Hmm, well Linux does have MILLIONS of server deployments out there. Linux does have support of large companies like Oracle, SAP, People Soft, Network Associates, IBM, and many many more. But your right. No one uses Linux. The BILLIONS in sales in 2003 for Linux were just an imagination. The fact is, is that there are far more Linux OS deployments in the world then Mac OS X, RIGHT NOW, when you count Linux server deployments. Mac OS might have that 3% of the desktop market, though give Linux two more years and it will pass Mac OS X to become number two on desktop world wide when you add up all those corporate roll outs. Heck, China is doing a deal with Sun to deploy 1,000,000 Linux desktops in 2004.
Perhaps 1,000 people have significantly large enough Vorbis music collections to warrant an Ogg compatible player.
Do you have the link to where you got those stats? I guess all these device makers supported OGG for only 1,000 people. How many portable devices support Apple's DRM'ed AAC format again? Just incase I am not happy with an iPod, it is good to know I have choice in the market place. We all know how much Apple supports consumer choice.
The openess of free software
Yes because Sorensen is so open, Apple's DRM'ed AAC is so open or OS X is so open...
with the polish of proprietary excellence.
Do you work for Apple? That is the biggest piece of marketing BS I have ever heard. Proprietary != excellence. As a developer I have worked with and deployed tons of proprietary software, some costing in excess of 25 Million that were not "polished proprietary excellence". IMO, OS X is not "polished proprietary excellence" either.
I think not being able to copy music back from an iPod is a pretty nasty restriction. And a restriction that suggests that Apple assumes their custoemrs are theives. I don't see how or Why Apple would do it to "Keep the RIAA" happy. Pretty much every other player out there lets you copy songs to it and FROM it and be able to play those songs that are on it with out making a distinction between songs that are playable and not copyable and songs that are copyable and not playable. For ITunes, I personally don't care for the DRM. It doesn't do anything to stop a pirate from buying a song, burning it to a CD and ripping it to share on the net. It again suggests to me the Apple assumes that their customers are theives that will try to steal at any opportunity. I also don't want to have to use MS Windows or Mac OS X to use ITunes. What is wrong with the idea of just having a music service that lets the user use ANY OS and pick from a few different download formats? You know, a service from some copany that did not assume that their customers are theives.
2) Ogg/Vorbis can work in a DRM-based business model! Here is how: Step 1: Get five candles and a live goat.
Umm, Ogg/Vorbis is an Open Source codec released under a BSD style license. You can wrap it in any proprietary DRM you want and save tons of money from not having to a) write your own codec or b) pay royalties to use someone elses.
Exactly. That is why there are many players that support OGG Vorbis now. Neuros, Rio, IRiver and a buch of others. I personally do not want to be locked into a proprietary format like wma or Apple's AAC. And I would never buy an iPod that limitis what I can do with music I buy. I personally don't understand the Apple Fan Boy mentality. On one hand they cheer Open Source and screem how Apple is now BSD on the inside. Though they over look all of the proprietary Apple formats that are attempts to lock comsumers into Apple. Quicktime, Apple's AAC, their restrictive iPod and iTunes, and just about every product they put out. I personally am sick of companies trying to control what I can do with a product I purchase to further their profits. I will stick to buying a CD and legally ripping it to OGG and playing it on a portable player like the Neuros that supports it. Read this quickly, because soon Apple Fan Boys will be along and wet their pants and mod this as a troll.
However, we had to conclude that this would be a bad idea, because even if we complied fully with the terms of the GPL, it would be virtually impossible to ensure that our customers also did so (since they often modify our code). In the worst case, we fear that we might be villified for the actions of our customers.
Please give the Linux community and developers more credit then that. A simple statement from you company SHOWING how YOU are compliant with the GPL is all that matters.
Here is an analogy of what your are saying. Looking at it in this light, might make you look at it differently.
If I purchase a new Ford pickup and use it to rob a bank or to run down people in the middle of a busy city, would *ANYONE* think of blaming Ford? Of course not. That would be silly. Just as if you sell a product and your product is legal and fully compliant with the GPL, no one would THINK of blaming you or your company for some *OTHER* company violating the GPL.
Not that I think there is anything wrong with *BSD, I personally just think that you will loose out on the Linux movement and all the development and support that is going into Linux by Linux developers and commercial developers. I am not saying that one is better over the other. It is just that the Linux development base is far larger then *BSD and your company is likely to benefit from that much larger effort.
Ok. The fortune 500 I work for spends millions USD every year on "BIG IT COMPANY" products. Our company is the only company that asks for a feature or needs a custom patch for "popular server one" or "popular server two". In testing this feature or custom patch, it breaks other customers deployments. Does "BIG IT COMPANY" add this new feature to "popular server one" or "popular server two"? Do they send us the custom patch? NOPE. "BIG IT COMPANY" says "sorry, we do not support your configuration". With an Open Source product, we can either make those changes ourselves, or pay someone else to make them. *AND*, we get to keep those changes to ourselves if we want since we are not distributing.
Any "BIG IT COMPANY" adds features and patches bugs that MOST of their customers ask for. If they did not, "BIG IT COMPANY" would not be around long.
Again, my point still stands that paid support from "BIG IT COMPANY" WILL NOT make *ANY* custom chagnes for ONE company. *ONLY* if those feature requests or patches are beneficial to all/most of their customers will "BIG IT COMPANY" make/add that feature/patch. This is just one of the many flaws with closed source, proprietary software and the whole business model around it.
Do you think that most commercial companies make changes for their customers? Having a paid contract means little for custom changes. Maybe a small IT company would be more willing to make changes for you, however the BIG software companies do not. I am a programmer for a fortune 500 company that is not in the IT sector. We spend millions a year on BIG IT companies, and have not had ANY custom changes made for us (and we could have used many). Good luck getting Microsoft, People Soft, Oracle, SAP, Network Assosciates, etc to make one change for you. Basically what you get for your paid "support" is issue resolution. If a solution to that issue is a custom developed patch from the software manufacturer or YOU making a change, guess who has to make the change.
We recently finished a 25+ Million USD software roll-out from on of the BIG companies above that I will not point out. We got stuck trying to run this software behind a Cisco content switch. From what I could tell, We only needed ONE extra HTTP header sent to resolve our issue. Though, being closed source, I could do nothing about it. The amount of money we pay EVERY year just for "support" is enough to hire a programmer for a year to make this one small patch for us. Did we get the patch? Nope. We were told that our "configuration" is not supported. The funny thing is, is that the one problem piece of software had a "partnership" with the other problem piece of software. I had to stick a reverse proxy Apache server on EVERY server behind the Ciso switch to get it to work. This adds another piece of software to maintain and adds another layer to slow performance.
Commerciall "support" is never what it is made out to be.
I can understand the BIG companies not doing it. EVERY little patch would have to go through a strick QA process and would cost more then the customer pays in support. Also, I can understand Microsoft, etc. not putting out a custom patch and getting the call that the patch brought the customers data center down.
In general, I find "BIG" Open Source software to actaully have better Free support throught mailing lists then you can generally get with paid support.
Probably not. Yes, OGG is an open standard. Yay. That's nice. I don't feel like re-encoding 10GB of songs.
Just because you do not feel like it, doesn't mean that there are not many out there that WOULD rather use Open Source.
This is the same question you just asked. Are you expecting a different answer?
I thought I read in a post that if you copy music to the iPod as a regualer hard drive, then the iPod won't play it. If that is the case, then it is pretty worthless IMO.
What does the Neuros run on? Happy rays of sunshine?
Well, according to the Neuros Products faq, it has 10 hours of continuous playback. The NiMH batteries in the Neuros and the Lithium Ion battery in the Neuros HD are expected to last at least 1 1/2 - 2 years.
Oh, and their batter replacement policy is FAR cheaper then Apples:
Within Warranty (90 days parts, 1 year labor) -If within first 90 days of purchase - NO CHARGE -Past 90 days, but within 1 year- $7
Is there support for OGG files?
Can I use it between my home PC and my work PC both of which run Linux?
Can I copy a new track to the iPod at home and then download from it to my work PC?
Will it play those files that I want to copy FROM IT to my other PC?
For some reason it sounds like it doesn not. And if that is the case, then this player is not worth a dime to me. I read some post here that are trying to say that if you want to copy YOUR music from YOUR iPod, then you are somehow a theif! What utter crap-ola. Oh, and if Apple thinks I am going to pay $100 for a portable player and then $50 for batteries, they are nuts. 50% the cost of the original product for a battery?
A much better player IMO is the Neuros. It is 20GB, very sleek looking, and it supports OGG and MP3, all for only $199.
For more players that support the Open Source OGG format, take a look here Vorbis Hardware
I know all the Apple zealots will mod me a troll, though that is not my intent. Just because Apple puts out some product does not make it great. When you compare the features of the iPod with other players, the iPod just falls short IMO. I am sorry, but I DO NOT want DRM and I DO NOT want a company I purchase a product from (Apple) to assume I am a theif and prevent me from copying audio I LEGALLY own.
I didn't say anything was undocumented, the emphasis on my comment was intended to be "fully". Some of the documentation for various security packages I've been working with is badly written and incomplete with badly worked through examples. I'm a fully paid up member of the open software paradigm but I wish that when people contribute they'd realise there contributions are more valuable if they fully document their software. Not that they have to, their contribution is valuable nevertheless, but it'd be even better if they did.
I agree. Documentation is _very_ important. Though I would rather have the source code and no documentation/poor documentation, then undocumented systems with no source.
I think we read the second part of this one differently, I read it as "no new security holes added ever", I think you might have read it as "no more holes disguised as features added ever". To be honest, I doubt if even Microsoft deliberately add a true security hole disguised as a feature. Certainly they claim many security holes are features after the event, certainly some features they add contain inherent security problems but they, you'd have to assume, fit into the architectural model that they are/were trying to maintain however flawed that may be.
Agreed.
As to the last comment, I'm not sure why you've emphasised the "against" in the last sentence, if it's a tool that could be used to protect intellectual property is that a bad thing ? Maybe it is if you believe that companies shouldn't own it in the first place. Personally I see too many people "stealing" software and justifying it by saying it should have been free in the first place.
I think stealing is wrong as well. I personally don't think many "normal" people think stealing is acceptable. However, TC will be used against consumers to LIMIT their fair use rights to what then can do with products that they buy. If I purchase a song, I have the right to back it up. I have the right to listen to it where I want and not only on one PC. If I purchase software, I have the right to use that software how I want. Notice that I did not mention giving it to others and keeping the original. That is wrong IMO and obviously breaks copyright law. The main purpose of TC will be to limit consumer fair use, and I think that is not acceptable.
Huh? You have the SOURCE CODE. Any programmer worth their weight in salt should be able to look through the source and figure things out. Granted, documentation is the best solution. Though, we cannot get the source to undocumented MS Windows features now can we? Do you really think that every feature of the MS Windows kerenl is documented? Documenting a large system like the kernel will leave a few thing undocumented. Though as long as you have the source, that shouldn't be a show stopper.
All protocols, APIs and data formats fully documented.
Where are there any undocumented protocols or protocols that you cannot get the documentation for, used in Linux?
All security holes disguised as features closed, permanently, and no new ones added, ever.
While there will always be the possibility for security holes in ANY OS, when has there ever been ONE in Linux that has been hidden?
Dump Trusted Computing. It is about restricting the rights of the end user.
Where is Trused Computing in Linux? Even if there ever was some framework for TC, in Linux it would be something that could EASILY be turned off or taken out. Under MS Windows, it WILL be an "integral" part of the OS and used against the end-user by software companies and the media companies to enforce their "IP".
With wxWindows, there is no need for a commercial license fee to QT. wxWindows would be the perfect toolkit for UserLinux. One of the main points of UserLinux it to be FREE as in cost. Large IT industry corporations will all help fund the development efforts of UserLinux. Out of that funding they will get a FREE as in cost, Linux distro that they can develop their applicaitons for and offer their services on. QT takes away that whole FREE as in cost, situation. So those IT corporations that will be funding UserLinux will pay for UserLinux development and then have to turn around and have to pay to be able to develop on the platform that they funded. That doesn't make sense to me.
But why not let the admin make that choice? Why does Perens get to make that choice?
It is almost NEVER the admin who makes the choice. The choice are made by managers, directors, VP's and CTO's. The admin and programmers like myself only get to IMPLEMENT the choices of the managers, directors, VP's and CTO's.
Do admins get to choose what desktop is used in the corporate world with MS Windows or Mac OS X? No. And I bet that is one less decision that the corporate world will not miss having to make. Imagine company A standardizes on KDE and then some very important commercial applications comes out for Linux that could really help them save money. However, that aplications was written in GTK+ or using the GNOME API. Sure they could run it under KDE. Though it would not fit in with KDE and there would be interoperabilty problmes like drag-n-drop, cut-n-paste, RPC and others. So now that company will either have to not use that applications that could help their busines or do a costly and time comsuming switch to the other desktop.
For them it was probably a pretty arbitrary choice. "Hey, you who have been writing our LInux driver, make us a GUI for it." "No problem boss, I'll have it ready tomorrow." DO you really think there was a huge board meeting, or big-time IT department meeting or even a large developer meeting for that?
Your not a corporate developer are you? Or not for one of any significant size? I am a senior developer for a fortune 500 company with 110,000+ employees. Thre are meetings for EVERYTHIHG in corporate American. End of story. Do you really think that NVidia just throws together some code and releases it the next day? Hell no, they test it and test it. They have meetings about the features to go into the next release. Often, the major decisions in a corporations are NOT made by the IT staff, but the management staff. We just had a big series of meetings over our standard Java Servlet/JSP server. Us developers wanted Tomcat for technical reasons and management wanted Oracle9iAS for business reasons. Guess what, management won out. Management does not care about KDE vs Gnome. They don't want choice. They don't want to not be able to purchase some commercial Linux applications because it was developed with QT and they standardized on Gnome. Although you can run GTK apps under KDE and QT apps under Gnome, they do not work well together. Especially with simple things like drag-n-drop or copy-n-paste.
Most of the IT world is sick of MS not because they limit choice. It is because their products are over priced, they lock you in and their licensing contracts are a death trap. Corporations don't care what browsers their user can use. They just want one that works. That is why MS only has IE and most of the corporate world uses IE and most of all PC users in fact. IE was NOT picked for technical merits. It was picked because that is what MS put in their OS.
UserLinux will limit choice by picking the default applications. That is it. UserLinux will not stop you or your company from using KDE or QT. If you want it, just type apt-get install kde and your done. IMO Linux is great as a server and ready for a corporate desktop. Why has Linux not had a larger growth in the corportate desktop? I think there are a few reason.
Over priced commercial distros like Red Hat make Linux actaully MORE expensive then MS Windows. UserLinux wants to address this by having the IT industry split the cost of the process and making it very affordable/free to all.
Linux distros have too much choice in packages that is just too much information for a corporate manager to assimilate and make a chioce. It is the managers, directors, VP and CTO's that make the final choice to use Linux and NOT the it workers like myself. With MS Windows and Mac OS X, the corporate guys do not have to worry about trivail things like what window manager to use, or what desktop or what web brosers or what ftp server or what... With current Linux distros the corporate suits have to face all those choice and it is too much for them.
For geeks like us, give us chioce and DO NOT take it away. For the corporate world, make the chioce for them and sell them an END PRODUCT.
It appears that UserLinux will be targeted at corporations. Corporations use many, many closed source, proprietary applications. UserLinux NEEDS to make a way for those proprietary applications to get onto UserLinux without those proprietary vendors having to give up their source. I am all for Open Source, though it will take time for companies to realize that seeing their source code will not destroy their business. Until/if that happens, UserLinux need to provide a way for those vendors to deliver applications. Picking ONE desktop and GUI toolkit/API is an important step in that process. Allowing those vendors to not have to pay extra to just use that toolkit/API is another important step IMO. According to Bruce, he is working with IT companies who plan to support (read give money) to UserLinux to keep it going. They want to do that because it will be much cheaper to split the cost over many companies. The IT companies also want to be able to deliver their applications/services to the UserLinux platform. They are already paying for the development of UserLinux, it seems silly to turn around and tell them that they then have to go and pay TrollTech to use the native toolkit. Another issue is that UserLinux can customise the packages according to the supporting companies needs, including making changes to the native GUI toolkit. UserLinux will not be able to make those change to QT. IMO, UserLinux should use wxWindows as the native GUIL toolkit. Then you can have an excellent C++ toolkit that also works great under MS Windows and Mac. wxWindows also allows companies to develop Open Source or Closed source applications without the need for extra licensing fees.
I do agree that the QT docs are very good and better then GTK+. Though saying that the API is great is a personal opinion. I personally don't think it is great and prefer wxWindows. By the way, wxWindows is FREE to use under MS Windows, Mac and Linux. I don't like the Meta Object compiler for QT required to do signals/slots. It is old cruft left over from the need for older C++ compilers. Gtkmm is a C++ toolkit for GTK that uses signals and slots and has no need for an aditional precompiler. According to QT's docs, there are a bunch of Limitations with QT's signal/slot implementation:
class templates cannot have signals or slots
Multiple inheritance requires QObject to be first
Function pointers cannot be arguments to signals or slots
Friend declarations cannot be placed in signals or slots sections
Signals and slots cannot be upgraded
Type macros Nested classes cannot be in the signals or slots sections nor have signals or slotsacros cannot be used for signal and slot parameters
Constructors cannot be used in signals or slots sections
www.wxwindows.org, IMO is better then QT and can be used to develop Open Source as well as closed source, propreitary applications. There is an impressive list of people using wxWindows including commercial companies such as AMD and Xerox who uses wxWindwos. The feature set is impressive as well.
You don't have to buy VS to develop with the Win32 API. With VS, you are paying for the IDE/tools, not to code with the Win32 API. In fact, you can use gcc under MS Windows to write Win32 apps without paying a dime for VS.
At the core of UserLinux is a not-for-profit entity in charge of the Linux distribution, with engineering-by-meritocracy as in the Linux kernel. Surrounding that non-profit are for-profit companies that are in the business of providing service and engineering for the UserLinux distribution.
So basically the WHOLE POINT of UserLinux is for a FREE Linux distro for for-profit companies to provide COMMERCIAL services and applications. QT takes the FREE out of that picture, while GTK+ being LGPL still allows those for-profit companies to develop closed source proprietary applications/services. These for-profits are going to all collectivly support the non-profit UserLinux, thus spreading the cost out and making it very cheap for each for-profit. Why would those for-profits want to fund the development of UserLinux and then have to turn around and pay ONE vendor to be able to develop on the system that the for-profits have already paid for?
You just can't make commerical apps and link to QT without their permission.
And an expensive PER DEVELOPER license fee.
$2,330 per developer to compile for one OS
$3,495 per developer to compile for two OSes
$4,660 per developer to compile for Windows, Linux and Mac
Plus Maintenance and Support PER DEVELOPER
$720 for one OS
$1,080 for two OSes
$1,450 for Three OSes
You don't have to pay any extra to develop with the Win32 API under MS Windows, nor do you have to pay any extra to develop with Cocco/Carbon under Mac OS X. Why in the world should you have to pay extra to do commercial development under Linux?
The problem is that the two do not inter-operate well. I use Gnome, though I fire up a KDE app now and then. Guess what. I cannot copy-n-paste between the KDE app to my GNome app. KDE apps try to use arts for sound while Gnome apps usually use esd. KDE apps use a differnt tool for RPC then GNOME. Do you see where I am going? I can see tons of corporate users complaining that then cannot cut-n-paste between two apps. While the two apps may look the same, one is a KDE app and the other is Gnome. I can see a home user trying to run a KDE app and Gnome app that both play some sound. The Gnome app is using esd and the KDE is trying to play sound through arts. Let your imagination run wild with all the possible problems caused by users running applications for KDE and Gnome at the same time. It would be a corporate admins nightmare. Pick ONE Linux desktop. I don't care wich, just one. I am bias for Gnome so I say Gnome. Others say KDE. Agian, in the end I don't care which one. Just pick and may it a great desktop. Make it have ONE API (though with many language bindings like GTK), so the commercial software industry can make tons of software for Linux. Simple software that flurishes under MS Windows like a gretting card program, or GAMES, or etc, etc. I write software for a fortune 500 comapny and I know that I would not want to have to deal with a KDE user not being able to drag-n-drop or cut-n-past with my Gnome based app, or visa versa.
For more commercial desktop software to get to Linux, Linux needs ONE desktop and ONE GUI toolkit. I don't see large commercial support for Linux any other way.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, well Linux does have MILLIONS of server deployments out there. Linux does have support of large companies like Oracle, SAP, People Soft, Network Associates, IBM, and many many more. But your right. No one uses Linux. The BILLIONS in sales in 2003 for Linux were just an imagination. The fact is, is that there are far more Linux OS deployments in the world then Mac OS X, RIGHT NOW, when you count Linux server deployments. Mac OS might have that 3% of the desktop market, though give Linux two more years and it will pass Mac OS X to become number two on desktop world wide when you add up all those corporate roll outs. Heck, China is doing a deal with Sun to deploy 1,000,000 Linux desktops in 2004.
I think not being able to copy music back from an iPod is a pretty nasty restriction. And a restriction that suggests that Apple assumes their custoemrs are theives. I don't see how or Why Apple would do it to "Keep the RIAA" happy. Pretty much every other player out there lets you copy songs to it and FROM it and be able to play those songs that are on it with out making a distinction between songs that are playable and not copyable and songs that are copyable and not playable. For ITunes, I personally don't care for the DRM. It doesn't do anything to stop a pirate from buying a song, burning it to a CD and ripping it to share on the net. It again suggests to me the Apple assumes that their customers are theives that will try to steal at any opportunity. I also don't want to have to use MS Windows or Mac OS X to use ITunes. What is wrong with the idea of just having a music service that lets the user use ANY OS and pick from a few different download formats? You know, a service from some copany that did not assume that their customers are theives.
I meant Sorensen. That is proprietary Apple.
Neuros Digital Audio Computer
Rio Karma
iRiver iHP-100, iHP-115, iHP-120, iGP-100, iFP-3xxt, iFP-5xxt
Kenwood's Music Keg
And a bunch of others.
IMO, the Neuros is much better then the iPod. Is cheaper and the battery replacement is from $0 - $12 depending on if it is in warranty or not, which is much cheaper then Apple's $50 or so. Umm, Ogg/Vorbis is an Open Source codec released under a BSD style license. You can wrap it in any proprietary DRM you want and save tons of money from not having to a) write your own codec or b) pay royalties to use someone elses.
Exactly. That is why there are many players that support OGG Vorbis now. Neuros, Rio, IRiver and a buch of others. I personally do not want to be locked into a proprietary format like wma or Apple's AAC. And I would never buy an iPod that limitis what I can do with music I buy. I personally don't understand the Apple Fan Boy mentality. On one hand they cheer Open Source and screem how Apple is now BSD on the inside. Though they over look all of the proprietary Apple formats that are attempts to lock comsumers into Apple. Quicktime, Apple's AAC, their restrictive iPod and iTunes, and just about every product they put out. I personally am sick of companies trying to control what I can do with a product I purchase to further their profits. I will stick to buying a CD and legally ripping it to OGG and playing it on a portable player like the Neuros that supports it. Read this quickly, because soon Apple Fan Boys will be along and wet their pants and mod this as a troll.
The code examples from MS and MSDN are at a 12 year old, Comp Sci. 101 level. Remember, MS does not give away and USEFUL code.
Here is an analogy of what your are saying. Looking at it in this light, might make you look at it differently.
If I purchase a new Ford pickup and use it to rob a bank or to run down people in the middle of a busy city, would *ANYONE* think of blaming Ford? Of course not. That would be silly. Just as if you sell a product and your product is legal and fully compliant with the GPL, no one would THINK of blaming you or your company for some *OTHER* company violating the GPL.
Not that I think there is anything wrong with *BSD, I personally just think that you will loose out on the Linux movement and all the development and support that is going into Linux by Linux developers and commercial developers. I am not saying that one is better over the other. It is just that the Linux development base is far larger then *BSD and your company is likely to benefit from that much larger effort.
Ok. The fortune 500 I work for spends millions USD every year on "BIG IT COMPANY" products. Our company is the only company that asks for a feature or needs a custom patch for "popular server one" or "popular server two". In testing this feature or custom patch, it breaks other customers deployments. Does "BIG IT COMPANY" add this new feature to "popular server one" or "popular server two"? Do they send us the custom patch? NOPE. "BIG IT COMPANY" says "sorry, we do not support your configuration". With an Open Source product, we can either make those changes ourselves, or pay someone else to make them. *AND*, we get to keep those changes to ourselves if we want since we are not distributing.
Any "BIG IT COMPANY" adds features and patches bugs that MOST of their customers ask for. If they did not, "BIG IT COMPANY" would not be around long.
Again, my point still stands that paid support from "BIG IT COMPANY" WILL NOT make *ANY* custom chagnes for ONE company. *ONLY* if those feature requests or patches are beneficial to all/most of their customers will "BIG IT COMPANY" make/add that feature/patch. This is just one of the many flaws with closed source, proprietary software and the whole business model around it.
Do you think that most commercial companies make changes for their customers? Having a paid contract means little for custom changes. Maybe a small IT company would be more willing to make changes for you, however the BIG software companies do not. I am a programmer for a fortune 500 company that is not in the IT sector. We spend millions a year on BIG IT companies, and have not had ANY custom changes made for us (and we could have used many). Good luck getting Microsoft, People Soft, Oracle, SAP, Network Assosciates, etc to make one change for you. Basically what you get for your paid "support" is issue resolution. If a solution to that issue is a custom developed patch from the software manufacturer or YOU making a change, guess who has to make the change.
We recently finished a 25+ Million USD software roll-out from on of the BIG companies above that I will not point out. We got stuck trying to run this software behind a Cisco content switch. From what I could tell, We only needed ONE extra HTTP header sent to resolve our issue. Though, being closed source, I could do nothing about it. The amount of money we pay EVERY year just for "support" is enough to hire a programmer for a year to make this one small patch for us. Did we get the patch? Nope. We were told that our "configuration" is not supported. The funny thing is, is that the one problem piece of software had a "partnership" with the other problem piece of software. I had to stick a reverse proxy Apache server on EVERY server behind the Ciso switch to get it to work. This adds another piece of software to maintain and adds another layer to slow performance.
Commerciall "support" is never what it is made out to be.
I can understand the BIG companies not doing it. EVERY little patch would have to go through a strick QA process and would cost more then the customer pays in support. Also, I can understand Microsoft, etc. not putting out a custom patch and getting the call that the patch brought the customers data center down.
In general, I find "BIG" Open Source software to actaully have better Free support throught mailing lists then you can generally get with paid support.
Oh, and their batter replacement policy is FAR cheaper then Apples:$7 - $12 dollars compared to $50 for the iPod.
Is there support for OGG files?
Can I use it between my home PC and my work PC both of which run Linux?
Can I copy a new track to the iPod at home and then download from it to my work PC?
Will it play those files that I want to copy FROM IT to my other PC?
For some reason it sounds like it doesn not. And if that is the case, then this player is not worth a dime to me. I read some post here that are trying to say that if you want to copy YOUR music from YOUR iPod, then you are somehow a theif! What utter crap-ola. Oh, and if Apple thinks I am going to pay $100 for a portable player and then $50 for batteries, they are nuts. 50% the cost of the original product for a battery?
A much better player IMO is the Neuros. It is 20GB, very sleek looking, and it supports OGG and MP3, all for only $199.
For more players that support the Open Source OGG format, take a look here Vorbis Hardware
I know all the Apple zealots will mod me a troll, though that is not my intent. Just because Apple puts out some product does not make it great. When you compare the features of the iPod with other players, the iPod just falls short IMO. I am sorry, but I DO NOT want DRM and I DO NOT want a company I purchase a product from (Apple) to assume I am a theif and prevent me from copying audio I LEGALLY own.
Huh? You have the SOURCE CODE. Any programmer worth their weight in salt should be able to look through the source and figure things out. Granted, documentation is the best solution. Though, we cannot get the source to undocumented MS Windows features now can we? Do you really think that every feature of the MS Windows kerenl is documented? Documenting a large system like the kernel will leave a few thing undocumented. Though as long as you have the source, that shouldn't be a show stopper.
While there will always be the possibility for security holes in ANY OS, when has there ever been ONE in Linux that has been hidden?Where is Trused Computing in Linux? Even if there ever was some framework for TC, in Linux it would be something that could EASILY be turned off or taken out. Under MS Windows, it WILL be an "integral" part of the OS and used against the end-user by software companies and the media companies to enforce their "IP".
With wxWindows, there is no need for a commercial license fee to QT. wxWindows would be the perfect toolkit for UserLinux. One of the main points of UserLinux it to be FREE as in cost. Large IT industry corporations will all help fund the development efforts of UserLinux. Out of that funding they will get a FREE as in cost, Linux distro that they can develop their applicaitons for and offer their services on. QT takes away that whole FREE as in cost, situation. So those IT corporations that will be funding UserLinux will pay for UserLinux development and then have to turn around and have to pay to be able to develop on the platform that they funded. That doesn't make sense to me.
It is almost NEVER the admin who makes the choice. The choice are made by managers, directors, VP's and CTO's. The admin and programmers like myself only get to IMPLEMENT the choices of the managers, directors, VP's and CTO's. Do admins get to choose what desktop is used in the corporate world with MS Windows or Mac OS X? No. And I bet that is one less decision that the corporate world will not miss having to make. Imagine company A standardizes on KDE and then some very important commercial applications comes out for Linux that could really help them save money. However, that aplications was written in GTK+ or using the GNOME API. Sure they could run it under KDE. Though it would not fit in with KDE and there would be interoperabilty problmes like drag-n-drop, cut-n-paste, RPC and others. So now that company will either have to not use that applications that could help their busines or do a costly and time comsuming switch to the other desktop.
Most of the IT world is sick of MS not because they limit choice. It is because their products are over priced, they lock you in and their licensing contracts are a death trap. Corporations don't care what browsers their user can use. They just want one that works. That is why MS only has IE and most of the corporate world uses IE and most of all PC users in fact. IE was NOT picked for technical merits. It was picked because that is what MS put in their OS.
UserLinux will limit choice by picking the default applications. That is it. UserLinux will not stop you or your company from using KDE or QT. If you want it, just type apt-get install kde and your done. IMO Linux is great as a server and ready for a corporate desktop. Why has Linux not had a larger growth in the corportate desktop? I think there are a few reason.
... With current Linux distros the corporate suits have to face all those choice and it is too much for them.
Over priced commercial distros like Red Hat make Linux actaully MORE expensive then MS Windows. UserLinux wants to address this by having the IT industry split the cost of the process and making it very affordable/free to all.
Linux distros have too much choice in packages that is just too much information for a corporate manager to assimilate and make a chioce. It is the managers, directors, VP and CTO's that make the final choice to use Linux and NOT the it workers like myself. With MS Windows and Mac OS X, the corporate guys do not have to worry about trivail things like what window manager to use, or what desktop or what web brosers or what ftp server or what
For geeks like us, give us chioce and DO NOT take it away. For the corporate world, make the chioce for them and sell them an END PRODUCT.
It appears that UserLinux will be targeted at corporations. Corporations use many, many closed source, proprietary applications. UserLinux NEEDS to make a way for those proprietary applications to get onto UserLinux without those proprietary vendors having to give up their source. I am all for Open Source, though it will take time for companies to realize that seeing their source code will not destroy their business. Until/if that happens, UserLinux need to provide a way for those vendors to deliver applications. Picking ONE desktop and GUI toolkit/API is an important step in that process. Allowing those vendors to not have to pay extra to just use that toolkit/API is another important step IMO. According to Bruce, he is working with IT companies who plan to support (read give money) to UserLinux to keep it going. They want to do that because it will be much cheaper to split the cost over many companies. The IT companies also want to be able to deliver their applications/services to the UserLinux platform. They are already paying for the development of UserLinux, it seems silly to turn around and tell them that they then have to go and pay TrollTech to use the native toolkit. Another issue is that UserLinux can customise the packages according to the supporting companies needs, including making changes to the native GUI toolkit. UserLinux will not be able to make those change to QT. IMO, UserLinux should use wxWindows as the native GUIL toolkit. Then you can have an excellent C++ toolkit that also works great under MS Windows and Mac. wxWindows also allows companies to develop Open Source or Closed source applications without the need for extra licensing fees.
So does wxWindows and it can be used to develop commercial or Open Source.
class templates cannot have signals or slots
Multiple inheritance requires QObject to be first
Function pointers cannot be arguments to signals or slots
Friend declarations cannot be placed in signals or slots sections
Signals and slots cannot be upgraded
Type macros Nested classes cannot be in the signals or slots sections nor have signals or slotsacros cannot be used for signal and slot parameters
Constructors cannot be used in signals or slots sections
www.wxwindows.org, IMO is better then QT and can be used to develop Open Source as well as closed source, propreitary applications. There is an impressive list of people using wxWindows including commercial companies such as AMD and Xerox who uses wxWindwos. The feature set is impressive as well.
You don't have to buy VS to develop with the Win32 API. With VS, you are paying for the IDE/tools, not to code with the Win32 API. In fact, you can use gcc under MS Windows to write Win32 apps without paying a dime for VS.
$2,330 per developer to compile for one OS
$3,495 per developer to compile for two OSes
$4,660 per developer to compile for Windows, Linux and Mac
Plus Maintenance and Support PER DEVELOPER
$720 for one OS
$1,080 for two OSes
$1,450 for Three OSes
You don't have to pay any extra to develop with the Win32 API under MS Windows, nor do you have to pay any extra to develop with Cocco/Carbon under Mac OS X. Why in the world should you have to pay extra to do commercial development under Linux?
For more commercial desktop software to get to Linux, Linux needs ONE desktop and ONE GUI toolkit. I don't see large commercial support for Linux any other way.