Another very strong issue in this is that many games have to develop at breakneck speeds in order to be "first on the market" before a rival releases something similar enough that when people play that game, your game is too similar to warrant buying for a different game experience. This ends up with the situation mentioned in the linked articals... you have to have a dedicated bunch of developers and artists who can spend 80 hours per week for years at a time, potentially, in order to get the game out the door before someone else scoops you. Making modern games is a huge investment risk. You put a *lot* of money up front paying for the developers and artists with the hopes of getting some return on it when it is released. To be competitive in that market, you have to be able to make sure that you can make ends meet for the duration of the project and that requires payment up front for salaries and folks purchasing the product when it is released. Neither of which typically would figure into the F/OSS model of software.
Why would this be a Windows killer? These solutions have been around for years on Windows (and in X itself). I can't really see where all the "innovation" is. Five years ago I was administering Windows database servers remotely from almost 2500 miles away with no problems whatsoever using various methods (Windows Terminal Server, PCAnywhere, and now there is another web based one that is even more responsive called gotomypc that we've started using).
Ditto * 2. I waited until the S939 was released and the S754s dropped as a result, then I bought two m/b, cpu, memory sets to upgrade two of my home machines.
I have three PCs with 1G each. My laptop has 768M. I have another PC with 512M and one more with 384M, but that one is gonna be upgraded soon. I just got rid of two PCs (which were upgraded), both of which had 768M. 512M is the minimum I put in a machine these days (that 512M one above replaced a 768M one... for now... I'm going to get another 512M for it eventually) and I'm more likely to put 1G in it, no matter what OS it runs (I have both Windows and Linux boxes at home).
Unless you have the support in-house, you aren't going to even get through the phone menu system in 5 minutes if you have to call support on the phone;) Even if you have a direct number, 5 minutes is a very short amount of time.
If it is a hardware issue, you'd better have spare parts locally if you want 5 minute response time. Spare HDD for that hot-swap RAID array, spare/redundant/failover machines, even multiple ISPs for the network.
If some server/software is "down", then other than a restart of the software, 5 minutes isn't going to get you far either... database corrupted? restore from backup?
How many issues have you helped solve within 5 minutes that wasn't simply "reboot" or "restart the service" type?
While that may be true for personal use, business use is a whole other story. Are you going to take a bunch of highly paid engineers and waste their time by having them go onto newsgroups instead of just getting support and getting the solution fast? Are you going to tell angry customers that your system is down, and if they could please wait till you google for the solution?
Actually... Google and Google Groups are the very first thing I look at when I run into a snag. Usually someone else has run into the same thing and either solved it or advanced it to a state further than I am at. If I can't find the solution within 30 minutes using Google and the like, then I start thinking about calling tech support. So far, I haven't had to call tech support for anything in quite a while.
Not only that, but most of the F/OSS support is online already either on Google+Groups or on their own web site. The only time I've had to call tech support in the last few years is to call Microsoft about some serious bug issues (like one in MSSQLServer that I found a few years ago).
(You want me to tell you how to use the software, then pay me).
This only works if you are the only player in that niche for the software. As soon as someone gets fed up with your cryptic, practically unusable software (after all, you'll have to purposefully make your app hard to use to get folks to pay for this kind of support) and writes their own with good help and easy to use, you're out of business.
After all these years, the concept of being allowed to read, modify and sell the source code is still alien to most Windows users.
Not only that, most Windows users aren't computer technical folks. These "features" are non-features to them and offer little/no incentive to use the software for those reasons. They don't care or want to be able to read, modify, or sell the source code. They just want their program to work. The only real "feature" that attracts these users to F/OSS is the price tag, which is to say they can download it for free (as in beer - no cost). The other "features" you mention (allowed to read/modify/sell the source) are simply noise to them. They could care less.
The only time you could enforce it (which would be what the advertisers who pay you to show their adverts will require) is during the download time. Giving the source away means that folks will disable any pop-ups or the like pretty fast. With no guarantee to advertisers that anyone will see the add except for those updates, which you will probably have to force just so folks will see the advertisements, won't entice advertisers to give you much money to advertise for them.
Advertisers pay for exposure... the more exposure, the more money they pay. If you can't guarantee them any exposure, they won't pay.
Paying for the CD is usually just enough to actually cover the cost of the media... a few $$ at most. It's hard to get folks to pay for tech support when it can be had for free everywhere else (newsgroups, web searches, etc.) It isn't like hardware tech support where you provide an actual service like if a HDD fails, someone will be waiting for you at the open of business the next day to replace it for you.
Advertising has to be seen/heard to be effective. Comments in the code will not be sufficient. The ads will have to be inherent in the GUI or something... like your background has to be like one of those billboards that changes every few minutes. Maybe some add has to pop up first before any application you activate runs...
Another example of how strong anonymity is... Catholics regularly participate in confession. Confession is given in a little closet with a window in it that you can't see who is on the other side. Which confession do you think would be easier? this one or where you stand up and face the priest?
I think it has a lot to do with maturity (note that I didn't say "age"). You get immature folks on the internet, no matter how geeky, they will act an ass. Mature folks tend to do this less. I've seen plenty of geeks who are immature.
The anonymity is the other key. A poster above said that he isn't afraid of anybody... I would bet it'd be a lot more difficult for him to stand face to face with anyone and voice a differing opinion that it is across the 'net. Easy test: call someone a racist name over the 'net on a chat room. Now walk up to a stranger on the street and try it...
I didn't see anywhere in there that said they even asked Microsoft to do anything about it or that Microsoft had refused to do anything about it.
I could just as easily write a program that won't run on Windows and not even try to port it to Windows and start claiming that Windows won't run it because it isn't Open.
Until I see something that says that Microsoft refused to make changes to Windows that HP suggested, I'll chalk this up to a publicity campaign by HP to join the M$ bashing bandwagon and make themselves look better to the F/OSS community.
>linux is by far, a more complex OS to >setup/use/configure then windows
Is it? Really? I just poped in a mandrakemove cd, clicked three times and in a couple of minutes i had a perfectly configured linux running on my machine.
Yeah... now get around to the "using" part of that parent mentions...
Ease of installation does not cover things like: - no easily discernable method to menus - few common practices between applications on where things are or how they behave (no platform standard... funny thing... folks rant and rave about having standards... but only for data... and if you say you want a GUI standard, they get up in arms... they want choices, but only for some things, the others shouldn't have choices) - little commonality between distributions in the way that the distribution is managed and configured... try explaining to someone who uses Mandrake how to configure the network by using only SuSE terminology and application references... - etc.
The appearance is (and it is somewhat true) that Linux is more of a loose collection of programs than it is a work platform, from the users' perspective. Unless you are doing command line stuff, things don't interact among each other that well... many times, even simple things like cut-n-paste don't work "right" between applications not written by the same group. In many cases, it seems very disorganized.
That's a legitimate avenue to pursue, in my opinion, as opposed to the ridiculous restrictions on advertising and other means by which government is trying to eliminate smoking.
The weight of the cost for government medical care for all of the people who smoke and can't afford to pay their own health bills or afford insurance that will cover it causes my taxes (I'm not a smoker although everyone else in my family is) to go up to support this harmful habit that others "choose" to do. I feel that if others can "choose" to keep this habit, then I should be able to "choose" whether or not to pay the taxes required to support their partaking of this habit.
Different architectures will use different amounts of memory for stuff. If the developers have to worry and deal with all this stuff, it isn't much different from doing the same sort of things in C or C++ (worrying about 32-bit vs. 64-bit integers and the like).
From my experiences, Java being cross platform is one of the major myths about Java.
In the hands of a skilled C++, as well a C, developer these things are actually not the issue you made them out to be.
That's a tautology.
The real issue is that a developer has to spend some time developing this skill, and it is essentially waste for solving most problems. The same developer could have learned something else with his time that makes him more productive.
I'd count "paying attention to details" a valuable skill and one that increases productivity.
Slashdot Mirror
Athlon 64 3000+ => fine
Dell Inspiron 8600 => fine
Shuttle SN41G2 => fine
Frankenstein P3-933 => fine
Shuttle SN41G2 => fine (yes, I have two of them)
Nothing you say here was invented by iTunes. Plenty of programs had these features long before iTunes was even a glint in Apple's eye.
This isn't Insightful at all. It's blind-eye by a clueless person.
Cryptography will die when the last human draws its breath. Er.... shouldn't that be third-to-last human?
Depends if you believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe or not... I guess they could know about encryption.
Another very strong issue in this is that many games have to develop at breakneck speeds in order to be "first on the market" before a rival releases something similar enough that when people play that game, your game is too similar to warrant buying for a different game experience. This ends up with the situation mentioned in the linked articals... you have to have a dedicated bunch of developers and artists who can spend 80 hours per week for years at a time, potentially, in order to get the game out the door before someone else scoops you. Making modern games is a huge investment risk. You put a *lot* of money up front paying for the developers and artists with the hopes of getting some return on it when it is released. To be competitive in that market, you have to be able to make sure that you can make ends meet for the duration of the project and that requires payment up front for salaries and folks purchasing the product when it is released. Neither of which typically would figure into the F/OSS model of software.
Why would this be a Windows killer? These solutions have been around for years on Windows (and in X itself). I can't really see where all the "innovation" is. Five years ago I was administering Windows database servers remotely from almost 2500 miles away with no problems whatsoever using various methods (Windows Terminal Server, PCAnywhere, and now there is another web based one that is even more responsive called gotomypc that we've started using).
Ditto * 2. I waited until the S939 was released and the S754s dropped as a result, then I bought two m/b, cpu, memory sets to upgrade two of my home machines.
I have three PCs with 1G each. My laptop has 768M. I have another PC with 512M and one more with 384M, but that one is gonna be upgraded soon. I just got rid of two PCs (which were upgraded), both of which had 768M. 512M is the minimum I put in a machine these days (that 512M one above replaced a 768M one... for now... I'm going to get another 512M for it eventually) and I'm more likely to put 1G in it, no matter what OS it runs (I have both Windows and Linux boxes at home).
Yeah, I meant "couldn't care less". To most Windows users, those aren't features at all.
Well... depends on what you are doing...
;) Even if you have a direct number, 5 minutes is a very short amount of time.
Unless you have the support in-house, you aren't going to even get through the phone menu system in 5 minutes if you have to call support on the phone
If it is a hardware issue, you'd better have spare parts locally if you want 5 minute response time. Spare HDD for that hot-swap RAID array, spare/redundant/failover machines, even multiple ISPs for the network.
If some server/software is "down", then other than a restart of the software, 5 minutes isn't going to get you far either... database corrupted? restore from backup?
How many issues have you helped solve within 5 minutes that wasn't simply "reboot" or "restart the service" type?
While that may be true for personal use, business use is a whole other story. Are you going to take a bunch of highly paid engineers and waste their time by having them go onto newsgroups instead of just getting support and getting the solution fast? Are you going to tell angry customers that your system is down, and if they could please wait till you google for the solution?
Actually... Google and Google Groups are the very first thing I look at when I run into a snag. Usually someone else has run into the same thing and either solved it or advanced it to a state further than I am at. If I can't find the solution within 30 minutes using Google and the like, then I start thinking about calling tech support. So far, I haven't had to call tech support for anything in quite a while.
Not only that, but most of the F/OSS support is online already either on Google+Groups or on their own web site. The only time I've had to call tech support in the last few years is to call Microsoft about some serious bug issues (like one in MSSQLServer that I found a few years ago).
(You want me to tell you how to use the software, then pay me).
This only works if you are the only player in that niche for the software. As soon as someone gets fed up with your cryptic, practically unusable software (after all, you'll have to purposefully make your app hard to use to get folks to pay for this kind of support) and writes their own with good help and easy to use, you're out of business.
After all these years, the concept of being allowed to read, modify and sell the source code is still alien to most Windows users.
Not only that, most Windows users aren't computer technical folks. These "features" are non-features to them and offer little/no incentive to use the software for those reasons. They don't care or want to be able to read, modify, or sell the source code. They just want their program to work. The only real "feature" that attracts these users to F/OSS is the price tag, which is to say they can download it for free (as in beer - no cost). The other "features" you mention (allowed to read/modify/sell the source) are simply noise to them. They could care less.
The only time you could enforce it (which would be what the advertisers who pay you to show their adverts will require) is during the download time. Giving the source away means that folks will disable any pop-ups or the like pretty fast. With no guarantee to advertisers that anyone will see the add except for those updates, which you will probably have to force just so folks will see the advertisements, won't entice advertisers to give you much money to advertise for them.
Advertisers pay for exposure... the more exposure, the more money they pay. If you can't guarantee them any exposure, they won't pay.
Paying for the CD is usually just enough to actually cover the cost of the media... a few $$ at most. It's hard to get folks to pay for tech support when it can be had for free everywhere else (newsgroups, web searches, etc.) It isn't like hardware tech support where you provide an actual service like if a HDD fails, someone will be waiting for you at the open of business the next day to replace it for you.
Advertising has to be seen/heard to be effective. Comments in the code will not be sufficient. The ads will have to be inherent in the GUI or something... like your background has to be like one of those billboards that changes every few minutes. Maybe some add has to pop up first before any application you activate runs...
Sounds fun and wonderful...
Another example of how strong anonymity is... Catholics regularly participate in confession. Confession is given in a little closet with a window in it that you can't see who is on the other side. Which confession do you think would be easier? this one or where you stand up and face the priest?
I think it has a lot to do with maturity (note that I didn't say "age"). You get immature folks on the internet, no matter how geeky, they will act an ass. Mature folks tend to do this less. I've seen plenty of geeks who are immature.
The anonymity is the other key. A poster above said that he isn't afraid of anybody... I would bet it'd be a lot more difficult for him to stand face to face with anyone and voice a differing opinion that it is across the 'net. Easy test: call someone a racist name over the 'net on a chat room. Now walk up to a stranger on the street and try it...
in a pool of sharks
Yeah... but the sharks with friggin laser beams on their heads might shoot you out of the sky!
Actually, when I disabled the graphical screen savers and told it to just blank the screen, I didn't have any more lockups.
I didn't see anywhere in there that said they even asked Microsoft to do anything about it or that Microsoft had refused to do anything about it.
I could just as easily write a program that won't run on Windows and not even try to port it to Windows and start claiming that Windows won't run it because it isn't Open.
Until I see something that says that Microsoft refused to make changes to Windows that HP suggested, I'll chalk this up to a publicity campaign by HP to join the M$ bashing bandwagon and make themselves look better to the F/OSS community.
NVidia has very good linux drivers
Ahhh... so that's why FC2 kept hanging to the point of power cycle... I'd hate to see what the ATi drivers do then....
>linux is by far, a more complex OS to
>setup/use/configure then windows
Is it? Really? I just poped in a mandrakemove cd, clicked three times and in a couple of minutes i had a perfectly configured linux running on my machine.
Yeah... now get around to the "using" part of that parent mentions...
Ease of installation does not cover things like:
- no easily discernable method to menus
- few common practices between applications on where things are or how they behave (no platform standard... funny thing... folks rant and rave about having standards... but only for data... and if you say you want a GUI standard, they get up in arms... they want choices, but only for some things, the others shouldn't have choices)
- little commonality between distributions in the way that the distribution is managed and configured... try explaining to someone who uses Mandrake how to configure the network by using only SuSE terminology and application references...
- etc.
The appearance is (and it is somewhat true) that Linux is more of a loose collection of programs than it is a work platform, from the users' perspective. Unless you are doing command line stuff, things don't interact among each other that well... many times, even simple things like cut-n-paste don't work "right" between applications not written by the same group. In many cases, it seems very disorganized.
That's a legitimate avenue to pursue, in my opinion, as opposed to the ridiculous restrictions on advertising and other means by which government is trying to eliminate smoking.
The weight of the cost for government medical care for all of the people who smoke and can't afford to pay their own health bills or afford insurance that will cover it causes my taxes (I'm not a smoker although everyone else in my family is) to go up to support this harmful habit that others "choose" to do. I feel that if others can "choose" to keep this habit, then I should be able to "choose" whether or not to pay the taxes required to support their partaking of this habit.
Different architectures will use different amounts of memory for stuff. If the developers have to worry and deal with all this stuff, it isn't much different from doing the same sort of things in C or C++ (worrying about 32-bit vs. 64-bit integers and the like).
From my experiences, Java being cross platform is one of the major myths about Java.
In the hands of a skilled C++, as well a C, developer these things are actually not the issue you made them out to be.
That's a tautology.
The real issue is that a developer has to spend some time developing this skill, and it is essentially waste for solving most problems. The same developer could have learned something else with his time that makes him more productive.
I'd count "paying attention to details" a valuable skill and one that increases productivity.