I was checking out Slashcode.com the other day because I wanted to submit some patches to create some desperately needed features (killfiles and nick-changing). But then I realized that while some patches have been submitted, none have ever been accepted. What's up with this. Also, if they ever DO get accepted, will they ever run on slashdot.org? -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
I'm glad I'm not the only one around here who realizes "they cost too much" is a strawman. The point here is rights, not money. And there is no "right to make a profit". -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Don't be silly, you have the rights to a physical creation as well, until you sell or give it to someone."
Ummm...that's my point. Person A creates physical item I. A gives I to B. At this point A has no claim whatsoever on I. B can resell, give, dismantle, copy and redistribute, etc. But if I is non-physical, B can't do all those things.
"If you honestly don't understand a concept that enough other people grasp, its your job to educate yourself, not everyone elses to stop using the word until you personally accept it."
It's not a matter of understanding the word--I'm clear on what "copyright" means. I'm saying that just spouting the word provides no explanation. I've provided an explanation of my position (see above). What you've done is the equivalent of answering the question "why do we sleep" by answering "because we are tired". Duh! But WHY?
There's no need for your explanation to be "drawn out". Just a simple outline will do. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"The fact is, content-creators need to be compensated for the work they do. Copyright helps to ensure that that happens."
Ownership is a "natural law". It is clear to everyone what it means to own, say, a car. It is a very basic concept. Copyright weakens the force of that natural law by removing certain rights from the purported "owner". So the situation we have is one where rights are removed from the vast majority to ensure the money-making potential (which, btw, is not a right) of a small number of people.
I'm not objecting to artists (or even the RIAA) making money. What I AM objecting to is their making money at the expense of my rights to do what I want with the items I own.
Therefore, if an artist asked me not to distribute copies of an item acknowledged as mine, I might consider it. If I liked the artist, I would probably say something like "I won't distribute it widely, but I'll still share with my friends".
Let me ask you this: If you could get a CD (copy) for free of an artist you very much liked and admired and the artist asked for a donation, would you do it? Why or why not?
Ending IP would change a lot of things, but I don't think the world would come to an end. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"...most people believe that when you create something you have an interest and ownership in it, even if that "something" is non-physical in nature."
You mean only if that something is non-physical. If I built a car and sold it to you and you gave it to Frank (or built another one and gave THAT to Frank) no one would say that MY rights had been violated.
"In other words, copyright. Don't be childish and reject an answer you don't like..."
I'm not rejecting the answer because I don't like it. I'm rejecting the answer because it's not an answer. It's just a word. "We hold these things to be self-evident..." doesn't work for me. EXPLAIN WHY there is such a thing as copyright, don't just tell me it exists. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
(I don't read your column as often as I'd like, but when I do, I love it. R of the Ns was great.)
You are one of the few columnists out there who seems to have a clue. And I'm not saying that just because you like Linux--everything I've heard from you radiates insight (even when it's wrong). You also work for PBS, who, I assume, can't afford to pay the big bucks. Do you ever find yourself starting articles intended to spank the well-paid idiots *couch*jesseberst*cough* who spout off in commercial fora? Have you ever published any of these articles? -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"That's what the MPAA is trying to stop you from doing, the RIAA just want you to stopping giving away copies to people who don't own it."
If *I* own it, why should the RIAA have any say what I do with it? Don't say "copyright"--that's an answer to "why DOES the RIAA have any say". I want to know why SHOULD the RIAA have any say. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
There is no need to get out panties in a bunch. Nobody gives a rip about Napster per se--all we care about is sharing MP3's. That has not ended. Furthermore there is nothing on the horizon that could possibly end it. There is MP3-sharing software other than Napster that doesn't share it's legal flaws (such as having a well-known operator). And even if there wasn't such software, FTP still works.
It's all over but the crying. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
For you and me, yes. But to motivate The People, you need competition. There is no competition in "colonize Mars". There IS competition in "We Can Beat The Pants Off Japan With Mars' Gold" or even "Colonize Mars Before The Chinese Do".
"Capturing the public's imagination" is not enough. You MUST capture their competitive spirit. When Joe reads the daily status report on the Mars Mission, we don't want him to say "Huh, neat". We want him to shout "Go team!".
I'm not saying the asteroid belt is beyond our technological grasp. I'm saying that we probably wouldn't see anything from there for 20 years and that's too long to make Joe wait.
Don't ask yourself "what would motivate me to go to Mars". Don't ask your techie friends/co-workers. Ask people in bars and supermarkets. These are the people who have to pay for the mission, they are the people you have to excite. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Don't get me wrong, I would be totally pumped if we had a manned mission to Mars (or better yet, a Mars Station).
But I don't know if that would get the public all that excited. Back in 1969 the general public was pretty thrilled to see live pictures from the surface of the moon. But today most everybody has seen Star Wars, Star Trek, and a billion other SF shows and movies--they are going to need to see more than a man in a spacesuit jumping over some red rocks to get them excited.
What we really need is a Mission (with a capital M). In the 60's this was Beat The Reds To The Moon. "Do it for science" is never going to be capitalized for Joe Schmoe. We need something like Mars Has Gold or Mars Has Life or whatever.
The only (halfway valid) "cause" I can think of off the top of my head is The Asteroids Have Precious Metals And Mars Is Nearby. But that Mission requires more than a trip to Mars--it requires space-mining (a so-far fictional activity) and scheduled regular trips out to the asteroid belt (not cheap). -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Oh, there are the pics. Follow the link to the main Evolution page, then follow the links to the various pieces (Mail, Calendar, etc).
Also, no MAPI. I thought Miguel's interview from a while back mentioned that Evolution would support MAPI, but obviously I'm mis-remembering. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
As I understand it, Evolution will be a Outlook replacement--that is, you can use Evolution on Linux to connect to an Exchange server. You can see your email, your contacts, your schedule, etc.
I'm very very interested in this. From my sig (today and over the past couple of months) you can tell that my company has a server that runs on Linux (and Tru64 and AIX) that you can connect to from Exchange and Outlook on Windows. Unfortunately we can't do the Outlook specific stuff yet (contacts, task list, calendar/schedule, etc). Hopefully being able to use/view/test the Evolution code will help us there.
Actually, all that Outlook-stuff is really done in the MAPI driver. The server doesn't really have to know anything (except for the workgroup stuff like sharing schedules). My question for the Evolution team is: Are you going to release a separate "MAPI driver for Linux" piece? -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Is there a new copy of the moderator guidelines that contains the phrase "don't think, just moderate"?
The only thing that makes a member of the 4% special is that their site is a bridge between large sections of the Web. Nothing else. It needn't even be highly connected itself. For instance, let's say all sites were partitioned into two groups: A) Those you could get to via Yahoo and B) Those you could get to via InfoSeek. Further assume that none of those sites linked to sites in the other group. Now I start a site that has just two link: 1) To Yahoo, 2) To InfoSeek. MY site is the only one linking "the whole internet" together. What power do I have? None.
Furthermore, let's say that I DID have power by virtue of my accidental placement. That power is easily wrenched from me by anyone who sets up their own site that links Yahoo and InfoSeek.
Yes, the Web has "link bottlenecks". But they web is three-dimensional, you don't have to travel linearly. Just hop right to the location you want and bypass the bottleneck altogether. Better yet, create your own site and make the bottle neck disappear. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Land directly on the surface using a booster? Haven't you ever played XLander? It's damn near impossible unless you are a mathematical prodigy with unusual dexterity.
It's hella easier to just pad the thing you're going to throw and point it in the general direction of Mars. In any case, it's exactly what the last probe did and it worked fine. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"But let's assume Linux has had a 4% market share every year since 1993."
Yes, obviously false for the beginning. But also false NOW. Your quote from the IDC report is not about "market share" it is about "share of shipping units". That's not even vaguely related.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to count Linux users. With no real shipping numbers to compare the terms become meaningless. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Here is my actual question: "Why can't a public relations officer from the NSA tell me his name?" -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
For the US only, I think 50 million is too high--probably 20-25 million is closer Worldwide I think it is too low--I would be willing to bet it was closer to 75-100 million (or more?). In any case, I'm sick of seeing the "7 millions users" mantra trotted out year after year when it is plainly outdated. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"...current numbers that show Windows having 87 percent share of a 98.5 million shipment market....and Linux paid copies having just under four percent. "
4 percent would be around 4 million, JUST THIS YEAR. If that was the whole story and Linux had only 7 million users now, there would have been only 3 last year--and we KNOW that ain't right (see other posts in this thread for proof).
These arguments have been made many times, but I'll make it here again: What are we measuring? Users or shipments? I've never bought a single "shipped" copy of Linux. But I have installed it on over 10 machines. How many "users" is that?
There's also the question of what IDC covers--the world or the US? -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
May 1998 press release: http://www.redhat.com/mailing-lists/blinux-list/19 98-5/msg00062.html
That's 28 million now AT LEAST.
Or from Slashdot in 10/98: http://slashdot.org/articles/98/10/21/1843217.shtm l (search for "7 million")
Best yet from 01/98: http://www.xent.com/jan98/0440.html
Which quotes these figures from a 1996/7 report: "Here are Young's estimates of the number of Linux systems extant through 1996:
End of year millions
1993 0.1 1994 0.5 1995 1.5 1996 3 - 5
Note the "more than doubling" nature of these numbers. Let's say it was only 3 million in 1996. 1997 - 6 million. 1998 - 12 million. 1999 - 24 million. 2000 - almost 50 million! If you start with 5 mill in 1996, you get 80 mill today! And that's just doubling. Even 1994-1995 (when nobody had ever heard of Linux) was a tripler. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Claim with no attached meaning, let alone evidence.
"While Linux might be cheapest of them all, among commercial unicies OSX will be the cheapest."
Possibly true (is pricing for OSX available yet?) but utterly irrelevant. Why limit discussion to "commercial unicies" [sic]?
"SCO costs an arm and a leg, along with Solaris."
Non-sequitur.
"Most available referred to where it's being sold and market attention."
This appears to be English but is not well-formed.
"The Mac has the combination of installed base, cost, and market attention that makes it perfect for posts."
"The Mac" no longer exists. There is MacOS and there is OS X. OS X has zero installed base. Cost has yet to be determined. "Market attention" and $.75 will buy you a cup of coffee. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
You had refined your trolling so far it was indistingiushable from real posts. But you've apparently lost it in the past few days.
For instance, why compare iMac to Sun? SCO, BSD AND Linux all run on Intel. You can get an Intel box for the same price as an iMac and we all know the OS is free....
Probably the "cheapest and most available system ever to come with a UNIX preloaded" so far is the DotStation from Intel (IBM?) that comes with Linux. I doubt iMac with OS X (will OS X run on an iMac) can beat it. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"The hardest part, according to Robert Palmer, will be writing the GUI..."
This is old news. Haven't you ever heard his song? "Simply Unportable"
As for "assume Linux has 7 million users"--there are more than that. That figure comes from a survey done 3-4 years ago. The other conclusion of that study was that the numbers were doubling every year. Even assuming it's still "only" doubling that puts us at 54-108 million.
That number seems a little high to me, but that's just a gut reaction. Don't bother responding with YOUR gut reactions--get some hard facts (or at least hard reasoning). -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Debian is a volunteer project, so it's not like Debian is taking away resources from other projects to work on the Hurd, like a company might have to do."
Parameterize this baby and you've got yourself a response to "why don't these developers quit writing IRC clients and all contribute to some one project".
Linux NOW sounds pretty interesting. Something I didn't see him address, though, is the absolutely most important feature of a distributed (file) system: Simple, easily understood (and discovered) behavior. Every time I save a file, I don't want to have to think to myself "Let's see, I saved this from a desktop, so if I go to a laptop I have to hit refresh but make sure not to save changes....etc". -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Slashdot Mirror
I was checking out Slashcode.com the other day because I wanted to submit some patches to create some desperately needed features (killfiles and nick-changing). But then I realized that while some patches have been submitted, none have ever been accepted. What's up with this. Also, if they ever DO get accepted, will they ever run on slashdot.org?
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
I'm glad I'm not the only one around here who realizes "they cost too much" is a strawman. The point here is rights, not money. And there is no "right to make a profit".
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Don't be silly, you have the rights to a physical creation as well, until you sell or give it to someone."
Ummm...that's my point. Person A creates physical item I. A gives I to B. At this point A has no claim whatsoever on I. B can resell, give, dismantle, copy and redistribute, etc. But if I is non-physical, B can't do all those things.
"If you honestly don't understand a concept that enough other people grasp, its your job to educate yourself, not everyone elses to stop using the word until you personally accept it."
It's not a matter of understanding the word--I'm clear on what "copyright" means. I'm saying that just spouting the word provides no explanation. I've provided an explanation of my position (see above). What you've done is the equivalent of answering the question "why do we sleep" by answering "because we are tired". Duh! But WHY?
There's no need for your explanation to be "drawn out". Just a simple outline will do.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"The fact is, content-creators need to be compensated for the work they do. Copyright helps to ensure that that happens."
Ownership is a "natural law". It is clear to everyone what it means to own, say, a car. It is a very basic concept. Copyright weakens the force of that natural law by removing certain rights from the purported "owner". So the situation we have is one where rights are removed from the vast majority to ensure the money-making potential (which, btw, is not a right) of a small number of people.
I'm not objecting to artists (or even the RIAA) making money. What I AM objecting to is their making money at the expense of my rights to do what I want with the items I own.
Therefore, if an artist asked me not to distribute copies of an item acknowledged as mine, I might consider it. If I liked the artist, I would probably say something like "I won't distribute it widely, but I'll still share with my friends".
Let me ask you this: If you could get a CD (copy) for free of an artist you very much liked and admired and the artist asked for a donation, would you do it? Why or why not?
Ending IP would change a lot of things, but I don't think the world would come to an end.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"...most people believe that when you create something you have an interest and ownership in it, even if that "something" is non-physical in nature."
You mean only if that something is non-physical. If I built a car and sold it to you and you gave it to Frank (or built another one and gave THAT to Frank) no one would say that MY rights had been violated.
"In other words, copyright. Don't be childish and reject an answer you don't like..."
I'm not rejecting the answer because I don't like it. I'm rejecting the answer because it's not an answer. It's just a word. "We hold these things to be self-evident..." doesn't work for me. EXPLAIN WHY there is such a thing as copyright, don't just tell me it exists.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
(I don't read your column as often as I'd like, but when I do, I love it. R of the Ns was great.)
You are one of the few columnists out there who seems to have a clue. And I'm not saying that just because you like Linux--everything I've heard from you radiates insight (even when it's wrong). You also work for PBS, who, I assume, can't afford to pay the big bucks. Do you ever find yourself starting articles intended to spank the well-paid idiots *couch*jesseberst*cough* who spout off in commercial fora? Have you ever published any of these articles?
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"That's what the MPAA is trying to stop you from doing, the RIAA just want you to stopping giving away copies to people who don't own it."
If *I* own it, why should the RIAA have any say what I do with it? Don't say "copyright"--that's an answer to "why DOES the RIAA have any say". I want to know why SHOULD the RIAA have any say.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
1) $1/song is less than $15/8 songs. If/When the RIAA tries to go to a per song basis (which seems unlikely to me) they will start around $3.
2) MY problem is that I can't legally make copies of a product I purportedly own.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
There is no need to get out panties in a bunch. Nobody gives a rip about Napster per se--all we care about is sharing MP3's. That has not ended. Furthermore there is nothing on the horizon that could possibly end it. There is MP3-sharing software other than Napster that doesn't share it's legal flaws (such as having a well-known operator). And even if there wasn't such software, FTP still works.
It's all over but the crying.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"And colonising Mars wouldn't be a Mission?"
For you and me, yes. But to motivate The People, you need competition. There is no competition in "colonize Mars". There IS competition in "We Can Beat The Pants Off Japan With Mars' Gold" or even "Colonize Mars Before The Chinese Do".
"Capturing the public's imagination" is not enough. You MUST capture their competitive spirit. When Joe reads the daily status report on the Mars Mission, we don't want him to say "Huh, neat". We want him to shout "Go team!".
I'm not saying the asteroid belt is beyond our technological grasp. I'm saying that we probably wouldn't see anything from there for 20 years and that's too long to make Joe wait.
Don't ask yourself "what would motivate me to go to Mars". Don't ask your techie friends/co-workers. Ask people in bars and supermarkets. These are the people who have to pay for the mission, they are the people you have to excite.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Don't get me wrong, I would be totally pumped if we had a manned mission to Mars (or better yet, a Mars Station).
But I don't know if that would get the public all that excited. Back in 1969 the general public was pretty thrilled to see live pictures from the surface of the moon. But today most everybody has seen Star Wars, Star Trek, and a billion other SF shows and movies--they are going to need to see more than a man in a spacesuit jumping over some red rocks to get them excited.
What we really need is a Mission (with a capital M). In the 60's this was Beat The Reds To The Moon. "Do it for science" is never going to be capitalized for Joe Schmoe. We need something like Mars Has Gold or Mars Has Life or whatever.
The only (halfway valid) "cause" I can think of off the top of my head is The Asteroids Have Precious Metals And Mars Is Nearby. But that Mission requires more than a trip to Mars--it requires space-mining (a so-far fictional activity) and scheduled regular trips out to the asteroid belt (not cheap).
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Oh, there are the pics. Follow the link to the main Evolution page, then follow the links to the various pieces (Mail, Calendar, etc).
Also, no MAPI. I thought Miguel's interview from a while back mentioned that Evolution would support MAPI, but obviously I'm mis-remembering.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Where are the pics?
As I understand it, Evolution will be a Outlook replacement--that is, you can use Evolution on Linux to connect to an Exchange server. You can see your email, your contacts, your schedule, etc.
I'm very very interested in this. From my sig (today and over the past couple of months) you can tell that my company has a server that runs on Linux (and Tru64 and AIX) that you can connect to from Exchange and Outlook on Windows. Unfortunately we can't do the Outlook specific stuff yet (contacts, task list, calendar/schedule, etc). Hopefully being able to use/view/test the Evolution code will help us there.
Actually, all that Outlook-stuff is really done in the MAPI driver. The server doesn't really have to know anything (except for the workgroup stuff like sharing schedules). My question for the Evolution team is: Are you going to release a separate "MAPI driver for Linux" piece?
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Is there a new copy of the moderator guidelines that contains the phrase "don't think, just moderate"?
The only thing that makes a member of the 4% special is that their site is a bridge between large sections of the Web. Nothing else. It needn't even be highly connected itself. For instance, let's say all sites were partitioned into two groups: A) Those you could get to via Yahoo and B) Those you could get to via InfoSeek. Further assume that none of those sites linked to sites in the other group. Now I start a site that has just two link: 1) To Yahoo, 2) To InfoSeek. MY site is the only one linking "the whole internet" together. What power do I have? None.
Furthermore, let's say that I DID have power by virtue of my accidental placement. That power is easily wrenched from me by anyone who sets up their own site that links Yahoo and InfoSeek.
Yes, the Web has "link bottlenecks". But they web is three-dimensional, you don't have to travel linearly. Just hop right to the location you want and bypass the bottleneck altogether. Better yet, create your own site and make the bottle neck disappear.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Land directly on the surface using a booster? Haven't you ever played XLander? It's damn near impossible unless you are a mathematical prodigy with unusual dexterity.
It's hella easier to just pad the thing you're going to throw and point it in the general direction of Mars. In any case, it's exactly what the last probe did and it worked fine.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"But let's assume Linux has had a 4% market share every year since 1993."
Yes, obviously false for the beginning. But also false NOW. Your quote from the IDC report is not about "market share" it is about "share of shipping units". That's not even vaguely related.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to count Linux users. With no real shipping numbers to compare the terms become meaningless.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Here is my actual question: "Why can't a public relations officer from the NSA tell me his name?"
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
For the US only, I think 50 million is too high--probably 20-25 million is closer Worldwide I think it is too low--I would be willing to bet it was closer to 75-100 million (or more?). In any case, I'm sick of seeing the "7 millions users" mantra trotted out year after year when it is plainly outdated.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"...current numbers that show Windows having 87 percent share of a 98.5 million shipment market....and Linux paid copies having just under four percent. "
4 percent would be around 4 million, JUST THIS YEAR. If that was the whole story and Linux had only 7 million users now, there would have been only 3 last year--and we KNOW that ain't right (see other posts in this thread for proof).
These arguments have been made many times, but I'll make it here again: What are we measuring? Users or shipments? I've never bought a single "shipped" copy of Linux. But I have installed it on over 10 machines. How many "users" is that?
There's also the question of what IDC covers--the world or the US?
--
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SX=$99. Puts it all into context, doesn't it?
It sure does. It's $99 dollars more expensive than Linux or FreeBSD.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
May 1998 press release: http://www.redhat.com/mailing-lists/blinux-list/19 98-5/msg00062.html
m l (search for "7 million")
That's 28 million now AT LEAST.
Or from Slashdot in 10/98: http://slashdot.org/articles/98/10/21/1843217.sht
Best yet from 01/98: http://www.xent.com/jan98/0440.html
Which quotes these figures from a 1996/7 report: "Here are Young's estimates of the number of Linux systems extant through 1996:
End of year millions
1993 0.1
1994 0.5
1995 1.5
1996 3 - 5
Note the "more than doubling" nature of these numbers. Let's say it was only 3 million in 1996. 1997 - 6 million. 1998 - 12 million. 1999 - 24 million. 2000 - almost 50 million! If you start with 5 mill in 1996, you get 80 mill today! And that's just doubling. Even 1994-1995 (when nobody had ever heard of Linux) was a tripler.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Actually, you're losing your touch."
Claim with no attached meaning, let alone evidence.
"While Linux might be cheapest of them all, among commercial unicies OSX will be the cheapest."
Possibly true (is pricing for OSX available yet?) but utterly irrelevant. Why limit discussion to "commercial unicies" [sic]?
"SCO costs an arm and a leg, along with Solaris."
Non-sequitur.
"Most available referred to where it's being sold and market attention."
This appears to be English but is not well-formed.
"The Mac has the combination of installed base, cost, and market attention that makes it perfect for posts."
"The Mac" no longer exists. There is MacOS and there is OS X. OS X has zero installed base. Cost has yet to be determined. "Market attention" and $.75 will buy you a cup of coffee.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
You had refined your trolling so far it was indistingiushable from real posts. But you've apparently lost it in the past few days.
For instance, why compare iMac to Sun? SCO, BSD AND Linux all run on Intel. You can get an Intel box for the same price as an iMac and we all know the OS is free....
Probably the "cheapest and most available system ever to come with a UNIX preloaded" so far is the DotStation from Intel (IBM?) that comes with Linux. I doubt iMac with OS X (will OS X run on an iMac) can beat it.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"The hardest part, according to Robert Palmer, will be writing the GUI..."
This is old news. Haven't you ever heard his song? "Simply Unportable"
As for "assume Linux has 7 million users"--there are more than that. That figure comes from a survey done 3-4 years ago. The other conclusion of that study was that the numbers were doubling every year. Even assuming it's still "only" doubling that puts us at 54-108 million.
That number seems a little high to me, but that's just a gut reaction. Don't bother responding with YOUR gut reactions--get some hard facts (or at least hard reasoning).
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"Debian is a volunteer project, so it's not like Debian is taking away resources from other projects to work on the Hurd, like a company might have to do."
Parameterize this baby and you've got yourself a response to "why don't these developers quit writing IRC clients and all contribute to some one project".
Linux NOW sounds pretty interesting. Something I didn't see him address, though, is the absolutely most important feature of a distributed (file) system: Simple, easily understood (and discovered) behavior. Every time I save a file, I don't want to have to think to myself "Let's see, I saved this from a desktop, so if I go to a laptop I have to hit refresh but make sure not to save changes....etc".
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!