A verbal agreement and handshake just don't qualify as an agreement anymore, now you have to have very (legally) specific contracts to be sure and cover your ass. Otherwise, the joker you are shaking hands with might try to screw you later.
A "verbal contract" is perfectly legally binding. However in order to have a court enforce a contract then the court has to be able to know what the contract is/was. One person's word against another is not much help here. You'd need something like a third party witness or a recording.
Yesterday Sybase submitted a license for approval to the OSI. It was essentially the Apple APSL, with an additional clause requiring distributions to use click-wrap or use-wrap to indicate a manifestation of assent. (use-wrap: "by using this software, which you already have the legal right to use, you agree to...") Such a clause is completely unnecessary for Open Source Software, and I hope it doesn't get approved. I can envision only two rationales for this clause: 1) Sybase is petty, and doesn't want people using their free-beer software unless they bow before the all holy legal department; or 2) they think the clause is necessary simply because every other proprietary company has it.
There is the 2a possibility. Which is that all EULA's have "evolved" from an original one. Without anyone ever bothering to read the current versions in context, in order to see if they make sense. Probably they also contain a large number of "junk clauses".
The 1040 is a personal income tax form, dumbass. Corporations don't have personal income, they just create personal income for others, like for instance, you.
This being another exception to the concept of corporations as legal "people"... Since otherwise they certainly would have "personal income", even if it were zero or negative.
Hollywood stepped in a few years ago and started the standard whining on how evil it is for peons, er, I mean, consumers to be able to record shows and then do something as absurd as watch them when they want instead of when the broadcast studio wants.
That's the basic problem, broadcasters want to tightly control when people can watch, both by time and geography. Viewers want to be able to watch to suit their timetable.
I disagree with your statement that Linux is not ready for primetime. I think it is, but it needs to be protected from the users.
It already has such a mechanism, it's known as a "root password".
Why is it that Window$ needs to be rebooted everytime you make a little change like switching your workgroup or installing a program?
A more fundermental question is "Why are users in an enterprise environment expected to be messing around with these kind of techie things in the first place?"
(Yes XP people, I understand that Micro$oft has made significant improvements in this area with XP.) Because you can't tell a user to restart their networking subsystem!
Why is there a need for the end user to even know what a "networking subsystem" is, let alone how to restart one?
This is one of the big things that Window$ has caught onto as well. Just say no to the command line; Don't let users even get remotely close. That way they can't screw up the system.
Except that this is nothing to do with CLI or GUI arguments. In many Windows systems an awful lot of danage can be done without touching a CLI. It's more about the difference between single user and multi user systems. On a well though out system applications would run in "crippled mode" (e.g. file saving and printing disabled) if they are run under a service mode/login/privilege level.
About ease of installation: when was the last time you installed Linux? I haven't had any problems installing Linux for years. Flawless. Linux installation has become as easy or easier than Windows installation. Maybe installing ANY OS is difficult.
Most people who use Windows do not install it. They either have it installed and set up by the corporate IT people, who can just as easily set up anything or if they are a home user they muddle through with some kind of OEM install or "wizard". In the case of Dreamworks the former applies. Indeed in most "enterprise" environments the last thing you want is end users even attempting to install software.
True, but misleading. If the contract was invalid, then uninstalling Adaware would be unauthorized. You might have a tort claim (trespass, trespass to chattels, etc. etc.) against Redlight.
Actually this probably would be covered by "anti-hacking" laws. Which means very bad news for Redlight. Since they have just become "terrorists".
Easy to say when you have a good job. I consider them PEOPLE when they HELP ME HELP THEM to solve their problem. When they are lazy ("oh, just send someone up. I don't have time to sit on the phone all day."), unecessarily vague ("Is the Internet down?"), or rude, they are not people.
There is the all time classic "dosn't work". Including in cases where the computer is working perfectly, just that GIGO applies.
By your logic, you're focusing the burden of responsibility to the admin and not the end user. So I guess it's MY fault they opened the attatchment. I guess it's MY fault that I have to order a new laptop everytime this paticular sales lady goes out on travel and returns with a mangled laptop because "It's too much trouble to carry it on" This paticular lady i'm thinking of DESTROYED 9 laptops in 3 months! You would think MAYBE after the first one she would wise up BUT SHE KILLED 8 MORE.
Often, as in this example it's the same end (l)users who do stupid things time and time again. But typically the sysadmin isn't in a position to say "you break it, then fixing it is at the bottom of the priority list".
It currently costs $10,000 to get 1 lb of material into orbit. How much would it take to get it to the moon? One hell of a lot.
The expensive bit is getting the stuff into Earth orbit. You need a lot less fuel for a translunar injection and soft landing.
Re:Or adding more trees
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2
Or adding many more trees.
Tree's arn't really the best kind of plants for soaking up carbon dioxide. Because they are fairly slow growing and only a portion of the plant performs photosythesis. A fast growing herbecious plant will do a better job.
Yes, let us a high energy form, with narrow wavelength, thats close to visible light, or even visible light. Now wait don't we already get this in masses for free from the sun? and not the moon. Why have we to hop ever the moon? Do you see the logical cludge?
The output of the Sun is "light" of many wavelengths. A fair amount of the energy is reflected or absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. In addition 70% of the Earth's surface is is water, not the easiest place to build. A further large chunk is covered by the polar ice caps.
Windoze optimises for "client" use, bumping the piority of the GUI at the expense of background processes (even on nominally "server" computers)
IIRC the highest priority task in Windows is driving the mouse pointer.
Linux installations typically don't (except for Mandrake 8.1+), since they're generally assumed to be "server" machines - you can significantly speed up your GUI by running X with a negative nice value, since that way the GUI pre-empts background stuff, just like on Windows. This _is_ mentioned in the X manual, BTW. I don't understand why people don't read computer manuals.
With many pieces of software it's a case of "good luck finding a user manual". (With even better luck if you need a service manual.)
It takes months to learn how to drive. Computers are several orders of magnitude more complicated than cars, yet people seem to think one should be able to jsut muddle through wihtout any learning.
An important point is that even once someone has learned to drive they do not suddenly become a motor mechanic. Yet a lot of fuss is made about how computers should enable something analagous to a barely competant driver being able to perform major maintanance.
Even windows only has a VERY thin veneer of "easiness", it's actually horrendously complicated (more so than unix).
It is also very "unfriendly" when things go wrong.
The problem is that frequently, oft-changing tools abstracted by a *thick* (yes, you can have thin GUI frontends) GUI layer from the actual config files can be confusing to the people who really *do* know what they want to do, but have to put up with figuring out what exactly a graphical util is doing.
Also any kind of "wizard" type interface which attempts to enable someone to perform a complex task, which they do not understand, means that when it fails that person is left completly at a loss. Such an interface (or even a set of step by step instructions) cannot possibly cover every way in which things can go wrong.) Combined with those who do understand what is going on having to work around silly assumptions. e.g. insisting on installing modem and ISDN utilities on a machine which only has a NIC.
I've yet to see anything major to swing me. I'm far too used to the old tools (chkconfig, ifconfig) and the like that it doesn't make much difference which distro I use, linux or otherwise.
One point with SuSE is that you get a very large amount of software supplied as standard in the box set. Where people do not have a high bandwidth Internet connection this can be desirable.
Why don't we just switch over to metric like the
rest of the planet?
Assuming the the "we" equates to the US it's probably to do with the US like to doing things differently from the rest of the planet. An extreme case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. The US did actually sign the "Treaty of the metre", but since when did the US signing a treaty actually mean anything:)
Yes, once in a while you can see the European origins of this distribution, like in the A4 bias for default paper sizes, but generally they're pretty good about providing "en" language users a good interface.
Metric paper is used in most of the world. There is also a simple mathematical relationship with A size paper, especially useful if you want to directly print booklets or to resize to a different paper size. There is an "en_US" locale, does that have something like "US_Letter" as the default paper size?
Living in the US, saddled as we are with the onerous legacy of what used to be the British system of measurements (miles, feet, gallons, pints, pounds, furlongs per fortnight, other nondecimal abominations),
You do realise that what are called "English" measurments in the US are actually somewhat unique to the US? Some of them, such as the inch (25.4 mm) are actually defined in terms of metric measurments. Until 60 years ago the English (US) and Imperial (used in the British empire and later commonwealth) were actually different. Measuments of volume are different between the two systems.
It doesn't take more than a couple of days for the average person to lean towards Windows. And you'd be stupid to think otherwise. Walk into Best Buy, (or Walmart, or Office Depot, etc..) and buy some games that tickle your fancy and then go home and install them. Guess what, they require Windows.
Or the easier option the 20+ year old concept of a games console Of course it's a really good idea for people to be trying to play games on computers owned by their employer (or their school), NOT... Which is where the vast majority of computers are. Installing anything is a technical task. Would you expect to tell someone to swap around the seats, lights, even engine, in their car? Only car "geeks" do this themselves. But the Windows zealots, in their fantasyland, think it's a good idea for end users to be messing around doing complicated maintanance tasks. Installing software most defintly falls into this catagory, expecting regular users to be able to do this is like expecting a bus driver to overhaul a fuel injected engine or an airline pilot to install flight controls from scratch. If you are going to have computer systems with any kind of reliability then end users being able to mess with software installs is something to be utterly avoided.
For good or bad, most of these GUI environments are pretty much the same, as is the common software which runs in them. Click on the picture of a printer to print, click on the character in italic to change the font to italic, etc. It's not very difficult to made the adjustment, in my opinion.
It is also the case that if changes cause problem this would apply just as much to a different version of Windows or Office....
Besides, if other schools are like the ones local here, all they're teaching is basic stuff that most kids could figure out in an hour or so if the needed to: word processing, spreadsheet basics, etc. Kids come into schools knowing how to use a mouse and keyboard and even if they don't it takes less than a day to teach them. I don't see a real threat to their 'competitive advantage' if they go to a school using Macs or Linux boxes in place of Windows.
Anyway teaching kids how to use a specific piece of software using the argument that it is what they will encounter when they leave school makes no sense at all for any student under the age of about 15 in the first place. Schools are ment to be providing education rather than training. How to use a wordprocessor (and get the best out of it) is education, how to use a specific version of MS Word is training. Of course if someone is educated to use a wordprocessor they need less training in the use of any specific wordprocessor they might encounter.
Does anybody actually know what these schools use their computers for?
The answer may not be quite what you expect.
To put it in another way: how many educational software, like math/reading/writing/science software run on Linux?
How many of these "educational programs" actually have major usage within schools? IME only with younger children. A lot of the time teenagers simply use a web browser, a spreadsheet, some kind of word procesor and email.
Boy it sounds like MS re-invented their favorite market power ploy... remember how they were barred from OEM contracts like this? Remember how OEMs paid for a copy of Windows whether the computer shipped with it or not?
Microsoft offering this kind of licence is nothing new, what is is their attempting to intimidate schools into doing things this way. If economic terms this rental only makes much sense to a school starting from scratch. Otherwise they are effectivly paying again for licences they have already bought. But if they are starting from scratch most of the arguments for using Microsoft over open source are meaningless.
So, if the schools install Linux, even that level of unknown, unwanted pirated application installations will go down. It isn't as simple a task in Linux to install an application, especially if you are not root and the application -needs- root.
In which case it is immediatly obvious who is responsible for either
a) trying to install software
b) not logging out
c) disclosing their password All of which should be covered by an AUP.
As another respondent has mentioned, school PCs are quite often very bottom of the barrel. They might only have 16M of RAM to work with. Short of turning such a machine into an xterminal, there's not much you can do with such a machine if you're using the like of StarOffice and KDE.
A diskless X terminal will take far more abuse than a regular PC. Remember that school children often don't take care of school equiptment.
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A verbal agreement and handshake just don't qualify as an agreement anymore, now you have to have very (legally) specific contracts to be sure and cover your ass. Otherwise, the joker you are shaking hands with might try to screw you later.
A "verbal contract" is perfectly legally binding. However in order to have a court enforce a contract then the court has to be able to know what the contract is/was. One person's word against another is not much help here. You'd need something like a third party witness or a recording.
Yesterday Sybase submitted a license for approval to the OSI. It was essentially the Apple APSL, with an additional clause requiring distributions to use click-wrap or use-wrap to indicate a manifestation of assent. (use-wrap: "by using this software, which you already have the legal right to use, you agree to...") Such a clause is completely unnecessary for Open Source Software, and I hope it doesn't get approved. I can envision only two rationales for this clause: 1) Sybase is petty, and doesn't want people using their free-beer software unless they bow before the all holy legal department; or 2) they think the clause is necessary simply because every other proprietary company has it.
There is the 2a possibility. Which is that all EULA's have "evolved" from an original one. Without anyone ever bothering to read the current versions in context, in order to see if they make sense. Probably they also contain a large number of "junk clauses".
The 1040 is a personal income tax form, dumbass. Corporations don't have personal income, they just create personal income for others, like for instance, you.
This being another exception to the concept of corporations as legal "people"... Since otherwise they certainly would have "personal income", even if it were zero or negative.
Hollywood stepped in a few years ago and started the standard whining on how evil it is for peons, er, I mean, consumers to be able to record shows and then do something as absurd as watch them when they want instead of when the broadcast studio wants.
That's the basic problem, broadcasters want to tightly control when people can watch, both by time and geography. Viewers want to be able to watch to suit their timetable.
I disagree with your statement that Linux is not ready for primetime. I think it is, but it needs to be protected from the users.
It already has such a mechanism, it's known as a "root password".
Why is it that Window$ needs to be rebooted everytime you make a little change like switching your workgroup or installing a program?
A more fundermental question is "Why are users in an enterprise environment expected to be messing around with these kind of techie things in the first place?"
(Yes XP people, I understand that Micro$oft has made significant improvements in this area with XP.) Because you can't tell a user to restart their networking subsystem!
Why is there a need for the end user to even know what a "networking subsystem" is, let alone how to restart one?
This is one of the big things that Window$ has caught onto as well. Just say no to the command line; Don't let users even get remotely close. That way they can't screw up the system.
Except that this is nothing to do with CLI or GUI arguments. In many Windows systems an awful lot of danage can be done without touching a CLI. It's more about the difference between single user and multi user systems. On a well though out system applications would run in "crippled mode" (e.g. file saving and printing disabled) if they are run under a service mode/login/privilege level.
About ease of installation: when was the last time you installed Linux? I haven't had any problems installing Linux for years. Flawless. Linux installation has become as easy or easier than Windows installation. Maybe installing ANY OS is difficult.
Most people who use Windows do not install it. They either have it installed and set up by the corporate IT people, who can just as easily set up anything or if they are a home user they muddle through with some kind of OEM install or "wizard". In the case of Dreamworks the former applies. Indeed in most "enterprise" environments the last thing you want is end users even attempting to install software.
True, but misleading. If the contract was invalid, then uninstalling Adaware would be unauthorized. You might have a tort claim (trespass, trespass to chattels, etc. etc.) against Redlight.
Actually this probably would be covered by "anti-hacking" laws. Which means very bad news for Redlight. Since they have just become "terrorists".
Easy to say when you have a good job. I consider them PEOPLE when they HELP ME HELP THEM to solve their problem. When they are lazy ("oh, just send someone up. I don't have time to sit on the phone all day."), unecessarily vague ("Is the Internet down?"), or rude, they are not people.
There is the all time classic "dosn't work". Including in cases where the computer is working perfectly, just that GIGO applies.
By your logic, you're focusing the burden of responsibility to the admin and not the end user. So I guess it's MY fault they opened the attatchment. I guess it's MY fault that I have to order a new laptop everytime this paticular sales lady goes out on travel and returns with a mangled laptop because "It's too much trouble to carry it on" This paticular lady i'm thinking of DESTROYED 9 laptops in 3 months! You would think MAYBE after the first one she would wise up BUT SHE KILLED 8 MORE.
Often, as in this example it's the same end (l)users who do stupid things time and time again. But typically the sysadmin isn't in a position to say "you break it, then fixing it is at the bottom of the priority list".
It currently costs $10,000 to get 1 lb of material into orbit. How much would it take to get it to the moon? One hell of a lot.
The expensive bit is getting the stuff into Earth orbit. You need a lot less fuel for a translunar injection and soft landing.
Or adding many more trees.
Tree's arn't really the best kind of plants for soaking up carbon dioxide. Because they are fairly slow growing and only a portion of the plant performs photosythesis.
A fast growing herbecious plant will do a better job.
Yes, let us a high energy form, with narrow wavelength, thats close to visible light, or even visible light. Now wait don't we already get this in masses for free from the sun? and not the moon. Why have we to hop ever the moon? Do you see the logical cludge?
The output of the Sun is "light" of many wavelengths. A fair amount of the energy is reflected or absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. In addition 70% of the Earth's surface is is water, not the easiest place to build. A further large chunk is covered by the polar ice caps.
If the beams are wide enough, they don't represent an immediate danger to anything passing through them.
But the wider they are the larger a collecting area you need on the Earth's surface.
If the beams are wide enough, they don't represent an immediate danger to anything passing through them.
It also helps that the frequency of the microwaves used is a resonant frequency of water molecules.
Windoze optimises for "client" use, bumping the piority of the GUI at the expense of background processes (even on nominally "server" computers)
IIRC the highest priority task in Windows is driving the mouse pointer.
Linux installations typically don't (except for Mandrake 8.1+), since they're generally assumed to be "server" machines - you can significantly speed up your GUI by running X with a negative nice value, since that way the GUI pre-empts background stuff, just like on Windows.
This _is_ mentioned in the X manual, BTW. I don't understand why people don't read computer manuals.
With many pieces of software it's a case of "good luck finding a user manual". (With even better luck if you need a service manual.)
It takes months to learn how to drive. Computers are several orders of magnitude more complicated than cars, yet people seem to think one should be able to jsut muddle through wihtout any learning.
An important point is that even once someone has learned to drive they do not suddenly become a motor mechanic. Yet a lot of fuss is made about how computers should enable something analagous to a barely competant driver being able to perform major maintanance.
Even windows only has a VERY thin veneer of "easiness", it's actually horrendously complicated (more so than unix).
It is also very "unfriendly" when things go wrong.
The problem is that frequently, oft-changing tools abstracted by a *thick* (yes, you can have thin GUI frontends) GUI layer from the actual config files can be confusing to the people who really *do* know what they want to do, but have to put up with figuring out what exactly a graphical util is doing.
Also any kind of "wizard" type interface which attempts to enable someone to perform a complex task, which they do not understand, means that when it fails that person is left completly at a loss. Such an interface (or even a set of step by step instructions) cannot possibly cover every way in which things can go wrong.)
Combined with those who do understand what is going on having to work around silly assumptions. e.g. insisting on installing modem and ISDN utilities on a machine which only has a NIC.
I've yet to see anything major to swing me. I'm far too used to the old tools (chkconfig, ifconfig) and the like that it doesn't make much difference which distro I use, linux or otherwise.
One point with SuSE is that you get a very large amount of software supplied as standard in the box set. Where people do not have a high bandwidth Internet connection this can be desirable.
Why don't we just switch over to metric like the rest of the planet?
:)
Assuming the the "we" equates to the US it's probably to do with the US like to doing things differently from the rest of the planet. An extreme case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome.
The US did actually sign the "Treaty of the metre", but since when did the US signing a treaty actually mean anything
Yes, once in a while you can see the European origins of this distribution, like in the A4 bias for default paper sizes, but generally they're pretty good about providing "en" language users a good interface.
Metric paper is used in most of the world. There is also a simple mathematical relationship with A size paper, especially useful if you want to directly print booklets or to resize to a different paper size.
There is an "en_US" locale, does that have something like "US_Letter" as the default paper size?
Living in the US, saddled as we are with the onerous legacy of what used to be the British system of measurements (miles, feet, gallons, pints, pounds, furlongs per fortnight, other nondecimal abominations),
You do realise that what are called "English" measurments in the US are actually somewhat unique to the US? Some of them, such as the inch (25.4 mm) are actually defined in terms of metric measurments. Until 60 years ago the English (US) and Imperial (used in the British empire and later commonwealth) were actually different. Measuments of volume are different between the two systems.
It doesn't take more than a couple of days for the average person to lean towards Windows. And you'd be stupid to think otherwise. Walk into Best Buy, (or Walmart, or Office Depot, etc..) and buy some games that tickle your fancy and then go home and install them. Guess what, they require Windows.
Or the easier option the 20+ year old concept of a games console
Of course it's a really good idea for people to be trying to play games on computers owned by their employer (or their school), NOT... Which is where the vast majority of computers are.
Installing anything is a technical task. Would you expect to tell someone to swap around the seats, lights, even engine, in their car? Only car "geeks" do this themselves.
But the Windows zealots, in their fantasyland, think it's a good idea for end users to be messing around doing complicated maintanance tasks. Installing software most defintly falls into this catagory, expecting regular users to be able to do this is like expecting a bus driver to overhaul a fuel injected engine or an airline pilot to install flight controls from scratch.
If you are going to have computer systems with any kind of reliability then end users being able to mess with software installs is something to be utterly avoided.
For good or bad, most of these GUI environments are pretty much the same, as is the common software which runs in them. Click on the picture of a printer to print, click on the character in italic to change the font to italic, etc. It's not very difficult to made the adjustment, in my opinion.
It is also the case that if changes cause problem this would apply just as much to a different version of Windows or Office....
Besides, if other schools are like the ones local here, all they're teaching is basic stuff that most kids could figure out in an hour or so if the needed to: word processing, spreadsheet basics, etc. Kids come into schools knowing how to use a mouse and keyboard and even if they don't it takes less than a day to teach them. I don't see a real threat to their 'competitive advantage' if they go to a school using Macs or Linux boxes in place of Windows.
Anyway teaching kids how to use a specific piece of software using the argument that it is what they will encounter when they leave school makes no sense at all for any student under the age of about 15 in the first place.
Schools are ment to be providing education rather than training. How to use a wordprocessor (and get the best out of it) is education, how to use a specific version of MS Word is training. Of course if someone is educated to use a wordprocessor they need less training in the use of any specific wordprocessor they might encounter.
Does anybody actually know what these schools use their computers for?
The answer may not be quite what you expect.
To put it in another way: how many educational software, like math/reading/writing/science software run on Linux?
How many of these "educational programs" actually have major usage within schools? IME only with younger children. A lot of the time teenagers simply use a web browser, a spreadsheet, some kind of word procesor and email.
Boy it sounds like MS re-invented their favorite market power ploy... remember how they were barred from OEM contracts like this? Remember how OEMs paid for a copy of Windows whether the computer shipped with it or not?
Microsoft offering this kind of licence is nothing new, what is is their attempting to intimidate schools into doing things this way.
If economic terms this rental only makes much sense to a school starting from scratch. Otherwise they are effectivly paying again for licences they have already bought. But if they are starting from scratch most of the arguments for using Microsoft over open source are meaningless.
So, if the schools install Linux, even that level of unknown, unwanted pirated application installations will go down. It isn't as simple a task in Linux to install an application, especially if you are not root and the application -needs- root.
In which case it is immediatly obvious who is responsible for either
a) trying to install software
b) not logging out
c) disclosing their password
All of which should be covered by an AUP.
As another respondent has mentioned, school PCs are quite often very bottom of the barrel. They might only have 16M of RAM to work with. Short of turning such a machine into an xterminal, there's not much you can do with such a machine if you're using the like of StarOffice and KDE.
A diskless X terminal will take far more abuse than a regular PC. Remember that school children often don't take care of school equiptment.