Maybe it'll gain more marketshare for Opera in power users, who still value usability and the simple efficient things like menu bars.
The day Opera supports Firefox plugins (oh, and releases their source) they'll get me. I do like Opera (although I've used it fairly little), but if I want a quick no-frills browser that I can pop open without loading up all the Firefox bullshit, I've already got Konqueror.
While it may be true that there is very little Linux malware, that's only because it's not worth it to criminals to write it
That's bullshit. Let me tell you why.
1. There are literally thousands of different kinds of malware for Windows, and zero for Linux. The geek cred for pulling it off would be incredible. You'd have job offers for life. 2. All the really important data out there lives on Linux servers.
But to be honest you need to include a disclaimer: that not all of my favorite Windows programs will run under Linux.
Funny, I didn't notice that in the Mac commercials. Nor did I see any disclaimer in the PS3 commercials that you couldn't play your Wii games on it. Nor did I see a disclaimer on the Blu Ray commercial that it wouldn't play 8-tracks. Must have been some really small print, huh?
For all those complaints about Windows, I've never had to spend as much time simply maintaining my machine
Say what you will about that (I take issue with the assertion, but I'll let it slide), assuming you're running anti* software on your Windows installation, you are spending a hell of a lot more processor and disk I/O time maintaining your machine than you should really have to. Just sayin'.
For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers).
If you think projects like OpenOffice, KDE, Gnome, and Firefox don't have professional UI designers on board, you're utterly and completely wrong. You seem to assume that all this stuff comes out of somebody's basement. I can assure you that you are mistaken.
Mostly free software is exploiting programs to give their work away for free--designers, editors and proofreaders don't fall for it.
(If this double posts, it's because I double clutched. Sorry.)
There are not that many people who hate Windows
You may be right about this, percentage-wise, but...
the vast majority of windows users love it
Are you on crack? I've never met anyone - anyone, in my life - who "loves Windows." Never. I've met hundreds of people who "tolerate Windows," or "deal with Windows," and yes, some who even "kinda like Windows." But to try and claim with a straight face that "the vast majority of Windows users love it" is simply the height of absurdity.
With Windows, as well as with most proprietary software, some schmuck got paid to make sure all the bits that nobody likes to program work the way they are supposed to, and what you get is a GUI that is so easy to use nobody even thinks about it.
I don't know who the hell these people are that you're talking about. I work with desktop computers for a living. I deal with these things all day. I can handle the Windows desktop GUI, mostly because I'm accustomed to it and know its quirks. But if I try to use my girlfriend's Mac, I am completely lost. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Now, I use KDE, which I will readily concede is the sort of thing that "it's either for you or it ain't," and can take some getting used to.
OTOH, I sell computers with Gnome, which is pretty much the simplest, most brain-dead easy point-and-drool interface I've ever seen (also why I don't use it myself). People very seldom have any trouble with it. Sit them down in front of the screen and away they go. And (and I think this is a telling point) on the occasions when someone does ask me how to do something with it, when I tell them the reaction is invariably "Oh, I should have looked there, that makes sense."
This is one thing that open source developement is terrible at. Not bad, but terrible, and it is an area closed-source developement excels at. Usually the poor schmuck doing the GUI work is an intern or new guy making his way up the ranks, being told what to do by the high-paid GUI designer. Neither of those two exist in an open source project. If they do, it's very rare.
This last bit just displays stunning ignorance. Leaving aside the totally unsupported opinion that "closed-source development excels" at interface design which is a whole other argument, if you think KDE or Gnome don't have human interface guidelines or professional UI designers, you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
You may be right about this, percentage-wise, but...
the vast majority of windows users love it
Are you on crack? I've never met anyone - anyone, in my life - who "loves Windows." Never. I've met hundreds of people who "tolerate Windows," or "deal with Windows," and yes, some who even "kinda like Windows." But to try and claim with a straight face that "the vast majority of Windows users love it" is simply the height of absurdity.
1. See there is no apt-url link - curse (shit is common here) 2. Search repository - curse again (often it escalates to fuck or some variation) 3. Download tarball 4. Create empty directory to extract tarball into 5. Extract tarball 6. Open terminal 7. Navigate to the directory containing the compile scripts - curse because the tarball made a new directory with a ridiculous name 8. Make the install with sudo, crossing your fingers that everything works as intended* 9. Install the software with sudo (easier the second time you use it)**
* A problem here and it can take 10 minutes to a couple of hours of troubleshooting to fix, may require knowledge of scripting
** A problem here and you may be fucked, unless of course you wish to re-write parts of the app that failed
Moderately humorous and cleverly written, but still a bunch of utter horseshit. What distro are you using and what software are you trying to install that you even get to step 3? Seriously. This is a troll from 2001.
My problem with the repository system is there is a ton of stuff that is not in the repository. If you want it, it can be a pain in the ass to get it.
What distribution do you use? Even when I was still using Ubuntu, for stuff that wasn't in the standard repositories, it was never terribly hard to find a.deb for it somewhere. Now that I'm using Arch, everything I could possibly imagine is at least in the AUR.
why hasn't the Linux community come up with a simple install script/storage container that packs all the dirty stuff into one neat little package for easy distribution?
install.sh is pretty standard with developers that want to put out a single binary that'll run anywhere and has been for some time.
As wonderful as the repository idea is - frankly I love that everything is right at your fingertips - it is completely unnecessary with Windows, because Google works just fine as a repository.
This is just not true and ignores the main selling points of software repositories, such as security and unified updating. Besides that, I disagree with your premise that "Google works just fine as a repository." You can't tell me with a straight face that that's any sort of convenience.
Frankly, some kind of unified one-step scripted install structure, preferably all in a single container, that actually worked as intended would catapult linux on the desktop by leaps and bounds.
Again, that's not really a problem. It's trivial for a developer to compile a binary with statically linked libraries and make an install.sh script that puts the end result in/opt or ~. Most commercial software houses that develop for Linux have beeing doing just that for years.
Well considering I went from +5 to negative 2 in under 1 hour, i guess the mods don't agree with you. Only a fool would say that groupthink isn't VERY strong here at/., and I am no fool.
Really? You don't think it's because you rattle off the same tired and easily refuted talking points every time you post to a discussion involving Linux?
You pop up and blow your horn about this about once every two weeks from what I've seen, and you're still just rampantly full of shit.
The reason I added that is I have found if I don't instead of having a discussion on the subject i get 30 posts that are a variation of "M$ suxorz! U is teh newbz! CLI is leet and roxorz! Go back to Windblowz LOL!"
Yeah, I've seen so much of that in this thread. Oh, wait, no. Just from you. Grow up.
Does anyone honestly think you could walk up to the geek squad guy or the guy working the counter at Wally World and say "which items here work with Linux?" and they would have a fricking clue?
I don't give a rat's ass what the electronics clerk at Wal Mart knows or doesn't know. By the way, if you're looking for an answer to that question, it is "Damn near all of them. More of them than will work for Windows. Many, many more than will work for Mac." In the last four years I've been in this business, I cannot recall one device that a customer called me back and said "This doesn't work with Linux." Not. One.
That is why I won't sell Linux
Oh, so you don't really know what the hell you're talking about. I do sell Linux machines. They are all I sell. They move well, people like them. One of the big reasons people like them is because shit like installing a new printer is so much easier than on Windows. Plug that sucker in, print a test page. Hey, lookie there, we're done already. Meanwhile, your customers still haven't gotten the CD out of the jewel case. When they get sick of your self-rightious horseshit, give them my number.
But ultimately the choice is up to the community. Only by throwing a shitfit and demanding a stable ABI will this ever change.
Spoken like someone who is in no way a part of "the community."
And guys like me STILL won't be able to sell Linux machines, because even buying the simplest piece of hardware at retail will be a giant minefield for the customer
I don't think that's the reason, man. Guys like you should stick to selling Windows if that's all you know.
In 2009 this is simply inexcusable, and will continue to keep Linux in the basement adoption wise.
Linux use grows exponentially every fucking year. And all your bitching and ignorance won't stop it.
We have rovers on Mars now. Two of them, Spirit and Opportunity. You can learn more about them here. It's fascinating stuff. They're incredible machines.
They also average about 0.02 miles per hour. One of them has been stuck in a patch of sand since May.
I can find almost zero information on either of those outside the link you provided. I'm not questioning your credibility, but if you have another source I'd be most interested.
But you're assuming the relation between marketshare and malware is linear, which it most likely is not.
I understand that the numbers I used were overly simplistic, and I tried to underscore that in my original post. My point was not that those numbers were in any way accurate, but that it is absurd on its face to claim that "Linux is no more inherently secure than Windows" when mountains of evidence speaks to the contrary.
Dude, it wasn't that good. I was using it. When it went from a fairly solid (if memory intensive) web browser to a godawful browser/email client/web design/Christ only knows what else blob (what was that, Netscape 4?) was about when things really started going downhill for them. No, IE wasn't very good at the time either, and yes, MSFT had to give it away for free to get people to use it, but the point remains that Netscape was a piece of crap after about 1996.
its "son" called Firefox is superior to IE.
Firefox contains no Netscape code and follows completely different design principles. I am aware that the original project was based on Netscape code, but that was a very long time ago.
"Over the top?" I think it's too tame if anything. Let's Get The Facts (tm):
* Microsoft's insecure buggy crap - no, let me rephrase that, their culture of insecure buggy crap - costs us all billions of dollars a year. Have you ever heard the whine of a malware-ridden Windows machine spinning up in the middle of the night for no good reason? How much do think that one machine costs per year in electricity bills? Microsoft is bad for the American economy at a time when we can't afford that shit.
* They lie, cheat, and steal. They blackmail, threaten, and cajole. They are not simply bad corporate citizens, they are the very model of parasitic big business.
* The Microsoft hegemony has set the computing industry back 20 years. Can you even imagine where we'd be today if it weren't for the innovation-stifling behemoth Microsoft crushing everything that moves?
And on and on and fucking on. It just never ends with these sons of bitches, does it?
I do agree that the 7 Sins campaign is whiny and pathetic. We should be taking the fight to the enemy, and this is a weak way to do it. It's time to call people out on the carpet. Between the Vista debacle and the generally terrible image of the company in the eyes of consumers (at least those even dimly aware of alternatives), the time is right now. I mean, a lot of people I talk to have never even seen Vista, are only dimly aware of what it is, but they know they don't want it like they know they don't want the clap.
These parasites have never been more vulnerable, and the FSF BadVista and 7 Sins campaigns have completely failed to nail it down. That's inexcusable. We've got them on the ropes, it's time to finish the job.
I agree with the larger point you're trying to make, but Microsoft didn't have to do anything to Netscape, they fucked themselves by delivering a bloated shitty product that people did not want
Was Microsoft's behavior anti-competitive? Yes. In the end, would Netscape have collapsed under its own weight anyway? Yes.
Most Windows malware could easily be ported to Linux.
How long have we been hearing this line? Has it happened yet?
All I ever hear about this from MSFT apologists is "Windows has the marketshare, if Linux had as many users it'd have malware too! You're not special!"
Ignoring the fact that delivering a malware package that runs on Linux would be a major geek-cred coup for anyone who pulled it off, let's play a little game here. Let's say that Windows has 90% marketshare, Apple has 8% and Linux the remaining 2%. I think that's probably about right, and if it's not it doesn't really matter in terms of this experiment.
Okay, let's further say that there are 900 pieces of malware that run on windows. (This isn't even close to the actual number of course, but it's easy to work with.) Once again, ignoring the geek-cred that one would accrue by delivering a working piece of malware that runs on Linux, or the presumed financial benefit that one would accrue by pwning all those Mac yuppies, the completely bullshit numbers I just pulled out of my ass above would suggest that if there were 900 pieces of malware that run on Windows, there would be 80 for the Mac and 20 for Linux.
I am from Minneapolis. I remember when that bridge fell, I was scared to death. I've got a couple dozen friends who cross that bridge twice a day. Scared the hell out of everybody.
It's not good when a bridge falls down. Bridges shouldn't fall down. But as far as such things go, that bridge went down exactly the way it was designed to, straight down and in big contiguous blocks, and emergency plans were executed promptly, heroically, and correctly. I don't know where you're from, but we get shit done around here. We don't fuck around.
Thirteen people lost their lives that day. That's the largest single tragedy in my city in as long as I can remember. I in no way make light of that loss.
But hundreds of people lived. Hundreds. A bridge full of people in the middle of evening rush. A school bus full of kids. 60 of them. God, I remember watching the news, watching that bus. I'm not a guy easily swayed to emotion, but Jesus Christ, 60 kids. Everyone in this city paced in front of their TV and chewed their nails and prayed for those kids.
And every single one lived. They lived when they could have died. They lived because emergency response and government agencies did their job.
"A state bridge on an Interstate highway over a county river between two banks of a city... we didn't have one problem." -Rocco Forte, city Emergency Preparedness Director
Initially, design and construction was predicted to take a year and a half, and news reports called that hopelessly optimistic. One year and nineteen days worth of seven-day work weeks later, months ahead of schedule, millions of dollars under budget, the new I-35W bridge was opened to the public. It is truly one of the most beautiful pieces of civic engineering in the upper midwest.
Your post is ignorant in the extreme and incredibly offensive not simply to the people that were there that day, but to the literally thousands of municipal, county, state, and federal employees, not to mention private agencies and contractors, whose diligence, civic devotion, and amazing work not only mitigated what could have been an exponentially worse disaster, but as an encore created one of the first truly great pieces of American engineering of the 21st century.
In my lifetime, I have learned that stupid people tend to assume that everyone is as stupid as they are, and react defensively and with disbelief at the suggestion that others may not be.
In other words, has it occurred to you that it might just be you?
That lemon concentrate stuff that comes in the little plastic lemon works great too. Put a couple drops on the area to be cleaned, let sit for ten minutes, gently scrub clean with a tissue.
Grow up yourself. Not everyone wants to live on someone else's clock for the rest of their lives.
Okay, that was deliberately inflammatory and not how I actually feel, but I wanted to show you how you sounded there. I feel like people who choose the "breadwinner/family man" path in life often (defensively?) take the attitude that you express in your last paragraph, summarily dismissing any other possible life choices. It's great that you want to do the family thing. You enable the propagation of the species and all that, for which I'm grateful, and you sound like your choices give your life a sense of fulfillment, which is great. But don't assume that anyone who's taken a different path in life, one that offers them the same feeling of fulfillment that you've acheived, just needs to "grow up." Not everyone should get married and have kids.
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Maybe it'll gain more marketshare for Opera in power users, who still value usability and the simple efficient things like menu bars.
The day Opera supports Firefox plugins (oh, and releases their source) they'll get me. I do like Opera (although I've used it fairly little), but if I want a quick no-frills browser that I can pop open without loading up all the Firefox bullshit, I've already got Konqueror.
While it may be true that there is very little Linux malware, that's only because it's not worth it to criminals to write it
That's bullshit. Let me tell you why.
1. There are literally thousands of different kinds of malware for Windows, and zero for Linux. The geek cred for pulling it off would be incredible. You'd have job offers for life.
2. All the really important data out there lives on Linux servers.
Don't try to tell me "they just don't bother."
All OSes are susceptible to virii
[citation needed]
Oh, and it's "viruses." Douche.
But to be honest you need to include a disclaimer: that not all of my favorite Windows programs will run under Linux.
Funny, I didn't notice that in the Mac commercials. Nor did I see any disclaimer in the PS3 commercials that you couldn't play your Wii games on it. Nor did I see a disclaimer on the Blu Ray commercial that it wouldn't play 8-tracks. Must have been some really small print, huh?
For all those complaints about Windows, I've never had to spend as much time simply maintaining my machine
Say what you will about that (I take issue with the assertion, but I'll let it slide), assuming you're running anti* software on your Windows installation, you are spending a hell of a lot more processor and disk I/O time maintaining your machine than you should really have to. Just sayin'.
For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers).
If you think projects like OpenOffice, KDE, Gnome, and Firefox don't have professional UI designers on board, you're utterly and completely wrong. You seem to assume that all this stuff comes out of somebody's basement. I can assure you that you are mistaken.
Mostly free software is exploiting programs to give their work away for free--designers, editors and proofreaders don't fall for it.
What a load of horseshit.
(If this double posts, it's because I double clutched. Sorry.)
There are not that many people who hate Windows
You may be right about this, percentage-wise, but...
the vast majority of windows users love it
Are you on crack? I've never met anyone - anyone, in my life - who "loves Windows." Never. I've met hundreds of people who "tolerate Windows," or "deal with Windows," and yes, some who even "kinda like Windows." But to try and claim with a straight face that "the vast majority of Windows users love it" is simply the height of absurdity.
With Windows, as well as with most proprietary software, some schmuck got paid to make sure all the bits that nobody likes to program work the way they are supposed to, and what you get is a GUI that is so easy to use nobody even thinks about it.
I don't know who the hell these people are that you're talking about. I work with desktop computers for a living. I deal with these things all day. I can handle the Windows desktop GUI, mostly because I'm accustomed to it and know its quirks. But if I try to use my girlfriend's Mac, I am completely lost. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Now, I use KDE, which I will readily concede is the sort of thing that "it's either for you or it ain't," and can take some getting used to.
OTOH, I sell computers with Gnome, which is pretty much the simplest, most brain-dead easy point-and-drool interface I've ever seen (also why I don't use it myself). People very seldom have any trouble with it. Sit them down in front of the screen and away they go. And (and I think this is a telling point) on the occasions when someone does ask me how to do something with it, when I tell them the reaction is invariably "Oh, I should have looked there, that makes sense."
This is one thing that open source developement is terrible at. Not bad, but terrible, and it is an area closed-source developement excels at. Usually the poor schmuck doing the GUI work is an intern or new guy making his way up the ranks, being told what to do by the high-paid GUI designer. Neither of those two exist in an open source project. If they do, it's very rare.
This last bit just displays stunning ignorance. Leaving aside the totally unsupported opinion that "closed-source development excels" at interface design which is a whole other argument, if you think KDE or Gnome don't have human interface guidelines or professional UI designers, you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
There are not that many people who hate Windows
You may be right about this, percentage-wise, but...
the vast majority of windows users love it
Are you on crack? I've never met anyone - anyone, in my life - who "loves Windows." Never. I've met hundreds of people who "tolerate Windows," or "deal with Windows," and yes, some who even "kinda like Windows." But to try and claim with a straight face that "the vast majority of Windows users love it" is simply the height of absurdity.
1. See there is no apt-url link - curse (shit is common here)
2. Search repository - curse again (often it escalates to fuck or some variation)
3. Download tarball
4. Create empty directory to extract tarball into
5. Extract tarball
6. Open terminal
7. Navigate to the directory containing the compile scripts - curse because the tarball made a new directory with a ridiculous name
8. Make the install with sudo, crossing your fingers that everything works as intended*
9. Install the software with sudo (easier the second time you use it)**
* A problem here and it can take 10 minutes to a couple of hours of troubleshooting to fix, may require knowledge of scripting
** A problem here and you may be fucked, unless of course you wish to re-write parts of the app that failed
Moderately humorous and cleverly written, but still a bunch of utter horseshit. What distro are you using and what software are you trying to install that you even get to step 3? Seriously. This is a troll from 2001.
My problem with the repository system is there is a ton of stuff that is not in the repository. If you want it, it can be a pain in the ass to get it.
What distribution do you use? Even when I was still using Ubuntu, for stuff that wasn't in the standard repositories, it was never terribly hard to find a .deb for it somewhere. Now that I'm using Arch, everything I could possibly imagine is at least in the AUR.
why hasn't the Linux community come up with a simple install script/storage container that packs all the dirty stuff into one neat little package for easy distribution?
install.sh is pretty standard with developers that want to put out a single binary that'll run anywhere and has been for some time.
As wonderful as the repository idea is - frankly I love that everything is right at your fingertips - it is completely unnecessary with Windows, because Google works just fine as a repository.
This is just not true and ignores the main selling points of software repositories, such as security and unified updating. Besides that, I disagree with your premise that "Google works just fine as a repository." You can't tell me with a straight face that that's any sort of convenience.
Frankly, some kind of unified one-step scripted install structure, preferably all in a single container, that actually worked as intended would catapult linux on the desktop by leaps and bounds.
Again, that's not really a problem. It's trivial for a developer to compile a binary with statically linked libraries and make an install.sh script that puts the end result in /opt or ~. Most commercial software houses that develop for Linux have beeing doing just that for years.
Well considering I went from +5 to negative 2 in under 1 hour, i guess the mods don't agree with you. Only a fool would say that groupthink isn't VERY strong here at /., and I am no fool.
Really? You don't think it's because you rattle off the same tired and easily refuted talking points every time you post to a discussion involving Linux?
You pop up and blow your horn about this about once every two weeks from what I've seen, and you're still just rampantly full of shit.
The reason I added that is I have found if I don't instead of having a discussion on the subject i get 30 posts that are a variation of "M$ suxorz! U is teh newbz! CLI is leet and roxorz! Go back to Windblowz LOL!"
Yeah, I've seen so much of that in this thread. Oh, wait, no. Just from you. Grow up.
Does anyone honestly think you could walk up to the geek squad guy or the guy working the counter at Wally World and say "which items here work with Linux?" and they would have a fricking clue?
I don't give a rat's ass what the electronics clerk at Wal Mart knows or doesn't know. By the way, if you're looking for an answer to that question, it is "Damn near all of them. More of them than will work for Windows. Many, many more than will work for Mac." In the last four years I've been in this business, I cannot recall one device that a customer called me back and said "This doesn't work with Linux." Not. One.
That is why I won't sell Linux
Oh, so you don't really know what the hell you're talking about. I do sell Linux machines. They are all I sell. They move well, people like them. One of the big reasons people like them is because shit like installing a new printer is so much easier than on Windows. Plug that sucker in, print a test page. Hey, lookie there, we're done already. Meanwhile, your customers still haven't gotten the CD out of the jewel case. When they get sick of your self-rightious horseshit, give them my number.
But ultimately the choice is up to the community. Only by throwing a shitfit and demanding a stable ABI will this ever change.
Spoken like someone who is in no way a part of "the community."
And guys like me STILL won't be able to sell Linux machines, because even buying the simplest piece of hardware at retail will be a giant minefield for the customer
I don't think that's the reason, man. Guys like you should stick to selling Windows if that's all you know.
In 2009 this is simply inexcusable, and will continue to keep Linux in the basement adoption wise.
Linux use grows exponentially every fucking year. And all your bitching and ignorance won't stop it.
We have rovers on Mars now. Two of them, Spirit and Opportunity. You can learn more about them here. It's fascinating stuff. They're incredible machines.
They also average about 0.02 miles per hour. One of them has been stuck in a patch of sand since May.
Send people.
I'm a technologist and I'd much rather deal with technical issues than political and economic.
You can try to leave politics alone. Politics will not leave you alone. -Richard Stallman
how about Rexob and Kaiten
I can find almost zero information on either of those outside the link you provided. I'm not questioning your credibility, but if you have another source I'd be most interested.
But you're assuming the relation between marketshare and malware is linear, which it most likely is not.
I understand that the numbers I used were overly simplistic, and I tried to underscore that in my original post. My point was not that those numbers were in any way accurate, but that it is absurd on its face to claim that "Linux is no more inherently secure than Windows" when mountains of evidence speaks to the contrary.
It was *always* superior to Internet Explorer
Dude, it wasn't that good. I was using it. When it went from a fairly solid (if memory intensive) web browser to a godawful browser/email client/web design/Christ only knows what else blob (what was that, Netscape 4?) was about when things really started going downhill for them. No, IE wasn't very good at the time either, and yes, MSFT had to give it away for free to get people to use it, but the point remains that Netscape was a piece of crap after about 1996.
its "son" called Firefox is superior to IE.
Firefox contains no Netscape code and follows completely different design principles. I am aware that the original project was based on Netscape code, but that was a very long time ago.
Ssh, don't make fun. He learned a new word on the linuxhaters blog and wants to impress his new friends.
"Over the top?" I think it's too tame if anything. Let's Get The Facts (tm):
* Microsoft's insecure buggy crap - no, let me rephrase that, their culture of insecure buggy crap - costs us all billions of dollars a year. Have you ever heard the whine of a malware-ridden Windows machine spinning up in the middle of the night for no good reason? How much do think that one machine costs per year in electricity bills? Microsoft is bad for the American economy at a time when we can't afford that shit.
* They lie, cheat, and steal. They blackmail, threaten, and cajole. They are not simply bad corporate citizens, they are the very model of parasitic big business.
* The Microsoft hegemony has set the computing industry back 20 years. Can you even imagine where we'd be today if it weren't for the innovation-stifling behemoth Microsoft crushing everything that moves?
And on and on and fucking on. It just never ends with these sons of bitches, does it?
I do agree that the 7 Sins campaign is whiny and pathetic. We should be taking the fight to the enemy, and this is a weak way to do it. It's time to call people out on the carpet. Between the Vista debacle and the generally terrible image of the company in the eyes of consumers (at least those even dimly aware of alternatives), the time is right now. I mean, a lot of people I talk to have never even seen Vista, are only dimly aware of what it is, but they know they don't want it like they know they don't want the clap.
These parasites have never been more vulnerable, and the FSF BadVista and 7 Sins campaigns have completely failed to nail it down. That's inexcusable. We've got them on the ropes, it's time to finish the job.
s/EFF/FSF
I agree with the larger point you're trying to make, but Microsoft didn't have to do anything to Netscape, they fucked themselves by delivering a bloated shitty product that people did not want
Was Microsoft's behavior anti-competitive? Yes. In the end, would Netscape have collapsed under its own weight anyway? Yes.
Most Windows malware could easily be ported to Linux.
How long have we been hearing this line? Has it happened yet?
All I ever hear about this from MSFT apologists is "Windows has the marketshare, if Linux had as many users it'd have malware too! You're not special!"
Ignoring the fact that delivering a malware package that runs on Linux would be a major geek-cred coup for anyone who pulled it off, let's play a little game here. Let's say that Windows has 90% marketshare, Apple has 8% and Linux the remaining 2%. I think that's probably about right, and if it's not it doesn't really matter in terms of this experiment.
Okay, let's further say that there are 900 pieces of malware that run on windows. (This isn't even close to the actual number of course, but it's easy to work with.) Once again, ignoring the geek-cred that one would accrue by delivering a working piece of malware that runs on Linux, or the presumed financial benefit that one would accrue by pwning all those Mac yuppies, the completely bullshit numbers I just pulled out of my ass above would suggest that if there were 900 pieces of malware that run on Windows, there would be 80 for the Mac and 20 for Linux.
Name two.
I am from Minneapolis. I remember when that bridge fell, I was scared to death. I've got a couple dozen friends who cross that bridge twice a day. Scared the hell out of everybody.
It's not good when a bridge falls down. Bridges shouldn't fall down. But as far as such things go, that bridge went down exactly the way it was designed to, straight down and in big contiguous blocks, and emergency plans were executed promptly, heroically, and correctly. I don't know where you're from, but we get shit done around here. We don't fuck around.
Thirteen people lost their lives that day. That's the largest single tragedy in my city in as long as I can remember. I in no way make light of that loss.
But hundreds of people lived. Hundreds. A bridge full of people in the middle of evening rush. A school bus full of kids. 60 of them. God, I remember watching the news, watching that bus. I'm not a guy easily swayed to emotion, but Jesus Christ, 60 kids. Everyone in this city paced in front of their TV and chewed their nails and prayed for those kids.
And every single one lived. They lived when they could have died. They lived because emergency response and government agencies did their job.
"A state bridge on an Interstate highway over a county river between two banks of a city... we didn't have one problem." -Rocco Forte, city Emergency Preparedness Director
Initially, design and construction was predicted to take a year and a half, and news reports called that hopelessly optimistic. One year and nineteen days worth of seven-day work weeks later, months ahead of schedule, millions of dollars under budget, the new I-35W bridge was opened to the public. It is truly one of the most beautiful pieces of civic engineering in the upper midwest.
Your post is ignorant in the extreme and incredibly offensive not simply to the people that were there that day, but to the literally thousands of municipal, county, state, and federal employees, not to mention private agencies and contractors, whose diligence, civic devotion, and amazing work not only mitigated what could have been an exponentially worse disaster, but as an encore created one of the first truly great pieces of American engineering of the 21st century.
So fuck you.
In my lifetime, I have learned that stupid people tend to assume that everyone is as stupid as they are, and react defensively and with disbelief at the suggestion that others may not be.
In other words, has it occurred to you that it might just be you?
That lemon concentrate stuff that comes in the little plastic lemon works great too. Put a couple drops on the area to be cleaned, let sit for ten minutes, gently scrub clean with a tissue.
Grow up yourself. Not everyone wants to live on someone else's clock for the rest of their lives.
Okay, that was deliberately inflammatory and not how I actually feel, but I wanted to show you how you sounded there. I feel like people who choose the "breadwinner/family man" path in life often (defensively?) take the attitude that you express in your last paragraph, summarily dismissing any other possible life choices. It's great that you want to do the family thing. You enable the propagation of the species and all that, for which I'm grateful, and you sound like your choices give your life a sense of fulfillment, which is great. But don't assume that anyone who's taken a different path in life, one that offers them the same feeling of fulfillment that you've acheived, just needs to "grow up." Not everyone should get married and have kids.