Whoever wrote the article for/. probably should have included a little more detail. Knowing the audience here, very few are going to read the article before jerking their knees.
1. Avoid strong ideological statements in your marketing ("We believe OSS is the wave of the future", "Free software forever"). I don't care about your politics, I want to know technical details about what your software does and how it will benefit me. 2. Be realistic in your marketing jargon - if it will improve produtivity, don't beat me about the head and shoulders with it, just say so and provide concrete reasons why. 3. Copious examples. 4. Reasonable price - I'll pay for something if I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off for something that is only used occasionally. 5. Multi-platform is nice (if possible), with equal levels of support. 6. Good technical documentation - consider having a third-party writer for this. The third-party books are usually much better than the company documentation for real world use. 7. Printed documentation. It's always a good idea to kill a few trees for our convenience. It shows you love us. (Seriously, a detailed reference manual is a good thing). 8. Download on purchase, and ship a CD later. 9. Good illustrations (if necessary). Sometimes a picture does say a thousand words, especially if it clears up a really wierd conceptual knot.
There's probably more, but that's all for now. Thanks for asking.
No. Please. Let them charge. Then I can refuse to pay and stop all junk mail.
Re:This is the way it should be...
on
KDE Gets The Hat
·
· Score: 3
No distro should take preference over which is the default windowmanager...
Why not? There aren't any rules here except that you don't violate the GPL. I don't see where actively choosing one desktop over the other as the default does any damage to the end-user. He/she/it still has the option to install any other desktop necessary.
This is just good business sense - it simplifies the task of supporting the installation. They would actually be better off if they would just choose to ship ONE desktop and let the users install others if they wanted to. Then they could declare a standard for their distribution and work from that point on.
This is just a lot of sound and fury, signifying that some people need to quit worrying so much.
Well, unfortunately humor does not come across in email because we don't have the social context and physical cues that are present in the real world.
Hey, you know he's kidding. I know he's kidding (well, actually, I don't give a shit - anything he does is his problem). But with that message in the hands of the right lawyer, how will a jury know he's kidding?
What worse (if you want to get alarmist) is that Linus advocates using violence against patent enforcers, thereby establishing very plainly the possibility that he could cause harm.
Even though he declaims it later, how hard would it be for a well-paid lawyer to get the jury to overlook the disclaimer?
The biggest problem is that Brown should probably not be representing himself. While he is certainly entitled to do so, in a case like this I would recommend finding the world most slippery, weaselly, down-and-dirty-junkyard-dog-fighting lawyer to help with the defense.
Go down to the athletic dorm, social fraternity or sorority, or the theatre department to find your clueless users.
I can authoritatively tell you that most actors in a theatre department will be pretty clueless about setting up a PC.
Re:...isn't this type of thing still legal in the
on
Shake-up At SonicBlue
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
In the case of Sonic Blue, apparently repayment is not a legal necessity. The board voted that they would not be held personally liable for failure to repay the loans, which means that the company is left holding the bag if anyone defaults.
If I was working at Sonic Blue right now, I wouldn't be by the end of the day. An action like this means that the board of directors can rape the company cashpile and not have to do a thing to replace it. It's legalized theft.
For whatever criticism the CEO may have endured in the past, right or wrong, he was definitely right to call in those loans and when they fired him, he was definitely right to call "shenanigans" and inform the press.
After reading the article, several questions arise - what the hell is mitre.org up to and what culpability do they share in propagating this spam? Did Tseng and Schleier-Smith conduct any of their dot-com building on the federal dime? If so, can they be sued for recovery of wasted tax dollars?
The main worry here is Mitre. If they are involved in government research, what are these guys up to? Is our government playing games with spam or is there some real, nefarious purpose here?
Well, then this bill will kill Open Source development because it will allow companies to recoup losses from commercial software companies.
Look, it's fairly simple. Specify the system that the software was tested on and provide a warranty for matching configurations only. Any other configuration voids the warranty.
I'm generalizing, but it would seem that the problem lies more with software companies avoiding the moral responsibility to fix bugs in previously released software, than any attempt at malice. So while UCITA might mean well, we know what road is paved with good intentions.
Apple only picks the hardware and software that goes into the distributed OS. They have zero control over what the end user installs on their system.
Under their previous offerings this could cause some real issues (thus the extension manager and programs like Conflict Catcher were born). There probably should be something similar for Win2K, although Win2K is way more fault-tolerant than the older MacOSes.
I'm not sure how Linux avoids the issue, except that it rarely has full-featured drivers for the latest hardware.
If it's GPL'd, they're free to take the code as long as they don't change the license.
Frankly, I thought this was the point of GPL - to make the source a commodity product that others could base their products off of. Sure, they have to release the source, but there's nothing that prevents them from making a buck somewhere along the line.
It looks like either: 1) somebody left a hole in the GPL or 2) sour grapes.
Poeple don't like to change their habits, so Apple helps them do it
No, Apple forces them to change, which is just not right. Perhaps if Apple examined the reason that people haven't been upgrading, they might clue into whether or not this is a good thing.
My personal suspicion is that most people haven't upgraded because they're very happy with the way things work right now, except for the speed (speed is always good). Most of the OS9 apps are very stable and don't require much in the way of upgrading.
Forcing change on the users is not a good thing. Let them come to the realization themselves, give them all the incentive in the world to do so, but never force.
1. Who are you to determine what a "ridiculous amount" of profit is? Alan Greenspan? The arrogance implicit in your statement is astounding.
2. AT&T buy a T1? ROFLMAO!
3. Try contacting your government representative about this. Your congressperson will be laughing about that for a couple of minutes and then forget about it.
4. And more to the point -- there's a lot more investment that goes into providing service on a large-scale basis than just stringing up a network. A lost of it has to do with paying some person who is ostensibly qualified to sit and watch it for hours on end so they can be miserable at 3 a.m. when your connection goes down.
1. depending on who you read - a bad idea or a very bad idea 2. the worst name for a company since lindows 3. because someone wasn't feeling very original that day 4. hard to say - neither distro was designed with the advanced user in mind 5. see 3.
I would hardly call that "using Linux" - I would call it using a browser. Kudos to your wife for not even pausing to take a breath, but really - the mozilla UI is pretty much standardized on all platforms.
Have you ever heard the proverb "Don't shit where you eat"? If Bruce had gone through with his demo, HP would most certainly (not could have been, but most certainly) be sued for way more money than you, me, and half the people on/. would ever see in a lifetime. While money may be meaningless to you, some of us need it to do those oh-so-important things like eat, put a roof over our heads, drive to work, pay for childcare, etc..
I never said that it wasn't arrogant - it's just that any company coming out with something new (or even the appearance of new-ness) has to aggressively sell in order to achieve a high rate of adoption. Microsoft having a majority of the desktops doesn't release them from the onus of having to convince their customers that.NET is the way to go.
BG admitting that.NET hasn't gone over very well is probably the result of hubris, and lack of understanding on Microsoft's part as to exactly what they have produced, leading to an inability to market their product effectively.
I don't think anyone understands.NET yet, since it is not a clearly defined product, but rather a framework for building products (apparently). A single product may take off and grow wings and do all sorts of exciting things, but frameworks take much longer to integrate since you've only got the foundation to work with.
Personally, I'm avoiding the whole mess until someone figures it out and can explain it succinctly and clearly, since I'd rather have a proven product than some blue-sky nightmare (ie., I try to stay just on the trailing edge of the bleeding edge curve).
The point of being in business (for a lot of companies) is to sell things. If you can't convince the consumer that your product is the end-all-be-all product to end their computer woes and clear up psoriasis, then you are doomed to fail.
Modern business doesn't wait for the customer to come to them - it goes to the customer and pushes it's products. This action is the product of competition. You absolutely have to outdo your competition in order to survive and grow.
Modern business can't play nice because nice guys finish second, if not last.
Well, that's where reality sets in - there is no way to track ALL the purchasers of hardware and software that uses the JPEG patent. However, Forgent will go after the manufacturers, most of whom will cave in to their demands.
This whole debacle makes me ashamed to be from Texas. We're supposed to be above this sort of horseshit.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoever wrote the article for /. probably should have included a little more detail. Knowing the audience here, very few are going to read the article before jerking their knees.
1. Avoid strong ideological statements in your marketing ("We believe OSS is the wave of the future", "Free software forever"). I don't care about your politics, I want to know technical details about what your software does and how it will benefit me.
2. Be realistic in your marketing jargon - if it will improve produtivity, don't beat me about the head and shoulders with it, just say so and provide concrete reasons why.
3. Copious examples.
4. Reasonable price - I'll pay for something if I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off for something that is only used occasionally.
5. Multi-platform is nice (if possible), with equal levels of support.
6. Good technical documentation - consider having a third-party writer for this. The third-party books are usually much better than the company documentation for real world use.
7. Printed documentation. It's always a good idea to kill a few trees for our convenience. It shows you love us. (Seriously, a detailed reference manual is a good thing).
8. Download on purchase, and ship a CD later.
9. Good illustrations (if necessary). Sometimes a picture does say a thousand words, especially if it clears up a really wierd conceptual knot.
There's probably more, but that's all for now. Thanks for asking.
No. Please. Let them charge. Then I can refuse to pay and stop all junk mail.
No distro should take preference over which is the default windowmanager ...
Why not? There aren't any rules here except that you don't violate the GPL. I don't see where actively choosing one desktop over the other as the default does any damage to the end-user. He/she/it still has the option to install any other desktop necessary.
This is just good business sense - it simplifies the task of supporting the installation. They would actually be better off if they would just choose to ship ONE desktop and let the users install others if they wanted to. Then they could declare a standard for their distribution and work from that point on.
This is just a lot of sound and fury, signifying that some people need to quit worrying so much.
Well, unfortunately humor does not come across in email because we don't have the social context and physical cues that are present in the real world.
Hey, you know he's kidding. I know he's kidding (well, actually, I don't give a shit - anything he does is his problem). But with that message in the hands of the right lawyer, how will a jury know he's kidding?
What worse (if you want to get alarmist) is that Linus advocates using violence against patent enforcers, thereby establishing very plainly the possibility that he could cause harm.
Even though he declaims it later, how hard would it be for a well-paid lawyer to get the jury to overlook the disclaimer?
The biggest problem is that Brown should probably not be representing himself. While he is certainly entitled to do so, in a case like this I would recommend finding the world most slippery, weaselly, down-and-dirty-junkyard-dog-fighting lawyer to help with the defense.
Go down to the athletic dorm, social fraternity or sorority, or the theatre department to find your clueless users.
I can authoritatively tell you that most actors in a theatre department will be pretty clueless about setting up a PC.
In the case of Sonic Blue, apparently repayment is not a legal necessity. The board voted that they would not be held personally liable for failure to repay the loans, which means that the company is left holding the bag if anyone defaults.
If I was working at Sonic Blue right now, I wouldn't be by the end of the day. An action like this means that the board of directors can rape the company cashpile and not have to do a thing to replace it. It's legalized theft.
For whatever criticism the CEO may have endured in the past, right or wrong, he was definitely right to call in those loans and when they fired him, he was definitely right to call "shenanigans" and inform the press.
After reading the article, several questions arise - what the hell is mitre.org up to and what culpability do they share in propagating this spam? Did Tseng and Schleier-Smith conduct any of their dot-com building on the federal dime? If so, can they be sued for recovery of wasted tax dollars?
The main worry here is Mitre. If they are involved in government research, what are these guys up to? Is our government playing games with spam or is there some real, nefarious purpose here?
Well, then this bill will kill Open Source development because it will allow companies to recoup losses from commercial software companies.
Look, it's fairly simple. Specify the system that the software was tested on and provide a warranty for matching configurations only. Any other configuration voids the warranty.
I'm generalizing, but it would seem that the problem lies more with software companies avoiding the moral responsibility to fix bugs in previously released software, than any attempt at malice. So while UCITA might mean well, we know what road is paved with good intentions.
Apple only picks the hardware and software that goes into the distributed OS. They have zero control over what the end user installs on their system.
Under their previous offerings this could cause some real issues (thus the extension manager and programs like Conflict Catcher were born). There probably should be something similar for Win2K, although Win2K is way more fault-tolerant than the older MacOSes.
I'm not sure how Linux avoids the issue, except that it rarely has full-featured drivers for the latest hardware.
This works great until she either checks caller ID or get the phone company to start tracking harassing calls.
Either way, I smell a lawsuit against Slashdot for incitement.
If it's GPL'd, they're free to take the code as long as they don't change the license.
Frankly, I thought this was the point of GPL - to make the source a commodity product that others could base their products off of. Sure, they have to release the source, but there's nothing that prevents them from making a buck somewhere along the line.
It looks like either: 1) somebody left a hole in the GPL or 2) sour grapes.
Poeple don't like to change their habits, so Apple helps them do it
No, Apple forces them to change, which is just not right. Perhaps if Apple examined the reason that people haven't been upgrading, they might clue into whether or not this is a good thing.
My personal suspicion is that most people haven't upgraded because they're very happy with the way things work right now, except for the speed (speed is always good). Most of the OS9 apps are very stable and don't require much in the way of upgrading.
Forcing change on the users is not a good thing. Let them come to the realization themselves, give them all the incentive in the world to do so, but never force.
1. Who are you to determine what a "ridiculous amount" of profit is? Alan Greenspan? The arrogance implicit in your statement is astounding.
2. AT&T buy a T1? ROFLMAO!
3. Try contacting your government representative about this. Your congressperson will be laughing about that for a couple of minutes and then forget about it.
4. And more to the point -- there's a lot more investment that goes into providing service on a large-scale basis than just stringing up a network. A lost of it has to do with paying some person who is ostensibly qualified to sit and watch it for hours on end so they can be miserable at 3 a.m. when your connection goes down.
Java-based AND slow? This is a recommendation?
1. depending on who you read - a bad idea or a very bad idea
2. the worst name for a company since lindows
3. because someone wasn't feeling very original that day
4. hard to say - neither distro was designed with the advanced user in mind
5. see 3.
I would hardly call that "using Linux" - I would call it using a browser. Kudos to your wife for not even pausing to take a breath, but really - the mozilla UI is pretty much standardized on all platforms.
I'm with you, foobar. He/she/it more than likely full of crap, anyway.
Have you ever heard the proverb "Don't shit where you eat"? If Bruce had gone through with his demo, HP would most certainly (not could have been, but most certainly) be sued for way more money than you, me, and half the people on /. would ever see in a lifetime. While money may be meaningless to you, some of us need it to do those oh-so-important things like eat, put a roof over our heads, drive to work, pay for childcare, etc..
I never said that it wasn't arrogant - it's just that any company coming out with something new (or even the appearance of new-ness) has to aggressively sell in order to achieve a high rate of adoption. Microsoft having a majority of the desktops doesn't release them from the onus of having to convince their customers that .NET is the way to go.
.NET hasn't gone over very well is probably the result of hubris, and lack of understanding on Microsoft's part as to exactly what they have produced, leading to an inability to market their product effectively.
.NET yet, since it is not a clearly defined product, but rather a framework for building products (apparently). A single product may take off and grow wings and do all sorts of exciting things, but frameworks take much longer to integrate since you've only got the foundation to work with.
BG admitting that
I don't think anyone understands
Personally, I'm avoiding the whole mess until someone figures it out and can explain it succinctly and clearly, since I'd rather have a proven product than some blue-sky nightmare (ie., I try to stay just on the trailing edge of the bleeding edge curve).
The point of being in business (for a lot of companies) is to sell things. If you can't convince the consumer that your product is the end-all-be-all product to end their computer woes and clear up psoriasis, then you are doomed to fail.
Modern business doesn't wait for the customer to come to them - it goes to the customer and pushes it's products. This action is the product of competition. You absolutely have to outdo your competition in order to survive and grow.
Modern business can't play nice because nice guys finish second, if not last.
I was thinking a Mike's Hard Lemonade commercial instead.
...
You know, where the server says it's going to go bits-up in 10 minutes
Well, that's where reality sets in - there is no way to track ALL the purchasers of hardware and software that uses the JPEG patent. However, Forgent will go after the manufacturers, most of whom will cave in to their demands.
This whole debacle makes me ashamed to be from Texas. We're supposed to be above this sort of horseshit.