I like the GPL, use GPL software, and think it's a good thing overall.
However, I am having difficulting grasping why a software license should be dictating how content is distributed. If anything, adding DRM penalties to the GPL would do more to lock out Linux boxes from mainstream content than anything Microsoft could do.
Software should be free, but limiting the freedom of people using it to listen to DRM'd content is counter-productive
Microsoft said that Massachusetts decision is wrong because open document formats do not allow embedded video or audio in the document.
The Microsoft rep went on to say that they would be discontinuing support for import/export of ASCII and WordPerfect document formats, to the delight of many professional communities.
We are running Kerio 6.0 as an Exchange replacement (we were on Exchange 5.5). Most of our users are on Microsoft Outlook 2K or 2K3. Our main reason for selecting Kerio was its marketting as an Exchange replacement. Here are some of our experiences:
As a POP3/SMTP server, it works adequately.
Antiviral capability works adequately
Anti-spam (based on SpamBayes) is mediocre - it allows only level of Spam filtering (i.e. no "suspected spam" vs. "spam")
Their "Outlook Connector" - which allows Outlook to manage email from the server without downloading it to the client, is junk. Among other things, it's extremely slow, you can't search body text, and in 6.1 people have been getting crashes with it.
In 6.1, you can only do backups 3 times per week (although there is apparently a kludge around this)
Importing our email from Exchange 5.5 was painful - their import utility crashed constantly and it took days to migrate < 100 mailboxes
After misleading customers about the capabilities of its Outlook Connector, and subsequent flames on their message boards, Kerio has instituted a "no comment" policy about development - they will make no commitments to when bugs will get fixed or promised functionality will be implemented
Kerio is marketting an offline caching capability for its product. However, only contacts and calendar information are cached, email does not get cached!
In short, my bosses are forcing us back to "how things were". We are going to bite the bullet and go back to Exchange. I'm bummed, because there is a lot to like about Kerio (the web interface, integrated antivirus and spam and management are all nice, and it's a lot easier to manage than Exchange) - but the Outlook Connector's poor functionality make it an inadequate replacement for Exchange
Unlike my predecessor, take a look at the Kerio forums before you buy this product.
The media would have you believe 80% of the women are ugly, boring and uninspired based upon what they hold up as a reference model (heroin-addict thin, vapeous, self-absorbed, etc.) This does not make most women less productive than their "beautiful" counterparts in Hollywood movies or New York runways. In fact, most succesful families and productive careers are spearheaded by women who look nothing like Paris Hilton.
Likewise, there are a bunch of ugly Windows applications doing a lot of work. Like it or not, Microsoft made it possible for mediocre programmers to make boring apps that get a lot of work done. These programs may not be innovative with pretty UI gimmicks that suck up CPU cycles, they tend to use more resources than they ought to, and they are fraught with spaghetti and bugs, but they get the work done.
The lack of innovation may help minimize training when teaching new apps. Teaching new paradigms is expensive and time consuming.
Like it or not, ugly is what most work is getting done on.
It's more fundamental than that. The culture in India is one of extreme politeness, but self-directed thinking just isn't a part of their culture.
I have never been to India, but that seems a little harsh. There are a lot of examples of very creative art and literature from pre-colonial India, and plenty of cinema now.
I imagine that employees of call centers are encouraged less to solve problems than to contribute to metrics of "customer satisfaction" so that the call center can keep its contract. I'm sure this has to frustate the call center workers as much as the customers.
Trying to purchase some Dell notebooks this week was an excrutiating excercise. The online credit application initially rejected me and gave me a number to call. The person I spoke to was very polite but had absolutely no authority/ability to assist me in getting my credit line established or switching my order to use a credit card instead of the credit line. The order ended up getting cancelled, and the two notebooks I selected from the Dell Outlet site ended up going to somebody else by the time I ended my fruitless 2 hours on the phone.
The problem isn't so much that the call centers are offshored, it's that the staff are not provided with any meaningful mechanisms to address customer concerns. They seem to have a list of things that they are expected to respond to and responses they are allowed to give. There is no "go-to" person that you can speak to that can make decisions or provide intervention if the system behaves unexpectedly. Since the call center is located on the other side of the globe from where the orders are managed and shipped, the call center staff is pretty much powerless to act on a customer's behalf.
A remote call center is fine to talk Joe Average in figuring out why their AOL connection isn't working as expected. But when it comes to making a purchase and spending money, I want to speak to somebody who can take action on my behalf. Having my order cancelled and then getting thanked for choosing Dell does not constitute adequate customer service.
There are a number of applications, such as WinFax and Dragon Naturally Speaking, which install add-on's to Microsoft Word that add to the startup time and can cause problems with other add-in's (I know, the article is about Word/OO on fresh installs, but this issue comes up often in real life).
The WinFax plug-in in particular can cause problems with other add-on's. For better or for worse, there aren't similar issues yet with OO. Given it's tight ties in Java, though, I can't imagine it would take long once OO gets popular for a number of add-in's to spring up, add time to its startup as well.
It is rather odd that Nokia is singling out the "Linux" kernel as a benefactor of its largess. I would agree with Stallman's point (albeit poorly made) that the granting of "immunity" to the Linux kernel implies some manner of "threat" to other projects, including FOSS.
What would Nokia's motivation be for making this announcement? I doubt they need the clout for getting patents crammed through the EU -- it's just a matter of time, unfortnately. My guess is that they have some skunkworks project using Linux embedded (like the dead Media Terminal ).
Does Yahoo's service require XP in order to do a transfer to portable devices? I am still on Windows 2000 for gaming and such, and do not want to "upgrade" to XP (I know better than to ask if they have Linux support - sigh)
I read that it doesn't support buying tracks and transferring them to an iPod, which is odd. Does anybody know if this will change?
I have dealt with a great number of people who want Microsoft Office installed on a second computer but don't realize that to legally do so, they need to shell out a few hundred bucks.
This is rampant among SOHO users who think because they bought a license for their office computer they should be able to load it onto their notebook. They have no idea (or are in denial) of Microsoft's EULA and what it means in the cost of using Office.
As people are educated about the true cost of using proprietary packages (especially Office), they will may be more receptive to alternatives.
As somebody who subscribes to a legit music service, as well as somebody who pays taxes, I'm a bit miffed at the attitudes of those who are rationalizing the file sharing of copyrighted material because:
Sharing anything your want should be legal
**AA has no right to monitor I2
There's plenty of unused bandwidth
**AA members put out crap (which is an odd justification)
Ripping Metallica tracks and sharing them isn't legal. Period. There is no fair use in taking a copyrighted work, duplicating it and distributing unlimited copies of it. Falacious arguments about the virtues of illegal media file sharing work to undermine what legitimate fair use rights we have left.
For all the whining about the crap content **AA puts out, it seems like an awful number of people are interested in getting their hands on it for free.
What do you think is going to happen the next time a congressional appropriation is required for I2 maintenance or expansion, and the **AA lobby start spewing stats (legitimate or otherwise) about the percentage of I2 used for "illicit" sharing? Do you think your congressman who receives large campain contributions from the **AA is going to stand up for the rights of educational institutions (especially given the Republican majority)? Universities and other I2 management entities need to do better job of policing their publicly-financed infrastucture.
Frankly, I could give a rat's ass if IE uses super-secret API calls. Other browsers seem to do just fine without them.
To me, the larger problem is the level at which other applications leverage IE's COM interfaces (IWebBrowser, etc.). These interfaces are published in the Platform SDK as part of the Windows development environment, without much mention of IE (that I could find). But using them requires IE to be on the system, since Microsoft makes it difficult (imposible?) for other browser applications to expose these interfaces and to be used instead of IE. Quickbooks is a great example, it uses these COM interfaces to include web pages in its application, requiring keeping IE on the computer in organizations that would like to purge IE. Sloppyness on Intuit's part? Perhaps. But is it really in their best interest to wedge support in for say, Gecko, when IE is pretty much guaranteed to be on the computer?
While it might be a misnomer to say "IE is part of the Operating System", it might as well be since developers are guided with a club toward it.
VB 6's strongest point was not its wonderful wrappers around Windows U/I widgets (which were garbage), nor it's lack of built in threading, nor it's exception handling, nor its ability to subclass windows object (without destabilizing hacks).
What made VB shine was it's solid implmenetation of COM. It was far easier to use COM widgets with VB6 than Visual C++, and it actually worked most of the time (unlike Delphi 3, 4 and 5 which suffered from horrid COM implementations and a parent company in constant identity crisis)
Other than the $$$, migrating to VB6 was not bad. Did I have to modify code? Yes. But in return, I got threading, decent exception handling, along with access to other.NET goodies.
That being said, though, I do have some apps & libraries that I've left on VB 6. It doesn't particularly bug me that Microsoft isn't actively supporting it. It works well enough as is, and has for a while. And I can continue to add functionality and workarounds easily enough writing COM objects in C++ if I need to.
DirectTV markets a Tivo for $99 and charges only $5 / month for all of your Tivo's. Better yet, it has an integrated dual tuner so you can watch/record two different programs at once. Not a bad deal.
The rub is that it only has Version 3 of the Tivo software, so you can't use the USB connector to hook up a NIC. No plans from DirectTV in the near future for getting the Tivo software up to date. So we can all enjoy these new apps, except for those of us who bought our DVR from DirectTV:-P
I don't know what level intelligence a Walmart shopper's brain exhibits when it's "activated." They could be a Mensa member and still have difficulty finding a PCMCIA wireless adapter on Walmart or BestBuy shelves that mentions Linux compatibliity.
If I buy a notebook with Windows XP and a wireless card, odd's are pretty good I will be able to get online. If I buy a Linux notebook and a wireless card, unless I have a wired jack to connect to, or have a second computer, I'm not going to be able to get online to get the wireless drivers, let alone get them installed and configured properly.
If people want "let the dumb ones keep using Windows", that's fine. Just don't complain that Linux is still a niche player on the desktop.
Admitedly, I last messed with this with my DLink card in the earlier days of 2.6. Out of curiosity, I took a peek at the madwifi project's readme and howto files. I'm sorry, but I doubt people who have trouble figuring out how to send an email attachment are going to succesfully compile the modules, put them where they need to go, not to mention building a script to run the necessary iw* commands. There might be some management tool available that comes with Linspire that takes care of figuring out what adapter you're using and assisting the user with setting up WEP (or other security) and creating profiles for different access points. If so, this post is moot, my bad.
A Windoze or Mac notebook pretty much either has wireless functionality out of the box or with the insertion of a card and CD. I was unable to find a reference to Linux compatibility with wireless adapters on a cursory check of the Linksys, Netgear and DLink sites. Who's Joe N00b going to call if the manufacturers doesn't support Linux? Walmart? Linspire?
It's going to be ugly when Joe User buys one of these things and tries to get a wireless working. You can imagine how the support call will go when the poor user mentiones he's using Linspire/Linux.
For a non-Windows PC to work on a mass-market level, it has to be sold as an appliance. It should come out of the box with all that you need to perform "basic" functionality (web browser, email, productivity suite). All of these things exist in Linux. But if the user isn't able to log onto Linspire's site because they can't hook up to their wireless router or USB DSL/Cable modem to get those apps, they're going to go back and either return the notebook or buy XP
Although a few well-meaning souls volunteered to be the contacts for SpamAssassin, when our marketting department contacted them regarding advertising no one would step up to the plate and shell-out for print ads like the other enterprise-focused vendors.
The idea that the Oscars aren't a marketting orgy and somehow represents an introspective look at an industry at itself is silly. The Oscars have always been a self-congratulatory social event. Given that the only "independent" films you see are distributed by Miramax (Disney) and Fox Searchlight illustrate that this is a glorified advertisement for studios.
The fact that you don't see the Mountain Dew Action Movie award is simply because the studios have the money to fund their own marketting fest, whereas the gaming publishers don't. As the software publishing continues to consolidate you this might change (EA, Sony and Nintendo may hook up to do something that seems more legitimate). Even so, don't hold your breath waiting for your favorite non-console game by a small distributor to get any recognition.
Substitute "Internet Explorer" for "Firefox" and see if you would find one post on Slashdot defending the product or suggesting a post to the manufacturer's support site.
For the record, I am a happy Firefox 1.0 user who has experienced some additional stability with 1.0, and have submitted my crashes through the integrated bug reporting tool
What exactly was United Linux supposed to do? Ensure that companies other than RedHat could make a profit/living selling GNU/Linux? Simulate momentum by adding up all of their cumulative minor market shares? Why would I care? United Linux was never nearly as compelling as LSB, which does address the issue of making sure apps built for a named platform can be installed and run on any distribution.
If all of the United Linux companies bit the dust, GNU/Linux would still carry on in the same fashion. On the server, GNU/Linux continues its inbounds. On the desktop, driver support by manufacturers is still spotty at best, and if you go to a lot of trouble you can get some Windoze games to run almost as well as they do in Windoze.
If anyone with money is interested getting Microsoft off desktops, they need to build an integrated platform based on GNU/Linux that consists of an "entertainment unit" (combo DVD/DVR/Game Unit) that communicates seamlessly with a desktop productivity PC's that can play the same games. Put out plenty of press-releases with ad-whores like CNET and set up plenty of demo units at consumer stores.
Finally, this will make the true-believers gag, implement some form of copy protection that content-creators can use so they will be willing produce games, add-on's and apps (of course, open source developers will be welcomed and encouraged to create Free apps/games for the new system)
You present Joe User with an end-to-end solution with a Myth-TV-like box, a stable PC not subject to the Microsoft Tax, package decent controllers/remotes, you might get Microsoft off of the desktop. About the only company I'm guessing that could pull this off who isn't already in bed with Microsoft is Sony.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the GPL, use GPL software, and think it's a good thing overall.
However, I am having difficulting grasping why a software license should be dictating how content is distributed. If anything, adding DRM penalties to the GPL would do more to lock out Linux boxes from mainstream content than anything Microsoft could do.
Software should be free, but limiting the freedom of people using it to listen to DRM'd content is counter-productive
The Microsoft rep went on to say that they would be discontinuing support for import/export of ASCII and WordPerfect document formats, to the delight of many professional communities.
We are running Kerio 6.0 as an Exchange replacement (we were on Exchange 5.5). Most of our users are on Microsoft Outlook 2K or 2K3. Our main reason for selecting Kerio was its marketting as an Exchange replacement. Here are some of our experiences:
In short, my bosses are forcing us back to "how things were". We are going to bite the bullet and go back to Exchange. I'm bummed, because there is a lot to like about Kerio (the web interface, integrated antivirus and spam and management are all nice, and it's a lot easier to manage than Exchange) - but the Outlook Connector's poor functionality make it an inadequate replacement for Exchange
Unlike my predecessor, take a look at the Kerio forums before you buy this product.
Actually, given the amount of paint, sandblasting, etc. that goes into cleaning it up, it is quite related to air polution.
It'd be nice if this stuff cleaned the "artwork" painted on by the spraycan community...
The media would have you believe 80% of the women are ugly, boring and uninspired based upon what they hold up as a reference model (heroin-addict thin, vapeous, self-absorbed, etc.) This does not make most women less productive than their "beautiful" counterparts in Hollywood movies or New York runways. In fact, most succesful families and productive careers are spearheaded by women who look nothing like Paris Hilton.
Likewise, there are a bunch of ugly Windows applications doing a lot of work. Like it or not, Microsoft made it possible for mediocre programmers to make boring apps that get a lot of work done. These programs may not be innovative with pretty UI gimmicks that suck up CPU cycles, they tend to use more resources than they ought to, and they are fraught with spaghetti and bugs, but they get the work done.
The lack of innovation may help minimize training when teaching new apps. Teaching new paradigms is expensive and time consuming.
Like it or not, ugly is what most work is getting done on.
It's more fundamental than that. The culture in India is one of extreme politeness, but self-directed thinking just isn't a part of their culture.
I have never been to India, but that seems a little harsh. There are a lot of examples of very creative art and literature from pre-colonial India, and plenty of cinema now.
I imagine that employees of call centers are encouraged less to solve problems than to contribute to metrics of "customer satisfaction" so that the call center can keep its contract. I'm sure this has to frustate the call center workers as much as the customers.
Trying to purchase some Dell notebooks this week was an excrutiating excercise. The online credit application initially rejected me and gave me a number to call. The person I spoke to was very polite but had absolutely no authority/ability to assist me in getting my credit line established or switching my order to use a credit card instead of the credit line. The order ended up getting cancelled, and the two notebooks I selected from the Dell Outlet site ended up going to somebody else by the time I ended my fruitless 2 hours on the phone. The problem isn't so much that the call centers are offshored, it's that the staff are not provided with any meaningful mechanisms to address customer concerns. They seem to have a list of things that they are expected to respond to and responses they are allowed to give. There is no "go-to" person that you can speak to that can make decisions or provide intervention if the system behaves unexpectedly. Since the call center is located on the other side of the globe from where the orders are managed and shipped, the call center staff is pretty much powerless to act on a customer's behalf.
A remote call center is fine to talk Joe Average in figuring out why their AOL connection isn't working as expected. But when it comes to making a purchase and spending money, I want to speak to somebody who can take action on my behalf. Having my order cancelled and then getting thanked for choosing Dell does not constitute adequate customer service.
There are a number of applications, such as WinFax and Dragon Naturally Speaking, which install add-on's to Microsoft Word that add to the startup time and can cause problems with other add-in's (I know, the article is about Word/OO on fresh installs, but this issue comes up often in real life). The WinFax plug-in in particular can cause problems with other add-on's. For better or for worse, there aren't similar issues yet with OO. Given it's tight ties in Java, though, I can't imagine it would take long once OO gets popular for a number of add-in's to spring up, add time to its startup as well.
It is rather odd that Nokia is singling out the "Linux" kernel as a benefactor of its largess. I would agree with Stallman's point (albeit poorly made) that the granting of "immunity" to the Linux kernel implies some manner of "threat" to other projects, including FOSS.
What would Nokia's motivation be for making this announcement? I doubt they need the clout for getting patents crammed through the EU -- it's just a matter of time, unfortnately. My guess is that they have some skunkworks project using Linux embedded (like the dead Media Terminal ).
Does Yahoo's service require XP in order to do a transfer to portable devices? I am still on Windows 2000 for gaming and such, and do not want to "upgrade" to XP (I know better than to ask if they have Linux support - sigh)
I read that it doesn't support buying tracks and transferring them to an iPod, which is odd. Does anybody know if this will change?
I have dealt with a great number of people who want Microsoft Office installed on a second computer but don't realize that to legally do so, they need to shell out a few hundred bucks.
This is rampant among SOHO users who think because they bought a license for their office computer they should be able to load it onto their notebook. They have no idea (or are in denial) of Microsoft's EULA and what it means in the cost of using Office.
As people are educated about the true cost of using proprietary packages (especially Office), they will may be more receptive to alternatives.
As somebody who subscribes to a legit music service, as well as somebody who pays taxes, I'm a bit miffed at the attitudes of those who are rationalizing the file sharing of copyrighted material because:
Ripping Metallica tracks and sharing them isn't legal. Period. There is no fair use in taking a copyrighted work, duplicating it and distributing unlimited copies of it. Falacious arguments about the virtues of illegal media file sharing work to undermine what legitimate fair use rights we have left.
For all the whining about the crap content **AA puts out, it seems like an awful number of people are interested in getting their hands on it for free.
What do you think is going to happen the next time a congressional appropriation is required for I2 maintenance or expansion, and the **AA lobby start spewing stats (legitimate or otherwise) about the percentage of I2 used for "illicit" sharing? Do you think your congressman who receives large campain contributions from the **AA is going to stand up for the rights of educational institutions (especially given the Republican majority)? Universities and other I2 management entities need to do better job of policing their publicly-financed infrastucture.
END FLAMEBAITFrankly, I could give a rat's ass if IE uses super-secret API calls. Other browsers seem to do just fine without them.
To me, the larger problem is the level at which other applications leverage IE's COM interfaces (IWebBrowser, etc.). These interfaces are published in the Platform SDK as part of the Windows development environment, without much mention of IE (that I could find). But using them requires IE to be on the system, since Microsoft makes it difficult (imposible?) for other browser applications to expose these interfaces and to be used instead of IE. Quickbooks is a great example, it uses these COM interfaces to include web pages in its application, requiring keeping IE on the computer in organizations that would like to purge IE. Sloppyness on Intuit's part? Perhaps. But is it really in their best interest to wedge support in for say, Gecko, when IE is pretty much guaranteed to be on the computer?
While it might be a misnomer to say "IE is part of the Operating System", it might as well be since developers are guided with a club toward it.
"...migrating to VB6 was not bad"
Doh!
meant "migrating from VB6 was not bad"
VB 6's strongest point was not its wonderful wrappers around Windows U/I widgets (which were garbage), nor it's lack of built in threading, nor it's exception handling, nor its ability to subclass windows object (without destabilizing hacks).
.NET goodies.
What made VB shine was it's solid implmenetation of COM. It was far easier to use COM widgets with VB6 than Visual C++, and it actually worked most of the time (unlike Delphi 3, 4 and 5 which suffered from horrid COM implementations and a parent company in constant identity crisis)
Other than the $$$, migrating to VB6 was not bad. Did I have to modify code? Yes. But in return, I got threading, decent exception handling, along with access to other
That being said, though, I do have some apps & libraries that I've left on VB 6. It doesn't particularly bug me that Microsoft isn't actively supporting it. It works well enough as is, and has for a while. And I can continue to add functionality and workarounds easily enough writing COM objects in C++ if I need to.
The media companies are asserting that if a technology is primarily used for illegal activity, then it should be banned.
Since there are statistics showing that a majority of email is now SPAM, which is illegal, shouldn't we have to shut down email as well?
DirectTV markets a Tivo for $99 and charges only $5 / month for all of your Tivo's. Better yet, it has an integrated dual tuner so you can watch/record two different programs at once. Not a bad deal.
The rub is that it only has Version 3 of the Tivo software, so you can't use the USB connector to hook up a NIC. No plans from DirectTV in the near future for getting the Tivo software up to date. So we can all enjoy these new apps, except for those of us who bought our DVR from DirectTV :-P
I don't know what level intelligence a Walmart shopper's brain exhibits when it's "activated." They could be a Mensa member and still have difficulty finding a PCMCIA wireless adapter on Walmart or BestBuy shelves that mentions Linux compatibliity.
If I buy a notebook with Windows XP and a wireless card, odd's are pretty good I will be able to get online. If I buy a Linux notebook and a wireless card, unless I have a wired jack to connect to, or have a second computer, I'm not going to be able to get online to get the wireless drivers, let alone get them installed and configured properly.
If people want "let the dumb ones keep using Windows", that's fine. Just don't complain that Linux is still a niche player on the desktop.
Admitedly, I last messed with this with my DLink card in the earlier days of 2.6. Out of curiosity, I took a peek at the madwifi project's readme and howto files. I'm sorry, but I doubt people who have trouble figuring out how to send an email attachment are going to succesfully compile the modules, put them where they need to go, not to mention building a script to run the necessary iw* commands. There might be some management tool available that comes with Linspire that takes care of figuring out what adapter you're using and assisting the user with setting up WEP (or other security) and creating profiles for different access points. If so, this post is moot, my bad.
A Windoze or Mac notebook pretty much either has wireless functionality out of the box or with the insertion of a card and CD. I was unable to find a reference to Linux compatibility with wireless adapters on a cursory check of the Linksys, Netgear and DLink sites. Who's Joe N00b going to call if the manufacturers doesn't support Linux? Walmart? Linspire?
It's going to be ugly when Joe User buys one of these things and tries to get a wireless working. You can imagine how the support call will go when the poor user mentiones he's using Linspire/Linux.
For a non-Windows PC to work on a mass-market level, it has to be sold as an appliance. It should come out of the box with all that you need to perform "basic" functionality (web browser, email, productivity suite). All of these things exist in Linux. But if the user isn't able to log onto Linspire's site because they can't hook up to their wireless router or USB DSL/Cable modem to get those apps, they're going to go back and either return the notebook or buy XP
Where's SpamAssassin?
Although a few well-meaning souls volunteered to be the contacts for SpamAssassin, when our marketting department contacted them regarding advertising no one would step up to the plate and shell-out for print ads like the other enterprise-focused vendors.
The idea that the Oscars aren't a marketting orgy and somehow represents an introspective look at an industry at itself is silly. The Oscars have always been a self-congratulatory social event. Given that the only "independent" films you see are distributed by Miramax (Disney) and Fox Searchlight illustrate that this is a glorified advertisement for studios.
The fact that you don't see the Mountain Dew Action Movie award is simply because the studios have the money to fund their own marketting fest, whereas the gaming publishers don't. As the software publishing continues to consolidate you this might change (EA, Sony and Nintendo may hook up to do something that seems more legitimate). Even so, don't hold your breath waiting for your favorite non-console game by a small distributor to get any recognition.
Substitute "Internet Explorer" for "Firefox" and see if you would find one post on Slashdot defending the product or suggesting a post to the manufacturer's support site.
For the record, I am a happy Firefox 1.0 user who has experienced some additional stability with 1.0, and have submitted my crashes through the integrated bug reporting tool
What exactly was United Linux supposed to do? Ensure that companies other than RedHat could make a profit/living selling GNU/Linux? Simulate momentum by adding up all of their cumulative minor market shares? Why would I care? United Linux was never nearly as compelling as LSB, which does address the issue of making sure apps built for a named platform can be installed and run on any distribution.
If all of the United Linux companies bit the dust, GNU/Linux would still carry on in the same fashion. On the server, GNU/Linux continues its inbounds. On the desktop, driver support by manufacturers is still spotty at best, and if you go to a lot of trouble you can get some Windoze games to run almost as well as they do in Windoze.
If anyone with money is interested getting Microsoft off desktops, they need to build an integrated platform based on GNU/Linux that consists of an "entertainment unit" (combo DVD/DVR/Game Unit) that communicates seamlessly with a desktop productivity PC's that can play the same games. Put out plenty of press-releases with ad-whores like CNET and set up plenty of demo units at consumer stores.
Finally, this will make the true-believers gag, implement some form of copy protection that content-creators can use so they will be willing produce games, add-on's and apps (of course, open source developers will be welcomed and encouraged to create Free apps/games for the new system)
You present Joe User with an end-to-end solution with a Myth-TV-like box, a stable PC not subject to the Microsoft Tax, package decent controllers/remotes, you might get Microsoft off of the desktop. About the only company I'm guessing that could pull this off who isn't already in bed with Microsoft is Sony.