The best way to support open source is to use the software and encourage others to use the software. Investing in open source is a long term benefit not a shot term one and what you get out of it is hard to put a value on; most companies invest because they themselves directly benefit from the labors of open source developers and it is mostly an investment in their own prosperity.
If you are not in a software company and do not directly benefit from any open source product, I'd say invest elsewhere. Because I assume you want a return and you probably won't see a monetary one unless you have a product that directly benefits from an open source project.
I'm more familiar with the greater Seattle Linux Users Group. In reading some of the members, one of the guys who shows up at these meetings started the PHP Users Group and when I showed up at one found a guy who only wanted to talk about how.NET rocked and PHP sucked ass. While being a LAMP developer in the process of converting to Tomcat, I wouldn't argue that PHP sucks (as all languages suck on some level) but to have a users group to talk about a competing product is very off putting ( I won't mention the PHP Meetup where the local Ruby Meetup sponsor came and did recruiting to get people to move to Ruby).
While my accusations appear to be unfounded (to which I sincerely apologize), it's unfortunate that anyone can start a users group and spout any kind of nonsense they want. It's a bit like the Slashdot forum (irony is deliberate).
Calling names really encourages people to apologize. However I understand your general anger over my false accusation. I retract my assertion and apologize for confusion that may have occurred. While all evidence seemed to add up, sometimes 1+1!=2
Excuse my skepticism. I've never heard of you guys; I live in Seattle and go to the Seattle Java Users Group, PHP Meetup and a few others and have NEVER heard of the Bellevue Linux Users group.
Not saying you don't exist, it's just that saying you are a Linux users group in the heart of Microsith-town is like saying you are the Iraqi Democracy Committe in the heart of Baghdad and saying how great the American invasion was for Iraq. A sensible person is going to have his doubts as to your credibility.
Just out of curiosity, what companies do your members come from? I happen to know most of the open source vendors and companies using and developing open source tools in that area.
There is no need to redefine "Blizzard ban gays" it's pretty obvious to anyone not bullshitting what that means.
Well then mister obvious, what's your excuse for ignorance? Oh you must think that CLARIFICATION==REDEFINING. English really isn't your first language is it? Y'know, if you keep babbling on enough, maybe you can find some nazi sympathizers to bash gays with. And you call all agree that you aren't BASHING them and that everyone elses interpretation of your actions are merely a redefinition.
Microsoft has ever so recently started creating it's own 'pro-windows' Linux websites and putting up propoganda. Linfo.org is one of those sites. It's registered to an email of ips@connectexpress.com who do promotions for companies. The registrant is from Bellevue, Washington where half of the Microsoft campus is (Redmond is LITERALLY across the street).
The phone number used for registering this site goes to an answering service. This is nothing more than a propoganda site sponsored by Microsoft
My only issues I have ever had is with module conflicts and then all I did was use a different version to solve the conflict.
While I was at this company, the head of north america sales for Microsoft burst into my office and tried to sell me on using their product on the server. I showed him that my setup was more cost effective, more dependable, more stable and more secure to which he responded 'Aside from security, cost and dependability, why NOT use Microsoft products?'
I practically laughed my ass off when he posed that question.
And that is what they threatened. Since words are obviously new to you, allow me to enlighten that monkey brain of yours and bring you into the 20th century with the rest of us primates. Stating 'First they ban gays' actually supports what they threatened; theire threat was 'stop talking about being gay or we will ban you'. Stating' they BANNED someone for being gay' implies that in the past tense, they took action.
When you figure out how to crack open that Merriam Websters, give me a call. Until then, good luck with the rest of your english lessons. I'd wish you luck with your WOW knowledge but seeing how you have yet to even admit how wrong you were, I don't see much success in that.
and I never said any players were banned. I merely said that they ban gays in reference to their threat to ban players who talk about being gay. And no matter how many ad-hominem attacks you throw around, you can't change their past policy.:)
Nope. Just their word that they were going to do it. And as stated by my original post, the point being made is that they are pissing people off by their over policing. If you think this makes people happy merely because nobody actually got banned but were threatened with banning, then you need to speak to the ACLU and the Lesbian Gay Alliance to see just how thrilled they were with Blizzards actions.
Because we all know that the threat of banishment makes people giddy in comparsion to banishment itself. Just like stifling civil liberties. Everyone loved the Nazis, didn't they? Show us how they goose step since you are defending them so vehemently.
Speaking as someone who set up a LAMP architecture for a Microsoft vendor, my uptimes dwarfed those of IIS with the only time I had to take the server down was for software updates. The time it took me to do my makes and set everything up perfectly the way I want took a couple hours (not that different from Windows).
When I left, they decided to switch everything over to an ALL WINDOWS environment. Not counting costs involved in switching all applications over, they had to spend almost $100,000 to duplicate the setup I had for free with open source.
Costs in setup are minimal in LAMP, longterm savings and uptime are HUGE!! Also with LAMP, I'm a one man army. In my old company, they had to hire contractors for the DB work separate from the web dev. More labor, higher costs. With LAMP I can keep my costs very very low.
This is yet again 100% FUD from Microsoft
Yes banning gays. They did not allow gay guilds and even posted public policy on this including banning players. For someone who plays the game, you don't seem to know much about it. And at 7 million players, is it ok to indiscriminately piss people off? Would it be ok if I had an OS and decided to just start disabling peoples computers because I didn't like the way they were using them??
Why does having more subscribers make their actions morally justifiable?
First they ban gays, have massive amounts of downtime, now they ban Linux users? Are they deliberately trying to erode their game base? Everytime I read about this game it's usually something bad.
This and the cell processor were the major reasons why I was looking forward to the PS3. Blu-ray and HD-dvd still have to fight it out and it doesn't look like it's going to end quickly
Microsoft is under the scrutiny of the US Gov and the EU who just told them to open up their protocols are start getting fined. So NATURALLY, they want to make these deals before they are forced to open up their protociols because once those protocols are opened, they can;t really threaten people with their patents; people will either used a Microsoft patent and pay for the license or engineer around it to get interoperability. That's the way the MONO project has worked so far.
So while threatening over something they have to fork over anyway, Microsoft is basically just posing and posturing at this point, More FUD for the game. If they had patents that others infringed on, they are responsible to come forward and tell people that they are infringing on those patanets, identify the patents (so people know what the infringement is) and either come up with a remedy or sue. Otherwise the patent is null and void. Much like a trademark, if you do not enforce it when it is known that there are infringements, you risk losing the ability to sue in the future.
So in other words, this is a shakedown and nothing else.
We were standardizing on SUSE but switched to RHEL afterthe Microsoft-Novell pact. For the desktops we use Kubuntu. And we don't have a single problem. And Microsoft threatening to sue and bullying vendors into contracts without telling them what patents they think they are violating is called 'extortion'.
Nice software you got here... shame if something happened to it.
Still blaming the voters for allowing Microsoft to perpetuate their monopolistic practices is like blaming the butterfly in china for the hurricane in florida. Voters are uninformed as far as technology is concerned and they no vote was ever cast where the individual voter was allowed to choose whether Microsoft was a monopoly or not so this is a moot point.
Sure they could have voted for representatives that would have represented them in this case but this assumes that all the voters are informed in all topics and also that representatives wil always do what the voter wants them to do and not the lobbyists filling their pockets. So again, this is a stupid point to even begin with.
If voting changed anything, it would be illegal. Though, if I had as much money as Microsoft to lobby congress and donate to presidential campaigns, I'm sure my vote would count for something.
It's easy to blame the voter in a corrupt system. But why not blame those who perpetrate the behaviour rather than the average voter who isn't an engineer and doesn't understand what is at stake.
Speaking as someone who works in a mixed environment, everytime SAMBA makes any progress, Microsoft makes major changes which effectively locks peope out all over again. Being able to get your MAC machines and LINUX machines to be able to fluidly talk to your Windows machines would be a nice thing. As is, Linux and Mac make it very easy for other machines to talk to them but Microsoft deliberately hides, and obfuscates its technology making it difficult to interface with if you are not also running a windows machine.
Aside from that, Microsoft has gotten in trouble in the past for using SHADOW API's. They tell competing vendors one way to interface with the machine and then use a better way themselves so all Microsoft's products run super fast and vendors products run slower and not as well.
These are all things that the EU is talking about and has been talking about. Getting our machines to play well together shouldn't be something that should have to be enforced. As engineers, it should be the obvious choice. So when you say you dont get it, maybe you don't understand why machines should talk to each other or share data with each other or work together. However working in a mixed environment, I'd rather not have to force our designers off MAC and our servers off LINUX merely because Microsoft can't play well with the other kids on the playground.
It's sad to think that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft still needs to be babysat.
Slashdot Mirror
The best way to support open source is to use the software and encourage others to use the software. Investing in open source is a long term benefit not a shot term one and what you get out of it is hard to put a value on; most companies invest because they themselves directly benefit from the labors of open source developers and it is mostly an investment in their own prosperity. If you are not in a software company and do not directly benefit from any open source product, I'd say invest elsewhere. Because I assume you want a return and you probably won't see a monetary one unless you have a product that directly benefits from an open source project.
I'm more familiar with the greater Seattle Linux Users Group. In reading some of the members, one of the guys who shows up at these meetings started the PHP Users Group and when I showed up at one found a guy who only wanted to talk about how .NET rocked and PHP sucked ass. While being a LAMP developer in the process of converting to Tomcat, I wouldn't argue that PHP sucks (as all languages suck on some level) but to have a users group to talk about a competing product is very off putting ( I won't mention the PHP Meetup where the local Ruby Meetup sponsor came and did recruiting to get people to move to Ruby).
While my accusations appear to be unfounded (to which I sincerely apologize), it's unfortunate that anyone can start a users group and spout any kind of nonsense they want. It's a bit like the Slashdot forum (irony is deliberate).
Calling names really encourages people to apologize. However I understand your general anger over my false accusation. I retract my assertion and apologize for confusion that may have occurred. While all evidence seemed to add up, sometimes 1+1!=2
Excuse my skepticism. I've never heard of you guys; I live in Seattle and go to the Seattle Java Users Group, PHP Meetup and a few others and have NEVER heard of the Bellevue Linux Users group.
Not saying you don't exist, it's just that saying you are a Linux users group in the heart of Microsith-town is like saying you are the Iraqi Democracy Committe in the heart of Baghdad and saying how great the American invasion was for Iraq. A sensible person is going to have his doubts as to your credibility.
Just out of curiosity, what companies do your members come from? I happen to know most of the open source vendors and companies using and developing open source tools in that area.
Siege Heil!
Microsoft has ever so recently started creating it's own 'pro-windows' Linux websites and putting up propoganda. Linfo.org is one of those sites. It's registered to an email of ips@connectexpress.com who do promotions for companies. The registrant is from Bellevue, Washington where half of the Microsoft campus is (Redmond is LITERALLY across the street).
The phone number used for registering this site goes to an answering service. This is nothing more than a propoganda site sponsored by Microsoft
My only issues I have ever had is with module conflicts and then all I did was use a different version to solve the conflict.
While I was at this company, the head of north america sales for Microsoft burst into my office and tried to sell me on using their product on the server. I showed him that my setup was more cost effective, more dependable, more stable and more secure to which he responded 'Aside from security, cost and dependability, why NOT use Microsoft products?'
I practically laughed my ass off when he posed that question.
Let's see... denial of known evidence, hatred of gays, now trying to redefine what was said. Congratulations, you are the model of a nazi reformist. :)
And that is what they threatened. Since words are obviously new to you, allow me to enlighten that monkey brain of yours and bring you into the 20th century with the rest of us primates. Stating 'First they ban gays' actually supports what they threatened; theire threat was 'stop talking about being gay or we will ban you'. Stating' they BANNED someone for being gay' implies that in the past tense, they took action.
When you figure out how to crack open that Merriam Websters, give me a call. Until then, good luck with the rest of your english lessons. I'd wish you luck with your WOW knowledge but seeing how you have yet to even admit how wrong you were, I don't see much success in that.
and I never said any players were banned. I merely said that they ban gays in reference to their threat to ban players who talk about being gay. And no matter how many ad-hominem attacks you throw around, you can't change their past policy. :)
And once you get past the arrogant demeanor, you are basically saying it's ok to ban gays?
Nope. Just their word that they were going to do it. And as stated by my original post, the point being made is that they are pissing people off by their over policing. If you think this makes people happy merely because nobody actually got banned but were threatened with banning, then you need to speak to the ACLU and the Lesbian Gay Alliance to see just how thrilled they were with Blizzards actions.
Because we all know that the threat of banishment makes people giddy in comparsion to banishment itself. Just like stifling civil liberties. Everyone loved the Nazis, didn't they? Show us how they goose step since you are defending them so vehemently.
Speaking as someone who set up a LAMP architecture for a Microsoft vendor, my uptimes dwarfed those of IIS with the only time I had to take the server down was for software updates. The time it took me to do my makes and set everything up perfectly the way I want took a couple hours (not that different from Windows). When I left, they decided to switch everything over to an ALL WINDOWS environment. Not counting costs involved in switching all applications over, they had to spend almost $100,000 to duplicate the setup I had for free with open source. Costs in setup are minimal in LAMP, longterm savings and uptime are HUGE!! Also with LAMP, I'm a one man army. In my old company, they had to hire contractors for the DB work separate from the web dev. More labor, higher costs. With LAMP I can keep my costs very very low. This is yet again 100% FUD from Microsoft
BAN on in-game Gay Guilds http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/ban_on_gayfri endly_g.html
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/01/31/blizzard-vs-gaym ers-are-other-minorities-next/
http://news.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/0,39029682,492491 57,00.htm
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060207-6129 .html
In case you are still reading impaired, notice the word 'BAN' in all those article titles? Notice the threat of being banned by WOW? They threatened to ban people for talking about being gay. Whether anyone was banned or not is irrelevant because the threatened to ban people for talking about being gay. And that was their policy until the community backlash caused them to change their mind.
So what part of Blizzard threatening to ban gay players are you confused about? Just for the record, this took all of two seconds to find in Google. So now not only are you wrong but you are also apparently incompetent at researching your own info.
Sucks to be you.
Nice. Claim to know more but remain vague. In other words, you are unfamiliar with the incident but want to deny it anyway.
Yes banning gays. They did not allow gay guilds and even posted public policy on this including banning players. For someone who plays the game, you don't seem to know much about it. And at 7 million players, is it ok to indiscriminately piss people off? Would it be ok if I had an OS and decided to just start disabling peoples computers because I didn't like the way they were using them?? Why does having more subscribers make their actions morally justifiable?
First they ban gays, have massive amounts of downtime, now they ban Linux users? Are they deliberately trying to erode their game base? Everytime I read about this game it's usually something bad.
This and the cell processor were the major reasons why I was looking forward to the PS3. Blu-ray and HD-dvd still have to fight it out and it doesn't look like it's going to end quickly
Microsoft is under the scrutiny of the US Gov and the EU who just told them to open up their protocols are start getting fined. So NATURALLY, they want to make these deals before they are forced to open up their protociols because once those protocols are opened, they can;t really threaten people with their patents; people will either used a Microsoft patent and pay for the license or engineer around it to get interoperability. That's the way the MONO project has worked so far. So while threatening over something they have to fork over anyway, Microsoft is basically just posing and posturing at this point, More FUD for the game. If they had patents that others infringed on, they are responsible to come forward and tell people that they are infringing on those patanets, identify the patents (so people know what the infringement is) and either come up with a remedy or sue. Otherwise the patent is null and void. Much like a trademark, if you do not enforce it when it is known that there are infringements, you risk losing the ability to sue in the future. So in other words, this is a shakedown and nothing else.
We were standardizing on SUSE but switched to RHEL afterthe Microsoft-Novell pact. For the desktops we use Kubuntu. And we don't have a single problem. And Microsoft threatening to sue and bullying vendors into contracts without telling them what patents they think they are violating is called 'extortion'.
Nice software you got here... shame if something happened to it.
I hope he isn't going to squirt all over the developers, developers, developers, developers.
Still blaming the voters for allowing Microsoft to perpetuate their monopolistic practices is like blaming the butterfly in china for the hurricane in florida. Voters are uninformed as far as technology is concerned and they no vote was ever cast where the individual voter was allowed to choose whether Microsoft was a monopoly or not so this is a moot point.
Sure they could have voted for representatives that would have represented them in this case but this assumes that all the voters are informed in all topics and also that representatives wil always do what the voter wants them to do and not the lobbyists filling their pockets. So again, this is a stupid point to even begin with.
It's easy to blame the voter in a corrupt system. But why not blame those who perpetrate the behaviour rather than the average voter who isn't an engineer and doesn't understand what is at stake.
Speaking as someone who works in a mixed environment, everytime SAMBA makes any progress, Microsoft makes major changes which effectively locks peope out all over again. Being able to get your MAC machines and LINUX machines to be able to fluidly talk to your Windows machines would be a nice thing. As is, Linux and Mac make it very easy for other machines to talk to them but Microsoft deliberately hides, and obfuscates its technology making it difficult to interface with if you are not also running a windows machine.
Aside from that, Microsoft has gotten in trouble in the past for using SHADOW API's. They tell competing vendors one way to interface with the machine and then use a better way themselves so all Microsoft's products run super fast and vendors products run slower and not as well.
These are all things that the EU is talking about and has been talking about. Getting our machines to play well together shouldn't be something that should have to be enforced. As engineers, it should be the obvious choice. So when you say you dont get it, maybe you don't understand why machines should talk to each other or share data with each other or work together. However working in a mixed environment, I'd rather not have to force our designers off MAC and our servers off LINUX merely because Microsoft can't play well with the other kids on the playground.
It's sad to think that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft still needs to be babysat.