelf software (open or proprietary), business typically incur major costs paying for new code written exclusively for them, if only to pass data between independent programs.
>> If they are OSS, the community can take over. I thought that was the whole benefit to OSS in the first place.
That only applies within the narrow developer community. It is quite unreasonable to expect end users to start writing code just to turn an annoying piece of software into something they will use. Instead, they will simply look for a better program.
In addition, consider a business that's evaluating Ximian. If Ximian goes bust, the fact that the code they leave behind is open source doesn't do that business any good unless one or both of these two conditions are met:
1) They pay developers to maintain and support the code.
2) They depend on the "community" to maintain and support the code.
The first option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "You know, if we'd bought Windows, we wouldn't be in this spot right now. Why should we start hiring developers? We're not a software company. This open source stuff is going to cost too much."
The second option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "We need this code to keep our business running. How can we depend on some anonymous and amorphous bunch of developers to support our requirements? What happens if they walk away from this code? Face it, we either need to spend money to move back to Windows or spend money to pay some people to maintain this code ourselves. Either way, we're spending money we wouldn't be spending if we'd stuck with Microsoft."
Support and credibility as a business with staying power are the Achille's heels for any company marketing open source. Being purchased by Novell will give Ximian needed credibility among the corporate and business clients they are going after.
One overlooked reason why more people aren't adopting Linux is that they can't get Linux applications at the same place they buy their software -- from stores.
Take a look around a CompUSA, a Walmart, a Best Buy, an Office Depot, or Amazon, or any other franchise that sells software. You might see a few boxes of RedHat or Mandrake, but if you start looking for specific kinds of applications that run on Linux, you won't find any. (Yerah, I know Linux distros are chocked full of apps, but most people don't know that; even if they do, they'll get a confusing array of applications with overlapping functionality.)
It's all well and good to have bunches of free Linux applications available for people who know how to find them and install them. And, how to get rid of them if and when they turn out to be unsatisfactory.
That's not the case for most people. They already own Windows (or a Mac). They only need new software very occasionally, and then they can afford to pay for it. If that's the case, why dump Windows and spend hours getting up to speed on Linux just to get one free app? That's a high-risk approach.his is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
his is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
The heritage of Linux and Gnu is a double-edged sword. It enables a flowering of talent among the developer community, but it also isolates Linux from the mainstream.
>> "...this is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
Gee, d'ya think?
Hopeless, hopeless.
I'm not arguing that the recording industry is populated with saints. The examples you cite are only the latest.
I am arguing that anyone in the business of selling their music is subject to the same laws of te marketplace. That's true whether your Sony or some struggling bar band. I am arguing that it is a rare musician, indeed, who isn't as subject to the lure of money as the rest of us. I really do think it is naive to expect musicians to be impervious to the lure of wealth, or to automatically cast as a "whore" any musician who oursues wealth.
I also think it just isn't all that important unless you're involved in the industry. That's expecially true of pop and rock music, which is about as important as yesterday's comics. It's entertainment, nothing more. No one would be harmed if it all vanished tomorrow.
>> ...it's not just me that thinks the labels are misguided...
I didn't say they weren't. (So, who are these other folks that support you?)
CD sales are dropping like a rock. The labels haven't changed their approach or their thinking. They've just turned to extortion and litigation to force people to buy their dredge.
Please explain how the recording industry is forcing people into stores and extorting them to buy things they don't want. By attempting to sue people they believe are violating their rights? Maybe tht's smart, mayeb it isn't, but please explain how that is extortion? Why is anyone forced to buy a CD against their will because the recording industry is trying to stop people from giving away their product? The only reasonable way to paint that as extortion is if you believe you have a right to take things that don't belong to you.
>> You don't believe a culture existed? That doesn't even deserve a response.
Or, you couldn't think of a response. Again, what culture are you talking about? The culture of bad bar bands?
>> The recording industry represents less than 10 percent of the country's recording artists.
That doesn't make sense. If someone is being recorded, they are -- by definition -- being recorded by soeone in the recording industry. They might label themselves as "independent", but they are still part of the same industry.
When I think of "independent" music labels, I think of musicians whose music dont like and wouldn't buy. I think of bar bands populated by people barely old enough to vote who can't get a contract with a major player because they won't sell enough CD's to make it worthwhile. An indpendent label's overhead is usually small enough that they can find a way to make a profit selling these kind of niche artists. And, if you fantasize, the major players disappear, they will be rapidly replaced by some of those independents who will buy up the catalogs and -- poof -- turn themselves into the same kind of profitable corporate engines you seem to loathe. Remember, the independents are in it for the money, too. (Or else they go bankrupt and disappear.)
>> The musicians are fed up with it and so is the American public.
Can't speak for all musicians because I don't know them all. Maybe you do. As for the public...well, my assumption is that you're equating the public with the little demographic slice you populate. The real public has real things to worry about, not techniques used in a record studio or the business practices of recrding labels. Again, CD's are an unneccessary entertainment luxury. They're pretty low on most the list of priorities of most adults.
>> When money comes first, you're not an artist -- you're a whore.
How naive.
The purpose of a recording label is to maximize the revenue they derive for marketing product, not to ensure that the "best" music is recorded. Obviously, labels choose to spend money and other resources to create and boost demand for the artists they think are likely to sell the most products. That's why you don't see much advertising for Bing Crosby CD's. No matter how much is spent on advertising Bing Crosby music, the financial return will be greater if the money is spent on advertising something else.
Labels do promote new acts, but you will have noticed that all new acts are not promoted, and that if an act's debut CD doesn't sell, they may never release a second CD. Like all businesses, recording labels are not charities, and are not going to throw good money after bad.
Whether or not "everything" today is overproduced, etc., is a matter of opinion. What I call overproduced might sound "just right" to someone else. If these "overproduced" CD's are unpopular, they won't sell and the labels will stop making them. (Two points: 1: Just because you don't like something doesnt necessarily make it the epitome of evil. 2: CD's are entertainment. There's no requirement to buy them. Ranting about recording lables and the RIAA dims considerably in importance if you consider this from the proper perspective, which is rather like deciding which sit com rerun you'll watch on TV tonight)
Record labels sign acts they think will make money. If enough people share your view that labels today are signing bad acts, CD sales will drop and the labels will start signing other acts. That's how a market works.
There's plenty of music out there that doesn't sound like Spears. Spears' music is deliberately created to cater to the demographic that buys the most CD's. That's why they spend so much money hyping her.You wouldn't expect labels to hype Beethoven to 12-year-old's, would you? Buy and listen to whatever you like; there's a lot more music out there than ypu migvht think.
Finally, I don't believe a "culture" ever existed, so I'm not sure what your point is. Destroying the recording industry will just create space in the market for a new one to develop.
Tjis long-winded question seems just one more juvenile attempt to argue that recording labels are blocking progress to some kind of pop music utopia in which muse-inspired musicians would play and sing for free, but, that said::
You're buying the same thing you buy when you purchase a book:
1. A copy of the organized information created by the works author, expressed in ordinary printed language in the book and in a digitzed code on the CD.
2. The material required to contain that organized information: paper for the book, plastic for the CD.
3. The legal right to access and use the organized information as specified by law and the terms of the sale.
Well, the obvious response is "better than what?", but, for the life of me, I can't figure out what this has to do with computing.
/. manipulation of its readership designed to boost ad revenue.
/. readers are sophisticaed enough to simply ask "Does this guy know what he's talking about? Does he prove what he says?"
/. crew another pointless can to kick.
I suspect this piece of doggerel has been foisted on us as one more
One really wonders if
First of all, musicians sign contract with recording labels. That's their choice. If they don't like some of the things done by the label down the road, they need to remember that they signed that contract of their own free will.
That said, look at these assertions from Rip Rowan's piece:
Record labels have never really understood what makes a record "sound good" and frankly, few even care. Many of the people who sign artists don't understand their music at all. Instead, they are able to pick up on musical trends, and replicate those trends across the ranks of their artists. Artists that fit into the trend are fed, the rest are starved.
Labels are in the business of creating and meeting demand. That's why musicians sign with them: to sell CD's and make money. If there's a demand for one kind of music, it makes sense that labels would focus on musicians who make that kind of music. What else would they do? Spend their advertising and promotion budgets on musicians that no one listens to?
Mastering engineers are caught in a Catch-22. If they do not deliver a product that is appropriately LOUD, then they are consdered inept by the labels and are shunned. If they refuse to destroy the artist's music, then they aren't being "team players" and quickly fall out of favor. But if they provide what the customer demands (and remember, the label, not the band, is the customer) then they ruin a perfectly good piece of music,
Why should we believe this assertion? It might be true, but, then again, it might not be. If writers expect readers to take them seriously,, they need to back up their assertions with evidence and facts.
This guy "Rip" is just whining in public, and happened to give the
If they can afford it, organizations ought to support the use of Linux on employee desktops.
In turn, employees ought to be reasonable and not insist on using Linux exclusively if that means they can't fulfill their job responsibilities.
That said, I onced worked at a place that locked down desktop configurations, and policed it by running periodic inventories of all the software on every desktop. If someone was running software that wasn't on the approved list, they got called to the principal's office.
I don't see much reason to play endless "what if" games.
Back in reality land, if someone wants to violate a Micrsoft license, or anyone's license, for that matter, they'd better be prepared to deal with the legal consequences. Contrary to the commonly held opinion around here, a firm moral conviction isn't enough to win in court. The other side might just think they're right.
Microsoft could write a license that says developers using their products must wear funny clothes and send all their money to Bill Gates, but it would be meaningless until tested in court.
Open source developers would be better off coding better apps than Microsoft instead of playing amateur lawyers. Give users something they think is better than Microsot and the market will settle these "what if" questions.
>> Please install xp on 100 identical computer systems...
..much like windows, except all the apps are listed....
No thanks. You can't pay me enough to administer someone else's PC's.
>> type apt-get install appname...
Debian has a fine packaging system. So does RedHat. And, going the configure-make-install route is fine, too. Trouble is, each method is unaware of the other. Mixing packaging systems is a recipe for a very bad cake. Meanwhile, in my book, you get no extra points for running apt at the command line instead of clicking on an icon in Windows. Conceptually, it's the same thing.
>>
If a developer follows Microsoft's rules, your app will be listed in the install/deinstall panel. If you don't, it probably won't be. Ditto apt, which can't correctly uninstall something it didn't install.
>> As for uninstalling the system, whether you find it easy or difficult really doesn't matter. Under linux I don't have to do it.
Well, deleting a partition works pretty much the same for any OS. I'm happy you can upgrade in place. My point was simply that arguing about which OS is easier to uninstall is silly. They're all easy to uninstall if you delete their partitions.
A couple releases later when microsoft drops support for winXP like they did win95, do you really think they will keep the activation hotlines open for you? Another bit of news for you... if you change hardware and break your activation, they will only give you a reactivation code once... upgrade that pc twice, come on buddy try it
I'm not using XP, so I don't really care when MS stops supporting it. (By the way, how's RedHat's support for their 4.0 release these days?). As for that reactiviation nonsense, I do have am XP CD that I've installed and activated on 3 different machines. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
And, while ere at it, why is "activating" XP any different than signing up for the "RedHat Network" so you can get updates, or signing up for whatever weird "club" Mandrake is running these days? I'll give you points for Debian not wanting to know your life history before you use apt, but they certainly know you IP.
I know this is Slashdot, but don't mistake my little criticisms of little pieces of Linux for slavish adoration of Microsoft. Dealing with the truth is a better policy than slavish adoration of anything, even Linux.
I've found the best way to uninstall Windows -- the entire OS -- is to delete the partition. Poof, it's gone.
You're correct about registry woes. That's what I meant by playing by the rules. If an uninstall routine backs out all the registry entries made during installation, plus the links, shortcuts and what-not, you should be fine. It's simply a matter of recording everything the install routine did and backing out of each of those actions.
The same principle applies in any OS. I've found that Linux install routines often don't track everything they do. And, certainly, the "Configure, Make, Install" mantra leaves it up to the user to remember what's where.
The profusion of different and incompatible packaging schemes in Linux, combined with manual compilation and installation, does have a down side.