There are so many levels of network spying in China that we can assume this move has entirely practical motivations. Windows botnets let anyone spy on everyone and cover criminal behavior, the Chinese know this first hand. They also make network traffic problems. Still, unless Windows is entirely eliminated, these problems will continue to exist.
Software freedom is impossible without network freedom anyway. Do you really think you can get a clean copy of Debian off the Chinese internet? The view from the average citizen's perspective remains grim.
Think about how many windows desktops have been sold, over the last 5-6 years that are still being used!
Ah yes, the brisk sales that have bankrupted CompUSA, DSG, Circuit City and damaged many others. It is true that most systems shipped still go with XP, and at least 1/3 of the Vista machines get XP or GNU/Linux within a few months of use. We should all weep for the home market's lost productivity and the sadness of a seven year old operating system. Even I have to admit that a virused out XP machine is what you find in most people's home but GNU/Linux use is better than 2%.
The older computer market is a good sign for GNU/Linux. Computers older than five years old are essentially netbooks, 1GHz class machines with 1 or 2 GB of RAM and small hard drives. "Updated" XP runs poorly on those too, so the users are either GNU/Linux users or in the market for GNU/Linux or Mac. No one is buying a GNU/Linux netbook and then torturing themselves with a $200 XP install.
GNU/Linux less than 2%? I don't think so. EEE PC has sold more than 4 million, most of them GNU/Linux, and that makes about 0.5% of the world market on it's own. My SWAG is that there's about 10 GNU/Linux desktops for every EEE PC sold.
The only thing interesting here is the Wintel press conceding declines. The loss of market share thanks to Vista and GNU/Linux improvements is undeniable.
Peter's response very well answers the bogus ZDNet charges, the rest is useful too. People need to understand both the technical and political issues that result in such smears so that they can take the next smears with the grain of salt deserved. M$ has squandered it's reputation by attacking honest people and everyone should know about it. This is not "black and white thinking" it's holding people accountable for their actions.
Just because you say one thing that doesn't take the worst possible view of Microsoft in one particular instance, doesn't mean that you therefore defend and support everything Microsoft ever did, ever.
Mindlessly repeating a well refuted M$ smear makes you an idiot. That's what happened above. Trusting people who lie to you is a bad idea. M$ has earned the worst possible view on everything. The best possible thing to do is move your computing work to another platform and let M$ sink into the pit they have dug for themselves.
The present changes are clearly damage control. Reasonable people have to ask themselves why DirectX 9 and 10 did not work with Intel chipsets in the first place, which just happen to have GPL'd drivers that work fine with GNU/Linux. That is an anti-trust issue that won't be solved by Vista7 getting the reasonable non accelerated support GNU/Linux has had for a decade or more with Window Managers like Enlightenment. Intel lost billions of dollars in development and hardware, despite the "favor" done for them in the Vista Capable case.
This is good news but patents are still harmful and M$ executives have already found a new boat to float on. There's a lot of work left to do before patents are no longer an extortion tool.
If it really matters, people can remember even as they age. What happens though, is that people start to figure out what really matters. A person's ability to do menial work for others is a dying exponential function of their age.
Twitter submission, four days ago. It's been cheaper than non free laptop programs and more effective than labs, which often deliver less than an hour of computing time per week even when there's one computer per four students.
The real solution, therefore is one that requires the cooperation of your entire school or state. You can, if you are good, coordinate the efforts of local LUG/activists, large businesses and recyclers. The local recycler can take care of parts that just won't work. LUG and corporate IT people can do the installs and the school can plan the hand outs so that everyone gets one and there's no abuse. If you are very good, you can lobby your state government to just buy new equipment based on the Indiana success story. There will be more of this and your job will get easier and easier.
Good luck, things are stacked against you. The local recycler is often a M$ Certified rebuilder and M$ has it's hooks into most school districts.
A charitable non profit that purchases independent newspapers and requires grant recipients to "respect" IP and use the OS of its micromanaging founder, all with zero public accountability. It's not part of M$, I swear.
That the IRS is investigating Mozilla and not the Gates Foundation is almost as bad as the Google/Yahoo/M$ corruption. How much more corrupt can it get than that? Oh yeah, this much.
How can you combine "familiar" and "roll out new language" in the same breath? Even if someone is familiar with all the quirks and shortcomings of Windows programming, why would they risk significant money and time on M$'s next vaporware?
How can a new language or familiarity offset the massive difference in cost and hassle when it comes to building the thing and adding new nodes? I mean really, do you want to write you next grant around how many Windoze licenses you think you can afford rather than what you think you need to get the job done?
get ready to see the 99.9% of the world print and broadcast were unable to deliver. you only have to look at the perts you are interested in but you may not have enough time left in your life.
this is what the tw-aol merger was supposed to deliver years ago. aol could have done it but tw was stupid. aol could have been worth owning, now tw bows to google
Organizers concealed Novell sponsorship, so that people would associate the event with legitimate free software organizations and then mistake Novell for a backer of free software instead of a M$ puppet.
Protests against Novell had to be rush planned on the first day of the event because of the organizer's treachery.
Protests were entirely peaceful and non disruptive, banners, posters and fliers.
Novell disrupted the event by inciting ignorant Student Union and University staff to harshly attack the peaceful protesters.
The organizers of the event and university staff should be deeply ashamed of their actions. We can only hope that no one was injured and that no one is now threatened with unjust charges, jail time or fines. The University and police were used as tools by Novell and M$. If they learn their lesson those companies will no longer be welcome on campus or in the state.
For all of that, Novell would have been better off providing the protesters with a booth. The truth has come out and it is ugly. The specious speculation [2] and libel below should be dismissed as M$ generated astroturf, laid in the dark of night.
At the top of my list of companies that claim to be open source-friendly but that actually have dangerous agendas would be Sun, Apple, and Nokia.
This is true but none of the above have attacked software freedom the way Novell has or is as easy to avoid as Novell. Novell took $350 million dollars to agree that GNU/Linux was owned by M$ and that everyone needs to pay a license to use free software. Effective or not, they still claim all other distributions are illegitimate and dangerous to use. Boycott Novell has documented in detail every threat from Novell, M$ and the Wintel press. Boycott Novell has also reported the extent to which Novell is cramming inferior M$ technology into their distribution. Even Miguel de Icaza criticizes choice of Microsoft technology over open-source options now. The "valuable" contributions Novell makes that are worthwhile are available from other distributions that don't FUD free software and lay landmines in their dependencies for M$'s sake.
Don't shoot yourself in the foot, stay in school and push for better laws. You don't have to work for an unethical company when you get out, just those that think "ignorance is bliss" when it comes to patent law - there never was finer proof that patents offer no real protection to inventors. Software patents should be abolished so the patent office can get back to enforcing real patents.
The number of Universities falling for this has been grossly understated. The article itself says:
the firm recently completed its 100th tech-transfer deal with a university
Despite the multiple deals with Intellectual Ventures, however, Georgeson said his university has kept some pending patents, from its nanotechnology program, off-limits from the firm, believing it can successfully market those to industry itself.
This means that the deals are often with the same suckers but are not exclusive by a long shot. Stanford and MIT have the right idea. I predict IV will be found guilty of fraud and self dealing. It would be easy for Bill Gates and friends to make one or two universities a lot of money by paying for a few select patents while sucking a much larger volume of money out of the rest of the pawns and one night stands.
The connections between M$ and the reasons you should discard the results of this study are well laid out by Boycott Novell. The place is run by former M$ employees and their methodology is deplorable. You should only trust the numbers if you are comfortable believing what former M$ employees have to say about people dumb enough to download additional spyware for Winblows. Studies like this are paid for by M$ to demoralize free software users. If you listen to them you will conclude that GNU/Linux has less than 1% of the desktop market. It's bullshit.
The question really is, who wants to run M$ Office on their iPhone? They need an online version to stem losses to Google Docs at Universities, but who's really going to take the bait? Knowing M$, this is going to depend on some special kind of download, Silverblight and not work very well, so it's still going to be easier to use Google Docs and Open Office. Thanks to ODF, these two things already work together. M$ Office is the odd man out.
They want money for their service instead of following the mega successful Google, advert supported model? Good, they will be ignored just like the content they offer. This stuff needs to be liberated instead.
I can think of several good reasons for using bits of twitter journal and the later reports. Twitter hater trolls and that the future is more important than the past.
Editors probably picked the story for an hour later than twitter's to avoid the usual "I hate twitter" first post trolls. The M$FT astroturfers would have to carry this thread far and wide to undo speculation that Circuit City's last five quarters of loss is is directly attributed to the Vista Failure. They would also have to laugh at connecting the 2004 Suse migration dots to firing of all competent employees last year.
These things can be looked at as secondary to the pain and suffering to come. I think the causes should be remembered so that the same mistakes are not made by others in the future, so it's a shame the first reports and attributions were skipped in the name of harmony, balance, professionalism and other forms of self censorship not practiced by enemies of free software.
Like they said, "be sure to research the prices before you buy." But really, the market is already flooded with Vista Failure hardware. Good laptops can be found for $500. That's about where CompUSA was before their liquidation. Be sure to check out the hardware for free software function be fore you buy too. You won't get a refund on this stuff even if it does become a bargain.
An ethical society makes enough medicine for everyone and you can do that with well regulated insurance. No one wants to leave your third patient who needs two pills incapacitated, or dead. Highway robbery is an efficient living but we don't let people do it. The value of a person's existence is always worth more than few pills, so it is always right to buy the medicine. People can cooperate to make the money available without limiting anyone's freedom to do anything but rob their neighbors.
Google's implementation can't be the big stick that Apple's implementation could be.
That's not clear and it is improbable. You assume Google does not have the power to kill other applications because they say they won't. The ability to override user intentions is the biggest problem with non free software. If they can do it to one application without asking, they can do it to any including the device itself. When you don't have software freedom, you don't really control your device. Free software has all of the good supervisory power and none of the ability to abuse the user. When real problems happen, the community fixes it but does not force the user to do anything.
Slashdot Mirror
one great leap for software freedom.
There are so many levels of network spying in China that we can assume this move has entirely practical motivations. Windows botnets let anyone spy on everyone and cover criminal behavior, the Chinese know this first hand. They also make network traffic problems. Still, unless Windows is entirely eliminated, these problems will continue to exist.
Software freedom is impossible without network freedom anyway. Do you really think you can get a clean copy of Debian off the Chinese internet? The view from the average citizen's perspective remains grim.
Think about how many windows desktops have been sold, over the last 5-6 years that are still being used!
Ah yes, the brisk sales that have bankrupted CompUSA, DSG, Circuit City and damaged many others. It is true that most systems shipped still go with XP, and at least 1/3 of the Vista machines get XP or GNU/Linux within a few months of use. We should all weep for the home market's lost productivity and the sadness of a seven year old operating system. Even I have to admit that a virused out XP machine is what you find in most people's home but GNU/Linux use is better than 2%.
The older computer market is a good sign for GNU/Linux. Computers older than five years old are essentially netbooks, 1GHz class machines with 1 or 2 GB of RAM and small hard drives. "Updated" XP runs poorly on those too, so the users are either GNU/Linux users or in the market for GNU/Linux or Mac. No one is buying a GNU/Linux netbook and then torturing themselves with a $200 XP install.
GNU/Linux less than 2%? I don't think so. EEE PC has sold more than 4 million, most of them GNU/Linux, and that makes about 0.5% of the world market on it's own. My SWAG is that there's about 10 GNU/Linux desktops for every EEE PC sold.
The only thing interesting here is the Wintel press conceding declines. The loss of market share thanks to Vista and GNU/Linux improvements is undeniable.
Peter's response very well answers the bogus ZDNet charges, the rest is useful too. People need to understand both the technical and political issues that result in such smears so that they can take the next smears with the grain of salt deserved. M$ has squandered it's reputation by attacking honest people and everyone should know about it. This is not "black and white thinking" it's holding people accountable for their actions.
Mindlessly repeating a well refuted M$ smear makes you an idiot. That's what happened above. Trusting people who lie to you is a bad idea. M$ has earned the worst possible view on everything. The best possible thing to do is move your computing work to another platform and let M$ sink into the pit they have dug for themselves.
The present changes are clearly damage control. Reasonable people have to ask themselves why DirectX 9 and 10 did not work with Intel chipsets in the first place, which just happen to have GPL'd drivers that work fine with GNU/Linux. That is an anti-trust issue that won't be solved by Vista7 getting the reasonable non accelerated support GNU/Linux has had for a decade or more with Window Managers like Enlightenment. Intel lost billions of dollars in development and hardware, despite the "favor" done for them in the Vista Capable case.
This is good news but patents are still harmful and M$ executives have already found a new boat to float on. There's a lot of work left to do before patents are no longer an extortion tool.
cool, you sound like me.
If it really matters, people can remember even as they age. What happens though, is that people start to figure out what really matters. A person's ability to do menial work for others is a dying exponential function of their age.
Twitter submission, four days ago. It's been cheaper than non free laptop programs and more effective than labs, which often deliver less than an hour of computing time per week even when there's one computer per four students.
The real solution, therefore is one that requires the cooperation of your entire school or state. You can, if you are good, coordinate the efforts of local LUG/activists, large businesses and recyclers. The local recycler can take care of parts that just won't work. LUG and corporate IT people can do the installs and the school can plan the hand outs so that everyone gets one and there's no abuse. If you are very good, you can lobby your state government to just buy new equipment based on the Indiana success story. There will be more of this and your job will get easier and easier.
Good luck, things are stacked against you. The local recycler is often a M$ Certified rebuilder and M$ has it's hooks into most school districts.
A charitable non profit that purchases independent newspapers and requires grant recipients to "respect" IP and use the OS of its micromanaging founder, all with zero public accountability. It's not part of M$, I swear.
That the IRS is investigating Mozilla and not the Gates Foundation is almost as bad as the Google/Yahoo/M$ corruption. How much more corrupt can it get than that? Oh yeah, this much.
How can you combine "familiar" and "roll out new language" in the same breath? Even if someone is familiar with all the quirks and shortcomings of Windows programming, why would they risk significant money and time on M$'s next vaporware?
How can a new language or familiarity offset the massive difference in cost and hassle when it comes to building the thing and adding new nodes? I mean really, do you want to write you next grant around how many Windoze licenses you think you can afford rather than what you think you need to get the job done?
get ready to see the 99.9% of the world print and broadcast were unable to deliver. you only have to look at the perts you are interested in but you may not have enough time left in your life. this is what the tw-aol merger was supposed to deliver years ago. aol could have done it but tw was stupid. aol could have been worth owning, now tw bows to google
Windows, good for first post trolls but not much else.
The Protesters themselves have made their statement. The important parts are:
The organizers of the event and university staff should be deeply ashamed of their actions. We can only hope that no one was injured and that no one is now threatened with unjust charges, jail time or fines. The University and police were used as tools by Novell and M$. If they learn their lesson those companies will no longer be welcome on campus or in the state.
For all of that, Novell would have been better off providing the protesters with a booth. The truth has come out and it is ugly. The specious speculation [2] and libel below should be dismissed as M$ generated astroturf, laid in the dark of night.
At the top of my list of companies that claim to be open source-friendly but that actually have dangerous agendas would be Sun, Apple, and Nokia.
This is true but none of the above have attacked software freedom the way Novell has or is as easy to avoid as Novell. Novell took $350 million dollars to agree that GNU/Linux was owned by M$ and that everyone needs to pay a license to use free software. Effective or not, they still claim all other distributions are illegitimate and dangerous to use. Boycott Novell has documented in detail every threat from Novell, M$ and the Wintel press. Boycott Novell has also reported the extent to which Novell is cramming inferior M$ technology into their distribution. Even Miguel de Icaza criticizes choice of Microsoft technology over open-source options now. The "valuable" contributions Novell makes that are worthwhile are available from other distributions that don't FUD free software and lay landmines in their dependencies for M$'s sake.
Don't shoot yourself in the foot, stay in school and push for better laws. You don't have to work for an unethical company when you get out, just those that think "ignorance is bliss" when it comes to patent law - there never was finer proof that patents offer no real protection to inventors. Software patents should be abolished so the patent office can get back to enforcing real patents.
The number of Universities falling for this has been grossly understated. The article itself says:
This means that the deals are often with the same suckers but are not exclusive by a long shot. Stanford and MIT have the right idea. I predict IV will be found guilty of fraud and self dealing. It would be easy for Bill Gates and friends to make one or two universities a lot of money by paying for a few select patents while sucking a much larger volume of money out of the rest of the pawns and one night stands.
The connections between M$ and the reasons you should discard the results of this study are well laid out by Boycott Novell. The place is run by former M$ employees and their methodology is deplorable. You should only trust the numbers if you are comfortable believing what former M$ employees have to say about people dumb enough to download additional spyware for Winblows. Studies like this are paid for by M$ to demoralize free software users. If you listen to them you will conclude that GNU/Linux has less than 1% of the desktop market. It's bullshit.
The question really is, who wants to run M$ Office on their iPhone? They need an online version to stem losses to Google Docs at Universities, but who's really going to take the bait? Knowing M$, this is going to depend on some special kind of download, Silverblight and not work very well, so it's still going to be easier to use Google Docs and Open Office. Thanks to ODF, these two things already work together. M$ Office is the odd man out.
They want money for their service instead of following the mega successful Google, advert supported model? Good, they will be ignored just like the content they offer. This stuff needs to be liberated instead.
I can think of several good reasons for using bits of twitter journal and the later reports. Twitter hater trolls and that the future is more important than the past.
Editors probably picked the story for an hour later than twitter's to avoid the usual "I hate twitter" first post trolls. The M$FT astroturfers would have to carry this thread far and wide to undo speculation that Circuit City's last five quarters of loss is is directly attributed to the Vista Failure. They would also have to laugh at connecting the 2004 Suse migration dots to firing of all competent employees last year.
These things can be looked at as secondary to the pain and suffering to come. I think the causes should be remembered so that the same mistakes are not made by others in the future, so it's a shame the first reports and attributions were skipped in the name of harmony, balance, professionalism and other forms of self censorship not practiced by enemies of free software.
Like they said, "be sure to research the prices before you buy." But really, the market is already flooded with Vista Failure hardware. Good laptops can be found for $500. That's about where CompUSA was before their liquidation. Be sure to check out the hardware for free software function be fore you buy too. You won't get a refund on this stuff even if it does become a bargain.
World to M$, your Office cash cow is dead.
An ethical society makes enough medicine for everyone and you can do that with well regulated insurance. No one wants to leave your third patient who needs two pills incapacitated, or dead. Highway robbery is an efficient living but we don't let people do it. The value of a person's existence is always worth more than few pills, so it is always right to buy the medicine. People can cooperate to make the money available without limiting anyone's freedom to do anything but rob their neighbors.
That's not clear and it is improbable. You assume Google does not have the power to kill other applications because they say they won't. The ability to override user intentions is the biggest problem with non free software. If they can do it to one application without asking, they can do it to any including the device itself. When you don't have software freedom, you don't really control your device. Free software has all of the good supervisory power and none of the ability to abuse the user. When real problems happen, the community fixes it but does not force the user to do anything.
Look for Xrays and you will see them.