1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. It isn't right for someone else to do the same thing.
If it was MS, they would be clearly abusing of their power to extend their monopoly, fair enough to contact the US Justice Dept (well, these days it wouldn't work anyway). In the present case, however, someone is donating money to encourage the University to use FREE software, free as in libre, instead of a monopolistic product. You don't see the difference ? Really ?
I just can't believe how some people try to put MS in the same standpoint as free software in these discussions. It is one huge monopolistic megacorporation that they are comparing with a
movement fighting for people's freedom in the use of their computers.
By the way, the donor would be better off stating his point in a slightly different way: I make the donation if the University makes a commitment to use free software only. That's good enough. MS can in principle produce free (as in the GPL) software and offer it to the University;-)
Look, enough is enough. How many stories about X considering a switch from win* to *linux are going to be posted by Slashdot editors ?. This is just ridiculous. First of all, GNU/Linux is enough into the mainstream as to waste time with "potential users" stories. Second, and more importantly, many companies, governments, agencies, etc., try to fscking negotiate with MS for a discoung and this is way they announce that they are "considering" Linux. I mean, come on, this is not a secret ! Let's get real. Let's talk about real users using Linux for real. There are plenty:-)
It will be hard to replace the 50% to 80% gross margins of the software business with the 20% or less gross margins typical for software-service companies.
This is the main issue in open source: using open software for your business is a no-brainer (unless there is no open source solution for your problem),
however developing open source software and making a living out of it is not easy. I am not saying it is impossible, it is just pretty difficult.
I have the feeling that the next main contribution to Free/Open Source Software will come from a business person, not from a developer. We need to find a way so that people can make money producing (as opposed to "using") free software, without compromising the spirit of free software.
So, onto something more positive: what's the state of SVG in KDE?
As far as I know early stages. Check out the
KSVG project, they are about to release ksvg 0.1.
Not ONLY because it is free
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
IMHO, where the story submitter says "This not because it is free", it should read "This not only because it is free". Being free as in beer helps reducing costs you know (not to mention being free as in libre). Licensing costs do matter.
I wonder if the shell will be POSIX compliant. I anticipate it will not be. Why ? The key to MS's monopoly is to create their own versions of standards. That is, to destroy standards and force people to use software that understands their "standard". Note that they do not mention "knowledge of POSIX" as a requirement in the job announcement.
I particularly like
Mandrake's demos. I checked them out before switching to Mandrake. They give potential users a nice overview of the power and ease of modern distros. In addition, rather than a book, I would recommend people to buy a damn boxed set which includes useful manuals. Both Mandrake and RedHat have great manuals (Mandrake's are more newbie-friendly IMHO). Show them a nice shiny box with pretty manuals, that's more sexy than home-made burned CD's... and helps keep distros healthy;-)
How do you feel about the Web Accessibility Initiative ?. Do you support it, are you a part of it ?. Do you think that accessibility-aware standards are the way to go (even though some software companies try to stick their own closed protocols instead of open standards)?
Yes, GNU/Linux will probably in the long run eat up all commercial Unixes, the trend goes in this direction. In the mean time, there are a lot of
UNIX sysadmin positions that still require Solaris knowledge.
So, it makes sense to run Solaris on cheap x68 hardware to get some trainning if you are going to apply for one of these jobs. It is much more fun than sysadmin'ing Win* boxes, and whenever the company switches to Linux/BSD you are already working there and you get to do real cool work;-)
I agree: cvs/rcs and similar software are a great improvement. But in particular you say:
I seriously doubt that a program like Linux could flourish without programs like CVS.
If you are talking about the Linux Kernel, only recently Linus
adopted a version control system (bitkeeper). There are many huge projects maintained on CVS though, and this includes KDE and GNOME. But, the common denominator to all these projects is the fact that the source was made publically available for peer review and international collaboration.
I think you are making the right decision for the wrong reasons:-). I think it is great for your kids to see alternatives, and using free (as in freedom), community-based software will encourage several nice aspects of their personalities. Teaching your kids to appreciate freedom, cooperation and critical thinking is a great thing; should more people do that this world would suck a little less:-)
Technically, I would repartition, keep a dual boot for a while, and start buying games for Linux. This will help them have a smooth transition. You can read a lot about the cons in other posts, but to me the big picture is: your kids can do their stuff in Linux. They just won't be able to use every possible game. But then again, if they are hardcore gamers, maybe a games console will do the job. For most other tasks, you should be golden with linux. And the legaci win* partition will help you in the few remaining cases. And by buying Linux stuff you will help it become more popular and in the end your family will be making a difference.
Let's see... oh!, Microsoft® Pocket PC 2002 Premium ! That's very surprising coming from Dell. I'll sit back and wait for the Wal-Mart $100 Linux handheld;-)
So, how exactly would you get rid of the battery after use ?. Moreover, even if there is a proper way to dispose them, how can you make sure that people will be responsible enough not just trash them in a regular trash can ?. It sounds horribly risky !
I am sick of futurology. People predicting all kinds of apocaliptic things: there will be no cars by year NNNN, computers will be obsolete, the desktop paradigm is dead, etc. etc. etc. They predict "A" and "the opposite of A", they fail 99% of the times and then when they hit some prediction they brag about it (of course they do not remember their 99% failures)
We have the space shuttle but we still use trains. We have the internet but we still use the phone. When a technology gets adopted it takes looooong for it to be dropped for good. There is a lot of inertia, people keep using it.
Now operating systems are dead ? Sure, anytime. Now, how the hell is this smart new shinny cell phone/PDA running ?. Oh, it does have an OS. And how is this new network-enabled video camera running ?. Oh, an OS. As somebody else already pointed out, how the hell do you talk to your hardware without an OS ?
And best of all, the guy seems to be selling (I couldn't load his dead webpage) some GUI software, and he tells you "OS don't matter, just run my little app under windows". Yeah, sure, where is my wallet ?
Do you have an idea of what the global budget for NASA is ?. It is orders of magnitude higher than 15k. If this helps NASA maintain credibility it is more than worth the money for them. Don't forget that their money has to be approved by the US Congress, and that means in the end that US citizens have to be happy with this money being spent on the NASA budget. NASA is targeting the mass of people who are not necessarily literate enough to understand, the way you do, that these conspiracy theory sellers are just crap.
From a social point of view, having a science institution educate the regular citizen about this sort of conspiracy theories is again worth much more money than what they are spending.
And last but not least, the nutters will always have a case. If you answer, they'll say "See, they know we are right, so they had to answer". And if you don't answer, they'll say: "They don't answer to our charges because they can't, they know we are right". So really, I don't see where the problem is.
BTW, this article is about US scientific policies/issues, and as such it should probably go in "US", not in "Space" as a topic.
Not only your posting is a troll, but you got modded all the way up, this is a double annoyance:
To me, KDE isn't a software development project but rather, a parade.
Have you even bother looking at the source code at least ? You'll notice it IS a software project. High quality software. You may prefer some other desktop environment, fine, but no need to flame.
They see how Apple and Microsoft like to throw parties and festivals for their releases, all in the name of marketing, and KDE sees this and gets the awful notion that this is an area they need to compete in. That marketing somehow matters to them. From this they get strange ideas that its wrong to change this branding, that every computer the software gets installed on is thiers.
Look, I think it is you who is having strange ideas. KDE is the default desktop in most of the top Linux distributions. It is extremely well integrated.
It includes one of the best file/web browsers. It comes up as the preferred desktop in most polls. And all of this is because they provide a great desktop based on a great development platform. They didn't get where they are by marketting, they got there by coding damn well.
But I am wasting my time, the fact that you compare them to microsoft tells more about the intentions of your post than whatever I may say...
My only complaint is they are an RPM-based distro and I like apt-get.
From the command line, urpmi will give you similar functionality (mainly deal with the dependencies for you). And even nicer, the GUI for Software Management in MandrakeControlCenter is just beautifull. Really painless software management, as long as you install software from the installation CDs or urpmi-aware repositories. Security updates are just a few clicks away and you get to see the advisories and decide what you want to install and what you don't. When installing from CD's you are prompted to insert the CD's in the order they are needed. You can search for packages (in names, files and descriptions). I NEVER had any problems, never had to manually solve dependencies (with ML 9.0). It works like a charm...
A better course of action would be to quietly uninstall everything the cable guy installed and keep it all under your hat.
This is fine if you only care about yourself. If you care about others, you do spread the word out, because other people's privacy is at stake, and because this cable provider is doing something dirty to say the least. Know what ? Some people do care about other people. Thanks to {e}NOS and Cliff for the story.
Ok I am late to the party, but hopefully someone will read this:-)
IMHO what they are really looking for is to fake
some grassroots soport for MS. For one thing, the common
view of MS is as a huge monster representing the darkest
part of the corporate US. They are trying to change
this and show some kind of (paid-for) street presence,
grassroot support, a popularity that they will never
get acting the way they do. In short, they are trying
to clean up their public image. Yeah, like when astroturfing.
The MPD-AP20U includes a Memory Stick media slot, a USB 2.0 port and supports both Macintosh and Windows platforms.
This alone is a showstopper for me. Of course people will hack around and maybe get it to work.
The price doesn't seem too high if it is under US$ 300 as the article mentions though.
Isn't this whole explorer metaphor quite new to *NIX, and borrowed from win/mac OSes ?
Yes, but there is nothing wrong in borrowing an idea as long as it is a good idea
I don't think the gnome community should become as depend on nautilus as windows users are on explorer. It's a nice shell, granted, but it's an app like many others, and many users don't... use it.
Yes, but I can bet that an application like Nautilus is necessary if you ever want to have a decent market share on the desktop . By decent I mean 10% or more.
My point is, that kind of integration is just not the way to go for desktop on linx. If you want to be recognized, don't follow the (questinable) ideas of others.
I would love to hear from you or someone else what kind of a replacement you can offer for a user-friendly file manager.
I am a KDE user, and I love Konqueror. The little bit I tried Nautilus it looked very good to me too. Being an experienced UNIX user, I do most things from the console, but many times I find myself using konqueror just because it is more efficient for the specific task. For example, a recursive copy of a local directory tree to an ftp server where I also want to rename stuff on the fly.
I guess my point is very simple: regular users (and this means 99% of the potential users)
need a powerfull yet user-friendly file manager, or something else that let's them access all kinds of files, open them, copy remove them, manage removable devices and so forth. If you come up with a better metaphore it is more than welcome. Otherwise, GNOME needs to keep going with Nautilus.
Now this is the kind of interaction I like to see between RedHat and KDE. Redhat (and SuSe and Compaq) develop an X extension, KDE immediately adds support for it. That's it. Come on guys, it's all software libre, let's all be friends. There are enough unfriendly people (your favorite MonopoliStic link here) out there:-)
Slashdot Mirror
If it was MS, they would be clearly abusing of their power to extend their monopoly, fair enough to contact the US Justice Dept (well, these days it wouldn't work anyway). In the present case, however, someone is donating money to encourage the University to use FREE software, free as in libre, instead of a monopolistic product. You don't see the difference ? Really ?
I just can't believe how some people try to put MS in the same standpoint as free software in these discussions. It is one huge monopolistic megacorporation that they are comparing with a movement fighting for people's freedom in the use of their computers.
By the way, the donor would be better off stating his point in a slightly different way: I make the donation if the University makes a commitment to use free software only. That's good enough. MS can in principle produce free (as in the GPL) software and offer it to the University ;-)
Look, enough is enough. How many stories about X considering a switch from win* to *linux are going to be posted by Slashdot editors ?. This is just ridiculous. First of all, GNU/Linux is enough into the mainstream as to waste time with "potential users" stories. Second, and more importantly, many companies, governments, agencies, etc., try to fscking negotiate with MS for a discoung and this is way they announce that they are "considering" Linux. I mean, come on, this is not a secret ! Let's get real. Let's talk about real users using Linux for real. There are plenty :-)
This is the main issue in open source: using open software for your business is a no-brainer (unless there is no open source solution for your problem), however developing open source software and making a living out of it is not easy. I am not saying it is impossible, it is just pretty difficult.
I have the feeling that the next main contribution to Free/Open Source Software will come from a business person, not from a developer. We need to find a way so that people can make money producing (as opposed to "using") free software, without compromising the spirit of free software.
As far as I know early stages. Check out the KSVG project, they are about to release ksvg 0.1.
IMHO, where the story submitter says "This not because it is free", it should read "This not only because it is free". Being free as in beer helps reducing costs you know (not to mention being free as in libre). Licensing costs do matter.
I wonder if the shell will be POSIX compliant. I anticipate it will not be. Why ? The key to MS's monopoly is to create their own versions of standards. That is, to destroy standards and force people to use software that understands their "standard". Note that they do not mention "knowledge of POSIX" as a requirement in the job announcement.
I particularly like Mandrake's demos. I checked them out before switching to Mandrake. They give potential users a nice overview of the power and ease of modern distros. In addition, rather than a book, I would recommend people to buy a damn boxed set which includes useful manuals. Both Mandrake and RedHat have great manuals (Mandrake's are more newbie-friendly IMHO). Show them a nice shiny box with pretty manuals, that's more sexy than home-made burned CD's ... and helps keep distros healthy ;-)
How do you feel about the Web Accessibility Initiative ?. Do you support it, are you a part of it ?. Do you think that accessibility-aware standards are the way to go (even though some software companies try to stick their own closed protocols instead of open standards)?
So, it makes sense to run Solaris on cheap x68 hardware to get some trainning if you are going to apply for one of these jobs. It is much more fun than sysadmin'ing Win* boxes, and whenever the company switches to Linux/BSD you are already working there and you get to do real cool work ;-)
If you are talking about the Linux Kernel, only recently Linus adopted a version control system (bitkeeper). There are many huge projects maintained on CVS though, and this includes KDE and GNOME. But, the common denominator to all these projects is the fact that the source was made publically available for peer review and international collaboration.
There even exists a perl script to help the transition: pine2mutt (disclaimer: I still use pine).
Technically, I would repartition, keep a dual boot for a while, and start buying games for Linux. This will help them have a smooth transition. You can read a lot about the cons in other posts, but to me the big picture is: your kids can do their stuff in Linux. They just won't be able to use every possible game. But then again, if they are hardcore gamers, maybe a games console will do the job. For most other tasks, you should be golden with linux. And the legaci win* partition will help you in the few remaining cases. And by buying Linux stuff you will help it become more popular and in the end your family will be making a difference.
Let's see ... oh!, Microsoft® Pocket PC 2002 Premium ! That's very surprising coming from Dell. I'll sit back and wait for the Wal-Mart $100 Linux handheld ;-)
Well, last time I checked it appeared that they were not paying taxes at all. Outrageous. I wonder what their current situation is ...
So, how exactly would you get rid of the battery after use ?. Moreover, even if there is a proper way to dispose them, how can you make sure that people will be responsible enough not just trash them in a regular trash can ?. It sounds horribly risky !
We have the space shuttle but we still use trains. We have the internet but we still use the phone. When a technology gets adopted it takes looooong for it to be dropped for good. There is a lot of inertia, people keep using it.
Now operating systems are dead ? Sure, anytime. Now, how the hell is this smart new shinny cell phone/PDA running ?. Oh, it does have an OS. And how is this new network-enabled video camera running ?. Oh, an OS. As somebody else already pointed out, how the hell do you talk to your hardware without an OS ?
And best of all, the guy seems to be selling (I couldn't load his dead webpage) some GUI software, and he tells you "OS don't matter, just run my little app under windows". Yeah, sure, where is my wallet ?
From a social point of view, having a science institution educate the regular citizen about this sort of conspiracy theories is again worth much more money than what they are spending.
And last but not least, the nutters will always have a case. If you answer, they'll say "See, they know we are right, so they had to answer". And if you don't answer, they'll say: "They don't answer to our charges because they can't, they know we are right". So really, I don't see where the problem is.
BTW, this article is about US scientific policies/issues, and as such it should probably go in "US", not in "Space" as a topic.
Look, I think it is you who is having strange ideas. KDE is the default desktop in most of the top Linux distributions. It is extremely well integrated. It includes one of the best file/web browsers. It comes up as the preferred desktop in most polls. And all of this is because they provide a great desktop based on a great development platform. They didn't get where they are by marketting, they got there by coding damn well.
But I am wasting my time, the fact that you compare them to microsoft tells more about the intentions of your post than whatever I may say ...
From the command line, urpmi will give you similar functionality (mainly deal with the dependencies for you). And even nicer, the GUI for Software Management in MandrakeControlCenter is just beautifull. Really painless software management, as long as you install software from the installation CDs or urpmi-aware repositories. Security updates are just a few clicks away and you get to see the advisories and decide what you want to install and what you don't. When installing from CD's you are prompted to insert the CD's in the order they are needed. You can search for packages (in names, files and descriptions). I NEVER had any problems, never had to manually solve dependencies (with ML 9.0). It works like a charm ...
This is fine if you only care about yourself. If you care about others, you do spread the word out, because other people's privacy is at stake, and because this cable provider is doing something dirty to say the least. Know what ? Some people do care about other people. Thanks to {e}NOS and Cliff for the story.
IMHO what they are really looking for is to fake some grassroots soport for MS. For one thing, the common view of MS is as a huge monster representing the darkest part of the corporate US. They are trying to change this and show some kind of (paid-for) street presence, grassroot support, a popularity that they will never get acting the way they do. In short, they are trying to clean up their public image. Yeah, like when astroturfing.
This alone is a showstopper for me. Of course people will hack around and maybe get it to work. The price doesn't seem too high if it is under US$ 300 as the article mentions though.
Yes, but there is nothing wrong in borrowing an idea as long as it is a good idea
Yes, but I can bet that an application like Nautilus is necessary if you ever want to have a decent market share on the desktop . By decent I mean 10% or more.
I would love to hear from you or someone else what kind of a replacement you can offer for a user-friendly file manager.
I am a KDE user, and I love Konqueror. The little bit I tried Nautilus it looked very good to me too. Being an experienced UNIX user, I do most things from the console, but many times I find myself using konqueror just because it is more efficient for the specific task. For example, a recursive copy of a local directory tree to an ftp server where I also want to rename stuff on the fly.
I guess my point is very simple: regular users (and this means 99% of the potential users) need a powerfull yet user-friendly file manager, or something else that let's them access all kinds of files, open them, copy remove them, manage removable devices and so forth. If you come up with a better metaphore it is more than welcome. Otherwise, GNOME needs to keep going with Nautilus.
No, the article says "3.0-pre (or 2.6-pre) series". And what's the big deal after all ?. Call it 2.6, 3.0, whatever :-)
Now this is the kind of interaction I like to see between RedHat and KDE. Redhat (and SuSe and Compaq) develop an X extension, KDE immediately adds support for it. That's it. Come on guys, it's all software libre, let's all be friends. There are enough unfriendly people (your favorite MonopoliStic link here) out there :-)