Not like the old page that said `Linux only had 128 MB swap files' and FUD like that. This page actually lists things that Microsoft does better, in a mostly factual, hype-limited way.
Different audiences, different messages.
MS has to be a bit straighter with techies because they'll get laughed out of the room otherwise.
Rest assured that the message targeted at less sophisticated audiences is as chock-full of bullshit as ever.
So while you're writing to those who sponsor pop-up ads, telling them that you're taking your business elsewhere, cc: that note to the folks who stick to the 30 and 60 second ads, telling them that you're giving them your business because they don't run pop-up ads, and making it clear that you'll switch again if they ever do.
And while you're at that - there is a way you can drive the point home instead of being dismissed as another slack-jaw on a sugar rush who will compliantly start watching and buying again as soon as the insulin levels return to normal:
From that date forward, each time you purchase a *competitor's* product, send a copy of the sales receipt to the people you're boycotting, annotate the purchase, and note that "$X.xx of my money has gone to your competitor instead of you because: ___________."
And you don't have to waste a stamp. E-mail a scan, or maintain a website so that the offending megalo-oligo-corp can keep a running total.
One more step toward making TV utterly worthless and unwatchable even to the gawking masses. We're getting closer! At some point it will have to get so bad that even they will have to notice.
Or at the very least, a pay version of TV WITH NO ADS will arise.
If enough people wanted DOS to stick around, they would continue to purchase DOS, etc. etc. Keep in mind, the keyword is _enough_. This is the precise reason you are "at the mercy of [...] vendor's business plans." Because there simply is not enough people purchasing the product to keep it alive.
That's not correct. You're assuming that a vendor's sole interest in a product is whether there is sufficient interest to continue to sell it. A proprietary vendor might want to force you to upgrade, even when your current software environment is exactly what you need.
Now, why would a vendor do something that is against their customer's interest? Easy: they are only interested in their customer's interest as long as that is in *their* interest. For example, let's say an OS vendor has struck a huge deal with entertainment industries to package and deliver their customers via a "secure operating system" that protects digital media. The vendor stands to gain for every customer they get on board, and they *lose* money for every customer who chooses to stay with their current OS.
In monopoly situations, the vendor's old product is actually a *competitor* to its new product. It has to kill off its own older software in order to generate new sales from the same customers.
And why would a customer go along with this coercion? Because they have a large investment in the vendor's platform and the cost to switch is prohibitive. Or, in a monopoly situation, the customer may simply have no other realistic choice.
How could the vendor actually leverage the customer to accede to their desires? By drying up supply; by refusing to burn more copies; witholding support; by fixing prices to make it prohibitive to resist; by no longer fixing security flaws as they're discovered; etc.
Now if we look at the previous poster's comments we see that open source has no remedy whatsoever. If there aren't enough people to warrant keeping a product alive in the marketplace, then why should hackers continue to support their "product" when so few people use it?
You still don't get it - with proprietary software, the vendor can kill a product even if (under normal conditions) there IS enough interest to keep it alive! And the fundamental fact remains: If the source code is available, you CAN actually pay someone to maintain the code. Regardless of whether you or anyone else thinks it's economically viable, any single person to whom it's worth it to do so, can keep the code alive.
There is sort of a mythical maintenance belief going on in the open source crowd. Many seem to believe that just because software is still sitting on a web page or ftp that it is still maintained and updated (or even worthy of a download).
I don't know anyone who believes that. There are scads of projects that are started, abandoned, die deserved deaths and are forgotten. That's certainly not unique to open source software. The difference is - even if you're the *only guy in the world* who wants a copy of that code, you can get it. Software houses with failed closed source projects just don't hand out their failures to the three or four people who might be mildly interested.
Open source software has no greater value than proprietary, if the code is worthless to the user.
This is the reason so much is rewritten and so many wheels recreated in open source camp.
It's rewritten if the developer chooses to rewrite. If he wants to borrow someone else's code, he can.
My point of this is: outdated open source is not going to be maintained more than proprietary,
Maybe, maybe not, but with open source, it's the user who decides if it's outdated. Not the vendor.
and in most cases the source code will be worthless to whomever decides to use it.
Huh? If they use it, it's because they find it useful; and if it's useful and they use it, it's not outdated. There's some kind of circular illogic at work here:-)
If only one organization decided to use say, Linux 1.x, then they _could_ maintain it by themselves since no one (I don't think..) maintains that version any longer. But they would have to learn the entire code base and train people to maintain it. In the end, they would have been better off rewritting from scratch--or simply going to the new version.
Again - that may or may not be the case in each particular instance; the main thing is that this is UP TO THE USER.
Which reduces the problem but doesn't negate it. Everyone loves pointing out that anyone can get their hands on the tools necessary to modify open-source software, but they tend to conveniently ignore the fact that not everyone has the programming skills necessary to do so.
The point is not that everyone should maintain their own source code; the point is that if there are enough people interested in keeping it around, it will stay around. You're not at the mercy of your monopolistic vendor's business plans.
The 2.0 kernel is rapidly reaching end-of-life status. You are all warned that operating system updates (including security updates) will soon be discontinued. You are urged to contact your local software vendor, upgrade to the latest version of the Linux kernel, and sign up for Software Assurance ASAP.
I almost never use P2P software, but recently I did notice that my cable modem connection speed overall seemed to drop significantly if Gnutella was running. And, that I had trouble actually connecting to the file I was trying to get, even after trying for hours overnight.
After shutting down Gnutella, speed went back up. I think there was far too little actual network traffic resulting from Gnutella to cause this. It made me wonder if Earthlink / Charter Pipeline was acting punitively.
Incidentally, while that doesn't affect me much, here is a possibly related experience: I handle a number of servers at work. I noticed that if I did a portscan on one of our own servers - presto, no more cable connection. Gotta unplug the modem and reboot. Now I just ssh into a server at work and scan from there, but it kind of pissed me off for awhile. Sometimes I want to know what our network looks like from the outside, too.
Look, my mom has trouble with Excel. You think she'd be able to run Linux? You think she'd be able to build a kernel module? Even install an RPM package?
For that kind of user, I'm not sure that Linux with an install utility like Ximian Red Carpet is any more complicated than Windows. People who don't like dicking around with computer stuff are probably *good* candidates for modern Linux distributions.
My wife - a very bright woman who completed her university degree in Finance before her 20th birthday - uses spreadsheets like this: She enters the data into columns, performs the calculations by hand or with a calculator, and then enters the result in the appropriate cell.
Yes, I think it's crazy too - but she just doesn't like (or trust) computers. She's just as happy with Linux as she was with Windows - which isn't very happy, but the point is that Linux is not necessarily a step down in usability for non-geeks.
Kind of an opposite case for my mom - she spends all her time on her Windows PC, in various gardening and photograpy forums, playing Freecell for ridiculously long stretches of time, etc.
But until recently, every time I would visit, I'd end up spending half an hour fixing things, removing virii, and generally un-fucking up her computer. (I say "until recently" because, thankfully, she has a friend nearby to deal with that stuff). And, I discovered the reason I hadn't heard from her for a few weeks was because Outlook Express got so fucked up she could no longer even send or receive mail. There have been so many occasions that she's told me a Windows tale of woe, and I've told her that I'm sympathetic, but that I just don't have those kinds of problems on Linux.
I'm not sure she's ready for a change yet - she faces the same inertia problem that so many countless others face wrt their Windows use; but someday, I'll introduce her to Linux. I'll have to set it up, spend a day with her showing her how to use stuff, show her how to get more software, and so on. But after that I (and her Windows-helper friend) will probably have drastically less work to do keeping that PC going.
I would love to see SGI, Nvidia, ATi, and other leading graphics companys to step it up. You can not tell me that Microsoft hasn't borrowed heavily from patented concepts and ideas that were first implemented by some of these companies.
Well, my take on it is:
Microsoft BOUGHT a lot of those patents from those companies.
The companies would NOT have sold them if they were cutting their own throats
A number of proprietary technology companies have concerns about OSS/FS devaluing their companies
So my guess is that:
Their agreements forbid Microsoft to use the sold patents against the companies
The companies sold the patents with a wink and a nod to MS for the purpose (in part) of hurting OSS/FS.
In other words, part of the value the previous patent holders get out of the deal is that they can hide behind MS while it does the dirty work - which is, after all, Microsoft's most finely crafted product.
I was thinking of putting together a cheap diskless workstation for casual web browsing in the study (a la LTSP). It would boot off the server in the basement.
But if I could do the same with an XBox and take a couple hundred bucks out of MS's pockets, all the better!
Slashdot Mirror
I'll eagerly follow that divine, demented hippie into the very bowels of hell!
Different audiences, different messages.
MS has to be a bit straighter with techies because they'll get laughed out of the room otherwise.
Rest assured that the message targeted at less sophisticated audiences is as chock-full of bullshit as ever.
or: "You're too good. Now get the hell off my dad's polo field!"
They're throwing away 5% of the market and giving it to a competitor. And in many businesses that IS a big deal.
Or just get a damn dog! Everyone should have a dog... Everyone should have a dog as sweet and lovely as mine.
And while you're at that - there is a way you can drive the point home instead of being dismissed as another slack-jaw on a sugar rush who will compliantly start watching and buying again as soon as the insulin levels return to normal:
From that date forward, each time you purchase a *competitor's* product, send a copy of the sales receipt to the people you're boycotting, annotate the purchase, and note that "$X.xx of my money has gone to your competitor instead of you because: ___________."
And you don't have to waste a stamp. E-mail a scan, or maintain a website so that the offending megalo-oligo-corp can keep a running total.
Or at the very least, a pay version of TV WITH NO ADS will arise.
If someone doesn't mod this funny ASAP I'm going to slash my wrists.
If you find out who he is, let me know, BECAUSE I'D LIKE TO BLOW HIM!
Fantastic article.
That's not correct. You're assuming that a vendor's sole interest in a product is whether there is sufficient interest to continue to sell it. A proprietary vendor might want to force you to upgrade, even when your current software environment is exactly what you need.
Now, why would a vendor do something that is against their customer's interest? Easy: they are only interested in their customer's interest as long as that is in *their* interest. For example, let's say an OS vendor has struck a huge deal with entertainment industries to package and deliver their customers via a "secure operating system" that protects digital media. The vendor stands to gain for every customer they get on board, and they *lose* money for every customer who chooses to stay with their current OS.
In monopoly situations, the vendor's old product is actually a *competitor* to its new product. It has to kill off its own older software in order to generate new sales from the same customers.
And why would a customer go along with this coercion? Because they have a large investment in the vendor's platform and the cost to switch is prohibitive. Or, in a monopoly situation, the customer may simply have no other realistic choice.
How could the vendor actually leverage the customer to accede to their desires? By drying up supply; by refusing to burn more copies; witholding support; by fixing prices to make it prohibitive to resist; by no longer fixing security flaws as they're discovered; etc.
Now if we look at the previous poster's comments we see that open source has no remedy whatsoever. If there aren't enough people to warrant keeping a product alive in the marketplace, then why should hackers continue to support their "product" when so few people use it?
You still don't get it - with proprietary software, the vendor can kill a product even if (under normal conditions) there IS enough interest to keep it alive! And the fundamental fact remains: If the source code is available, you CAN actually pay someone to maintain the code. Regardless of whether you or anyone else thinks it's economically viable, any single person to whom it's worth it to do so, can keep the code alive.
There is sort of a mythical maintenance belief going on in the open source crowd. Many seem to believe that just because software is still sitting on a web page or ftp that it is still maintained and updated (or even worthy of a download).
I don't know anyone who believes that. There are scads of projects that are started, abandoned, die deserved deaths and are forgotten. That's certainly not unique to open source software. The difference is - even if you're the *only guy in the world* who wants a copy of that code, you can get it. Software houses with failed closed source projects just don't hand out their failures to the three or four people who might be mildly interested.
Open source software has no greater value than proprietary, if the code is worthless to the user. This is the reason so much is rewritten and so many wheels recreated in open source camp.
It's rewritten if the developer chooses to rewrite. If he wants to borrow someone else's code, he can.
My point of this is: outdated open source is not going to be maintained more than proprietary,
Maybe, maybe not, but with open source, it's the user who decides if it's outdated. Not the vendor.
and in most cases the source code will be worthless to whomever decides to use it.
Huh? If they use it, it's because they find it useful; and if it's useful and they use it, it's not outdated. There's some kind of circular illogic at work here :-)
If only one organization decided to use say, Linux 1.x, then they _could_ maintain it by themselves since no one (I don't think..) maintains that version any longer. But they would have to learn the entire code base and train people to maintain it. In the end, they would have been better off rewritting from scratch--or simply going to the new version.
Again - that may or may not be the case in each particular instance; the main thing is that this is UP TO THE USER.
The point is not that everyone should maintain their own source code; the point is that if there are enough people interested in keeping it around, it will stay around. You're not at the mercy of your monopolistic vendor's business plans.
Oh wait, this is open source.
Another couple of fuck-wads who apparently can't write a web page without using Flash.
After shutting down Gnutella, speed went back up. I think there was far too little actual network traffic resulting from Gnutella to cause this. It made me wonder if Earthlink / Charter Pipeline was acting punitively.
Incidentally, while that doesn't affect me much, here is a possibly related experience: I handle a number of servers at work. I noticed that if I did a portscan on one of our own servers - presto, no more cable connection. Gotta unplug the modem and reboot. Now I just ssh into a server at work and scan from there, but it kind of pissed me off for awhile. Sometimes I want to know what our network looks like from the outside, too.
For that kind of user, I'm not sure that Linux with an install utility like Ximian Red Carpet is any more complicated than Windows. People who don't like dicking around with computer stuff are probably *good* candidates for modern Linux distributions.
My wife - a very bright woman who completed her university degree in Finance before her 20th birthday - uses spreadsheets like this: She enters the data into columns, performs the calculations by hand or with a calculator, and then enters the result in the appropriate cell.
Yes, I think it's crazy too - but she just doesn't like (or trust) computers. She's just as happy with Linux as she was with Windows - which isn't very happy, but the point is that Linux is not necessarily a step down in usability for non-geeks.
Kind of an opposite case for my mom - she spends all her time on her Windows PC, in various gardening and photograpy forums, playing Freecell for ridiculously long stretches of time, etc.
But until recently, every time I would visit, I'd end up spending half an hour fixing things, removing virii, and generally un-fucking up her computer. (I say "until recently" because, thankfully, she has a friend nearby to deal with that stuff). And, I discovered the reason I hadn't heard from her for a few weeks was because Outlook Express got so fucked up she could no longer even send or receive mail. There have been so many occasions that she's told me a Windows tale of woe, and I've told her that I'm sympathetic, but that I just don't have those kinds of problems on Linux.
I'm not sure she's ready for a change yet - she faces the same inertia problem that so many countless others face wrt their Windows use; but someday, I'll introduce her to Linux. I'll have to set it up, spend a day with her showing her how to use stuff, show her how to get more software, and so on. But after that I (and her Windows-helper friend) will probably have drastically less work to do keeping that PC going.
Then you haven't been following the news.
What is the purpose for pointing 600+ missiles at Taiwan? Is China afraid that Taiwan will invade it?
I guess we'll just have to see who's right. Unfortunately, if you aren't and we pretend the problem doesn't exist, the people of Taiwan are fucked.
I thought they would beat Mozilla 1.0 out the door - who would've thought the Lizard would have whipped it out first?
Well, my take on it is:
- Microsoft BOUGHT a lot of those patents from those companies.
- The companies would NOT have sold them if they were cutting their own throats
- A number of proprietary technology companies have concerns about OSS/FS devaluing their companies
So my guess is that:- Their agreements forbid Microsoft to use the sold patents against the companies
- The companies sold the patents with a wink and a nod to MS for the purpose (in part) of hurting OSS/FS.
In other words, part of the value the previous patent holders get out of the deal is that they can hide behind MS while it does the dirty work - which is, after all, Microsoft's most finely crafted product.And the dealers on our local main street sell excellent crack.
And the transvestites outside the local dive hotel give excellent reach-arounds.
People who make arguments like that ignore the fourth dimension.
If a single company effectively controls an entire segment of a market by virtue of its patents, is that monopolist?
Doesn't it seem that there are an inordinate number of red-heads in this set of photos?
Right to the good stuff.
Do you think they would make good web clients?
I was thinking of putting together a cheap diskless workstation for casual web browsing in the study (a la LTSP). It would boot off the server in the basement.
But if I could do the same with an XBox and take a couple hundred bucks out of MS's pockets, all the better!
Must cost an ass-load to take your lawyer with you whenever you travel.