Really? My admiral swore blind that ATI was going to acquire SGI lock stock and barrel. I'm with him since ATI is obviously the better company than is the nVidia. nVidia is too friendly to open source to be solvent for much longer. ATI is more business friendly. If you were SGI who would you want o get bought up by, the captain of industry or the commie vegetarian place down the street?
How about a big fat load of NOTHING. The average home user is not adventurous enough to be curious. The average home user knows little about how the PC runs using Windows. In fact that average home user when faced with a PC that has some Linux distro on it with KDE or GNOME will ask you, "What version of Windows is that"? Or... "Is that a Mac"? The average user (thanks to MS's huge marketing and PR budget) has no idea that there is an alternative to the OS, let alone nearly all of their applications. Ask the average user what word processor they use and they will happily report: "Microsoft Word. I think". Look at their machine and they very well may have Word. Or Works. Or Wordperfect. Or some other company's word processor. I speak from the experience of knowing someone who got a Dell bundled with Wordperfect and they still called it MS Word. The average user will not believe you when you tell them you can give them a system with every application they would possibly need and they dont' have to spend a dime on the software. They will assume you're a pirate. They might even think open source/free software is piracy. (Yeah. It's piracy about as much as it is when I build a chair or table at home with my own wood and tools and deprive some poor little corporation of their hard earned cash by not buying their crappy pressboard table or chair) The average user wants to be able to buy common hardware at Best Buy or CompUSA, plug it in and use it. Typically this means CHEAP hardware which is usually NOT supported on most Linux distros since the manfuacturers refuse to release the specs for FOSS devs to build support. This is NOT a failing of Linux, it's a failing of the hardware manufacturer to cooperate, understand or see beyond their share of the market. Because of this, the average user will assume that "Linux sucks" because it didn't work with the $10 printer they got that uses $40 ink cartridges or the $20 scanner that plugs into the USB port but needs a Windows driver for half of it's brain. If the average user could be educated enough to realize that you DON'T NEED to go to the big box store to get new software when you use Linux, that would, at least, be a step in the right direction. But mark my words... if that ever happened, MS would put up an online "free" repository of some of their apps beyond the ones bundled with the OS or service packs. And it would be a "Click and Run" type of store too. I honestly don't see this changing unless:
A. The distros unite (which would suck for us) B. We get one central PR campaign that is distro agnostic (slightly better but a huge task due to the differences in distros) C. Most of you shave your beards, cut your hair and get better clothes (I've got an inner-Steve Jobs myself and he makes it impossible for facial hair to grow)
Oh yeah... lose the sandles too.;P
NOTE: I am a 100% Linux user. I try to educate everyone I know about Linux if they are interested. I find that about 25% of the time they're interested. My wife, my parents and a friend of mine are all Linux users to varying degrees. My parent's and wife actually use it as their desktop and my friend uses it as his server at home> I just think that rather than concentrating on "winning the desktop" the focus should be 95% on writting better software and 5% writting better PR in a unified manner. How about this? Someone puts together a distro for PR folks that is basically a LiveCD with an installer and the tools to make some wicked PR. Someone else hosts it with an eye to hosting the wicked PR in the future. And we get some new PR people who want to get a little exposure doing a large campaign? Oh well... it's a thought. Anyone know if Edina Monsoon wants in?
You are correct sir. It appears that there is some disagreement about which form of abbreviation gets pronounced as a word (acronym) and which one gets prnounced as individual letters (initialism). Which also leads me to the question and supposition... you're not an American, are you? I would have to guess that there are VERY FEW Americans who know these distinctions since they aren't taught in primary education, high school or college courses. Now what was I saying originally?:\
USA is not an abbreviation. And abbreviation is something like: 'abbr.' or 'Jun, Jul, Aug'. Abbreviation meaning to make something brief. The U.S.A. is an acronym. I guess I should start saying "Ooh-Suh"?;P
But the cars aren't necessarily better performers either. Stick shift still wins out for efficiency every time. People are much better at doing variable things manually than machines are at doing things automatically. Gear shifting is a variable activity. If a knowledgable user was able to manage more of the car's functions, the car would be far more effiecient than any automatic system. Once again, just plain and simple fact.
But you're talking about a business environment. I'm talking about the person doing something REAL at home with their computer. As much as I can, I use FOSS exclusively at work. But I'm one of those people who CAN be productive because I know what I'm doing with FOSS. However, as much as I wish others would use the software the same way I do, they can't because they don't have the experience or knowledge. It's a plain fact that to do the job right, you need to have the right tools and know how to use them. That is why it is a user problem. Most users don't know how to use the tools nor should they even be attempting to use them.
Actually... back when I was first new to computers (coming from a very 50s upbringing even though I was born in 1970) I DID call SCSI "ess-see-ess-eye". I continued to do that even when I heard others say "scuzzy" because I felt it was impromper to pronounce an acronym as a word. After all no one runs around saying, "I'm from the ooh-suh" as opposed to the "You-ess-ay". I did the same with GUI for a long time as well. In fact I still prefer the sound of "Gee-You-Eye" to "gooey". Turning acronyms into words, to me, is the sign of laziness. We should all subject ourselves to massive amounts of inconvenience and discomfort every day in order to be more proper about things. And no, I'm not a Victorian.
Well there's a bigger problem. The entire set of concepts and licenses behind Free and Open Source Software is quite complex so that even most Slashdotters don't really know what they're talking about in this regard. Just a nit BTW... "FOSS" is an acronym like USA. How many people walk around daily saying "The United States of America" and never saying "the USA"? Or how about SCSI to bring this closer to home. Have you EVER heard anyone actually say Small Computer Systems Interface repeatedly instead of SCSI? The fact is that acronyms have to be learned in any field and the computer field is rife with them. VGA, BMP, JPEG, MPEG, PCI, etc... If someone is interested in Free/Open Source Software, then they are going to have to learn what the acronym means. Plain and simple.
Getting back to the licenses and concepts though... think about the amount of people who hear "Linux" and think that it includes Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and the like. I know that one of my supervisors thinks that "Linux" means ANY software that is given away at no charge. But how do you explain to "Joe Average" that Linux is the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system which is packaged by multiple projects and vendors as a distribution? And beyond that, how do you get people to realize that RedHat, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, SuSE and all the others are NOT just GNU/Linux, but are various distributions of GNU/Linux? And how do you get them to see the value in this? That's the problem. It's not FOSS at all, it's the ignorance of most users these days and we have "ease of use" lies to thank for that. There was a time in the United States of America when people were raised to respect intelligence and asipre to it. Today, they are raised to respect earning power and asipre to "being rich". That's why people don't get FOSS. They're being conditioned to be the ultimate consumers instead of producers themselves. And that's just the way business wants it.
...exclusive concepts. However this is highly subjective since "quality software" is defined in different ways by different users. Witness:
1. Today, I consider quality software to be very flexible and to allow for extensive CLI interfaces as well as highly intricate GUI interfaces. Think of combining tools like KDE Konsole, Enlightenment 0.7 Desktop, GNU Screen, LVM, and Xen virtualization. 2. When I was a new PC user (circa 1994) I considered quality software to be exclusively GUI based, object oriented (even though I didn't really know what that meant at the time), statically linked binaries (just a single executable with everything built in and no lib dependencies or "DLL Hell"), and everything had to be a metaphor to real world objects. 3. Mr. Middle Management considers quality software to be what all other Mr. Middle Managers use. Regardless of whether the program actually works well or works at all, if all the others have it, then he's got to have it too. 4. Mr. Joe User believes that quality software is something that "just works" from his point of view. It might be the most inefficient, spyware-ridden piece of crap, but if it allows him to do task X with little or no effort, then it's "quality" as far as he's concerned and he doesn't want to know about better ways even if they will help him save money, and get the most out of his computer.
So the problem isn't with FOSS. The problem lies with the users. Unless you're willing to work harder to get the most out of your computing experience, you will probably shy away from FOSS. Besides, who says that FOSS is primarily trying to get more mindshare? FOSS doesn't exist to be popular. It exists to do a job and do it well. In many cases, doing a job well is something that only professionals and hobbyists can do. (Ugh, I hate the term "hobbyist" because it belittles the importance of these advanced users) And this will never change.
Right on the money my friend. The problem is that people have been sold a bill of goods when they were told by MS that "computing is now easy". While the GUIs might help make things easier for low skill administrators for many tasks that used to require skill, there is no substitute for a thorough understanding of the underlying technology. One main flaw in today's IT world is that the users are driving technology. While this is liberating for them, it's like letting a wet behind the ears new teen driver drive in Mexico City just after getting their license.
The users *THINK* they know how things should work but have no comprehension of just how impossible some of their desires are since computers AREN'T inherently easy. Those of us with the skill to work with the underlying systems (I'm no genius mind you, but I'm a bit better off solving even Windows problems than most Windows admins are and I'm a *nix only guy at this point) know this all too well. We curse things like Rapid Application Development daily since it takes people who SHOULD be just users and makes them *THINK* they are programmers. Worse yet, it adds arrogance to their disposition so that they believe that their bloated muddled crap is on par with the elegant solutions written decades earlier by people who knew a little something about how computers work. And when they believe that, then they start expecting to be paid like kings when all they truly deserve is a good horse whipping for their stupidity in algorithms and no supper.
However, there is a deeper problem at work here. Most of the human population is not and cannot be technically minded. There are precious few of the technically minded in the world and they tend to be locked up in back rooms of IT departments working on the most vital systems of their organizations because nobody else can do it or learn it.
...just what we need. More mindless Google bashing. Sorry, but no matter what you dorks do, Google just isn't the evil company that MS is. If they were they'd be turning over much higher stock values and enforcing lock-ins on their users. Sorry, but if I wanted a daily dose of "evil overlord" I'd be all over MS. Google is more like the middle manager who "gets it".
Heh. Yeah. But would you really want to? I imagine that since the demand for his autograph is low, his bank balance has recently reached (-$750). Up from (-$768). Unless you like having access to a bank account owned by a penniless programmer... (Said in jest of course since I rather like R.M.S.)
1. You get your internet access from AOL 2. They get their access from a metaISP. Let's just say AT&T for simplicty 3. AT&T is finacially related to... let's say Barnes & Noble Bookstores 4. You want to hit Amazon to buy a book 5. Barnes & Noble tell AT&T to provided the slowest possible access (modem speeds) to their competitors and lightning fast access to Barnes and Noble. AT&T Complies 6. You try to get to Amazon.com and you either get a timeout or the site renders VERY SLOWLY 7. This makes you think that Amazon sucks, so you ditch them and go through others until you find this really great bookseller online: Barnes & Noble
Nevermind that their prices are higher and they don't provide access to used books and media. So you just got hamstrung. Now... let's say you discover through friends who have excellent experiences with Amazon that you are missing out. What do you do? You could change ISPs to one who is a partner or in some other way is financially related to Amazon. But then... your access to your favorite news or sports site slows to a crawl. That's how this is going to impact you. Nice huh?
...the so-called "darknets" will grow in number. I've been doing my own for the past five years. Originally I started off with using simple OpenSSH tunnels to forward ports from home to work, parents to my house, friends to my house and vice-versa (with respect to all listed sources and desintations). Then I discovered OpenVPN and started using that to do the same thing. What this means is that I can stream whatever I want to whomever I allow onto my VPN in whatever format I choose and the FCC/RIAA/MPAA can't do a damn thing about it. As far as the net is concerned, anyone sniffing my traffic will just see a lot of traffic on a random port. They can't read my stream at all unless I allow them in. It's not that hard to implement and I believe this is the "next big thing" for the kind of user who wants the power to publish content without limits. American business sheisters, lawmakers and the government are currently a bunch of fools who think they can get away with controlling the general public and not get a backlash. It's coming and it's going to hit them hard...
Your comment brings up an unrelated topic BTW. That of the lack of humor on Slashdot. I had a rip roaring good time last year with a particularly long thread that between me, myself and another friend in which we pretended to be those looney audiophiles who think that digital audio is a curse. We went into the "green marker on CDs, gold plated power cords, green stickers on the walls due to resonant frequencies of the color green and their interaction with sound" territory. It was a lot of fun and it pissed a lot of other people off. We had good arguments about why cassette tapes are much better than MP3s and why reel-to-reel systems with vacuum tubes will always beat the pants off of solid state and crappy 3/8" cassette tape. How come there aren't more people who join in these reindeer games?
There is only one thing to say here: "Jack of all trades, master of none". I don't see how any reasonably usable, compact device can properly do all things that a user might want. When you use a camera for taking really good photos, you want a real viewfinder that you can put your eye up too. The LCD displays suck for proper framing of a shot. To accomodate that, you can't use the form factor of a cell phone and ergonomically succeed. On the other hand, if you did get the proper form factor for a camera, it's very likely that you wouldn't have a decent cell phone form factor anymore. Whereas, most of us want digital music players to be pretty non-intrusive and preferrably totally hidden. The form factor to accomplish that can be closer to a cell phone but that's not ideal. The ideal is to make it as small as possible and once you do that, you're out of the cell phone and camera realm in terms of usability and restrictions on the UI. Here's when I'll be excited:
1. When the camera devices can use any/all of the following in wireless mode for taking photos and videos: my eyes, my contact lenses, my glasses 2. When the music player can bypass my ears and go straight to the auditory nerve (again wireless) 3. When the form factor of the device can shape shift to properly accomodate the function 4. When my eyes are the display device with heads up display functionality
Of course that's probably going to happen closer to the end of my life than now since I'm 36 and I don't see anything like that being mass marketed until 2040 at earliest.
Are you off your nut man!? You must obviously be an MS astroturfer because what you just spewed is only so much MS apologist crap. The fact is that most users lose data whenever they migrate from one platform or machine to another. They typically either backup the wrong things (think about people who backup *.lnk files thinking they're burning the real data to CD but saving LOTS of disk space) or have no clue where their data resides. Unless you're a low level computer tech, you haven't a prayer of migrating your Favorites, E-mail or Office configuration from one box to another. Now, with Windows Live, MS is "centralizing" the data for users which seems nice on the surface. But users will be users and when (not if) something else comes along that they're more interested in, they aren't going to have much help from MS migrating away to a competing service. Again... unless they really know what they're doing (which is a very small percentage of users), they're going to lose their data once again. Or... at best they'll be forced to do stupid things like browse to each of their blog entries, copy and paste the entries a page at a time into Word, recover any links that may be obscured by the hypertext and rebuild their blog elswhere. That is if there isn't some kind of copyright clause in the EULA like there supposedly is with MSN Messenger. Yes, that's right, MS owns copyright on everything you type via IM. I imagine there is some fine print somewhere for Windows Live that gives them the same rights over a user's content on Windows Live. Remember, big business doesn't want the average person to have the power to publish. They just want to make it look like the average person has that power. People don't have complaints about MS products? Yeah right. Knob.
From TFA: "The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live. They would likely create a Windows Live Messenger account, start a blog and organize their favorites under this e-mail account -- especially if they plan to continue using it, Microsoft says."
Just think of how many people (Joe Average types, not geeks) started off with DOS/Windows 3.1 machines and built up a whole lot of data on their boxes between the original release and even up to a year or two after Windows 95 was released. Then when the time came to move to a new PC, remember how all of those users migrated their data from the Windows 3.1 box to Windows 95. They were very painstaking in their attention to detail with their precious data, lovingly learning about the file formats and required conversions and then running test migrations before committing to the moved data. And when some of them moved to Macintoshes when the iMacs came out, they were even very good about carrying their data and converting properly there too. Yes, I believe the Microsoft is right in thinking that they will have lifelong customers by 0wnz0ring their user's data and keeping them from using third rate products from competitors. The day and age of people wanting to try alternatives to the mainstream products, have come and gone. Everyone is perfectly happy with the products and services that MS gives them these days and really has no interest in alternatives like Firefox, Google, Mac OS X or Linux. So MS can say this with confidence since there will never be a day when their users might want to migrate their Windows Live data to another service.
The Web is NOT a platform. I repeat. The web is NOT a platform. There are TONS of applications that the web is not suited to support in any kind of "Web OS" because of the limitations of current bandwidth, computing power and of course the archaic web browser itself. A few examples:
1. Audio/music production software. I wouldn't want to have to use a slow and low powered web application to do audio editing or multitrack recording. Unless we all had 10 gigbit links to the internet with super low latency and the server end was running 10 terahertz CPUs in a 1024 node cluster, it could just be stupid to do this kind of work with a web application.
2. CAD. The same limitations with even more impact considering how graphically intensive this sort of thing is. Hell an X session over a cable modem between two locations would perform better than a stupid web based CAD application!
3. Video/Film editing and production. Sorry, but this is definitely ALWAYS going to be in the realm of running on a REAL OS locally (or at least on the same LAN). You can't "Webify" this type of application. It's just idiotic.
Sure, you can maybe make a few cutesy apps for word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail and the like, but how useful is that to REAL computer users? Not very. It'll keep Joe and Jane Average happy, but that's NOT an OS you're providing there... it's just a set of web services possibly in a unified, clunky "desktop" of a sort. Face it ALL web browsers are ugly. They were designed primarily to display textual content and hypertext. We've bolted on all sorts of additional functionality that browsers are ill suited for. What moron would actually want to run an application or OS inside another application that CAN'T be put out of the way (UI wise)? Even when you're running a virtual machine, you have the option in nearly every case to run it fullscreen so that you don't see the underlying app. NO web browser out there allows this and even if there was one, you'd still have the problem of being forced to get back to the browser occasionally to do something browser specific that you can't do from within the "Web OS". What a phenomenally stupid idea!
I say we ditch the entire concept of web browser and build something from the ground up that is MEANT to be an actual internet based OS that REALLY shares resources like RAM and computing power with security built in from the ground up and an eye towards taking advantage of available bandwidth but being able to scale up when more bandwidth is available in the future. There's already stuff out there that does some of this, why not just dedicate some work to actually making it a dedicated app that can run on any locally hosted platform and joins the "hive mind". Sort of like P2P for hardware resources (a la Seti).
I stand corrected. In my quest to find the link, I found that this is a rumor from an "insider". Apple is expected to make an API to run Mac applications on Windows. There was a lot of discussion about this rumor last week indicating that a lot of people don't believe anything from the macosrumors site anymore... I also found this in my search which indicates that just the opposite may be true. MS might be releasing an API to run Windows applications on multiple platforms. I can see them shifting from an OS vendor to "THE" application vendor as their next plan of attack. Since, at this point OSes are pretty much worthless when you consider how little distinction there is between them anymore for the average user.
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Really? My admiral swore blind that ATI was going to acquire SGI lock stock and barrel. I'm with him since ATI is obviously the better company than is the nVidia. nVidia is too friendly to open source to be solvent for much longer. ATI is more business friendly. If you were SGI who would you want o get bought up by, the captain of industry or the commie vegetarian place down the street?
How about a big fat load of NOTHING. The average home user is not adventurous enough to be curious. The average home user knows little about how the PC runs using Windows. In fact that average home user when faced with a PC that has some Linux distro on it with KDE or GNOME will ask you, "What version of Windows is that"? Or... "Is that a Mac"? The average user (thanks to MS's huge marketing and PR budget) has no idea that there is an alternative to the OS, let alone nearly all of their applications. Ask the average user what word processor they use and they will happily report: "Microsoft Word. I think". Look at their machine and they very well may have Word. Or Works. Or Wordperfect. Or some other company's word processor. I speak from the experience of knowing someone who got a Dell bundled with Wordperfect and they still called it MS Word. The average user will not believe you when you tell them you can give them a system with every application they would possibly need and they dont' have to spend a dime on the software. They will assume you're a pirate. They might even think open source/free software is piracy. (Yeah. It's piracy about as much as it is when I build a chair or table at home with my own wood and tools and deprive some poor little corporation of their hard earned cash by not buying their crappy pressboard table or chair) The average user wants to be able to buy common hardware at Best Buy or CompUSA, plug it in and use it. Typically this means CHEAP hardware which is usually NOT supported on most Linux distros since the manfuacturers refuse to release the specs for FOSS devs to build support. This is NOT a failing of Linux, it's a failing of the hardware manufacturer to cooperate, understand or see beyond their share of the market. Because of this, the average user will assume that "Linux sucks" because it didn't work with the $10 printer they got that uses $40 ink cartridges or the $20 scanner that plugs into the USB port but needs a Windows driver for half of it's brain. If the average user could be educated enough to realize that you DON'T NEED to go to the big box store to get new software when you use Linux, that would, at least, be a step in the right direction. But mark my words... if that ever happened, MS would put up an online "free" repository of some of their apps beyond the ones bundled with the OS or service packs. And it would be a "Click and Run" type of store too. I honestly don't see this changing unless:
;P
A. The distros unite (which would suck for us)
B. We get one central PR campaign that is distro agnostic (slightly better but a huge task due to the differences in distros)
C. Most of you shave your beards, cut your hair and get better clothes (I've got an inner-Steve Jobs myself and he makes it impossible for facial hair to grow)
Oh yeah... lose the sandles too.
NOTE: I am a 100% Linux user. I try to educate everyone I know about Linux if they are interested. I find that about 25% of the time they're interested. My wife, my parents and a friend of mine are all Linux users to varying degrees. My parent's and wife actually use it as their desktop and my friend uses it as his server at home> I just think that rather than concentrating on "winning the desktop" the focus should be 95% on writting better software and 5% writting better PR in a unified manner. How about this? Someone puts together a distro for PR folks that is basically a LiveCD with an installer and the tools to make some wicked PR. Someone else hosts it with an eye to hosting the wicked PR in the future. And we get some new PR people who want to get a little exposure doing a large campaign? Oh well... it's a thought. Anyone know if Edina Monsoon wants in?
You are correct sir. It appears that there is some disagreement about which form of abbreviation gets pronounced as a word (acronym) and which one gets prnounced as individual letters (initialism). Which also leads me to the question and supposition... you're not an American, are you? I would have to guess that there are VERY FEW Americans who know these distinctions since they aren't taught in primary education, high school or college courses. Now what was I saying originally? :\
USA is not an abbreviation. And abbreviation is something like: 'abbr.' or 'Jun, Jul, Aug'. Abbreviation meaning to make something brief. The U.S.A. is an acronym. I guess I should start saying "Ooh-Suh"? ;P
Wrong. Do you say "You-Ess-Ay" or "Ooh-suh"? If you say "Ooh-suh" then I'd accept it...
But the cars aren't necessarily better performers either. Stick shift still wins out for efficiency every time. People are much better at doing variable things manually than machines are at doing things automatically. Gear shifting is a variable activity. If a knowledgable user was able to manage more of the car's functions, the car would be far more effiecient than any automatic system. Once again, just plain and simple fact.
But you're talking about a business environment. I'm talking about the person doing something REAL at home with their computer. As much as I can, I use FOSS exclusively at work. But I'm one of those people who CAN be productive because I know what I'm doing with FOSS. However, as much as I wish others would use the software the same way I do, they can't because they don't have the experience or knowledge. It's a plain fact that to do the job right, you need to have the right tools and know how to use them. That is why it is a user problem. Most users don't know how to use the tools nor should they even be attempting to use them.
Actually... back when I was first new to computers (coming from a very 50s upbringing even though I was born in 1970) I DID call SCSI "ess-see-ess-eye". I continued to do that even when I heard others say "scuzzy" because I felt it was impromper to pronounce an acronym as a word. After all no one runs around saying, "I'm from the ooh-suh" as opposed to the "You-ess-ay". I did the same with GUI for a long time as well. In fact I still prefer the sound of "Gee-You-Eye" to "gooey". Turning acronyms into words, to me, is the sign of laziness. We should all subject ourselves to massive amounts of inconvenience and discomfort every day in order to be more proper about things. And no, I'm not a Victorian.
I thought we were talking vintage gaming consoles and there was a new cart out for the SNES. Oh well... ;P
Well there's a bigger problem. The entire set of concepts and licenses behind Free and Open Source Software is quite complex so that even most Slashdotters don't really know what they're talking about in this regard. Just a nit BTW... "FOSS" is an acronym like USA. How many people walk around daily saying "The United States of America" and never saying "the USA"? Or how about SCSI to bring this closer to home. Have you EVER heard anyone actually say Small Computer Systems Interface repeatedly instead of SCSI? The fact is that acronyms have to be learned in any field and the computer field is rife with them. VGA, BMP, JPEG, MPEG, PCI, etc... If someone is interested in Free/Open Source Software, then they are going to have to learn what the acronym means. Plain and simple.
Getting back to the licenses and concepts though... think about the amount of people who hear "Linux" and think that it includes Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and the like. I know that one of my supervisors thinks that "Linux" means ANY software that is given away at no charge. But how do you explain to "Joe Average" that Linux is the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system which is packaged by multiple projects and vendors as a distribution? And beyond that, how do you get people to realize that RedHat, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, SuSE and all the others are NOT just GNU/Linux, but are various distributions of GNU/Linux? And how do you get them to see the value in this? That's the problem. It's not FOSS at all, it's the ignorance of most users these days and we have "ease of use" lies to thank for that. There was a time in the United States of America when people were raised to respect intelligence and asipre to it. Today, they are raised to respect earning power and asipre to "being rich". That's why people don't get FOSS. They're being conditioned to be the ultimate consumers instead of producers themselves. And that's just the way business wants it.
...exclusive concepts. However this is highly subjective since "quality software" is defined in different ways by different users. Witness:
1. Today, I consider quality software to be very flexible and to allow for extensive CLI interfaces as well as highly intricate GUI interfaces. Think of combining tools like KDE Konsole, Enlightenment 0.7 Desktop, GNU Screen, LVM, and Xen virtualization.
2. When I was a new PC user (circa 1994) I considered quality software to be exclusively GUI based, object oriented (even though I didn't really know what that meant at the time), statically linked binaries (just a single executable with everything built in and no lib dependencies or "DLL Hell"), and everything had to be a metaphor to real world objects.
3. Mr. Middle Management considers quality software to be what all other Mr. Middle Managers use. Regardless of whether the program actually works well or works at all, if all the others have it, then he's got to have it too.
4. Mr. Joe User believes that quality software is something that "just works" from his point of view. It might be the most inefficient, spyware-ridden piece of crap, but if it allows him to do task X with little or no effort, then it's "quality" as far as he's concerned and he doesn't want to know about better ways even if they will help him save money, and get the most out of his computer.
So the problem isn't with FOSS. The problem lies with the users. Unless you're willing to work harder to get the most out of your computing experience, you will probably shy away from FOSS. Besides, who says that FOSS is primarily trying to get more mindshare? FOSS doesn't exist to be popular. It exists to do a job and do it well. In many cases, doing a job well is something that only professionals and hobbyists can do. (Ugh, I hate the term "hobbyist" because it belittles the importance of these advanced users) And this will never change.
Right on the money my friend. The problem is that people have been sold a bill of goods when they were told by MS that "computing is now easy". While the GUIs might help make things easier for low skill administrators for many tasks that used to require skill, there is no substitute for a thorough understanding of the underlying technology. One main flaw in today's IT world is that the users are driving technology. While this is liberating for them, it's like letting a wet behind the ears new teen driver drive in Mexico City just after getting their license.
The users *THINK* they know how things should work but have no comprehension of just how impossible some of their desires are since computers AREN'T inherently easy. Those of us with the skill to work with the underlying systems (I'm no genius mind you, but I'm a bit better off solving even Windows problems than most Windows admins are and I'm a *nix only guy at this point) know this all too well. We curse things like Rapid Application Development daily since it takes people who SHOULD be just users and makes them *THINK* they are programmers. Worse yet, it adds arrogance to their disposition so that they believe that their bloated muddled crap is on par with the elegant solutions written decades earlier by people who knew a little something about how computers work. And when they believe that, then they start expecting to be paid like kings when all they truly deserve is a good horse whipping for their stupidity in algorithms and no supper.
However, there is a deeper problem at work here. Most of the human population is not and cannot be technically minded. There are precious few of the technically minded in the world and they tend to be locked up in back rooms of IT departments working on the most vital systems of their organizations because nobody else can do it or learn it.
...just what we need. More mindless Google bashing. Sorry, but no matter what you dorks do, Google just isn't the evil company that MS is. If they were they'd be turning over much higher stock values and enforcing lock-ins on their users. Sorry, but if I wanted a daily dose of "evil overlord" I'd be all over MS. Google is more like the middle manager who "gets it".
Heh. Yeah. But would you really want to? I imagine that since the demand for his autograph is low, his bank balance has recently reached (-$750). Up from (-$768). Unless you like having access to a bank account owned by a penniless programmer... (Said in jest of course since I rather like R.M.S.)
OK Dim son. Here goes (all hypothetical):
1. You get your internet access from AOL
2. They get their access from a metaISP. Let's just say AT&T for simplicty
3. AT&T is finacially related to... let's say Barnes & Noble Bookstores
4. You want to hit Amazon to buy a book
5. Barnes & Noble tell AT&T to provided the slowest possible access (modem speeds) to their competitors and lightning fast access to Barnes and Noble. AT&T Complies
6. You try to get to Amazon.com and you either get a timeout or the site renders VERY SLOWLY
7. This makes you think that Amazon sucks, so you ditch them and go through others until you find this really great bookseller online: Barnes & Noble
Nevermind that their prices are higher and they don't provide access to used books and media. So you just got hamstrung. Now... let's say you discover through friends who have excellent experiences with Amazon that you are missing out. What do you do? You could change ISPs to one who is a partner or in some other way is financially related to Amazon. But then... your access to your favorite news or sports site slows to a crawl. That's how this is going to impact you. Nice huh?
In the words of our infamous veep: "Go fuck yourself". Now whaddaya say we go hunting next weekend and you stand in front of me? Kay? ;P
...the so-called "darknets" will grow in number. I've been doing my own for the past five years. Originally I started off with using simple OpenSSH tunnels to forward ports from home to work, parents to my house, friends to my house and vice-versa (with respect to all listed sources and desintations). Then I discovered OpenVPN and started using that to do the same thing. What this means is that I can stream whatever I want to whomever I allow onto my VPN in whatever format I choose and the FCC/RIAA/MPAA can't do a damn thing about it. As far as the net is concerned, anyone sniffing my traffic will just see a lot of traffic on a random port. They can't read my stream at all unless I allow them in. It's not that hard to implement and I believe this is the "next big thing" for the kind of user who wants the power to publish content without limits. American business sheisters, lawmakers and the government are currently a bunch of fools who think they can get away with controlling the general public and not get a backlash. It's coming and it's going to hit them hard...
Your comment brings up an unrelated topic BTW. That of the lack of humor on Slashdot. I had a rip roaring good time last year with a particularly long thread that between me, myself and another friend in which we pretended to be those looney audiophiles who think that digital audio is a curse. We went into the "green marker on CDs, gold plated power cords, green stickers on the walls due to resonant frequencies of the color green and their interaction with sound" territory. It was a lot of fun and it pissed a lot of other people off. We had good arguments about why cassette tapes are much better than MP3s and why reel-to-reel systems with vacuum tubes will always beat the pants off of solid state and crappy 3/8" cassette tape. How come there aren't more people who join in these reindeer games?
Regarding your "Linux Chicks" link: OMG!!! Rebecca Gayheart is channelling Balok!!! OMFG!!! That's horrifying.
It's not karma whoring in my case. I like to post schizo posts and have fun with idiots.
There is only one thing to say here: "Jack of all trades, master of none". I don't see how any reasonably usable, compact device can properly do all things that a user might want. When you use a camera for taking really good photos, you want a real viewfinder that you can put your eye up too. The LCD displays suck for proper framing of a shot. To accomodate that, you can't use the form factor of a cell phone and ergonomically succeed. On the other hand, if you did get the proper form factor for a camera, it's very likely that you wouldn't have a decent cell phone form factor anymore. Whereas, most of us want digital music players to be pretty non-intrusive and preferrably totally hidden. The form factor to accomplish that can be closer to a cell phone but that's not ideal. The ideal is to make it as small as possible and once you do that, you're out of the cell phone and camera realm in terms of usability and restrictions on the UI. Here's when I'll be excited:
1. When the camera devices can use any/all of the following in wireless mode for taking photos and videos: my eyes, my contact lenses, my glasses
2. When the music player can bypass my ears and go straight to the auditory nerve (again wireless)
3. When the form factor of the device can shape shift to properly accomodate the function
4. When my eyes are the display device with heads up display functionality
Of course that's probably going to happen closer to the end of my life than now since I'm 36 and I don't see anything like that being mass marketed until 2040 at earliest.
Are you off your nut man!? You must obviously be an MS astroturfer because what you just spewed is only so much MS apologist crap. The fact is that most users lose data whenever they migrate from one platform or machine to another. They typically either backup the wrong things (think about people who backup *.lnk files thinking they're burning the real data to CD but saving LOTS of disk space) or have no clue where their data resides. Unless you're a low level computer tech, you haven't a prayer of migrating your Favorites, E-mail or Office configuration from one box to another. Now, with Windows Live, MS is "centralizing" the data for users which seems nice on the surface. But users will be users and when (not if) something else comes along that they're more interested in, they aren't going to have much help from MS migrating away to a competing service. Again... unless they really know what they're doing (which is a very small percentage of users), they're going to lose their data once again. Or... at best they'll be forced to do stupid things like browse to each of their blog entries, copy and paste the entries a page at a time into Word, recover any links that may be obscured by the hypertext and rebuild their blog elswhere. That is if there isn't some kind of copyright clause in the EULA like there supposedly is with MSN Messenger. Yes, that's right, MS owns copyright on everything you type via IM. I imagine there is some fine print somewhere for Windows Live that gives them the same rights over a user's content on Windows Live. Remember, big business doesn't want the average person to have the power to publish. They just want to make it look like the average person has that power. People don't have complaints about MS products? Yeah right. Knob.
Just think of how many people (Joe Average types, not geeks) started off with DOS/Windows 3.1 machines and built up a whole lot of data on their boxes between the original release and even up to a year or two after Windows 95 was released. Then when the time came to move to a new PC, remember how all of those users migrated their data from the Windows 3.1 box to Windows 95. They were very painstaking in their attention to detail with their precious data, lovingly learning about the file formats and required conversions and then running test migrations before committing to the moved data. And when some of them moved to Macintoshes when the iMacs came out, they were even very good about carrying their data and converting properly there too. Yes, I believe the Microsoft is right in thinking that they will have lifelong customers by 0wnz0ring their user's data and keeping them from using third rate products from competitors. The day and age of people wanting to try alternatives to the mainstream products, have come and gone. Everyone is perfectly happy with the products and services that MS gives them these days and really has no interest in alternatives like Firefox, Google, Mac OS X or Linux. So MS can say this with confidence since there will never be a day when their users might want to migrate their Windows Live data to another service.
The Web is NOT a platform. I repeat. The web is NOT a platform. There are TONS of applications that the web is not suited to support in any kind of "Web OS" because of the limitations of current bandwidth, computing power and of course the archaic web browser itself. A few examples:
1. Audio/music production software. I wouldn't want to have to use a slow and low powered web application to do audio editing or multitrack recording. Unless we all had 10 gigbit links to the internet with super low latency and the server end was running 10 terahertz CPUs in a 1024 node cluster, it could just be stupid to do this kind of work with a web application.
2. CAD. The same limitations with even more impact considering how graphically intensive this sort of thing is. Hell an X session over a cable modem between two locations would perform better than a stupid web based CAD application!
3. Video/Film editing and production. Sorry, but this is definitely ALWAYS going to be in the realm of running on a REAL OS locally (or at least on the same LAN). You can't "Webify" this type of application. It's just idiotic.
Sure, you can maybe make a few cutesy apps for word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail and the like, but how useful is that to REAL computer users? Not very. It'll keep Joe and Jane Average happy, but that's NOT an OS you're providing there... it's just a set of web services possibly in a unified, clunky "desktop" of a sort. Face it ALL web browsers are ugly. They were designed primarily to display textual content and hypertext. We've bolted on all sorts of additional functionality that browsers are ill suited for. What moron would actually want to run an application or OS inside another application that CAN'T be put out of the way (UI wise)? Even when you're running a virtual machine, you have the option in nearly every case to run it fullscreen so that you don't see the underlying app. NO web browser out there allows this and even if there was one, you'd still have the problem of being forced to get back to the browser occasionally to do something browser specific that you can't do from within the "Web OS". What a phenomenally stupid idea!
I say we ditch the entire concept of web browser and build something from the ground up that is MEANT to be an actual internet based OS that REALLY shares resources like RAM and computing power with security built in from the ground up and an eye towards taking advantage of available bandwidth but being able to scale up when more bandwidth is available in the future. There's already stuff out there that does some of this, why not just dedicate some work to actually making it a dedicated app that can run on any locally hosted platform and joins the "hive mind". Sort of like P2P for hardware resources (a la Seti).
I stand corrected. In my quest to find the link, I found that this is a rumor from an "insider". Apple is expected to make an API to run Mac applications on Windows. There was a lot of discussion about this rumor last week indicating that a lot of people don't believe anything from the macosrumors site anymore... I also found this in my search which indicates that just the opposite may be true. MS might be releasing an API to run Windows applications on multiple platforms. I can see them shifting from an OS vendor to "THE" application vendor as their next plan of attack. Since, at this point OSes are pretty much worthless when you consider how little distinction there is between them anymore for the average user.