Re:Wow. Out of touch..
on
The GNOME Roadmap
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Why not make an installation system that works as simply as clicking setuppackage.msi is in Windows and let the other problems solve themselves?
Oh man, you just opened the floodgates with this one. Prepare to be lectured on why the 37 different packaging standards make software installations easier than with Windows. Of course, the reality of the situation is that it's a crapshoot as to whether or not a package will work with whichever one of the 10,000 Linux distributions you happen to be running (chances are it won't), but hey.
Why not just make a working desktop first?
That would require setting aside this childish "Linux has to do every single thing that every single person on the planet could want it to do, and then some" attitude that plagues the community. No one wants to sit down and say "OK, let's mandate that all distributions have, at minimum, THESE particular packages that operate in THESE particular ways." No, no. That stifles choice somehow. Of course, everyone conveniently ignores the fact that some amount of standardization has to occur before Linux can be accepted on the desktop.
Yeah, this year will be the year of linux-on-the-desktop
You must have missed how the zealots are spinning this one now. See, there's no particular "year of Linux on the desktop" anymore, now it's "EVERY year that Linux gains popularity it's getting closer to the desktop!" Some clever guy came up with that one after everyone pointed out that Slashdot has been proclaiming every year since 1998 as the "year of Linux on the desktop."
Right, but I'm willing to bet that these deals are pretty common place, considering that in order to get your OS shipped in the first place, you've gonna have to cut a deal anyway. You don't think major computer retailers should be expected to pay retail for the OS's they ship, do you? No, of course not. If you want your OS shipped, you're going to have to entice the big boys somehow. I have a feeling that if RedHat or some other OS company were to start looking towards having their OS bundled with Dell, HP, etc. they would have to cut some serious deals. The only reason you can't see if this situation pans out or not is because, well, Microsoft is dominating right now. And I think the reason things got this way between Microsoft and OEMs is because when Microsoft first started bundling Windows, they cut OEMs a deal, and as the popularity of Windows exploded, they were able to leverage those existing deals into what we have today. You must be kidding yourself if you think that RedHat or Be wouldn't do the same thing given the chance.
Hmm, you still haven't proven anything. Did Microsoft state that they would disallow Hitachi from installing Windows on their PCs? No, they were just "unhappy" over the arrangement, and it was Hitachi who relented. Microsoft didn't actually do anything, except remind Hitachi that they won't get favorable license prices if they did what they were doing. Apparently Hitachi found favorable Windows prices more important than bundling BeOS.
You still haven't answered the bigger question as to WHY Microsoft would prevent OEMs from shipping Windows *AT ALL* if they sold PCs with BeOS, given that such a move would pretty much ensure that Windows doesn't get installed on a large number of new desktop PCs. Your conspiracy theory sounds a little stupid when you put it that way, huh?
your understanding of the commercial realities is naive.
And your understanding of the commercial realities is all based on speculation. Why would Microsoft deliberately shut out major OEMs like Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, etc. over them shipping a niche OS on certain models? That would basically wipe out Windows on all pre-installed machines. Tell me again why they would want to do that? Not to mention denying OEMs the ability to sell Windows (or selling it at a higher price) would quickly catch the eye of the DOJ...
first because it means that no one will start up a competing "openjava", a venture that would almost certainly lead to incompatibilities
Are you kidding? Forking is incredibly popular in Open Source land and generally leads to incompatibilities, at least on some level (generally, "fork X has this feature which fork X.1 doesn't have, and neither X nor X.1 can do this particular thing that fork Y does").
I think you're giving the writers a bit too much credit. The episode had nothing to do with "title flaws", I mean, the guy literally went back in time and had sexual intercourse with his grandmother. The show is intelligent, sure, but that particular plotline is not what I would consider the height of intelligent writing.
It's funny that the same people who decry free software as killing the economic incentive for software development don't feel the same thing applies to hardware.
Well, it doesn't really. The hardware can't do anything without software, so clearly there is potential for profit to be made by charging for the "service" (read: applications) and throwing in the hardware (which is pretty cheap) for free. It works for cellphones, and their "hardware" costs about half what a cheap-to-decent computer costs, so this business model might actually make sense.
Contrast this with most free software companies, who give away the software (you know, the stuff that makes your hardware actually do things), but then charge you for some lame "service" that most people could care less about. Let me get this straight, RedHat... you want to charge me $100 a year for the ability to download updates to software that doesn't cost any money and can be downloaded for free from numerous sources? Thanks but no thanks. It might work if they were the only game in town, but if I can update my copy of Mozilla without paying RedHat, then that's exactly what I'll do.
If a movie is good, pirates will be more likely to go to the theater to see it, and bring their friends. If a movie sucks, then the pirates know it and can't be tricked.
Tricked into what? It's not as if there's an obligation on behalf of the movie studios to make sure that each and every person who pays for a ticket is entertained to their personal satisfaction. I look at entertainment like a small gamble -- you pay a little in the hopes that the movie/play/CD entertains you. If it doesn't, oh well. It's not like it was the duty of the producer to make sure YOU in particular were satisfied with their attempt at making an entertaining product. I honestly don't think the Hollywood business model revolves around purposefully creating the most awful movies ever devised in the hopes of "tricking" enough people during the opening weekend to generate a profit (after which the movie is never heard of again). I think there is a legitimate attempt on behalf of the studios to create movies that are as entertaining to as many demographics as possible (this should be obvious by the sheer number of inoffensive movies with large amounts of crossover appeal being created). Obviously this means that not EVERYONE will be entertained by the product, but that's inevitable...
Not sure where you're getting this from, though I don't think it's hard to tell (your ass). Anything not heavily system dependent can easily be compiled on Windows using GCC/Cygwin or Mingw or what have you. Are you going to tell me that the majority of free software is tied down to Unix? Gee, whatever happened to that fabled OSS platform independence? I thought it was only Windows programmers who tied software down to one particular platform.
Freeware software on Windows is either ported from Linux, made mutiplatform or bad.
Generalize much? Winamp is bad? ZoomPlayer is bad? Girder is bad? PuTTY is bad? Google toolbar is bad?
And so on and so forth...
I really tend to side with the fact that the opinion that Windows freeware is inherently "garbage" (as if Linux freeware is a shining beacon of software excellence) is a myth. There's plenty of good free Windows software out there, but I wouldn't expect you to know much about that, seeing as how you've summarized everything you know about Windows freeware in one sweeping generalization.
When AOL flips a switch to change their default browser from IE to something else, they'll suck down IE's dominance by 10% on the very first day. It won't kill IE, but it'll increase the pressure for website authors to write to W3C standards instead of Microsoft conventions. That can only be a good thing.
So when Microsoft uses product integration to promote its stuff, that's bad, but when AOL does it it's good (because they'd be promoting beloved Mozilla)? I see.
Does it really matter though? Windows has the ability to run most free Linux software, so it's arguable that Windows, not Linux, has the broader base of high-quality free software.
Sorry -- just noticed you were talking about the free player. Either way, the principle stands... don't petition for commercial software unless you're going to pay for it.
Sure, do that, but at the same time don't just pay lip service and get thousands of people to say "yeah, I'll buy that if you port it to Linux!" and then leave the developer high and dry when it comes time to drop some money.
Simply put, a copyright should grant the creator of a work the sole ability to collect revenue based on any use of that work. That's it, that's what you get, and nothing more. You write a book, record a song, make a movie, and you're the only one allowed to make money from it.
That might work if it weren't for the fact that it costs lots more money to record, produce, and (most importantly) distribute than most people can afford. That's why artists get financed through companies. Their rules state that they give you money and in return they get most of the profits. That's just how it works.
Now likewise, if you ARE using someone's copyrighted work to make money, we're going to come down real hard on you.
Why is it that as soon as you put money in the equation then piracy isn't okay? I mean really, what's the difference between giving a million people a copy of something for free and giving a million people a copy of something for, say, a penny? What magical line did the person just cross that makes one act "not cool" to piracy advocates?
If you think "virii" is annoying, ponder this. I had a friend who insisted that not only was "virii" the plural form of "virus", but that it was pronounced "ver-il-eye".
As much as you may think that it's just a "warm fuzzy feeling" that keeps people using IBM products, the reality is that MySQL and JBoss aren't anywhere near as capable as DB2 and WebSphere are.
Which, of course, they don't. What, did you think WebSphere was going to be GPL'd or something? I can't think of anything off the top of my head that IBM is GPL'ing that is actually a revenue-generating product.
The only reason IBM is promoting Linux so much is because it's a good platform to run WebSphere on. That, and the cost of supporting it is for the most part minimal (all the big stuff is written in Java).
If they turn evil, we can just fork the code and do what we please with it.
If it's a product that's generating revenue for IBM, you're not going to get your hands on the source. Get real.
Sounds to me like you're one of those morons who rides his bike on the street as if he were a car. Yeah yeah, it's not illegal, but if you can't pedal your bike at the speed limit consistently, get the hell off the road or expect to get some dirty looks.
So when all is said and done, what have you paid for?
You've paid for an easy-to-use OS that has unparalleled commercial software support and more hardware support than the comparably priced Linux offering. You can also run nearly all the free software that the Linux system can run.
So maybe the question to ask you is, what have you paid for?, besides an OS that costs the same amount of money yet has less hardware support and far fewer commercial software packages? A couple CDs full of free software, only a fraction of which you'll use since there's about ten of every single type of program on the disks? Security, assuming you keep up with your patching every day (which of course, you can do with Windows)? Big deal.
Also, if you would like to list one single virus that is make the rounds this afternoon infecting Linux computers, I am all ears.
Not sure about viruses, but over at securityfocus.com there's already three new exploits published by RedHat alone today.
I think it's telling that half the items you list as remedies include downloading third-party software.
And nearly all of the functionality that Linux has depends on third party software that just so happens to come on a couple CDs, instead of being downloaded. I fail to see the big deal with getting a CD or two that has a bunch of free apps that anyone could download, because you're going to make that corporate disk image first, and spending a few minutes downloading and installing the software on a Windows machine is not a big deal really. But hey, you guys like CDs so much, maybe the sysadmin could just hand everyone a Windows CD and two or three extra CDs with all the third party software they need. Same net effect as what you're getting with Linux distros.
Also, your comment about Linux being insufficient on the corporate desktop is off-base.
I didn't say that. If you examine what was said:
XP Home provides a secure, virus-free work environment for the corporate desktop?
Linux doesn't provide you with one either, so this isn't really a good point for you to be making.
The poster claimed that Linux proves a virus-free network. Until the day that there are no viruses and exploits for the particular Linux distribution in question, this is not an accurate statement.
Hey, he was the one talking about using Apache on a desktop. I was merely pointing out that you CAN do this.
This is about a ready-to-go solution - XP Home does not provide this.
In corporate environments, there's plenty of custom software that users need that isn't provided by either Windows OR Linux. So if you're going to be making custom disk images anyway, might as well throw in all that software that Windows doesn't have in the first place. So I don't see why everyone keeps thinking that a couple CDs full of free software is so amazing, considering that you can just download it before you make the corporate disk image.
Bzz. We are not taking about Linux. We talk about SuSE - and SuSE provides a secure, virus-free work environment for the corporate desktop.
No it doesn't, unless SuSE has absolutely no viruses or exploits. What you mean is it's more secure.
Windows on AMD64 is still a no-go for example, while it is quite possible with linux.
Really? That's news to me, seeing as how you can buy these AMD64 laptops with Windows XP pre-installed (and just in case you come back with "but that's not really 64-bit!" don't forget that Microsoft will let you download a copy of XP that works with AMD-64 right now, and for free).
How do you get this right license-wise without loosing OEM licenses/doublelicensing?
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Why not make an installation system that works as simply as clicking setuppackage.msi is in Windows and let the other problems solve themselves?
Oh man, you just opened the floodgates with this one. Prepare to be lectured on why the 37 different packaging standards make software installations easier than with Windows. Of course, the reality of the situation is that it's a crapshoot as to whether or not a package will work with whichever one of the 10,000 Linux distributions you happen to be running (chances are it won't), but hey.
Why not just make a working desktop first?
That would require setting aside this childish "Linux has to do every single thing that every single person on the planet could want it to do, and then some" attitude that plagues the community. No one wants to sit down and say "OK, let's mandate that all distributions have, at minimum, THESE particular packages that operate in THESE particular ways." No, no. That stifles choice somehow. Of course, everyone conveniently ignores the fact that some amount of standardization has to occur before Linux can be accepted on the desktop.
Yeah, this year will be the year of linux-on-the-desktop
You must have missed how the zealots are spinning this one now. See, there's no particular "year of Linux on the desktop" anymore, now it's "EVERY year that Linux gains popularity it's getting closer to the desktop!" Some clever guy came up with that one after everyone pointed out that Slashdot has been proclaiming every year since 1998 as the "year of Linux on the desktop."
Right, but I'm willing to bet that these deals are pretty common place, considering that in order to get your OS shipped in the first place, you've gonna have to cut a deal anyway. You don't think major computer retailers should be expected to pay retail for the OS's they ship, do you? No, of course not. If you want your OS shipped, you're going to have to entice the big boys somehow. I have a feeling that if RedHat or some other OS company were to start looking towards having their OS bundled with Dell, HP, etc. they would have to cut some serious deals. The only reason you can't see if this situation pans out or not is because, well, Microsoft is dominating right now. And I think the reason things got this way between Microsoft and OEMs is because when Microsoft first started bundling Windows, they cut OEMs a deal, and as the popularity of Windows exploded, they were able to leverage those existing deals into what we have today. You must be kidding yourself if you think that RedHat or Be wouldn't do the same thing given the chance.
Hmm, you still haven't proven anything. Did Microsoft state that they would disallow Hitachi from installing Windows on their PCs? No, they were just "unhappy" over the arrangement, and it was Hitachi who relented. Microsoft didn't actually do anything, except remind Hitachi that they won't get favorable license prices if they did what they were doing. Apparently Hitachi found favorable Windows prices more important than bundling BeOS.
You still haven't answered the bigger question as to WHY Microsoft would prevent OEMs from shipping Windows *AT ALL* if they sold PCs with BeOS, given that such a move would pretty much ensure that Windows doesn't get installed on a large number of new desktop PCs. Your conspiracy theory sounds a little stupid when you put it that way, huh?
your understanding of the commercial realities is naive.
And your understanding of the commercial realities is all based on speculation. Why would Microsoft deliberately shut out major OEMs like Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, etc. over them shipping a niche OS on certain models? That would basically wipe out Windows on all pre-installed machines. Tell me again why they would want to do that? Not to mention denying OEMs the ability to sell Windows (or selling it at a higher price) would quickly catch the eye of the DOJ...
first because it means that no one will start up a competing "openjava", a venture that would almost certainly lead to incompatibilities
Are you kidding? Forking is incredibly popular in Open Source land and generally leads to incompatibilities, at least on some level (generally, "fork X has this feature which fork X.1 doesn't have, and neither X nor X.1 can do this particular thing that fork Y does").
I think you're giving the writers a bit too much credit. The episode had nothing to do with "title flaws", I mean, the guy literally went back in time and had sexual intercourse with his grandmother. The show is intelligent, sure, but that particular plotline is not what I would consider the height of intelligent writing.
Instead of watching intelligent, well-written shows like Futurama
Is this the same Futurama where the lead character went back in time and had sex with his grandmother?
It's funny that the same people who decry free software as killing the economic incentive for software development don't feel the same thing applies to hardware.
Well, it doesn't really. The hardware can't do anything without software, so clearly there is potential for profit to be made by charging for the "service" (read: applications) and throwing in the hardware (which is pretty cheap) for free. It works for cellphones, and their "hardware" costs about half what a cheap-to-decent computer costs, so this business model might actually make sense.
Contrast this with most free software companies, who give away the software (you know, the stuff that makes your hardware actually do things), but then charge you for some lame "service" that most people could care less about. Let me get this straight, RedHat... you want to charge me $100 a year for the ability to download updates to software that doesn't cost any money and can be downloaded for free from numerous sources? Thanks but no thanks. It might work if they were the only game in town, but if I can update my copy of Mozilla without paying RedHat, then that's exactly what I'll do.
If a movie is good, pirates will be more likely to go to the theater to see it, and bring their friends. If a movie sucks, then the pirates know it and can't be tricked.
Tricked into what? It's not as if there's an obligation on behalf of the movie studios to make sure that each and every person who pays for a ticket is entertained to their personal satisfaction. I look at entertainment like a small gamble -- you pay a little in the hopes that the movie/play/CD entertains you. If it doesn't, oh well. It's not like it was the duty of the producer to make sure YOU in particular were satisfied with their attempt at making an entertaining product. I honestly don't think the Hollywood business model revolves around purposefully creating the most awful movies ever devised in the hopes of "tricking" enough people during the opening weekend to generate a profit (after which the movie is never heard of again). I think there is a legitimate attempt on behalf of the studios to create movies that are as entertaining to as many demographics as possible (this should be obvious by the sheer number of inoffensive movies with large amounts of crossover appeal being created). Obviously this means that not EVERYONE will be entertained by the product, but that's inevitable...
Most of the software isn't ported.
Not sure where you're getting this from, though I don't think it's hard to tell (your ass). Anything not heavily system dependent can easily be compiled on Windows using GCC/Cygwin or Mingw or what have you. Are you going to tell me that the majority of free software is tied down to Unix? Gee, whatever happened to that fabled OSS platform independence? I thought it was only Windows programmers who tied software down to one particular platform.
Freeware software on Windows is either ported from Linux, made mutiplatform or bad.
Generalize much? Winamp is bad? ZoomPlayer is bad? Girder is bad? PuTTY is bad? Google toolbar is bad?
And so on and so forth...
I really tend to side with the fact that the opinion that Windows freeware is inherently "garbage" (as if Linux freeware is a shining beacon of software excellence) is a myth. There's plenty of good free Windows software out there, but I wouldn't expect you to know much about that, seeing as how you've summarized everything you know about Windows freeware in one sweeping generalization.
Oh I see. So if those two conditions didn't hold you wouldn't have any problem with Microsoft integrating whatever products it wants with Windows?
When AOL flips a switch to change their default browser from IE to something else, they'll suck down IE's dominance by 10% on the very first day. It won't kill IE, but it'll increase the pressure for website authors to write to W3C standards instead of Microsoft conventions. That can only be a good thing.
So when Microsoft uses product integration to promote its stuff, that's bad, but when AOL does it it's good (because they'd be promoting beloved Mozilla)? I see.
Does it really matter though? Windows has the ability to run most free Linux software, so it's arguable that Windows, not Linux, has the broader base of high-quality free software.
Sorry -- just noticed you were talking about the free player. Either way, the principle stands... don't petition for commercial software unless you're going to pay for it.
Sure, do that, but at the same time don't just pay lip service and get thousands of people to say "yeah, I'll buy that if you port it to Linux!" and then leave the developer high and dry when it comes time to drop some money.
Simply put, a copyright should grant the creator of a work the sole ability to collect revenue based on any use of that work. That's it, that's what you get, and nothing more. You write a book, record a song, make a movie, and you're the only one allowed to make money from it.
That might work if it weren't for the fact that it costs lots more money to record, produce, and (most importantly) distribute than most people can afford. That's why artists get financed through companies. Their rules state that they give you money and in return they get most of the profits. That's just how it works.
Now likewise, if you ARE using someone's copyrighted work to make money, we're going to come down real hard on you.
Why is it that as soon as you put money in the equation then piracy isn't okay? I mean really, what's the difference between giving a million people a copy of something for free and giving a million people a copy of something for, say, a penny? What magical line did the person just cross that makes one act "not cool" to piracy advocates?
If you think "virii" is annoying, ponder this. I had a friend who insisted that not only was "virii" the plural form of "virus", but that it was pronounced "ver-il-eye".
Uh, I was comparing MySQL with DB2 and JBoss with WebSphere.
As much as you may think that it's just a "warm fuzzy feeling" that keeps people using IBM products, the reality is that MySQL and JBoss aren't anywhere near as capable as DB2 and WebSphere are.
As long as IBM uses the GPL
Which, of course, they don't. What, did you think WebSphere was going to be GPL'd or something? I can't think of anything off the top of my head that IBM is GPL'ing that is actually a revenue-generating product.
The only reason IBM is promoting Linux so much is because it's a good platform to run WebSphere on. That, and the cost of supporting it is for the most part minimal (all the big stuff is written in Java).
If they turn evil, we can just fork the code and do what we please with it.
If it's a product that's generating revenue for IBM, you're not going to get your hands on the source. Get real.
Sounds to me like you're one of those morons who rides his bike on the street as if he were a car. Yeah yeah, it's not illegal, but if you can't pedal your bike at the speed limit consistently, get the hell off the road or expect to get some dirty looks.
How will John Woo work a shot of flying doves into this movie?
So when all is said and done, what have you paid for?
You've paid for an easy-to-use OS that has unparalleled commercial software support and more hardware support than the comparably priced Linux offering. You can also run nearly all the free software that the Linux system can run.
So maybe the question to ask you is, what have you paid for?, besides an OS that costs the same amount of money yet has less hardware support and far fewer commercial software packages? A couple CDs full of free software, only a fraction of which you'll use since there's about ten of every single type of program on the disks? Security, assuming you keep up with your patching every day (which of course, you can do with Windows)? Big deal.
Also, if you would like to list one single virus that is make the rounds this afternoon infecting Linux computers, I am all ears.
Not sure about viruses, but over at securityfocus.com there's already three new exploits published by RedHat alone today.
I think it's telling that half the items you list as remedies include downloading third-party software.
And nearly all of the functionality that Linux has depends on third party software that just so happens to come on a couple CDs, instead of being downloaded. I fail to see the big deal with getting a CD or two that has a bunch of free apps that anyone could download, because you're going to make that corporate disk image first, and spending a few minutes downloading and installing the software on a Windows machine is not a big deal really. But hey, you guys like CDs so much, maybe the sysadmin could just hand everyone a Windows CD and two or three extra CDs with all the third party software they need. Same net effect as what you're getting with Linux distros.
Also, your comment about Linux being insufficient on the corporate desktop is off-base.
I didn't say that. If you examine what was said:
XP Home provides a secure, virus-free work environment for the corporate desktop?
Linux doesn't provide you with one either, so this isn't really a good point for you to be making.
The poster claimed that Linux proves a virus-free network. Until the day that there are no viruses and exploits for the particular Linux distribution in question, this is not an accurate statement.
Right, here we go for a corporate desktop.
Hey, he was the one talking about using Apache on a desktop. I was merely pointing out that you CAN do this.
This is about a ready-to-go solution - XP Home does not provide this.
In corporate environments, there's plenty of custom software that users need that isn't provided by either Windows OR Linux. So if you're going to be making custom disk images anyway, might as well throw in all that software that Windows doesn't have in the first place. So I don't see why everyone keeps thinking that a couple CDs full of free software is so amazing, considering that you can just download it before you make the corporate disk image.
Bzz. We are not taking about Linux. We talk about SuSE - and SuSE provides a secure, virus-free work environment for the corporate desktop.
No it doesn't, unless SuSE has absolutely no viruses or exploits. What you mean is it's more secure.
Windows on AMD64 is still a no-go for example, while it is quite possible with linux.
Really? That's news to me, seeing as how you can buy these AMD64 laptops with Windows XP pre-installed (and just in case you come back with "but that's not really 64-bit!" don't forget that Microsoft will let you download a copy of XP that works with AMD-64 right now, and for free).
How do you get this right license-wise without loosing OEM licenses/doublelicensing?
Volume licensing.