This has been pointed out before, but it needs repeating: Opera aims to work well even on older, slower systems. Speed is an issue there.
Not only that, but Opera are trying to be a contender in the embedded device market, where memory and CPU power is limited. This is why speed is important.
Sometimes, a rewrite is necessary. Patching the old engine to support dynamic changing of pages was clearly not thought to be good enough. By tossing out the old and starting over, this time with a dynamic engine, they can get even further than before. Sometimes, it is better to start from scratch, even if what you have already works decently.
You really should lurk in their opera.mac newsgroup. Recently, a member of the Opera Mac team posted a message saying that a beta v6 for OS X is on the way, apparently as a shared library (which means that you can embed it into other applications). Seeing as they are stating that a beta is coming, I'll assume that it will be here soon, since it usually is when they start saying things like that.
You really should read the article, which states, among other things:
"There were some things that were difficult to do with the old engine, particularly with changing elements in pages," said Opera Software co-founder and CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner. "We felt we needed a rewritten engine to have something that works with all the DOM that is coming out."
Of course Opera has issues, but so has all other browsers. MSIE, for example, can't even handle absolute positioning with CSS properly. Opera are rewriting the engine from scratch specifically to address the kind of issues you brought up.
When it comes to not paying for software, you may soon find out that few things in life are free. You pay for MSIE when you pay for Windows. Mozilla is free, though. And both Opera and Mozilla are vastly superior to MSIE in my opinion (security, stability, user interface features).
What do you base your comments on? If you look at their specs page, you can see that it supports CSS1 completely, and just about all of CSS2. It even does it correctly most of the time, unlike certain other browsers (MSIE in particular).
Opera has great support for CSS2. Saying that CSS2 is a "hard problem" is nonsense.
Sure, it has bugs, but so has every single other browser. We could always play the "list the bugs" game and I could list Mozilla bugs and you could list Opera bugs, but there wouldn't be any point in that. The simple fact remains that both Mozilla and Opera are superior to MSIE when it comes to CSS (and in most other respects), and rather equal to each other on the CSS front.
It seems fairly obvious that the article was written to generate hits. Perhaps he even knew that Slashdot would post a story about it. I've seen several such stories on CNET lately, and it is becoming annoying. You know, like the columnist who said "I love spam! Spam doesn't bother me! So why does it bother everyone else? It shouldn't!"...
Strange that you should write about "web of trust" right now. Well, this isn't exactly the same, but it is a similar-ish solution. The post before yours mentions Bitzi, which allows people to rate files (and search through the ratings).
Currently, anyone can rate a file, but perhaps Bitzi could be expanded into a kind of web of trust thing by allowing people to pick friends and enemies, for example. Friends' reviews of a file would have more impact on the score you see than an enemie's for example. And then you can perhaps rate each user's file ratings and say if the rating was helpful or unhelpful.
Without this, even Bitzi can be abused, but with thousands, if not millions, of people rating files and then, well, "metamoderating" the file ratings, fakers would have to organize a huge crowd of people to have an impact.
I am surprised that I hadn't heard about Bitzi until I read about it in the Slashdot post just before yours. It is a great idea, and I am sure there is plenty in store for it in the future. Let's hope they will expand the concept and "integrate" it with even more file sharing software.
I see what you are saying, and as I mentioned, it is a problem which goes two ways. And the customer isn't necessarily an idiot for not knowing the answer, but it is frustrating to try to help people who are convinced that they are right and have the answer to everything (only they can't figure out the problem for some strange reason), and blow their anger all over someone who is there to help. It has been said that "the customer is always right", but more often than not, it looks like the more angry the customer is, the less he knows about what's going on, and is usually wrong on all accounts.
Tech support people are supposed to deal with that, but they are only human after all. Those who contact tech support should consider that. But people are generally ignorant and can't see further than the inside of their own eye lids...
If only people realized that being nice gets them so much further... And if only techs could reset their brains from time to time to forget the last idiot who called and yelled at them for something which was actually their own fault;-)
The problem isn't one-sided. The techs know all the problems, etc., but many people are outright obnoxious when contacting support, even yelling about things which are their own fault. Most techs handle this quite well, but it obviously starts wearing on you after a while. If you only knew how much better the tech support is if you are polite and pleasant. If anything, being a dick will lessen your chances of getting good tech support.
Combine this with the fact that people are usually pissed off for the wrong reasons, and you can see they the techs are worn out and don't perform as well as they could if people actually had a brain.
Does "free speech" apply to marketing pitches forced upon us? I thought free speech was the right to express one's opinions, not to force others to listen, or even hide behind "free speech" to try to push products on people.
You have excellent points there, if only someone with the power to do something had the same insight. And if only the trolls who constantly go on about how preventing spam is preventing "free speech" would go and get a darn clue.
"Email while annoying doesn't neccessarily impede you from downloading the rest of your email in a timely manner."
Actually, it does. For one, I am on a dialup, and some of these spam messages are huge. They cost me money. I pay for the time I am connected.
But the fact is that spam prevents me from receiving e-mail as well - through my Bigfoot.com account. I have the free service, which only allows 25 messages per day. Guess what? One day I was informed that "you have exceeded your quota". The rest of the mail was not delivered! And guess what else? The 25 messages I received that day was pure spam!
No legitimate mail seems to get through my Bigfoot forwarding address anymore. Spammers are preventing me from downloading legitimate mail!
Actually, e-mail spammers can often be considered to be as much of a pain in the butt as fax spammers. I registered a Bigfoot.com forwarding address long ago, and I naturally started receiving spam. Well, a while ago, Bigfoot decided to limit the number of e-mails forwarded per day to only 25 (or so). I had noticed that I received a lot of spam through my Bigfoot address, but one day I got a note saying "you have exceeded your daily quota of forwarded mail. Please click here blah blah to pay us to forward more mails per day".
In essence, the spammers who used up my forwarding quota every day was preventing me from receiving legitimate e-mail through my Bigfoot address. They were denying me service - a Denial of Service attack if you will.
So fax spam costs you money. Well, e-mail spam costs me money! I pay for every minute I am connected, and some of these spams are huge and take a long time to download over a dialup connection.
That's right. E-mail spammers are both DoSing me, while they are forcing me to pay to download their crap.
I just cannot understand why they don't go after e-mail spammers. They are as much of a nuisance to me as a fax spammer would be!
Re:This is why the populace needs to be educated.
on
Meet the Spammers
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· Score: 1
You do realize that those who send ads through snail mail actually pay for it, while spammers abuse open servers and don't actually pay someone for delivering their crap?
I must also comment on your "ethical cost" argument. I find it to be nonsense. There is nothing unethical about protecting citizens from corporations who try to force themselves upon us. A spam law would actually benefit individuals, while marketing droids who think they can get away with anything, and who really despise customers and just want to make money no matter the cost, will get their hands slapped. There is nothing in a spam law which would limit the individual's rights. It is all about protecting the indidiual's rights to refuse to read e-mail if he or she wishes to, and prevent corporations from, say, dodging spam filters to force themselves upon us.
This is what you fail to see. Spam has got nothing to do with free speech. In fact, spam is forced speech. They try to force people to read their crap. I thought only fascists were into that. Then again, spammers are fascist bastards who should be taught a lesson.
Perhaps you should talk to a system administrator about spam. I bet he could tell you a thing or two about how much of his time is wasted trying to deal with the problem. I know that our sysadmins are drowning in it, and constantly trying to battle it to prevent it from ending up in our inboxes.
Our support department is also drowning in it. It has gotten to the point where they had to filter it, but there's always the danger of the filters preventing legitimate mail through. Paying customers may find their mail filtered, which is not a good thing. So someone has to go through hundreds, if not thousands, of spam messages filtered out, just to look for legitimate mail. And we all know about human error.
So basically, we waste many hours dealing with spam, and we risk pissing off customers who have actually paid us, but who won't receive a reply because something went wrong with the spam filters.
So as you can see, this is a major problem. Again, I ask you to take the pick: Laws against spam or a bullet in the head for spammers.
Re:Timothy posted the same story 3 days ago
on
Meet the Spammers
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· Score: 1
It is not the same story. The Hotmail story pointed to part 1 of this three-part series of stories about spam:
You have to realize that spam is not an insignificant problem. Spam costs me money! I often find myself on a dialup connection, and I pay for the time I am connected. Having been online for years, and seeing the amount of spam grow steadily, I can only imagine how much money I have wasted. Not to mention time! I have to either set up filters or delete the incoming spam. Nothing works perfectly, and spam always gets through.
Part of the problem is that spammers do everything they can to avoid being filtered out. It is my right to filter out whatever I please! It is a big step to make avoiding spam filters illegal (you would have to prove that it was done on purpose, etc.), but it definitely should be avoided. In addition to this, sender addresses should not be forged, and the mail should only be sent to people who agree to received marketing pitches. I will never ever buy something from a spammer. There is no point in their sending me anything! Why should I have to receive it then? We all lose.
There are plenty of people who would be interested in receiving offers through e-mail if they have chosen to themselves. This kind of bulk e-mail is just fine. As long as one can opt-out.
We need laws, and we need to lock people like Tom Cowles up for a long time if he does not realize that what he is doing is disgustingly wrong. He event thinks that this is what the Internet is about and that he has a right to do it! Does he have the right to force me to listen to him? NO! Is the purpose of the Internet to make businesses grow by harassing people? NO! This is what some of these spammers apparently think. What would it take to change their minds?
A law against spam or a bullet in a spammer's head. Take your pick.
Re:This is *why* we need laws!
on
Meet the Spammers
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, that's exactly what they are doing. They are doing everything they can to force people to read their mails. They try their best to move around spam filters by changing the subject and contents ever so slightly for each mail (we've all seen the weird crap added to the end of many spam subjects).
The AC doesn't realize that this is completely different from, say, fighting corrupt senators in the U.S. A law against spam is a law to prevent these pathetic creeps from forcing their nonsense down our throats. "Our" being the people. The law would be to protect people from companies/corporations and their greed. This, as opposed to huge corporations trying to push through laws that restrict people's rights to, for example, do whatever they please with things they have bougt.
The bottom line is that they aren't even accepting the fact that people filter them out. They want to force us to receive and read their spam.
This bill was not about catching someone red-handed. It was about "reasonable suspicion". Not only that, but it was aimed at helping huge corporations - helping them combat their customers who naturally are criminals, all of them:
From a story today about DoS attacks against RIAA: "Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified. "Perhaps it at least took 10 minutes away from stealing music."
The legislation's single purpose is to give more power to corporations to punish anyone they think may be doing something illegal. And obviously, they think everyone is really stealing from them.
Granted, this isn't as much about punishment as such. Instead, it is about Denial of Service attacks made legal. These people want to prevent others from distributing digital content - even their own work! They want to be able to be in a position where they can decide whether or not a crime is being committed. And, as we can see from what these people are saying, we are all really criminals, and therefore, they need the power to prevent us from connecting to the network. After all, if we can connect, we will probably steal "their" music. What is "reasonable suspicion"? These people seem to think that they have a "reasonable suspicion" against just about anyone.
It is obvious that the bill is a pathetic attempt at limiting our rights. It is not about preventing piracy, it is about preventing us from doing anything without it resulting in income to the huge corporations that are trying to take over.
Actually, they want to lock you into your own house to prevent you from going out of your house to commit the inevitable crime. They make it illegal to try to open your own door to exit your house, because surely, the only reason to exit your house is to steal things, right?
"And what when those official agencies fail to uphold your rights effectively? See "self defence, individual's responsibility for"."
In my country, those who do law enforcement do law enforcement, and we leave them to deal with it. It is not possible for just anyone to act like they have police authority.
It is up to the system to punish those who break the law. To do so, one is required to take them to court and have them convicted.
A country where just anyone can punish people as they see fit is a barbaric country.
"And neither does this Act give any analogous rights to any copyright holder. Get over your sensationalism and RTFA already."
It gives them the possibility to take action against individuals without going through court. This would be a disturbing development indeed.
"Given your legal culture, I imagine heavy punitive damages would quickly be slapped on the big boys if they go beyond the rights granted in the Act and abuse their systems. Nothing in this Act removes your right to have a go back in court if they do something unreasonable."
A single person can often do little against the power of money. The corporations should be prevented from doing anything to me in the first place. It is not their right to punish me for something. It is not their responsibility.
"Oh, please. We are talking about publicly available files. They can be searched freely by anyone. There is no extra power needed for the MPAA or RIAA to search your machine than Joe from Texas. And if they find their copyrighted stuff on your box -- the only time they are allowed to take action under this Act -- you have already been proven guilty."
Exactly. You are found guilty without even going to trial! This is straight out of the most grim of predictions for the future. I am not talking about searching for files that are publicly available, I am talking about punishment without going to court.
I am talking about corporation taking over the role as the prosecutor and executioner. Let them search for public files all they want, but in order to do anything, they should have to go through the legal system like everyone else.
Please understand this: It would mean that you are guilty until you have proven otherwise! Do you understand now? You actually have to go to court to prove that you are innocent, and the damage has already been done! How hard can it be to understand this?
"Ah, yes, the old "name calling instead of reasoned argument" approach. Very convincing. I'm suitably impressed."
Perhaps you should have thought about that before you called peple who disagree with you hypocrites? "Slashbots", you call them, because they are worried that corporations get more and more power and even take over the role of the judicial system.
"In fact, it basically seems to say that if they can prove you're screwing them, they can DoS you to stop you, under the oversight of the legal system. Is that so unfair?"
Yes. It is not up to anyone but official law enforcement agencies to deal with people who break the law. I do not have the right to break into my neighbour's house to see if he has happened to steal something from my house, and much less bust his kneecaps to prevent him from doing so in the future. It is not my business to investigate crimes and deal with criminals myself. This is what the police is for.
And when you consider the many mistakes made by trained police officers (see news the last few days), how do you think corporate vigilantes would behave? It is a terrifying thought.
"It's hardly the same as the DoSing that takes down systems that are there for law-abiding reasons, contrary to the "hypocrisy" chant of the slashbots here.
I thought one was innocent until proven guilty in most civilized countries. The police even needs a warrant to enter your house to look for illegal material. Why should corporations be raised above the law? Why should they have rights which the police doesn't even have?
I'm sorry, but you sound like more of a hypocrite than anyone else here.
Give a complete newbie a system which is already set up (Windows vs. Linux with KDE or Gnome). What exactly makes it harder to use the Linux solution? They are both point and click. Your comment is based on an assumption that Microsoft somehow does something which is more "intuitive" to new users. This is wrong. New users need to be told what to do, and they will do it. There's nothing intuitive about Windows or other operating systems. There is nothing which makes Windows "just work" any more than other solutions.
Installing the operating system? No newbie would do that. Installing software? You wouldn't believe how much trouble new users can go through to install a simple program in MS-Win. It is all about teaching them how to do it. It's that simple. It's that complicated.
But please give up the nonsensical claims that some software "just works" for everyone. It doesn't. People need to be taught how to use it. Without exceptions!
Having alternatives available does not make for real competition? Forcing Microsoft to perhaps improve their products or lower their prices because otherwise they may use other products does not make for real competition? This will encourage people to develop software to compete with Microsoft, because now it is possible to get a lot from it. You don't quite seem to understand what competition is about. As long as there are alternatives, there is competition.
And competition doesn't even have to be about making money! Gnome and KDE both compete, but both can be downloaded for free as well.
But on the other hand, open-source companies do make money. Norwegian TrollTech are actually making money right now, as far as I know. They have no losses, they make real money from their open-source GUI toolkit.
What makes you think it isn't possible to make money from Linux? Don't Red Hat make money? SuSE? Mandrake? No? What about professional consultants that specialize in Linux? They don't make money?
I don't quite think you have thought this through.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that, but Opera are trying to be a contender in the embedded device market, where memory and CPU power is limited. This is why speed is important.
Sometimes, a rewrite is necessary. Patching the old engine to support dynamic changing of pages was clearly not thought to be good enough. By tossing out the old and starting over, this time with a dynamic engine, they can get even further than before. Sometimes, it is better to start from scratch, even if what you have already works decently.
You really should lurk in their opera.mac newsgroup. Recently, a member of the Opera Mac team posted a message saying that a beta v6 for OS X is on the way, apparently as a shared library (which means that you can embed it into other applications). Seeing as they are stating that a beta is coming, I'll assume that it will be here soon, since it usually is when they start saying things like that.
When it comes to not paying for software, you may soon find out that few things in life are free. You pay for MSIE when you pay for Windows. Mozilla is free, though. And both Opera and Mozilla are vastly superior to MSIE in my opinion (security, stability, user interface features).
Opera has great support for CSS2. Saying that CSS2 is a "hard problem" is nonsense.
Sure, it has bugs, but so has every single other browser. We could always play the "list the bugs" game and I could list Mozilla bugs and you could list Opera bugs, but there wouldn't be any point in that. The simple fact remains that both Mozilla and Opera are superior to MSIE when it comes to CSS (and in most other respects), and rather equal to each other on the CSS front.
It seems fairly obvious that the article was written to generate hits. Perhaps he even knew that Slashdot would post a story about it. I've seen several such stories on CNET lately, and it is becoming annoying. You know, like the columnist who said "I love spam! Spam doesn't bother me! So why does it bother everyone else? It shouldn't!"...
Currently, anyone can rate a file, but perhaps Bitzi could be expanded into a kind of web of trust thing by allowing people to pick friends and enemies, for example. Friends' reviews of a file would have more impact on the score you see than an enemie's for example. And then you can perhaps rate each user's file ratings and say if the rating was helpful or unhelpful.
Without this, even Bitzi can be abused, but with thousands, if not millions, of people rating files and then, well, "metamoderating" the file ratings, fakers would have to organize a huge crowd of people to have an impact.
I am surprised that I hadn't heard about Bitzi until I read about it in the Slashdot post just before yours. It is a great idea, and I am sure there is plenty in store for it in the future. Let's hope they will expand the concept and "integrate" it with even more file sharing software.
Tech support people are supposed to deal with that, but they are only human after all. Those who contact tech support should consider that. But people are generally ignorant and can't see further than the inside of their own eye lids...
If only people realized that being nice gets them so much further... And if only techs could reset their brains from time to time to forget the last idiot who called and yelled at them for something which was actually their own fault ;-)
Combine this with the fact that people are usually pissed off for the wrong reasons, and you can see they the techs are worn out and don't perform as well as they could if people actually had a brain.
You have excellent points there, if only someone with the power to do something had the same insight. And if only the trolls who constantly go on about how preventing spam is preventing "free speech" would go and get a darn clue.
But the fact is that spam prevents me from receiving e-mail as well - through my Bigfoot.com account. I have the free service, which only allows 25 messages per day. Guess what? One day I was informed that "you have exceeded your quota". The rest of the mail was not delivered! And guess what else? The 25 messages I received that day was pure spam!
No legitimate mail seems to get through my Bigfoot forwarding address anymore. Spammers are preventing me from downloading legitimate mail!
In essence, the spammers who used up my forwarding quota every day was preventing me from receiving legitimate e-mail through my Bigfoot address. They were denying me service - a Denial of Service attack if you will.
So fax spam costs you money. Well, e-mail spam costs me money! I pay for every minute I am connected, and some of these spams are huge and take a long time to download over a dialup connection.
That's right. E-mail spammers are both DoSing me, while they are forcing me to pay to download their crap.
I just cannot understand why they don't go after e-mail spammers. They are as much of a nuisance to me as a fax spammer would be!
You do realize that those who send ads through snail mail actually pay for it, while spammers abuse open servers and don't actually pay someone for delivering their crap?
This is what you fail to see. Spam has got nothing to do with free speech. In fact, spam is forced speech. They try to force people to read their crap. I thought only fascists were into that. Then again, spammers are fascist bastards who should be taught a lesson.
Our support department is also drowning in it. It has gotten to the point where they had to filter it, but there's always the danger of the filters preventing legitimate mail through. Paying customers may find their mail filtered, which is not a good thing. So someone has to go through hundreds, if not thousands, of spam messages filtered out, just to look for legitimate mail. And we all know about human error.
So basically, we waste many hours dealing with spam, and we risk pissing off customers who have actually paid us, but who won't receive a reply because something went wrong with the spam filters.
So as you can see, this is a major problem. Again, I ask you to take the pick: Laws against spam or a bullet in the head for spammers.
- Hotmail story (part 1)
- This story (part 2)
It looks like you should take your own advice...You have to realize that spam is not an insignificant problem. Spam costs me money! I often find myself on a dialup connection, and I pay for the time I am connected. Having been online for years, and seeing the amount of spam grow steadily, I can only imagine how much money I have wasted. Not to mention time! I have to either set up filters or delete the incoming spam. Nothing works perfectly, and spam always gets through.
Part of the problem is that spammers do everything they can to avoid being filtered out. It is my right to filter out whatever I please! It is a big step to make avoiding spam filters illegal (you would have to prove that it was done on purpose, etc.), but it definitely should be avoided. In addition to this, sender addresses should not be forged, and the mail should only be sent to people who agree to received marketing pitches. I will never ever buy something from a spammer. There is no point in their sending me anything! Why should I have to receive it then? We all lose.
There are plenty of people who would be interested in receiving offers through e-mail if they have chosen to themselves. This kind of bulk e-mail is just fine. As long as one can opt-out.
We need laws, and we need to lock people like Tom Cowles up for a long time if he does not realize that what he is doing is disgustingly wrong. He event thinks that this is what the Internet is about and that he has a right to do it! Does he have the right to force me to listen to him? NO! Is the purpose of the Internet to make businesses grow by harassing people? NO! This is what some of these spammers apparently think. What would it take to change their minds?
A law against spam or a bullet in a spammer's head. Take your pick.
The AC doesn't realize that this is completely different from, say, fighting corrupt senators in the U.S. A law against spam is a law to prevent these pathetic creeps from forcing their nonsense down our throats. "Our" being the people. The law would be to protect people from companies/corporations and their greed. This, as opposed to huge corporations trying to push through laws that restrict people's rights to, for example, do whatever they please with things they have bougt.
The bottom line is that they aren't even accepting the fact that people filter them out. They want to force us to receive and read their spam.
From a story today about DoS attacks against RIAA:
"Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified. "Perhaps it at least took 10 minutes away from stealing music."
The legislation's single purpose is to give more power to corporations to punish anyone they think may be doing something illegal. And obviously, they think everyone is really stealing from them.
Granted, this isn't as much about punishment as such. Instead, it is about Denial of Service attacks made legal. These people want to prevent others from distributing digital content - even their own work! They want to be able to be in a position where they can decide whether or not a crime is being committed. And, as we can see from what these people are saying, we are all really criminals, and therefore, they need the power to prevent us from connecting to the network. After all, if we can connect, we will probably steal "their" music. What is "reasonable suspicion"? These people seem to think that they have a "reasonable suspicion" against just about anyone.
It is obvious that the bill is a pathetic attempt at limiting our rights. It is not about preventing piracy, it is about preventing us from doing anything without it resulting in income to the huge corporations that are trying to take over.
Actually, they want to lock you into your own house to prevent you from going out of your house to commit the inevitable crime. They make it illegal to try to open your own door to exit your house, because surely, the only reason to exit your house is to steal things, right?
It is up to the system to punish those who break the law. To do so, one is required to take them to court and have them convicted.
A country where just anyone can punish people as they see fit is a barbaric country.
It gives them the possibility to take action against individuals without going through court. This would be a disturbing development indeed. A single person can often do little against the power of money. The corporations should be prevented from doing anything to me in the first place. It is not their right to punish me for something. It is not their responsibility. Exactly. You are found guilty without even going to trial! This is straight out of the most grim of predictions for the future. I am not talking about searching for files that are publicly available, I am talking about punishment without going to court.I am talking about corporation taking over the role as the prosecutor and executioner. Let them search for public files all they want, but in order to do anything, they should have to go through the legal system like everyone else.
Please understand this: It would mean that you are guilty until you have proven otherwise! Do you understand now? You actually have to go to court to prove that you are innocent, and the damage has already been done! How hard can it be to understand this?
Perhaps you should have thought about that before you called peple who disagree with you hypocrites? "Slashbots", you call them, because they are worried that corporations get more and more power and even take over the role of the judicial system.How incredibly insightful of you.
And when you consider the many mistakes made by trained police officers (see news the last few days), how do you think corporate vigilantes would behave? It is a terrifying thought.
I thought one was innocent until proven guilty in most civilized countries. The police even needs a warrant to enter your house to look for illegal material. Why should corporations be raised above the law? Why should they have rights which the police doesn't even have?I'm sorry, but you sound like more of a hypocrite than anyone else here.
Installing the operating system? No newbie would do that. Installing software? You wouldn't believe how much trouble new users can go through to install a simple program in MS-Win. It is all about teaching them how to do it. It's that simple. It's that complicated.
But please give up the nonsensical claims that some software "just works" for everyone. It doesn't. People need to be taught how to use it. Without exceptions!
And competition doesn't even have to be about making money! Gnome and KDE both compete, but both can be downloaded for free as well.
But on the other hand, open-source companies do make money. Norwegian TrollTech are actually making money right now, as far as I know. They have no losses, they make real money from their open-source GUI toolkit.
What makes you think it isn't possible to make money from Linux? Don't Red Hat make money? SuSE? Mandrake? No? What about professional consultants that specialize in Linux? They don't make money?
I don't quite think you have thought this through.
Because Norway is a socialist country they all know how to use open-source software? Illogical statement.