As for the "payfor" thing, I'm only aware of one free AV program for the Mac and that one often fails to receive glowing reviews. In addition, many people don't trust free software.
No computer is immune to attacks, including Apple's. And, I don't think Apple has ever actually claimed they products were immune. They've calimed Macs are far less likely to be attacked. That's true. Times change, though, and more Macs means greater incentive for lowlifes to target them.
All those are fine areas for improvement. ("Fix" is the wrong word because it suggests changing something and never looking at it again.)
Here's what drove me from Linux after using it as my desktop for the better part of a decade:
1. Lack of coordination and control by a single entity. I know this runs counter to the culture of Linux development. But, as a non-developer, it meant that I often had to locate my own sources for updates, drivers, tweaking info, etc. For some time, this did not bother me, but these days I've got better things to do. I want a single source for all that i need to keep my OS happy.
2. Things didn't always "just work," including basic things. I shouldn't need to manually edit an X11 config file to get optimum performance from my monitor. But you'd be surprised, or maybe not, at the number of distributions with automated install routines that claimed to know my monitor and my video card that still managed to botch the X11 config. The problem peaked when I moved into wireless thingies, which was the annoyance that precipitated my abandoning Linux.
3. I grew really annoyed at the apparent belief by some Linux developers that Linux is the exclusive paything of coders and that ordinary users should stay silent and grateful. Not all of them, of course, but the "code it yourself" response wore thin.
As others have said, contact your credit card company and block the charge. Don't be shy about telling them you're in the military and in Afghanstan. Remember, the credit card company has a reason to be on you side.
Then, contact Dell and tell then what you've done. Tell them you asked for advice on Slashdot and the you've blocked the charge.
My guess is that this will get you a new laptop.
Frankly, as someone who served at a few APO addresses, my guess is that someone on the Afghan side made off with your purchase. I once ordered a pair of replacement contacts lenses from my D.C. optometrist to be sent APO only to have them arrive, weeks late, in the local mail. Never figured that out.
As a terminally broke college student, I don't see a serious ethical difference between "taking it out of the library, scanning a copy for personal use, and deleting it when I have to return the book, repeat every time I want to read the book" and "pirating it"...
Ethics don't depend on income level. If something is unethical, it's unethical when you're poor and it's unethical when you're wealthy.
You know, there are these things called libraries.
Copyright exists to ensure that an author retains the rights to a work that he or she doesn't sell to a pubisher. The typical deal is obvious: A publisher produces, markets and sells the book and the author gets a cut.
Buying a used book isn't unethical, certainly not because the author won't make a penny on the deal. The author's deal is with a publisher, not with individuals who buy the book, used or new.
Reproducing and distributing a published book without the copyright holders permission is unethical. It's as unethical as producing and distributing a manuscript that hasn't yet been offered for publication by an author.
The technology used to reproduce and distribute a work is irrelevant. From an ethical point of view, duplicating a book without the copyright holder's permission and making the file available on the Internet is equivalent to a publisher printing and marketing books by authors under contract to rival publishers.
Copyright is the legal recognition of an undeniable ethical reality: I retain all rights to something I create until I decide to transfer all, or some, of those rights to someone else. To believe that members of society can somehow acquire rights to my work that I do not transfer to them is, frankly, to believe in fantasy.
It's depressing that so many folks here are using this survey to blast people as morons. Depressing, but not terribly surprising.
Very, very, very few customers looking to buy a new TV are going to have a clue about things like FPS or pixels or whatever. There's no reaon why they should.
People will judge the quality of a TV's display by looking at it. It seems obvious that, given the variations in our eyesight, a lot of people aren't going to notice the difference between SD and HD, just as a lot of people can't notice the difference between sound reproduced on an audiophile's high-end dream and a $200 box.
It's not important and, frankly, most people don't care about HDTV. If the programming isn't worth watching, who cares about anything else?
I have no problems with semantics. You seem to have a problem confusing semantics with opinion.
Reporting is the business of presenting the news. It is a subset of journalism. E.g., columns and editorials are written by people doing journalism, not by people who are doing news reporting.
You complained that "the media" wasn't reporting something you found on the Trinity Church's website. That's illogical, and ironic, because all public websites are part of "the media."
The "mainstream media" presently fails to be journalistic and tends toward being editorial in nature.
Well, by introducing the label "mainstream media", you've narrowed the scope of your previous argument considerably. Also, perhaps you should consider that your own biases and opinions might be coloring your perception of the media. I.e., if a reporter had examined the Trinity site and failed to report in a way that was in accord with your opinion of the site, would you have seen that report as objective? Finally, I suggest sticking with Fox News. I'm pretty sure you'll find it the epitome of unbiased straight news.
To repeat, that website is one tiny piece of the media. Every public website is is part of the media.
Your opinion of the conservative email shot and your opinion of what you found at the Trinity Church site are not relevant to this discussion. The fact that you found the church's statements "very questionable" is subjective.
Just two points:
1. The purpose of the media is not to report everything. The purpose of the media is to report whatever it chooses to report. Typically, that reportage is shaped by intended market and/or by political stance.
2. Unless you hear something from a private source, the only way to receive information is via the media. Almost invariably, people who complain that the media is failing to report something know that "something" only because an element of the media reported it.
It always amazes me when people start ranting "What about this??! Why isn't the media telleing us about it?"
The reality, of course, is that the ranter only knows about it because someone in the media told him about it.
The press has never been, will never be, and cannot be perfectly impartial, perfectly fair, and perfectly objective. It's a foolish objective to demand.
People who want to pay attention to the news need to understand that they cannot expect any single source to provide all their news. They need to understand the influences at work in the media sources they consume.
For example, it's a waste of time to complain that The Washington Post shows a pro-Democratic lean. That's not new information. The Post has been leaning Democratic for decades. Likewise, The Washington Times leans right, and, in fact, was created expressly for that market, just like Fox News.
>>"...the ease of use just wasn't there a few years ago..."
True. No normal person is going to do things like install X by hand and then edit its configuration files. Normal people don't even want to know it exists.
>>"The only real problems left has nothing to do with the OS but with third party support and legal silliness with codecs."
True, but I think consumers perceive third party support as being on OS issue. If someone switches from Windows to Linux and finds that some of their hardware doesn't work, odds are they are going to blame Linux and put Windows back on the machine.
>>"A well set up install of Ubuntu will be just as pretty as Vista, a lot faster, and will keep running a lot longer without the aid of a rent a geek."
It's been two years since I ran Ubuntu. Can a default install on a typical machine, with no additional user tweaking, be called a "well set up install". (That's not a loaded question. I think any OS ought to automatically set up a machine to the maximum during an install.)
>>"The draw back is that not many vendors have done ports to Linux."
And they're unlikely to do ports in the future. Besides usually believing, with reason, that the return on their investment is greater in the Windows market, vendors see Linux as a fragmented target. I.e., they see each distribution as a separate target for porting. A port to Ubuntu may not work on SUSE and a SUSE port may not work on Red Hat, etc., etc. Finally, it's hard to convince vendors that people who didn't pay for their OS will pay for something like a driver.
We're not discussing Linux's readiness for the desktop. (Like I said, I used it for 10 years on my desktop.)
We're discussing what incentives satisfied Windows users might have to switch to Linux. Here's my position: I agree with almost all of the attractive Linux attributes cited by others, but I think the evidence of the last 15 or so years is that the majority of Windows users are not motivated by those incentives to switch. Therefore, wider Linux adoption depends on creating new incentives.
First, even if your assertion that learning to cope with an MS/Adobe upgrade takes more time (I'll give you the financial cost) than learning Linux could be shown to be accurate, how is that reflected in the real behavior of real people?
I don't disagree with the incentives that you or anyone else has listed here. I simply saying that people seem to be ignoring those incentives.
Second, I take strong exception to your use of "good user" and "bad user" labels. There are no good or bad users, just users.
You said: "...a good user can switch easily between OS's and programs, while the bad users know only one program..."
Why would they want to? If someone is satisfied with their OS or their word processor or their spreadsheet, or whatever, why is it to their advantage to spend time with other programs?
That's how real people behave. They stay with what they know and like as long as possible.
>>"GNU/Linux won't obsolete your hardware. Apple will. So the incentive would be to save money."
I chose to put my Linux machine in the closet and spend $2000 on a Mac. So, the cost savings aspect of Linux was not an incentive for me.
The virtues of Linux are many, but the market provides ample evidence that those virtues are not attracting a large following. I'm only suggesting that those who want Linux to attract more users ought to think about that.
The evidence shows that most people do, in fact, eventually buy a new copy of Windows, Office, Outlook, etc., when MS releases upgrades. (Outside the corporate world, where someone else pays for the upgrade, I don't believe most of us receive enough incoming Office files to make readability an issue.) Otherwise, we'd see a spike in Linux use every time Microsoft released an upgrade.
So, yes, it seems that saving money would be an incentive, but apparently not.
Remember the article pointed to by the original post cited customers returning Linux machines because they were unable to install Microsoft products on them. Now, it's easy to chuckle about that. But, from the perspective of the market and human nature -- which are what we are talking about here -- that's an indication of how needing to use non-Microsoft products is a strong disincentive to switch for many people,
I don't dislike Linux. I've said little about its capabilities other than the fact that three or four years ago I stopped using it because of difficulties with wireless. That was a frequent complaint about Linux at the time.
All I've said is that Linux does not provide a sufficient incentive for satisfied Windows users to switch. I've pointed to the behavior of the market over the last 15 years to substantiate that assertion. That is, it is a self-evident fact that most satisfied Windows users have not switched to Linux.
Sadly, as seems to be typical here, many people do not understand that pointing out the reality of Linux's position in the market is not a criticism of Linux as an operating system. Their argument is twofold: One, that Linux is technically better than Windows, therefore people should adopt it. And, two, if they don't adopt it, that is evidence that they are too stupid to use the better OS. Both assertions are irrelevant.
I did not argue that "Linux Sux." I made an argument about why satisfied Linux users do not switch to Linux. That has everything to do with human nature and little to do with the attributes of Linux or Windows.
"Common tasks" are whatever any user commonly does.
The fact that Linux offers roughly approximately equivelant capability is not an incentive to switch. If someone is using Windows, and is happy with it, please explain why being told that Linux does what they are already doing is a reason to switch.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a statement of reality, that's all.
As for the "payfor" thing, I'm only aware of one free AV program for the Mac and that one often fails to receive glowing reviews. In addition, many people don't trust free software.
No computer is immune to attacks, including Apple's. And, I don't think Apple has ever actually claimed they products were immune. They've calimed Macs are far less likely to be attacked. That's true. Times change, though, and more Macs means greater incentive for lowlifes to target them.
All those are fine areas for improvement. ("Fix" is the wrong word because it suggests changing something and never looking at it again.)
Here's what drove me from Linux after using it as my desktop for the better part of a decade:
1. Lack of coordination and control by a single entity. I know this runs counter to the culture of Linux development. But, as a non-developer, it meant that I often had to locate my own sources for updates, drivers, tweaking info, etc. For some time, this did not bother me, but these days I've got better things to do. I want a single source for all that i need to keep my OS happy.
2. Things didn't always "just work," including basic things. I shouldn't need to manually edit an X11 config file to get optimum performance from my monitor. But you'd be surprised, or maybe not, at the number of distributions with automated install routines that claimed to know my monitor and my video card that still managed to botch the X11 config. The problem peaked when I moved into wireless thingies, which was the annoyance that precipitated my abandoning Linux.
3. I grew really annoyed at the apparent belief by some Linux developers that Linux is the exclusive paything of coders and that ordinary users should stay silent and grateful. Not all of them, of course, but the "code it yourself" response wore thin.
As others have said, contact your credit card company and block the charge. Don't be shy about telling them you're in the military and in Afghanstan. Remember, the credit card company has a reason to be on you side.
Then, contact Dell and tell then what you've done. Tell them you asked for advice on Slashdot and the you've blocked the charge.
My guess is that this will get you a new laptop.
Frankly, as someone who served at a few APO addresses, my guess is that someone on the Afghan side made off with your purchase. I once ordered a pair of replacement contacts lenses from my D.C. optometrist to be sent APO only to have them arrive, weeks late, in the local mail. Never figured that out.
As a terminally broke college student, I don't see a serious ethical difference between "taking it out of the library, scanning a copy for personal use, and deleting it when I have to return the book, repeat every time I want to read the book" and "pirating it"...
Ethics don't depend on income level. If something is unethical, it's unethical when you're poor and it's unethical when you're wealthy.
You know, there are these things called libraries.
Copyright exists to ensure that an author retains the rights to a work that he or she doesn't sell to a pubisher. The typical deal is obvious: A publisher produces, markets and sells the book and the author gets a cut.
Buying a used book isn't unethical, certainly not because the author won't make a penny on the deal. The author's deal is with a publisher, not with individuals who buy the book, used or new.
Reproducing and distributing a published book without the copyright holders permission is unethical. It's as unethical as producing and distributing a manuscript that hasn't yet been offered for publication by an author.
The technology used to reproduce and distribute a work is irrelevant. From an ethical point of view, duplicating a book without the copyright holder's permission and making the file available on the Internet is equivalent to a publisher printing and marketing books by authors under contract to rival publishers.
Copyright is the legal recognition of an undeniable ethical reality: I retain all rights to something I create until I decide to transfer all, or some, of those rights to someone else. To believe that members of society can somehow acquire rights to my work that I do not transfer to them is, frankly, to believe in fantasy.
Because it's a design that's about 50 years old now.
So, let's bring back the DC-7 and let airlines start flying those.
It's depressing that so many folks here are using this survey to blast people as morons. Depressing, but not terribly surprising.
Very, very, very few customers looking to buy a new TV are going to have a clue about things like FPS or pixels or whatever. There's no reaon why they should.
People will judge the quality of a TV's display by looking at it. It seems obvious that, given the variations in our eyesight, a lot of people aren't going to notice the difference between SD and HD, just as a lot of people can't notice the difference between sound reproduced on an audiophile's high-end dream and a $200 box.
It's not important and, frankly, most people don't care about HDTV. If the programming isn't worth watching, who cares about anything else?
I have no problems with semantics. You seem to have a problem confusing semantics with opinion.
Reporting is the business of presenting the news. It is a subset of journalism. E.g., columns and editorials are written by people doing journalism, not by people who are doing news reporting.
You complained that "the media" wasn't reporting something you found on the Trinity Church's website. That's illogical, and ironic, because all public websites are part of "the media."
The "mainstream media" presently fails to be journalistic and tends toward being editorial in nature.
Well, by introducing the label "mainstream media", you've narrowed the scope of your previous argument considerably. Also, perhaps you should consider that your own biases and opinions might be coloring your perception of the media. I.e., if a reporter had examined the Trinity site and failed to report in a way that was in accord with your opinion of the site, would you have seen that report as objective? Finally, I suggest sticking with Fox News. I'm pretty sure you'll find it the epitome of unbiased straight news.
To repeat, that website is one tiny piece of the media. Every public website is is part of the media.
Your opinion of the conservative email shot and your opinion of what you found at the Trinity Church site are not relevant to this discussion. The fact that you found the church's statements "very questionable" is subjective.
Just two points:
1. The purpose of the media is not to report everything. The purpose of the media is to report whatever it chooses to report. Typically, that reportage is shaped by intended market and/or by political stance.
2. Unless you hear something from a private source, the only way to receive information is via the media. Almost invariably, people who complain that the media is failing to report something know that "something" only because an element of the media reported it.
...my own personal research...
Don't be silly.
Where did you do that research? Did data flow into your brain from space?
Those conservative email shots are part of the media. Those websites -- just like this one -- are part of the media.
It always amazes me when people start ranting "What about this??! Why isn't the media telleing us about it?"
The reality, of course, is that the ranter only knows about it because someone in the media told him about it.
The press has never been, will never be, and cannot be perfectly impartial, perfectly fair, and perfectly objective. It's a foolish objective to demand.
People who want to pay attention to the news need to understand that they cannot expect any single source to provide all their news. They need to understand the influences at work in the media sources they consume.
For example, it's a waste of time to complain that The Washington Post shows a pro-Democratic lean. That's not new information. The Post has been leaning Democratic for decades. Likewise, The Washington Times leans right, and, in fact, was created expressly for that market, just like Fox News.
... that other interesting parts peak much earlier than 39.
It's no news that Hubble is operating with technology that dates from the era of its launch.
If you want machines in space to use current tech, then you need to send people with uptodate hardware.
Hint, hint.
>>"...the ease of use just wasn't there a few years ago..."
True. No normal person is going to do things like install X by hand and then edit its configuration files. Normal people don't even want to know it exists.
>>"The only real problems left has nothing to do with the OS but with third party support and legal silliness with codecs."
True, but I think consumers perceive third party support as being on OS issue. If someone switches from Windows to Linux and finds that some of their hardware doesn't work, odds are they are going to blame Linux and put Windows back on the machine.
>>"A well set up install of Ubuntu will be just as pretty as Vista, a lot faster, and will keep running a lot longer without the aid of a rent a geek."
It's been two years since I ran Ubuntu. Can a default install on a typical machine, with no additional user tweaking, be called a "well set up install". (That's not a loaded question. I think any OS ought to automatically set up a machine to the maximum during an install.)
>>"The draw back is that not many vendors have done ports to Linux."
And they're unlikely to do ports in the future. Besides usually believing, with reason, that the return on their investment is greater in the Windows market, vendors see Linux as a fragmented target. I.e., they see each distribution as a separate target for porting. A port to Ubuntu may not work on SUSE and a SUSE port may not work on Red Hat, etc., etc. Finally, it's hard to convince vendors that people who didn't pay for their OS will pay for something like a driver.
We're not discussing Linux's readiness for the desktop. (Like I said, I used it for 10 years on my desktop.)
We're discussing what incentives satisfied Windows users might have to switch to Linux. Here's my position: I agree with almost all of the attractive Linux attributes cited by others, but I think the evidence of the last 15 or so years is that the majority of Windows users are not motivated by those incentives to switch. Therefore, wider Linux adoption depends on creating new incentives.
Yes, Linux is cheap. And that means it's attractive in markets with little cash.
But this discussion assumes a satisfied Windows user, not someone who is trying to fund their first PC.
First, even if your assertion that learning to cope with an MS/Adobe upgrade takes more time (I'll give you the financial cost) than learning Linux could be shown to be accurate, how is that reflected in the real behavior of real people?
I don't disagree with the incentives that you or anyone else has listed here. I simply saying that people seem to be ignoring those incentives.
Second, I take strong exception to your use of "good user" and "bad user" labels. There are no good or bad users, just users.
You said: "...a good user can switch easily between OS's and programs, while the bad users know only one program..."
Why would they want to? If someone is satisfied with their OS or their word processor or their spreadsheet, or whatever, why is it to their advantage to spend time with other programs?
That's how real people behave. They stay with what they know and like as long as possible.
>>"GNU/Linux won't obsolete your hardware. Apple will. So the incentive would be to save money."
I chose to put my Linux machine in the closet and spend $2000 on a Mac. So, the cost savings aspect of Linux was not an incentive for me.
The virtues of Linux are many, but the market provides ample evidence that those virtues are not attracting a large following. I'm only suggesting that those who want Linux to attract more users ought to think about that.
The evidence shows that most people do, in fact, eventually buy a new copy of Windows, Office, Outlook, etc., when MS releases upgrades. (Outside the corporate world, where someone else pays for the upgrade, I don't believe most of us receive enough incoming Office files to make readability an issue.) Otherwise, we'd see a spike in Linux use every time Microsoft released an upgrade.
So, yes, it seems that saving money would be an incentive, but apparently not.
Remember the article pointed to by the original post cited customers returning Linux machines because they were unable to install Microsoft products on them. Now, it's easy to chuckle about that. But, from the perspective of the market and human nature -- which are what we are talking about here -- that's an indication of how needing to use non-Microsoft products is a strong disincentive to switch for many people,
I don't dislike Linux. I've said little about its capabilities other than the fact that three or four years ago I stopped using it because of difficulties with wireless. That was a frequent complaint about Linux at the time.
All I've said is that Linux does not provide a sufficient incentive for satisfied Windows users to switch. I've pointed to the behavior of the market over the last 15 years to substantiate that assertion. That is, it is a self-evident fact that most satisfied Windows users have not switched to Linux.
Sadly, as seems to be typical here, many people do not understand that pointing out the reality of Linux's position in the market is not a criticism of Linux as an operating system. Their argument is twofold: One, that Linux is technically better than Windows, therefore people should adopt it. And, two, if they don't adopt it, that is evidence that they are too stupid to use the better OS. Both assertions are irrelevant.
You seem to be blaming people who don't stand to make any money from Linux for its poor showing in the market.
I did not argue that "Linux Sux." I made an argument about why satisfied Linux users do not switch to Linux. That has everything to do with human nature and little to do with the attributes of Linux or Windows.
What does that have to do with Linux?
"Common tasks" are whatever any user commonly does.
The fact that Linux offers roughly approximately equivelant capability is not an incentive to switch. If someone is using Windows, and is happy with it, please explain why being told that Linux does what they are already doing is a reason to switch.
>>:The incentive is freedom. You know that."
Then why isn't everyone using emacs and wearing Stallman buttons?