Hindsight is always wonderful. When you have an OS that can give itself the luxury of modifying the driver architecture between point releases so that everyone has to recompile things always look so much easier.
When you have a product to sell it gets more complicated.
They're getting better, but they're not there yet.
Wow, yeah. I guess everyone should have been using Linux 1.0 in 1992, what with its excellent graphics system, usable desktop environment and great application support.
Microsoft has a consumer OS they're trying to secure. You have a server OS that you're trying to make usable as a workstation. You can argue endlessly about how each side could have done things differently, but most of the time most people who attack Microsoft because they're (in your words) "unable to write good code" also discount the fact that they have to deal with a huge user and legacy application base. They can't just change the default shell action of a VB script from "Run" to "Edit" (which pretty much eliminates script worms) without getting themselves into a hell of a bind. There is no easy solution. But the attitude from people like you is mostly "lock it down and let the user fight it". You won't sell a lot of anything like that, unfortunately. As long as open source continues to think of users as developers who don't mind opening a console and typing 'su' to get anything done Linux won't get far in the desktop.
The Apple comparison is dumb, as always. Just by virtue of sheer user base size.
You just wait until Linux gains some market share in the desktop thanks to IBM or Novell. The day some fuck starts sending tarballs with bash scripts that delete ~/ or zombie the box to send spam we'll have another chat. There's no need to run as root to do damage to a machine.
That's just so fantastically bogus it's not even funny.
Even assuming that Linux is inherently safer than Windows (and I will not argue that point), you cannot just discount user stupidity like that and claim superiority because you think you can engineer a solution for it.
The current Windows worm du jour requires the user to open a ZIP archive and provide a password before extracting the executable.
A password.
If you think you're going to engineer away that with open source and still provide users with a decent computing experience, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
This whole "we're so much better than them because there are many eyes looking at the code blah blah" deal gets more tiresome every time I hear it. If it were true, open source software would have zero bugs. Zero vulnerabilities. It would be approaching 99% of perfection. And it's not. Aside from a few choice projects, it's not even beyond what commercial software provides.
I'm trying to figure out if you're trying to be funny, dismissive, insulting or something else. Perhaps more specifically, I'm trying to figure out what the overall point of your comment could possibly be. Thus I'm sorta, like... you know, stumped.
As I am distracted by shiny things sometimes I miss the inherent hilarity incorporated into some posts here on Slashdot, so my apologies if that was your intention.
If Microsoft had "opened" C# and the CLI the way Sun "opened" Java and Java happened to be an ECMA standard (or fall under any other independent body) you'd probably be asking me for the same thing. Java is not an independent thing. It is closely controlled by Sun. They giveth and taketh away as they choose.
And you're seriously mistaken if you think Sun can't take legal action against anyone for any reason over anything related to Java.
That they won't is another matter. But then that's exactly the point I'm making WRT Mono and Microsoft.
Because Sun could sue the pants off everyone who has ever even remotely considered doing a JVM implementation if they chose to.
This is the great stupidity of people who moan and bitch about how Mono is evil and then in the same breath recommend just using Java. C# and.NET are actually more "open" than Java for all practical purposes.
I'd suggest you read the Mono FAQ and the various blogs (Havoc Pennington, Miguel, Nat and some GNOME hackers) that discuss this, and then make up your mind instead of just parroting what you've read here. Especially here.
This bi-monthly "OMFG.NET is teh dumb and M$ is teh evilz and why dont we do teh JAVA instead!!1!" diatribe posted to every Mono release announcement is becoming very tiresome.
The core product groups never doubted for a second that Miguel would pull it off, mainly because Don Box and other architects working on.NET told them he would after they looked at the first alpha.
There might be some "static" coming from the evangelism or strategy folks; I don't know. My perception of this is mostly positive.
Microsoft, believe it or not, is happy (at least at that level) that Mono exists. There is nothing like having one of the main figures in open source sit down and implement a technology they opened. And I don't mean that with an evil or snickery undertone (and they don't, either) - they like it, just as they like all the SSCLI initiatives people have started to do since they released it.
They've learned that you can be successful without closing up the specs, and those of us who write software for Windows for a living have benefited greatly from this.
If Mono does nothing else it has already succeeded as far as I'm concerned. Microsoft has changed enormously since.NET was released.
all in a bunch, perhaps someone would like to provide some numbers that prove the majority of worms in Windows systems are not there because the users are just plain utterly stupid and have no AV software to begin with.
The current batch of mail worms making the rounds require the user to actually unzip a password protected executable and run it manually.
Password protected. The password is included in the badly written email message body.
And yet I can't believe how many of these I get every day, from people who were stupid enough to unzip the file and run it.
That is a "hole for viruses" you can drive a truck through, and you're probably never, ever going to patch, because it cannot be patched.
You can get "infected" (because I wouldn't really call it that) regardless of what mail client or operating system you're using. In fact, most worms require user intervention.
Why aren't they incorporating it into Windows? That's ridiculous. If they did they'd be accused of choking the AV vendors using anti-competitive tactics, and if they don't they'll be accused of everything from extortion to incompetence. It doesn't matter.
People will continue to get infected because they are ignorant. Not stupid - just ignorant.
And then one day Linux will be the dominant desktop OS and there will be a worm that requires the user to untar and chmod +x on a bash script (yay monoculture) called "NAKED PICS", which will delete ~/ or turn the box into a spam generator zombie or exploit some vendor-introduced vulnerability that has a big enough user base, and people will actually get infected with it. But of course it will be their fault, not the software's.
No AV can fix this problem. This is ultimately a PR move by Microsoft. If they have a way to say "hey, we have free AV and you didn't use it" they'll close the final gap. They can patch RPC vulnerabilities 2 months before a live exploit all they want but they can't cure ignorance.
A better question is what parts are really Microsoft's
It's all Microsoft's, because they paid for it. Even in Stac's case, they ended up paying for it.
They even got notepad from ATT.
Please provide some backing for this ridiculous statement.
companies like Red Hat do that much and more
Oh, I agree completely. RedHat is not much more of an integrator, except that they pay nothing or very little for everything.
It's no big deal, except they continue to also portray themselves to the public as "innovators" instead of what they are, a software vendor.
Well, they are both. Of course since as far as you're concerned Microsoft product catalog is limited to the products they've acquired (and they never did anything to them besides repackaging, of course) then that whole thing is just pointless to discuss.
But getting back to topic, I was asking specifically about technologies in the operating system proper. You know, the application server, the web server, COM/DCOM/COM+, the shell, etc.
'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'.
No. It has everything to do with this. People like free stuff.
Yes, well. Duh. And yet that by itself proves that Microsoft is somehow digging its own grave. What a leap of logic.
I have gratis copies of Win2003, MS Office,
Head on over to microsoft.com and peruse the full line of enterprise software. Then tell me they gave you a license (non beta or developer copy) of Application Center or Host Integration Server or ISA or BizTalk or SQL Server or SharePoint for free. Then we'll chat.
So we've established that free stuff has a wide appeal. Please feel free to show how this appeal is incompatable with the ideals of Open Source software
Heh. So you're basically saying that the primary appeal is the low monetary cost? OK, I can go with that, sure. I don't see how it's incompatible with the "ideals", since each one of you has different ideals and they're changed depending on what you're trying to defend or attack.
I'm not an expert on the "ideals" (heck, I doubt anyone is - they're like standards in that there are so many to pick from), but I do think that by and large, people who use open source or free (or whatever) software are fundamentally cheap. Not all of them. But most.
People who run Windows and are used to paying for software or not (and your insistence of using warez as proof that they're cheap is dumb since there are people out there actually pirating Xandros) don't care about ideals, and neither do the people who give them the software.
FOSS on the other hand seems to think that it's spreading The Message by appealing to people who are fundamentally cheap. I say this is kind of self-defeating, but that's just me.
If Opera is so great, how come there's an ad-supported version?
At least Opera can offer an ad-supported version. Can you imagine what would be the reaction of the zealots if Gentoo showed you ads during the boot process? Yet it works for people who *think* they're getting something for free, even though it's not. Everybody wins (or thinks they do).
Besides, the add-supported version is to get you hooked on the thing. That's how shareware works (or doesn't, depending on who you talk to). It's exactly the same as free software. We hope that this time instead of downloading the ISO you'll buy a CD for $5. I don't quite think that works, because you're using guilt as an appeal factor. People could care less. When you cripple software or use another way to get people to pay up you get better results. This has always been true and it simply jives with human nature.
But they certainly feed it when it suits them. And that could be a problem for them as time goes on.
Well, to get back on topic. I thought the article was stupid for making generalizations about people expecting everything free from Microsoft, given that they get the browser and other things for free as well. I thought it was especially stupid coming from someone who is part of the "everything should be free" crowd.
You can argue all you want, but the fact remains that Microsoft has given away IE (and everything else they give away) for a long time, and yet people continue to buy their software (and everyone else's). This sudden revolution of people realizing that they don't want to pay for an OS or an office suite and going to open source is fundamentally stupid; as all the other theories of what would be Microsoft's downfall and when Linux would rule the desktop. It's 2004 and here's another theory about how people will find FOSS attractive. Wow. Color me impressed.
In your eagerness to sound clever [...] After all, most of us get water out of the tap... yet there's quite an industry involved in selling it bottled.
I don't know that I was "trying to sound clever". And yet the facts are the same: Open Source is not exactly the hottest business in the planet, and Microsoft is still selling software like crazy.
You can't argue that away, no matter how clever you want to sound. And you and your friends sure don't understand how people think. Which doesn't surprise me given that you don't understand how they use computers either.
and when it was finally complete, did not work properly.
So let's assume this is the case. What you're saying is that you simply didn't know what you were doing. Or do you think this doesn't happen with Linux? Perhaps you have the time to look through the Anaconda source code; most normal people don't.
I'm kinda lazy and cheap, but not stupid.
Either the latter is actually true, or you're just full of shit.
Do I pick Windows (Pain in the ass to install Hell to operate and protect, and expensive to buy and get support for, which needs to be periodically reinstalled when it stops working for no apparent reason)
1) Compared to what again?
2) Compared to what again? Gee, those 3 1/2 hours I just spent updating a fresh install of RH9 with "errata" must have been a dream. But maybe I'll never need to patch it again. Could it be?
3) $49 for Windows XP Pro (bundled with a machine) always seemed to me like a good deal.
4) Support? have you ever used Google to look for information on Windows Have you? You seriously dont' swallow this myth that only open source has a great community out there, do you?
5) Another zealot meme - I've never had to reinstall Windows. Ever. Not single solitary time. If you take care of the box, it will run fine for years. If you expect it to take care if itself, you're fucked. Then again that's also the case for ANY operating system. Windows doesn't just corrupt itself because it has nothing better to do, much as you'd like to believe that's the case.
Or do I pick Linux (easy to install, free to get, and millions of developers that give you the info you need to keep things going for free on a stable platform that can be trusted not to inexplicably decide not to work)?
1) Compared to what again?
2) Free is right - money wise, at least. Then again $49 bucks is a good bargain, if you ask me. Certainly you are free to use whatever dammned OS you want; just don't come in here and tell me "how it is", mmkay?
3)"Millions of developers"? I want some of whatever you're smoking, bud. And see (4) above in any case.
4) So Linux does not "inexplicably" decide not to work? Heh. How long have you been using it?
Ever see GRUB freeze at the "Loading stage 1" or whatever? Ever enter runlevel 5 and have the box freeze solid when initializing PCMCIA? Ever had X fail to load with some obscure message?
Let me tell you - apparently these things have never happened to anyone on Slashdot. Yet everyone has these amazing horror stories about Windows that Stephen King would be hard pressed to invent.
It's boring trying to talk sense to people like you, but I'm patient even with rude children.
That's so very nice of you, but I don't need you to "talk sense" to me. And as you can see, I have a certain pacience towards weird zealots like you, so we're even.
The parent poster was a troll. They compared Slashdot's parent company to SCO based on a decline in market value of their stock and a proported lack of profit. That's a stupid assertion, designed for insult only. I don't like trolls, that's true.
Surely you cannot be that dense. The post you replied to made the assertion that it was supremely stupid and retarded to make snide remarks about SCOX when Slashdot's parent company is essentially the same - two dollars away from becoming a penny stock and being de-listed. It had nothing to do with whether or not Company A and Company B were making money off of "free software", but I suppose you missed that in your hurried attempt to call him a troll. That's precisely why I mentioned RedHat. I'm sorry if this is getting too complicated for you.
The rest of your comment is weird and self defeating.
Dishonest and evil as well, I bet.
I'm not sure how to respond to something stupid like that, besides to tell you what an idiot you are.
Coming from you twitter, that's quite the endorsement. Thanks!
Unix != Linux. Interesting that you used "Unix" instead of Linux there. Unix isn't even technically open source, or free.
How do I know that the majority of "normal" open source users are cheap? RedHat either wouldn't exist, or it would be a fortune 100 corporation. It wouldn't exist because no one would pay for their products or services if all open source users were "cheap". And it would be very wealthy if only a fraction of the people who download ISOs would instead buy them for a few bucks. RedHat doesn't care that "your time is valuable" after you essentially denied them the profit, small as it might be. It's nice that you have a choice, and I'm not attacking that. But that choice is what proves my point. If it's free, why pay for it? Even if I actually perceive any value in the product, eh?
Mandrake wouldn't need to resort to handouts to survive, and would have gone into bankruptcy to begin with.
SuSE wouldn't have sold out to Novell; they wouldn't have had any incentive to do that. Neither would Ximian.
Open source would be a brisk business indeed. It isn't. At least not yet. The number of people who actually make a living off it is still extremely small compared to how many people live off commercial software.
It's all very simple if you consider software as a business instead of as some wacky religious weapon or a means to provide "freedom and liberty" to humanity.
let's ignore the Windows-based warez scene. Windows freeware, shareware, and spyware.
Yes, let's. Because they have nothing to do with this.
Let's not bother ourselves with how gleefull Winnuts get when Microsoft slips them CDs of the latest Enterprise
Microsoft doesn't give away "enterprise software".
And since this exists within the OSS crowd, obviously its all about money. Forget all those high-hat morals and ideals. Its all about being cheap. Nevermind professionals who deploy OSS even though they have access to budgets that enable them to pick from any option available.
High-hat morals? Bwahahaha, again. And you're free to deploy whatever you want with your big budget. But now you're turning my assertion into a stupid generalization. I have no doubt that there are people who are in it for the cause; however the majority of your "users" are in it for the free ride. Otherwise - wait for it - more people would buy distros, even for a token cost, than simply download ISOs for free. Otherwise all those open source projects that ask for donations via Paypal would actually be getting them. It's as simple as that.
that sounds awfully like the arguments put forward by Darl McBride and Ken Brown.
Mad propz to you, sir. Evil Name Dropping never cost anyone any karma.
Of course, if you weren't so busy trying to mine the article for propoganda, you might have caught on to a good point. Whether Microsoft started the process or contributed to it... today they have a serious problem. They have to fight more than a product put forward by IBM or Novell or Redhat, et al. They have to battle a perception that the OS itself is as much a commodity as the hardware it runs on.
I wasn't "mining" the article for propaganda. I was quoting the part that I thought was the most ridiculous, that's all. And just in case you missed it (well, obviously you did), Microsoft now has a "serious" problem solely because of companies getting behind open source. Profit. Your own high-falutin' ideals are being replaced by the quest for profit and competition, which is something Microsoft can understand. Before this little development open source had exactly zero chances of becoming mainstream. The perception of software becoming a commodity will depend on whether or not these companies want it that way, not because of what you and a few other slashbots think. And frankly, I don't think Novell or IBM want it that way, but we'll see.
In any case, Microsoft didn't "hook" people on "free stuff". The internet did. And your generalization is again stupid - Opera would have disappeared a long time ago if everyone expected to get a browser for free. Indeed, if Mozilla is such a fantastic browser, how come Opera still exists?
Oh, and Mr. High-Hat Morals, if "free software" is all about freedom, how can freedom be commoditized? Please be careful and try not to trip all over your ideology next time you flame someone. It's so unbecoming.
You show me a single instance of Microsoft using a patent offensively and we'll talk. I gather you'll find as many instances as IBM has, which is to say none.
Yet everyone is ready to bend over and give IBM the benefit of the doubt for potentially doing something they have not done yet (none of their patents helped with the SCO case anyway) while blasting Microsoft for potentially doing something they've never done.
The open source/Sun honeymoon just came to a close. Just wait for the other shoe to drop with IBM.
Oh, and twitter, a reply to the other post to this absolutely nonsensical thing of yours would be highly appreciated as well. I think that if you're going to make outlandish claims about something, you'd better be prepared to back them up with some facts.
No, actually I'm still sort of waiting for you to address my point. I also replied to your other dumb offtopic diatribe, and if you don't mind too much I'd also like to see a response to that.
Unless of course my responses are becoming too painful for you to deal with.
OK, so the "Microsoftie" sacred cow follow up quotes this from a Slashdot comment in the story, theorizing that "he couldn't have put it better":
"In his lust to dominate the browser market and bring down Netscape, Bill and his cronies decided to give Internet Explorer away for free. They succeeded in undermining Netscape and getting the lion's share of the browser market, but in the process they got an entire generation of users hooked on getting stuff for free. Once users get a taste of free, getting them to pay for stuff becomes difficult or impossible. Why pay for a browser when I can get it for free? Why pay for an operating system when I can get it for free? Why pay for software when I can get it for free? Why pay for music when I can get it for free? Why pay for movies when I can get them for free? In the end, it isn't just Microsoft that's hurt by this."
Heh. This, coming from the "teh softwarez must be free-as-in-um-actually-i'm-just-cheap" crowd (which unfortunately makes up the majority of the people who use open source) is absolutely hilarious.
In any case, Microsoft has given software away for ages. Suddenly because they gave away IE, the world is on track to become evil purveyors of stolen... things.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, looks like somebody forgot to check that "Post Anonymously" thingy.
When you have a product to sell it gets more complicated.
They're getting better, but they're not there yet.
Wow, yeah. I guess everyone should have been using Linux 1.0 in 1992, what with its excellent graphics system, usable desktop environment and great application support.
Microsoft has a consumer OS they're trying to secure. You have a server OS that you're trying to make usable as a workstation. You can argue endlessly about how each side could have done things differently, but most of the time most people who attack Microsoft because they're (in your words) "unable to write good code" also discount the fact that they have to deal with a huge user and legacy application base. They can't just change the default shell action of a VB script from "Run" to "Edit" (which pretty much eliminates script worms) without getting themselves into a hell of a bind. There is no easy solution. But the attitude from people like you is mostly "lock it down and let the user fight it". You won't sell a lot of anything like that, unfortunately. As long as open source continues to think of users as developers who don't mind opening a console and typing 'su' to get anything done Linux won't get far in the desktop.
The Apple comparison is dumb, as always. Just by virtue of sheer user base size.
You just wait until Linux gains some market share in the desktop thanks to IBM or Novell. The day some fuck starts sending tarballs with bash scripts that delete ~/ or zombie the box to send spam we'll have another chat. There's no need to run as root to do damage to a machine.
Even assuming that Linux is inherently safer than Windows (and I will not argue that point), you cannot just discount user stupidity like that and claim superiority because you think you can engineer a solution for it.
The current Windows worm du jour requires the user to open a ZIP archive and provide a password before extracting the executable.
A password.
If you think you're going to engineer away that with open source and still provide users with a decent computing experience, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
This whole "we're so much better than them because there are many eyes looking at the code blah blah" deal gets more tiresome every time I hear it. If it were true, open source software would have zero bugs. Zero vulnerabilities. It would be approaching 99% of perfection. And it's not. Aside from a few choice projects, it's not even beyond what commercial software provides.
As I am distracted by shiny things sometimes I miss the inherent hilarity incorporated into some posts here on Slashdot, so my apologies if that was your intention.
If Microsoft had "opened" C# and the CLI the way Sun "opened" Java and Java happened to be an ECMA standard (or fall under any other independent body) you'd probably be asking me for the same thing. Java is not an independent thing. It is closely controlled by Sun. They giveth and taketh away as they choose.
And you're seriously mistaken if you think Sun can't take legal action against anyone for any reason over anything related to Java.
That they won't is another matter. But then that's exactly the point I'm making WRT Mono and Microsoft.
This is the great stupidity of people who moan and bitch about how Mono is evil and then in the same breath recommend just using Java. C# and .NET are actually more "open" than Java for all practical purposes.
I'd suggest you read the Mono FAQ and the various blogs (Havoc Pennington, Miguel, Nat and some GNOME hackers) that discuss this, and then make up your mind instead of just parroting what you've read here. Especially here.
This bi-monthly "OMFG .NET is teh dumb and M$ is teh evilz and why dont we do teh JAVA instead!!1!" diatribe posted to every Mono release announcement is becoming very tiresome.
There might be some "static" coming from the evangelism or strategy folks; I don't know. My perception of this is mostly positive.
Microsoft, believe it or not, is happy (at least at that level) that Mono exists. There is nothing like having one of the main figures in open source sit down and implement a technology they opened. And I don't mean that with an evil or snickery undertone (and they don't, either) - they like it, just as they like all the SSCLI initiatives people have started to do since they released it.
They've learned that you can be successful without closing up the specs, and those of us who write software for Windows for a living have benefited greatly from this.
If Mono does nothing else it has already succeeded as far as I'm concerned. Microsoft has changed enormously since .NET was released.
The current batch of mail worms making the rounds require the user to actually unzip a password protected executable and run it manually.
Password protected. The password is included in the badly written email message body.
And yet I can't believe how many of these I get every day, from people who were stupid enough to unzip the file and run it.
That is a "hole for viruses" you can drive a truck through, and you're probably never, ever going to patch, because it cannot be patched.
You can get "infected" (because I wouldn't really call it that) regardless of what mail client or operating system you're using. In fact, most worms require user intervention.
Why aren't they incorporating it into Windows? That's ridiculous. If they did they'd be accused of choking the AV vendors using anti-competitive tactics, and if they don't they'll be accused of everything from extortion to incompetence. It doesn't matter.
People will continue to get infected because they are ignorant. Not stupid - just ignorant.
And then one day Linux will be the dominant desktop OS and there will be a worm that requires the user to untar and chmod +x on a bash script (yay monoculture) called "NAKED PICS", which will delete ~/ or turn the box into a spam generator zombie or exploit some vendor-introduced vulnerability that has a big enough user base, and people will actually get infected with it. But of course it will be their fault, not the software's.
No AV can fix this problem. This is ultimately a PR move by Microsoft. If they have a way to say "hey, we have free AV and you didn't use it" they'll close the final gap. They can patch RPC vulnerabilities 2 months before a live exploit all they want but they can't cure ignorance.
It's all Microsoft's, because they paid for it. Even in Stac's case, they ended up paying for it.
They even got notepad from ATT.
Please provide some backing for this ridiculous statement.
companies like Red Hat do that much and more
Oh, I agree completely. RedHat is not much more of an integrator, except that they pay nothing or very little for everything.
It's no big deal, except they continue to also portray themselves to the public as "innovators" instead of what they are, a software vendor.
Well, they are both. Of course since as far as you're concerned Microsoft product catalog is limited to the products they've acquired (and they never did anything to them besides repackaging, of course) then that whole thing is just pointless to discuss.
But getting back to topic, I was asking specifically about technologies in the operating system proper. You know, the application server, the web server, COM/DCOM/COM+, the shell, etc.
Should be good even for doing basic partitioning and FS prep before putting in a full distro.
He wants his punch line back.
Yes, well. Duh. And yet that by itself proves that Microsoft is somehow digging its own grave. What a leap of logic.
I have gratis copies of Win2003, MS Office,
Head on over to microsoft.com and peruse the full line of enterprise software. Then tell me they gave you a license (non beta or developer copy) of Application Center or Host Integration Server or ISA or BizTalk or SQL Server or SharePoint for free. Then we'll chat.
So we've established that free stuff has a wide appeal. Please feel free to show how this appeal is incompatable with the ideals of Open Source software
Heh. So you're basically saying that the primary appeal is the low monetary cost? OK, I can go with that, sure. I don't see how it's incompatible with the "ideals", since each one of you has different ideals and they're changed depending on what you're trying to defend or attack.
I'm not an expert on the "ideals" (heck, I doubt anyone is - they're like standards in that there are so many to pick from), but I do think that by and large, people who use open source or free (or whatever) software are fundamentally cheap. Not all of them. But most.
People who run Windows and are used to paying for software or not (and your insistence of using warez as proof that they're cheap is dumb since there are people out there actually pirating Xandros) don't care about ideals, and neither do the people who give them the software.
FOSS on the other hand seems to think that it's spreading The Message by appealing to people who are fundamentally cheap. I say this is kind of self-defeating, but that's just me.
If Opera is so great, how come there's an ad-supported version?
At least Opera can offer an ad-supported version. Can you imagine what would be the reaction of the zealots if Gentoo showed you ads during the boot process? Yet it works for people who *think* they're getting something for free, even though it's not. Everybody wins (or thinks they do).
Besides, the add-supported version is to get you hooked on the thing. That's how shareware works (or doesn't, depending on who you talk to). It's exactly the same as free software. We hope that this time instead of downloading the ISO you'll buy a CD for $5. I don't quite think that works, because you're using guilt as an appeal factor. People could care less. When you cripple software or use another way to get people to pay up you get better results. This has always been true and it simply jives with human nature.
But they certainly feed it when it suits them. And that could be a problem for them as time goes on.
Well, to get back on topic. I thought the article was stupid for making generalizations about people expecting everything free from Microsoft, given that they get the browser and other things for free as well. I thought it was especially stupid coming from someone who is part of the "everything should be free" crowd.
You can argue all you want, but the fact remains that Microsoft has given away IE (and everything else they give away) for a long time, and yet people continue to buy their software (and everyone else's). This sudden revolution of people realizing that they don't want to pay for an OS or an office suite and going to open source is fundamentally stupid; as all the other theories of what would be Microsoft's downfall and when Linux would rule the desktop. It's 2004 and here's another theory about how people will find FOSS attractive. Wow. Color me impressed.
In your eagerness to sound clever [...] After all, most of us get water out of the tap... yet there's quite an industry involved in selling it bottled.
I don't know that I was "trying to sound clever". And yet the facts are the same: Open Source is not exactly the hottest business in the planet, and Microsoft is still selling software like crazy.
You can't argue that away, no matter how clever you want to sound. And you and your friends sure don't understand how people think. Which doesn't surprise me given that you don't understand how they use computers either.
Bought? What do you figure they've bought? DOS 1.0? GW-BASIC? What else that is relevant in the current Windows codebase?
coppied from BSD
Other than licensing the Berkeley TCP stack, what else, in your opinion, did they "coppy" from BSD?
Go on, enlighten us.
So let's assume this is the case. What you're saying is that you simply didn't know what you were doing. Or do you think this doesn't happen with Linux? Perhaps you have the time to look through the Anaconda source code; most normal people don't.
I'm kinda lazy and cheap, but not stupid.
Either the latter is actually true, or you're just full of shit.
Do I pick Windows (Pain in the ass to install Hell to operate and protect, and expensive to buy and get support for, which needs to be periodically reinstalled when it stops working for no apparent reason)
1) Compared to what again?
2) Compared to what again? Gee, those 3 1/2 hours I just spent updating a fresh install of RH9 with "errata" must have been a dream. But maybe I'll never need to patch it again. Could it be?
3) $49 for Windows XP Pro (bundled with a machine) always seemed to me like a good deal.
4) Support? have you ever used Google to look for information on Windows Have you? You seriously dont' swallow this myth that only open source has a great community out there, do you?
5) Another zealot meme - I've never had to reinstall Windows. Ever. Not single solitary time. If you take care of the box, it will run fine for years. If you expect it to take care if itself, you're fucked. Then again that's also the case for ANY operating system. Windows doesn't just corrupt itself because it has nothing better to do, much as you'd like to believe that's the case.
Or do I pick Linux (easy to install, free to get, and millions of developers that give you the info you need to keep things going for free on a stable platform that can be trusted not to inexplicably decide not to work)?
1) Compared to what again?
2) Free is right - money wise, at least. Then again $49 bucks is a good bargain, if you ask me. Certainly you are free to use whatever dammned OS you want; just don't come in here and tell me "how it is", mmkay?
3)"Millions of developers"? I want some of whatever you're smoking, bud. And see (4) above in any case.
4) So Linux does not "inexplicably" decide not to work? Heh. How long have you been using it? Ever see GRUB freeze at the "Loading stage 1" or whatever? Ever enter runlevel 5 and have the box freeze solid when initializing PCMCIA? Ever had X fail to load with some obscure message?
Let me tell you - apparently these things have never happened to anyone on Slashdot. Yet everyone has these amazing horror stories about Windows that Stephen King would be hard pressed to invent.
Uncanny.
That's so very nice of you, but I don't need you to "talk sense" to me. And as you can see, I have a certain pacience towards weird zealots like you, so we're even.
The parent poster was a troll. They compared Slashdot's parent company to SCO based on a decline in market value of their stock and a proported lack of profit. That's a stupid assertion, designed for insult only. I don't like trolls, that's true.
Surely you cannot be that dense. The post you replied to made the assertion that it was supremely stupid and retarded to make snide remarks about SCOX when Slashdot's parent company is essentially the same - two dollars away from becoming a penny stock and being de-listed. It had nothing to do with whether or not Company A and Company B were making money off of "free software", but I suppose you missed that in your hurried attempt to call him a troll. That's precisely why I mentioned RedHat. I'm sorry if this is getting too complicated for you.
The rest of your comment is weird and self defeating.
Dishonest and evil as well, I bet.
I'm not sure how to respond to something stupid like that, besides to tell you what an idiot you are.
Coming from you twitter, that's quite the endorsement. Thanks!
How do I know that the majority of "normal" open source users are cheap? RedHat either wouldn't exist, or it would be a fortune 100 corporation. It wouldn't exist because no one would pay for their products or services if all open source users were "cheap". And it would be very wealthy if only a fraction of the people who download ISOs would instead buy them for a few bucks. RedHat doesn't care that "your time is valuable" after you essentially denied them the profit, small as it might be. It's nice that you have a choice, and I'm not attacking that. But that choice is what proves my point. If it's free, why pay for it? Even if I actually perceive any value in the product, eh?
Mandrake wouldn't need to resort to handouts to survive, and would have gone into bankruptcy to begin with.
SuSE wouldn't have sold out to Novell; they wouldn't have had any incentive to do that. Neither would Ximian.
Open source would be a brisk business indeed. It isn't. At least not yet. The number of people who actually make a living off it is still extremely small compared to how many people live off commercial software.
It's all very simple if you consider software as a business instead of as some wacky religious weapon or a means to provide "freedom and liberty" to humanity.
"Winnut"? That's hilarious. "Open sores fanboy" is funny, too. Isn't it?
let's ignore the Windows-based warez scene. Windows freeware, shareware, and spyware.
Yes, let's. Because they have nothing to do with this.
Let's not bother ourselves with how gleefull Winnuts get when Microsoft slips them CDs of the latest Enterprise
Microsoft doesn't give away "enterprise software".
And since this exists within the OSS crowd, obviously its all about money. Forget all those high-hat morals and ideals. Its all about being cheap. Nevermind professionals who deploy OSS even though they have access to budgets that enable them to pick from any option available.
High-hat morals? Bwahahaha, again. And you're free to deploy whatever you want with your big budget. But now you're turning my assertion into a stupid generalization. I have no doubt that there are people who are in it for the cause; however the majority of your "users" are in it for the free ride. Otherwise - wait for it - more people would buy distros, even for a token cost, than simply download ISOs for free. Otherwise all those open source projects that ask for donations via Paypal would actually be getting them. It's as simple as that.
that sounds awfully like the arguments put forward by Darl McBride and Ken Brown.
Mad propz to you, sir. Evil Name Dropping never cost anyone any karma.
Of course, if you weren't so busy trying to mine the article for propoganda, you might have caught on to a good point. Whether Microsoft started the process or contributed to it... today they have a serious problem. They have to fight more than a product put forward by IBM or Novell or Redhat, et al. They have to battle a perception that the OS itself is as much a commodity as the hardware it runs on.
I wasn't "mining" the article for propaganda. I was quoting the part that I thought was the most ridiculous, that's all. And just in case you missed it (well, obviously you did), Microsoft now has a "serious" problem solely because of companies getting behind open source. Profit. Your own high-falutin' ideals are being replaced by the quest for profit and competition, which is something Microsoft can understand. Before this little development open source had exactly zero chances of becoming mainstream. The perception of software becoming a commodity will depend on whether or not these companies want it that way, not because of what you and a few other slashbots think. And frankly, I don't think Novell or IBM want it that way, but we'll see.
In any case, Microsoft didn't "hook" people on "free stuff". The internet did. And your generalization is again stupid - Opera would have disappeared a long time ago if everyone expected to get a browser for free. Indeed, if Mozilla is such a fantastic browser, how come Opera still exists?
Oh, and Mr. High-Hat Morals, if "free software" is all about freedom, how can freedom be commoditized? Please be careful and try not to trip all over your ideology next time you flame someone. It's so unbecoming.
Yet everyone is ready to bend over and give IBM the benefit of the doubt for potentially doing something they have not done yet (none of their patents helped with the SCO case anyway) while blasting Microsoft for potentially doing something they've never done.
The open source/Sun honeymoon just came to a close. Just wait for the other shoe to drop with IBM.
Thanks.
Unless of course my responses are becoming too painful for you to deal with.
In any case, Microsoft has given software away for ages. Suddenly because they gave away IE, the world is on track to become evil purveyors of stolen... things.
If that isn't ironic I don't know what is.
Well, your hovercraft is full of eels, too.
Score one for non sequitur opportunities to use "M$" in a discussion that has otherwise nothing to do with Windows or Microsoft. Mad propz.
Make sure you post some "M$"-related thing in the next article about genetically modified Burmese Vampire Hedgehogs.