Only thanks to actions like this attempting to shut off methods of communication, the only information these people will get about the outside world will be what their government supplies them...
So as far as the people are concerned, it is not their heroic government that needs to change, it is the evil foreign governments who are picking on them.. And were it not for their heroic government fighting their corner, these people would be even more cut off from the world.
Google's IM service is "totally in the cloud"... Sure, they *offer* a downloadable client for it, but you don't have to use theirs, they even encourage you to use other clients to connect to it. People in these countries wanting to connect can just download another client, in fact they could even use XMPP compliant servers located anywhere else to talk to google users... I speak to tons of gtalk users every day, from my own server.
Might be able to make a good business taking free software, slapping a huge price tag on it and selling it... Just include the src on the CD to comply with the GPL...
Laws like this exist to allow companies to profiteer... Starting legal action against the poor miserable and troubled is not profitable... Winning legal action against MS will get you a lot of money and might enable you to sell your company for a huge amount.
Indeed, but if enough of these cases are used to sting microsoft, that they decide to turn against software patents, then the fight against software patents gains a powerful ally.
I have a VAXServer 3100, the actual server model (no video capability)... I did have a VAXStation 3100 as well and an original DEC monitor with seperate RGB cables, but it actually failed and was thrown away a year or so ago... It has Ultrix 4.4 installed on it's 200mb internal SCSI disk, I tried connecting larger disks but it wouldn't touch anything bigger than 2gb i think. I also have a DECStation, 3300 i believe, it runs the mips version of ultrix and osf/1 1.0
Because of the stupid way government budgets work... If you don't spend all of the budget you've been given, then you get less the following year, so by the last month of the financial year the surplus needs to be gotten rid of in any way possible.
It's also labelled "Windows", just like "Windows Mobile", trying to play on people's familiarity with the desktop version, but it isn't compatible with any of the software available for the desktop version thus being extremely misleading.
Actually, you can use the unofficial (jailbroken) iphone sdk on non mac systems, infact you can even install gcc on the iphone itself and compile apps natively. Can you develop zune software without having windows? I would say the iphone is one step up in this regard.
I say "evil" because i don't know enough about all of the sanctioned regimes to cast judgement on wether they are evil or not. And i have enough distrust of the western governments setting the sanctions to suspect that their definition of evil is based on financial factors rather than how the regime treats its people.
Buying a server in a foreign country to proxy their traffic requires very few resources, perhaps 100USD/month? And where do you think they will get that money from? Certainly not their own pockets, if you cost the regime financially they will just extract funds from their population to compensate.
When you put official sanctions on a regime you don't stop them trading... Take Burma, they still manufacture goods in sweat shops, only instead of selling them on the open market, they sell them to chinese criminals, who stamp "made in china" on them and sell them onwards. As the trades are less profitable, due to middlemen taking a cut, the government just takes a higher percentage of tax. The only people who lose out are the people doing the work.
Also since you are now dealing with criminals anyway, it's only a small step to start producing outright illegal goods such as drugs, since that can be the only way to make enough money to live.
Sanctions also strengthen the regime... Communications with the outside world are reduced, meaning often the only sources of information are the government sponsored ones... And the people know that sanctions exist which are hurting their ability to trade freely, the government tells the people how evil these sanctions are and how only they are fighting against them.
If you want to hurt an "evil" regime, don't isolate them, encourage trade and communication... If you are so sure you're regime is better than theirs, then open communication will let their people see your superior regime and be envious of it, and gradually push for change. This is why the Berlin Wall was built.
You can do pretty much the same with Linux, only there is less reason to because it already ships with a decent set of autoinstalled software and the update process isn't going to make you reboot more than once.
Doing an unattended install just means that you only have to mess with drivers and the activation key once...
But unless you're planning on installing several machines in one go, is it really worth all the extra effort? Most of the advantages you get from a slipstream install are already provided by linux without having to do any extra work.
Also creating a slipstream disk requires that you already have a working installation available to you.
You can't say windows is either easier or faster when you have to roll your own installation media, because you have to consider the time and effort required to do so. This simply wouldn't be possible for an end user, especially one who only has a single computer. Ready for the desktop indeed...
So for windows you have to write 5 drivers to cater to every possible version someone might be using... On Linux you can write one driver and submit it to the kernel maintainers, and providing your driver is up to snuff it will get rolled in and the kernel developers will help maintain it.
What's better, an old driver that works on a new os because that os provides tons of backwards compatibility kludges, or a driver that's been updated along with the new os?
Also, if you release your driver this way you will get ports to other architectures for free... Look at the MIPS based netbooks, and the forthcoming ARM based ones, not to mention cellphones and games consoles that can run linux...
To bring up your point about printers, HP released open source drivers for their printers and scanners some years ago... These drivers work great with the latest versions of Linux, Ubuntu supports them out of the box... I have an old all in one printer/scanner for which HP have stopped providing official drivers (this means no 64bit, no vista, no leopard or osx/x86).. So to use that printer with a proprietary os i need a 32bit xp or a ppc based osx 10.4, yet it works flawlessly with my 64bit quad core ubuntu box. When this printer dies on me or i just need a newer one, i'm far more likely to buy another HP because the brand has earned a level of trust from me.
SunOS 4 was pretty easy providing you had a sun branded cdrom to install it from, it actually used to check the vendor string of the cd and wouldn't kick other brands (i had a toshiba) into 512 byte blocksize mode... But i know what you mean about third party disks, having to manually input the cylinder information etc.
Ultrix was trivially easy, boot from cd, say yes a couple of times...
IRIX was easy, click on the "install from cd" option in the bootup gui.
All simple because they have known hardware they're going on to, no need to screw around with drivers or anything.
Maybe microsoft should work on making windows more user friendly so you don't have to spend hours in the dos cli configuring irq numbers and io addresses, dealing with constant crashes and manually installing networking support just so they can get a workable graphic interface to check their mail with..
Oh wait, it's not 1993 anymore...
Linux these days is generally much easier to install than windows, and proprietary unix was always much easier than windows (because like macos, it came bundled with hardware designed to run it)
The 1% figure is for "desktop" use, which is the area in which linux is weakest... The iphone is an embedded device, and there are plenty of phones running linux not to mention other types of embedded device.
I have an older HP all in one scanner that doesn't even work with vista, yet the latest ubuntu picks it up out of the box... It did with with xp, but you had to install hp's rather bloated drivers.
You usually can't get food past security... And you certainly don't want to have any left when you land in a foreign country or you could face stiff fines for illegally importing food. This is also why the food is overpriced, since you have no other alternative.
Wine as a whole is currently a "bad" solution, but it is being incrementally improved... Should we scrap the whole lot until it can provide drop in compatibility for a given version of windows?
The first is a problem with windows uninstallers in general, not all of them but quite a few... If you delete or corrupt the uninstall program, or in some cases parts of whatever was installed, then the installer will often refuse to run... Sometimes you can reinstall the app first, and then perform an uninstall, but that wont always work (sometimes it tries to run the uninstaller first, sometimes it doesnt associate the existing files as belonging to it and thus doesnt remove them, sometimes it says its already installed and refuses to install again until you've removed the previous copy - which you cant do!)...
I find the HP drivers for mac just as bad... But at least for printers, OSX will include the drivers already and you don't need all the crappy little utility programs you get with the official driver.
The linux ones are open source and come with your distro's package management so they actually work quite well.
Exactly, it's what they *think* they want, because they aren't aware of anything better...
It's like an oppressive regime, the people think that regime is good because the regime constantly tells them so, and the regime also tells them that any other option is much worse so they won't even consider anything else... Only a very small number of people will actually do their own research to find out the truth.
Linux is very widely used in the server market, and yet still seems comparably few attacks there... Although there is plenty of malware, it is almost always targeted at servers and is manually installed onto the machine and typically only targets one or two distributions or kernel versions. There is very little malware that is going to affect an average user who's browsing websites or inserting arbitrary media.
There are plenty of tuners with WinXP stickers on them that would be useless for a consumer running XP... Why? Well, analog over the air, digital over the air, cable and satellite in both their analog and digital forms, hdtv versions of the above, what kind of tv are they hoping to tune? Do they want to receive encrypted channels? if so what kind of cam module do they need?
Also, if you are operating a shop that sells computers, why do you want your customers buying peripherals from other places? Wouldn't you prefer them coming back to *your shop* for addons? If you sell them linux then they need to be more careful what peripherals they buy, but that's where you profit because you can do that research and mark the linux compatible products in your shop. Also, if linux is as difficult to use as you claim, then why not sell them support services? Explain the advantages of linux, teach the users how to get the most from it (at a price), and sell them peripherals which are known to work with it. For the majority of users they would be better off, and more loyal customers as a result... Even some people i know who are hardcore gamers have dual boot systems, windows for gaming and linux for everything else. That way their windows system stays clean, and other apps do not hinder the performance of their games.
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Only thanks to actions like this attempting to shut off methods of communication, the only information these people will get about the outside world will be what their government supplies them...
So as far as the people are concerned, it is not their heroic government that needs to change, it is the evil foreign governments who are picking on them.. And were it not for their heroic government fighting their corner, these people would be even more cut off from the world.
Google's IM service is "totally in the cloud"... Sure, they *offer* a downloadable client for it, but you don't have to use theirs, they even encourage you to use other clients to connect to it. People in these countries wanting to connect can just download another client, in fact they could even use XMPP compliant servers located anywhere else to talk to google users... I speak to tons of gtalk users every day, from my own server.
Might be able to make a good business taking free software, slapping a huge price tag on it and selling it... Just include the src on the CD to comply with the GPL...
Laws like this exist to allow companies to profiteer... Starting legal action against the poor miserable and troubled is not profitable... Winning legal action against MS will get you a lot of money and might enable you to sell your company for a huge amount.
Ofcourse there is the risk that MS will simply buy this company so that they can use the patent themselves...
Indeed, but if enough of these cases are used to sting microsoft, that they decide to turn against software patents, then the fight against software patents gains a powerful ally.
I have a VAXServer 3100, the actual server model (no video capability)...
I did have a VAXStation 3100 as well and an original DEC monitor with seperate RGB cables, but it actually failed and was thrown away a year or so ago...
It has Ultrix 4.4 installed on it's 200mb internal SCSI disk, I tried connecting larger disks but it wouldn't touch anything bigger than 2gb i think.
I also have a DECStation, 3300 i believe, it runs the mips version of ultrix and osf/1 1.0
I still have an A4000 with its original keyboard, also an A3000...
Because of the stupid way government budgets work... If you don't spend all of the budget you've been given, then you get less the following year, so by the last month of the financial year the surplus needs to be gotten rid of in any way possible.
It's also labelled "Windows", just like "Windows Mobile", trying to play on people's familiarity with the desktop version, but it isn't compatible with any of the software available for the desktop version thus being extremely misleading.
Actually, you can use the unofficial (jailbroken) iphone sdk on non mac systems, infact you can even install gcc on the iphone itself and compile apps natively.
Can you develop zune software without having windows? I would say the iphone is one step up in this regard.
I say "evil" because i don't know enough about all of the sanctioned regimes to cast judgement on wether they are evil or not. And i have enough distrust of the western governments setting the sanctions to suspect that their definition of evil is based on financial factors rather than how the regime treats its people.
Buying a server in a foreign country to proxy their traffic requires very few resources, perhaps 100USD/month? And where do you think they will get that money from? Certainly not their own pockets, if you cost the regime financially they will just extract funds from their population to compensate.
When you put official sanctions on a regime you don't stop them trading... Take Burma, they still manufacture goods in sweat shops, only instead of selling them on the open market, they sell them to chinese criminals, who stamp "made in china" on them and sell them onwards. As the trades are less profitable, due to middlemen taking a cut, the government just takes a higher percentage of tax. The only people who lose out are the people doing the work.
Also since you are now dealing with criminals anyway, it's only a small step to start producing outright illegal goods such as drugs, since that can be the only way to make enough money to live.
Sanctions also strengthen the regime... Communications with the outside world are reduced, meaning often the only sources of information are the government sponsored ones... And the people know that sanctions exist which are hurting their ability to trade freely, the government tells the people how evil these sanctions are and how only they are fighting against them.
If you want to hurt an "evil" regime, don't isolate them, encourage trade and communication... If you are so sure you're regime is better than theirs, then open communication will let their people see your superior regime and be envious of it, and gradually push for change. This is why the Berlin Wall was built.
You can do pretty much the same with Linux, only there is less reason to because it already ships with a decent set of autoinstalled software and the update process isn't going to make you reboot more than once.
Doing an unattended install just means that you only have to mess with drivers and the activation key once...
But unless you're planning on installing several machines in one go, is it really worth all the extra effort? Most of the advantages you get from a slipstream install are already provided by linux without having to do any extra work.
Also creating a slipstream disk requires that you already have a working installation available to you.
You can't say windows is either easier or faster when you have to roll your own installation media, because you have to consider the time and effort required to do so. This simply wouldn't be possible for an end user, especially one who only has a single computer. Ready for the desktop indeed...
So for windows you have to write 5 drivers to cater to every possible version someone might be using...
On Linux you can write one driver and submit it to the kernel maintainers, and providing your driver is up to snuff it will get rolled in and the kernel developers will help maintain it.
What's better, an old driver that works on a new os because that os provides tons of backwards compatibility kludges, or a driver that's been updated along with the new os?
Also, if you release your driver this way you will get ports to other architectures for free... Look at the MIPS based netbooks, and the forthcoming ARM based ones, not to mention cellphones and games consoles that can run linux...
To bring up your point about printers, HP released open source drivers for their printers and scanners some years ago... These drivers work great with the latest versions of Linux, Ubuntu supports them out of the box... I have an old all in one printer/scanner for which HP have stopped providing official drivers (this means no 64bit, no vista, no leopard or osx/x86).. So to use that printer with a proprietary os i need a 32bit xp or a ppc based osx 10.4, yet it works flawlessly with my 64bit quad core ubuntu box. When this printer dies on me or i just need a newer one, i'm far more likely to buy another HP because the brand has earned a level of trust from me.
SunOS 4 was pretty easy providing you had a sun branded cdrom to install it from, it actually used to check the vendor string of the cd and wouldn't kick other brands (i had a toshiba) into 512 byte blocksize mode... But i know what you mean about third party disks, having to manually input the cylinder information etc.
Ultrix was trivially easy, boot from cd, say yes a couple of times...
IRIX was easy, click on the "install from cd" option in the bootup gui.
All simple because they have known hardware they're going on to, no need to screw around with drivers or anything.
Maybe microsoft should work on making windows more user friendly so you don't have to spend hours in the dos cli configuring irq numbers and io addresses, dealing with constant crashes and manually installing networking support just so they can get a workable graphic interface to check their mail with..
Oh wait, it's not 1993 anymore...
Linux these days is generally much easier to install than windows, and proprietary unix was always much easier than windows (because like macos, it came bundled with hardware designed to run it)
The 1% figure is for "desktop" use, which is the area in which linux is weakest... The iphone is an embedded device, and there are plenty of phones running linux not to mention other types of embedded device.
I have an older HP all in one scanner that doesn't even work with vista, yet the latest ubuntu picks it up out of the box... It did with with xp, but you had to install hp's rather bloated drivers.
You usually can't get food past security... And you certainly don't want to have any left when you land in a foreign country or you could face stiff fines for illegally importing food.
This is also why the food is overpriced, since you have no other alternative.
Wine as a whole is currently a "bad" solution, but it is being incrementally improved... Should we scrap the whole lot until it can provide drop in compatibility for a given version of windows?
The first is a problem with windows uninstallers in general, not all of them but quite a few... If you delete or corrupt the uninstall program, or in some cases parts of whatever was installed, then the installer will often refuse to run... Sometimes you can reinstall the app first, and then perform an uninstall, but that wont always work (sometimes it tries to run the uninstaller first, sometimes it doesnt associate the existing files as belonging to it and thus doesnt remove them, sometimes it says its already installed and refuses to install again until you've removed the previous copy - which you cant do!)...
I find the HP drivers for mac just as bad... But at least for printers, OSX will include the drivers already and you don't need all the crappy little utility programs you get with the official driver.
The linux ones are open source and come with your distro's package management so they actually work quite well.
There were tv addons for existing games consoles years ago... I believe the sega genesis had one available for it, and the ps3 certainly does.
Exactly, it's what they *think* they want, because they aren't aware of anything better...
It's like an oppressive regime, the people think that regime is good because the regime constantly tells them so, and the regime also tells them that any other option is much worse so they won't even consider anything else... Only a very small number of people will actually do their own research to find out the truth.
Linux is very widely used in the server market, and yet still seems comparably few attacks there... Although there is plenty of malware, it is almost always targeted at servers and is manually installed onto the machine and typically only targets one or two distributions or kernel versions. There is very little malware that is going to affect an average user who's browsing websites or inserting arbitrary media.
There are plenty of tuners with WinXP stickers on them that would be useless for a consumer running XP... Why? Well, analog over the air, digital over the air, cable and satellite in both their analog and digital forms, hdtv versions of the above, what kind of tv are they hoping to tune? Do they want to receive encrypted channels? if so what kind of cam module do they need?
Also, if you are operating a shop that sells computers, why do you want your customers buying peripherals from other places? Wouldn't you prefer them coming back to *your shop* for addons? If you sell them linux then they need to be more careful what peripherals they buy, but that's where you profit because you can do that research and mark the linux compatible products in your shop.
Also, if linux is as difficult to use as you claim, then why not sell them support services? Explain the advantages of linux, teach the users how to get the most from it (at a price), and sell them peripherals which are known to work with it. For the majority of users they would be better off, and more loyal customers as a result... Even some people i know who are hardcore gamers have dual boot systems, windows for gaming and linux for everything else. That way their windows system stays clean, and other apps do not hinder the performance of their games.