Face it: retraining 10,000 employees on alternative operating systems won't be nearly as cost effective as maintaining the existing Windows installs, so the desktops will remain Windows for the foreseeable future.
Most applications I see nowadays in my office are Web based. Some people may need to use very complicated documents. They can keep their Windows machines if that is the right tool for the job, but all the other people that write a report once in a while can do perfectly with ay application available in other OSes.
Most employees do not have to deal with the OS at all. The skills that most people need is know how to click, double-click, drag and drop, etc. All modern desktop OSes proveide for that. I would expect that any differences regarding these basic competences can be explained in a very small booklet.
Finally you refer to training like if it would be a sudden, almost unforseen ocurrence. Training is (or should be) a permanent ongoing concern, but under the situation described above I don't se what vast amounts of training would be needed for any person migrating in thath hypotetical company of yours.
Just to finish. I have seen it done. I read so many naysayers trying to paint the situation like completely unsorumontable.
I am left with the distinctive feeling that they are either astroturfers or completely unqualified to opinionate regarding the matter of migrations away from Windows.
Koolaid share's price increases
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy, they're also fighting for stable economies & developed infrastructures.
In an era when companies are patenting "one click" buttons, to say that the people that provide a legal framework for FOSS are doing nothing, is most disingenious, uninformed and frankly idiotic.
Some people in the IT world need to broaden the view of the issues at hand, hacking (in the good sense of the word) is not what software is all about, your right to tinker, protected by people like this "albatross" you deride so cheaply, is essential if you have any hope of challenging big companies at their own game, os simply if you want to preserve the pleasure of thinkering and sharing without receiving an stupid lawsuit.
The problem with people with vision and understanding of a situation is that they are not unifiers, they are dividers because they say the truth as they see it, but the truth always hurts, and the people harmed will obvioulsy answer back.
To say that Stallman cause contoversy is an unintended plaudit, sheppesh compliance is what kills progress. Agitators as what fuells it.
... but strangely fail to understand than to do so a solid legal framework is needed. You may call it "GPL blabber", but I am not going to discuss a matter of semantics. The fact is that if people do not discuss this issues we are going to be had, and ejoy it, by the copyright and patent lawyes of those acpitalists you seem to be so fond of.
Linux was not created to provide what the users want. Linux was created to fulfill a need: the right to tinker. Linus was not envisioning pleasing the users, he was trying to get a tool that would work for him.
As far as I am concerned the users will come because there are companies prepared to make this possible, but the only saving grace that differentiates Linux from other OSes is freedom, not features.
People have been adopting Linux because they are free to thinker with it. Not because the features (there are better desktops out there, some applications you simply can't get for Linux, even an equivalent). People are prepared to put up with lack of features because they can suit the system to thei own needs in a way not possible with other systems, even if hand holding comes in the form of USENET instead of expensive, ungainly, paid for phone support.
If people do not keep their eyes on the ball, the freedom will go away, and then Linux would be doomed: its only distinctive advantage (freedom) would be lost, and thus it would not make sense to use it.
If a company uses GPLed software for internal purposes, and does not redistribute the binaries (i.e. only for internal consumption) an employee can't take that code out since he is not the owner of those changes.
It is up to the entity making the modifications to decide if they redistribute the binaries (and thus force themselve to make the source available), but that does not give carte blanche ao somebody working on behalf of that entity to decide for himslef what to do with code that is not his to distribute.
Can you please tell us when the poor devlopers, may the little bunny have pity of their fearful soul, were forced to GPL their source code?
Oh! I see what you are saying. Those horrible developers that use the GPL are forcing those poor developers, may the little bunny protect them, to release changes for a product the did not develop.
Sorry but I think the little bunny is cleverer than you.
Developers starting a new piece of software are in complete freedom of not using the GPL.
Developers wanting to take advantage of a work licensed under the GPL have full freedom not to use a software with licensing conditions that will make them miserable.
You are simply pandering to the individuals that want to exploit the work of others.
Big conglomerates used licensing in a punitive fashion in accordance to a set of values and morals (dubious ones I think).
The original poster can;t berate the GNU camp fro using licenses in that way while blissfully ignoring what other people, with far more power and money, are doing.
Mexican writer Juan Rulfo wrote only 2 smallish books (almost booklets) and then retired to private life. One is a novel based on his home town, a dirty little village, the other a collection of short histories.
Any Spanish speaking writer and any moderately informed Spanish speaking reader will know his name, the names of his books and pay homage to him as a great innovator.
Google for him and be surprised.
Don't belittle a person that has written little, what he has written may be very insightful and important.
....an installation or upgrade of several hundred machines running Windows.
With a central, web based offering, the only thing you need to advice your users for an upgrade is the time when it is going to happen.
With windows based apps it all becomes a nightmare that may not scale and that oepns new vectors of vulnerabilities on each machine.
With a web based application server your possible vilnerabilities are well localized and more likely to be quickly and efficently controlled.
I am not Google marketroid neither, but 15 years of experience in the IT sector give me enough insight to recognize an idea with potential when I see it.
But for the ones that were there when the WWW became popular, Mosaic was synonymous with Internet, and Andreessen was the prophet.
There was HotJava, a browser developped by Sun in Java, more as a proof of concept of the language than as a real application powerhouse, and there was Amaya, the W3C browser released to test compliant HTML code.
And that was pretty much all the game in town.
You can find all this by yourself, to ask for references to what is pretty much well dcoumented history is lazy and disingeneous.
It is modded as funny beacuse is nonsense.
on
Computer Voodoo?
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· Score: 1
The hideout of the incapable technician is the blaming of the user.
Mexico, for example, has had a maximium working week of 40 hours (unless you pay overtime or are contracted as a consultant. in which case your rates are much higer) since 1917.
During that period it experienced high rates of development comparable to any of the Asian tigers (specially between 1945-1970 period). 6%, 7% or 8% growth rates wer not uncommon.
We should also refer to the German economic miracle during the same period. It is well known that German workers enjoy a highly protective system under which economic growth was still possible.
Protecting workers rights is not necessarily opossed to an increase in productivity.
In the case of China the poor record of workers rights (in an allegedly Communist country of all places) has more to do qith the collapsing of the Chinese bureaucracy under the weight of corruption thatn with a real economic need.
Dictatorial and opressive regimes would use any excuse to justify the bad living conditions of the population, which is particularly easy to do if it is for the good of the people....
I have never worked overtime in a regular basis in my life. Ever.
But I am progressing on my carrier fine, TVM.
The difference is that in those horrendous countries with social policies you have protection against abusive employers that pull the "mandatory" overtime bullshit.
In Mexico the working week is 40 hours, in Europe between 35 and 40. Nobody gives a second thought to people working exactly just that, and many companies actively encourage that you actually do not work more than that.
Most EU countries are more productive thatn US workers, perhaps because they have a more balanced lifestyle.
Maybe one day USians will stop drinking the Koolaid that their employers (via bought legislature and media) is serving them....
I am also sure that people from times go by in Western countries, lets say 19th century, would claim today that they had a stronger work ethic.
Did they have a better life? In a society were children used to work in mining, women had no rights in regards to pregnancy and men were suppossed to work 14 or 16 hour shifts, I may venture that their lifes were crap.
Stronger work ethic? Maybe (do people in these "stron work ethic" situations have a choice?).
It is simply impossible to listen to all that music in lifetime, and it is an exercise of futility to hoard it all if you will never use most of it....
.... you deserve to be abused by the companies that should be serving you.
Fortunately there are enough people that care about the particulars that Linux and FLOSS in general are now taken seriously in the press, the media and the corps that matter. The general public will follow sooner or later.
According to your reasoning that was a Windows shortcoming.
Now wiseguy, pray do tell us who fixed this shortcomming?
Was it MS?
Nope. IT was Apple Computers Inc.
So put the blame where it belongs. iTunes does not run in Linux because Apple don't want it to. Those are the culprit party, not the Linux comunity.
iPods work perfectly fine in Linux btw, there is plenty of software out there that allows you to transparently drap and drop MP3 files in your iPod (without doing any modifications to the music player).
You patronize the previous poster for being patronizing. Go figure.
But Linux adoption is not and end to itself.
If people do not have the spine to use stuff that respects their rights (DRM contravenes fair use and makes difficult to assert your fith to full ownership of music you buy) do not blame in people that have got a clue.
Next thing you will suggest is that democratic countries should become a bit more repressive so people used to be repressed feel at home.
If you want to be free you have to pay a price, in the case of sofware the price may be conveneince (and here, this is becoming a non issue, I have used Linux as my desktop for 10 years and have found ways to make for the relatively inconvenience of using something not so popular).
What you describe as an attitude problem is simply to stand for your principles.
The mainstream users should in this case wisen up or be screwed, Linux, FLOSS and principles can't be bnet in order to accomadate an ignorant, masochist, majority.
The London bombers and the alleged London terrorists captured last week (alleged, information is emerging that many of them did not have a passport, flight tickets or anything that would have allowed them on a plane anytime soon) did not allege anything.
They were normal people by the reckoning of most people that knew them.
The current problem is a small minority of deranged people incensed by suicidal policies of Western leaders (mostly the US and the UK) when dealing with Muslim countries and their international grievances.
The individuals that hide behind Islam have no redention as human beens and should be caught and punished, but, and this is the bit but many people are blissfully ignoring, you don't pacify a mad man by been unjust to him.
Slashdot Mirror
Face it: retraining 10,000 employees on alternative operating systems won't be nearly as cost effective as maintaining the existing Windows installs, so the desktops will remain Windows for the foreseeable future.
Most applications I see nowadays in my office are Web based. Some people may need to use very complicated documents. They can keep their Windows machines if that is the right tool for the job, but all the other people that write a report once in a while can do perfectly with ay application available in other OSes.
Most employees do not have to deal with the OS at all. The skills that most people need is know how to click, double-click, drag and drop, etc. All modern desktop OSes proveide for that. I would expect that any differences regarding these basic competences can be explained in a very small booklet.
Finally you refer to training like if it would be a sudden, almost unforseen ocurrence. Training is (or should be) a permanent ongoing concern, but under the situation described above I don't se what vast amounts of training would be needed for any person migrating in thath hypotetical company of yours.
Just to finish. I have seen it done. I read so many naysayers trying to paint the situation like completely unsorumontable.
I am left with the distinctive feeling that they are either astroturfers or completely unqualified to opinionate regarding the matter of migrations away from Windows.
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy, they're also fighting for stable economies & developed infrastructures.
Where have you been the last 5 years????
2 years of not getting it. Truly sad.
In an era when companies are patenting "one click" buttons, to say that the people that provide a legal framework for FOSS are doing nothing, is most disingenious, uninformed and frankly idiotic.
Some people in the IT world need to broaden the view of the issues at hand, hacking (in the good sense of the word) is not what software is all about, your right to tinker, protected by people like this "albatross" you deride so cheaply, is essential if you have any hope of challenging big companies at their own game, os simply if you want to preserve the pleasure of thinkering and sharing without receiving an stupid lawsuit.
The problem with people with vision and understanding of a situation is that they are not unifiers, they are dividers because they say the truth as they see it, but the truth always hurts, and the people harmed will obvioulsy answer back.
To say that Stallman cause contoversy is an unintended plaudit, sheppesh compliance is what kills progress. Agitators as what fuells it.
... but strangely fail to understand than to do so a solid legal framework is needed. You may call it "GPL blabber", but I am not going to discuss a matter of semantics. The fact is that if people do not discuss this issues we are going to be had, and ejoy it, by the copyright and patent lawyes of those acpitalists you seem to be so fond of.
Linux was not created to provide what the users want. Linux was created to fulfill a need: the right to tinker. Linus was not envisioning pleasing the users, he was trying to get a tool that would work for him.
As far as I am concerned the users will come because there are companies prepared to make this possible, but the only saving grace that differentiates Linux from other OSes is freedom, not features.
People have been adopting Linux because they are free to thinker with it. Not because the features (there are better desktops out there, some applications you simply can't get for Linux, even an equivalent). People are prepared to put up with lack of features because they can suit the system to thei own needs in a way not possible with other systems, even if hand holding comes in the form of USENET instead of expensive, ungainly, paid for phone support.
If people do not keep their eyes on the ball, the freedom will go away, and then Linux would be doomed: its only distinctive advantage (freedom) would be lost, and thus it would not make sense to use it.
.... when provides a good or service with his software.
If a company uses GPLed software for internal purposes, and does not redistribute the binaries (i.e. only for internal consumption) an employee can't take that code out since he is not the owner of those changes.
It is up to the entity making the modifications to decide if they redistribute the binaries (and thus force themselve to make the source available), but that does not give carte blanche ao somebody working on behalf of that entity to decide for himslef what to do with code that is not his to distribute.
.... of some people.
Can you please tell us when the poor devlopers, may the little bunny have pity of their fearful soul, were forced to GPL their source code?
Oh! I see what you are saying. Those horrible developers that use the GPL are forcing those poor developers, may the little bunny protect them, to release changes for a product the did not develop.
Sorry but I think the little bunny is cleverer than you.
Developers starting a new piece of software are in complete freedom of not using the GPL.
Developers wanting to take advantage of a work licensed under the GPL have full freedom not to use a software with licensing conditions that will make them miserable.
You are simply pandering to the individuals that want to exploit the work of others.
Big conglomerates used licensing in a punitive fashion in accordance to a set of values and morals (dubious ones I think).
The original poster can;t berate the GNU camp fro using licenses in that way while blissfully ignoring what other people, with far more power and money, are doing.
Mexican writer Juan Rulfo wrote only 2 smallish books (almost booklets) and then retired to private life. One is a novel based on his home town, a dirty little village, the other a collection of short histories.
Any Spanish speaking writer and any moderately informed Spanish speaking reader will know his name, the names of his books and pay homage to him as a great innovator.
Google for him and be surprised.
Don't belittle a person that has written little, what he has written may be very insightful and important.
....an installation or upgrade of several hundred machines running Windows.
With a central, web based offering, the only thing you need to advice your users for an upgrade is the time when it is going to happen.
With windows based apps it all becomes a nightmare that may not scale and that oepns new vectors of vulnerabilities on each machine.
With a web based application server your possible vilnerabilities are well localized and more likely to be quickly and efficently controlled.
I am not Google marketroid neither, but 15 years of experience in the IT sector give me enough insight to recognize an idea with potential when I see it.
But for the ones that were there when the WWW became popular, Mosaic was synonymous with Internet, and Andreessen was the prophet.
There was HotJava, a browser developped by Sun in Java, more as a proof of concept of the language than as a real application powerhouse, and there was Amaya, the W3C browser released to test compliant HTML code.
And that was pretty much all the game in town.
You can find all this by yourself, to ask for references to what is pretty much well dcoumented history is lazy and disingeneous.
The hideout of the incapable technician is the blaming of the user.
They would not be stealing, they would by copying without permission.
There is a legal difference between both, so if you are going to point the finger, do so while holding the correct arguments.
There are also situation in which copying is perfectly legal, even without permission.
Once can't issue a blanket statemnt regarding copying without knowing the particularities of each case.
Mexico, for example, has had a maximium working week of 40 hours (unless you pay overtime or are contracted as a consultant. in which case your rates are much higer) since 1917.
During that period it experienced high rates of development comparable to any of the Asian tigers (specially between 1945-1970 period). 6%, 7% or 8% growth rates wer not uncommon.
We should also refer to the German economic miracle during the same period. It is well known that German workers enjoy a highly protective system under which economic growth was still possible.
Protecting workers rights is not necessarily opossed to an increase in productivity.
In the case of China the poor record of workers rights (in an allegedly Communist country of all places) has more to do qith the collapsing of the Chinese bureaucracy under the weight of corruption thatn with a real economic need.
Dictatorial and opressive regimes would use any excuse to justify the bad living conditions of the population, which is particularly easy to do if it is for the good of the people....
I have never worked overtime in a regular basis in my life. Ever.
But I am progressing on my carrier fine, TVM.
The difference is that in those horrendous countries with social policies you have protection against abusive employers that pull the "mandatory" overtime bullshit.
In Mexico the working week is 40 hours, in Europe between 35 and 40. Nobody gives a second thought to people working exactly just that, and many companies actively encourage that you actually do not work more than that.
Most EU countries are more productive thatn US workers, perhaps because they have a more balanced lifestyle.
Maybe one day USians will stop drinking the Koolaid that their employers (via bought legislature and media) is serving them....
I am also sure that people from times go by in Western countries, lets say 19th century, would claim today that they had a stronger work ethic.
Did they have a better life? In a society were children used to work in mining, women had no rights in regards to pregnancy and men were suppossed to work 14 or 16 hour shifts, I may venture that their lifes were crap.
Stronger work ethic? Maybe (do people in these "stron work ethic" situations have a choice?).
Better life? Doubt it.
It is simply impossible to listen to all that music in lifetime, and it is an exercise of futility to hoard it all if you will never use most of it....
.... you deserve to be abused by the companies that should be serving you.
Fortunately there are enough people that care about the particulars that Linux and FLOSS in general are now taken seriously in the press, the media and the corps that matter. The general public will follow sooner or later.
Look, iTunes used to run in OSX only.
It did not run in Windows.
According to your reasoning that was a Windows shortcoming.
Now wiseguy, pray do tell us who fixed this shortcomming?
Was it MS?
Nope. IT was Apple Computers Inc.
So put the blame where it belongs. iTunes does not run in Linux because Apple don't want it to. Those are the culprit party, not the Linux comunity.
iPods work perfectly fine in Linux btw, there is plenty of software out there that allows you to transparently drap and drop MP3 files in your iPod (without doing any modifications to the music player).
You patronize the previous poster for being patronizing. Go figure.
But Linux adoption is not and end to itself.
If people do not have the spine to use stuff that respects their rights (DRM contravenes fair use and makes difficult to assert your fith to full ownership of music you buy) do not blame in people that have got a clue.
Next thing you will suggest is that democratic countries should become a bit more repressive so people used to be repressed feel at home.
If you want to be free you have to pay a price, in the case of sofware the price may be conveneince (and here, this is becoming a non issue, I have used Linux as my desktop for 10 years and have found ways to make for the relatively inconvenience of using something not so popular).
What you describe as an attitude problem is simply to stand for your principles.
The mainstream users should in this case wisen up or be screwed, Linux, FLOSS and principles can't be bnet in order to accomadate an ignorant, masochist, majority.
Look, if you have not used Linux in the last couple of years say so, it is fine, we will understand.
.... the use of the word allegedely is a healty necessity.
Oh, and it seems that secveral of the people arrested did not even have a passport, so how is it that the risk was "imminent"?
This history has still lots of stuff to show...
A laptop should not contain confidential information. Period.
Confidential information should be contained in a remote server properly secured, or in removable, encrypted media.
The London bombers and the alleged London terrorists captured last week (alleged, information is emerging that many of them did not have a passport, flight tickets or anything that would have allowed them on a plane anytime soon) did not allege anything.
They were normal people by the reckoning of most people that knew them.
The current problem is a small minority of deranged people incensed by suicidal policies of Western leaders (mostly the US and the UK) when dealing with Muslim countries and their international grievances.
The individuals that hide behind Islam have no redention as human beens and should be caught and punished, but, and this is the bit but many people are blissfully ignoring, you don't pacify a mad man by been unjust to him.
If we hope that Linux will ever have the hardware and software support it needs, the only way will be to sing its praises.
As long as Linux is not in 20% or 30% of desktop machine (at least) it is worth building a body of evidence showing why Linux is a valid alternative.