Poor documentation? Have you got a web browser and an Internet connection? Do you know Google's url? There is your documentation. Now, show me your manuals for your latest and greatest Windows OS. What? You did not get one? Pray, do not tell me. I am shocked, shocked, I am telling you. OK, show me your manual of Office? No manual neither? Gee, you can trust nobody nowadays.
I don't know in which planet you are buddy, down here on planet Earth most software companies stopped providing proper documentation ages ago, and very often when hey do they are written in Engrish. Or they refer you to their website.
As in poor support do not joke with us in jest buddy, unless you are paying you get squat. And that is as true for your WIndows, OS X or commerical Linux distribution.
If you are wise enough to use Linux for your bussiness then you will pay support, like you do when you use any other software infrastructure. The advantage is that you have choice of who procvides that support.
With commercial options there is only one game in town, and you drink it or spill it.
Double clicking in a file with a caption "prog_name installer" which action is to launch your emerge command is much more user friendly (because it appeals to our visual instincts as a primate).
Or at lease the user should be met half way by providing a script alias names "install_software" or something of the sort.
emerge may have geek appeal but is completely meaningless to a newbie.
If your most valuable time is spent doing slide presentations and writting a few documents I just don't see how the current state of Linux can't provide for this.
I have been working with whatever Linux has to offer for 10 years, 3 of which I used it exclusively for my Masters degree (including all kind of documents that were suppossed to be created with MS Office).
My time is so valuable that I moved to Linux. Maybe OS X is up there with Linux in terms of usability and application support. But at the end you are still hostage to the whims and tribulations of what Apple decides, your data and methods to access it remains in many cases still hostage to Apple.
YOu may like that, I don't, and that is cool, but putting this little label of Linux as a system in which you have to invest time for things to work is a myth. This was true as recently as 2 or 3 years ago, but now it is frankly scaremongering.
If the innovation is really the greates thing since sliced bread, if marketed properly, it will give enough head start to the inventor to make back his money.
If the invention is just a gradual step or an idea that is pretty simple (even if unique), then it should rightly be copied, and the head start should be much shorter in regards to competition.
Most likely what would happen is that inventors with a good record would be hired by companies in order to solve problems and with their muscle put things quickly into the market.
Prop up a company that lost the clu-o-meter 10 years ago?
Sorry pal, we can't have it both ways. Most people, rightly, dislike AOL, this reflects and lower marketshare, lower profits (or both) which eventually impacts the workforce.
People in general gloath about AOL problems, not about the individuals affected by this measure.
Come down from your high horse, you have no reason to be riding it.
Nobody's family starves to death just because you lose your job, specially in developed countries (where most/.ers are located).
A paycheck is not necessary to feed your family on these places. Is to what any self respecting individual aspires, but not having one is not a tragedy of the sorts many/.ers paint.
It may be an unpleasent experience but by large is not a life threatening one for anybody but the mentally ill (depression, etc).
You want tragedy?
I have friends in both Beirut and Basra. Being a techie there puts to shame the little complaints most/.ers have about bein jobless.
Sorry pal, the jobs are out ther, but it is only for people with some skills and determination.
If recrutiment is so draconian that even your credit rating is scrutinized in order to get a new job, then one should move to a different state or country.
There are options, but people want the easiest one, which is not necessarily the best one.
....but no good for distribution - at least not if the publisher wanted to make money.
This is completey untrue. There are companies making money today (emusic, magnatunes) using MP3 for distribution.
Naxos (classical music) is releasing all their stuff in non DRMed MP3 files.
The format has no problems, the ones with the problme are the big 5 that have got a mental block. People value convenience over many other considerations, most people could not care less about sharing something that is not copied.
Most people would share a non DRMed file with a few of their friends. how that would be a treat to the big 5 recording companies is a mystery.
I know ladies that know exactly what they are buying and why.
And if they don't they ask the right questions.
When you are spending such a serious amount of money only a stupid person (woman or otherwise) would base his decitions in the factors you are mentioning. The gender of a person doing a purchased based in the worng reasons is completely incidental.
Painters, sculptors have it the easiest, they have a name, an style and they can authenticate their works (some artists are fingerprinting their works with their own DNA in several ways). If anybody copies a painting, big deal. If this happens after the artist is dead, who would be harmed then? Nowadays any plastic artist worth its salt will catalogue their work with excruciating detail. So this group would not be affected by a lack of copyright law.
Musicians? Performers are creating nothing, they can go and fsck themselves or do what they are suppossed to do: go out there and perform. Composers? Music circulating around would be the the advertisement for new tailored comissions or performances if they can play.
Writers? They could sell books in advance. I am pretty sure that good writers could announce they will write a book, request remuneration before publication and then publish. After they had made the money, who would care that the work is copied ad nauseam (actually that would be free advertisement for their next work). So no copyright needed.
I could go on, but I am pretty certain that artists would find ways to keep earning a living, bussiness models would change, but at least we would not starve the spreading of culture with draconian artificial constructs. Thing that many things created early last century are still untouchable. That mkes us all poorer culturaly because we cant create new works with them.
Then at least I would know if he has experience in a enterprise environment.
What many folks supportive of the FLOSS movement lack is precisely that.
Systems Administrators very rarely select the operating system that is deployed in a big company.
I may have all my home machines running Ubuntu (last year everybody was running Gentoo I recall) but my boss or most likely a guy 2 or 3 levels above him, will decide based in many variables (do not underestimate the golf meetings) which OS will be deployed.
This Tony guy is starting from a very shaky premise: that actually system administrators are the main purchasers.
A lot of companies know this and are taking advantage of it, from being locked down to one vendor now, finally, as it should be, they have the choice of who holds their hand when there is a problem.
If you think the suits are not questioning why it should not be so in the desktop as well, you are misinformed or working in small companies only.
... if you are actually not defending your area (bunch of sissies) hopping to go to extra time. A famous Mexican soccer comentator used to say "The football is very lazy, it always choses to rest in the net that is closest to it"...
But now that you guys know that, you can apply this knowledge next time there is a WC in Germany.
Slashdot Mirror
Just wanted to clarify that one.
Poor documentation? Have you got a web browser and an Internet connection? Do you know Google's url? There is your documentation. Now, show me your manuals for your latest and greatest Windows OS. What? You did not get one? Pray, do not tell me. I am shocked, shocked, I am telling you. OK, show me your manual of Office? No manual neither? Gee, you can trust nobody nowadays.
I don't know in which planet you are buddy, down here on planet Earth most software companies stopped providing proper documentation ages ago, and very often when hey do they are written in Engrish. Or they refer you to their website.
As in poor support do not joke with us in jest buddy, unless you are paying you get squat. And that is as true for your WIndows, OS X or commerical Linux distribution.
If you are wise enough to use Linux for your bussiness then you will pay support, like you do when you use any other software infrastructure. The advantage is that you have choice of who procvides that support.
With commercial options there is only one game in town, and you drink it or spill it.
Double clicking in a file with a caption "prog_name installer" which action is to launch your emerge command is much more user friendly (because it appeals to our visual instincts as a primate).
Or at lease the user should be met half way by providing a script alias names "install_software" or something of the sort.
emerge may have geek appeal but is completely meaningless to a newbie.
If your most valuable time is spent doing slide presentations and writting a few documents I just don't see how the current state of Linux can't provide for this.
I have been working with whatever Linux has to offer for 10 years, 3 of which I used it exclusively for my Masters degree (including all kind of documents that were suppossed to be created with MS Office).
My time is so valuable that I moved to Linux. Maybe OS X is up there with Linux in terms of usability and application support. But at the end you are still hostage to the whims and tribulations of what Apple decides, your data and methods to access it remains in many cases still hostage to Apple.
YOu may like that, I don't, and that is cool, but putting this little label of Linux as a system in which you have to invest time for things to work is a myth. This was true as recently as 2 or 3 years ago, but now it is frankly scaremongering.
.... and many others.
Geeks are suppossed to be good at spotting patterns.
This one is screaming at you but your political biases are stopping you to see it.
If they are selling all their stuff below cost them may be popular but the bussiness model would be broken.
But we don;t know at this moment in time because the accounting, in the words of Apple, can't be trusted.
It was completely unavoidable to come up with the correct material eventually.
If the innovation is really the greates thing since sliced bread, if marketed properly, it will give enough head start to the inventor to make back his money.
If the invention is just a gradual step or an idea that is pretty simple (even if unique), then it should rightly be copied, and the head start should be much shorter in regards to competition.
Most likely what would happen is that inventors with a good record would be hired by companies in order to solve problems and with their muscle put things quickly into the market.
One pay 4 times less for a .co.uk domain than for a .com domain in the UK.
It is not only a matter of cost, it's also a matter of branding, marketing, clarification, etc.
Anybody using a local domain is stating clearly where his website is and provide a clue to who it may be aimed at.
The Open University now recommends OO.org.
There was a time when they mandated Office, but I guess enough students talked sense into them.
Prop up a company that lost the clu-o-meter 10 years ago?
Sorry pal, we can't have it both ways. Most people, rightly, dislike AOL, this reflects and lower marketshare, lower profits (or both) which eventually impacts the workforce.
People in general gloath about AOL problems, not about the individuals affected by this measure.
Come down from your high horse, you have no reason to be riding it.
... labour laws are crap.
In civilized countries workers get some compensation to help them while they find a new job.
Nobody's family starves to death just because you lose your job, specially in developed countries (where most /.ers are located).
/.ers paint.
/.ers have about bein jobless.
A paycheck is not necessary to feed your family on these places. Is to what any self respecting individual aspires, but not having one is not a tragedy of the sorts many
It may be an unpleasent experience but by large is not a life threatening one for anybody but the mentally ill (depression, etc).
You want tragedy?
I have friends in both Beirut and Basra. Being a techie there puts to shame the little complaints most
Why are they not contracting?
Or heading their own bussiness?
Sorry pal, the jobs are out ther, but it is only for people with some skills and determination.
If recrutiment is so draconian that even your credit rating is scrutinized in order to get a new job, then one should move to a different state or country.
There are options, but people want the easiest one, which is not necessarily the best one.
.... allow me to introduce you to Miss Irony.
....but no good for distribution - at least not if the publisher wanted to make money.
This is completey untrue. There are companies making money today (emusic, magnatunes) using MP3 for distribution.
Naxos (classical music) is releasing all their stuff in non DRMed MP3 files.
The format has no problems, the ones with the problme are the big 5 that have got a mental block. People value convenience over many other considerations, most people could not care less about sharing something that is not copied.
Most people would share a non DRMed file with a few of their friends. how that would be a treat to the big 5 recording companies is a mystery.
If you think the state of your computer matters to a prospective girlfriend I reckon you are not getting out much....
I know ladies that know exactly what they are buying and why.
And if they don't they ask the right questions.
When you are spending such a serious amount of money only a stupid person (woman or otherwise) would base his decitions in the factors you are mentioning. The gender of a person doing a purchased based in the worng reasons is completely incidental.
Painters, sculptors have it the easiest, they have a name, an style and they can authenticate their works (some artists are fingerprinting their works with their own DNA in several ways). If anybody copies a painting, big deal. If this happens after the artist is dead, who would be harmed then? Nowadays any plastic artist worth its salt will catalogue their work with excruciating detail. So this group would not be affected by a lack of copyright law.
Musicians? Performers are creating nothing, they can go and fsck themselves or do what they are suppossed to do: go out there and perform. Composers? Music circulating around would be the the advertisement for new tailored comissions or performances if they can play.
Writers? They could sell books in advance. I am pretty sure that good writers could announce they will write a book, request remuneration before publication and then publish. After they had made the money, who would care that the work is copied ad nauseam (actually that would be free advertisement for their next work). So no copyright needed.
I could go on, but I am pretty certain that artists would find ways to keep earning a living, bussiness models would change, but at least we would not starve the spreading of culture with draconian artificial constructs. Thing that many things created early last century are still untouchable. That mkes us all poorer culturaly because we cant create new works with them.
Then at least I would know if he has experience in a enterprise environment.
What many folks supportive of the FLOSS movement lack is precisely that.
Systems Administrators very rarely select the operating system that is deployed in a big company.
I may have all my home machines running Ubuntu (last year everybody was running Gentoo I recall) but my boss or most likely a guy 2 or 3 levels above him, will decide based in many variables (do not underestimate the golf meetings) which OS will be deployed.
This Tony guy is starting from a very shaky premise: that actually system administrators are the main purchasers.
In big companies that is not the case.
Or whoever they get a support contract from.
A lot of companies know this and are taking advantage of it, from being locked down to one vendor now, finally, as it should be, they have the choice of who holds their hand when there is a problem.
If you think the suits are not questioning why it should not be so in the desktop as well, you are misinformed or working in small companies only.
The bizarre pronunciation rules (are there any?) make these kind of mistakes very common.
... if you are actually not defending your area (bunch of sissies) hopping to go to extra time. A famous Mexican soccer comentator used to say "The football is very lazy, it always choses to rest in the net that is closest to it"...
But now that you guys know that, you can apply this knowledge next time there is a WC in Germany.
I have seen logos and the like of the team and that is the context.
Think about the US jobs that will be lost.
We are doomed, I am telling you, Mc Donalds, flipping burgers, blah, blah, blah.