"The OS either needs some drastic marketting plans or a couple of well placed PR people if it ever wants to make some headway."
Yeah, it wouldn't have got anywhere in the corporate server environment, if it wasn't for that.
The LAST thing Linux needs is a bunch of people persuaded to use it because of exaggerated marketing claims, and a bunch of PR people talking crap to idiots.
Why, if only the US government could have someone come to the US and give a talk on the limitations of some of Adobe's security mechanisms.
Surely if someone was to do something like that, they would welcome him with open arms, and thank him for his useful expose ? After all, he would be doing them a service, wouldn't he ?
"It is not hypocritical of the US to engage in behaviors that we find unacceptable for others".
But it is hypocritical when you claim the freedom to engage in these behaviours for yourselves, but deny them from others, whilst the whole time claiming that "freedom is an inalienable right of ALL people".
Treat other people with respect, be part of a "community", and they'll forgive you the odd unfortunate mistake.
Spend your life screwing over other people, think about nothing else except "number one" or "the bottom line" and, rightly or wrongly, any unfortunate mistake you made gets jumped on.
"I'll [All?] I've done is taken the exclusivity away from the club members"
That sounds like you've taken away something of value, something people would be prepared to pay for, especially by deliberately publicising the downloads on Slashdot.
"I have in no way hurt anyone at all,..... financially."
Apart from the Mandrake club, which is helping to keep Mandrake in existence.
"Maybe I'm bittered by the real world, but I'll tell you flat out: it doesn't work that way"
Of course, you're more privileged than the rest of us to live in the real world. I mean, it's not like any of the rest of us live there.
"Time to come up with a better plan than reliance on honesty or self-moderation."
.....because, sadly, there are people like you in the world.
I got sent the following email a couple of weeks ago:
The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
"Had I purchased a hard drive to use as part of a support for holding up my car or as part of a wind chime or as a hat, I would expect the magnitude prefix to reflect the SI prefixes (1G = 10^9)."
Thank you, Sir, for writing the strangest sentence I have ever read.
You don't, perchance, happen to own a 10.24-gallon-hat, do you ?
"Next time, I won't be voting for his lot or any of the others. They're all as bad as each other."
Why ? Just because the Conservatives and "New" Labour are as bad as each other ?
What about the Liberal Democrats ? Or the Greens ? Or one of the regional parties (if such a thing exists where you live) ? What about an independent candidate ?
Sometimes I get the feeling that there are millions of people in the UK all thinking "I can't vote for the Lib Dems because they have no chance of winning". If half of them bloody voted for them, then they might have a chance. On the other hand, not voting for them because you don't agree with their policies is something I can easily accept.
(For non-UK readers, the Lib Dems are the third-largest national party here, and seem to get roughly about 20% of the vote in recent times - nowhere near enough to challenge the two main parties in terms of the number of seats they win at parliament).
If all a government has to face as a result of introducing unpopular policies is someone saying "They're all as bad as each other. I won't vote for any of them next time" then that is no disincentive to them whatsoever.
"If the going gets tough I can just as easily start encrypting all sensitive email"
But thanks to the RIP act passed a couple of years ago, if you don't decrypt them when asked, you could face two years in jail (even if you've lost or forgotten the keys). And if you tell anyone you've been asked for your decryption keys, that's five years in jail.
"I'm going to be a lot more worried when they start to ``outlaw'' these workarounds, most importantly when encryption becomes a big ``no-no''."
In some ways, it already is - you should be worried.
There are many links online describing this, but you could try these two to begin with:
"How much do you think it costs to support downloading 3 iso images "millions" of times?"
Much less than it costs to download 3 iso images to a few mirrors (often in publicly-funded universities) and let "millions" of people download them from there.
Strangely enough, that's just what they do.
They've also made their recent release candidates available via BitTorrent.
At $15,000 per advert for the full monty (install, screensaver and bookmark), and a six-monthly release cycle, one advertiser is going to be paying $30,000 per annum (to reach millions of people in a very targetted field).
$30,000 - $50,000 is about what it's going to cost to employ another full-time programmer in a developed country (anyone who says that's way too low should consider why their country is losing work to lower-cost countries).
If Mandrake get even a dozen advertisers with this scheme, then they can increase the size of their development team significantly. Or maybe beef up their QA department instead - and get rid of a few more bugs before every release.
Presumably because the person he wants to employ is cheaper to employ than a native American citizen.
I'm sure if an American in India could undercut the salaries there, and agree to work for less than it would cost to employ a native Indian, then "a way would be found" to employ them too.
But I suspect there are few Americans who would be prepared to work in India for a salary which undercuts the native population.
Welcome to globalisation.
On an unrelated topic........Several years ago I used to work with an Indian hardware guy. He once told me "You know the trouble with this industry ? Too many cowboys, not enough Indians".
Unless, that is, you work somewhere that has a strict policy on the applying of updates (e.g. the IT department tests them first, before applying them), and employees were made aware of this policy, and informed of just what was their responsibility to do, and what was that of the IT department.
And this "dumbass" broke those rules.
But then, of course, in an environment like that, you wouldn't just give out admin rights to every dumbass, would you ?
So here we are, wondering why users won't keep up to date with security updates, and you call someone a dumbass just for trying to install some of those patches from Windows Update.
How are they supposed to know they're only supposed to download the "critical" ones? Not everyone who uses windows is a system admin - nor should they be.
Good job you don't work for me. Comments like this made at work would probably get you at least an unofficial verbal warning.
You weren't the only one who treated it like you describe. I think many people used their basic password, followed by a two-digit number - often the month of the year.
The end result was that for many users a minimum password length of, say, 8 characters became a 6-character password, with a trivially-guessable two-digit suffix.
So the IT rules being enforced actually made things less secure.
"...a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible of industrial application..."
There are very few pieces of software which would not be useable, in some way, in some particular industry.
What is "industry" ? Is there a "childcare industry" ? If so, would even educational software and games "be susceptible of industrial application" ?
The phrase "industrial application" is almost meaningless.
"In order to involve an inventive step, a computer-implemented invention must make a technical contribution."
It could be argued that any computer program / piece of software is, by its very nature, technical.
What is the "contribution" contributing towards ? It could be argued that every single instruction executed by a microprocessor (with the exception of the "NOP" (No-OPeration instruction)) is affecting the state of the computer system in some way, and is thus providing a "contribution". Even the "NOP" instruction is often used to provide a timing delay to allow a computer program to operate correctly with the hardware it is attempting to control. Thus, even a single microprocessor "NOP" instruction is making a "technical contribution".
The phrase "technical contribution" is meaningless.
In turn, the phrase "inventive step" becomes meaningless.
The phrase "industrial application" is almost meaningless, meaning that the definition of what is patentable is almost meaningless.
You appear to disagree with all the "free trade" agreements the USA appears to have been arranging recently.
"...with an annual GDP in the 5 trillion range"
I assume you meant the combined GDPs of the combined populations of those countries. Which is very different to the amount of money their governments have to spend. And of course those governments have nothing else to spend that money on, apart from developing software (despite the USA's best efforts to accelerate a new arms race with their current level of military spending).
""compeating[sic]" with a company in the neighborhood of a thousand times smaller is not the free market."
Many of the companies Microsoft competes with in many areas are in the neighbourhood of a thousand times smaller.
Microsoft's position, and its business practises, have nothing to do with the free market.
"They should innovate"
Yeah, why don't those countries create their own damn operating system? Oh, wait.......
"But ultimately governments making software isn't a whole lot better than governments making airplanes or computer chips."
After all, the internet had absolutely nothing to do with a government agency called DARPA. And governments have never sponsored any sort of research in universities or wherever that have had anything to do with software, oh no.
"Microsoft does have a case..."
...to answer.
"And they probably should get the US to go to step up to the plate..."
After all, no other countries in the world should be able to do what they want, subject to their own rules (and any international treaties they happen to have signed up to), within their own countries.
"...especially considering how little of the MS software in use throughout asia was paid for."
Well if all that software had never been paid for in the first place, what on earth has Microsoft to be concerned about ? And supposing a large amount of piracy does take place there, what better means to stamp it out than by having the people of those countries come together, in the form of their governments, to design and build something to use legitimately in its place ?
Slashdot Mirror
"With the current paper system there are always dubious votes (e.g the X is misplaced, the punching machine does not make the hole properly, etc.)."
How bloody difficult is it to use a pen/pencil to mark an X ?
And if the X is exactly midway between two choices, consider the ballot spoiled.
"The OS either needs some drastic marketting plans or a couple of well placed PR people if it ever wants to make some headway."
Yeah, it wouldn't have got anywhere in the corporate server environment, if it wasn't for that.
The LAST thing Linux needs is a bunch of people persuaded to use it because of exaggerated marketing claims, and a bunch of PR people talking crap to idiots.
Why, if only the US government could have someone come to the US and give a talk on the limitations of some of Adobe's security mechanisms.
Surely if someone was to do something like that, they would welcome him with open arms, and thank him for his useful expose ? After all, he would be doing them a service, wouldn't he ?
"It is not hypocritical of the US to engage in behaviors that we find unacceptable for others".
But it is hypocritical when you claim the freedom to engage in these behaviours for yourselves, but deny them from others, whilst the whole time claiming that "freedom is an inalienable right of ALL people".
Trying running this to find out how slow X is on a single machine:
x11perf -all
You might find it instructive.
Captain: Private, you've done the electronic sweep, are there any enemy soldiers nearby ?
Private: No, SIR. But there's a pair of boots, a combat jacket and a rifle hiding behind that tree.....
Look on it as a lesson in life.
Treat other people with respect, be part of a "community", and they'll forgive you the odd unfortunate mistake.
Spend your life screwing over other people, think about nothing else except "number one" or "the bottom line" and, rightly or wrongly, any unfortunate mistake you made gets jumped on.
Never trust a man who tries to stick a flag in Uranus.
"I'll [All?] I've done is taken the exclusivity away from the club members"
..... financially."
.....because, sadly, there are people like you in the world.
That sounds like you've taken away something of value, something people would be prepared to pay for, especially by deliberately publicising the downloads on Slashdot.
"I have in no way hurt anyone at all,
Apart from the Mandrake club, which is helping to keep Mandrake in existence.
"Maybe I'm bittered by the real world, but I'll tell you flat out: it doesn't work that way"
Of course, you're more privileged than the rest of us to live in the real world. I mean, it's not like any of the rest of us live there.
"Time to come up with a better plan than reliance on honesty or self-moderation."
"...so it can have more time amending its briefs"
I'm not surprised.
If I was SCO, I'm sure my underpants would be feeling quite uncomfortable right now.....
I got sent the following email a couple of weeks ago:
The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh?
"I've always wondered about people like Darl McBride."
"What I've never understood about the psychology of it is this: do they actually believe themselves?"
The latest psychology book: Darl McBride - The Man Who Mistook His Ass For A Hat
"Had I purchased a hard drive to use as part of a support for holding up my car or as part of a wind chime or as a hat, I would expect the magnitude prefix to reflect the SI prefixes (1G = 10^9)."
Thank you, Sir, for writing the strangest sentence I have ever read.
You don't, perchance, happen to own a 10.24-gallon-hat, do you ?
And they've tried to take action over it for copyright infringement, believe it or not.
"Next time, I won't be voting for his lot or any of the others. They're all as bad as each other."
Why ? Just because the Conservatives and "New" Labour are as bad as each other ?
What about the Liberal Democrats ? Or the Greens ? Or one of the regional parties (if such a thing exists where you live) ? What about an independent candidate ?
Sometimes I get the feeling that there are millions of people in the UK all thinking "I can't vote for the Lib Dems because they have no chance of winning". If half of them bloody voted for them, then they might have a chance. On the other hand, not voting for them because you don't agree with their policies is something I can easily accept.
(For non-UK readers, the Lib Dems are the third-largest national party here, and seem to get roughly about 20% of the vote in recent times - nowhere near enough to challenge the two main parties in terms of the number of seats they win at parliament).
If all a government has to face as a result of introducing unpopular policies is someone saying "They're all as bad as each other. I won't vote for any of them next time" then that is no disincentive to them whatsoever.
"If the going gets tough I can just as easily start encrypting all sensitive email"
But thanks to the RIP act passed a couple of years ago, if you don't decrypt them when asked, you could face two years in jail (even if you've lost or forgotten the keys). And if you tell anyone you've been asked for your decryption keys, that's five years in jail.
"I'm going to be a lot more worried when they start to ``outlaw'' these workarounds, most importantly when encryption becomes a big ``no-no''."
In some ways, it already is - you should be worried.
There are many links online describing this, but you could try these two to begin with:
http://media.gn.apc.org/rip.html (NUJ is the National Union of Journalists, I believe)
http://www.ecommercetax.com/doc/072300.htm
"How much do you think it costs to support downloading 3 iso images "millions" of times?"
Much less than it costs to download 3 iso images to a few mirrors (often in publicly-funded universities) and let "millions" of people download them from there.
Strangely enough, that's just what they do.
They've also made their recent release candidates available via BitTorrent.
"What next? Back doors so advertizers can see where we surf?"
Why should there be a "next" ?
It's open source - if they tried something like that, it would be found, and the resulting outrage would absolutely kill them commercially.
Please, relax the paranoia just a little.
Eh ?
Mandrake only employ a few dozen people at most.
At $15,000 per advert for the full monty (install, screensaver and bookmark), and a six-monthly release cycle, one advertiser is going to be paying $30,000 per annum (to reach millions of people in a very targetted field).
$30,000 - $50,000 is about what it's going to cost to employ another full-time programmer in a developed country (anyone who says that's way too low should consider why their country is losing work to lower-cost countries).
If Mandrake get even a dozen advertisers with this scheme, then they can increase the size of their development team significantly. Or maybe beef up their QA department instead - and get rid of a few more bugs before every release.
Sounds good to me.
But why would he do that ?
Presumably because the person he wants to employ is cheaper to employ than a native American citizen.
I'm sure if an American in India could undercut the salaries there, and agree to work for less than it would cost to employ a native Indian, then "a way would be found" to employ them too.
But I suspect there are few Americans who would be prepared to work in India for a salary which undercuts the native population.
Welcome to globalisation.
On an unrelated topic........Several years ago I used to work with an Indian hardware guy. He once told me "You know the trouble with this industry ? Too many cowboys, not enough Indians".
Unless, that is, you work somewhere that has a strict policy on the applying of updates (e.g. the IT department tests them first, before applying them), and employees were made aware of this policy, and informed of just what was their responsibility to do, and what was that of the IT department.
And this "dumbass" broke those rules.
But then, of course, in an environment like that, you wouldn't just give out admin rights to every dumbass, would you ?
So here we are, wondering why users won't keep up to date with security updates, and you call someone a dumbass just for trying to install some of those patches from Windows Update.
How are they supposed to know they're only supposed to download the "critical" ones? Not everyone who uses windows is a system admin - nor should they be.
Good job you don't work for me. Comments like this made at work would probably get you at least an unofficial verbal warning.
I've dealt with situations like this before.
You weren't the only one who treated it like you describe. I think many people used their basic password, followed by a two-digit number - often the month of the year.
The end result was that for many users a minimum password length of, say, 8 characters became a 6-character password, with a trivially-guessable two-digit suffix.
So the IT rules being enforced actually made things less secure.
"...a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible of industrial application..."
There are very few pieces of software which would not be useable, in some way, in some particular industry.
What is "industry" ? Is there a "childcare industry" ? If so, would even educational software and games "be susceptible of industrial application" ?
The phrase "industrial application" is almost meaningless.
"In order to involve an inventive step, a computer-implemented invention must make a technical contribution."
It could be argued that any computer program / piece of software is, by its very nature, technical.
What is the "contribution" contributing towards ? It could be argued that every single instruction executed by a microprocessor (with the exception of the "NOP" (No-OPeration instruction)) is affecting the state of the computer system in some way, and is thus providing a "contribution". Even the "NOP" instruction is often used to provide a timing delay to allow a computer program to operate correctly with the hardware it is attempting to control. Thus, even a single microprocessor "NOP" instruction is making a "technical contribution".
The phrase "technical contribution" is meaningless.
In turn, the phrase "inventive step" becomes meaningless.
The phrase "industrial application" is almost meaningless, meaning that the definition of what is patentable is almost meaningless.
"A cartel of governments..."
...to answer.
You appear to disagree with all the "free trade" agreements the USA appears to have been arranging recently.
"...with an annual GDP in the 5 trillion range"
I assume you meant the combined GDPs of the combined populations of those countries. Which is very different to the amount of money their governments have to spend. And of course those governments have nothing else to spend that money on, apart from developing software (despite the USA's best efforts to accelerate a new arms race with their current level of military spending).
""compeating[sic]" with a company in the neighborhood of a thousand times smaller is not the free market."
Many of the companies Microsoft competes with in many areas are in the neighbourhood of a thousand times smaller.
Microsoft's position, and its business practises, have nothing to do with the free market.
"They should innovate"
Yeah, why don't those countries create their own damn operating system? Oh, wait.......
"But ultimately governments making software isn't a whole lot better than governments making airplanes or computer chips."
After all, the internet had absolutely nothing to do with a government agency called DARPA. And governments have never sponsored any sort of research in universities or wherever that have had anything to do with software, oh no.
"Microsoft does have a case..."
"And they probably should get the US to go to step up to the plate..."
After all, no other countries in the world should be able to do what they want, subject to their own rules (and any international treaties they happen to have signed up to), within their own countries.
"...especially considering how little of the MS software in use throughout asia was paid for."
Well if all that software had never been paid for in the first place, what on earth has Microsoft to be concerned about ? And supposing a large amount of piracy does take place there, what better means to stamp it out than by having the people of those countries come together, in the form of their governments, to design and build something to use legitimately in its place ?