Actually, if Microsoft wants to remain viable it has to remain well ahead of this trend. After all, once someone has paid the one-time price to migrate away from Windows migration costs work against Microsoft and not for Microsoft.
What's more, with a large centrally mandated switch of this kind the network effects that generally favor Windows disappear.
I agree that git's merging is much better. In fact, comparing subversion's merging with git's is ridiculous. However, most people don't really make branches (until they start playing around with a distributed version control system). Until you've used a system, like git, where you can create a separate branch for each new idea and still merge your branches sanely merging doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Heck, many git users don't even take advantage of git's merging ability. To them git is just a much faster subversion (with less tool support).
As far as tools go, Subversion clearly has the edge. repo.or.cz is nice, but everyone has subversion support, and so do all of the IDEs and other tools that you are probably interested in. What's more, it's trivial to use git, hg, or bzr as a front end for Subversion.
For a non-technical user, Subversion really is hard to beat. It's trivial to set up a Subversion server that looks to them just like a network drive. They don't even have to know that they are using a versioning file system. Combine that with the fact that Subversion will happily version even ridiculously large files means that you can use Subversion in situations where git simply won't play at all.
For my own projects, I use bzr (I have used git in the past), and I understand why Linus feels so strongly about subversion. For source code git is impossible to beat (assuming that everyone that needs to use the repository doesn't mind using a command line client).
However, there's a reason that Subversion is more popular than git, and why it is growing in popularity faster than git. Most people don't care about merging. They just want a straightforward user interface for a versioned file system.
The size of the repository is not the problem in this particular case. Both git and mercurial assume that it is safe to have several copies of the object in memory at any given time. In other words your 2GB files are going to cause git and mercurial to bomb out with memory errors (unless you are on a really big machine, I suppose). From my own experimentation on a machine with 2GB of memory both of these systems can handle files up to about 500M before failing. However, with files above 50M both of these systems become slower than CVS or Subversion.
The advantage of distributed systems is that they are far better at merging files. If you aren't merging files then these tools are probably the wrong tool for the job.
Precisely. I don't use Subversion for managing code anymore because for merging the distributed version control systems are much much better. However, Subversion is an excellent versioning file system, and that's what most people actually want. It handles large files well (try checking a 500M file into git, mercurial or bazaar sometime), and it can even be used as a WebDAV share for completely braindead use by normal end users. End users see the repository as a Network drive, but I can go back and get old revisions easily.
Now that Subversion has more advanced merging abilities it might even be suitable for shops that like Subversions centralized nature but still need to merge on a regular basis.
Besides, mercurial, git, and bazaar all interface well with Subversion. I frequently use bzr as a front end for subversion repositories if I know I am going to be doing any merging.
No one is talking about switching out mission-critical applications--unless of course your mission-critical application happens to be running on Websphere. In that particular case, a switch to a far less expensive JBoss is completely straightforward.
If you take a closer look at the article you'll see that two specific situations are mentioned. The first is the use of a proprietary Java application server, and the second is the case of a Windows shop with no Free Software at all. In both of those cases Red Hat can almost certainly save you some cash.
Interestingly enough Red Hat gets better marks for support from its customers than Microsoft, Oracle, or Intel. In fact, Red Hat competes directly for support contracts against Oracle (which offers support on its own Red Hat-based Linux distribution).
In fact, I am pretty sure that a contract with Red Hat for OS support and PostgreSQL support (including escalation clear up to conversations with Tom Lane himself) would cost significantly less than a far less capable support package from Oracle. With RedHat if I don't like their service and support it's easy to switch to Sun, or Novell, or even Oracle.
Don't even get me started with Microsoft.
The beauty of Free Software is that you aren't paying for software licenses. If Red Hat (or whoever) wants your business they have to offer valuable support. As such, with Free Software you have tons of options and can pay as much (or as little) as you want for support.
A rip and replace is almost always going to be more expensive in the short run no matter what systems you are replacing.
However, if you are a shop that doesn't have any Free Software running in it, then you are almost certainly pouring money down a rat hole. There are plenty of situations in which Free Software is not only "good enough," but where it is best of breed. The folks at Red Hat have basically made a business out of finding those circumstances. Once you have Free Software running in your shop the cost of training and acquiring Free Software expertise goes down as well. After all, at this point you already have some admins with Free Software experience. Assuming that your Linux admins are competent and ambitious they probably are already experimenting with more ways to replace proprietary software. You also need to make sure that you advertise for Linux talent when looking for new hires (even if the position doesn't really require Linux talent). Kids coming out of college almost certainly have some Linux administration skills already, and if you ask for Linux skills with each new hire your existing staff (the brighter ones anyway) will see the writing on the wall and begin self-training in the new technology.
The real key to saving money with Free Software is to simply start evaluating it seriously every time you go to roll out new services. At the very least this will give you some added leverage with your proprietary software vendors. Microsoft, in particular, has been known to offer deep discounts to companies looking to increase their commitment to Free Software. However, this tactic only works if you can convince the Microsoft rep that you are serious.
Even Microsoft's case studies show that the price differences are relatively close, and they assume much higher costs for Linux administration and training than I believe is typical in the real world. For the most part college graduates these days are very familiar with Linux, and even MCSEs can learn without expensive training if they believe that the alternative is the loss of their job. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of scenarios where Microsoft has a distinct advantage, but if your shop doesn't have any Free Software in it, then you are almost certainly missing out on some opportunities to save some money.
More importantly, however, Free Software is much less expensive to acquire, and when money gets tight, that's a big deal. Given the choice of cutting people and cutting software licensing costs most CEOs are going to at least entertain the idea of cutting software costs first. No one wants to see their empire get smaller. RedHat has a lot of experience in that arena. The folks at RedHat are good at finding ways that Free Software can lower costs. To a large extent that's how it makes its money.
At the very least talking to RedHat will probably get you some leverage with your current software provider. Microsoft in particular has shown that it is more than willing to give price breaks to companies that are looking to switch. The more realistic your migration plans, the more likely that Microsoft will roll over on price.
I agree, and these emails have been the best yet. Not only were they interesting, but they were written by people that could form complete sentences. I will admit that I feel a little bad for the second guy. He's clearly got a serious problem. It's just funny that he would write the Slashdot editors for help tracking his wife.
The reason for an NDA is actually fairly obvious. Lenovo's probably eating the cost of the license in this case, and the last thing that it wants is for Czechoslovakians to realize that they can get 78 Euro off of the price of a laptop simply by asking.
The reason that Vista has a new driver model was that Microsoft wanted to build DRM into its driver model. Unfortunately for Microsoft DRM isn't really a feature, but an anti-feature. No one *wants* a computer that tries to stop them from copying files.
You are certainly right that the pain of transition from XP to Vista was similar to the pain of transition between Windows 98 and XP. The problem is that the benefits to the upgrade are not nearly as profound. Windows XP was so much better than Windows 98 that people were willing to put up with the difficulties. Windows Vista, on the other hand, has comparatively little to offer. In fact, in several ways Vista is a step backwards. No one wants to pay extra for even more intrusive DRM and a User Account Control that is intrusive without really aiding in system security.
I would also point out that third party hardware and software vendors are not in the business of selling new copies of Windows. That's Microsoft's job. If selling new versions of Windows requires some help from the people that create the hardware and software that people actually use, then Microsoft should have done a better job of making that happen.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the hardware vendors saw Windows Vista as a chance to sell everyone new hardware. Rewriting old drivers for Windows Vista doesn't make these companies any money, but forcing Vista users to purchase a new printer (or whatever) does make them money. The same is true for software vendors. Patching old versions of software so that they work with Vista doesn't make the vendor any cash. Selling a new Vista-compatible version, on the other hand, does generate revenue.
Microsoft's hardware and software partners were only acting in their own best interest. Microsoft would have done the same thing had the roles been reversed.
The end result of Microsoft's Vista moves is a general trend away from Microsoft. Apple's got nearly 15% of the U.S. computer market and a whopping 66% of the over $1000 computer market. Microsoft still is clearly the 800 pound gorilla, but it no longer can be considered a given that a PC is running Windows. To a certain extent this trend is due to Vista.
Instead of creating growth for Microsoft Vista is causing people to rethink their reliance on Windows, and Microsoft doesn't really have anyone but itself to blame.
Autopackage is essentially a distribution on top of the distribution. The autopackage guys basically built an autopackage base that they have ported to some of the more popular distributions. They then try and take care of the same packaging issues that Debian, Fedora, and the rest of the distributions take care of already. They have their own incompatible list of packages, with their own incompatible dependencies, their own naming scheme, and their own packaging format.
The only difference between autopackage and Debian's repositories is that A) Debian's repositories are much much larger, B) Debian's repositories receive far more real-world testing, and C) Debian's repositories come with a Linux installer.
If you don't like Debian you can replace Debian with Fedora or the distribution of your choice. Basically, everyone has more supported packages than autopackage.
The problem was that for years Sun refused to release Java under a Free License. This meant that packages in main could not rely on the existence of a JVM. Worse, at least if you wanted to use Sun's JVM, as gcj got better Debian started packaging Free Software Java packages so that they would run on gcj.
Sun's announcement to Free Java has helped move things in the right direction, but we are just barely starting to get a usable Free Software JVM. I stopped paying attention some time ago (as I no longer am forced to use Java to develop web applications), but hopefully this all gets sorted out for the next stable version of Debian. If not, Java developers will get another two years (or however long it takes to do a release) of hate from Debian.
The Linux Standard Base is essentially a farce. The Wikipedia article linked to above gives a pretty good overview of why, but the primary reason is that developers don't want a set of tests that they can run against their application to see if it is portable. They want a binary distribution that they can actually install their software on and test against. Originally that's precisely what the LSB was supposed to be. It was going to be a small installable distribution based on Debian.
At the time Caldera thought that would be problematic, and so the current incarnation of the LSB was born. Not that anyone uses it, as it is a complete waste of time.
Usenet, at least the Usenet that I get from my provider, has actually improved quite a bit over the last few years. For the most part spammers have gone elsewhere, and when they do pop up they get taken care of by someone. comp.lang.python, for example, is far from dead, and I regularly get help from comp.text.tex. My favorite group is misc.fitness.weights, but that particular group admittedly takes some getting used to.
In many ways Usenet has become better as it has become less popular. I am personally hoping that ISPs do cut out the alt.binaries hierarchies so that Usenet can lose its association with the warez and pornography scenes and get back to its roots as a global forum.
Many of the netbooks coming out have VIA chipsets. I haven't picked one up to date because I knew the hardware was not particularly well supported. I've bought VIA in the past, and been disappointed.
VIA chipsets would be great for thin clients and X terminals as well, but once again, VIA's support has historically been sub par. I actually am a little surprised VIA hasn't done this earlier. VIA competes very well on the low power and low cost end of the scale and Linux is fairly important in this market.
Personally, I would say that hiring Harald Welte is a better indication of VIA's intentions than the release of documentation. Nobody in their right mind is going to hire the owner of GPL-Violations.org unless they are absolutely serious about Free Software.
Welte eats vendors for breakfast. Hiring him grants VIA instant credibility. If VIA drops the ball it is very likely to get crucified. Unless the executives at VIA have the intellect of fence posts this indicates a sea change for Free Software support from VIA.
It was sealed up just like the other set that I got at the same time. I suppose it's possible that a particularly malicious customer did that, but I have my doubts.
No matter how good your QA is, you will have some defects. Lego at least has a good reputation for making mistakes right after the fact. I did not know about their customer service policy before writing the post above. I'd never considered getting customer support on Legos.
I am very happy with Lego. I personally hope to buy a lot more of their merchandise.
When I turned 16 my family moved to Peru. I finished high school in Peru. Before moving to Peru I didn't speak two words of Spanish. Believe me, I understand that intelligence doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to communicate intelligently in a foreign or unfamiliar language. I've been on the other side of that divide (where people assumed that I was stupid because I couldn't speak Spanish), and I am not likely to ever fall for that particular trick.
People that use Ebonics, on the other hand, are basically parading around their ignorance like a badge of honor. Chances are good that they could speak English correctly (or they could at least learn to speak correctly with a little bit of work), but instead they want to sound like an uneducated crack fiend. Now, the person may be intelligent. Heck, they may even have the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but I doubt it. I am prejudiced against crack fiends and people that sound like crack fiends. My experience tells me that their opinions aren't particularly cogent.
"Message board," by comparison, at least has the fact that it is easier to type one handed to recommend it. Taken out of context, however, it would be easy to underestimate the writer's level of education. This is why I still think that journalists should find a better quote.
I've had a set missing a piece. Heck, the last set I purchased for my kid didn't match what was on the cover. When we opened the box up our Lego Star Wars set actually contained Indiana Jones pieces. Even worse, the retards at Target almost didn't take the set back. It's no wonder that people shop at Wal-Mart.
I buy Lego sets because that's what my son wants, and my son wants Lego because Lego is way better at marketing than the competition.
As an example. My kids liked Star Wars, but they didn't become obsessive over Star Wars until they played the Lego Star Wars video games. Next thing I know even my girls want Legos, and my boy has gone completely crazy.
I don't mind. I happen to like both Star Wars and Lego. I just bough my kids the Lego Indiana Jones video game and I hope it has the same effect. I'm going to spend quality time with my kinds anyhow, but I would much rather play Indiana Jones or Star Wars than American Girl Doll or Power Rangers.
I may not be the most gifted writer on the planet, but I am pretty sure that you could quote most of my posts, on slashdot and elsewhere, without having to translate them into English first. The article is talking about quotes that are so badly mangled that they can not be quoted verbatim and still be comprehended by a large portion of the readership.
My response to this problem is that the journalist should simply find a quote that is coherent without undue manipulation. For example, a journalist could quote your post without problem. Sure, a grammar nazi would probably object to something in your quote, but your post in clearly intelligible.
It's not as if opinions dried up when they turned the Internet on. Journalists used to be able to find intelligible quotes then, why settle for less now?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if Microsoft wants to remain viable it has to remain well ahead of this trend. After all, once someone has paid the one-time price to migrate away from Windows migration costs work against Microsoft and not for Microsoft.
What's more, with a large centrally mandated switch of this kind the network effects that generally favor Windows disappear.
I agree that git's merging is much better. In fact, comparing subversion's merging with git's is ridiculous. However, most people don't really make branches (until they start playing around with a distributed version control system). Until you've used a system, like git, where you can create a separate branch for each new idea and still merge your branches sanely merging doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Heck, many git users don't even take advantage of git's merging ability. To them git is just a much faster subversion (with less tool support).
As far as tools go, Subversion clearly has the edge. repo.or.cz is nice, but everyone has subversion support, and so do all of the IDEs and other tools that you are probably interested in. What's more, it's trivial to use git, hg, or bzr as a front end for Subversion.
For a non-technical user, Subversion really is hard to beat. It's trivial to set up a Subversion server that looks to them just like a network drive. They don't even have to know that they are using a versioning file system. Combine that with the fact that Subversion will happily version even ridiculously large files means that you can use Subversion in situations where git simply won't play at all.
For my own projects, I use bzr (I have used git in the past), and I understand why Linus feels so strongly about subversion. For source code git is impossible to beat (assuming that everyone that needs to use the repository doesn't mind using a command line client).
However, there's a reason that Subversion is more popular than git, and why it is growing in popularity faster than git. Most people don't care about merging. They just want a straightforward user interface for a versioned file system.
The size of the repository is not the problem in this particular case. Both git and mercurial assume that it is safe to have several copies of the object in memory at any given time. In other words your 2GB files are going to cause git and mercurial to bomb out with memory errors (unless you are on a really big machine, I suppose). From my own experimentation on a machine with 2GB of memory both of these systems can handle files up to about 500M before failing. However, with files above 50M both of these systems become slower than CVS or Subversion.
The advantage of distributed systems is that they are far better at merging files. If you aren't merging files then these tools are probably the wrong tool for the job.
Precisely. I don't use Subversion for managing code anymore because for merging the distributed version control systems are much much better. However, Subversion is an excellent versioning file system, and that's what most people actually want. It handles large files well (try checking a 500M file into git, mercurial or bazaar sometime), and it can even be used as a WebDAV share for completely braindead use by normal end users. End users see the repository as a Network drive, but I can go back and get old revisions easily.
Now that Subversion has more advanced merging abilities it might even be suitable for shops that like Subversions centralized nature but still need to merge on a regular basis.
Besides, mercurial, git, and bazaar all interface well with Subversion. I frequently use bzr as a front end for subversion repositories if I know I am going to be doing any merging.
No one is talking about switching out mission-critical applications--unless of course your mission-critical application happens to be running on Websphere. In that particular case, a switch to a far less expensive JBoss is completely straightforward.
If you take a closer look at the article you'll see that two specific situations are mentioned. The first is the use of a proprietary Java application server, and the second is the case of a Windows shop with no Free Software at all. In both of those cases Red Hat can almost certainly save you some cash.
Interestingly enough Red Hat gets better marks for support from its customers than Microsoft, Oracle, or Intel. In fact, Red Hat competes directly for support contracts against Oracle (which offers support on its own Red Hat-based Linux distribution).
In fact, I am pretty sure that a contract with Red Hat for OS support and PostgreSQL support (including escalation clear up to conversations with Tom Lane himself) would cost significantly less than a far less capable support package from Oracle. With RedHat if I don't like their service and support it's easy to switch to Sun, or Novell, or even Oracle.
Don't even get me started with Microsoft.
The beauty of Free Software is that you aren't paying for software licenses. If Red Hat (or whoever) wants your business they have to offer valuable support. As such, with Free Software you have tons of options and can pay as much (or as little) as you want for support.
A rip and replace is almost always going to be more expensive in the short run no matter what systems you are replacing.
However, if you are a shop that doesn't have any Free Software running in it, then you are almost certainly pouring money down a rat hole. There are plenty of situations in which Free Software is not only "good enough," but where it is best of breed. The folks at Red Hat have basically made a business out of finding those circumstances. Once you have Free Software running in your shop the cost of training and acquiring Free Software expertise goes down as well. After all, at this point you already have some admins with Free Software experience. Assuming that your Linux admins are competent and ambitious they probably are already experimenting with more ways to replace proprietary software. You also need to make sure that you advertise for Linux talent when looking for new hires (even if the position doesn't really require Linux talent). Kids coming out of college almost certainly have some Linux administration skills already, and if you ask for Linux skills with each new hire your existing staff (the brighter ones anyway) will see the writing on the wall and begin self-training in the new technology.
The real key to saving money with Free Software is to simply start evaluating it seriously every time you go to roll out new services. At the very least this will give you some added leverage with your proprietary software vendors. Microsoft, in particular, has been known to offer deep discounts to companies looking to increase their commitment to Free Software. However, this tactic only works if you can convince the Microsoft rep that you are serious.
Even Microsoft's case studies show that the price differences are relatively close, and they assume much higher costs for Linux administration and training than I believe is typical in the real world. For the most part college graduates these days are very familiar with Linux, and even MCSEs can learn without expensive training if they believe that the alternative is the loss of their job. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of scenarios where Microsoft has a distinct advantage, but if your shop doesn't have any Free Software in it, then you are almost certainly missing out on some opportunities to save some money.
More importantly, however, Free Software is much less expensive to acquire, and when money gets tight, that's a big deal. Given the choice of cutting people and cutting software licensing costs most CEOs are going to at least entertain the idea of cutting software costs first. No one wants to see their empire get smaller. RedHat has a lot of experience in that arena. The folks at RedHat are good at finding ways that Free Software can lower costs. To a large extent that's how it makes its money.
At the very least talking to RedHat will probably get you some leverage with your current software provider. Microsoft in particular has shown that it is more than willing to give price breaks to companies that are looking to switch. The more realistic your migration plans, the more likely that Microsoft will roll over on price.
I agree, and these emails have been the best yet. Not only were they interesting, but they were written by people that could form complete sentences. I will admit that I feel a little bad for the second guy. He's clearly got a serious problem. It's just funny that he would write the Slashdot editors for help tracking his wife.
And honey, if you are reading this... I Love You.
Ouch! Thanks for pointing out my error.
The worst part is I actually looked up how to spell Czechoslovakia. You'd think I would have noticed that the country doesn't exist any more.
The reason for an NDA is actually fairly obvious. Lenovo's probably eating the cost of the license in this case, and the last thing that it wants is for Czechoslovakians to realize that they can get 78 Euro off of the price of a laptop simply by asking.
The reason that Vista has a new driver model was that Microsoft wanted to build DRM into its driver model. Unfortunately for Microsoft DRM isn't really a feature, but an anti-feature. No one *wants* a computer that tries to stop them from copying files.
You are certainly right that the pain of transition from XP to Vista was similar to the pain of transition between Windows 98 and XP. The problem is that the benefits to the upgrade are not nearly as profound. Windows XP was so much better than Windows 98 that people were willing to put up with the difficulties. Windows Vista, on the other hand, has comparatively little to offer. In fact, in several ways Vista is a step backwards. No one wants to pay extra for even more intrusive DRM and a User Account Control that is intrusive without really aiding in system security.
I would also point out that third party hardware and software vendors are not in the business of selling new copies of Windows. That's Microsoft's job. If selling new versions of Windows requires some help from the people that create the hardware and software that people actually use, then Microsoft should have done a better job of making that happen.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the hardware vendors saw Windows Vista as a chance to sell everyone new hardware. Rewriting old drivers for Windows Vista doesn't make these companies any money, but forcing Vista users to purchase a new printer (or whatever) does make them money. The same is true for software vendors. Patching old versions of software so that they work with Vista doesn't make the vendor any cash. Selling a new Vista-compatible version, on the other hand, does generate revenue.
Microsoft's hardware and software partners were only acting in their own best interest. Microsoft would have done the same thing had the roles been reversed.
The end result of Microsoft's Vista moves is a general trend away from Microsoft. Apple's got nearly 15% of the U.S. computer market and a whopping 66% of the over $1000 computer market. Microsoft still is clearly the 800 pound gorilla, but it no longer can be considered a given that a PC is running Windows. To a certain extent this trend is due to Vista.
Instead of creating growth for Microsoft Vista is causing people to rethink their reliance on Windows, and Microsoft doesn't really have anyone but itself to blame.
Autopackage is essentially a distribution on top of the distribution. The autopackage guys basically built an autopackage base that they have ported to some of the more popular distributions. They then try and take care of the same packaging issues that Debian, Fedora, and the rest of the distributions take care of already. They have their own incompatible list of packages, with their own incompatible dependencies, their own naming scheme, and their own packaging format.
The only difference between autopackage and Debian's repositories is that A) Debian's repositories are much much larger, B) Debian's repositories receive far more real-world testing, and C) Debian's repositories come with a Linux installer.
If you don't like Debian you can replace Debian with Fedora or the distribution of your choice. Basically, everyone has more supported packages than autopackage.
Blame Sun.
The problem was that for years Sun refused to release Java under a Free License. This meant that packages in main could not rely on the existence of a JVM. Worse, at least if you wanted to use Sun's JVM, as gcj got better Debian started packaging Free Software Java packages so that they would run on gcj.
Sun's announcement to Free Java has helped move things in the right direction, but we are just barely starting to get a usable Free Software JVM. I stopped paying attention some time ago (as I no longer am forced to use Java to develop web applications), but hopefully this all gets sorted out for the next stable version of Debian. If not, Java developers will get another two years (or however long it takes to do a release) of hate from Debian.
The Linux Standard Base is essentially a farce. The Wikipedia article linked to above gives a pretty good overview of why, but the primary reason is that developers don't want a set of tests that they can run against their application to see if it is portable. They want a binary distribution that they can actually install their software on and test against. Originally that's precisely what the LSB was supposed to be. It was going to be a small installable distribution based on Debian.
At the time Caldera thought that would be problematic, and so the current incarnation of the LSB was born. Not that anyone uses it, as it is a complete waste of time.
Usenet, at least the Usenet that I get from my provider, has actually improved quite a bit over the last few years. For the most part spammers have gone elsewhere, and when they do pop up they get taken care of by someone. comp.lang.python, for example, is far from dead, and I regularly get help from comp.text.tex. My favorite group is misc.fitness.weights, but that particular group admittedly takes some getting used to.
In many ways Usenet has become better as it has become less popular. I am personally hoping that ISPs do cut out the alt.binaries hierarchies so that Usenet can lose its association with the warez and pornography scenes and get back to its roots as a global forum.
I didn't realize that Welte did gpl-violations.org for a living.
Many of the netbooks coming out have VIA chipsets. I haven't picked one up to date because I knew the hardware was not particularly well supported. I've bought VIA in the past, and been disappointed.
VIA chipsets would be great for thin clients and X terminals as well, but once again, VIA's support has historically been sub par. I actually am a little surprised VIA hasn't done this earlier. VIA competes very well on the low power and low cost end of the scale and Linux is fairly important in this market.
Personally, I would say that hiring Harald Welte is a better indication of VIA's intentions than the release of documentation. Nobody in their right mind is going to hire the owner of GPL-Violations.org unless they are absolutely serious about Free Software.
Welte eats vendors for breakfast. Hiring him grants VIA instant credibility. If VIA drops the ball it is very likely to get crucified. Unless the executives at VIA have the intellect of fence posts this indicates a sea change for Free Software support from VIA.
It was sealed up just like the other set that I got at the same time. I suppose it's possible that a particularly malicious customer did that, but I have my doubts.
No matter how good your QA is, you will have some defects. Lego at least has a good reputation for making mistakes right after the fact. I did not know about their customer service policy before writing the post above. I'd never considered getting customer support on Legos.
I am very happy with Lego. I personally hope to buy a lot more of their merchandise.
When I turned 16 my family moved to Peru. I finished high school in Peru. Before moving to Peru I didn't speak two words of Spanish. Believe me, I understand that intelligence doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to communicate intelligently in a foreign or unfamiliar language. I've been on the other side of that divide (where people assumed that I was stupid because I couldn't speak Spanish), and I am not likely to ever fall for that particular trick.
People that use Ebonics, on the other hand, are basically parading around their ignorance like a badge of honor. Chances are good that they could speak English correctly (or they could at least learn to speak correctly with a little bit of work), but instead they want to sound like an uneducated crack fiend. Now, the person may be intelligent. Heck, they may even have the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but I doubt it. I am prejudiced against crack fiends and people that sound like crack fiends. My experience tells me that their opinions aren't particularly cogent.
"Message board," by comparison, at least has the fact that it is easier to type one handed to recommend it. Taken out of context, however, it would be easy to underestimate the writer's level of education. This is why I still think that journalists should find a better quote.
That's good to know. Target sorted things out for me in the end. That's probably more expensive for Lego, but I got the set that I wanted.
Before then I couldn't even imagine needing customer support on a Lego set.
I've had a set missing a piece. Heck, the last set I purchased for my kid didn't match what was on the cover. When we opened the box up our Lego Star Wars set actually contained Indiana Jones pieces. Even worse, the retards at Target almost didn't take the set back. It's no wonder that people shop at Wal-Mart.
I buy Lego sets because that's what my son wants, and my son wants Lego because Lego is way better at marketing than the competition.
As an example. My kids liked Star Wars, but they didn't become obsessive over Star Wars until they played the Lego Star Wars video games. Next thing I know even my girls want Legos, and my boy has gone completely crazy.
I don't mind. I happen to like both Star Wars and Lego. I just bough my kids the Lego Indiana Jones video game and I hope it has the same effect. I'm going to spend quality time with my kinds anyhow, but I would much rather play Indiana Jones or Star Wars than American Girl Doll or Power Rangers.
I'm holding out for Cherry flavor. It's my favorite.
I may not be the most gifted writer on the planet, but I am pretty sure that you could quote most of my posts, on slashdot and elsewhere, without having to translate them into English first. The article is talking about quotes that are so badly mangled that they can not be quoted verbatim and still be comprehended by a large portion of the readership.
My response to this problem is that the journalist should simply find a quote that is coherent without undue manipulation. For example, a journalist could quote your post without problem. Sure, a grammar nazi would probably object to something in your quote, but your post in clearly intelligible.
It's not as if opinions dried up when they turned the Internet on. Journalists used to be able to find intelligible quotes then, why settle for less now?