Actually, I've used all three, and I don't have to admit any lack of polish in Ubuntu. Even three years ago you would have had a point, but today?
No. There are specific areas where one or the other is more polished, and it's possible that objectively scoring each aspect of the interface would have Ubuntu in third place - but not a certainty by any means, and certainly not by much. I will concede, I would fight for said scoring to include the ease of use of the CLI, but even excluding that, Ubuntu stacks up well.
I've got to disagree. If they can prove that Google is tweaking it's algorithm with intent to screw its competitors, then they actually have a valid anti-competitive practice complaint.
That said - properly ranking sites is an incredibly subjective judgment, indeed Google's great innovation is that they came up with an algorithm that far more closely matches an objective judgment with the average of our collective subjective judgment than anyone else has managed.
I think it would be a bad idea for Google to move away from this in order to annoy their competition - I suspect they're inclined enough to have proven mathematically what I suspect intuitively, that the opportunity cost exceeds any possible gain, but to be fair it would be awfully hard to *prove* they did so.
(And that *is* my big fear about Google. I don't actually expect them to make this bad judgment call to try and manipulate public opinion via their rankings - but if they do the short term harm in lost productivity and bad information before it's caught could be tremendous.)
I expect better, because I think they've thought this through, consciously, and weighed the possibilities. But then my ex-roommate called me "the most ethical sociopath I've ever met" because that's what I base my ethics in. I can nonetheless makes mistakes, therefore Google can too.
Has nothing to do with the argument he made of course, anymore than my snarkily calling you "Bill" in my reply -
There are practices that every company is allowed to do normally to crush competition, buying out rivals, trying to lockout competitors, that are not allowed once they are actually in a position that sheer market volume in fact allows their success at doing so to be a foregone conclusion. The 800 pound gorilla is in fact *not* allowed to sit wherever he wants.
None of these practices are what Google is being accused of here. No attempt to lock out other competitors, no accusation of buying up rivals. They are being explicitly accused of . . . having better results.
Well, yeah. They got into this game with an advanced algorithm when everyone else was crap, were allowed to consolidate their hold on the market for ages with no real competition, and are benefiting thereby - unless someone else gets into the game with something snazzier that overcomes that lead, the bottom drops out of the search/advertising market, or the CEO's are caught in a sex scandal involving lower primates *and* Google simultaneously suppresses that info from their search results, they're going to hold that position.
That's not a valid monopoly complaint. *Other* than skewing search results deliberately (And, I sincerely hope, destroying their cred thereby), they're actually not well positioned to abuse monopoly power. They can't really prevent someone else from competing in the market. They can't really 'lock you in' to Google - heck, I'm more locked into *Gmail* than I am Google itself, and even that doesn't force me to use Google.
To that extent, as much power as they have (And I find it imposing myself), their market position is intrinsically weaker than Microsoft - they don't own the platform itself, I can leave anytime I want.
Having the advantage of being the biggest is not actually a legal problem. Using that advantage to, say, destroy java and netscape actually is.
Bingo. I would be perfectly happy if everything else about copyright was dropped to something sane (15 years again, whatever) and the attribution right was made mandatory for the next ten million years. It's fine to build on work, but give the proper credit.
Feh - I'm no mathematician by any stretch, but I scored 730 in Math. RPN is just entirely counter-intuitive - algebraic notation simply is better at helping (Me at least) formulate the problem.
RPN? - stick verbs at the end of sentence I can, but stupid people that do that look. Elitist kiss-asses they are.
Heh - I got screwed out of unemployment for walking out of a retail store I worked for with a VCR cleaner I could produce the receipt for. No evidence of drawer being short or anything like that, no policy violated.
Fought for the unemployment in administrative court, Judge (Indiana, of course.) upheld the company line that I had been fired based on 'the appearance of dishonesty'.
Would have been worse - that was the job that taught me "I've been fired . . . oh thank you God, I've been fired!" was a perfectly rational sentence - {G}.
But my point is still that don't assume simply documenting stuff will be of any use. In Indiana at least, you can be fired (And have your unemployment revoked) for walking out of the store you worked for with items you bought in plain sight, in complete compliance with company policy.
On what basis do you think Corporations are identical to Unions, political parties, or individuals? Not a single one of these four things is organized in a similar way, has the law applied in a similar way, or has the same goals.
They are identical only in the same way cyanide, H2O, wood, and feces are all composed of atoms - I can only assume, barring some flaw in your logic, your reaction to ingesting these is the same and suggest you do so.
Oh, *obviously*. Objections to the concept of Billions Dollars in corporate assets that are putatively owned by the stockholders being thrown towards any political objective the CEO chooses (Including of course fighting against the legal rights of the stockholders to control the messages their money is backing) is, of course, *exactly* like my, rather than simply debating someone I disagree with in a public stadium, using the government to suppress their free speech completely.
other than the fact that the Corporation can afford to buy every seat in the stadium, and owns the newspaper, television station, and the mortgage on your house.
Neat theory. Except attempts to legally enforce the rights of the stockholder to exert control over the corporation he or she putatively owns have been fought tooth and nail by the very corporations they own, with the battles payed for by the profits of those very stockholders.
If the corporations interest were solely aligned with it's stockholders, this would not and indeed *could* not be the case.
You would bet. That is to say, you have no actual evidence to support your conclusion, but are willing to assume you're right without it.
Because of course, no one would want to preserve a cultural icon if there weren't immediate financial gain involved.
Why do people go to the trouble of being 'pagan' just to cleave to the most right wing Any Rand economic masturbation. Oh Yeah "See how kewl I is - I'm bein' a counter-intuitive freethinker!"
I went through a lot of hunting - For the price the Vizio 55 (VF-something) inch at Costco for $1350 is the best we found - lacks some features of the higher end models, but not very darn many.
Paid $200 for the stand though - old farm house, was not *about* to trust a wall mount. But it *is* purty, and definitely made my consumer reports subscription worth it.
Hmm - Actually I have, and, ah, no I wouldn't say the same.
There is a game experience that depends on graphical immersion. Between them X-box and the PS-3 (and the PC of course) have that market cornered.
They have however ignored, yknow, every game genre that *doesn't* require graphical immersion.Afterall, wtf would you play Tetris on a PS3 for.
Except -it turns out some of us like a quick game of Tetris. On my 55" HDTV even. for $5.
When I want a heavy duty game, I go to my PC anyway. But for light, fun games, basic internet/news access, all the general light games you can enjoy with family?
"The system works" if your system presumes level-headed competent trustworthy people want to work at stuffy places filled with politics.
In my experience though, barring massive recessions, they do not stay at those places. Sure, you can keep people there (Well, you can keep *some* of them there) when there's 10% unemployment. Great - for two years out of the last 75, you have low turnover due to fear.
The rest of the time you have managers making excuses about "(s)he was never a good fit for the Team", "They had other priorities", etcetera.
Everybody works hard - Exactly the preceding posters point.
The OP seems to be operating under the assumption that, y'know, "Only *I* am working hard! All my co-workers are reading Slashdot and producing lousy code!".
Well it's possible that he's the only good programmer with a strong work ethic hired by a lousy company that is miraculously making a profit in this economy.
Or it's possible he's a young programmer that doesn't recognize the difference between the theory of college and the practice of the real world, gives attitude to his co-workers for what he perceives as their shortcomings, and gets stuck on the short end of the stick because he's an uptight prick that, when the topic of overtime comes up among the management the thought is "He's got all this extra energy, let *him* do it".
I've seen badly managed companies make profits during recession. It's feasible. It's probably that one. Sure.
A) I run a fairly decent machine, not sota, but fairly spiffy, and it was neither pretty, nor fast. I could handle either or, but ugly *and* slow? B) there was no depth to it (when I was there at least). There were some museums online that were neat, some other stuff, but it was most faux-sex(y) and rpg games that weren't quite on par with the more consistent feel of even a reasonably well run mudlike (But with bad graphics!). C) The rules were entirely by fiat either by Linden or by the local landowner. Soooo - if you don't own a space you are a serf at the whim of the local lord. To be fair, some of those people at least got their nigh-absolute power in their domain by being talented people that came in early on, but as near as I can tell most of them simply had money to lease land and setup shop. Being a traveler with no real goals, home ground, or inherent worth is more like the setup for a Kafka novel, not a game I want to play. I'm not without any talent, time, or money, but not so much so that I want to invest either in a system like Second Life, just to be moderately less obviously under someone else's rules.
Just some thoughts. For me at least, it just didn't work - Pug
For all the crying about Monty's disingenuousness, Wikipedia shows the main license is still GPL, with a proprietary license available but not the only license. Presuming this is accurate (And I concede, I don't know exactly why anyone would pay a giga-buck for a GPL'd application given the inherent limitations on monetizing it in any way anyone else with access to the source could. I also don't entirely understand why one would buy a proprietary license for a GPL product? So finding out I misunderstand the situation would hardly be a shock.), um - so what. Phoenix the name, keep the code, fork the project - Oracle seems to be buying the mark, the code is open.
So, uh, who cares. The GPL is a valid license, in order to actually grab the code itself Oracle would have to file a lawsuit and retroactively 'un-GPL' it, and given the (intermittently tested, but consistent) record of the GPL as a perfectly valid license, I don't see that happening.
So . . . What am I missing that this sale is a major issue from the open-source pov?
You - ah - obviously don't know the definition of Straw Man argument.
"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]"
Claiming that if we don't do something about climate change, we'll have to deal with the consequences of not having done something about climate change, isn't a Straw Man Argument, and honestly, you're trying to present it as one isn't even sufficiently close to "Superficially Similar Proposition" to qualify for Irony Points.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've used all three, and I don't have to admit any lack of polish in Ubuntu. Even three years ago you would have had a point, but today?
No. There are specific areas where one or the other is more polished, and it's possible that objectively scoring each aspect of the interface would have Ubuntu in third place - but not a certainty by any means, and certainly not by much. I will concede, I would fight for said scoring to include the ease of use of the CLI, but even excluding that, Ubuntu stacks up well.
Pug
Given enough time evolution beats even the most intelligent design.
Pug
I've got to disagree. If they can prove that Google is tweaking it's algorithm with intent to screw its competitors, then they actually have a valid anti-competitive practice complaint.
That said - properly ranking sites is an incredibly subjective judgment, indeed Google's great innovation is that they came up with an algorithm that far more closely matches an objective judgment with the average of our collective subjective judgment than anyone else has managed.
I think it would be a bad idea for Google to move away from this in order to annoy their competition - I suspect they're inclined enough to have proven mathematically what I suspect intuitively, that the opportunity cost exceeds any possible gain, but to be fair it would be awfully hard to *prove* they did so.
(And that *is* my big fear about Google. I don't actually expect them to make this bad judgment call to try and manipulate public opinion via their rankings - but if they do the short term harm in lost productivity and bad information before it's caught could be tremendous.)
I expect better, because I think they've thought this through, consciously, and weighed the possibilities. But then my ex-roommate called me "the most ethical sociopath I've ever met" because that's what I base my ethics in. I can nonetheless makes mistakes, therefore Google can too.
Pug
Neat theory.
Has nothing to do with the argument he made of course, anymore than my snarkily calling you "Bill" in my reply -
There are practices that every company is allowed to do normally to crush competition, buying out rivals, trying to lockout competitors, that are not allowed once they are actually in a position that sheer market volume in fact allows their success at doing so to be a foregone conclusion. The 800 pound gorilla is in fact *not* allowed to sit wherever he wants.
None of these practices are what Google is being accused of here. No attempt to lock out other competitors, no accusation of buying up rivals. They are being explicitly accused of . . . having better results.
Well, yeah. They got into this game with an advanced algorithm when everyone else was crap, were allowed to consolidate their hold on the market for ages with no real competition, and are benefiting thereby - unless someone else gets into the game with something snazzier that overcomes that lead, the bottom drops out of the search/advertising market, or the CEO's are caught in a sex scandal involving lower primates *and* Google simultaneously suppresses that info from their search results, they're going to hold that position.
That's not a valid monopoly complaint. *Other* than skewing search results deliberately (And, I sincerely hope, destroying their cred thereby), they're actually not well positioned to abuse monopoly power. They can't really prevent someone else from competing in the market. They can't really 'lock you in' to Google - heck, I'm more locked into *Gmail* than I am Google itself, and even that doesn't force me to use Google.
To that extent, as much power as they have (And I find it imposing myself), their market position is intrinsically weaker than Microsoft - they don't own the platform itself, I can leave anytime I want.
Having the advantage of being the biggest is not actually a legal problem. Using that advantage to, say, destroy java and netscape actually is.
Pug
A notation appended to my Evil Overlord list now -
"I will never say 'Make this happen or die.' I will say 'Whatcha Got?' "
Pug
In fact, I've wired some extra money to that Swiss Bank account you don't know your wife knows about, just to help!!
Pug
NO!
Plagiarism is about cultural memory, and attempting to substitute a false memory for a true one. It is Deceit.
I have no objections to creating new work based on old work, but don't lie to me and try to pretend there was no old work.
Pug
Bingo.
I would be perfectly happy if everything else about copyright was dropped to something sane (15 years again, whatever) and the attribution right was made mandatory for the next ten million years. It's fine to build on work, but give the proper credit.
Pug
Not according to the 11th Circuit court.
Feh - I'm no mathematician by any stretch, but I scored 730 in Math. RPN is just entirely counter-intuitive - algebraic notation simply is better at helping (Me at least) formulate the problem.
RPN? - stick verbs at the end of sentence I can, but stupid people that do that look. Elitist kiss-asses they are.
Pug
Heh - I got screwed out of unemployment for walking out of a retail store I worked for with a VCR cleaner I could produce the receipt for. No evidence of drawer being short or anything like that, no policy violated.
Fought for the unemployment in administrative court, Judge (Indiana, of course.) upheld the company line that I had been fired based on 'the appearance of dishonesty'.
Would have been worse - that was the job that taught me "I've been fired . . . oh thank you God, I've been fired!" was a perfectly rational sentence - {G}.
But my point is still that don't assume simply documenting stuff will be of any use. In Indiana at least, you can be fired (And have your unemployment revoked) for walking out of the store you worked for with items you bought in plain sight, in complete compliance with company policy.
Pug
Really?
On what basis do you think Corporations are identical to Unions, political parties, or individuals? Not a single one of these four things is organized in a similar way, has the law applied in a similar way, or has the same goals.
They are identical only in the same way cyanide, H2O, wood, and feces are all composed of atoms - I can only assume, barring some flaw in your logic, your reaction to ingesting these is the same and suggest you do so.
Pug
Oh, *obviously*. Objections to the concept of Billions Dollars in corporate assets that are putatively owned by the stockholders being thrown towards any political objective the CEO chooses (Including of course fighting against the legal rights of the stockholders to control the messages their money is backing) is, of course, *exactly* like my, rather than simply debating someone I disagree with in a public stadium, using the government to suppress their free speech completely.
other than the fact that the Corporation can afford to buy every seat in the stadium, and owns the newspaper, television station, and the mortgage on your house.
Yeah. Obviously identical.
Pug
Neat theory. Except attempts to legally enforce the rights of the stockholder to exert control over the corporation he or she putatively owns have been fought tooth and nail by the very corporations they own, with the battles payed for by the profits of those very stockholders.
If the corporations interest were solely aligned with it's stockholders, this would not and indeed *could* not be the case.
Pug
You would bet. That is to say, you have no actual evidence to support your conclusion, but are willing to assume you're right without it.
Because of course, no one would want to preserve a cultural icon if there weren't immediate financial gain involved.
Why do people go to the trouble of being 'pagan' just to cleave to the most right wing Any Rand economic masturbation. Oh Yeah "See how kewl I is - I'm bein' a counter-intuitive freethinker!"
Pug
I went through a lot of hunting - For the price the Vizio 55 (VF-something) inch at Costco for $1350 is the best we found - lacks some features of the higher end models, but not very darn many.
Paid $200 for the stand though - old farm house, was not *about* to trust a wall mount. But it *is* purty, and definitely made my consumer reports subscription worth it.
YMMV.
Pug
Now there's a thought.
WiiHack!!!!!
Hmm - Actually I have, and, ah, no I wouldn't say the same.
There is a game experience that depends on graphical immersion. Between them X-box and the PS-3 (and the PC of course) have that market cornered.
They have however ignored, yknow, every game genre that *doesn't* require graphical immersion.Afterall, wtf would you play Tetris on a PS3 for.
Except -it turns out some of us like a quick game of Tetris. On my 55" HDTV even. for $5.
When I want a heavy duty game, I go to my PC anyway. But for light, fun games, basic internet/news access, all the general light games you can enjoy with family?
Wii rocks man.
"The system works" if your system presumes level-headed competent trustworthy people want to work at stuffy places filled with politics.
In my experience though, barring massive recessions, they do not stay at those places. Sure, you can keep people there (Well, you can keep *some* of them there) when there's 10% unemployment. Great - for two years out of the last 75, you have low turnover due to fear.
The rest of the time you have managers making excuses about "(s)he was never a good fit for the Team", "They had other priorities", etcetera.
Pug
I'm sorry, your report has been closed; Item only reported once, unable to duplicate.
Everybody works hard - Exactly the preceding posters point.
The OP seems to be operating under the assumption that, y'know, "Only *I* am working hard! All my co-workers are reading Slashdot and producing lousy code!".
Well it's possible that he's the only good programmer with a strong work ethic hired by a lousy company that is miraculously making a profit in this economy.
Or it's possible he's a young programmer that doesn't recognize the difference between the theory of college and the practice of the real world, gives attitude to his co-workers for what he perceives as their shortcomings, and gets stuck on the short end of the stick because he's an uptight prick that, when the topic of overtime comes up among the management the thought is "He's got all this extra energy, let *him* do it".
I've seen badly managed companies make profits during recession. It's feasible. It's probably that one. Sure.
Pug
It's interesting, but
A) I run a fairly decent machine, not sota, but fairly spiffy, and it was neither pretty, nor fast. I could handle either or, but ugly *and* slow?
B) there was no depth to it (when I was there at least). There were some museums online that were neat, some other stuff, but it was most faux-sex(y) and rpg games that weren't quite on par with the more consistent feel of even a reasonably well run mudlike (But with bad graphics!).
C) The rules were entirely by fiat either by Linden or by the local landowner. Soooo - if you don't own a space you are a serf at the whim of the local lord. To be fair, some of those people at least got their nigh-absolute power in their domain by being talented people that came in early on, but as near as I can tell most of them simply had money to lease land and setup shop. Being a traveler with no real goals, home ground, or inherent worth is more like the setup for a Kafka novel, not a game I want to play. I'm not without any talent, time, or money, but not so much so that I want to invest either in a system like Second Life, just to be moderately less obviously under someone else's rules.
Just some thoughts. For me at least, it just didn't work - Pug
For all the crying about Monty's disingenuousness, Wikipedia shows the main license is still GPL, with a proprietary license available but not the only license. Presuming this is accurate (And I concede, I don't know exactly why anyone would pay a giga-buck for a GPL'd application given the inherent limitations on monetizing it in any way anyone else with access to the source could. I also don't entirely understand why one would buy a proprietary license for a GPL product? So finding out I misunderstand the situation would hardly be a shock.), um - so what. Phoenix the name, keep the code, fork the project - Oracle seems to be buying the mark, the code is open.
So, uh, who cares. The GPL is a valid license, in order to actually grab the code itself Oracle would have to file a lawsuit and retroactively 'un-GPL' it, and given the (intermittently tested, but consistent) record of the GPL as a perfectly valid license, I don't see that happening.
So . . . What am I missing that this sale is a major issue from the open-source pov?
Pug
I've never seen a company that insisted on interchangeable uniforms that didn't consider the people interchangeable parts.
Pug
You - ah - obviously don't know the definition of Straw Man argument.
"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]"
Claiming that if we don't do something about climate change, we'll have to deal with the consequences of not having done something about climate change, isn't a Straw Man Argument, and honestly, you're trying to present it as one isn't even sufficiently close to "Superficially Similar Proposition" to qualify for Irony Points.
(Insightful? Really? On what planet?)
Pug