i even had the samba team making a fascist censorship decision to classify any posts i make to samba.org as "net abuse".
presumably one could do that simply by being a chronic douchebag. maybe you could elaborate to convince us otherwise?
how about the samba team being sufficiently willing to be egoistical and to remain ignorant by cutting off opinions of people that privately they agree with but are so arrogant that they cannot publicly admit that that person might be right?
again, it would help your credibility if you gave some details.
does anyone really care if they have 50B, 500B, or 5T - as long as they can't control computing? all we have to do is drive the price for commodity software near zero - which we are in the process of doing with F/OSS - and MS will become powerless in that market.
as far as i'm concerned, MS can continue to be successful - by changing their focus from commodity software to something else: become an investment house, enter the game console market, develop vertical-market applications, whatever - as long as they aren't able to control the software i use on a daily basis, or its marketplace.
i should note that MS is apparently doing the latter already - they're being pushed further up the application stack into accounting, CRM, etc. now. currently, it seems their plan is to dominate those markets and make them proprietary, running on their proprietary OS/server/applications stack. but F/OSS will chase them there too, eventually. and before that, they will have competition from companies developing competing applications on top of F/OSS platforms, who don't have the added expense of developing proprietary layers beneath their applications.
i think that commodity software has become a tarpit for MS. i don't care if they sink or get out, but it's going to have to be one or the other. that makes me happy.
Note especially the response re: what the BSA needs in order to get a court order: "Generally speaking, we would need to provide the court with a sworn affidavit from someone who has firsthand knowledge of the company's actions and is willing to be publicly identified". I'd be fairly surprised if a teacher would be willing or able to do that sort of thing at a school.
there are a LOT of people - resentful former employees - who would gladly do so, publicly. part of the pay-off is the employer knowing who has gotten revenge.
Mind you, I'd be very worried if your legal system allows a rogue company like the BSA to have law enforcement break down your door (metaphorically speaking) on the word of what could be just one bitter ex-employee. That'd have enormous potential for industrial espionage.
i've just demonstrated to you that it is possible, and in fact a rather routine occurrence.
the industrial espionage is a weird take on the situation. i'll bet it's almost never an issue.
btw, i'm all for strict software license enforcement. it improves the atmostphere for F/free software.
an' another thing - this from a company who specializes in software compliance:
Q: Can anyone really get busted for using unlicensed software?
Yes. There are a large number of documented cases regarding the arrest and prosecution of software copyright violators. For example, a consulting firm in Chicago was recently tagged with over $480,000 in fines. Take note that the US Marshall conducts these busts! This is no joke and it's happening more frequently. You can read more about this and many other busts on the BSA or SIIA website in their 'press release' sections.
Try jacking off in front of a primary school, and see how readily you are able to use your body as you see fit.
i just wanted to commend you for using the grammatically correct "jacking off" instead of the common vernacular "jerking off" which, sadly, has become so prevalent in the popular culture.
Well if you're not completely talking out of your arse, GIVE us a pointer to the specific story you mean. Or if you weren't referring to a single incident, find a story on the indicident that best supports your point
this is from a 1/05 interview between Windows IT Pro magazine and Bob Kruger, vice president of enforcement at the Business Software Alliance (BSA):
Windows IT Pro: If a company isn't cooperative with a request for an audit, does the BSA ever take legal or other action?
Kruger: There have been a number of incidents over the years where we have taken the information directly to a district court judge and applied for a court order that allowed us to go to the company unannounced and in the presence of federal marshals to conduct a surprise audit of its computers.
you can be sure that the guy is soft-pedaling their activities.
and surely you recall microsoft's pre-"Licensing 6.0" scare campaign from a few years ago? where they'd hit a town with ominous print/radio advertising about ponying up for microsoft licenses, then hit some poor schmucks in that town with a BSA audit and get multi-hundred-thousand dollar fines from them, and then play that up in the media as well. these mass-communication campaigns were done in conjunction with mass mailings of coercive-sounding letters to microsoft's corporate "customers" in the particular town that they were targeting.
there were several local stories in these towns in which business owners who refused to allow the audits all said that the BSA returned the next day with federal marshalls.
come on, you have been following IT news for a few years at least? surely that story would have stuck with you?
For anyone else who's completely clueless, the BSA is a BUSINESS ORGANIZATION. They have no legal standing whatsoever to show up at anyone's door and demand a fucking thing. Quite frankly, until they show up with the sheriff, and a warrant describing exactly what they are looking for signed by a judge (who, BTW, still has to be convinced of the merits of their arguments, and will tend to frown upon fishing expeditions), they should be shown the door and waved goodbye to.
well, see, the thing is, if you refuse to let the BSA conduct an audit, you *can* expect them to show up the very next day - not with a sherriff, but with a US marshall. with guns.
that's how they do it. no lie. don't believe me, ask google.
But aren't schools already getting a significant discount? How much lower can Microsoft go before they give it away to schools?
at my university, at least, we pay 10% of list on most stuff and get a lot of stuff free.
there is little or no monetary incentive here to use F/OSS, which is one reason i'm contemplating a career change to an industry where it is better appreciated.
If there were, say, three competing office suites each with 33% of the market share, then you could understand them wanting to include support for this format - companies would demand that the app supported them or switch to an alternative. However, when one office suite controls anything in the region of up to 96% of the market share, it'll take a lot more than a common open file format to persuade the average business to move away from a program that is pretty much the standard, whether we like it or not.
chicken and egg scenario. what oasis is trying to do is create the chicken.
Gray writes, 'the greatest of these [research challenges] will have to do with the unification of approximate and exact reasoning. Most of us come from the exact-reasoning world -- but most of our clients are now asking questions that require approximate or probabilistic answers.'"
oh please, get off it. The high horse ain't that high. 1) if you can't learn to forgive people for doing bad things (i didn't say forget) then you are probably in a world of trouble yourself
microsoft has done nothing to indicate it's going to change its ways. i don't blame it - it's a driven beast that will do whatever it possibly can to grow and dominate - but that doesn't mean i have to like it or forgive it.
2) lets not forget all the good that Billy has also done. I would list it all, but I don't have a day or two to do all of that research.
if this were ten years ago, i'd be with you. but that was then, this is now. microsoft has become the beast, and it has to be tamed or destroyed.
this is about my rights to software, my rights to control the software i use, and my right to legally interact with the rest of the computing community. microsoft is driving software patent laws to take those rights away from me. i'm not going to stand for it.
the microsoft business model: the customer is a semi-comatose patient. fuck it in the ass as hard and rough as possible. if the customer starts squirming or whining, back off a little, maybe apply a bit of lube, and ride the crack of its ass for awhile until its feeble mind drifts off and it settles down. then shove it back in and continue fucking.
whining for a bit of temporary relief isn't the solution. the solution is to make the effort to get the ass-fucker off of the customer.
i actually would prefer spatial if it had bookmarks. something like the file/open dialog's ability to accept and remember dragged/dropped "places" would clinch the deal for me. since the code is already there... maybe we'll see it...
another good place for a "places" shortcut menu would be on the gnome panel. you know how a firefox "back" button has a main button that takes you to the previous page, and alongside it is a little drop-down arrow that drops down a list of previous pages? i think a great place to use the same thing is on the "home" icon in the gnome panel. click it in the middle and you go to your home folder. click the drop-down part of the icon and you get a drop-down with your places shortcuts.
i don't think it *sucks*... i'm still not entirely sure why it's easier to use than a file browser, though. true, the previous windows are still open, but that means i have to search through the (now very cluttered) taskbar to find them. why don't i use the drop-down thingy in the lower left? because i, john q. newbie, never saw it. if it were up around the titlebar/menu etc. i would have seen it.
two improvements that would really help usability (imho) are:
move that drop-down thingy to the top of the windows
add a menu of of easily managed bookmarks/shortcuts to the spatial windows.
By usurping Debian (without giving back in any significant measure), Unbuntu might accidently obliterate the hand that feeds it.
maybe ubuntu is giving the debian developers and decision-makers two big fucking data-points to think about:
a three-year release cycle isn't acceptable.
eventually end-users will go away if you shit on them long enough (see other posts about #debian).
i tried the ubuntu live cd, and it was pretty damn nice. i went to #ubuntu and found helpful people who weren't total jerk-offs.
myself, i'm gonna stick with debian anyway, for strategic reasons; but i can see a lot of people who want a relatively stable, modern desktop without the contemptuous leetness making the switch.
i agree this will weaken debian in the long run. the solution is to have a sane release cycle, and to have more patience and respect for users. yes, even those who don't contribute code. they're not your personal voodoo dolls.
a number of the regulars in #debian are total douchebags to new users. it's perplexing why deb devels with a little more sense of grand strategy don't suggest to them that they shut their pie-holes. #ubuntu is a lot more friendly.
the self-styled high priests of #debian are free to abuse whomever they want on irc, and to have contempt for newbie-user-friendliness in their software, but they shouldn't cry when their own actions and attitudes help drive a migration to ubuntu.
that said, i use debian exclusively. the technical arguments outweigh the personalities. but i still lament the loss to the community caused by these arrogant assholes on #debian.
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gates has only a single gene in his entire body that i envy - the one that gave him THIS. O_o
...they should have named this release "Godot".
presumably one could do that simply by being a chronic douchebag. maybe you could elaborate to convince us otherwise?
how about the samba team being sufficiently willing to be egoistical and to remain ignorant by cutting off opinions of people that privately they agree with but are so arrogant that they cannot publicly admit that that person might be right?
again, it would help your credibility if you gave some details.
does anyone really care if they have 50B, 500B, or 5T - as long as they can't control computing? all we have to do is drive the price for commodity software near zero - which we are in the process of doing with F/OSS - and MS will become powerless in that market.
as far as i'm concerned, MS can continue to be successful - by changing their focus from commodity software to something else: become an investment house, enter the game console market, develop vertical-market applications, whatever - as long as they aren't able to control the software i use on a daily basis, or its marketplace.
i should note that MS is apparently doing the latter already - they're being pushed further up the application stack into accounting, CRM, etc. now. currently, it seems their plan is to dominate those markets and make them proprietary, running on their proprietary OS/server/applications stack. but F/OSS will chase them there too, eventually. and before that, they will have competition from companies developing competing applications on top of F/OSS platforms, who don't have the added expense of developing proprietary layers beneath their applications.
i think that commodity software has become a tarpit for MS. i don't care if they sink or get out, but it's going to have to be one or the other. that makes me happy.
there are a LOT of people - resentful former employees - who would gladly do so, publicly. part of the pay-off is the employer knowing who has gotten revenge.
Mind you, I'd be very worried if your legal system allows a rogue company like the BSA to have law enforcement break down your door (metaphorically speaking) on the word of what could be just one bitter ex-employee. That'd have enormous potential for industrial espionage.
i've just demonstrated to you that it is possible, and in fact a rather routine occurrence.
the industrial espionage is a weird take on the situation. i'll bet it's almost never an issue.
btw, i'm all for strict software license enforcement. it improves the atmostphere for F/free software.
http://www.belegal.com/software/complianceissues.a sp
i just wanted to commend you for using the grammatically correct "jacking off" instead of the common vernacular "jerking off" which, sadly, has become so prevalent in the popular culture.
this is from a 1/05 interview between Windows IT Pro magazine and Bob Kruger, vice president of enforcement at the Business Software Alliance (BSA):
you can be sure that the guy is soft-pedaling their activities.
and surely you recall microsoft's pre-"Licensing 6.0" scare campaign from a few years ago? where they'd hit a town with ominous print/radio advertising about ponying up for microsoft licenses, then hit some poor schmucks in that town with a BSA audit and get multi-hundred-thousand dollar fines from them, and then play that up in the media as well. these mass-communication campaigns were done in conjunction with mass mailings of coercive-sounding letters to microsoft's corporate "customers" in the particular town that they were targeting.
there were several local stories in these towns in which business owners who refused to allow the audits all said that the BSA returned the next day with federal marshalls.
come on, you have been following IT news for a few years at least? surely that story would have stuck with you?
cool! i can hardly wait until orbiting mini-nuke-tipped bunker-busters are available in walmart!
well, see, the thing is, if you refuse to let the BSA conduct an audit, you *can* expect them to show up the very next day - not with a sherriff, but with a US marshall. with guns.
that's how they do it. no lie. don't believe me, ask google.
F/OSS is a different kind of threat, however. in some respects, MS's billions in the bank are about as useful as a battleship in iraq.
at my university, at least, we pay 10% of list on most stuff and get a lot of stuff free.
there is little or no monetary incentive here to use F/OSS, which is one reason i'm contemplating a career change to an industry where it is better appreciated.
...it's the license, stupid.
chicken and egg scenario. what oasis is trying to do is create the chicken.
oh, yay, patent it quick, you fucking douchebags.
microsoft has done nothing to indicate it's going to change its ways. i don't blame it - it's a driven beast that will do whatever it possibly can to grow and dominate - but that doesn't mean i have to like it or forgive it.
2) lets not forget all the good that Billy has also done. I would list it all, but I don't have a day or two to do all of that research.
if this were ten years ago, i'd be with you. but that was then, this is now. microsoft has become the beast, and it has to be tamed or destroyed.
this is about my rights to software, my rights to control the software i use, and my right to legally interact with the rest of the computing community. microsoft is driving software patent laws to take those rights away from me. i'm not going to stand for it.
microsoft is the enemy now.
it's perplexing to me, this "stallman doesn't bathe" meme. does having long hair automatically make you filthy?
whining for a bit of temporary relief isn't the solution. the solution is to make the effort to get the ass-fucker off of the customer.
i actually would prefer spatial if it had bookmarks. something like the file/open dialog's ability to accept and remember dragged/dropped "places" would clinch the deal for me. since the code is already there... maybe we'll see it...
another good place for a "places" shortcut menu would be on the gnome panel. you know how a firefox "back" button has a main button that takes you to the previous page, and alongside it is a little drop-down arrow that drops down a list of previous pages? i think a great place to use the same thing is on the "home" icon in the gnome panel. click it in the middle and you go to your home folder. click the drop-down part of the icon and you get a drop-down with your places shortcuts.
i don't think it *sucks*... i'm still not entirely sure why it's easier to use than a file browser, though. true, the previous windows are still open, but that means i have to search through the (now very cluttered) taskbar to find them. why don't i use the drop-down thingy in the lower left? because i, john q. newbie, never saw it. if it were up around the titlebar/menu etc. i would have seen it.
two improvements that would really help usability (imho) are:
maybe ubuntu is giving the debian developers and decision-makers two big fucking data-points to think about:
i tried the ubuntu live cd, and it was pretty damn nice. i went to #ubuntu and found helpful people who weren't total jerk-offs.
myself, i'm gonna stick with debian anyway, for strategic reasons; but i can see a lot of people who want a relatively stable, modern desktop without the contemptuous leetness making the switch.
i agree this will weaken debian in the long run. the solution is to have a sane release cycle, and to have more patience and respect for users. yes, even those who don't contribute code. they're not your personal voodoo dolls.
...that isp's may respond by asking the entertainment industries to sign a "code of going and fucking yourself".
the self-styled high priests of #debian are free to abuse whomever they want on irc, and to have contempt for newbie-user-friendliness in their software, but they shouldn't cry when their own actions and attitudes help drive a migration to ubuntu.
that said, i use debian exclusively. the technical arguments outweigh the personalities. but i still lament the loss to the community caused by these arrogant assholes on #debian.
give me a little more time - i'm pretty sure i can pin this on microsoft's stock-holdings in best buy...
...i think i can hear bill gates cumming in his pants from here.