I can just see it - telling you it doesn't have the right drivers for your heart and disabling your pulmonary functions.
You see, God's in a dilemma. The Heart was developed over many millions of years by God Himself, using his now-open Evolution Development System. But, due to Microsoft's dominance of the desktop leading to its dominance of the browsers and then to the servers, in this, the year 2012, Microsoft now has complete control over the Internet. So unless God was able to somehow convince 9 billion people to use His Almighty Internet Service, which is notably completely incompatible with Microsoft's Internet v3 and Body Management Services of Medicine PX, he must provide the interface to Heart version 3.14159265(and so on) to Microsoft. Unfortunately, as a side effect of licensing the interface to Microsoft, he's now unable to provide drivers to Linux, which since Microsoft's utter dominance of all things computers shortly after all vendors suddenly and miraculously started supporting Microsoft's Palladium System nee NGSCB, is run by about 3 people in Norway living in a cave and harnessing a beowulf cluster of hamsters to provide power. But, on the other hand, Microsoft promised not to provide a competing implementation of Heart! (Both a carrot and a stick, God mutters under His breath sometimes).
Too bad for God that Microsoft has now launched MS Deity, which has received very favourable press lately (despite not having nearly as many features as God Himself, but it ties in so well to the existing Microsoft hardware software and wetware, and besides, they'll get that in the next version, they promise), and of course will provide everything that God provides except Heart. Of course, to do this, they had to get inside information, but since they outright own many very pleasant places to live and work, and with a warchest now exceeding 432 trillion dollars, they easily afford to, uh, acquire many of God's most trusted workers and skip the millions of years of development (coincidentally, they also hired away all of God's workers in charge of Zotting the Unbelievers, who otherwise would help convert 9billion fat and happy-ish Microsoft users!). However, in 2015, according to an internal Microsoft email that, after being read, got lost, shredded, re-constructed, stamped three times with a big red stamp, and then lost again, Microsoft plans on also releasing Heart, since God's marketshare is expected to dwindle to the point of Him not being able to support a lawsuit against Microsoft.
You should try installing Unreal Tournament 2004. Pretty GUI install--even under Linux!
I ask myself again and again why vendors keep including these ancient installers for Linux, but have pretty, shiny installers for Windows. The stuff is there--InstallShield, for example. They should frelling use it. End rant.
Actually, I'd summarize it thusly: new ati hardware is alright (thanks to the drivers they provide). Older ati hardware is excellent (thanks to the information they provide).
Nvidia's hardware is generally excellent because their drivers seem to be very high-performance. Caveat is that they don't support the X devs nearly as well as ATI does, so you're much more stuck if they stop supporting you than if you were using ati.
That was actually precisely the reason I chose an ATI card despite its poorer performance (and support) under Linux. When the card gets Old Enough, ATI works with the X devs to ensure that they can get the information they need to write drivers.
..and they have built their software on good quality code.
The OP said nothing about code quality. It was all about protocols and compatiblity (if I read it correctly).
If your goal is simply to encourage the use of your code, then feel free to use the BSD License. It is absolutely a fantastic license if your goal is merely to make your code widely-used. If I were writing a reference implementation, I might consider the BSDL heavily if my goal is to encourage commercial adoption. OTOH, the LGPL would help ensure compatibility down the road, without forcing proprietary vendors to give up their own source code, so it seems to me to be the best of both worlds--free use and a much higher probability of compatibility [plus they still get to use "good quality code"]. It's unlikely that I'd license a referenced implementation of a protocol under the full GPL, unless I don't care about proprietary software companies adopting it.
My point, however, was that the BSD license does nothing to ensure protocol compatiblity. The quality of the code is at best tangential to that discussion.
Maybe if you say so, but how about a noteobok sans OS then?
The main reason I want Linux pre-installed (regardless of distro) is that I want to know that the hardware will work with Linux (and I don't want to have to pay the Microsoft Tax.
maybe they'll just require costumers who hose their system to backup any personal files and they'll just reimage it back as it was sold.
That'd be essentially what it's like with Windows now. And yes, I'd be happy with that.
Well yes, BSD did get some benefit from Windows using the FreeBSD TCP stack - it got an assurance that 95% of the computers in the world would have a functional TCP stack - not a small thing.
Actually, no. It assured that 95% of the computers in the world might have a compatible TCP stack. If MSFT made subsequent changes to the code and as a result made Windows TCP incompatible with standard TCP, BSD (and the world at large) is then incompatible with it.
The only assurance that "95% of the computers in the world would have a [compatible] TCP stack" would be if Microsoft adopted a GPLed TCP stack and released their source code as well. [LGPL may work, since changes to the *lib* would have to be released, but potentially one could write code to modify that outside the lib and one would then not have to release specs.].
In netto, all that the BSD license assures is that businesses can use the code as a stepping stone to get ahead faster. Whether or not they stay on that stepping stone is up to the business and the BSD license provides no assurances past that.
Now you'll very likely point out that MSFT would never [publically] use GPLed code, since they'd have to release the Windows source code [though they could conceivably use LGPLed code]. And you'd quite likely be right. But then they'd develop their own TCP-compatible stack on their own dime, not on yours. They'd make it as compatible or incompatible as they would like, just as they would if they used a BSD-licensed stack. The only difference between someone using a BSD-licensed stack and writing their own stack is that they can use the BSD-licensed code's developers to do the work for them--they can subsequently make the code as compatible or incompatible as they wish, no holds barred, no feedback to the rest of the world. Well, that, and they have to put the little bit of credits somewhere.
That about says it all. I'm pretty interested in them for their software and peripherals, but the lack of Linux notebooks is still quite disheartening.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seemed to be stating that MS bundling IE and WMP with Windows and keeping it impossible to have a drop-in replacement isn't a problem because you can simply choose not to use it. My counterpoint is that it's not that simple, that there is indeed another, very important facet of this problem beyond simply using IE or WMP directly.
Why is it that its OK for developers to use the MS VB runtime, MS C libraries, etc which cannot be replaced, but not a browser component?
A fair question. Actually, a large amount of work is going into replacing the MS VB runtime and MS C libraries, and these are trying to be a drop-in replacement for running Windows apps on Linux (see also, Wine and gb). Various vendors make a living providing alternate access to win32, though Microsoft has pretty well stomped on many of them so that they are also niches (e.g. high-performance libraries). I guess the main reason that people haven't complained nearly as much is that there wasn't a lawsuit that, say, Borland has really brought up against Microsoft. Or at least, most users weren't familiar with this aspect enough to get up in arms about it--many, many people used to use Netscape, far fewer people were developers using another Basic package.
As a developer, I'd much rather have common proprietary component I can count on being there instead of having nothing or having to install my own and hope no other app installs the same app but a different version as part of there setup thus breaking mine.
This is a false dichotomy. This isn't simply two-sided--that is, we need not have Microsoft Proprietary or Unknown Configuration. If the API were standardized and an integral part of Windows, but OEMs and end-users could replace, say, MSHTML with, say, NSHTML, 3rd parties could still count on MSHTML's API regardless of whether Microsoft or Mozilla or Joe User was providing the implementation. This situation would be exactly like what you have now in terms of a development target, except that there'd be actual competition in places there is currently none.
Doesn't really effect (sic) me as long as its there.
Actually, it does affect you. It just does not affect you directly. There is a difference. As an example, you may wish to try, say, Mozilla, but find that, due to Microsoft's browser monopoly, some sites that you need to use only work with IE. Millions of tiny ants can add up to quite a bit of weight (and sting)!
You're totally and utterly missing my point, chief.
Now if we agree this is needed, whats the big deal if it has its own GUI to run as stand-alone?
The objection isn't about a standalone GUI; it's about 3rd parties (and particularly the other Microsoft softwares including and especially the "OS") tying into a non-open API and file specification, and therefore I object to the fact that nobody but Microsoft can code a drop-in replacement.
Standalone GUI is entirely tangential to this particular piece here.
What would be wrong with MS pushing a media library that and also a seperate player?
That's effectively what they're doing. Problem is that they're the only people who can be Microsoft Windows Media or Microsoft Internet Explorer--nobody else has 100% of the APIs, so there can be no drop-in replacement, even if OEMs and others had a free hand to pick and choose amongst alternatives without pressure from Microsoft. Additionally, patent crap has a huge effect, as well as other laws, e.g. the DMCA (so that someone else can implement MS's DRM scheme and be 100% compliant).
Then what does your code using the API talk to?
Your code talks to an implementation of the API, as I stated. The API itself is either written down someplace (e.g. a standards document) or it's only known in source code (so you can write to the API if you can see the implementation).
An API is an Interface. A specification. No code is involved. The.dll,.ocx,.exe,.so,.bin,.whathaveyou is an implementation of some API.
What I dislike is that, by bundling their browser and media player, they are the only provider of the API, due to it not being open nor free (patent liabilities, anyone?). The API, while portions of it are publically available (note that this can provide a fantastic anti-competitve edge against competitors!), it's 100% under one corporation's power, not a group. That is before IP crap comes into play.
There are open standards and then there are open standards. From a cursory review, it doesn't look like the openness is very open (e.g. cross-licensing "IP" terms in the license). Additionally, how closely does Microsoft's implementation (and the 3rd-party vendors) follow the open specifications? Even if the specifications came with no strings attached, they're worthless if everyone relies on one implementor of the specification and the implementor does things not in the spec.
Don't smoke? Don't use the ciggy lighter in your car. Big deal.
Excellent analogy.
Probably a vast majority of the people driving cars (at least in the USA) probably don't smoke. So why does every car equipped still ship with several cigarette lighters?
The answer is that third-party products (e.g. cellphones, laptops, and other power adaptors) use the cigarette lighter interface for their powersource. So we need cigarette lighters in our cars for the 3rd-party products, even if we don't use them directly for their immediate purpose, i.e. smoking.
Any alternative power or cigarette-lighting interface will face a significant mountain to its business, due to the installbase of the classic Cigarette Lighting and Power Interface (CLPI).
So why don't I complain about the classic CLPI's monopoly? For one, it's a completely open standard. If you want to create a new power attachment to use it, you can with zero strings attached. Likewise, if you want to create a competing cigarette lighter implementing the classic CLPI, you're good to go, and nobody will whine or complain because of incompatibilities. Consequently (and also another reason for my lack of complaining), nobody really has a monopoly on a single cigarette lighter and nobody is leveraging it to gain access to new fields, which is patently untrue for its computer-world monopoly counterparts.
The very minor difference to the end-user make a gigantic world of difference to 3rd-party vendors.
It makes the whole difference between writing apps which use Microsoft Windows Component X because it's guaranteed installed and working on 90% of the desktops out there (and forget the remaining 10% of ye; we don't want yer business anyway), and writing to an open, universally-available format or API.
While you could use a gaming console to download music, why would you want to?
The simple answer is that Microsoft's not simply producing a gaming console. This is their portal into your living room (and gateway to further growth out of the stagnant PC industry, via their formats this time). Music is just the start--on-demand Windows Video and digital video recorder functionality, combined with their IPTV offerings will likely prove to be both carrot and stick starting more with the 360 and increasing with every new version/revision.
Additionally, with a 20 GB HD, an Xbox 360 would be a slightly more expensive, larger, and significantly less portable iPod or MP3 player.
Given their excellent business history, what is more likely is that you'll not only be able to share (DRMed) music and video between XBox and (Windows) PC, you'll also likely be able to sync with any of the myriad of devices that support Microsoft's audio format, and likley also PocketPC devices or other video players. How this'll work with DRM is another question, but it makes sense.
Starting with the 360 and then expect more and more Windows/Windows Media/other Microsoft integration with each revisison.
when I create a new tab/page/whatever, I get the page that I was looking at duplicated in that window.
Such functionality exists in current versions of Mozilla (and has for the past couple of years, if not longer). It's available in your Preferences, under "Display on Navigator Startup", "Display on New Windows", and "Display on New Tab". For each one, you have three options: "Blank Page", "Home Page", "Last Page".
While it doesn't look like Firefox has the GUI way to configure this, it looks like it's still in there. Go to the URL "about:config". The preferences you're looking for are "browser.tabs.loadOnNewTab", "browser.windows.loadOnNewWindow", and "browser.startup.page". (You can probably guess which does what;) These are each integer values, and they are:
0
Blank page
1
Home page
2
Last page
At least, that seems to be the system. I highly recommend using the "Filter" area to quickly select these configuration preferences.
Hope that helps!
BTW, is there some way to disable the loadOnNewWindow = 2 functionality under IE? It always drives me up the wall whenever I'm forced to use IE.
Then today could be your lucky day. Software Suspend 2 is out for Linux. While you may have luck with earlier software suspend in the kernel, Software Suspend 2 is under very active development, and hopefully will be in the mainstream kernels (and hence in desktop distros) in the near future. It's working quite well for me now, and might work well for you too, if you have the knowledge and patience to use it. It seems to work around various crappy hardware problems with suspend-to-ram pretty well, so I'm pleased. This (Dell Inspiron 8600 w/ ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, WUXGA) laptop has some large issues with suspend-to-ram, apparently due to video card issues from the WUXGA screen (on resume, it drives the lcd at the wrong frequency and you get the oh-so-fun melting effect).
Additionally, the vast majority of sleep problems aren't in the kernel, they're in the bios (specifically, the DSDT as compiled by Microsoft tools). Go to acpi.sf.net for more information on broken DSDTs for more information on what this DSDT brokenness means to hardware compatibility, both device (e.g. sound cards) and suspend-resume and how to fix it (and maybe you're lucky and someone's already fixed your DSDT!)
Without fixing the DSDT, your best bet for suspend-resume on Linux is to use software suspend 2, as it seems to sidestep the BIOS/DSDT brokenness pretty well.
Slashdot Mirror
You see, God's in a dilemma. The Heart was developed over many millions of years by God Himself, using his now-open Evolution Development System. But, due to Microsoft's dominance of the desktop leading to its dominance of the browsers and then to the servers, in this, the year 2012, Microsoft now has complete control over the Internet. So unless God was able to somehow convince 9 billion people to use His Almighty Internet Service, which is notably completely incompatible with Microsoft's Internet v3 and Body Management Services of Medicine PX, he must provide the interface to Heart version 3.14159265(and so on) to Microsoft. Unfortunately, as a side effect of licensing the interface to Microsoft, he's now unable to provide drivers to Linux, which since Microsoft's utter dominance of all things computers shortly after all vendors suddenly and miraculously started supporting Microsoft's Palladium System nee NGSCB, is run by about 3 people in Norway living in a cave and harnessing a beowulf cluster of hamsters to provide power. But, on the other hand, Microsoft promised not to provide a competing implementation of Heart! (Both a carrot and a stick, God mutters under His breath sometimes).
Too bad for God that Microsoft has now launched MS Deity, which has received very favourable press lately (despite not having nearly as many features as God Himself, but it ties in so well to the existing Microsoft hardware software and wetware, and besides, they'll get that in the next version, they promise), and of course will provide everything that God provides except Heart. Of course, to do this, they had to get inside information, but since they outright own many very pleasant places to live and work, and with a warchest now exceeding 432 trillion dollars, they easily afford to, uh, acquire many of God's most trusted workers and skip the millions of years of development (coincidentally, they also hired away all of God's workers in charge of Zotting the Unbelievers, who otherwise would help convert 9billion fat and happy-ish Microsoft users!). However, in 2015, according to an internal Microsoft email that, after being read, got lost, shredded, re-constructed, stamped three times with a big red stamp, and then lost again, Microsoft plans on also releasing Heart, since God's marketshare is expected to dwindle to the point of Him not being able to support a lawsuit against Microsoft.
The minimal subscription is 3months for $15. You can still continue using the binaries after that; they don't expire.
I ask myself again and again why vendors keep including these ancient installers for Linux, but have pretty, shiny installers for Windows. The stuff is there--InstallShield, for example. They should frelling use it . End rant.
Nvidia's hardware is generally excellent because their drivers seem to be very high-performance. Caveat is that they don't support the X devs nearly as well as ATI does, so you're much more stuck if they stop supporting you than if you were using ati.
That was actually precisely the reason I chose an ATI card despite its poorer performance (and support) under Linux. When the card gets Old Enough, ATI works with the X devs to ensure that they can get the information they need to write drivers.
If your goal is simply to encourage the use of your code, then feel free to use the BSD License. It is absolutely a fantastic license if your goal is merely to make your code widely-used. If I were writing a reference implementation, I might consider the BSDL heavily if my goal is to encourage commercial adoption. OTOH, the LGPL would help ensure compatibility down the road, without forcing proprietary vendors to give up their own source code, so it seems to me to be the best of both worlds--free use and a much higher probability of compatibility [plus they still get to use "good quality code"]. It's unlikely that I'd license a referenced implementation of a protocol under the full GPL, unless I don't care about proprietary software companies adopting it.
My point, however, was that the BSD license does nothing to ensure protocol compatiblity. The quality of the code is at best tangential to that discussion.
The main reason I want Linux pre-installed (regardless of distro) is that I want to know that the hardware will work with Linux (and I don't want to have to pay the Microsoft Tax.
That'd be essentially what it's like with Windows now. And yes, I'd be happy with that.The only assurance that "95% of the computers in the world would have a [compatible] TCP stack" would be if Microsoft adopted a GPLed TCP stack and released their source code as well. [LGPL may work, since changes to the *lib* would have to be released, but potentially one could write code to modify that outside the lib and one would then not have to release specs.].
In netto, all that the BSD license assures is that businesses can use the code as a stepping stone to get ahead faster. Whether or not they stay on that stepping stone is up to the business and the BSD license provides no assurances past that.
Now you'll very likely point out that MSFT would never [publically] use GPLed code, since they'd have to release the Windows source code [though they could conceivably use LGPLed code]. And you'd quite likely be right. But then they'd develop their own TCP-compatible stack on their own dime, not on yours. They'd make it as compatible or incompatible as they would like, just as they would if they used a BSD-licensed stack. The only difference between someone using a BSD-licensed stack and writing their own stack is that they can use the BSD-licensed code's developers to do the work for them--they can subsequently make the code as compatible or incompatible as they wish, no holds barred, no feedback to the rest of the world. Well, that, and they have to put the little bit of credits somewhere.
That about says it all. I'm pretty interested in them for their software and peripherals, but the lack of Linux notebooks is still quite disheartening.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seemed to be stating that MS bundling IE and WMP with Windows and keeping it impossible to have a drop-in replacement isn't a problem because you can simply choose not to use it. My counterpoint is that it's not that simple, that there is indeed another, very important facet of this problem beyond simply using IE or WMP directly.
Now if we agree this is needed, whats the big deal if it has its own GUI to run as stand-alone?
The objection isn't about a standalone GUI; it's about 3rd parties (and particularly the other Microsoft softwares including and especially the "OS") tying into a non-open API and file specification, and therefore I object to the fact that nobody but Microsoft can code a drop-in replacement.Standalone GUI is entirely tangential to this particular piece here.
What I dislike is that, by bundling their browser and media player, they are the only provider of the API, due to it not being open nor free (patent liabilities, anyone?). The API, while portions of it are publically available (note that this can provide a fantastic anti-competitve edge against competitors!), it's 100% under one corporation's power, not a group. That is before IP crap comes into play.
There are open standards and then there are open standards. From a cursory review, it doesn't look like the openness is very open (e.g. cross-licensing "IP" terms in the license). Additionally, how closely does Microsoft's implementation (and the 3rd-party vendors) follow the open specifications? Even if the specifications came with no strings attached, they're worthless if everyone relies on one implementor of the specification and the implementor does things not in the spec.
Probably a vast majority of the people driving cars (at least in the USA) probably don't smoke. So why does every car equipped still ship with several cigarette lighters?
The answer is that third-party products (e.g. cellphones, laptops, and other power adaptors) use the cigarette lighter interface for their powersource. So we need cigarette lighters in our cars for the 3rd-party products, even if we don't use them directly for their immediate purpose, i.e. smoking.
Any alternative power or cigarette-lighting interface will face a significant mountain to its business, due to the installbase of the classic Cigarette Lighting and Power Interface (CLPI).
So why don't I complain about the classic CLPI's monopoly? For one, it's a completely open standard. If you want to create a new power attachment to use it, you can with zero strings attached. Likewise, if you want to create a competing cigarette lighter implementing the classic CLPI, you're good to go, and nobody will whine or complain because of incompatibilities. Consequently (and also another reason for my lack of complaining), nobody really has a monopoly on a single cigarette lighter and nobody is leveraging it to gain access to new fields, which is patently untrue for its computer-world monopoly counterparts.
It makes the whole difference between writing apps which use Microsoft Windows Component X because it's guaranteed installed and working on 90% of the desktops out there (and forget the remaining 10% of ye; we don't want yer business anyway), and writing to an open, universally-available format or API.
Starting with the 360 and then expect more and more Windows/Windows Media/other Microsoft integration with each revisison.
While it doesn't look like Firefox has the GUI way to configure this, it looks like it's still in there. Go to the URL "about:config". The preferences you're looking for are "browser.tabs.loadOnNewTab", "browser.windows.loadOnNewWindow", and "browser.startup.page". (You can probably guess which does what ;) These are each integer values, and they are:
0 Blank page 1 Home page 2 Last page At least, that seems to be the system. I highly recommend using the "Filter" area to quickly select these configuration preferences.Hope that helps!
BTW, is there some way to disable the loadOnNewWindow = 2 functionality under IE? It always drives me up the wall whenever I'm forced to use IE.
Hope this helps a little bit.
Without fixing the DSDT, your best bet for suspend-resume on Linux is to use software suspend 2, as it seems to sidestep the BIOS/DSDT brokenness pretty well.