"If you're still not sure after all that, you're going to have to (gasp, shock, horror) actually sit down in front of a Linux box and see it in action yourself."
I admit I have not seen KDE. I have had the misfortune of having to (gasp, shock, horror) sit down in front of a Linux box running Gnome. Horribly unusable, but it sure looked pretty.
Being a hypocrite is not a bad thing, as you appear to imply. Different situations require different resolutions. Only the young and naive would fail to comprehend that.
The problems with trade in the Ukraine are very different than with China. China has also been called on intellectual property issues as well.
What would you rather we do? Declare war with China? How will that help us or the chinese citizenry?
That type of foreign policy was a failure. The tact we use now is quite simple, we let you be a part of our success. We realize that a free market also can't exist without personal and economic freedoms constrained by certain laws(a legal system must exist to enforce contracts, etc), so if a country wants to truly be part of the success they need to adapt what they do to what we do.
That is our current solution for China, and it is working. Similarly with Russia and a number of other nations. It's a slow process. Understand that many of these countries are centuries behind us in terms of their development. Few countries can turn around and redirect themselves as quick as say Japan.
I've been an advocate for this type of coercion since the whole South Africa apartheid situation. Instead of boycotting and punishing, we introduce more and more of our successes and show what is possible. Punishment only creates resentment and slows the process towards freedom.
But my point was, if you look at how badly IBM floundered the sale of OS/2, and then consider that OS/2 had a really good technical lead, which Linux doesn't have...
History often repeats itself. Now maybe IBM has changed, but it doesn't look like it so far. So far I've only seen then targetting Linux towards people willing to buy their Mainframe product, which is doubtful to succeed.
#1 - Lack of bandwidth. Unless it's a corporate site, they're generally running off limited bandwidth, or on a host with bandwidth throttles.
#2 - Dynamic content poorly developed.
Any modern computer running a 300Mhz processor or better will saturate a T3 line on static content.
But if you use dynamic content, and you have not done any load testing, you can start hitting other limits of the hardware beyond bandwidth. If you really haven't done any testing at all, the whole system can fall down and go boom because of poor code, memory leaks, and so forth.
For once I have to agree with the troll Malcontent... although only in part.
Usually companies aren't sued over the quality of a product. Although I seem to recall Oracle might have been for their app suite.
But there is accountability when money is exchanging hands, because look I'm not going to pay you this $1 mil until you can come in here and get your stupid software working right.
It's that market conversation thing that the cluetrain manifesto talks about. It's something that is missing from the open source model.
"What do 100% of net types use, every single day? 1) base OS, 2) web browser, 3) music. Whoever makes 1-3 a better thing deserves my hard-earned cash."
I just donated $300 to Microsoft for helping to improve all three.
If you are going to by Sony headphones you want either the MDR-V6 or MDR-7506 sets.
The V500 are meant for rap music, not studio work.
I have a pair of the V6 headphones I purchased about 12 years ago, and they still sound incredible. Yes, I agree that with a good pair of headphones you can hear much more detail in the music.
"Linux and it's open source competitors to Windows only have to be "good enough" and free for them to win."
Linux has been "good enough" for years, at least by your standards. How come they haven't won yet?
"Linux desktop is already approaching the 80% mark pretty fast. "
Perhaps if you compare it to Win3.1, but compared to modern environments it's more like 20%.
"I figure linux should reach 10 percent in two years and over 40% in four."
I actually rather suspect Linux desktop use will decline from it's position today. Perhaps you meant.10% in two years and.04% in four?
Linux had more of a chance back in '99 compared to NT4 and MacOS8, but the gap(or should I say chasm?) between it and modern systems such as MacOSX or WinXP has been increasing, not decreasing.
I keep telling them they should appeal to the Catholic Church. Explain that without funds to drive software development, these programmers will be homeless on the streets.
"The FBI need cleaning before Clinton got into office -- it just got worse. "
No, it became signifigantly better after Clinton took office.
The two incidents you refer to with the FBI were the fault of the Republican appointed officials. After Clinton came into office and appointed Louis Freeh, the FBI(and ATF) began a process of clean up.
What I object to is that you've fallen like a sheep before the slaughter to the Republican bullshit where they refuse to take responsibility for their failures and instead blame it on Democrats. This has been a constant theme for the past 9 years of trying to tie both Ruby Ridge and Waco to Clinton and Reno.
I'd be curious if you can come up with an incident similar to Ruby Ridge(or Waco) which occured after 1993. I cannot remember any, despite the fact that more criminals were imprisoned during the Clinton years than during the Reagan/Bush years combined.
The most serious thing that I recall happening was the McVeigh screw up with the papers, but while a mistake it was nowhere near as serious and purposeful.
"Anyway, to say such a thing as a democrat puts you just as ignorant and partisan as a Republican."
If you can prove to my satisfaction that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh are not ignorant, stupid and partisan, I'll gladly recind my statement.
"Not to mention the fact that anytime you put a label on yourself as democrat or republican, you're being partisan, and as a result, in my mind, ignorant."
There's nothing wrong with being partisan, and being partisan does not make you ignorant. Generally quality partisanship comes from a standpoint of knowing what you are talking about, which is the case with me when it comes to political discussions.
No, my complaint with Republicans is that they are stupid, ignorant and partisan. It's that combination which is extremely hazardous to our nations well being.
Oh, and I'm not a Democrat so much as an anti-Republican.
Actually the one thing that all news which is incredibly biased has in common is that they keep telling you how unbiased they are.
You won't find that on the BBC, NPR, CNN, NBC, etc.
In fact the only stations that keep telling you that they are unbiased are FoxNews and EIB network(Rush Limbaugh). Now that should make you wonder, but I'm sure you haven't thought that far ahead in your argument.
It's kind of an interesting because these idiots who insist they have to have the music are really just sheep for the music industry. The only reason they feel they must have the music is because the advertising on the radio told them so.
So they yell about the RIAA and yet at the same time snuggle up and kiss their ass at the same time. They aren't part of a solution, they just keep contributing to the same problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you're still not sure after all that, you're going to have to (gasp, shock, horror) actually sit down in front of a Linux box and see it in action yourself."
I admit I have not seen KDE. I have had the misfortune of having to (gasp, shock, horror) sit down in front of a Linux box running Gnome. Horribly unusable, but it sure looked pretty.
So can anyone prove that these aren't just screenshots of Windows 2000 with a stardock skin?
Being a hypocrite is not a bad thing, as you appear to imply. Different situations require different resolutions. Only the young and naive would fail to comprehend that.
The problems with trade in the Ukraine are very different than with China. China has also been called on intellectual property issues as well.
What would you rather we do? Declare war with China? How will that help us or the chinese citizenry?
That type of foreign policy was a failure. The tact we use now is quite simple, we let you be a part of our success. We realize that a free market also can't exist without personal and economic freedoms constrained by certain laws(a legal system must exist to enforce contracts, etc), so if a country wants to truly be part of the success they need to adapt what they do to what we do.
That is our current solution for China, and it is working. Similarly with Russia and a number of other nations. It's a slow process. Understand that many of these countries are centuries behind us in terms of their development. Few countries can turn around and redirect themselves as quick as say Japan.
I've been an advocate for this type of coercion since the whole South Africa apartheid situation. Instead of boycotting and punishing, we introduce more and more of our successes and show what is possible. Punishment only creates resentment and slows the process towards freedom.
But my point was, if you look at how badly IBM floundered the sale of OS/2, and then consider that OS/2 had a really good technical lead, which Linux doesn't have...
History often repeats itself. Now maybe IBM has changed, but it doesn't look like it so far. So far I've only seen then targetting Linux towards people willing to buy their Mainframe product, which is doubtful to succeed.
"How'd this guy fail to achive Presidency?"
His father didn't help appoint 5 supreme court justices.
Ok, think about this.
At one time IBM actually had an OS that was not only very capable as a server, but also as a desktop.
IBM was completely unable to gain the marketshare momentum needed to succeed with it.
Now you seriously think that they're going to be able to pull off the same with Linux, which doesn't even have the good solid headstart that OS/2 had?
You have a lot more faith in IBM than I do.
The Register has credibility to lose?
Wow, that's a new one.
I can think of two actual problems:
#1 - Lack of bandwidth. Unless it's a corporate site, they're generally running off limited bandwidth, or on a host with bandwidth throttles.
#2 - Dynamic content poorly developed.
Any modern computer running a 300Mhz processor or better will saturate a T3 line on static content.
But if you use dynamic content, and you have not done any load testing, you can start hitting other limits of the hardware beyond bandwidth. If you really haven't done any testing at all, the whole system can fall down and go boom because of poor code, memory leaks, and so forth.
For once I have to agree with the troll Malcontent... although only in part.
Usually companies aren't sued over the quality of a product. Although I seem to recall Oracle might have been for their app suite.
But there is accountability when money is exchanging hands, because look I'm not going to pay you this $1 mil until you can come in here and get your stupid software working right.
It's that market conversation thing that the cluetrain manifesto talks about. It's something that is missing from the open source model.
"A few weeks later he upgraded his operating system, and WMA's Rights Management kicked in and told him he couldn't play any of those files anymore. "
That would explain why I turn of Digital Rights Management in Windows Media Player.
I believe Microsoft also now provides a backup system for the DRM stuff. Haven't tried that, again because none of my music uses DRM.
"What do 100% of net types use, every single day? 1) base OS, 2) web browser, 3) music. Whoever makes 1-3 a better thing deserves my hard-earned cash."
I just donated $300 to Microsoft for helping to improve all three.
:-)
If you are going to by Sony headphones you want either the MDR-V6 or MDR-7506 sets.
The V500 are meant for rap music, not studio work.
I have a pair of the V6 headphones I purchased about 12 years ago, and they still sound incredible. Yes, I agree that with a good pair of headphones you can hear much more detail in the music.
"I guess I am just tired of fighting w/my linux desktop."
:)
Now after a few years you'll give up on cygwin, and then start using better tools and pretty soon you'll be living in a Unix free environment.
"Linux has been good enough for the server market since kernel 2.4. "
So all those arguments I heard back in '98 that Linux was good enough for the server market... what were they? lies?
"Fortunately it's not you who will be making this decision. "
Actually it is me.
"We'll see who is right in time."
We've already established you as extremely over optimistic. Almost as bad as R.E. Ballard.
"3) Make subtle compatibility changes in Office file formats. DOC format is extensible, so this is easy to do. "
The DOC format has not changed dramatically since Office 97.
Either has XLS.
I don't even think PPT has changed.
The one which has changed in a major way is MDB, with each revision. But why is this bad? The reason was to improve performance, stability, etc.
"Linux and it's open source competitors to Windows only have to be "good enough" and free for them to win."
.10% in two years and .04% in four?
Linux has been "good enough" for years, at least by your standards. How come they haven't won yet?
"Linux desktop is already approaching the 80% mark pretty fast. "
Perhaps if you compare it to Win3.1, but compared to modern environments it's more like 20%.
"I figure linux should reach 10 percent in two years and over 40% in four."
I actually rather suspect Linux desktop use will decline from it's position today. Perhaps you meant
Linux had more of a chance back in '99 compared to NT4 and MacOS8, but the gap(or should I say chasm?) between it and modern systems such as MacOSX or WinXP has been increasing, not decreasing.
I keep telling them they should appeal to the Catholic Church. Explain that without funds to drive software development, these programmers will be homeless on the streets.
Only if you are using Linux.
:)
Oh and submit an awful lot of 'Ask Slashdot' questions...
What validation of your generous assumptions have you performed?
When I did a capture of the data stream from my browser, all the sensitive information I saw was contained in POST calls using SSL.
"The FBI need cleaning before Clinton got into office -- it just got worse. "
No, it became signifigantly better after Clinton took office.
The two incidents you refer to with the FBI were the fault of the Republican appointed officials. After Clinton came into office and appointed Louis Freeh, the FBI(and ATF) began a process of clean up.
What I object to is that you've fallen like a sheep before the slaughter to the Republican bullshit where they refuse to take responsibility for their failures and instead blame it on Democrats. This has been a constant theme for the past 9 years of trying to tie both Ruby Ridge and Waco to Clinton and Reno.
I'd be curious if you can come up with an incident similar to Ruby Ridge(or Waco) which occured after 1993. I cannot remember any, despite the fact that more criminals were imprisoned during the Clinton years than during the Reagan/Bush years combined.
The most serious thing that I recall happening was the McVeigh screw up with the papers, but while a mistake it was nowhere near as serious and purposeful.
"Anyway, to say such a thing as a democrat puts you just as ignorant and partisan as a Republican."
If you can prove to my satisfaction that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh are not ignorant, stupid and partisan, I'll gladly recind my statement.
"Not to mention the fact that anytime you put a label on yourself as democrat or republican, you're being partisan, and as a result, in my mind, ignorant."
There's nothing wrong with being partisan, and being partisan does not make you ignorant. Generally quality partisanship comes from a standpoint of knowing what you are talking about, which is the case with me when it comes to political discussions.
No, my complaint with Republicans is that they are stupid, ignorant and partisan. It's that combination which is extremely hazardous to our nations well being.
Oh, and I'm not a Democrat so much as an anti-Republican.
Don't ask... Don't tell...
The question should have never been asked. But apparently you are just a sheep for your Republican masters.
Actually the one thing that all news which is incredibly biased has in common is that they keep telling you how unbiased they are.
You won't find that on the BBC, NPR, CNN, NBC, etc.
In fact the only stations that keep telling you that they are unbiased are FoxNews and EIB network(Rush Limbaugh). Now that should make you wonder, but I'm sure you haven't thought that far ahead in your argument.
It's kind of an interesting because these idiots who insist they have to have the music are really just sheep for the music industry. The only reason they feel they must have the music is because the advertising on the radio told them so.
So they yell about the RIAA and yet at the same time snuggle up and kiss their ass at the same time. They aren't part of a solution, they just keep contributing to the same problem.