If that is the best response MS would have, well, they would be trully in a no win situation.
In 3 or 4 years down the line comes negotiation time again and the Japanese Government (or any other entity that obtained a big disscount) threatens to go to Linux again.
There is a point where MS can't keep disscounting. THat is a short term fix for their broken bussiness model, they have to fix their corporate culture in a way similar to what IBM had to do in the 90s.
If they dare do it, I am sure many people like me, normally apathetic regarding these issues, will work to help any company or individuals singled out by MS.
I don't know what is MS's budget for this sort of issue, but if they think they can defeat an army of commited people doing things for the love of a product and an idea that has given freedom back to them, then they will have a very rude awakening.
If I, my mother (Hi mom! Happy 67th birthday!) and several friends and relatives are using Linux as their desktop OS?
Beyond he anecdotal, which company worth its salt has ever sued a competitor that is not a threat? (and here I do remind you that Microsoft earns a living from desktop computing mostly).
Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, has been for many years a very tolerant country, where different faiths have coexisted.
The fluke bombs by extremists do not make a whole country a nest of jihadists. They are nut jobs like Timothy McVeigh or some other of that ilk.
You also have Turkey, a secular country, and Malaysia, a Muslim country that accepts diversity (you can see girls wearing mini-skirts, beauty pageants and casinos, all normally associated with non-mulsim behaviour).
And we had Iraq of course, which was a hineous dictatorship, but that can't be accussed of promoting Islamism, as anyone bothered to check the facts knew before Bush and Blair started their little crussade.
The immense majority of Muslims do not give a tosh about Salman Rushdie, lead peaceful lives and are not hostage to religious fanatics.
In places like Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey most people see Islam as their religion, yes, but not as the only major overencompassing thing on their lives.
You have countries like Saudi Arabia or perhaps Iran (not sure about this, most Iranians I know are perfectly persobale people) in which you could make a case that a cult has taken hold of the full country, but to describe Islam as a whole as you have done is a comment born out of the most monumental ignorance.
Normal: check a dictionary. pretty easy. In General it refers to somebody that acts in general terms pretty much as everyone else. No, Goths are not abnormal, no matter how much I would like to class them as such.
Your definition of difficult is clearly one based in an alternate Universe.
YOu can just issues a commend, use the package manager or doubleclick in the file with the packaged software (this will launch in most distors the graphical installer).
So exactly in which planet this almost impossible Linux software installation of stuff is taking place?
Using loaded words like censorship frankly gives you no credibility.
Supposing that the scenario you are painintg was true, you still could get things done (painful but doable) and once one person does the installation, he can share the wisdom with others.
I fail to see how you could do that with closed source software, except paying for the support and in occassions being told by EULAs that you can't whine in public about your experiences.
You clearly are talking in jest. I can almost see your funny hat with bells.
RedHat is now one of the recognized names on IT infrastructure with the likes of Sun, MS, IBM, HP and several others.
Geeks and nerds (same thing?) know about and use Ubuntu, but frankly is not serious to pretend that it is ready to provide for the needs RedHat is covering.
Nice troll, I laughed, next serious comment now please.
Very few people can attest to this because few people work in environments where the differences becom obvious.
It is of course the combination of Solaris/Sparc vs Linux/x86 , Solaris is designed in a way that scales well with your application. If you need more swap, disk space, memory Solaris will make good use of it, Linux not necessarily so (this improved with the most recent release of the kernel, the new scheduling mechanism seems to have imporved things quite a bit).
On top of that the tools for disk management (Disk Suite and Veritas) are more mature in Solaris, as is Database Support from Oracle and Sybase, the big dadys in the field. Armed with this infrastructure you can approach problems that Linux/ix86/MySQL (or evne Oracle) can't touch at the moment.
It is a piece of cake to bring a Linux machines to its knees.
Solaris performance in much better in similar hardware, specially if it is SPARC based processors, and Solaris escales properly with different machines: you can start an application in a small deprtemantal server and then migrate that to big Sun iron without any changes.
In Linux the only way to achieve equivalent performance is using a grid (like Google does),
It surprises me how many people in/. talk about Sun that clearly have not worked with their wares for any considerable amount of time if at all.
Solaris has been free for several years now, and before that a nominal charge was levied when you bought Sun servers.
In many ocassions we got new machines with newer version of Solaris and we could install it in older machines with their blessing, free of charge, and supported under the contract for the previous version.
You can say many things about Sun, but they never tried to abuse the Solaris upgrade cycle to make a buck.
If you can't see what this is flawed, move to Iran or Saudi Arabia and ask them what is their opiion of having a Christian government.
Honestly guys, religious types should ensure their goverments are atheist, at least you all would have a fighting chance to be ignored in equal measure....
It is not enough to show up in the office, work diligently during our working hours and then some.
We are also suppossed to behave in a way our feudal lords, sorry, employers, deem appropriate in accordance to their more out of office hours, in our private time.
... infringement in China then? Or Saudi Arabia, you know, where they cut the hands of thiefs (I very much doubt the Saud Kingdom will care aobut niceties regarding what is copyright and what is theft).
Neither the Kangaroo US court not the British Judicial system cold find anything against this or other individuals.
This same theme has been repeated over and over again.
The US screwed badly, they did not have any intelligence, picked up random guys in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tortured them, had to free most of them, but here you are, defending the indefensible.
It is written in several conventions and treaties.
Failing taht we have a bonafide arbiter in those matters: the Red Cross.
Oh wait, the US has not allowed access to Guantanamo prisioners to the Red Cross. How fucking conveninet, isn't it.
I think the neo-cons (and idiots like you) well know what torture is, you know it does not work (specially in a case where you want so badly to hear somethin, you have judged those individuals already in spite tht most of them had been left free because they are guilty of nothing but being in the worng place at the wrong time).
The US government is an absolute embarrasment to any people with a modicum of decency. Torturing people indiscriminately in the false hope of obtaining "information" (how do you know that a tortured person is not lying in order to stop the torture?) only creates fertile ground for more terrorists.
If your government has any evidence these people broke any laws then prosecute them and apply due process, that is what democracies where the rule of law is supposed to be paramount. Kangaroo courts to judge concentration camp prisioners is not the way a democratic system works.
You are the voice of fascism, but we are watching you and will make sure the likes of you never get their way.
Slashdot Mirror
If that is the best response MS would have, well, they would be trully in a no win situation.
In 3 or 4 years down the line comes negotiation time again and the Japanese Government (or any other entity that obtained a big disscount) threatens to go to Linux again.
There is a point where MS can't keep disscounting. THat is a short term fix for their broken bussiness model, they have to fix their corporate culture in a way similar to what IBM had to do in the 90s.
Or perish, as unimaginable as that may sound now.
If they dare do it, I am sure many people like me, normally apathetic regarding these issues, will work to help any company or individuals singled out by MS.
I don't know what is MS's budget for this sort of issue, but if they think they can defeat an army of commited people doing things for the love of a product and an idea that has given freedom back to them, then they will have a very rude awakening.
Go on MS. We dare you. Just try it please.
If I, my mother (Hi mom! Happy 67th birthday!) and several friends and relatives are using Linux as their desktop OS?
Beyond he anecdotal, which company worth its salt has ever sued a competitor that is not a threat? (and here I do remind you that Microsoft earns a living from desktop computing mostly).
Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, has been for many years a very tolerant country, where different faiths have coexisted.
The fluke bombs by extremists do not make a whole country a nest of jihadists. They are nut jobs like Timothy McVeigh or some other of that ilk.
You also have Turkey, a secular country, and Malaysia, a Muslim country that accepts diversity (you can see girls wearing mini-skirts, beauty pageants and casinos, all normally associated with non-mulsim behaviour).
And we had Iraq of course, which was a hineous dictatorship, but that can't be accussed of promoting Islamism, as anyone bothered to check the facts knew before Bush and Blair started their little crussade.
Have you been to a Muslim country?
I had.
Several as a matter of fact.
The immense majority of Muslims do not give a tosh about Salman Rushdie, lead peaceful lives and are not hostage to religious fanatics.
In places like Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey most people see Islam as their religion, yes, but not as the only major overencompassing thing on their lives.
You have countries like Saudi Arabia or perhaps Iran (not sure about this, most Iranians I know are perfectly persobale people) in which you could make a case that a cult has taken hold of the full country, but to describe Islam as a whole as you have done is a comment born out of the most monumental ignorance.
And before you ask, I am an atheist.
Normal: check a dictionary. pretty easy. In General it refers to somebody that acts in general terms pretty much as everyone else. No, Goths are not abnormal, no matter how much I would like to class them as such.
Sane: anybody that is not sick.
Your definition of difficult is clearly one based in an alternate Universe.
YOu can just issues a commend, use the package manager or doubleclick in the file with the packaged software (this will launch in most distors the graphical installer).
So exactly in which planet this almost impossible Linux software installation of stuff is taking place?
Using loaded words like censorship frankly gives you no credibility.
Supposing that the scenario you are painintg was true, you still could get things done (painful but doable) and once one person does the installation, he can share the wisdom with others.
I fail to see how you could do that with closed source software, except paying for the support and in occassions being told by EULAs that you can't whine in public about your experiences.
We have *always* been at war with East Asia....
You clearly are talking in jest. I can almost see your funny hat with bells.
RedHat is now one of the recognized names on IT infrastructure with the likes of Sun, MS, IBM, HP and several others.
Geeks and nerds (same thing?) know about and use Ubuntu, but frankly is not serious to pretend that it is ready to provide for the needs RedHat is covering.
Nice troll, I laughed, next serious comment now please.
I do not want such abomination as default, thank you very much.
So at then edn they will not really care what OS you are running.
machine >uname -sr /bin
SunOS 5.8
machine >cd
machine >ls *sh
bash hash ksh pfksh remsh rsh ssh zsh
csh jsh pfcsh pfsh rksh sh tcsh
machine >
Very few people can attest to this because few people work in environments where the differences becom obvious.
It is of course the combination of Solaris/Sparc vs Linux/x86 , Solaris is designed in a way that scales well with your application. If you need more swap, disk space, memory Solaris will make good use of it, Linux not necessarily so (this improved with the most recent release of the kernel, the new scheduling mechanism seems to have imporved things quite a bit).
On top of that the tools for disk management (Disk Suite and Veritas) are more mature in Solaris, as is Database Support from Oracle and Sybase, the big dadys in the field. Armed with this infrastructure you can approach problems that Linux/ix86/MySQL (or evne Oracle) can't touch at the moment.
It is a piece of cake to bring a Linux machines to its knees.
Solaris performance in much better in similar hardware, specially if it is SPARC based processors, and Solaris escales properly with different machines: you can start an application in a small deprtemantal server and then migrate that to big Sun iron without any changes.
In Linux the only way to achieve equivalent performance is using a grid (like Google does),
It surprises me how many people in /. talk about Sun that clearly have not worked with their wares for any considerable amount of time if at all.
Solaris has been free for several years now, and before that a nominal charge was levied when you bought Sun servers.
In many ocassions we got new machines with newer version of Solaris and we could install it in older machines with their blessing, free of charge, and supported under the contract for the previous version.
You can say many things about Sun, but they never tried to abuse the Solaris upgrade cycle to make a buck.
I don't know about zsh, where I work root's default is always ksh.
The Catholic Church sees pleasure for pleasure's sake as sinful.
Call it sex, glutony, or anything else really.
Sex by itself is immoral if it is pursued only by a means to attain pleasure (masturbation is heavily discouraged as well for the same reason).
Sex enjoyed when doing it for procreation is perfectly fine since pleasure is not the end itself.
ALl is nonsense frankly, but as somebody reaised as a Catholic I think you are mistaken.
Bad ones are all the rest.
If you can't see what this is flawed, move to Iran or Saudi Arabia and ask them what is their opiion of having a Christian government.
Honestly guys, religious types should ensure their goverments are atheist, at least you all would have a fighting chance to be ignored in equal measure....
It is not enough to show up in the office, work diligently during our working hours and then some.
We are also suppossed to behave in a way our feudal lords, sorry, employers, deem appropriate in accordance to their more out of office hours, in our private time.
Charming concept.
They are Republicans.
US people vote for the government, has the power to get rid of them, and chose not to do so.
Also they freely join the army that goes and does the bid of the government and parrot the interventionist values of the political uberclass.
... infringement in China then? Or Saudi Arabia, you know, where they cut the hands of thiefs (I very much doubt the Saud Kingdom will care aobut niceties regarding what is copyright and what is theft).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moazzam_Begg
Neither the Kangaroo US court not the British Judicial system cold find anything against this or other individuals.
This same theme has been repeated over and over again.
The US screwed badly, they did not have any intelligence, picked up random guys in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tortured them, had to free most of them, but here you are, defending the indefensible.
It is written in several conventions and treaties.
Failing taht we have a bonafide arbiter in those matters: the Red Cross.
Oh wait, the US has not allowed access to Guantanamo prisioners to the Red Cross. How fucking conveninet, isn't it.
I think the neo-cons (and idiots like you) well know what torture is, you know it does not work (specially in a case where you want so badly to hear somethin, you have judged those individuals already in spite tht most of them had been left free because they are guilty of nothing but being in the worng place at the wrong time).
The US government is an absolute embarrasment to any people with a modicum of decency. Torturing people indiscriminately in the false hope of obtaining "information" (how do you know that a tortured person is not lying in order to stop the torture?) only creates fertile ground for more terrorists.
If your government has any evidence these people broke any laws then prosecute them and apply due process, that is what democracies where the rule of law is supposed to be paramount. Kangaroo courts to judge concentration camp prisioners is not the way a democratic system works.
You are the voice of fascism, but we are watching you and will make sure the likes of you never get their way.
Just because I am Mexican and commit the communist activity of walking on the streets.
The statistical wordlwide distribution of arsholes is pretty even.
So what is your point exactly?