The article ignores the fact that there is no market for Microsoft Linux.
People choosing Linux are choosing it AHEAD OF Microsoft, usually because they've had more than enough...
Also, we shouldn't underestimate M$'s ego. And the drop in public perception when (if) M$ admit that Linux is the proper path for them do be pursuing. Personally I think hell would freeze over before we had that kind of admittion. And by that time, other distros will have developed plenty of brand awareness. M$ will be the new player - the one to stay clear of until they've proven themselves. Only a fool would buy into M$'s 1st Linux distro.
And then there's the support issue. Maybe M$ will provide similar support to what they do now. If so, they'll be doomed. And what would you say to someone who came asking questions in alt.os.linux about how to make M$ Linux work. I know what my answer will be - whether other people think that's fair or not...
They probably will try it some time in the next 5 years. I doubt whether it will work.
An FBI database of IP addresses? I just don't think we'd have freedom of speech any more. Would you speak out against someone in power on the net if you thought they could trace it back to you? How about if you lived in a less democratic country than the US? (which is getting harder by the day)
Speed Ain't Everything
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 1
I bought my TNT over a 3dfx because it offered a better feature set and because I liked what I saw of nVidia's intentions back then. I bought my TNT2 on nVidia's promises of Linux support. My card crashes. I have no hope of fixing it myself, and neither can anyone else I have access to. ATI have open-sourced their Radeon specs. I don't care how many times faster the new nVidia is over the Radeon, because I know how much faster the Radeon is over the TNT2 I have, and that it will be plenty fast enough for at least a year to come. Hey - I'm even willing to accept a buggy Radeon driver on the blind hope that it will stabalise better than the GeForce one. Oh - plus I know that because the Radeon uses XFree86's DRI that I won't get the compatibility bullshit I have to put up with now. Why can't my closed-source drivers properly integrate into my otherwise-perfectly running system? Why can't I compile KDE2 with OpenGL acceleration? It's all very well that the card can crunch a quad-zillion giga-whatits per nano-second, but how do I get it to work again???
I swear on my own Athlon_Beast, the minute I see mention of Radeon 3D acceleration in XFree86, I'm off to buy a Radeon. And when it crashes, I'll enjoy attempting to work out WTF happened.
Can I have my Radeon now please?
Now if they'd only apply the same logic to weapons. Tag all ammunition. Then when a civillian gets shot / blown up - sue the weapons / ammo manufacturer.
But there's far too much money in weapons for the govt to do that. Better just pick on nasty CD copiers.
No matter how many member of the team come out and say "Yes, we're good people. Yes, we promise (Promis) we won't do anything wrong" my view still is that the DOJ is one of the most disgusting orginisations known to intelligent life, and NEVER, EVER, EVER to be trusted. They have validated my opinion at every decision juncture. The DOJ is about money & power. Not the good of the people, or the preservation of "ethics", whatever they think this abstract term to be. Just MONEY & POWER. The only light at the end of the tunnel for us is that intelligent people - REALLY intelligent people tend to have a more developed sense of justice than the DOJ and will not work on their abominations. The very best of the world's people will always be on our side, and our chaotic nature will confuse and erode their best efforts at fucking us up the arse and hiding (killing) the evidence.
Can't remove things? Did you know you can do a make uninstall for practically everything you install via a make install??? And as for dependencies, if the configure script doesn't alert you to a dependency problem, the compile error will... Long like the Compiler!
I'm not worried about Linux gaining a more intuitive interface. I am worried about strong commercial interest defining THE way to do things, thereby making competition / existence difficult. Personally, I prefer Enlightenment to either Gnome or KDE, but I feel great empathy for KDE supporters over the recent 'standardisation' efforts of the commercial world. KDE rocks, as do all the other WMs out there. And Linux belongs more to the KDE developers / supporters than it does to Sun or IBM or anyone else wishing to hijack Linux for their own personal gains. I'm sure they don't mean any harm, but they are causing it...
Remember the Inslaw / Promis software conspiracy??
on
NYT On Open Source
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· Score: 1
One very interesting thing to note is that the advisory committee recommended Open Source solutions - which goes directly against the US Justice's 'Promis' software it stole from Inslaw. See here
and here. The areas the report was recommending - for large scale scientific work is exactly what the Promis software does. I wonder if they'll have any objections?
FNORD!
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
Seriously - if this software was pirated, altered and deployed at strategic sites, was it orchestrated by the US Justice Department, or are we staring Echelon in the face?
Wasn't M$ recently accused of co-operating with Echelon by putting back-doors in their software? Oh - sorry - Echelon doesn't exist. That was just a bad dream...
Interesting, but I don't think it will catch on. The people who use Linux are people who can and do think for themselves. And we don't necessarily want the masses hi-jacking our OS and 'normalising'. When I hear people complaining about the lack of coherence in Linux's application, I interpret that as meaning that the app they're talking about it too difference from the M$ app, not any other app. You see, these people couldn't give 2 hoots WHAT their GUI looks like, as long as they recognise it from what they were looking at yesterday. They are asking for something that looks indentical to the respective M$ app. I say - don't give it to them. If they want to use Linux, they will get uesd to whatever 'wacky' interface is presented to them, and pretty soon they'll start whinging about how M$'s apps are inconsistant, because they don't behave like their Linux counterparts... And if they can't handle the system shock of THINKING about what they're doing instead of flying on auto-pilot, then maybe they should stick with M$. Please don't give Linux to the lowest common denominator.
My first attempt was Redhat 5.2, probably a bit over a year ago now (I think...). I've seen it improve so much since then it's incredible. But I'm not the average PC user. I'm actually interested in frigging around for 6 hours trying to compile the latest xxxx.tar.gz. For most users though... I think the only thing stopping Linux moving onto the home PC is games. Who decides what OS goes on a computer - Mum & Dad, or 15yo who wants the best games. Would Mum & Dad even notice? When Linux gets some favourable game reviews against Windows, kids will install it no matter how hard they think it may be, just to get that extra 5fps. We need some games. Some GAMES!!! The masses will follow the GAMES!!!
I think that if any aliens were aware of our existence, they would stay well clear of us until they recognised a world government in operation. This is the sign of a civilisation mature enough to contact. When we can do that right, I think we can expect the visits to begin. Think of the shit-fight that would happen at the moment if an alien landed in Austrlia (being a better place and all...) and said to me "Take me to your leader" and I took him to John Howard. All the Aussie labor supporters would start bitching that the liberals are selling the underclass to the aliens. The Americans would be bitching because obviously an American should represent the world (them having more people and bigger weapons and all...). The communist world would bitch that it's a capitalist conspiracy to..... you get the point (and sorry to anyone I offended - hey - take it easy). No-one's coming until we can all agree to go forward together.
Is any life form capable of observing another life of considerably higher (or lower) intelligence / consciousness? I have often pondered this one. I believe in the Giaia hypothesis (the entire Earth is alive and conscious) and that the rest of the universe is more of the same. However, is our mind, with all the 'blinkers' of 'modern' society capable of understanding the consciousness of something radically different - say a planet. For example, that big red spot on Jupiter. That satisfies all of MY definitions of life. But I accept that I will probably never (in this life time) come close to understanding that spot, or communicating with it. When we do bump into another life form (which we may have done repeatedly) I expect we won't even be able to see the forest for the trees...
Any thoughts?
I agree. The benefits of Open Source software will never be realised while we have programmers with hungry egos. Sure - we _could_ just take a perfectly good file manager and devote all our time to improving it out of sight, but hey - lets start from scatch and make OUR file manager. Of course, everyone is free to do what they damn well want, but it's a bit hypocritical of Linux programmers to go around preaching about Open Source & sharing, and then go and do their own thing just like every commercial app.
Them's fighting words! I use Enlightenment because it feels like, fast and configurable. And on the (very) odd occasion that it does crash, it dumps everything on the X desktop, dies gracefully, restarts and picks everything up again like nothing happened. You have to admit, that is pretty impressive. Crank on, Enlightenment.
Does it matter? Linux needs a standard office suite, and here comes an office suit about to be integrated into Gnome by people with lots of money. At worst, it won't work, and some other project will pick up where that left off. They'd have to do something pretty stupid for it not to work, though...
Are Via chasing after the Golden Ghz just to sound competitive? Would they achieve a better processor if they spent they money it's costing to squeeze 1hgz out of their current technology on actually improving the technology? If the chip claims 1ghz, people can't help but compare it to someone else's 1ghz chip, and Via will be 'stained' as a cheap, low-performance chip - they same way Cyrix was. But if they made a 500Mhz chip that beat a 750Mhz Athlon - well - that would be VERY different. That would get them the name they NEED.
I think software installation should follow 2 forks.
Obviously we could never replace the option of compiling software by hand, so.tar.gz is here to stay.
And for the other group who just want to click & install, I think the rpm is still the way to go. Maybe we could have an addition to the rpm system where Distro developers can insert their idiosyncracies (is that how you spell it?) - eg a mapping of their file locations ==> all the other Distro's file locations. But why can't they all just decide on a standard and stick to it anyway? Is it to attempt to create compatibility issues so that one has to be compliant with xxx to sell?
Dan
He looks like a bloody idiot. And he's a well-known Microsoft supporter. And he quotes some pretty sad little distributions as the 'main players'. He's a dork. Nothin' to worry about...
This took my mind back to reading the reason for Slackware's jump from 4 to 7. Is there really that much improvement in either Suse's or Red Hat's latest offerings? At this rate, how long will it take before we have SuSE 24.1? Dammit! Just pay attention to the product, not the version number. Anyway, where can I download Linux 7?
Slashdot Mirror
The article ignores the fact that there is no market for Microsoft Linux.
People choosing Linux are choosing it AHEAD OF Microsoft, usually because they've had more than enough...
Also, we shouldn't underestimate M$'s ego. And the drop in public perception when (if) M$ admit that Linux is the proper path for them do be pursuing. Personally I think hell would freeze over before we had that kind of admittion. And by that time, other distros will have developed plenty of brand awareness. M$ will be the new player - the one to stay clear of until they've proven themselves. Only a fool would buy into M$'s 1st Linux distro.
And then there's the support issue. Maybe M$ will provide similar support to what they do now. If so, they'll be doomed. And what would you say to someone who came asking questions in alt.os.linux about how to make M$ Linux work. I know what my answer will be - whether other people think that's fair or not...
They probably will try it some time in the next 5 years. I doubt whether it will work.
Dan
An FBI database of IP addresses? I just don't think we'd have freedom of speech any more. Would you speak out against someone in power on the net if you thought they could trace it back to you? How about if you lived in a less democratic country than the US? (which is getting harder by the day)
I bought my TNT over a 3dfx because it offered a better feature set and because I liked what I saw of nVidia's intentions back then. I bought my TNT2 on nVidia's promises of Linux support. My card crashes. I have no hope of fixing it myself, and neither can anyone else I have access to. ATI have open-sourced their Radeon specs. I don't care how many times faster the new nVidia is over the Radeon, because I know how much faster the Radeon is over the TNT2 I have, and that it will be plenty fast enough for at least a year to come. Hey - I'm even willing to accept a buggy Radeon driver on the blind hope that it will stabalise better than the GeForce one. Oh - plus I know that because the Radeon uses XFree86's DRI that I won't get the compatibility bullshit I have to put up with now. Why can't my closed-source drivers properly integrate into my otherwise-perfectly running system? Why can't I compile KDE2 with OpenGL acceleration? It's all very well that the card can crunch a quad-zillion giga-whatits per nano-second, but how do I get it to work again??? I swear on my own Athlon_Beast, the minute I see mention of Radeon 3D acceleration in XFree86, I'm off to buy a Radeon. And when it crashes, I'll enjoy attempting to work out WTF happened. Can I have my Radeon now please?
Now if they'd only apply the same logic to weapons. Tag all ammunition. Then when a civillian gets shot / blown up - sue the weapons / ammo manufacturer.
But there's far too much money in weapons for the govt to do that. Better just pick on nasty CD copiers.
FNORD!
No matter how many member of the team come out and say "Yes, we're good people. Yes, we promise (Promis) we won't do anything wrong" my view still is that the DOJ is one of the most disgusting orginisations known to intelligent life, and NEVER, EVER, EVER to be trusted. They have validated my opinion at every decision juncture. The DOJ is about money & power. Not the good of the people, or the preservation of "ethics", whatever they think this abstract term to be. Just MONEY & POWER. The only light at the end of the tunnel for us is that intelligent people - REALLY intelligent people tend to have a more developed sense of justice than the DOJ and will not work on their abominations. The very best of the world's people will always be on our side, and our chaotic nature will confuse and erode their best efforts at fucking us up the arse and hiding (killing) the evidence.
!FNORD!
System Requirements:
RedHat 6.2, SuSE 6.4, Mandrake 7.1
What do you mean Slackware isn't supported by your RPMs?
Oh - not supported... I see...
Why did I move to Linux again?
You guys are funny... I've already bumped into 2 versions of DeCSS, and I've only clicked on 2 links so far...
Can't remove things? Did you know you can do a make uninstall for practically everything you install via a make install??? And as for dependencies, if the configure script doesn't alert you to a dependency problem, the compile error will... Long like the Compiler!
I'm not worried about Linux gaining a more intuitive interface. I am worried about strong commercial interest defining THE way to do things, thereby making competition / existence difficult. Personally, I prefer Enlightenment to either Gnome or KDE, but I feel great empathy for KDE supporters over the recent 'standardisation' efforts of the commercial world. KDE rocks, as do all the other WMs out there. And Linux belongs more to the KDE developers / supporters than it does to Sun or IBM or anyone else wishing to hijack Linux for their own personal gains. I'm sure they don't mean any harm, but they are causing it...
One very interesting thing to note is that the advisory committee recommended Open Source solutions - which goes directly against the US Justice's 'Promis' software it stole from Inslaw. See here and here. The areas the report was recommending - for large scale scientific work is exactly what the Promis software does. I wonder if they'll have any objections? FNORD!
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
Seriously - if this software was pirated, altered and deployed at strategic sites, was it orchestrated by the US Justice Department, or are we staring Echelon in the face?
Wasn't M$ recently accused of co-operating with Echelon by putting back-doors in their software? Oh - sorry - Echelon doesn't exist. That was just a bad dream...
Interesting, but I don't think it will catch on. The people who use Linux are people who can and do think for themselves. And we don't necessarily want the masses hi-jacking our OS and 'normalising'. When I hear people complaining about the lack of coherence in Linux's application, I interpret that as meaning that the app they're talking about it too difference from the M$ app, not any other app. You see, these people couldn't give 2 hoots WHAT their GUI looks like, as long as they recognise it from what they were looking at yesterday. They are asking for something that looks indentical to the respective M$ app. I say - don't give it to them. If they want to use Linux, they will get uesd to whatever 'wacky' interface is presented to them, and pretty soon they'll start whinging about how M$'s apps are inconsistant, because they don't behave like their Linux counterparts... And if they can't handle the system shock of THINKING about what they're doing instead of flying on auto-pilot, then maybe they should stick with M$. Please don't give Linux to the lowest common denominator.
My first attempt was Redhat 5.2, probably a bit over a year ago now (I think...). I've seen it improve so much since then it's incredible. But I'm not the average PC user. I'm actually interested in frigging around for 6 hours trying to compile the latest xxxx.tar.gz. For most users though ... I think the only thing stopping Linux moving onto the home PC is games. Who decides what OS goes on a computer - Mum & Dad, or 15yo who wants the best games. Would Mum & Dad even notice? When Linux gets some favourable game reviews against Windows, kids will install it no matter how hard they think it may be, just to get that extra 5fps. We need some games. Some GAMES!!! The masses will follow the GAMES!!!
I think that if any aliens were aware of our existence, they would stay well clear of us until they recognised a world government in operation. This is the sign of a civilisation mature enough to contact. When we can do that right, I think we can expect the visits to begin. Think of the shit-fight that would happen at the moment if an alien landed in Austrlia (being a better place and all...) and said to me "Take me to your leader" and I took him to John Howard. All the Aussie labor supporters would start bitching that the liberals are selling the underclass to the aliens. The Americans would be bitching because obviously an American should represent the world (them having more people and bigger weapons and all...). The communist world would bitch that it's a capitalist conspiracy to..... you get the point (and sorry to anyone I offended - hey - take it easy). No-one's coming until we can all agree to go forward together.
Is any life form capable of observing another life of considerably higher (or lower) intelligence / consciousness? I have often pondered this one. I believe in the Giaia hypothesis (the entire Earth is alive and conscious) and that the rest of the universe is more of the same. However, is our mind, with all the 'blinkers' of 'modern' society capable of understanding the consciousness of something radically different - say a planet. For example, that big red spot on Jupiter. That satisfies all of MY definitions of life. But I accept that I will probably never (in this life time) come close to understanding that spot, or communicating with it. When we do bump into another life form (which we may have done repeatedly) I expect we won't even be able to see the forest for the trees... Any thoughts?
I agree. The benefits of Open Source software will never be realised while we have programmers with hungry egos. Sure - we _could_ just take a perfectly good file manager and devote all our time to improving it out of sight, but hey - lets start from scatch and make OUR file manager. Of course, everyone is free to do what they damn well want, but it's a bit hypocritical of Linux programmers to go around preaching about Open Source & sharing, and then go and do their own thing just like every commercial app.
Them's fighting words! I use Enlightenment because it feels like, fast and configurable. And on the (very) odd occasion that it does crash, it dumps everything on the X desktop, dies gracefully, restarts and picks everything up again like nothing happened. You have to admit, that is pretty impressive. Crank on, Enlightenment.
Does it matter? Linux needs a standard office suite, and here comes an office suit about to be integrated into Gnome by people with lots of money. At worst, it won't work, and some other project will pick up where that left off. They'd have to do something pretty stupid for it not to work, though...
I'm sad to say that I think you're absolutely correct.
Are Via chasing after the Golden Ghz just to sound competitive? Would they achieve a better processor if they spent they money it's costing to squeeze 1hgz out of their current technology on actually improving the technology? If the chip claims 1ghz, people can't help but compare it to someone else's 1ghz chip, and Via will be 'stained' as a cheap, low-performance chip - they same way Cyrix was. But if they made a 500Mhz chip that beat a 750Mhz Athlon - well - that would be VERY different. That would get them the name they NEED.
I like webmin. It bloody-well rocks! That little colour-terminal-in-a-Netscape-window is something else too. Why don't they work together?
I think software installation should follow 2 forks. Obviously we could never replace the option of compiling software by hand, so .tar.gz is here to stay.
And for the other group who just want to click & install, I think the rpm is still the way to go. Maybe we could have an addition to the rpm system where Distro developers can insert their idiosyncracies (is that how you spell it?) - eg a mapping of their file locations ==> all the other Distro's file locations. But why can't they all just decide on a standard and stick to it anyway? Is it to attempt to create compatibility issues so that one has to be compliant with xxx to sell?
Dan
He looks like a bloody idiot. And he's a well-known Microsoft supporter. And he quotes some pretty sad little distributions as the 'main players'. He's a dork. Nothin' to worry about...
This took my mind back to reading the reason for Slackware's jump from 4 to 7. Is there really that much improvement in either Suse's or Red Hat's latest offerings? At this rate, how long will it take before we have SuSE 24.1? Dammit! Just pay attention to the product, not the version number. Anyway, where can I download Linux 7?