The Mahatma knew his cause was just and that his supporters, and many in the side of his enemy, knew it. That was the context in which that saying was said.
You get a full blown, constantly improving, OS for freee that is free. And the only thing you have to do is use it and report problems.
I don't see where is the raw deal.
If one group of people choose to make business and another one choose to support a political agenda I think both are very commendable things to do.
Having both kinds of organizations ensure Linux has a name recognition while allowing us access to cutting edge technology and promoting a political point of view in regards to the use and sharing of software.
I have to reboot my machine weekly due to memory leaks managed ungracefully all the time. This been my office machine, is running only MS software. It is *that* bad.
You are not lisitng your needs, you are listing the products you know or are comfortable with that do something you currently do.
And unsurprisingly, many of your needs have only one provider. That is exactly how vendor lock in happens and it is a sad state of affairs when people don;t even realize the big mess in which they are and think temselves that they are evaluating their needs and choosing accordingly.
When you think monoculture you get MSCEs, promote monoculture in your company and yoou will get the cheapest money can buy which normally means the lowest skill set.
Promote diversity in your company (between reason, it is OK tyo have two or three different solutions for different problems in your company) and you will have people that have a deeper understanding of technology in general.
You will pay in years to come by being restricted to a "standard" that forces you to use the Internet in only one sanctioned way, using technology provided for only one company.
Well that is if people like me throw the towell, which will not be anytime soon.
In Mexico we have a saying: that who burns himself with boiling milk will ve weary even of icecream.
To be vigilant and simply cynical about a company known to use illegal practices does look bad only in the eyes of people that have short term memory problems.
Then MS will come, attempt to patent this or other obvious already perfected innovation and the OS advocate that suppossedly looked bad then will look damn insigthful.
One or two are as good as you are (asuming you are any good to begin with) and then you realize that you have put an artificial barrier of entry for people to have access to your work.
What is going to work IMHO is to cultivate the loyalty of a small close circle of followers that will be convinced to help once in a while to donate (not pay, donate) in order to allow you to continue providing free content for free.
Pity that some patches broke previous fixes for other problems and that such an avalanche of fixes has to be tested before installed in a corporate environment.
In Solaris we can do this once every quarter.
In Windows we have been patching and rebooting practically every couple of weeks for the last 6 months.
As you see, a lucky home user can't be taken as an example of how a company could be affected.
The problem is not the user. Period. If you design a car that has accidents for the most inocous of reasons you would be out of business in a snap, blaming the user would not save you. Extrapolate as you wish, a computer device should not expose an user to nastiness and it should not be possible to use it to launch attacks.
You may be affected by MS targeted virii even if you don't have Windows in your own network: thousend of owned machines scanning your firewall ports can bring your network to a halt.
Some of the virii have been so arcane and difficult to patch (even for pros sonny) that to keep arguing that MS is affected for their monopolistic position is the excuse of the gullible or the ignorant.
I will not boast about my credentials here, but the post to which you are replying is spot on, I have seen myself in the same situation in a much bigger and equally well organized company with an equivalent skill set as the one mentioned and still it is almost impossible that in despite of best, stringer practices, not to be affected.
MS in its current form is a threat to the IT industry, the sooner people realize this the better for everybody, MS included.
it sadens me that in spite of the mountains of evidence there are still people like you (and Mr Bush) that will go to any lenghts to descredit something on which there is a general concensus in the scientific community: there is global warming, perhaps made worse by human activity, something should be done.
When the overriding short term policy is to "protect American jobs" no matter what, we know that long term vision will not be in long supply in certain countries.
To each one his own, I can't accept as good balance a forced cycle of upgrades and obsolescence impossed by a company convicted of using illegal tacticts to prop-up its market share.
Perhaps my moral and social standards are too high and I should join the fray of whatever works without mattering the consequences.
I remember as if it was just yesterday how people, non geeks, had to mess up with autoexec.bat or config.sys files and later on with *.ini files to make things work on their Windows machines.
For some strange reason some people see it as normal that back then Joe User was mightly prepared to do those tasks, but now somehow normal people should be assumed to be stupid and incapable to handle a CLI like the one provided by MSDOS back then.
The average user always had and most probably always will have to do some tweaking on his system to make it work the way he wants. One size fits all is obviously not the right solution and the people willing to live with that will always have a mediocre computing experience.
The needs and resources of an individual are not the same required by a corporation, and amongst corporations, the needs of a company with 10 employess are not the same as the ones of a company employing 10000 people.
At home I need to write a few letters in passable format, keep a nice looking CV, perhaps have a spreadsheet for some basic calculations. I do not need presentation software and most probably I don't need DB software (comma separated plain files normally will do fine to organize relatively complex information in tables). Groupware is just an aberration at home, thus Outlook is not needed (and this is ignoring security, but I am feeling forgiving).
If I need to share between home and office machines, then I would expect that mty employer either provides a laptop or the necessary software, otherwise the sharing is done in the lower common denominator (rtf, plain text).
This unwillingness to evaluate what you really need is killing competition and innovation allowing monopolies to grow where healthy competition should be possible.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mahatma knew his cause was just and that his supporters, and many in the side of his enemy, knew it. That was the context in which that saying was said.
Can SCO claim the same?
... for one OS in another, without emulator.
In such a regime, Mandela knew the next step after the "they fight you" step, which is "you fight back" followed by "you go underground".
And then you win.
You get a full blown, constantly improving, OS for freee that is free. And the only thing you have to do is use it and report problems.
I don't see where is the raw deal.
If one group of people choose to make business and another one choose to support a political agenda I think both are very commendable things to do.
Having both kinds of organizations ensure Linux has a name recognition while allowing us access to cutting edge technology and promoting a political point of view in regards to the use and sharing of software.
So honestly, what is your point?
I have to reboot my machine weekly due to memory leaks managed ungracefully all the time. This been my office machine, is running only MS software. It is *that* bad.
You are not lisitng your needs, you are listing the products you know or are comfortable with that do something you currently do.
And unsurprisingly, many of your needs have only one provider. That is exactly how vendor lock in happens and it is a sad state of affairs when people don;t even realize the big mess in which they are and think temselves that they are evaluating their needs and choosing accordingly.
Office suite: I need compatibility. Pathetic.
When you think monoculture you get MSCEs, promote monoculture in your company and yoou will get the cheapest money can buy which normally means the lowest skill set.
Promote diversity in your company (between reason, it is OK tyo have two or three different solutions for different problems in your company) and you will have people that have a deeper understanding of technology in general.
IMVHO of course.
You will pay in years to come by being restricted to a "standard" that forces you to use the Internet in only one sanctioned way, using technology provided for only one company.
Well that is if people like me throw the towell, which will not be anytime soon.
In Mexico we have a saying: that who burns himself with boiling milk will ve weary even of icecream.
To be vigilant and simply cynical about a company known to use illegal practices does look bad only in the eyes of people that have short term memory problems.
Then MS will come, attempt to patent this or other obvious already perfected innovation and the OS advocate that suppossedly looked bad then will look damn insigthful.
... a clearinghouse for press releases?
Did Apple pay for the placement of this "article"?
One or two are as good as you are (asuming you are any good to begin with) and then you realize that you have put an artificial barrier of entry for people to have access to your work.
What is going to work IMHO is to cultivate the loyalty of a small close circle of followers that will be convinced to help once in a while to donate (not pay, donate) in order to allow you to continue providing free content for free.
Say you are charging and you'll be doomed.
If I can get the same (or good enough equivalents) for free?
You did not read Shirky's article or did not get the gist of it.
Buy an add....
Pity that some patches broke previous fixes for other problems and that such an avalanche of fixes has to be tested before installed in a corporate environment.
In Solaris we can do this once every quarter.
In Windows we have been patching and rebooting practically every couple of weeks for the last 6 months.
As you see, a lucky home user can't be taken as an example of how a company could be affected.
The problem is not the user. Period. If you design a car that has accidents for the most inocous of reasons you would be out of business in a snap, blaming the user would not save you. Extrapolate as you wish, a computer device should not expose an user to nastiness and it should not be possible to use it to launch attacks.
You may be affected by MS targeted virii even if you don't have Windows in your own network: thousend of owned machines scanning your firewall ports can bring your network to a halt.
Some of the virii have been so arcane and difficult to patch (even for pros sonny) that to keep arguing that MS is affected for their monopolistic position is the excuse of the gullible or the ignorant.
I will not boast about my credentials here, but the post to which you are replying is spot on, I have seen myself in the same situation in a much bigger and equally well organized company with an equivalent skill set as the one mentioned and still it is almost impossible that in despite of best, stringer practices, not to be affected.
MS in its current form is a threat to the IT industry, the sooner people realize this the better for everybody, MS included.
Next?
What about the novel idea of forbidding file sharing in campus and using the computers for academic purposes?
Yes.
The long answer: thers is none.
... that it does make you look like a dork.
Because of course to be 12 years old makes you somehow completely "stoopid" and unable to have a valuable opinion about the aesthetics of a gadget.
it sadens me that in spite of the mountains of evidence there are still people like you (and Mr Bush) that will go to any lenghts to descredit something on which there is a general concensus in the scientific community: there is global warming, perhaps made worse by human activity, something should be done.
When the overriding short term policy is to "protect American jobs" no matter what, we know that long term vision will not be in long supply in certain countries.
To each one his own, I can't accept as good balance a forced cycle of upgrades and obsolescence impossed by a company convicted of using illegal tacticts to prop-up its market share.
Perhaps my moral and social standards are too high and I should join the fray of whatever works without mattering the consequences.
I remember as if it was just yesterday how people, non geeks, had to mess up with autoexec.bat or config.sys files and later on with *.ini files to make things work on their Windows machines.
For some strange reason some people see it as normal that back then Joe User was mightly prepared to do those tasks, but now somehow normal people should be assumed to be stupid and incapable to handle a CLI like the one provided by MSDOS back then.
The average user always had and most probably always will have to do some tweaking on his system to make it work the way he wants. One size fits all is obviously not the right solution and the people willing to live with that will always have a mediocre computing experience.
I hope that answers this and any other silly question you may have.
The needs and resources of an individual are not the same required by a corporation, and amongst corporations, the needs of a company with 10 employess are not the same as the ones of a company employing 10000 people.
At home I need to write a few letters in passable format, keep a nice looking CV, perhaps have a spreadsheet for some basic calculations. I do not need presentation software and most probably I don't need DB software (comma separated plain files normally will do fine to organize relatively complex information in tables). Groupware is just an aberration at home, thus Outlook is not needed (and this is ignoring security, but I am feeling forgiving).
If I need to share between home and office machines, then I would expect that mty employer either provides a laptop or the necessary software, otherwise the sharing is done in the lower common denominator (rtf, plain text).
This unwillingness to evaluate what you really need is killing competition and innovation allowing monopolies to grow where healthy competition should be possible.
How does software that does not exist self repair itself Batman?
Most software work is inhouse applications that do not exist or that need to be customized to fit specific needs....
... it is a few here and a few there, with cheaper, workers with same skills being hired first, wherever they happen to be.