Oh god, after five years, thousands of blog entries and flamewars and you want me to explain what the problem is? Are you serious?
Maybe you shouldn't hang out on MozillaZine? Just a thought. I doubt they're very impartial there.
Go browse Bugzilla or something, seriously. I can't believe there are still people out there that claim everything is honky dory with FF. The memory problems don't detract from the browser (as far as I'm concerned), but the fanboys certainly do.
I suspect Firefox has a problem with the amount of time it stays open, which means it has a memory leak (or a number of them) that are slight enough not to be a problem if you have it open for 8 or nine hours and close it every day but become an issue after two or three days.
The instance I'm typing this into (2.0.x) has been up for about three days. I have no idea how many tabs I've opened and pages loaded, but the task manager shows ~300MB mem and ~120MB VM usage. Keep in mind right now I only have two tabs open.
I suppose one could say the solution to the problem is restarting Firefox at least once a day... except that restarting a web browser seems about the stupidest thing ever.
Still, I put up with it because it's far better than IE6. I don't like Opera, so I don't have a lot of choice.
Did you RTFA? Nowhere did that article draw any parallels between the relative sizes of IE and Firefox. On the contrary, it says FF beat the pants off IE6, which is true. I guess you just can't stand a good thing, can you?
I run IE on XP and that's nowhere near your mythic 10GB. Hell, even if it were I can get a 320GB hard drive for under $90. It's up to me to decide if I think that's excessive or not. Certainly not to you.
And BTW, I call BS on your claims of FF being "nimble" on a 233MHz Pentium II. I don't doubt it runs, but I'm going to guess it's not a pleasant experience. Just a wild guess.
You're just posturing to get your "M$ Winbloze" quippy into a discussion that doesn't even involve Microsoft other than the submitter's FUD headline.
Wow, I actually RTFA and nowhere in there does it say that Firefox is becoming as "bloated" as Internet Explorer. Nope, it says it's becoming as bloated as Seamonkey. Oh the horror. The article is also (as usual) not kind to Firefox as far as the speed and insane memory consumption it suffers from, which thousands of fanboys have spent the past three years desperately denying for some weird reason. To be fair, I use FF and I don't care about the memory problem, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Disingenuous FUD aside, I can't for the life of me imagine how IE could be "bloated". It never had much functionality to begin with.
Kudos to Bashdot. Even the current Digg submission doesn't mention IE at all.
Irrelevant my dear flocktard. Microsoft writes commercial software that runs on commodity mass-produced hardware. That's what they've always done, and that's what they'll always do. You can have the 28 niche platforms and architectures. Unless you were interested in the m68k, which etch dropped. Oops.
How much do SDK's cost per platform?
About $0.00, last I looked.
lack of choice is a serious failure of the non free software model
It's not a "failure" if you never intended to support all those platforms. You might count it as an advantage of Linux or whatever and I'll agree, but that does not translate into it being a "failure" on Microsoft's part. Why is that so hard to understand? "Microsoft doesn't do X - HAHA! THEY FAIL!!" C'mon.
being forced to move from one platform to another
As usual you exaggerate in the name of zealotry. Whatever your perceived damage done by doing x-or-y because of Microsoft happens rarely enough and goes smoothly enough that it doesn't really matter. Plus, you get support for decades if you decide not to. That's the little detail you keep forgetting, I suppose on purpose.
Bend over Bungi, Bill Gates has got a few software deals for you.
Ah, always a fan of scat humor and sexual references. If I didn't know better I'd say you were twelve.
Too bad Microsoft didn't have the balls to jump the gun and make Vista 64-bit only.
They need this final release cycle to get rid of all the 16-bit stuff still running out there on XP and 2000. Surprising amounts of people still run those types of apps, so now they have a few years' notice to upgrade or switch platforms. I was disappointed as well, but they have no choice.
What happened to the famous "backward binary compatibilty" M$ is supposed to be good for?
It's been twenty years+ of pretty fuckin' good compatibility. I still have an XP machine running Corel DRAW! 3.0, which was released in 1992. I know companies that stil run VB3 apps on Windows 2000 and XP. As more and more legacy software is replaced, the need to support it becomes less important, so Microsoft can move on. This is actually good for everyone, including hardware makers. Costs are also reduced dramatically.
In any case, Microsoft (or "M$") supports whatever they make for decades as well. RHEL gets EOLed after what, three years? And even now Mozilla is thinking of dropping Firefox support for older Linux versions.
Wouldn't it be nicer if you could just compile it yourself to whatever platform fit your needs? So that YOU could make hardware choices and do all of the above when it was in YOUR best interest?
Nice straw man, especially from the wipe-and-reload-the-distro-of-the-day types. Most people don't care about compiling their own code to target different architectures or word sizes or endianess. You're making the argument that it's somehow important to be able to support the 8088 for commodity consumer software until the mountains crumble into the sea. Other than a few isolated niche cases - who the hell cares.
Although not from the "M$ WINBLOZE LOLOLRZ" crowd, this is the same bull we all got when moving from 16 to 32-bit. "OMG, the end of the world, nothing will work, someone kill me". Same thing every time.
No, really, what are we supposed to do, sit on our hands while M$NBC, GE, Westinghouse, Disney, Fortune and other big media owners trumpet this bullshit? I don't think so.
I don't know, but I doubt you're supposed to be posting on Slashdot using technical terms like "shit" and lots of dollar signs to spell the names of companies. But hey, I'm sure free software is all better off thanks to you.
I've been trying to hire two C#/.NET web/backend developers for almost four months. Between the corporate recruiters and the tech consulting firms I've interviewed about 20 people so far. I wouldn't hire a single one. But you should see their resumes. It's like they should be working for Google or something.
At least for my market, I have to conclude that all the quality people have jobs, 'cuz I can't find a single one.
You're absolutely right. Except that your pair of shoes would go for $80 instead of $20 and your iPod would be $2,500 instead of $400.
You don't really think companies do this because they have nothing better to waste their time on, do you?
The more the American (and European) markets demand cheap products, the more justification there is for outsourcing, offshoring and just plain shipping of all manufacturing capacity.
The more zealous members have an intolerance found only in those who have confused their faith for science. Simply mentioning alternatives in front of them is unpleasant enough to enrage them and torrents of abuse soon follow. They demand that people modify their morals to accommodate their obsolete business and software development models, which would otherwise perish. They engage in character and economic assassination, but such individual damage pales in comparison to the damage done by the inadequacy of the "product" they have such blind faith in
twitter, in case you have not noticed, you're describing yourself here. Remember? Including your sockpuppet account, those are just a very few limited examples among almost eight thousand posts you've made to Slashdot.
I'm actually curious - in your opinion what exactly separates this behavior you're describing from your own? I'm not even going to contest that your claims are valid (or even not exaggerated for the sake of making a ridiculous emotional argument), but instead I just want to know if you realize you are basically describing what you do here on Slashdot.
As to your idea of a cult, well, that merits a response all of its own.
Did you even realize that you were a member of a cult?
The main drivers of a cult in the "classic" sense are hatred and fear. One usually feeds the other, which often results in a harmful vicious circle. In a cult, there's always the "others". The "others" are largely anything the cult does not understand, and therefore fears. So people in cults fear what they don't understand and lash out at whatever that is by demonizing and preaching a level of hatred and disdain that usually has no grounding in reality. Christians used to do this a lot, though they certainly never held a monopoly on the behavior.
I think it's amusing that you would accuse anyone of being in a "cult", when your behavior resembles the definition much more closely. You "hate" Microsoft, even though you really don't even know how their products work. You chafe at at any workarounds or problems anyone might have to use in in one OS but you're perfectly OK with spending hours trying to accomplish simple things in yours. You are dismayed and infuriated at anyone who even dares to utter the "it's really not that bad" line in response to your standard "OMFG M$ WINBLOZE SUXXORZ DIE DIE DIE" mantra. You exaggerate anything that is wrong with Microsoft and then at the same time happily minimize whatever is wrong with your technology of choice - indeed if I were to actually believe what you write, free software is perfect and has no flaws whatsoever. For you it's not about the relative merits of the technologies, but about completely artificial black-and-white perfection vs. utter uselessness. These of course exist only in your head.
You know what the difference between the cult of Microsoft and yours? In almost 20 years I've never seen a user of a Microsoft product or technology claim it is perfect and flawless. Those of us who choose the right tools for our jobs understand perfection is a long way off and we live within the boundaries of those limitations. The principle applies to toasters, cars, screwdrivers and operating systems. On the other hand, I can easily point to hundreds of your own posts where you make those types of assertions with a straight face. You make them because you think people are ignorant enough to actually swallow that. I believe you call that "evangelism". Who's on a cult again?
People like you are scary. You're scary because you've chosen an operating system as a religion. Right now you seem to be a minority. Most people who are passionate about free software can be so without that ridiculous "join us or die" demeanor. But there's always the possibility that won't always be the case. I don't want technology to have only a "any color you want it as long as it's black" choice dictated by ignorant, infantile hatred, just as I don't want there to live in a world where I can only choose Microsoft. I want Microsoft's technology to stand on its own, just as I want Apple and Linux and everyone else to do the same. That's what choice is about. The playing field is starting to level, but you and your brothers in the cult of Stallman apparently have not noticed the world is changing for the better.
For your sake and everyone else's, I hope you rent a clue very soon. You cause far more damage than whatever benefit you think you are providing.
What use has a middle or high school student for ANY of that?
Absolutely nothing at all. None. But twitter needed to get in his bullshit "the M$ laptop will always be expensive, fragile and barren of learning material", so I wondered what "M$" had to do with anything. Or for that matter any other type of professional commercial software.
It turns out - whaddya know - it really is irrelevant. That's just good old twitter. Sky is blue? Blame it on "M$". Cow not giving milk? Blame it on "M$". Children not learning? Blame it on "M$". Sure beats blaming lack of parental involvement, low teacher salaries or any one of the myriad other things that suck with the education system in this country. It's all "Micro$haft Winblozes LOLOL".
So you agree you're a slashbot then? Awesome. Not that I had any doubt, but it's always good to hear it from the source. See? You can be accurate and truthful sometimes.
Setting aside the postulate that the FSF is trying to destroy copyright
I don't see how you can set that aside. That is exactly what the FSF preaches, unless I've been reading a very different set of manifestos from you. The "copyleft" term they coined is essentially copyright without the usage and ownership restrictions (instead they just add distribution restrictions and call it "freedom"), but it's disingenous to claim that "copyleft" is just like copyright with some cool whip on top.
I know that in your small occipital cavity a phrase that contains both "Bill Gates" and "bully" is one to be cherished, exploited and regurgitated endlessly to enforce your "M$ sux" routine. But really, stop "evangelizing" and start thinking for yourself. Things in the real world (you know, where most of us live) are different, and something that in yours might be cause for dispairing outrage and golf claps from your friends are nothing more than normal. I don't know Gates and I have no idea what he really is like, though I do know that I would never want to work for Microsoft (various reasons that are irrelevant here). But if this article is anywhere near the truth, I have counted people very much like Bill Gates as leaders and mentors that have taught me many valuable things about how to succeed in what I do. "Bully" does not necessarily translate into your mental image of the term, regardless of how much you want that to be so.
I thought the author was going to make the mistake of saying that without copyright the GPL would be useless, but he actually makes a good point. I think the problem with licenses like the GPL and the Creative Commons are all about sticking it to The Man and a sort of social statement to the effect that IP ownership laws are broken, but they rely on an imagined legal and social framework that simply does not exist yet - and probably never will, though that's just my opinion. The efectiveness of these licenses (which overwhelmingly deal with distribution rather than use) wobbles on top of the very foundation they are trying to destroy. And none of them have addressed just what exactly is going to happen after they manage to topple it down.
I'm not a big fan of the GPL, but I don't think public domain or a BSD-type deal is going to work either. But for everything I've ever read from Stallman and friends, I don't really think they have it down, either. It's as if they are sitting there hoping something will happen that will validate their position and everything will be kumbaya and honky dory. What that is they have no idea.
Stallman can rewrite his license until the cows come home, but without some real change in the legal area it won't really make much difference. And piling restrictions up on top of the GPL can only go so far. Not his fault - that's just reality.
And that's just for software... wait 'til you get into music and images and whatnot. The Creative Commons are in the same bind.
The software I mentioned is all concerned with learning.
Exactly. What does "M$" Word have to do with all that in the first place?
I said Encarta was inferior to printed encyclopedias because it was and still is. They made if from a subset of Funk & Wagnalls, and modified facts to pander to different demographics
While it might not meet your ideals of perfection, it was still useful. A thing (including software) does not have to perfect to be useful. You are personally insulted because it exists at all and came from "M$" and is "non-free". The rest of your argument is irrelevant.
Wikipedia
Maybe I wouldn't buy Encarta. Maybe I wouldn't buy a printed encyclopedia. But whatever else, I sure as hell would not let a child use Wikipedia.
The well has been poisoned by people who claimed that "computer literacy" was being able to work M$ Word and other now worthless non-free software.
AutoCAD, for example? Mathematica? SAS/Stat? Websphere? Photoshop? Windows? Help me out here, I'm trying to come up with some other "now worthless non-free software" that I can recommend to my friends' kids not to touch. Especially "M$" software, because we all know no one uses that anymore.
There is of course the difference between an educational software package that teaches, say, spelling, and "M$" Word, which is not educational tool. So I'm not sure how you can tie the two together?
BTW, Encarta - when it was released - was simply amazing. One of my nephews spent uncounted hours (this is 1997) exploring and learning Encarta. In fact, IIRC the article about Johann Sebastian Bach had a small sample of the Brandenburg concerto (BMW 1048), which he loved. That lead to my buying him a Bach CD "sampler", which got him on the road to other composers like Vivaldi, Brahms and Mozart.
I haven't seen Encarta in a while, and though teh interwebs have largely superceded its niche, I'm sure it's at least valuable from a production/quality/self-contained standpoint.
Honestly, I find it disturbing (if not downright pathetic) that someone would dismiss a product like Encarta (especially when it was first released) just because it comes from Microsoft.
They keep taking and ruining winners, delivering to the public exactly what no one wants.
For the better part of three decades they have also been sucessful at doing the opposite. Aren't you one of those people who accuse them of buying everything they sell and not "innovating" at all?
Hotmail was cool [...] loading it with adds and making it suck.
I'm sorry, but Hotmail was not cool. And yes, they made it suck, but then all the free webmails of the day sucked. I remember Altavista mail well. It was GMail that first bucked that trend. This is not a "M$" trait by any stretch of the imagination.
Amazon used to have a good search, then along came M$
No, I'm sorry. Amazon used to suck rocks. Now that they run on top of Live, it sucks less. Seriously, Live is really not that bad, but I'm sure you've never even loaded it.
Is a picture emerging here?
Sure, XBox is not selling and neither is Vista. All of Microsoft's product have been "losers", which is why they are where they are today. Their development tools suck. Their office suite barely sells. The picture is clear. Thanks for bringing that up.
Oh flocktard, I've seen so many examples like that in free software, it's not even funny. Why, here's the list of current serious regressions lately introduced by GCC. This one looks like a ton of joy. But there's more: here's a list of dumb bugs in GCC that they only recently fixed. And then there are the "features" they've claimed are not defects since forever (not that I care, but still).
I remember there was that early Plone (or Zope, I forget) bug where a password couldn't begin with an underscore or a tilde or something like that. That one was funny. But they fixed it, as I'm sure "M$" fixed this one.
But here you are, using a bug in a compiler that hasn't been used in years as ammunition for your "M$ sux" religion. How painfully lame can you get?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you shouldn't hang out on MozillaZine? Just a thought. I doubt they're very impartial there.
Go browse Bugzilla or something, seriously. I can't believe there are still people out there that claim everything is honky dory with FF. The memory problems don't detract from the browser (as far as I'm concerned), but the fanboys certainly do.
The instance I'm typing this into (2.0.x) has been up for about three days. I have no idea how many tabs I've opened and pages loaded, but the task manager shows ~300MB mem and ~120MB VM usage. Keep in mind right now I only have two tabs open.
I suppose one could say the solution to the problem is restarting Firefox at least once a day... except that restarting a web browser seems about the stupidest thing ever.
Still, I put up with it because it's far better than IE6. I don't like Opera, so I don't have a lot of choice.
ROFL! This is the funniest thing I've seen on /. in ages.
I run IE on XP and that's nowhere near your mythic 10GB. Hell, even if it were I can get a 320GB hard drive for under $90. It's up to me to decide if I think that's excessive or not. Certainly not to you.
And BTW, I call BS on your claims of FF being "nimble" on a 233MHz Pentium II. I don't doubt it runs, but I'm going to guess it's not a pleasant experience. Just a wild guess.
You're just posturing to get your "M$ Winbloze" quippy into a discussion that doesn't even involve Microsoft other than the submitter's FUD headline.
Disingenuous FUD aside, I can't for the life of me imagine how IE could be "bloated". It never had much functionality to begin with.
Kudos to Bashdot. Even the current Digg submission doesn't mention IE at all.
Irrelevant my dear flocktard. Microsoft writes commercial software that runs on commodity mass-produced hardware. That's what they've always done, and that's what they'll always do. You can have the 28 niche platforms and architectures. Unless you were interested in the m68k, which etch dropped. Oops.
How much do SDK's cost per platform?
About $0.00, last I looked.
lack of choice is a serious failure of the non free software model
It's not a "failure" if you never intended to support all those platforms. You might count it as an advantage of Linux or whatever and I'll agree, but that does not translate into it being a "failure" on Microsoft's part. Why is that so hard to understand? "Microsoft doesn't do X - HAHA! THEY FAIL!!" C'mon.
being forced to move from one platform to another
As usual you exaggerate in the name of zealotry. Whatever your perceived damage done by doing x-or-y because of Microsoft happens rarely enough and goes smoothly enough that it doesn't really matter. Plus, you get support for decades if you decide not to. That's the little detail you keep forgetting, I suppose on purpose.
Bend over Bungi, Bill Gates has got a few software deals for you.
Ah, always a fan of scat humor and sexual references. If I didn't know better I'd say you were twelve.
They need this final release cycle to get rid of all the 16-bit stuff still running out there on XP and 2000. Surprising amounts of people still run those types of apps, so now they have a few years' notice to upgrade or switch platforms. I was disappointed as well, but they have no choice.
It's been twenty years+ of pretty fuckin' good compatibility. I still have an XP machine running Corel DRAW! 3.0, which was released in 1992. I know companies that stil run VB3 apps on Windows 2000 and XP. As more and more legacy software is replaced, the need to support it becomes less important, so Microsoft can move on. This is actually good for everyone, including hardware makers. Costs are also reduced dramatically.
In any case, Microsoft (or "M$") supports whatever they make for decades as well. RHEL gets EOLed after what, three years? And even now Mozilla is thinking of dropping Firefox support for older Linux versions.
Wouldn't it be nicer if you could just compile it yourself to whatever platform fit your needs? So that YOU could make hardware choices and do all of the above when it was in YOUR best interest?
Nice straw man, especially from the wipe-and-reload-the-distro-of-the-day types. Most people don't care about compiling their own code to target different architectures or word sizes or endianess. You're making the argument that it's somehow important to be able to support the 8088 for commodity consumer software until the mountains crumble into the sea. Other than a few isolated niche cases - who the hell cares.
Although not from the "M$ WINBLOZE LOLOLRZ" crowd, this is the same bull we all got when moving from 16 to 32-bit. "OMG, the end of the world, nothing will work, someone kill me". Same thing every time.
I don't know, but I doubt you're supposed to be posting on Slashdot using technical terms like "shit" and lots of dollar signs to spell the names of companies. But hey, I'm sure free software is all better off thanks to you.
At least for my market, I have to conclude that all the quality people have jobs, 'cuz I can't find a single one.
You don't really think companies do this because they have nothing better to waste their time on, do you?
The more the American (and European) markets demand cheap products, the more justification there is for outsourcing, offshoring and just plain shipping of all manufacturing capacity.
What's next, playing "good zealot/bad zealot" while shilling your own posts?
It just cracks me up when you claim I lack "honesty". Classic. Just classic.
Yeah, they're so big on it they've been getting patents on top of it as well.
twitter, in case you have not noticed, you're describing yourself here. Remember? Including your sockpuppet account, those are just a very few limited examples among almost eight thousand posts you've made to Slashdot.
I'm actually curious - in your opinion what exactly separates this behavior you're describing from your own? I'm not even going to contest that your claims are valid (or even not exaggerated for the sake of making a ridiculous emotional argument), but instead I just want to know if you realize you are basically describing what you do here on Slashdot.
As to your idea of a cult, well, that merits a response all of its own.
The main drivers of a cult in the "classic" sense are hatred and fear. One usually feeds the other, which often results in a harmful vicious circle. In a cult, there's always the "others". The "others" are largely anything the cult does not understand, and therefore fears. So people in cults fear what they don't understand and lash out at whatever that is by demonizing and preaching a level of hatred and disdain that usually has no grounding in reality. Christians used to do this a lot, though they certainly never held a monopoly on the behavior.
I think it's amusing that you would accuse anyone of being in a "cult", when your behavior resembles the definition much more closely. You "hate" Microsoft, even though you really don't even know how their products work. You chafe at at any workarounds or problems anyone might have to use in in one OS but you're perfectly OK with spending hours trying to accomplish simple things in yours. You are dismayed and infuriated at anyone who even dares to utter the "it's really not that bad" line in response to your standard "OMFG M$ WINBLOZE SUXXORZ DIE DIE DIE" mantra. You exaggerate anything that is wrong with Microsoft and then at the same time happily minimize whatever is wrong with your technology of choice - indeed if I were to actually believe what you write, free software is perfect and has no flaws whatsoever. For you it's not about the relative merits of the technologies, but about completely artificial black-and-white perfection vs. utter uselessness. These of course exist only in your head.
You know what the difference between the cult of Microsoft and yours? In almost 20 years I've never seen a user of a Microsoft product or technology claim it is perfect and flawless. Those of us who choose the right tools for our jobs understand perfection is a long way off and we live within the boundaries of those limitations. The principle applies to toasters, cars, screwdrivers and operating systems. On the other hand, I can easily point to hundreds of your own posts where you make those types of assertions with a straight face. You make them because you think people are ignorant enough to actually swallow that. I believe you call that "evangelism". Who's on a cult again?
People like you are scary. You're scary because you've chosen an operating system as a religion. Right now you seem to be a minority. Most people who are passionate about free software can be so without that ridiculous "join us or die" demeanor. But there's always the possibility that won't always be the case. I don't want technology to have only a "any color you want it as long as it's black" choice dictated by ignorant, infantile hatred, just as I don't want there to live in a world where I can only choose Microsoft. I want Microsoft's technology to stand on its own, just as I want Apple and Linux and everyone else to do the same. That's what choice is about. The playing field is starting to level, but you and your brothers in the cult of Stallman apparently have not noticed the world is changing for the better.
For your sake and everyone else's, I hope you rent a clue very soon. You cause far more damage than whatever benefit you think you are providing.
Absolutely nothing at all. None. But twitter needed to get in his bullshit "the M$ laptop will always be expensive, fragile and barren of learning material", so I wondered what "M$" had to do with anything. Or for that matter any other type of professional commercial software.
It turns out - whaddya know - it really is irrelevant. That's just good old twitter. Sky is blue? Blame it on "M$". Cow not giving milk? Blame it on "M$". Children not learning? Blame it on "M$". Sure beats blaming lack of parental involvement, low teacher salaries or any one of the myriad other things that suck with the education system in this country. It's all "Micro$haft Winblozes LOLOL".
So you agree you're a slashbot then? Awesome. Not that I had any doubt, but it's always good to hear it from the source. See? You can be accurate and truthful sometimes.
I don't see how you can set that aside. That is exactly what the FSF preaches, unless I've been reading a very different set of manifestos from you. The "copyleft" term they coined is essentially copyright without the usage and ownership restrictions (instead they just add distribution restrictions and call it "freedom"), but it's disingenous to claim that "copyleft" is just like copyright with some cool whip on top.
I know that in your small occipital cavity a phrase that contains both "Bill Gates" and "bully" is one to be cherished, exploited and regurgitated endlessly to enforce your "M$ sux" routine. But really, stop "evangelizing" and start thinking for yourself. Things in the real world (you know, where most of us live) are different, and something that in yours might be cause for dispairing outrage and golf claps from your friends are nothing more than normal. I don't know Gates and I have no idea what he really is like, though I do know that I would never want to work for Microsoft (various reasons that are irrelevant here). But if this article is anywhere near the truth, I have counted people very much like Bill Gates as leaders and mentors that have taught me many valuable things about how to succeed in what I do. "Bully" does not necessarily translate into your mental image of the term, regardless of how much you want that to be so.
I'm not a big fan of the GPL, but I don't think public domain or a BSD-type deal is going to work either. But for everything I've ever read from Stallman and friends, I don't really think they have it down, either. It's as if they are sitting there hoping something will happen that will validate their position and everything will be kumbaya and honky dory. What that is they have no idea.
Stallman can rewrite his license until the cows come home, but without some real change in the legal area it won't really make much difference. And piling restrictions up on top of the GPL can only go so far. Not his fault - that's just reality.
And that's just for software... wait 'til you get into music and images and whatnot. The Creative Commons are in the same bind.
Exactly. What does "M$" Word have to do with all that in the first place?
I said Encarta was inferior to printed encyclopedias because it was and still is. They made if from a subset of Funk & Wagnalls, and modified facts to pander to different demographics
While it might not meet your ideals of perfection, it was still useful. A thing (including software) does not have to perfect to be useful. You are personally insulted because it exists at all and came from "M$" and is "non-free". The rest of your argument is irrelevant.
Wikipedia
Maybe I wouldn't buy Encarta. Maybe I wouldn't buy a printed encyclopedia. But whatever else, I sure as hell would not let a child use Wikipedia.
AutoCAD, for example? Mathematica? SAS/Stat? Websphere? Photoshop? Windows? Help me out here, I'm trying to come up with some other "now worthless non-free software" that I can recommend to my friends' kids not to touch. Especially "M$" software, because we all know no one uses that anymore.
There is of course the difference between an educational software package that teaches, say, spelling, and "M$" Word, which is not educational tool. So I'm not sure how you can tie the two together?
BTW, Encarta - when it was released - was simply amazing. One of my nephews spent uncounted hours (this is 1997) exploring and learning Encarta. In fact, IIRC the article about Johann Sebastian Bach had a small sample of the Brandenburg concerto (BMW 1048), which he loved. That lead to my buying him a Bach CD "sampler", which got him on the road to other composers like Vivaldi, Brahms and Mozart.
I haven't seen Encarta in a while, and though teh interwebs have largely superceded its niche, I'm sure it's at least valuable from a production/quality/self-contained standpoint.
Honestly, I find it disturbing (if not downright pathetic) that someone would dismiss a product like Encarta (especially when it was first released) just because it comes from Microsoft.
Wow. Some of you slashbots really leave me speechless sometimes.
For the better part of three decades they have also been sucessful at doing the opposite. Aren't you one of those people who accuse them of buying everything they sell and not "innovating" at all?
Hotmail was cool [...] loading it with adds and making it suck.
I'm sorry, but Hotmail was not cool. And yes, they made it suck, but then all the free webmails of the day sucked. I remember Altavista mail well. It was GMail that first bucked that trend. This is not a "M$" trait by any stretch of the imagination.
Amazon used to have a good search, then along came M$
No, I'm sorry. Amazon used to suck rocks. Now that they run on top of Live, it sucks less. Seriously, Live is really not that bad, but I'm sure you've never even loaded it.
Is a picture emerging here?
Sure, XBox is not selling and neither is Vista. All of Microsoft's product have been "losers", which is why they are where they are today. Their development tools suck. Their office suite barely sells. The picture is clear. Thanks for bringing that up.
I remember there was that early Plone (or Zope, I forget) bug where a password couldn't begin with an underscore or a tilde or something like that. That one was funny. But they fixed it, as I'm sure "M$" fixed this one.
But here you are, using a bug in a compiler that hasn't been used in years as ammunition for your "M$ sux" religion. How painfully lame can you get?