OK, well, that answers my last question at least, so thanks for that. I was under the impression that you would have to maintain Debian vs. Red Hat vs. whatever else, if that's not the case then that's a good thing. How many drivers does the kernel include in all distros?
I don't know where you got that conclusion from, all I was talking about was driver support. If you want to get into application compatibility and gaming we can get into that also.
Here's a question: why do people pirate Windows? If you're downloading an OS you can be considered a "power user", right? So why do power users choose to download an illegal copy of Windows when Linux is freely available? When price is not an issue, why do people still choose Windows?
Here's another question: considering the fact that we have cars like the Honda Civic around, why do people buy from BMW and Mercedes? Why don't they just buy the cheapest? Isn't price the most important thing? A lot of Linux users seem to think so.
Fun experiment: replace your parent's/grandparent's computer with a Linux netbook, give them no instructions (i.e. the same thing Joe would get), and tell them to "call with any questions".
You may figure out that users value application compatibility a lot more than $150.
I am noob and have found its easier then windows with less problems and lots of free and frendly support when tring new things. I and others are not going with this FUD anymore. 90% of the PC's in dept store where I live have to order windows they come in linux. and the window they offer if a copy for $12.00 US., but as most around here say its still to much to pay for viruses.
At least you get working keyboard drivers. Yours seem to have malfunctioned.
Do they complain when they pay 2k for an apple and it doesn't work with half the printers that you pick up from wallmart?
Yes, they do.
Or when the printer that was working perfectly fine under 98,2k,XP doesn't work anymore with their shiny new computer?
Yes, they complain then too.
Whos fault is that?
I'm glad you asked. The blame is shared by the software and hardware vendors for not working together to ensure that their products work.
I bet you don't blame Microsoft do you?
If they wrote the OS, yes, they share part of the blame for not working towards a solution.
I bet you don't say it's MICROSOFTS FAULT that there's no drivers for Vista for that printer!
Now I'm starting to think you're a compulsive gambler.
How is it even possible to do that what you demand anyway?
I know it's difficult to understand, but vendors typically attempt to "communicate" with one other, in order to "work together" towards a "solution" that both parties benefit from. This is commonly done using a "phone", or through "email", or even by scheduling a "meeting".
If I make a printer and sell it and make a new secret communication protocol for it and only ship a windows driver how is it possible for that to "just work" in ANYTHING?
I think you're limiting yourself if you're deciding to make your communication protocol secret, and if you only ship a Windows driver, but I guess it's your decision as a vendor. If this is something you're concerned about, if you feel that you aren't reaching as much of the market as you should, perhaps you should reach out to other vendors.
It's not a failing of the OS world
No? If that's true, then answer these questions:
If I'm a hardware manufacturer, and I've got a few software engineers working on implementing my products and the drivers to run them, and I'm interested in getting a version developed for Linux.. well, who do I call? Where do I send that email requesting a partnership and support for my development efforts? Who do I schedule a meeting with? How do I know I'm going to get real support and cooperation instead of a bunch of people arguing about which text editor is the best? And how many different drivers am I going to need to develop to "support Linux"?
Windows on the other hand wants me to go searching around on the internet, search through dodgy spyware ridden drivers sites
My friend, I believe you're doing it wrong. If you're trying to promote Linux, don't start by bashing driver support in Windows. It's not going to help your argument. Name a modern product that works with Windows and I'll point you to a location to download the driver from the manufacturer. It's really not difficult to find, and if you're going to claim otherwise then you're not helping your overall credibility at all.
If the result or output of a software program is to be used as evidence in court, then the code of that program needs to be made available to the court for analysis.
In 20 years it's going to be a no-brainer that if you're using the output of an algorithm as legal evidence then the algorithm should be up for scrutiny, so I'm not sure why people have difficulty understanding that now (especially as it relates to things like voting machines and breathalyzers).
However, I think that Ubuntu's a bit too young to call it a 'flop.'
Who's calling it a "flop?" The reason for quoting a word is because you're indicating that someone else said it. It's a disappointment, not a flop. It may still do great things, but before and just immediately after it was released, to hear a user talking about it you would have thought it was God's own OS.
The complaint refers to 3D Realms as part of Apogee Software, Ltd., not to be confused with Apogee Software, LLC, the publisher behind the still-forthcoming Duke Nukem Trilogy.
Yeah, that's not confusing at all. Who would confuse Apogee Software Limited, responsible for the development of Duke Nukem Forever, with Apogee Software Limited Liability Corp, publisher of the Duke Nuken Trilogy? Clearly they have nothing in common.
If their current work ends up being their last work, do I get a refund?
Would you ask for one? If your favorite artist retired, would you ask for a refund for your last purchase? You know, I really like you a lot, I've followed you for years, but I just don't want you to keep my $10 if you're not going to produce anything else. I don't really care about your well-being that much. Thanks for the memories.
How do I know I'm not just wasting money on a copy that I could've gotten elsewhere for free?
Shit man, I don't know, because you want to actually support the artist instead of just yelling about how much of their work you should be allowed to get for free?
I disagree. People obviously value the literary efforts of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling, biographers, scientists, Don Knuth, and other authors. Why wouldn't those same people be willing to contribute to their future works?
Why would they? There's not a single piece of evidence to suggest they would. Throughout history, only the rich have commissioned artists and writers to create works. No scientific or non-biographical historic book has ever been written because any group of people got together to pay the author to write it. Authors, publishers, editors, printers, etc all create books because of the expectation of sales, it's the only reason a book gets created unless the author just really has something they want to say.
You hear that, Peter Wayner? Mr2001 has come up with the solution to your problem. You should stop working with publishers and instead lobby teachers and the government for work-for-hire jobs. There you have it, good luck.
But if the book I want hasn't been written yet, I don't have the option of getting a free copy illegally. I'll find something else to use instead
People don't pay to have cultural works created. They just don't. They never have. If that's what becomes required, I don't think it looks good for the future of culture.
I know if my favorite author (or musician, or filmmaker, etc.) came to me and said "I need a few bucks or my next work is never going to be made", I wouldn't hesitate.
Right... sort of like.. I don't know, maybe giving them a few bucks for their *current* work, to allow them to create the next one. Sort of makes the whole distributed payment thing easier. But people don't seem to be very willing to do this.. surely they'll be fine with pre-paying for it though, because that's entirely different.
Easy enough: textbook authors can earn a living by charging directly for their labor. Don't write another book until someone (or a group of someones) agrees to pay a fair price for the time you spend writing it. If everyone does this, then anyone who wants a new book will have no choice but to pay someone to write it.
That's almost exactly what we have now. The only difference is that you're suggesting that authors get paid before they write the books instead of after. They're still charging for their books. Even so, many authors get money up front from the publisher as an advance, and then they get residuals on sales. The only thing you're suggesting is that the advance is more and they elminate residuals. What about the money for the publisher? They aren't going to publish the books for free, are they getting tax handouts also? I'm all for using public funds to better education, but assuming that the only way for educational authors to get compensated is through public funds is not a workable system, there isn't enough money allocated towards education in this country to pay all authors and publishers for their work. Not to mention the idea that the government gets to say which books get funding and which don't. I still don't agree with you, you're just rearranging the deck chairs.
As for the assumption that private individuals will pay authors to write a book.. well, that's precisely the problem that we're dealing with now, isn't it? It's apparent that private individuals are unwilling to pay authors for their work.
And your "solution" doesn't even apply to non-educational authors, entertainment, history, etc, who are also affected by book piracy. Even though Dan Brown or the lady who writes Harry Potter might sell millions of copies, no one is going to get a fund together to pay them to write a new entertainment book. No one is going to pay an author to write a biography on a historical figure. No one is going to pay a scientist to write a book explaining his new theory, say about evolution, or the laws governing heavenly bodies, or a new system of math. No one is going to pay Donald Knuth to write a book about algorithms. Where would this society be if all books were works-for-hire?
Surely there's a better way to phrase that so as not to sound pompous...
reducing ignorance is a justified use of taxation
So are you suggesting that authors be compensated with taxpayer money to produce educational materials? What about companies whose only business is producing educational materials? I work for one of them. Are we to become taxpayer-funded all of a sudden?
If there's no financial motivation to write an educational book, who is going to do it? Are the best and brightest minds going to take time off from their paid jobs to write a book that isn't going to produce any income? People still need to feed themselves and their families. If good books don't make decent money for their authors, then what's going to happen is that the only people writing books are going to be the people who don't have other employment and need whatever money they can get, which obviously aren't going to be the best and brightest minds.
Most of the apps I seen really don't have that much Javascript when you compare it to the amount of code that is in your typical desktop app or server side application. And ultimately many of the functions are small.
That's true, people aren't taking full advantage of what Javascript can do at this point.
What I've noticed is instead their is a difference in the rendering engine itself. Javascript might be a single line to change the CSS of an element or change the visibility attribute, but then the browser takes forever to collapse the item.
That's also true. I'm using a Javascript framework called ExtJS to develop a relatively large application. It's got about 750KB of minified Javascript code (not including Ext), about 550KB of backend PHP code, and about 5KB of HTML markup. All browsers load some of the screens quickly, even with IE there's not a significant delay to display much of the application. The delays I see with IE come mostly in two places - grids and trees. If I have an Ext grid that has 10 columns and 30 rows, where the grid is able to be sorted, filtered, show/hide columns, drag and drop rows, etc, Chrome or Opera will get the records from the server and update the grid pretty quickly, a matter of 1 to 2 seconds where the browser has frozen waiting for the UI to update. IE can take a good 10 seconds to do the same thing, it gets the JSON data from the server and I can see the little progress indicator freeze as soon as the data comes back and it starts the UI update, that indicator is frozen for 10 or so seconds before it updates the UI. The same thing with trees, if it loads a tree that has 100 parent nodes each with several child nodes, IE will sit and chew on that for a while before it updates the UI. Again, Opera and Chrome are much more responsive. Firefox also performs better than IE, but I'm sure Firefox is hampered a little because I'm using Firebug, I haven't done much testing of the application using Firefox without Firebug enabled.
The demos for Ext are here if you want to see for yourself, although most of the demos are made to be lightweight and fast on all, they don't stress the browser much. The web desktop might be one of the better performance tests.
If more than one browser scores the same, like 100%, then the difference between them is speed. Since the score is capped at 100%, the only other thing to measure is how fast it finishes.
Since he said "Fortune 15", I assume that means they aren't in the top 10 (or he would have said that). Which would narrow it down to these 5:
11 Bank of America Corp.
12 Citigroup
13 Berkshire Hathaway
14 International Business Machines
15 McKesson
While I *could* imagine IBM trying something like this, I think it's much more likely that he's working for one of the fine financial institutions who keep showing up in the news as "needing" some ungodly amount of money that no one can even comprehend. I *need* food, and I need water, and shelter. I find it hard to believe that B of A *needs* 34 billion dollars. I guess this is starting to get off-topic though..
Slashdot Mirror
OK, well, that answers my last question at least, so thanks for that. I was under the impression that you would have to maintain Debian vs. Red Hat vs. whatever else, if that's not the case then that's a good thing. How many drivers does the kernel include in all distros?
I don't know where you got that conclusion from, all I was talking about was driver support. If you want to get into application compatibility and gaming we can get into that also.
Here's a question: why do people pirate Windows? If you're downloading an OS you can be considered a "power user", right? So why do power users choose to download an illegal copy of Windows when Linux is freely available? When price is not an issue, why do people still choose Windows?
Here's another question: considering the fact that we have cars like the Honda Civic around, why do people buy from BMW and Mercedes? Why don't they just buy the cheapest? Isn't price the most important thing? A lot of Linux users seem to think so.
Fun experiment: replace your parent's/grandparent's computer with a Linux netbook, give them no instructions (i.e. the same thing Joe would get), and tell them to "call with any questions".
You may figure out that users value application compatibility a lot more than $150.
I am noob and have found its easier then windows with less problems and lots of free and frendly support when tring new things. I and others are not going with this FUD anymore. 90% of the PC's in dept store where I live have to order windows they come in linux. and the window they offer if a copy for $12.00 US., but as most around here say its still to much to pay for viruses.
At least you get working keyboard drivers. Yours seem to have malfunctioned.
Do they complain when they pay 2k for an apple and it doesn't work with half the printers that you pick up from wallmart?
Yes, they do.
Or when the printer that was working perfectly fine under 98,2k,XP doesn't work anymore with their shiny new computer?
Yes, they complain then too.
Whos fault is that?
I'm glad you asked. The blame is shared by the software and hardware vendors for not working together to ensure that their products work.
I bet you don't blame Microsoft do you?
If they wrote the OS, yes, they share part of the blame for not working towards a solution.
I bet you don't say it's MICROSOFTS FAULT that there's no drivers for Vista for that printer!
Now I'm starting to think you're a compulsive gambler.
How is it even possible to do that what you demand anyway?
I know it's difficult to understand, but vendors typically attempt to "communicate" with one other, in order to "work together" towards a "solution" that both parties benefit from. This is commonly done using a "phone", or through "email", or even by scheduling a "meeting".
If I make a printer and sell it and make a new secret communication protocol for it and only ship a windows driver how is it possible for that to "just work" in ANYTHING?
I think you're limiting yourself if you're deciding to make your communication protocol secret, and if you only ship a Windows driver, but I guess it's your decision as a vendor. If this is something you're concerned about, if you feel that you aren't reaching as much of the market as you should, perhaps you should reach out to other vendors.
It's not a failing of the OS world
No? If that's true, then answer these questions:
If I'm a hardware manufacturer, and I've got a few software engineers working on implementing my products and the drivers to run them, and I'm interested in getting a version developed for Linux.. well, who do I call? Where do I send that email requesting a partnership and support for my development efforts? Who do I schedule a meeting with? How do I know I'm going to get real support and cooperation instead of a bunch of people arguing about which text editor is the best? And how many different drivers am I going to need to develop to "support Linux"?
Windows on the other hand wants me to go searching around on the internet, search through dodgy spyware ridden drivers sites
My friend, I believe you're doing it wrong. If you're trying to promote Linux, don't start by bashing driver support in Windows. It's not going to help your argument. Name a modern product that works with Windows and I'll point you to a location to download the driver from the manufacturer. It's really not difficult to find, and if you're going to claim otherwise then you're not helping your overall credibility at all.
If the result or output of a software program is to be used as evidence in court, then the code of that program needs to be made available to the court for analysis.
In 20 years it's going to be a no-brainer that if you're using the output of an algorithm as legal evidence then the algorithm should be up for scrutiny, so I'm not sure why people have difficulty understanding that now (especially as it relates to things like voting machines and breathalyzers).
Hahaha, Gary!
It's not obscure and not elitist, it's just not American.
I'm... I'm confused.
But did anyone promise that ubuntu would kill off MS or something?
Furiously searching for a way to find Slashdot articles in Sep/Oct '04..
However, I think that Ubuntu's a bit too young to call it a 'flop.'
Who's calling it a "flop?" The reason for quoting a word is because you're indicating that someone else said it. It's a disappointment, not a flop. It may still do great things, but before and just immediately after it was released, to hear a user talking about it you would have thought it was God's own OS.
And that's almost twenty years old - it still works wonderfully,though.
It still works well because it was made 20 years, not despite it. That was before they added the warranty countdown clock to products.
Cmon mods, if there's ever been a candidate for a +5 troll, this is it. Work together!
The complaint refers to 3D Realms as part of Apogee Software, Ltd., not to be confused with Apogee Software, LLC, the publisher behind the still-forthcoming Duke Nukem Trilogy.
Yeah, that's not confusing at all. Who would confuse Apogee Software Limited, responsible for the development of Duke Nukem Forever, with Apogee Software Limited Liability Corp, publisher of the Duke Nuken Trilogy? Clearly they have nothing in common.
If their current work ends up being their last work, do I get a refund?
Would you ask for one? If your favorite artist retired, would you ask for a refund for your last purchase? You know, I really like you a lot, I've followed you for years, but I just don't want you to keep my $10 if you're not going to produce anything else. I don't really care about your well-being that much. Thanks for the memories.
How do I know I'm not just wasting money on a copy that I could've gotten elsewhere for free?
Shit man, I don't know, because you want to actually support the artist instead of just yelling about how much of their work you should be allowed to get for free?
I disagree. People obviously value the literary efforts of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling, biographers, scientists, Don Knuth, and other authors. Why wouldn't those same people be willing to contribute to their future works?
Why would they? There's not a single piece of evidence to suggest they would. Throughout history, only the rich have commissioned artists and writers to create works. No scientific or non-biographical historic book has ever been written because any group of people got together to pay the author to write it. Authors, publishers, editors, printers, etc all create books because of the expectation of sales, it's the only reason a book gets created unless the author just really has something they want to say.
You hear that, Peter Wayner? Mr2001 has come up with the solution to your problem. You should stop working with publishers and instead lobby teachers and the government for work-for-hire jobs. There you have it, good luck.
But if the book I want hasn't been written yet, I don't have the option of getting a free copy illegally. I'll find something else to use instead
People don't pay to have cultural works created. They just don't. They never have. If that's what becomes required, I don't think it looks good for the future of culture.
I know if my favorite author (or musician, or filmmaker, etc.) came to me and said "I need a few bucks or my next work is never going to be made", I wouldn't hesitate.
Right... sort of like.. I don't know, maybe giving them a few bucks for their *current* work, to allow them to create the next one. Sort of makes the whole distributed payment thing easier. But people don't seem to be very willing to do this.. surely they'll be fine with pre-paying for it though, because that's entirely different.
Easy enough: textbook authors can earn a living by charging directly for their labor. Don't write another book until someone (or a group of someones) agrees to pay a fair price for the time you spend writing it. If everyone does this, then anyone who wants a new book will have no choice but to pay someone to write it.
That's almost exactly what we have now. The only difference is that you're suggesting that authors get paid before they write the books instead of after. They're still charging for their books. Even so, many authors get money up front from the publisher as an advance, and then they get residuals on sales. The only thing you're suggesting is that the advance is more and they elminate residuals. What about the money for the publisher? They aren't going to publish the books for free, are they getting tax handouts also? I'm all for using public funds to better education, but assuming that the only way for educational authors to get compensated is through public funds is not a workable system, there isn't enough money allocated towards education in this country to pay all authors and publishers for their work. Not to mention the idea that the government gets to say which books get funding and which don't. I still don't agree with you, you're just rearranging the deck chairs.
As for the assumption that private individuals will pay authors to write a book.. well, that's precisely the problem that we're dealing with now, isn't it? It's apparent that private individuals are unwilling to pay authors for their work.
And your "solution" doesn't even apply to non-educational authors, entertainment, history, etc, who are also affected by book piracy. Even though Dan Brown or the lady who writes Harry Potter might sell millions of copies, no one is going to get a fund together to pay them to write a new entertainment book. No one is going to pay an author to write a biography on a historical figure. No one is going to pay a scientist to write a book explaining his new theory, say about evolution, or the laws governing heavenly bodies, or a new system of math. No one is going to pay Donald Knuth to write a book about algorithms. Where would this society be if all books were works-for-hire?
It's a fallacy to assume that the only way for authors to earn a living is to charge for copies of works they've already written.
I'll agree with you if you can provide a single example of a way for a textbook author to earn a living on his writing without selling his textbooks.
As in the case of all negative externalities
Surely there's a better way to phrase that so as not to sound pompous...
reducing ignorance is a justified use of taxation
So are you suggesting that authors be compensated with taxpayer money to produce educational materials? What about companies whose only business is producing educational materials? I work for one of them. Are we to become taxpayer-funded all of a sudden?
Your decline in sales is most likely due to students re-selling your used textbooks.
That implies that people only started reselling the books recently and haven't been doing it all along. That sounds unlikely.
If there's no financial motivation to write an educational book, who is going to do it? Are the best and brightest minds going to take time off from their paid jobs to write a book that isn't going to produce any income? People still need to feed themselves and their families. If good books don't make decent money for their authors, then what's going to happen is that the only people writing books are going to be the people who don't have other employment and need whatever money they can get, which obviously aren't going to be the best and brightest minds.
Most of the apps I seen really don't have that much Javascript when you compare it to the amount of code that is in your typical desktop app or server side application. And ultimately many of the functions are small.
That's true, people aren't taking full advantage of what Javascript can do at this point.
What I've noticed is instead their is a difference in the rendering engine itself. Javascript might be a single line to change the CSS of an element or change the visibility attribute, but then the browser takes forever to collapse the item.
That's also true. I'm using a Javascript framework called ExtJS to develop a relatively large application. It's got about 750KB of minified Javascript code (not including Ext), about 550KB of backend PHP code, and about 5KB of HTML markup. All browsers load some of the screens quickly, even with IE there's not a significant delay to display much of the application. The delays I see with IE come mostly in two places - grids and trees. If I have an Ext grid that has 10 columns and 30 rows, where the grid is able to be sorted, filtered, show/hide columns, drag and drop rows, etc, Chrome or Opera will get the records from the server and update the grid pretty quickly, a matter of 1 to 2 seconds where the browser has frozen waiting for the UI to update. IE can take a good 10 seconds to do the same thing, it gets the JSON data from the server and I can see the little progress indicator freeze as soon as the data comes back and it starts the UI update, that indicator is frozen for 10 or so seconds before it updates the UI. The same thing with trees, if it loads a tree that has 100 parent nodes each with several child nodes, IE will sit and chew on that for a while before it updates the UI. Again, Opera and Chrome are much more responsive. Firefox also performs better than IE, but I'm sure Firefox is hampered a little because I'm using Firebug, I haven't done much testing of the application using Firefox without Firebug enabled.
The demos for Ext are here if you want to see for yourself, although most of the demos are made to be lightweight and fast on all, they don't stress the browser much. The web desktop might be one of the better performance tests.
http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/
If more than one browser scores the same, like 100%, then the difference between them is speed. Since the score is capped at 100%, the only other thing to measure is how fast it finishes.
Not to mention any other unpredictable side-effects, which, when talking about introduced species, are /ALWAYS BAD/.
Seriously. Now when I go to Texas I get to worry about flys launching eggs into my eyes and ears. As if the fire ants aren't enough.
Since he said "Fortune 15", I assume that means they aren't in the top 10 (or he would have said that). Which would narrow it down to these 5:
11 Bank of America Corp.
12 Citigroup
13 Berkshire Hathaway
14 International Business Machines
15 McKesson
While I *could* imagine IBM trying something like this, I think it's much more likely that he's working for one of the fine financial institutions who keep showing up in the news as "needing" some ungodly amount of money that no one can even comprehend. I *need* food, and I need water, and shelter. I find it hard to believe that B of A *needs* 34 billion dollars. I guess this is starting to get off-topic though..
I also apparently have problems with the "Post Anonymously" box.