Long ago? You live in fantasy-land. We've held our boot on these people's throats for half a century. Before us, it was the British and French for a hundred and fifty years. There's no "long ago," there's what happened last week, last month, last year. Today. It's happening now. You want to talk about "unwillingness to forgo violence?" Fucking come on! Eleven Saudis flew jets into the World Trade Center, and we bombed a totally different fucking country! Apparently unsatisfied with that, two years later we invaded and occupy today a still different country!
As to whether or not someone's actions are "justified" or not, I don't think that's really relevant here, but maybe we could revisit the topic sometime if you perhaps read a fucking book and came back with some actual facts and figures. Anyway, not relevant. What's relevant here is that after two hundred years of being pissed on, these people are doing what we did two hundred years ago when we decided we'd had enough of getting pissed on here in America. They're fighting back. They're tripping the big guy, and kicking him in the face while he's down, because that's how it's done when you're fighting the big guy. America, of all countries in the world, should know better than to try to get all fucking self-righteous about "terrorism." Read a little history of the Revolutionary War. We wrote the book on terrorism. We invented terrorism. We rebelled and fought and won and founded what came to be the most powerful nation in the history of the world... on TERRORISM.
And now, two hundred-odd years later, after not learning any lessons whatsoever from that experience and treating the third world exactly like the British treated us all those years ago, people like you have the unmitigated gall to sit here and whine about "those brown folks don't fight fair!!" Well, you better hop on board the Whaaamublance, buddy, because the rest of the world's laughing at you.
Time for a civics lesson. Congress makes U.S. laws. President enforces U.S. laws. Judges interpret U.S. laws. A minister does not make U.S. law. A rabbi does not make U.S. law. A priest does not make U.S. law.
I don't know what part of the country you're from, but it's time for a fucking reality lesson. What really happens and what really gets said and what really gets done in this country doesn't have fuck-all to do with the laws, the Congress, the President, or the judges. That minister's "pissing and moaning," that conservative small-town mayor's opinions on what should and should not be taught in that small town's school or what books should or should not be in that small town's library, the PTA, the editor of the rural newspaper, those people dictate how this country really works. Those people really run shit, one town at a time, one county at a time, or sometimes the state of Kansas or South Dakota at a time.
And one main driving force behind that wave of public opinion is the religious community that you so glibly dismiss. These people fucking run the country. From a small-town preacher all the way up to Billy Graham. You don't think these people have power? You don't think these people have muscle to push their agenda, whether that's within or around or above the law? Like I said, I don't know where you live, but wherever it is, you should get out of it more often.
So calling religious people crazy and then endorsing killing us is no different than being crazy yourself.
You just made that up. Not to speak for the GPP, but I think it's crazy shit like this that s/he was talking about. You just went from "calling religious people crazy" to "endorsing killing" in seven words, without a pause for breath or the most cursory acknowledgment of the irony of your statement.
So it's "We don't need to slaughter any more heathens because we've already killed most of them," is it?
Let's talk about what's going on in the modern world, by all means. Has it occurred to you, even once, to examine how our history of dealing with these people shapes their reactions? I mean, I really don't think a bunch of people woke up one morning and said "It sure would be fun to kill a few white people and get our country bombed back into the stone age!" Our problems in the Arab world are really only passingly related to religion. Most of it goes back to white colonialism's thousand-year history of oppressing, enslaving, robbing, and killing FUCKING EVERYBODY. It's pretty easy for you to say "that's ancient history," when it's not your history.
Ecstasy alone (that is, MDMA) is surprisingly easy on your system, however, at the doses you need to take to get high, it gobbles up seratonin, so it's not something one should do several days running. Unfortunately, it's damn near impossible to buy it pure, street pills are always cut with speed (usually methamphetamine because it's cheap as hell) or heroin (or some related synthetic opiate, real heroin's expensive). Either of which will fry your little brain like the bacon in a "this is your brain on drugs" commercial.
Pot, of course, is great for you. (With the disclaimer that smoking anything isn't good for your lungs, obviously.)
Oh yeah? Well, if the non-Linux community wants to be taken seriously by those within it, they need to stop using the phrase "If the Linux community wants to be taken seriously..."
That's funny. I tell people that if they get Linux they don't have to buy DVD burning software, picture management software, music tools, backup software, and they say "wow" too. Then I tell them they don't need to spend $1000 on a Mac and it seals the deal.
Because every two-bit nerd is Tech God to about a dozen of their friends and relatives. Some of them, the really ballsy ones (yeah, I'm one of them) who try do make a living off it with the whole "flier in the coffee shop" thing or whatever, might hold that role for twenty or thirty paying clients. Our opinions hold weight with people. Every one of us has been sitting in the corner sharpening our axes for this moment for a decade. And now that it's come, every single one of us seems to be taking to heart the sage advice I got from my father when I was just a wee lad: "Always kick the big guy when he's down." Microsoft is in the process of being stabbed to death by pygmies with salad forks. It'll take a long time to bleed that sucker out, but one way or another it will die.
I'd be satisfied with a 20 year copyright term for books. Maybe 10.
Me too. I'm not calling for the abolition of copyright.
why was copyright invented, centuries before recorded music or photography, or scanners?
To combat unscrupulous printers who were engaged in the large-scale printing and selling of "pirated copies" of books during the eighteenth century. I fail to see what that has to do with the issue at hand.
Yeah, because no one wrote books before the era of million-year copyright terms. And there are so many people out there downloading "pirated books." (Yes, I know there are a few, but it's far from a widespread phenomenon.)
The thing about books is, they're fucking hard to copy. With music or movies or photography, one can easily make a digital copy without damaging or destroying their original. This is not the case with books. To get a really good scan, you have to take it apart and run the pages through individually. Very few people are willing to do this with something they just spent $7 - $100 on.
Hey, thanks for replying. You do raise excellent points. w/r/t OpenOffice, you're absolutely right, and your hypothetical MS Office user is also right. OpenOffice is not very good, it's that simple. I think KOffice is much better, but I'll concede your point.
But taking a broader view of your point, people already seem quite content with proprietary software offerings that don't work exactly as promised and have a less-than-robust feature set. Buggy software is the rule, not the exception, on both sides of the Free/Non-Free fence. But I'll stand by my assertion that 80% of the time (at least with the larger, more recognized Free Software projects) FOSS bugs are less severe and get fixed faster. Problems in Windows kill the system, problems in Linux kill a program.
But my original point was to emphasize the kinds of features that proprietary software simply cannot compete with Free Software on. Stuff like apt-get, or the Amarok music player, or (yeah, I know) Compiz. If Apple tried to release Amarok, the media companies would shit. If Microsoft tried to copy the repository system... god, I shudder to imagine. These are the features we need to be selling this stuff on. Not just the advantages of the application or the system, but the advantages of the freedom itself. We can do stuff the other guy can't.
Regarding your point about "the standard," while you're not wrong, I don't think that's true anymore, or at least it is becoming less so every day. Vista's not the standard, and Joe Luser can't buy XP anymore.
And finally, to summarize, in reply to your summary...
Perhaps "better" combined with "free" is what it will take, because frankly, I don't see average Joe ever having the slightest clue about the concept of "crippleware".
That's my point. Joe doesn't know it's crippled. It's our job as people who care about freedom to show him.
I don't think that's true. I think people are pretty much fed up with proprietary crippleware, and those that aren't yet, get on board pretty quick once you show them (not tell them, show them on the screen) why the Free alternative is better. Once you show them, concretely, what your (program/OS/whatever) can do that their crippleware can't, they'll listen to whatever you have to say.
Simple two step solution to this whole thing: 1. Show them that it's better. 2. Tell them that it's Free.
I see a lot of comments here advocating that we gloss over the freedom. That doesn't work, and even if it did, it's a disservice both to your friend and to the community. In short, it's not helping. The first time something cocks up on their shiny new open source program, it's gonna be "why'd you give me this freeware crap anyway?" FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM, tell them about the FREEDOM. Here's how. (And this does work, I use it a lot.)
1. Show them something that Free Software can do that proprietary software cannot and never could, because of its very nature. My favorite example is package management. Once you show somebody how to install 10,000 programs safely, easily, legally, from their chair, with their mouse, for zero dollars and zero cents, they'll listen to whatever you have to say.
2. They will ask you how this is possible. They will ask you where it comes from. They will ask you who made it. And that's the moment. (To quote Eben Moglen) "That's the moment, all right, that's the moment, that's the one where that annoying Stallman voice should enter the mind, okay. Free As In Freedom, Free As In Freedom. Tell people it's free as in freedom. Tell them that if you don't tell them anything else. Because they need to know."
To win the common man, you need to provide the advantages that a company currently offers.
Not only wrong, but dead-ass wrong. Provide an advantage that no company currently offers or ever possibly could. When I'm pushing Linux, this advantage is package management. Show someone how to install 10,000 programs from their chair with their mouse and no money, and they're yours. And I'm speaking from experience, it works. Every single time without fail. You cannot buy that for money.
Wrong. Normal people don't get it. I'll agree that if you start with the phrase "vendor lock-in," you've lost them. I start with "Here's two systems. This one's built by people who want a good, solid system for themselves and others to use. This one's built by people who want to take your money not just today, but forever. You can decide who you trust more."
Sorry about the formatting of my reply. Here's the same rant, with the preview button!
More choice and freedom isn't always better either, they don't want to make choices because that takes consideration of the options and a decision-making process. For consumers, it's better to go straight to getting what they want
The whole concept of "consumers" is antithetical to what Free Software is. It's Free Software. It's about choice and freedom. It's not about being #1, or having the most users. Choice and freedom. Inevitable world domination is just a fringe benefit.
I think Linux would see wider adoption if it targeted "noobs" instead of power users.... I think that an idealogical shift towards making OSS easy and familiar would greatly expand it's adoption, but I also find it highly unlikely for such a shift to occur.
So what you want is... Windows? I don't say that to be an asshole, I'm serious. If what you want is "something that is exactly like Windows," please use Windows. Linux is not a free version of Windows. ReactOS is a (work-in-progress) free Windows, and good for them, I hope they succeed, there's a place for that. Linux is a free Unix. There's a place for that too.
There are some efforts to simplify things, but I still find myself driven back to the commandline, because not everyone is on-board with that effort.
Do you honestly think that the people who make this software, who are the same people that use this software, are actively trying to make it harder on themselves? As a guy who I admire once said, "stealth bombers are more complicated to operate than tricycles because they can fly! It's trying to make complex things "simplified" that leaves us with the broken mess that is Windows. You can have click-and-go install.exe files, but jackoffs will write viruses. You can have binary click-and-go hardware drivers, but they'll leave the system a smoking radioactive pit when they break. You can have upnp, but you're gonna get your ass pwnt. That's what happens.
Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes you have to learn things. Sometimes you have to oh-my-god type things. If you want the payoff, you have to do the work. Do the work, man. It is worth it, I swear.
It's probably my fault for not knowing better... I'll bet my ignorance is to blame...
No, and being hard on yourself and calling yourself stupid isn't the answer. You have to do the work. Break it. Fix it. Breatk it. Fix it again. That's how we all learned. Do the work. Read the fucking manual. Then read it again. Get on IRC. Scour the forums. Hone your Google-fu. If after all that you still don't have the answer, email the package maintainer and say "What the fuck is the problem here?!" Read the fucking manual again. Fix it. Then break it again. The only way you're to blame is if you quit. Give yourself a chance.
Every time a n00b marks a thread "solved," an angel gets its wings. Good luck.
More choice and freedom isn't always better either, they don't want to make choices because that takes consideration of the options and a decision-making process. For consumers, it's better to go straight to getting what they want
The whole concept of "consumers" is antithetical to what Free Software is. It's Free Software. It's about choice and freedom. It's not about being #1, or having the most users. Choice and freedom. Inevitable world domination is just a fringe benefit.
I think Linux would see wider adoption if it targeted "noobs" instead of power users.... I think that an idealogical shift towards making OSS easy and familiar would greatly expand it's adoption, but I also find it highly unlikely for such a shift to occur.
So what you want is... Windows? I don't say that to be an asshole, I'm serious. If what you want is "something that is exactly like Windows," please use Windows. Linux is not a free version of Windows. ReactOS is a (work-in-progress) free Windows, and good for them, I hope they succeed, there's a place for that. Linux is a free Unix. There's a place for that too.
There are some efforts to simplify things, but I still find myself driven back to the commandline, because not everyone is on-board with that effort.
Do you honestly think that the people who make this software, who are the same people that use this software, are actively trying to make it harder on themselves? As a guy who I admire once said, "stealth bombers are more complicated to operate than tricycles because they can fly! It's trying to make complex things "simplified" that leaves us with the broken mess that is Windows. You can have click-and-go install.exe files, but jackoffs will write viruses. You can have binary click-and-go hardware drivers, but they'll leave the system a smoking radioactive pit when they break. You can have upnp, but you're gonna get your ass pwnt. That's what happens.
Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes you have to learn things. Sometimes you have to oh-my-god type things. If you want the payoff, you have to do the work. Do the work, man. It is worth it, I swear.
It's probably my fault for not knowing better... I'll bet my ignorance is to blame...
No, and being hard on yourself and calling yourself stupid isn't the answer. You have to do the work. Break it. Fix it. Breatk it. Fix it again. That's how we all learned. Do the work. Read the fucking manual. Then read it again. Get on IRC. Scour the forums. Hone your Google-fu. If after all that you still don't have the answer, email the package maintainer and say "What the fuck is the problem here?!" Read the fucking manual again. Fix it. Then break it again. The only way you're to blame is if you quit. Give yourself a chance.
Every time a n00b marks a thread "solved," an angel gets its wings. Good luck.
Oh, bullshit. I'm sick and tired of this "the average person doesn't want to learn" crap. Yeah, actually they do. Most of them are dying to learn, absolutely dying for it after years of being starved, abused, and kept in a dark, locked room by their proprietary software overlords. Especially once you show them a concrete example of what this system can do that their old one can't, like repo-surfing. I sell Linux machines to "the average person" (yes, really), and if I get far enough in my pitch to make it to "how do I install new software," that sale's in the bag, because that's the coolest part of the whole thing from an end-user perspective. Here's how it usually goes:
"Open this program, it's up here. Press control-f to search for something. What? Anything you want. How about 'animation'?"
Up pops Blender.
"Click here and tell it to install."
45 seconds later, Synaptic says done.
"Okay, now go up to the Graphics menu."
Lo, there it is.
"No, you're done, that's it."
Some of my more inquisitive folks ask how this works.
"Well, go up here (to software sources), see this list? When you search, you're searching these websites, called 'repositories.' These sites are maintained by the Ubuntu community, the same people who put together your operating system. They didn't write all the programs in it, but they make sure they all place nice with your computer. Every piece of your operating system and every program that runs on it comes from here, from Firefox to your video driver."
Maybe I'm just a great communicator, but I have never had to explain it twice. Tell me again how your way is easier.
The one company who REALLY understands this is Apple.
Every time a fanboi says that it makes me puke in my mouth a little.
I still don't get your analogy. I understand what the Fifth means, but what does that have to do with the GPL?
I'm gonna take a shot in the dark, and I may be wildly off base about what you meant in the first place, but here goes. Under the GPL, if you do not distribute the code, you have no responsibilities to anyone at all, you can do whatever you want with it. Isn't that analogous to a "right to remain silent?" However, once you distribute said code, you are in effect giving up your right to remain silent.
Great idea. After all, iPod, Mac, or Excel are much more easily recognizable terms and oh-so-relevant to what they do. Marketing sure knows best.
Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE
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KDE 4.0 Is Out
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· Score: 1
What a bunch of bullshit. Your mythical "Joe Average" will go to the Ubuntu website and download the Ubuntu or Kubuntu iso. U7.10 comes with Gnome 2.20.0. Stable. K7.10 (once updated) comes with KDE 3.5.8. Stable. "Joe Average" (a nonsense made-up concept, btw) isn't going to out looking for a new desktop to install in the first place.
Second, even taking your unlikely scenario, so "Joe Average" does go to kubuntu.org and follows the instructions to download KDE4, he's still going to have KDE 3.5.8 to fall back on. The only way you can download a version of Kubuntu with only KDE4 is if you get the Hardy alpha (and I'm not even sure about that, can anyone verify?)
Condensed version of above: You are talking out of your ass.
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Early Christians met in secret caves in order to avoid being killed by people who didn't like them.
Yes...
If you're going to try to compel contemporary Christians to behave the same way, you'll probably have to treat us the same way.
No.
Wishing for Christians to begin hiding in caves again almost directly correlates to wishing for the severe persecution early Christians suffered.
You're crazy.
Long ago? You live in fantasy-land. We've held our boot on these people's throats for half a century. Before us, it was the British and French for a hundred and fifty years. There's no "long ago," there's what happened last week, last month, last year. Today. It's happening now. You want to talk about "unwillingness to forgo violence?" Fucking come on! Eleven Saudis flew jets into the World Trade Center, and we bombed a totally different fucking country! Apparently unsatisfied with that, two years later we invaded and occupy today a still different country!
As to whether or not someone's actions are "justified" or not, I don't think that's really relevant here, but maybe we could revisit the topic sometime if you perhaps read a fucking book and came back with some actual facts and figures. Anyway, not relevant. What's relevant here is that after two hundred years of being pissed on, these people are doing what we did two hundred years ago when we decided we'd had enough of getting pissed on here in America. They're fighting back. They're tripping the big guy, and kicking him in the face while he's down, because that's how it's done when you're fighting the big guy. America, of all countries in the world, should know better than to try to get all fucking self-righteous about "terrorism." Read a little history of the Revolutionary War. We wrote the book on terrorism. We invented terrorism. We rebelled and fought and won and founded what came to be the most powerful nation in the history of the world... on TERRORISM.
And now, two hundred-odd years later, after not learning any lessons whatsoever from that experience and treating the third world exactly like the British treated us all those years ago, people like you have the unmitigated gall to sit here and whine about "those brown folks don't fight fair!!" Well, you better hop on board the Whaaamublance, buddy, because the rest of the world's laughing at you.
Time for a civics lesson. Congress makes U.S. laws. President enforces U.S. laws. Judges interpret U.S. laws. A minister does not make U.S. law. A rabbi does not make U.S. law. A priest does not make U.S. law.
I don't know what part of the country you're from, but it's time for a fucking reality lesson. What really happens and what really gets said and what really gets done in this country doesn't have fuck-all to do with the laws, the Congress, the President, or the judges. That minister's "pissing and moaning," that conservative small-town mayor's opinions on what should and should not be taught in that small town's school or what books should or should not be in that small town's library, the PTA, the editor of the rural newspaper, those people dictate how this country really works. Those people really run shit, one town at a time, one county at a time, or sometimes the state of Kansas or South Dakota at a time.
And one main driving force behind that wave of public opinion is the religious community that you so glibly dismiss. These people fucking run the country. From a small-town preacher all the way up to Billy Graham. You don't think these people have power? You don't think these people have muscle to push their agenda, whether that's within or around or above the law? Like I said, I don't know where you live, but wherever it is, you should get out of it more often.
So calling religious people crazy and then endorsing killing us is no different than being crazy yourself.
You just made that up. Not to speak for the GPP, but I think it's crazy shit like this that s/he was talking about. You just went from "calling religious people crazy" to "endorsing killing" in seven words, without a pause for breath or the most cursory acknowledgment of the irony of your statement.
So it's "We don't need to slaughter any more heathens because we've already killed most of them," is it?
Let's talk about what's going on in the modern world, by all means. Has it occurred to you, even once, to examine how our history of dealing with these people shapes their reactions? I mean, I really don't think a bunch of people woke up one morning and said "It sure would be fun to kill a few white people and get our country bombed back into the stone age!" Our problems in the Arab world are really only passingly related to religion. Most of it goes back to white colonialism's thousand-year history of oppressing, enslaving, robbing, and killing FUCKING EVERYBODY. It's pretty easy for you to say "that's ancient history," when it's not your history.
In what major Western Country can religion impose restrictions on free speech?
The United States of America. Do try to keep up here.
If we are willing to give up our freedom of speech to appease a handful of loud Muslims that offend easily then we truly are doomed.
I agree. If you replaced "Muslims" with "Christians" and made it past tense, I'd agree with that too.
Ecstasy alone (that is, MDMA) is surprisingly easy on your system, however, at the doses you need to take to get high, it gobbles up seratonin, so it's not something one should do several days running. Unfortunately, it's damn near impossible to buy it pure, street pills are always cut with speed (usually methamphetamine because it's cheap as hell) or heroin (or some related synthetic opiate, real heroin's expensive). Either of which will fry your little brain like the bacon in a "this is your brain on drugs" commercial.
Pot, of course, is great for you. (With the disclaimer that smoking anything isn't good for your lungs, obviously.)
Oh yeah? Well, if the non-Linux community wants to be taken seriously by those within it, they need to stop using the phrase "If the Linux community wants to be taken seriously..."
That's funny. I tell people that if they get Linux they don't have to buy DVD burning software, picture management software, music tools, backup software, and they say "wow" too. Then I tell them they don't need to spend $1000 on a Mac and it seals the deal.
Because every two-bit nerd is Tech God to about a dozen of their friends and relatives. Some of them, the really ballsy ones (yeah, I'm one of them) who try do make a living off it with the whole "flier in the coffee shop" thing or whatever, might hold that role for twenty or thirty paying clients. Our opinions hold weight with people. Every one of us has been sitting in the corner sharpening our axes for this moment for a decade. And now that it's come, every single one of us seems to be taking to heart the sage advice I got from my father when I was just a wee lad: "Always kick the big guy when he's down." Microsoft is in the process of being stabbed to death by pygmies with salad forks. It'll take a long time to bleed that sucker out, but one way or another it will die.
I'd be satisfied with a 20 year copyright term for books. Maybe 10.
Me too. I'm not calling for the abolition of copyright.
why was copyright invented, centuries before recorded music or photography, or scanners?
To combat unscrupulous printers who were engaged in the large-scale printing and selling of "pirated copies" of books during the eighteenth century. I fail to see what that has to do with the issue at hand.
Yeah, because no one wrote books before the era of million-year copyright terms. And there are so many people out there downloading "pirated books." (Yes, I know there are a few, but it's far from a widespread phenomenon.)
The thing about books is, they're fucking hard to copy. With music or movies or photography, one can easily make a digital copy without damaging or destroying their original. This is not the case with books. To get a really good scan, you have to take it apart and run the pages through individually. Very few people are willing to do this with something they just spent $7 - $100 on.
Hey, thanks for replying. You do raise excellent points. w/r/t OpenOffice, you're absolutely right, and your hypothetical MS Office user is also right. OpenOffice is not very good, it's that simple. I think KOffice is much better, but I'll concede your point.
But taking a broader view of your point, people already seem quite content with proprietary software offerings that don't work exactly as promised and have a less-than-robust feature set. Buggy software is the rule, not the exception, on both sides of the Free/Non-Free fence. But I'll stand by my assertion that 80% of the time (at least with the larger, more recognized Free Software projects) FOSS bugs are less severe and get fixed faster. Problems in Windows kill the system, problems in Linux kill a program.
But my original point was to emphasize the kinds of features that proprietary software simply cannot compete with Free Software on. Stuff like apt-get, or the Amarok music player, or (yeah, I know) Compiz. If Apple tried to release Amarok, the media companies would shit. If Microsoft tried to copy the repository system... god, I shudder to imagine. These are the features we need to be selling this stuff on. Not just the advantages of the application or the system, but the advantages of the freedom itself. We can do stuff the other guy can't.
Regarding your point about "the standard," while you're not wrong, I don't think that's true anymore, or at least it is becoming less so every day. Vista's not the standard, and Joe Luser can't buy XP anymore.
And finally, to summarize, in reply to your summary...
Perhaps "better" combined with "free" is what it will take, because frankly, I don't see average Joe ever having the slightest clue about the concept of "crippleware".
That's my point. Joe doesn't know it's crippled. It's our job as people who care about freedom to show him.
Okay, I get it now. You're attempting to connect two completely unrelated things to make a false analogy.
I don't think that's true. I think people are pretty much fed up with proprietary crippleware, and those that aren't yet, get on board pretty quick once you show them (not tell them, show them on the screen) why the Free alternative is better. Once you show them, concretely, what your (program/OS/whatever) can do that their crippleware can't, they'll listen to whatever you have to say.
Simple two step solution to this whole thing:
1. Show them that it's better.
2. Tell them that it's Free.
I see a lot of comments here advocating that we gloss over the freedom. That doesn't work, and even if it did, it's a disservice both to your friend and to the community. In short, it's not helping. The first time something cocks up on their shiny new open source program, it's gonna be "why'd you give me this freeware crap anyway?" FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM, tell them about the FREEDOM. Here's how. (And this does work, I use it a lot.)
1. Show them something that Free Software can do that proprietary software cannot and never could, because of its very nature. My favorite example is package management. Once you show somebody how to install 10,000 programs safely, easily, legally, from their chair, with their mouse, for zero dollars and zero cents, they'll listen to whatever you have to say.
2. They will ask you how this is possible. They will ask you where it comes from. They will ask you who made it. And that's the moment. (To quote Eben Moglen) "That's the moment, all right, that's the moment, that's the one where that annoying Stallman voice should enter the mind, okay. Free As In Freedom, Free As In Freedom. Tell people it's free as in freedom. Tell them that if you don't tell them anything else. Because they need to know."
To win the common man, you need to provide the advantages that a company currently offers.
Not only wrong, but dead-ass wrong. Provide an advantage that no company currently offers or ever possibly could. When I'm pushing Linux, this advantage is package management. Show someone how to install 10,000 programs from their chair with their mouse and no money, and they're yours. And I'm speaking from experience, it works. Every single time without fail. You cannot buy that for money.
Wrong. Normal people don't get it. I'll agree that if you start with the phrase "vendor lock-in," you've lost them. I start with "Here's two systems. This one's built by people who want a good, solid system for themselves and others to use. This one's built by people who want to take your money not just today, but forever. You can decide who you trust more."
Shouldn't have to.
Shouldn't have to.
Shouldn't have to. We've moved on. Apt-get or get out.
Sorry about the formatting of my reply. Here's the same rant, with the preview button!
More choice and freedom isn't always better either, they don't want to make choices because that takes consideration of the options and a decision-making process. For consumers, it's better to go straight to getting what they want
The whole concept of "consumers" is antithetical to what Free Software is. It's Free Software. It's about choice and freedom. It's not about being #1, or having the most users. Choice and freedom. Inevitable world domination is just a fringe benefit.
I think Linux would see wider adoption if it targeted "noobs" instead of power users.... I think that an idealogical shift towards making OSS easy and familiar would greatly expand it's adoption, but I also find it highly unlikely for such a shift to occur.
So what you want is... Windows? I don't say that to be an asshole, I'm serious. If what you want is "something that is exactly like Windows," please use Windows. Linux is not a free version of Windows. ReactOS is a (work-in-progress) free Windows, and good for them, I hope they succeed, there's a place for that. Linux is a free Unix. There's a place for that too.
There are some efforts to simplify things, but I still find myself driven back to the commandline, because not everyone is on-board with that effort.
Do you honestly think that the people who make this software, who are the same people that use this software, are actively trying to make it harder on themselves? As a guy who I admire once said, "stealth bombers are more complicated to operate than tricycles because they can fly! It's trying to make complex things "simplified" that leaves us with the broken mess that is Windows. You can have click-and-go install.exe files, but jackoffs will write viruses. You can have binary click-and-go hardware drivers, but they'll leave the system a smoking radioactive pit when they break. You can have upnp, but you're gonna get your ass pwnt. That's what happens.
Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes you have to learn things. Sometimes you have to oh-my-god type things. If you want the payoff, you have to do the work. Do the work, man. It is worth it, I swear.
It's probably my fault for not knowing better... I'll bet my ignorance is to blame...
No, and being hard on yourself and calling yourself stupid isn't the answer. You have to do the work. Break it. Fix it. Breatk it. Fix it again. That's how we all learned. Do the work. Read the fucking manual. Then read it again. Get on IRC. Scour the forums. Hone your Google-fu. If after all that you still don't have the answer, email the package maintainer and say "What the fuck is the problem here?!" Read the fucking manual again. Fix it. Then break it again. The only way you're to blame is if you quit. Give yourself a chance.
Every time a n00b marks a thread "solved," an angel gets its wings. Good luck.
More choice and freedom isn't always better either, they don't want to make choices because that takes consideration of the options and a decision-making process. For consumers, it's better to go straight to getting what they want
The whole concept of "consumers" is antithetical to what Free Software is. It's Free Software. It's about choice and freedom. It's not about being #1, or having the most users. Choice and freedom. Inevitable world domination is just a fringe benefit.
I think Linux would see wider adoption if it targeted "noobs" instead of power users.... I think that an idealogical shift towards making OSS easy and familiar would greatly expand it's adoption, but I also find it highly unlikely for such a shift to occur.
So what you want is... Windows? I don't say that to be an asshole, I'm serious. If what you want is "something that is exactly like Windows," please use Windows. Linux is not a free version of Windows. ReactOS is a (work-in-progress) free Windows, and good for them, I hope they succeed, there's a place for that. Linux is a free Unix. There's a place for that too.
There are some efforts to simplify things, but I still find myself driven back to the commandline, because not everyone is on-board with that effort.
Do you honestly think that the people who make this software, who are the same people that use this software, are actively trying to make it harder on themselves? As a guy who I admire once said, "stealth bombers are more complicated to operate than tricycles because they can fly! It's trying to make complex things "simplified" that leaves us with the broken mess that is Windows. You can have click-and-go install.exe files, but jackoffs will write viruses. You can have binary click-and-go hardware drivers, but they'll leave the system a smoking radioactive pit when they break. You can have upnp, but you're gonna get your ass pwnt. That's what happens.
Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes you have to learn things. Sometimes you have to oh-my-god type things. If you want the payoff, you have to do the work. Do the work, man. It is worth it, I swear.
It's probably my fault for not knowing better... I'll bet my ignorance is to blame...
No, and being hard on yourself and calling yourself stupid isn't the answer. You have to do the work. Break it. Fix it. Breatk it. Fix it again. That's how we all learned. Do the work. Read the fucking manual. Then read it again. Get on IRC. Scour the forums. Hone your Google-fu. If after all that you still don't have the answer, email the package maintainer and say "What the fuck is the problem here?!" Read the fucking manual again. Fix it. Then break it again. The only way you're to blame is if you quit. Give yourself a chance.
Every time a n00b marks a thread "solved," an angel gets its wings. Good luck.
Oh, bullshit. I'm sick and tired of this "the average person doesn't want to learn" crap. Yeah, actually they do. Most of them are dying to learn, absolutely dying for it after years of being starved, abused, and kept in a dark, locked room by their proprietary software overlords. Especially once you show them a concrete example of what this system can do that their old one can't, like repo-surfing. I sell Linux machines to "the average person" (yes, really), and if I get far enough in my pitch to make it to "how do I install new software," that sale's in the bag, because that's the coolest part of the whole thing from an end-user perspective. Here's how it usually goes:
"Open this program, it's up here. Press control-f to search for something. What? Anything you want. How about 'animation'?"
Up pops Blender.
"Click here and tell it to install."
45 seconds later, Synaptic says done.
"Okay, now go up to the Graphics menu."
Lo, there it is.
"No, you're done, that's it."
Some of my more inquisitive folks ask how this works.
"Well, go up here (to software sources), see this list? When you search, you're searching these websites, called 'repositories.' These sites are maintained by the Ubuntu community, the same people who put together your operating system. They didn't write all the programs in it, but they make sure they all place nice with your computer. Every piece of your operating system and every program that runs on it comes from here, from Firefox to your video driver."
Maybe I'm just a great communicator, but I have never had to explain it twice. Tell me again how your way is easier.
The one company who REALLY understands this is Apple.
Every time a fanboi says that it makes me puke in my mouth a little.
I still don't get your analogy. I understand what the Fifth means, but what does that have to do with the GPL?
I'm gonna take a shot in the dark, and I may be wildly off base about what you meant in the first place, but here goes. Under the GPL, if you do not distribute the code, you have no responsibilities to anyone at all, you can do whatever you want with it. Isn't that analogous to a "right to remain silent?" However, once you distribute said code, you are in effect giving up your right to remain silent.
Are we even talking about the same thing here?
Great idea. After all, iPod, Mac, or Excel are much more easily recognizable terms and oh-so-relevant to what they do. Marketing sure knows best.
What a bunch of bullshit. Your mythical "Joe Average" will go to the Ubuntu website and download the Ubuntu or Kubuntu iso. U7.10 comes with Gnome 2.20.0. Stable. K7.10 (once updated) comes with KDE 3.5.8. Stable. "Joe Average" (a nonsense made-up concept, btw) isn't going to out looking for a new desktop to install in the first place.
Second, even taking your unlikely scenario, so "Joe Average" does go to kubuntu.org and follows the instructions to download KDE4, he's still going to have KDE 3.5.8 to fall back on. The only way you can download a version of Kubuntu with only KDE4 is if you get the Hardy alpha (and I'm not even sure about that, can anyone verify?)
Condensed version of above: You are talking out of your ass.