There is a major major flaw in your argument. In the case of Microsoft or any other company who releases a product for free in order to drive out a competing company who must sell their rival product, the source code for the product is totally closed. If, for example, MS "defeats" RN and "wins" the streaming media war. Then they will hold a very strong lever, as anyone who wants to reach millions of people with streaming media will be forced to pay MS money to use their proprietary product.
In the case of Linux and OSS, if I'm trying to produce a particular type of application with the intention of selling it, and someone else simultaneously creates a similar product but GPLs it, they have not in any way produced a proprietary lever through which they can rake in money without having to improve the product. In fact, I can still make a ton of money, as I would be allowed to analyze the GPLed product for features that it was lacking that I might want to incorporate into my closed source application. If I then sold my closed source appliation, the consumer would have benefited as they would be purchasing a better product than if there had not been the OSS rival product.
And there is always the possibility to not adhere to the standard money making scheme of simply making money from the binary application. Instead of competing with the OSS version, a person could help merge the two versions to produce a superior GPLed program, and then sit down and create wonderful documentation which could then be sold as books or charge for technical support or attempt to convince other companies to invest in the application based on it's superior merits. I do not fully understand the money making potentials here, but they obviously exit.
I think if you consider OSS programming as not being able to put bread on the table, then it is not a problem with the OSS model, but rather with the way you're trying to use the model. And in no way is the OSS model the same as the traditional MS model. I can't think of many things that are so diametrically opposed.
You just have to read some H.G. Wells. I picked up a book of all of his short stories and novellas (It's a >1000 page collection), and have finally finished reading all of it. All I have to say is WOW. It's kind of like having listened to Led Zeppelin all your life, and then having someone hand you a stack of Delta Blues ablums... both are very entertaining but there's nothing like the true original.
I seem to remember that the idea of consumer-level biotech and it's associated patentability, profitability, and inherent potential for disaster is perhaps the most significant theme in the Micheal Chriton book, Jurassic Park.
Biotech companies fall in and out of existence with incredible rapidity these days. Imagine the potential wealth that could be had if a particular biotech company was able to patent the process of growing a living and breathing Wooly Mammoth, an event that has a real potential of happening.
And how long before somebody figures out that kids would simply love a picacho(sp?) that was a real living and breathing animal. Biotech has the capacity to give us wonderful medical advancements, but I think it's a dangerous tool to be put in the hands of the impulse driven public.
It was funny when the Flinstones used animals as tools... I wonder if it will still be humorous when we start to.
It seems that the rate of closed house product development seems to be far slower than that of open source product development. How do you plan to keep the Corel Office products in sync with the latest developments of the Linux platform? For instance, from what I understand, the Corel Linux distribution is based on glibc2.0, while Debian (the distribution which Corel Linux is based on) will soon be releasing their next stable version, based upon glibc2.1. Does Corel plan to also upgrade their Linux distribution to glibc2.1, and will this library change cause problems with Corel's Office suite? And how about soon to happen changes in the XFree86 platform? If Corel is unable to keep up, would it consider open sourcing their Office Suite?
I have a real problem with the government making it mandatory for a governmentally funded institution to purchase consumer level product(s) that have been shown time and time again to be ineffective.
First of all, whose money is being spent? If it is money that has been generated by the library, then did this same money used to be used for paying salaries, buying books, maintaining magazine subscriptions, or organizing public literacy programs. If it is money that has been given to them by local or federal goverment, then that is my money that is being spent on something that I don't approve of at all, is also being thrown away on products that have been show to not work and is taking away from all of the items noted above.
I have a real problem with this whole 'get rid of the pornography' issue. I believe it's generally agreed upon that Playboy magazine is not pornography. All it shows is naked airbrushed women... there is never a sexual act shown in any of the pictorals. So would http://www.playboy.com be blocked? How about sites that put up erotic stories? Is that pornography? If I read about some male putting his member inside some female, am I being exposed to mind-bending words that will make me sodomize the family cat and obsessively call the neighbor's daughter just to breath hard on the phone... I think not.
There seems to be a lot of sabre rattling about how pornography does all these evil things to young and adult minds. I just don't buy it. Porn sites are the most profitable sites on the internet. Hundreds of millions of god-fearing Americans either frequent or have frequented pornography-containing internet sites, bars, or magazines. And there are obviously not hundreds of millions of sex-crazed mind-warped individuals out there.
And why is this a Presidental issue? Is it the President's job to field this quagmire of insecurity? I don't think so, it's the job of the house and the senate... but how many people who will fervently not vote for a particular presidental candidate simply because of his/her stance on pornography have also written their representatives in congress eloquently expressing their views and the reasons behind them. Damn few I'd say.
This is the same kind of nonsense that has been used to get people in an uproar for the past 20 years, and sooner or later it will quit working. I just hope that happens before some ultimately damaging legislation is allowed to pass.
But perhaps that's why I'm in favor or the Reform party. http://www.reformparty.org
This really kind of showcases my igorance both of Australian government and culture, but isn't Australia's government popularly elected? It seems to me that there is a fairly steady stream of idiocity in the form of bizarre rules coming from that country. I mean no offense to any Australians, but why don't the lawmakers who are cooking up these crazy regulations fear getting thrown out of office? Seems to me that there is a lot to be angry about over there right now, and yet all I seem to hear and see is one more crazy rule or regulation after another.
I just want to voice my vast discontent at the recent change of events concerning the Linux version of Unreal Tournament. I had already set aside some money for UT, and was prepared to purchase the product as soon as possible on Monday or Tuesday. After reading the announcement that the Linux UT binaries will NOT be included in the box, I've decided that GT Interactive really doesn't care about my spending dollars. I do not use the Windows OS, and was very enthusiastic about being able to buy a product such as Unreal Tournament off the store shelf, carry it home, and be able to run it on my computer without any additional fuss or delays. I think it's unfortunate that GT Interactive has decided that Linux users are an unimportant segment of their market. I know this is something that I will be extremely slow in forgetting.
Just thought you might like to know that you've just lost my $55.
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I'm still extremely steamed over this. There is far more to a product such as a computer game than just playing the game itself. Maybe I'm just an anal old fart, but,as I rarely buy computer games, I really relish the whole experience of opening up the package, popping in the CD, installing & starting the program (watching the cheesy intro movies) while paging through the cheesy storyline and other documentation.
I've thought for a long time that many companies enjoy the luxory of 'critical mass', where they feel that the buying dollars of a single customer don't matter in the big picture. GT Interactive may well feel that I'm an insignificant buyer, but I am determined that, barring a public appology to the Linux Community, I will NEVER knowingly purchase a GT Interactive product again. Some will probably consider this an overreaction and/or the polarized ranting of some 'linux fanantic', but it's really not. If the Linux port didn't exist, or was still not ready for final release, I wouldn't be nearly as steamed. But being told by a company that I cannot use their product because they don't want to deal with possiblity that I might call them with a problem just sets by blood aboil. The solution (as Mr. Sweeney so aptly put it) isn't to pull the binaries from the CD. A simple statment (a la netscape's glibc version of navigator/communicator) that the linux version is unsupported by GT Interactive would have sufficed. I would not have been offended in the least by such a statement.
The people I really feel sorry for are the hard working individuals at Epic Games. I believe they have produced a superior product, and because of some shortsighted adminsitrative suits at GT Interactive I have been forced into the position of not rewarding the hard work of the people who brought to life the Linux version of Unreal Tournament. This is not a situation I relish, but if my money is not good enough for GT Interactive on Monday November 22, then as far as I'm concerned GT Interactive will never again be worth my money.
I wish to express my deepest regrets and appologies to Tim Sweeney and all the crew at Epic Games. I hope for all our sakes that GT Interactive retracts this blatant offense to the community of Linux users.
Will the ruling in this case directly impact the Caldera vs. Microsoft case? It seems already that the Judge's findings of fact should provide a significant advantage to Caldera's case, concerning the dirty tricks employed by Microsoft to run DR DOS out of town. And if the Caldera vs. Microsoft case were to finish before the Govt. vs. Microsoft case, would the former case's outcome be a significant weight in the latter case's outcome?
Me and the Mrs don't currently have any rugrats running around, but if and when we do, I'll be hard pressed not to home school the child(ren). I have a strong background in the sciences and the Mrs has a strong background in the liberal arts (i.e. history and english). And the way things are going, I'm frankly very very scared that if I send my child(ren) through the current school curriculum that any inherrent intelligence that they might have would be systematically squashed and ruined. In fact we're both so concerned about this state of affairs that it has become a real issue in the discussion of whether or not to have children. This angers me beyond belief, and saddens me that the state of affairs has been allowed to progress so far down this spiral into oblivion. And the things I see at the collegiate level aren't helping my state of mind. The other day in my data structures class the professor was talking about algorithm analysis and had written a statment that contained the expression: log(base 2) 2^10 The rest of the expression was simple arithmetic operators. When he turned to the class, expecting somebody to respond with a numerical answer, he was met with blank stares. Then people started reaching for their calculators. I barked out then answer (which I did in my head, as I realize that log(base 2) 2^10 == 10). He was so flustered that people were having to reach for their calculators that he dismissed class right then and there. It was a very wrenching experience. The other students weren't morons, they simply had never learned mathematical relationships on even the rudimentary level. I suspect in every math class they had ever had they've solved every problem by reading an number from the glowing screen of their TI-whatever calculators (btw I'm a non-trad student, and actually had to work all this stuff out by hand at some point). This may seem a bit off topic, but the general philosophy is the same. In the attempt to "protect" our childrens "emotional fortitude" we're effectively creating a whole generation of people who have been trained from the very outset of their educational experience to blindly believe whatever "glowing screen" is presented to them. I seem to recall that one of the reasons for getting an education was to allow you to approach the world with an objective eye with a focus towards discerning elements of truth within the maelstrom of life that surrounds you. I think it is dangerously unfortunate that we are systematically stripping from our children the very tools they they require to be contributing members of an ever increasingly complex world. "Facts are stupid things..." --Ronald Reagan
I might be missing something obvious (I am up past my bedtime, afterall), but it seems to me that nothing could be better for the alt-OS market (Linux, FreeBSD, Be, etc) then for this bill to pass. When people are angry at a provider of a good or service, they tend not to use/purchase their product. Not to mention the large number of markets that this kind of action could lock out for a company that actually used this functionality... heh, and you don't think Microsoft hasn't already drafted up a new end user license.
The advantage for the Open Source folk (who I am partial to -- Debian all the way!! -- ) is obvious. This legislation doesn't change the way Open Source products work in the least. So OSes like Linux will be able to carry on as if nothing had happened. Other OSes, like Be, which is not based on an OSS model, have a couple of different options. They can either try to use the law to their advantage and perhaps make a few extra dollars in the short run before they see their customer base dwindle to zero, or they can change their license to explicitly state that they will not utilize the powers given by the legislation. This could then, of course, become the centerpiece of a powerful marketing scheme.
Such a marketing scheme would quite possibly be very effective. Just how mad do you think the average American will be when his copy of Microsoft whatever just up and quits, leaving a nice little bit about sending a check to such and such address if they want to continue to use Microsoft whatever. And then you have the people who have put a second morgage on their house so they could buy Office 2000, and because of either some dolt at a control panel in the hallowed halls of Redmond or a bug in the auto-shutdown software their copy of Word shuts down right as they're putting their finishing touches on that big report that was due in yesterday. It won't be too long before the general public starts to get extremely fed up and begin to look for alternate solutions to their computing problems.
Then there is the whole governmental angle. Do you actually think that the government would allow software to be used in the offices of Congressmen and Senators that could be remotely shut off by some third party. While I don't think the suits at the Capital building are the most computer savvy blokes around, all it would take is either one incident or a buzz about what would happen to peoples' jobs if such an incident were allowed to happen. And who do you think the government would turn to? OS/2? Be? I doubt it. With such legislation in place, their only option would be to go with a form of OSS based software, which is immune to the ramifications of this legislation.
Of course all of this is pure late-night speculation on my part, fueled by a boiler loaded to capacity with 'what ifs', but I just don't see how this legislation could be anything but bad for any commercial software company. Americans will put up with a lot and turn a blind eye to many things, but there does exist a threshold, and once it is crossed things can get very ugly. And I also realize that I've been portraying this like Microsoft would be the only company who would use this legislation to their financial benefit, and while this would certainly not be the case, I think when people read about this law the spooks up at Redmond are the first group of undesireables that come into mind.
You got to wonder where Microsoft's PR people have gone. Public opinion may not matter much in the short term, but if enough of the public hates you, life can be very very difficult. Good press helped Microsoft immensely when they were fighting 'Big Blue'... have they forgotten that, or have they just ceased to care. I'm not sure which timebomb would cause the most damange.
Well, to anyone that has gotten this far, sorry I've burnt up so much of your time with my frivilous surmising, but hopefully you found some small pieces somewhat interesting and/or mildly entertaining.
It was/is my understanding that the GPL license is only for protecting the source code of the program. So if I write a program foo and somebody wants to add something to the code they can't turn around and start selling the foo binaries as proprietary software. But if somebody takes program foo and uses it to create some other entity bar, then bar is free and clear to be anything the creator of bar wants it to be. Perhaps I'm missing something or have a misunderstanding of the question, but that's how I see things.
If I decide to write proprietary software using Linux and gcc, there's nothing in the GPL that says I can't do that. And from what I understand this scenario is very much the same situation.
I was surprised not to see AOL in the list of potential buyers. I wonder if the coffers have finally run dry, or if they're just holding out for a better price. So much for useless conjecture.
I don't see how you get that idea. It is not your right as a fan to have a personal copy of TPM right away. And as far as Lucas being selfish, that's just plain absurdity. This man didn't have to make any more movies . . . EVER. But instead of doing what most red-blodded Americans would have done -- sit back on their pauches and sip lemonade on their front porch until doomsday -- he decided to undertake a 10-15 year project. And not only that, but he is paying for this project! So I have absolutely no problem with anything the man is doing. He could have spent his millions any way he wanted, and he chose to provide me and billions of other people three more wonderful movies. And about the hype. Katz needs to get a clue. Lucas is spending an incredible amount of money on these films. It appears that Katz thinks that Lucas should just do this pro bono. That is utterly insane. The man isn't able to maintain his artisitic integrity by personally funding his own multi-million dollar movies by throwing his money away. This project involves some very hard work, and I think Lucas & the Lucas machine (so to speak) deserve to reap any & all of the benefits of this massive undertaking.
I might agree with your hypothetical assessment, if it wasn't for the GPL. If there were indeed small variations between distributions that kept the officially released binaries of PhotoMegaGimp from working with any distribution except RedHat's, how long do you think it would take for a few enterprising hackers to track down the differences, apply appropriate patches, and then release the slightly altered source code as 'hacked for Debian' or 'hacked for Slackware'. After which, there would rapidly be binaries available for all the other distributions.
I think the situation you describe is the very idea that people are having so many knee-jerk reactions to. In many respects I consider it a testament to the sheer might of the Microsoft corporate machine, and the degree to which tbey have fundamentally changed our perception of OS software companies. Microsoft has the power to change the game by introducing new cards into play. They can do this because they write the rules and they make the cards, so to be able to use the cards, and hence learn the new rules, you must be 'friends' {e.g. pay money to} with Microsoft. For anyone who might be nervous that RedHat is trying to get into the card-making business for the Linux game, need not worry. Because of the foresightedness of the GPL license, not only is RedHat allowed to make new rules, but so am I and so are you, and hence we ALL get to make new cards to use with the new rules that help to extend and expand the game of Linux.
In this way, the company that attempts to comandeer the game of Linux is going to rapidly find themselves playing at an ever shrinking table. And this would not be profitable. So this will not happen.
Granted, I'm not a lawyer, in fact I really know next to nothing about law of any kind. But I do seem to remember something about 'expectation of pricacy.' It would seem to me that anybody who is tracked because they used Microsoft products did not realize that by using MS products they were having an electronic tattoo placed on their forearm, and thusly any information that was gathered by using the MS-forearm-tattoo would be inadmissable in a court of law. I could be completely off-base, but I sure hope not.
Another reason this really scares me is suddenly the whole idea of this MS-forearm-tattoo will all of a sudden become more palatable to the general public. When you tell them that they are being tracked by a for-profit corporation the first thing they'll think is "Yeah, but it's only used to catch bad guys."
Computers have already infiltrated our lives to an intimate level, and I find it disheartening that there seems to be both a general disregard and sullen apathy when it comes to dealing with the ramifications of this infiltration. This is doubly disturbing when you realize that everyone also agrees that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I guess it's time to run off to a deserted island with the Professor, Skipper, and Mary Ann. Who knows, maybe I could get Linux running on one of the Professor's coconut-computers . . .
The vast majority of the OSS/Linux talking heads seem to neglect the INTENSE stratification that exists in the computer business. I think Microsoft downplayed this very factor when they decided to feed NT to the common user, and are now paying very heavily for it . . . what's this there's going to be another consumer-grade OS based on DOS . . why? because NT is not compatible with cutting edge gaming at its core and will never be. I sure hope that the moron that came up with that strategy has been ripped a new one by his boss.
I know very little about the requirements of the server market, but I suspect that if reliability and stability is a strong factor then this great rise in NT usage might start to fall away with the advent of W2k, that is unless W2k is initially released in a very stable form heh heh heh. The next viable solution is a Unix-type platform, and it seems to me that this is where Linux will start to make some serious inroads against NT & the bix Unixes.
Then there's the consumer/business market. I initially clump them together because both of these major markets tend to use similar hardware, whereas the server market uses distinctly more advanced hardware. On the business end, Windows is pretty strong because it's fast. What I mean is that you can order a hundred or more PCs with Windows pre-installed and with a minimum of effort, all these PCs can be hooked up to a central network, and employeeds can be plunking numbers into spreadsheets and emailing jokes within a very short time. While Linux might offer advantages in maintance, configurability, and performance, it will be hard to convince the business folks to go for it because it doesn't come preinstalled (although this might be changing), and when something doesn't work right there isn't a centralized someone to call and bitch at. Forget that Microsoft charges for support, if this is a business that isn't a real concern. Add to this the additional cost of training virtually all the employees to use this OS that most have never seen and some have never heard of.
As far as the consumer market goes, there exist many sublevels. At the top (money-wise) there are the gamers. These are the people who plunk down many thousands of dollars on a predictably regular basis just so they can prance around as cyber-warriors (I have nothing against gamers, but sometimes I wonder if the tons of money might not be better spent). I think this is where Microsoft fumbled badly. The gamers are constantly looking for ways to get their machines to run faster, and with the talk of QuakeIII being multithreaded so it can use multiple processors, and the growing realization that for 32-bit programs that consume a lot of memory, NT offers a large performance advantage over 95/98, it should be obvious that Microsoft saw a way to feed an OS to a segment of people that are willing to spend a lot of money on a very regular basis. Unfortunately the very things that make NT run better on high-end machines also make it a nightmare for games that require direct-hardware access. That Microsoft thought (and possibly still think) that they could have their cake and eat it too still amazes me. But I have digressed. This is another market that Linux will not have an influence in. The emmergence of cutting-edge hardware along with their accompanying cutting-edge drivers (for 95/98) happens at such a rapid pace that there's no way Linux could keep up. Couple this with an already severe lack of game support (there are a lot of mainstream games other than Quake and Heretic), and the stage is set for 95/98 to rule this market segment.
Now for the consumers that are knowledgeable about their machines, and are eager to learn more. Generally these tend to be students at all levels, aspiring young programmers that are trying to learn as much as possible as quick as possible and don't have to worry about things like a 9-to-5 job. Here is where Linux already lives, and is probably growing rapidly. Personally, this is where I fall. I've only been messing with computers for a couple of years now, but I've already worn out Windows 95 and just the other day I hosed my NT installation so that I might be "all Linux". I maintain a small 98 installation just for games. I think this segment of the consumer market is approximately the same size as the gamer segment, and possibly just a little larger. The only problem is that within this segment are also the people who use computers for what they are intended, and hence they don't need the latest new hardware so their dollars tend to stay close to home instead of being scattered into the market. While this is a good personal philosophy, it really sucks for the market segment, as it lessens the importance of the segment. Linux also amplifies this sentiment. I have two machines at my house, one is a dual PPro that is my primary machine (and even though it is considered antiquated by many, it is still blazingly fast for everything that I ever need to do), and the other is a 486/66. When I was given the 486 it was slogging away with win95, and I was very impressed at the performance increase that was gained just by changing the OS to Linux. So the people who never felt like they needed a huge machine to begin with now will have yet another reason not to spend their money.
Then there is the last and largest subgroup of the consumer market. I call this group the email-drones. The people who belong to this group are the vast multitudes that are buying PCs because Betty down the street has one and if Jenny gets one then she can send email to Betty who can then reply to her email, all without picking up the telephone. And then there's the chat and the ICQ and before you know it the beauty salon of the 50s has moved into the den and onto the computer screen. This market group is single reason for the existance of both the iMac and the $500 PC. Everyone was shocked when the iMac didn't come with a floppy drive . . well, when I was mentioning this in passing conversation to my mother, she said right away "What do you need one of those for?". I rest my case. I'm also not trying to be in the least sexist by seemingly populating this large market segment with stereotypical images of the "gossiping housewife". I use this image as a behavior descriptor only, as it applies to an equal number of males as to females. Anyway, back to the point, here is yet another market where Linux will never make any serious inroads. My parents are still using an antiquated P75 machine, and everytime my father grumbles about things taking a long time to load and/or programs crashing I think about setting up a Linux installation on their machine, as I know Linux could easily fulfill every one of their computing needs and it would do it faster and better. But I already get too many calls from them whenever something happens on their machine that they don't understand and I shudder to think about trying to have them add a directory to their PATH or some such over the phone. Once again, Windows wins because it is easy, not because it is the best.
So what does this have to do with the article? Well, I think that Linux will continue to grow in both market size and stature, and that it will become a real competitor to Microsoft in many areas, especially in the high and low end. But unfortunately the real meat is in the upper and lower middle of the market, and I suspect that the ability for Linux to penetrate this area is slim to none, but not for any of the reasons described in the article, rather for the simple reason that the demands of those market segments do not mesh with the attributes and philosophy of the Linux OS. Personally I think this is a good thing. There's a reason I have a 98 installation, it plays Age of Empires REAL well, and it gives me a place to go to "relax" at the computer. I like having the "play" separated from the "work" in this manner, and while I remain a strong admirer and advocate of the Linux OS, I think the first question that must always be asked is "What do you plan on doing with your PC?". And I'm glad that Linux is not the solution to the reply "Umm . . I don't know . . games and stuff . . "
All this Tolkein-referencing is becoming very bizarre. Earlier today I was working on a Visual Basic project for school and came across a sub-chapter entitled "What has it got in its pocketses?" . . . very bizarre
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In the case of Linux and OSS, if I'm trying to produce a particular type of application with the intention of selling it, and someone else simultaneously creates a similar product but GPLs it, they have not in any way produced a proprietary lever through which they can rake in money without having to improve the product. In fact, I can still make a ton of money, as I would be allowed to analyze the GPLed product for features that it was lacking that I might want to incorporate into my closed source application. If I then sold my closed source appliation, the consumer would have benefited as they would be purchasing a better product than if there had not been the OSS rival product.
And there is always the possibility to not adhere to the standard money making scheme of simply making money from the binary application. Instead of competing with the OSS version, a person could help merge the two versions to produce a superior GPLed program, and then sit down and create wonderful documentation which could then be sold as books or charge for technical support or attempt to convince other companies to invest in the application based on it's superior merits. I do not fully understand the money making potentials here, but they obviously exit.
I think if you consider OSS programming as not being able to put bread on the table, then it is not a problem with the OSS model, but rather with the way you're trying to use the model. And in no way is the OSS model the same as the traditional MS model. I can't think of many things that are so diametrically opposed.
You just have to read some H.G. Wells. I picked up a book of all of his short stories and novellas (It's a >1000 page collection), and have finally finished reading all of it. All I have to say is WOW. It's kind of like having listened to Led Zeppelin all your life, and then having someone hand you a stack of Delta Blues ablums ... both are very entertaining but there's nothing like the true original.
Biotech companies fall in and out of existence with incredible rapidity these days. Imagine the potential wealth that could be had if a particular biotech company was able to patent the process of growing a living and breathing Wooly Mammoth, an event that has a real potential of happening.
And how long before somebody figures out that kids would simply love a picacho(sp?) that was a real living and breathing animal. Biotech has the capacity to give us wonderful medical advancements, but I think it's a dangerous tool to be put in the hands of the impulse driven public.
It was funny when the Flinstones used animals as tools ... I wonder if it will still be humorous when we start to.
Thank you.
First of all, whose money is being spent? If it is money that has been generated by the library, then did this same money used to be used for paying salaries, buying books, maintaining magazine subscriptions, or organizing public literacy programs. If it is money that has been given to them by local or federal goverment, then that is my money that is being spent on something that I don't approve of at all, is also being thrown away on products that have been show to not work and is taking away from all of the items noted above.
I have a real problem with this whole 'get rid of the pornography' issue. I believe it's generally agreed upon that Playboy magazine is not pornography. All it shows is naked airbrushed women ... there is never a sexual act shown in any of the pictorals. So would http://www.playboy.com be blocked? How about sites that put up erotic stories? Is that pornography? If I read about some male putting his member inside some female, am I being exposed to mind-bending words that will make me sodomize the family cat and obsessively call the neighbor's daughter just to breath hard on the phone ... I think not.
There seems to be a lot of sabre rattling about how pornography does all these evil things to young and adult minds. I just don't buy it. Porn sites are the most profitable sites on the internet. Hundreds of millions of god-fearing Americans either frequent or have frequented pornography-containing internet sites, bars, or magazines. And there are obviously not hundreds of millions of sex-crazed mind-warped individuals out there.
And why is this a Presidental issue? Is it the President's job to field this quagmire of insecurity? I don't think so, it's the job of the house and the senate ... but how many people who will fervently not vote for a particular presidental candidate simply because of his/her stance on pornography have also written their representatives in congress eloquently expressing their views and the reasons behind them. Damn few I'd say.
This is the same kind of nonsense that has been used to get people in an uproar for the past 20 years, and sooner or later it will quit working. I just hope that happens before some ultimately damaging legislation is allowed to pass.
But perhaps that's why I'm in favor or the Reform party. http://www.reformparty.org
Sean
Oh man! You mean those X-Ray Glasses really work?!?! I knew I should have saved those old comic book ads.
This really kind of showcases my igorance both of Australian government and culture, but isn't Australia's government popularly elected? It seems to me that there is a fairly steady stream of idiocity in the form of bizarre rules coming from that country. I mean no offense to any Australians, but why don't the lawmakers who are cooking up these crazy regulations fear getting thrown out of office? Seems to me that there is a lot to be angry about over there right now, and yet all I seem to hear and see is one more crazy rule or regulation after another.
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To Whom It May Concern,
I just want to voice my vast discontent at the recent change of events concerning the Linux version of Unreal Tournament. I had already set aside some money for UT, and was prepared to purchase the product as soon as possible on Monday or Tuesday. After reading the announcement that the Linux UT binaries will NOT be included in the box, I've decided that GT Interactive really doesn't care about my spending dollars. I do not use the Windows OS, and was very enthusiastic about being able to buy a product such as Unreal Tournament off the store shelf, carry it home, and be able to run it on my computer without any additional fuss or delays. I think it's unfortunate that GT Interactive has decided that Linux users are an unimportant segment of their market. I know this is something that I will be extremely slow in forgetting.
Just thought you might like to know that you've just lost my $55.
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I'm still extremely steamed over this. There is far more to a product such as a computer game than just playing the game itself. Maybe I'm just an anal old fart, but ,as I rarely buy computer games, I really relish the whole experience of opening up the package, popping in the CD, installing & starting the program (watching the cheesy intro movies) while paging through the cheesy storyline and other documentation.
I've thought for a long time that many companies enjoy the luxory of 'critical mass', where they feel that the buying dollars of a single customer don't matter in the big picture. GT Interactive may well feel that I'm an insignificant buyer, but I am determined that, barring a public appology to the Linux Community, I will NEVER knowingly purchase a GT Interactive product again. Some will probably consider this an overreaction and/or the polarized ranting of some 'linux fanantic', but it's really not. If the Linux port didn't exist, or was still not ready for final release, I wouldn't be nearly as steamed. But being told by a company that I cannot use their product because they don't want to deal with possiblity that I might call them with a problem just sets by blood aboil. The solution (as Mr. Sweeney so aptly put it) isn't to pull the binaries from the CD. A simple statment (a la netscape's glibc version of navigator/communicator) that the linux version is unsupported by GT Interactive would have sufficed. I would not have been offended in the least by such a statement.
The people I really feel sorry for are the hard working individuals at Epic Games. I believe they have produced a superior product, and because of some shortsighted adminsitrative suits at GT Interactive I have been forced into the position of not rewarding the hard work of the people who brought to life the Linux version of Unreal Tournament. This is not a situation I relish, but if my money is not good enough for GT Interactive on Monday November 22, then as far as I'm concerned GT Interactive will never again be worth my money.
I wish to express my deepest regrets and appologies to Tim Sweeney and all the crew at Epic Games. I hope for all our sakes that GT Interactive retracts this blatant offense to the community of Linux users.
Sean
Will the ruling in this case directly impact the Caldera vs. Microsoft case? It seems already that the Judge's findings of fact should provide a significant advantage to Caldera's case, concerning the dirty tricks employed by Microsoft to run DR DOS out of town. And if the Caldera vs. Microsoft case were to finish before the Govt. vs. Microsoft case, would the former case's outcome be a significant weight in the latter case's outcome?
Me and the Mrs don't currently have any rugrats running around, but if and when we do, I'll be hard pressed not to home school the child(ren). I have a strong background in the sciences and the Mrs has a strong background in the liberal arts (i.e. history and english). And the way things are going, I'm frankly very very scared that if I send my child(ren) through the current school curriculum that any inherrent intelligence that they might have would be systematically squashed and ruined. In fact we're both so concerned about this state of affairs that it has become a real issue in the discussion of whether or not to have children. This angers me beyond belief, and saddens me that the state of affairs has been allowed to progress so far down this spiral into oblivion. And the things I see at the collegiate level aren't helping my state of mind. The other day in my data structures class the professor was talking about algorithm analysis and had written a statment that contained the expression: log(base 2) 2^10 The rest of the expression was simple arithmetic operators. When he turned to the class, expecting somebody to respond with a numerical answer, he was met with blank stares. Then people started reaching for their calculators. I barked out then answer (which I did in my head, as I realize that log(base 2) 2^10 == 10). He was so flustered that people were having to reach for their calculators that he dismissed class right then and there. It was a very wrenching experience. The other students weren't morons, they simply had never learned mathematical relationships on even the rudimentary level. I suspect in every math class they had ever had they've solved every problem by reading an number from the glowing screen of their TI-whatever calculators (btw I'm a non-trad student, and actually had to work all this stuff out by hand at some point). This may seem a bit off topic, but the general philosophy is the same. In the attempt to "protect" our childrens "emotional fortitude" we're effectively creating a whole generation of people who have been trained from the very outset of their educational experience to blindly believe whatever "glowing screen" is presented to them. I seem to recall that one of the reasons for getting an education was to allow you to approach the world with an objective eye with a focus towards discerning elements of truth within the maelstrom of life that surrounds you. I think it is dangerously unfortunate that we are systematically stripping from our children the very tools they they require to be contributing members of an ever increasingly complex world. "Facts are stupid things..." --Ronald Reagan
I might be missing something obvious (I am up past my bedtime, afterall), but it seems to me that nothing could be better for the alt-OS market (Linux, FreeBSD, Be, etc) then for this bill to pass. When people are angry at a provider of a good or service, they tend not to use/purchase their product. Not to mention the large number of markets that this kind of action could lock out for a company that actually used this functionality ... heh, and you don't think Microsoft hasn't already drafted up a new end user license.
... have they forgotten that, or have they just ceased to care. I'm not sure which timebomb would cause the most damange.
The advantage for the Open Source folk (who I am partial to -- Debian all the way!! -- ) is obvious. This legislation doesn't change the way Open Source products work in the least. So OSes like Linux will be able to carry on as if nothing had happened. Other OSes, like Be, which is not based on an OSS model, have a couple of different options. They can either try to use the law to their advantage and perhaps make a few extra dollars in the short run before they see their customer base dwindle to zero, or they can change their license to explicitly state that they will not utilize the powers given by the legislation. This could then, of course, become the centerpiece of a powerful marketing scheme.
Such a marketing scheme would quite possibly be very effective. Just how mad do you think the average American will be when his copy of Microsoft whatever just up and quits, leaving a nice little bit about sending a check to such and such address if they want to continue to use Microsoft whatever. And then you have the people who have put a second morgage on their house so they could buy Office 2000, and because of either some dolt at a control panel in the hallowed halls of Redmond or a bug in the auto-shutdown software their copy of Word shuts down right as they're putting their finishing touches on that big report that was due in yesterday. It won't be too long before the general public starts to get extremely fed up and begin to look for alternate solutions to their computing problems.
Then there is the whole governmental angle. Do you actually think that the government would allow software to be used in the offices of Congressmen and Senators that could be remotely shut off by some third party. While I don't think the suits at the Capital building are the most computer savvy blokes around, all it would take is either one incident or a buzz about what would happen to peoples' jobs if such an incident were allowed to happen. And who do you think the government would turn to? OS/2? Be? I doubt it. With such legislation in place, their only option would be to go with a form of OSS based software, which is immune to the ramifications of this legislation.
Of course all of this is pure late-night speculation on my part, fueled by a boiler loaded to capacity with 'what ifs', but I just don't see how this legislation could be anything but bad for any commercial software company. Americans will put up with a lot and turn a blind eye to many things, but there does exist a threshold, and once it is crossed things can get very ugly. And I also realize that I've been portraying this like Microsoft would be the only company who would use this legislation to their financial benefit, and while this would certainly not be the case, I think when people read about this law the spooks up at Redmond are the first group of undesireables that come into mind.
You got to wonder where Microsoft's PR people have gone. Public opinion may not matter much in the short term, but if enough of the public hates you, life can be very very difficult. Good press helped Microsoft immensely when they were fighting 'Big Blue'
Well, to anyone that has gotten this far, sorry I've burnt up so much of your time with my frivilous surmising, but hopefully you found some small pieces somewhat interesting and/or mildly entertaining.
It was/is my understanding that the GPL license is only for protecting the source code of the program. So if I write a program foo and somebody wants to add something to the code they can't turn around and start selling the foo binaries as proprietary software. But if somebody takes program foo and uses it to create some other entity bar, then bar is free and clear to be anything the creator of bar wants it to be. Perhaps I'm missing something or have a misunderstanding of the question, but that's how I see things.
If I decide to write proprietary software using Linux and gcc, there's nothing in the GPL that says I can't do that. And from what I understand this scenario is very much the same situation.
Sean
I was surprised not to see AOL in the list of potential buyers. I wonder if the coffers have finally run dry, or if they're just holding out for a better price. So much for useless conjecture.
Sean
I don't see how you get that idea. It is not your right as a fan to have a personal copy of TPM right away. And as far as Lucas being selfish, that's just plain absurdity. This man didn't have to make any more movies . . . EVER. But instead of doing what most red-blodded Americans would have done -- sit back on their pauches and sip lemonade on their front porch until doomsday -- he decided to undertake a 10-15 year project. And not only that, but he is paying for this project! So I have absolutely no problem with anything the man is doing. He could have spent his millions any way he wanted, and he chose to provide me and billions of other people three more wonderful movies. And about the hype. Katz needs to get a clue. Lucas is spending an incredible amount of money on these films. It appears that Katz thinks that Lucas should just do this pro bono. That is utterly insane. The man isn't able to maintain his artisitic integrity by personally funding his own multi-million dollar movies by throwing his money away. This project involves some very hard work, and I think Lucas & the Lucas machine (so to speak) deserve to reap any & all of the benefits of this massive undertaking.
I might agree with your hypothetical assessment, if it wasn't for the GPL. If there were indeed small variations between distributions that kept the officially released binaries of PhotoMegaGimp from working with any distribution except RedHat's, how long do you think it would take for a few enterprising hackers to track down the differences, apply appropriate patches, and then release the slightly altered source code as 'hacked for Debian' or 'hacked for Slackware'. After which, there would rapidly be binaries available for all the other distributions.
I think the situation you describe is the very idea that people are having so many knee-jerk reactions to. In many respects I consider it a testament to the sheer might of the Microsoft corporate machine, and the degree to which tbey have fundamentally changed our perception of OS software companies. Microsoft has the power to change the game by introducing new cards into play. They can do this because they write the rules and they make the cards, so to be able to use the cards, and hence learn the new rules, you must be 'friends' {e.g. pay money to} with Microsoft. For anyone who might be nervous that RedHat is trying to get into the card-making business for the Linux game, need not worry. Because of the foresightedness of the GPL license, not only is RedHat allowed to make new rules, but so am I and so are you, and hence we ALL get to make new cards to use with the new rules that help to extend and expand the game of Linux.
In this way, the company that attempts to comandeer the game of Linux is going to rapidly find themselves playing at an ever shrinking table. And this would not be profitable. So this will not happen.
Sean
I noticed this comment on "poor ol' Al's" webpage:
"If Gore2000 selects your material for use on our website we will contact you with further legal requirements."
You don't suppose they're going to send a copy of the GPL . . .
Sean
Granted, I'm not a lawyer, in fact I really know next to nothing about law of any kind. But I do seem to remember something about 'expectation of pricacy.' It would seem to me that anybody who is tracked because they used Microsoft products did not realize that by using MS products they were having an electronic tattoo placed on their forearm, and thusly any information that was gathered by using the MS-forearm-tattoo would be inadmissable in a court of law. I could be completely off-base, but I sure hope not.
Another reason this really scares me is suddenly the whole idea of this MS-forearm-tattoo will all of a sudden become more palatable to the general public. When you tell them that they are being tracked by a for-profit corporation the first thing they'll think is "Yeah, but it's only used to catch bad guys."
Computers have already infiltrated our lives to an intimate level, and I find it disheartening that there seems to be both a general disregard and sullen apathy when it comes to dealing with the ramifications of this infiltration. This is doubly disturbing when you realize that everyone also agrees that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I guess it's time to run off to a deserted island with the Professor, Skipper, and Mary Ann. Who knows, maybe I could get Linux running on one of the Professor's coconut-computers . . .
Sean
Ditto!!
Sean
The vast majority of the OSS/Linux talking heads seem to neglect the INTENSE stratification that exists in the computer business. I think Microsoft downplayed this very factor when they decided to feed NT to the common user, and are now paying very heavily for it . . . what's this there's going to be another consumer-grade OS based on DOS . . why? because NT is not compatible with cutting edge gaming at its core and will never be. I sure hope that the moron that came up with that strategy has been ripped a new one by his boss.
I know very little about the requirements of the server market, but I suspect that if reliability and stability is a strong factor then this great rise in NT usage might start to fall away with the advent of W2k, that is unless W2k is initially released in a very stable form heh heh heh. The next viable solution is a Unix-type platform, and it seems to me that this is where Linux will start to make some serious inroads against NT & the bix Unixes.
Then there's the consumer/business market. I initially clump them together because both of these major markets tend to use similar hardware, whereas the server market uses distinctly more advanced hardware. On the business end, Windows is pretty strong because it's fast. What I mean is that you can order a hundred or more PCs with Windows pre-installed and with a minimum of effort, all these PCs can be hooked up to a central network, and employeeds can be plunking numbers into spreadsheets and emailing jokes within a very short time. While Linux might offer advantages in maintance, configurability, and performance, it will be hard to convince the business folks to go for it because it doesn't come preinstalled (although this might be changing), and when something doesn't work right there isn't a centralized someone to call and bitch at. Forget that Microsoft charges for support, if this is a business that isn't a real concern. Add to this the additional cost of training virtually all the employees to use this OS that most have never seen and some have never heard of.
As far as the consumer market goes, there exist many sublevels. At the top (money-wise) there are the gamers. These are the people who plunk down many thousands of dollars on a predictably regular basis just so they can prance around as cyber-warriors (I have nothing against gamers, but sometimes I wonder if the tons of money might not be better spent). I think this is where Microsoft fumbled badly. The gamers are constantly looking for ways to get their machines to run faster, and with the talk of QuakeIII being multithreaded so it can use multiple processors, and the growing realization that for 32-bit programs that consume a lot of memory, NT offers a large performance advantage over 95/98, it should be obvious that Microsoft saw a way to feed an OS to a segment of people that are willing to spend a lot of money on a very regular basis. Unfortunately the very things that make NT run better on high-end machines also make it a nightmare for games that require direct-hardware access. That Microsoft thought (and possibly still think) that they could have their cake and eat it too still amazes me. But I have digressed. This is another market that Linux will not have an influence in. The emmergence of cutting-edge hardware along with their accompanying cutting-edge drivers (for 95/98) happens at such a rapid pace that there's no way Linux could keep up. Couple this with an already severe lack of game support (there are a lot of mainstream games other than Quake and Heretic), and the stage is set for 95/98 to rule this market segment.
Now for the consumers that are knowledgeable about their machines, and are eager to learn more. Generally these tend to be students at all levels, aspiring young programmers that are trying to learn as much as possible as quick as possible and don't have to worry about things like a 9-to-5 job. Here is where Linux already lives, and is probably growing rapidly. Personally, this is where I fall. I've only been messing with computers for a couple of years now, but I've already worn out Windows 95 and just the other day I hosed my NT installation so that I might be "all Linux". I maintain a small 98 installation just for games. I think this segment of the consumer market is approximately the same size as the gamer segment, and possibly just a little larger. The only problem is that within this segment are also the people who use computers for what they are intended, and hence they don't need the latest new hardware so their dollars tend to stay close to home instead of being scattered into the market. While this is a good personal philosophy, it really sucks for the market segment, as it lessens the importance of the segment. Linux also amplifies this sentiment. I have two machines at my house, one is a dual PPro that is my primary machine (and even though it is considered antiquated by many, it is still blazingly fast for everything that I ever need to do), and the other is a 486/66. When I was given the 486 it was slogging away with win95, and I was very impressed at the performance increase that was gained just by changing the OS to Linux. So the people who never felt like they needed a huge machine to begin with now will have yet another reason not to spend their money.
Then there is the last and largest subgroup of the consumer market. I call this group the email-drones. The people who belong to this group are the vast multitudes that are buying PCs because Betty down the street has one and if Jenny gets one then she can send email to Betty who can then reply to her email, all without picking up the telephone. And then there's the chat and the ICQ and before you know it the beauty salon of the 50s has moved into the den and onto the computer screen. This market group is single reason for the existance of both the iMac and the $500 PC. Everyone was shocked when the iMac didn't come with a floppy drive . . well, when I was mentioning this in passing conversation to my mother, she said right away "What do you need one of those for?". I rest my case. I'm also not trying to be in the least sexist by seemingly populating this large market segment with stereotypical images of the "gossiping housewife". I use this image as a behavior descriptor only, as it applies to an equal number of males as to females. Anyway, back to the point, here is yet another market where Linux will never make any serious inroads. My parents are still using an antiquated P75 machine, and everytime my father grumbles about things taking a long time to load and/or programs crashing I think about setting up a Linux installation on their machine, as I know Linux could easily fulfill every one of their computing needs and it would do it faster and better. But I already get too many calls from them whenever something happens on their machine that they don't understand and I shudder to think about trying to have them add a directory to their PATH or some such over the phone. Once again, Windows wins because it is easy, not because it is the best.
So what does this have to do with the article? Well, I think that Linux will continue to grow in both market size and stature, and that it will become a real competitor to Microsoft in many areas, especially in the high and low end. But unfortunately the real meat is in the upper and lower middle of the market, and I suspect that the ability for Linux to penetrate this area is slim to none, but not for any of the reasons described in the article, rather for the simple reason that the demands of those market segments do not mesh with the attributes and philosophy of the Linux OS. Personally I think this is a good thing. There's a reason I have a 98 installation, it plays Age of Empires REAL well, and it gives me a place to go to "relax" at the computer. I like having the "play" separated from the "work" in this manner, and while I remain a strong admirer and advocate of the Linux OS, I think the first question that must always be asked is "What do you plan on doing with your PC?". And I'm glad that Linux is not the solution to the reply "Umm . . I don't know . . games and stuff . . "
Sean
Sounds like the requirements for a notebook PC.
Sean
All this Tolkein-referencing is becoming very bizarre. Earlier today I was working on a Visual Basic project for school and came across a sub-chapter entitled "What has it got in its pocketses?" . . . very bizarre
Sean