AMD and this LI group can't *both* trademark the same name, can they?
Yeah, it's ok, y'c'n do it if the two companies do different things. Apple Computer and Apple Records is the canonical example in all the text books. I hope CPUs and contraceptives are considered to be different markets!
Sig, that was a real pathetic attempt to be cool
by the usual MS bashing on here.
I'm not sure why you object so much to the poster's comment. It wasn't blind criticism, it was a valid parody of the actual "support" you get if you ring MS. Reboot, Reinstall, Upgrade. That's the advice you'll recieve much of the time.
as for his role as evangilist... he needs to step down. [...] As with Apple. The EvangeList was disbanded. It was no longer needed.
If you mean that there's now plenty of momentum behind the OSS movement, you're right. However, I think a lot of users only care about the technical superiority of GNU/Linux for some purposes. As soon as something technically better comes along, people will use it even if it is non-free. I know many Linux users. However, very few of them don't have a copy of Windows around to use when it suits them better. Few of them are at all bothered by, say, the fact that there's no good free compressed video format. Most will quite happily use StarOffice or WordPerfect, without caring that they are non-free. In this sense, we urgently need users to start caring about freedom above and beyond short-term technical superiority. It's currently possible to have a useful general-purpose computer without using any non-free software, but if people don't start caring about this then that fact is in danger of being steamrollered by the appearance of non-free de-facto standards.
In this sense, I think RMS's role as full-time evangelist is now more important than ever. Can you imagine how much less the message would spread if left to people like Bruce Perens and Alan Cox, who whilst being brilliant and generous with their time, understandably don't want to give up their lives in the way RMS has?
When you first heard the term free software, what did you believe it meant??
Ah, but that problem isn't because RMS uses serpentine language, it's that English is basically shite at expressing this concept. You try expressing it in just a few words. "Open Source" is just about the nearest competitor, but that phrase doesn't actually convey all the "freeness" which DFSG-free software is supposed to have.
True, but separate companies colluding is worse. At least, it is a lot more clear cut than "abusing your monopoly position", so it would be easier to prove that they'd done it. This should make the wheels of justice turn faster.
The ushers are trying to kick all the children [...] off the stage so the actors can start the first act of the play.
There's no excuse for kicking people out of the way when space is unlimited. The first act has been and gone and it was the "children" who made it fly.
Debian. (Well, it's available as a non-free extra but it's not part of the official CDs). Also Stampede, if their claim to run 100% free software is to be believed.
I should have pointed out that this is with networked NT4, with vaguely reasonable levels of security turned on. I wouldn't have this problem with, say, GNOME running on a secure Debian box.
If you have a US region selected, all of your region aware apps are going to use a US region if that is what is selected.
Yeah. Unfortunately, they act in approximately the same way if you specify UK, too. Excel, for example, has to be separately told to do dates as DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY.
If you downloaded it off of a site that had US discs, with US regions by default, and failed to change it, quit yer whining.
As a European who pays per second of telephone usage, it aint worth downloading things like Windows - it'd be cheaper just to buy it. Nope, the problem is with NT4 Workstation, allegedly in UK mode.
As for the British English...Blah...a U.K. English version of Office 2k ships
Yeah -- unfortunately nobody seems to have taught it to speak UK English!
and I have news for you, Microsoft doesn't make the Thesauraus, Spell Checker, and Grammar Checker. It's the same third party system used in numerous other office packages.
So? They're still selling the crap. OK, the spell checker knows english words (though it allows things like "color" which are absolutely *wrong* in UK English). But the grammar checker really does object to lots of valid UK English.
You know you can use Tools->Language to select your language.
Yeah - they never bother to do proper UK English versions, presumably because we can be expected to understand US English. I imagine this is even more annoying if you're Icelandic.
You know you can rename any icon on your desktop, fix the spelling on NN.
This does not work for My Computer or Network Neighborhood - at least, it will not save the change (without considerable fiddling). Also references to "color" everywhere which can't be changed to "colour".
The unfortunate truth is that "normal" people consider MicroSoft to be
gods. They see Bill's incredible success and marvel at it. They see the newest version of Windows and stand bug-eyed when they see their start menu fade in.
Maybe that's true in the US. Here in the UK there is (in my experience) considerable dissatisfaction with MS products. Maybe it's because of things like that unremovable "Network Neighborhood" icon which is the wrong spelling in this country, or perhaps it's things like the Word grammar checker having a go at you for using perfectly legitimate British English constructs. I imagine it's true that the further you get (culturally) from Seattle, the greater the proportion of people who see MS as menaces and not as gods.
I think this is good news. If they had settled, and Microsoft were not convicted, then the next monopolist after Microsoft could go and behave in the same way and the DOJ would have to waste another 5 years fighting them in court. Wheras if Microsoft get convicted, then a legal precedent will have been set and it will be much easier to prosecute the next violator.
Of course, this assumes that Microsoft do get convicted. If this doesn't happen it will be very bad news indeed. Not so much because Microsoft will then wreak havoc; more because then every other potential monopolist knows he has nothing to fear from the law. MS have price-fixed. They've held secret meetings to arrange not to compete in a certain area (with Netscape). They've payed companies to dump a competing product. They've arbitrarily tied products together (other than Windows+IE). If they aren't a monopoly in the eyes of the law, then nobody is.
Well, one thing is that there's no standard for the documents you have to process. Well there's the W3C standard. But if your browser only reads W3C-compliant HTML then 90% of sites out there won't work. People tend to write for Netscape / IE even if their HTML is "wrong". So you have to second-guess both these products and also try to follow the W3C standard.
Of course, you'd think Mozilla would have a good chance of emulating Netscape because most of its developers worked on Netscape.
How come they can't do this at a more convenient time? Like between 2 and 3 am Sunday morning?
There's no such time. You can only have "between 2 and 3 am Sunday morning in a certain place". Besides, unwanted data can survive for several hours without power, so they need to make sure there's enough time to starve it out into the open.
I'm not sure, but I think the statement that they were good could possibly have been sarcasm. That would make more sense.
Oops! I wasn't being very clear, was I? No, they genuinely are good, from my experience, though you're right it would have been more appropriate if it was sarcasm.
Every word you have posted is a lie. You are a Microsoft user. You are a clueless newbie who has have never even written a device driver. I recieve six death threats off you every half hour. Furthermore, you are the originator of those emails which say Bill Gates will buy a trip to Disneyland for every recipient.
On an unrelated note, I use FreeUK. They are an excellent free ISP who give free telephone and email support. They will go out of their way to support non-standard setups, like Linux, and I would heartily reccommend them to anyone.
My personal opinion is that RMS is peeved that Linux is the Open Source poster child and not him.
I think you may be right. But I don't think he'd be peeved if it was Alan Cox or Bruce Perens, instead of Linus. Linus is firmly in the "Open Source" camp and speaks of open source as a design methodology, not as a political philosophy. The FSF is (rightly) bothered that the public only hear that "Open Source is better", not that "Free Software is a right". When a technically brilliant piece of non-free software comes along, people may fail to see the danger.
Part of me would actually like to go buy their software and do a more in depth analysis, in the hopes of showing that they're more well meaning than they're being portrayed around here as being.
I agree that people who write blocker software can be well-meaning. But sueing people for trying to show how well your product works? Or would you interpret the law suit as being about something else?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's ok, y'c'n do it if the two companies do different things. Apple Computer and Apple Records is the canonical example in all the text books. I hope CPUs and contraceptives are considered to be different markets!
It's true! Durex Avanti condoms are made of it. Look here to find out about them.
I'm not sure why you object so much to the poster's comment.
It wasn't blind criticism, it was a valid parody of the
actual "support" you get if you ring MS. Reboot, Reinstall,
Upgrade. That's the advice you'll recieve much of the time.
If you mean that there's now plenty of momentum behind the OSS movement, you're right. However, I think a lot of users only care about the technical superiority of GNU/Linux for some purposes. As soon as something technically better comes along, people will use it even if it is non-free. I know many Linux users. However, very few of them don't have a copy of Windows around to use when it suits them better. Few of them are at all bothered by, say, the fact that there's no good free compressed video format. Most will quite happily use StarOffice or WordPerfect, without caring that they are non-free. In this sense, we urgently need users to start caring about freedom above and beyond short-term technical superiority. It's currently possible to have a useful general-purpose computer without using any non-free software, but if people don't start caring about this then that fact is in danger of being steamrollered by the appearance of non-free de-facto standards.
In this sense, I think RMS's role as full-time evangelist is now more important than ever. Can you imagine how much less the message would spread if left to people like Bruce Perens and Alan Cox, who whilst being brilliant and generous with their time, understandably don't want to give up their lives in the way RMS has?
Ah, but that problem isn't because RMS uses serpentine language, it's that English is basically shite at expressing this concept. You try expressing it in just a few words. "Open Source" is just about the nearest competitor, but that phrase doesn't actually convey all the "freeness" which DFSG-free software is supposed to have.
Sorry, I phrased my original comment badly. You have said what I was trying to say more clearly than I managed.
True, but separate companies colluding is worse. At least, it is a lot more clear cut than "abusing your monopoly position", so it would be easier to prove that they'd done it. This should make the wheels of justice turn faster.
There's no excuse for kicking people out of the way when space is unlimited. The first act has been and gone and it was the "children" who made it fly.
Debian. (Well, it's available as a non-free extra but it's not part of the official CDs). Also Stampede, if their claim to run 100% free software is to be believed.
I should have pointed out that this is with networked NT4, with vaguely reasonable levels of security turned on. I wouldn't have this problem with, say, GNOME running on a secure Debian box.
Yeah. Unfortunately, they act in approximately the same way if you specify UK, too. Excel, for example, has to be separately told to do dates as DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY.
As a European who pays per second of telephone usage, it aint worth downloading things like Windows - it'd be cheaper just to buy it. Nope, the problem is with NT4 Workstation, allegedly in UK mode.
Yeah -- unfortunately nobody seems to have taught it to speak UK English!
So? They're still selling the crap. OK, the spell checker knows english words (though it allows things like "color" which are absolutely *wrong* in UK English). But the grammar checker really does object to lots of valid UK English.
Yeah - they never bother to do proper UK English versions, presumably because we can be expected to understand US English. I imagine this is even more annoying if you're Icelandic.
This does not work for My Computer or Network Neighborhood - at least, it will not save the change (without considerable fiddling). Also references to "color" everywhere which can't be changed to "colour".
Maybe that's true in the US. Here in the UK there is (in my experience) considerable dissatisfaction with MS products. Maybe it's because of things like that unremovable "Network Neighborhood" icon which is the wrong spelling in this country, or perhaps it's things like the Word grammar checker having a go at you for using perfectly legitimate British English constructs. I imagine it's true that the further you get (culturally) from Seattle, the greater the proportion of people who see MS as menaces and not as gods.
I think this is good news. If they had settled, and Microsoft were not convicted, then the next monopolist after Microsoft could go and behave in the same way and the DOJ would have to waste another 5 years fighting them in court. Wheras if Microsoft get convicted, then a legal precedent will have been set and it will be much easier to prosecute the next violator.
Of course, this assumes that Microsoft do get convicted. If this doesn't happen it will be very bad news indeed. Not so much because Microsoft will then wreak havoc; more because then every other potential monopolist knows he has nothing to fear from the law. MS have price-fixed. They've held secret meetings to arrange not to compete in a certain area (with Netscape). They've payed companies to dump a competing product. They've arbitrarily tied products together (other than Windows+IE). If they aren't a monopoly in the eyes of the law, then nobody is.
Well, one thing is that there's no standard for the documents you have to process. Well there's the W3C standard. But if your browser only reads W3C-compliant HTML then 90% of sites out there won't work. People tend to write for Netscape / IE even if their HTML is "wrong". So you have to second-guess both these products and also try to follow the W3C standard.
Of course, you'd think Mozilla would have a good chance of emulating Netscape because most of its developers worked on Netscape.
No you wont, you all manage about ninteenth post or summit.
Good idea, but too late - the Open Group tried this in 1998, when announcing that X11 would be non-free in future (see here for the slashdot article).
There's no such time. You can only have "between 2 and 3 am Sunday morning in a certain place". Besides, unwanted data can survive for several hours without power, so they need to make sure there's enough time to starve it out into the open.
Oops! I wasn't being very clear, was I? No, they genuinely are good, from my experience, though you're right it would have been more appropriate if it was sarcasm.
Every word you have posted is a lie. You are a Microsoft user. You are a clueless newbie who has have never even written a device driver. I recieve six death threats off you every half hour. Furthermore, you are the originator of those emails which say Bill Gates will buy a trip to Disneyland for every recipient.
On an unrelated note, I use FreeUK. They are an excellent free ISP who give free telephone and email support. They will go out of their way to support non-standard setups, like Linux, and I would heartily reccommend them to anyone.
I think you may be right. But I don't think he'd be peeved if it was Alan Cox or Bruce Perens, instead of Linus. Linus is firmly in the "Open Source" camp and speaks of open source as a design methodology, not as a political philosophy. The FSF is (rightly) bothered that the public only hear that "Open Source is better", not that "Free Software is a right". When a technically brilliant piece of non-free software comes along, people may fail to see the danger.
I agree that people who write blocker software can be well-meaning. But sueing people for trying to show how well your product works? Or would you interpret the law suit as being about something else?
I forgot to say, "and arguably less educational, for many computer geeks."