Buy those shoes, suits, created with "slave wages", buy African corn, sugar, peanuts, tomatoes and apples.
That's how to lift people out of poverty.
We've been waging economic war with developing and third world countries for several generations now. It's only just starting to end. You can't buy African agricultural products (about all they can produce) because of the subsidies we give our own farming sectors to produce products at below market value.
The OLPC? Frankly it's irrelevant. What 3rd world countries need is first infrastructure and education. The OLPC isn't a particularly good way to educate people and there isn't enough infrastructure to make real use of it. The money spent on producing it would be better spent persuading American and European politicians to remove agricultural subsidies.
Whether or not other people use it has no impact on your use of it. Simply not the case. There are certain products which gain value with the number of people using them. The telephone, skype, email, qwerty keyboards, roads, ebay, paypal etc etc. You get the idea. Well Operating Systems benefit from the network effect, as do Office suites.
The more people who use an operating system, the more applications which become available for it, the more support becomes available for it.
But the game that the kids are bugging him about and the financial applications for which the local bank offers support are not listed. Now what? He now has exactly the same problem that Mac users have. i.e. What you're describing has nothing to do with Linux.
He's better off because there are 20,000 applications literally at his fingertips, hundreds of games, there's even an educational section for his kids and he saved hundreds of pounds in the process so he could even invest in a playstation. Oh, and banks don't offer support for financial applications.
To preempt the people who would say 'but this distorts the free market', remember that MS is a convicted monopolist; monopolies (which don't have to be 100% to be legally defined as such) stifle the free market; and trading conditions such as the above imposed on monopolists are designed to prevent them from stifling the free market. Or you just let MS charge what they like for their OS. They'll rapidly turn their system into a perceived problem as they maximise the price and profits.
e.g. Vista: £219.99 The hardware to run it: £279.00
Vista percentage of the purchase price for a new box? 44%
So this grandpa. Exactly where she should go to buy like software that works with Linux? He clicks the Applications menu, then clicks Add/Remove menu item. Then he types game, or finance and a list of available games or financial applications appear. He chooses one and clicks the install button.
As for DVD playing, he emails one of the Ubuntu maintainers and is sent a "patch" which updates his system fixing the problem and allowing the playing of DVDs. The patch is a handy script which adds the medibuntu repository and installs the libdvdcss library required to play encrypted DVDs.
Compare with attempting to find games and applications which will run on Windows, certainly not at the click of a button. Then there's dealing with viruses, spyware and other malware which infests vast numbers of machines.
This is Bad Advocacy what you are doing. This is Bad Grammar what you are doing.
Yes, it's a lot of cruft, but you also get necessary corporate features out of Exchange with Outlook that are impossible to get out of Pine, mail, Thunderbird, you name it Specifically?
Just wondering... (having worked as a systems, mail and even database administrator in a corporate environment for 15 years).
Most other email systems are sane and don't require the restoration of a 5 terrabyte database from tape when anything goes wrong. It's a dumb dumb design decision by someone with experience only of small mail systems (100 users max).
Linux is not customer ready OS right now (like for grandpa or smth.). If it would it would be mainstream right now. But it isn't There's a huge network effect to overcome when switching OS. That's why it takes so long. However Linux is consumer ready already. Like for grandpa.
Why linux is hard to sell is because (for most of its existence) it has been developed by highly technical people for highly technical people... Nope. It's hard to sell because there's no perceived need for it to fill. People get Windows for free, they don't pay for it, it just comes on a computer and they assume that's all there is. They assume all the problems it has are normal, completely standard part of all computers. To sell Linux to people you have to have one of two conditions.
1: It comes on the machine.
2: It fills a perceived need.
You have to fill a real and perceived need. That might be security, that might be stability, that might be flexibility, it might be openness, it might be cost, it might be to fit in, it might even be social status. All of the above may well be real needs of the user but if they can't see them then you can't sell them an alternative. THAT's marketing.
You can get a look at perceived needs by looking at the adverts that are being run for Windows and Mac. What're they saying about the new systems? The big one is security just now. Phishing, viruses, spyware etc.
How do I sell Linux? "No popups, no spyware, no viruses, no spam, no crashes, it just works."
but it hasn't gotten to the point where anyone can sit down in front of it and feel comfortable. Simply not true, Linux is as easy as windows these days, hell my aunt, a computer neophyte can use it.
They have a boot CD. Install CD, instant opengroupware system.
Having said that there is also Open-eXchange, egroupware, kolab, scalix, zimbra, group office, Citadel, simple groupware, Chandler.
Linux's problem isn't groupware, there's plenty of systems, some of them rather good. The specific problem is Microsoft Exchange, if it has to be exchange then there's a problem, if you're happy to drop exchange then you can replace virtually all of the functionality in the time it takes to install one of the mentioned alternatives.
Reduce the CO2 cap. California is implementing a cap and trade system for CO2 production. This'll make electricity a bit more expensive as the producers are required to trade CO2 emission permissions. People will automatically switch to cheaper technologies as they see the savings they can make.
Stall the internet's progress? Yes, that's exactly what it'll do. That's the purpose of the legislation. To prevent change to the network. It will prevent beneficial changes as well as malign ones and thereby stall development.
Except that in business, honour is written down and enforced in a contract or other agreement, like the one which allows you to use Windows. Nobody's forcing you to use Windows, you are allowed to because you agree to abide by the terms of the license.
I don't vote either, because it a) would have no effect, and b) all the parties look the same and are likely to lie and change their policies once they get in anyway (like Labour did). "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Burke
That the poor turnout is because voting is too hard...
Nothing to do with the fact that the government received only 34% of the votes but obtained 60% of the seats in parliament. No it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the electoral system throws away two thirds of all votes.
It's used today to confuse anyone with an engineering or scientific education. That means, anyone who could possibly make a difference. It's one of the ways the oil conspiracy are trying to sow confusion among those who promise to replace oil with renewables... The author of the article is a plant...
Because you're not selling in game items, or gold. You're selling the service of transferring an item from one in game character to another. At no point do you own anything.
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Start trading with them.
Buy those shoes, suits, created with "slave wages", buy African corn, sugar, peanuts, tomatoes and apples.
That's how to lift people out of poverty.
We've been waging economic war with developing and third world countries for several generations now. It's only just starting to end. You can't buy African agricultural products (about all they can produce) because of the subsidies we give our own farming sectors to produce products at below market value.
The OLPC? Frankly it's irrelevant. What 3rd world countries need is first infrastructure and education. The OLPC isn't a particularly good way to educate people and there isn't enough infrastructure to make real use of it. The money spent on producing it would be better spent persuading American and European politicians to remove agricultural subsidies.
If you're just following someone else?
Anyway. GnuStep should be the default Linux GUI...
The more people who use an operating system, the more applications which become available for it, the more support becomes available for it.
He's better off because there are 20,000 applications literally at his fingertips, hundreds of games, there's even an educational section for his kids and he saved hundreds of pounds in the process so he could even invest in a playstation. Oh, and banks don't offer support for financial applications.
I've worked support for years. HTH.
e.g.
Vista: £219.99
The hardware to run it: £279.00
Vista percentage of the purchase price for a new box? 44%
Ubuntu? Priceless.
As for DVD playing, he emails one of the Ubuntu maintainers and is sent a "patch" which updates his system fixing the problem and allowing the playing of DVDs. The patch is a handy script which adds the medibuntu repository and installs the libdvdcss library required to play encrypted DVDs.
Compare with attempting to find games and applications which will run on Windows, certainly not at the click of a button. Then there's dealing with viruses, spyware and other malware which infests vast numbers of machines. This is Bad Advocacy what you are doing. This is Bad Grammar what you are doing.
Just wondering... (having worked as a systems, mail and even database administrator in a corporate environment for 15 years).
Most other email systems are sane and don't require the restoration of a 5 terrabyte database from tape when anything goes wrong. It's a dumb dumb design decision by someone with experience only of small mail systems (100 users max).
1: It comes on the machine.
2: It fills a perceived need.
You have to fill a real and perceived need. That might be security, that might be stability, that might be flexibility, it might be openness, it might be cost, it might be to fit in, it might even be social status. All of the above may well be real needs of the user but if they can't see them then you can't sell them an alternative. THAT's marketing.
You can get a look at perceived needs by looking at the adverts that are being run for Windows and Mac. What're they saying about the new systems? The big one is security just now. Phishing, viruses, spyware etc.
How do I sell Linux? "No popups, no spyware, no viruses, no spam, no crashes, it just works." but it hasn't gotten to the point where anyone can sit down in front of it and feel comfortable. Simply not true, Linux is as easy as windows these days, hell my aunt, a computer neophyte can use it.
You mean this isn't how customer support is supposed to act?
p.s. The customer isn't always right, all too often the customer is wrong, stupid and loud with it.
They have a boot CD. Install CD, instant opengroupware system.
Having said that there is also Open-eXchange, egroupware, kolab, scalix, zimbra, group office, Citadel, simple groupware, Chandler.
Linux's problem isn't groupware, there's plenty of systems, some of them rather good. The specific problem is Microsoft Exchange, if it has to be exchange then there's a problem, if you're happy to drop exchange then you can replace virtually all of the functionality in the time it takes to install one of the mentioned alternatives.
Reduce the CO2 cap. California is implementing a cap and trade system for CO2 production. This'll make electricity a bit more expensive as the producers are required to trade CO2 emission permissions. People will automatically switch to cheaper technologies as they see the savings they can make.
Actually, it'll probably just maintain the status quot and stall the Internet's progress for a few years.
Except that in business, honour is written down and enforced in a contract or other agreement, like the one which allows you to use Windows. Nobody's forcing you to use Windows, you are allowed to because you agree to abide by the terms of the license.
Most people are really dumb.
That the poor turnout is because voting is too hard...
Nothing to do with the fact that the government received only 34% of the votes but obtained 60% of the seats in parliament. No it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the electoral system throws away two thirds of all votes.
It's used today to confuse anyone with an engineering or scientific education. That means, anyone who could possibly make a difference. It's one of the ways the oil conspiracy are trying to sow confusion among those who promise to replace oil with renewables... The author of the article is a plant...
Now it's even easier to pick out nice fat targets.
Because you're not selling in game items, or gold. You're selling the service of transferring an item from one in game character to another. At no point do you own anything.