The people begging for pre-installed Linux are probably the same people who would, upon receiving a PC from a vendor with a pre-installed OS, immediately wipe that OS and install it from scratch anyway lest they be left with an OS that has tons of cruft.
That was my thought exactly after reading the article. Dell should not try to satisfy the fussy people, but instead satisfy people who don't know about Linux. They should put together a system that our parents or grandparents can use out of the box. They should pre-install a whole set of software, including Linux, hardware drivers, office applications, a browser (along with common plugins), an email program, and whatever other kinds of software that most people use. Anyone who doesn't like what they pre-install can format the hard disk and start fresh, or just pick and choose among different software options.
In that case, talking to the manufacturer is the ONLY way you are going to get a stable system.
That, or just run Windows. Which do you think Joe Schmoe user is going to do? Do you understand the original poster's point now? This is exactly what he meant by "Linux is only free if your time is not money - and for some of us, our time is money."
If you need to run Windows, why not just run Windows? Isn't that just easier than running Windows and another operating system, especially Mac OS X? It sounds like you're advocating using other operating systems just for the sake of bragging rights. You're not doing it to stick it to Microsoft if you cave and pay for a Windows license anyway.
Personally, I'm thinking about buying a Mac, but if I did that it would only be if I could get by without any Microsoft software at all. Otherwise, what's the point? Even running an open-source Windows emulator would admit defeat.
That may be so, but many industries have been running Windows for years. They may have problems, but they at least know there are no showstoppers. Switching to Linux is expensive in the short term, and has lots of risks compared to running the old tried-and-true OS.
Let me make this point clear with a concrete example. I'm the sole IT person for a new startup. All the employees in the startup are coming from an industry where everyone uses Windows and MS Office on the desktop. Most of the employees run many (perhaps dozens) of different applications successfully. Do you think I should try to use Linux on the desktop on the computers for this startup? I don't know if it would be able to run all their programs successfully, even under Windows emulation. I don't know how long it would take for me to even find out. Go ahead and convince me why I should take the time and expense to evaluate using Linux on the desktop, rather than just going forward with Windows which I'm absolutely sure will work. What should I say to convince everyone else to go along?
Reporting security holes on bugzilla get them marked DUPE/WONTFIX/NOTABUG and ignored for 5+ years. Publishing detailed explanations of the exploits on your blog gets them fixed within a few weeks.
If you know of any such security holes, report them publicly or privately, and you will get a $500 bounty. If reporting them privately doesn't get them fixed, you can always go public later without losing your bounty. If responsible disclosure doesn't get bugs fixed, then I would agree that full disclosure is needed. Go ahead and report these bugs and collect your fame and riches!
The only bad thing is that Michael Zalewski is not following Mozilla policy for reporting security bugs. He should first report them to Mozilla privately and give them some time to fix the problems. Instead, he publicly announces the vulnerabilities so the bad guys can exploit them before Mozilla has any chance to fix the problems. In short, Zalewski seems to believe in full disclosure instead of responsible disclosure.
Will big drug companies be able to use this and keep the prices low for the final product?
No. The main expense in developing a new drug is doing the pre-clinical and clinical trials to prove the drug is safe and effective and to determine the proper dosage. That requires patients, doctors, nurses, hospitals, research scientists, and so on, over a period of many years. Paying for all of those people to do the work costs tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
I personally believe that both should be taught, with an explanation of the controversy.
Evolution is a scientific theory. It is an idea that explains the fossil and DNA evidence available to us and makes testable predictions. As such, it deserves to be taught in science classrooms and textbooks.
There are many things that are true or may be true that are not taught in science class. History is one of them. Religion is another. There is no scientific "controversy" about evolution, so no controversy to cover in science classrooms and textbooks.
If you bother the RTFA, you'll see the whole reason they looked up who the key contributors were and how much they contributed was to "see how or if Mozilla could provide any resources." Those resources will likely to turn out to be either money or something that costs money. There's your remuneration for you.
Oh, come on. The Catholic Church doesn't believe in evolution: it preaches Creationism.
Oh, come on yourself. See my post above where I explain that mainstream Christianity, and even Catholics right up to the Pope, agree that their faith does not exclude the possibility of evolution. This "religion vs. science" angle was started by the media, which are out to sensationalize the story to make money.
The theory of evolution is not faith. It is based on scientific evidence. There are fossils. There is DNA. We can see that DNA and fossils changed over time, at a rate which can be predicted by how quickly mutations occur in genes. We can tell how long ago two species diverged by measuring the differences in the DNA of the two species and the mutation rate. Evolution explains how species change and evolve, and makes testable predictions which are quite accurate.
Evolution means more than "adaptation of species and nothing more." It also explains the origin of new species, as explained in Darwin's original work Origin of Species.
You are correct that the origin of life itself, as in the origin of the first species ever from which all species evolved from, is a different subject. Evolution doesn't state how that occurred, just how all other life evolved from it. It's similar to how the "big bang" theory says nothing about the big bang itself, only how the universe evolved from a hot, dense state just after the big bang to its present cold, sparse one.
You're absolutely correct on all counts. However, Intelligent Design does not question evolution in any scientific way. It presents no evidence of a theory to compete with evolution. The best ID does is point to things that evolution does not yet answer completely and claim without evidence that some entity (God or a "designer") is needed to explain the gaps. This is called the "God of the gaps" view. The problem with this view is that as science fills in the gaps, the religion that occupied them is squeezed out.
So that's why Christians have to not believe evolution. If they accept evolution, then the entire point of Christianity is called into question.
Perhaps it's time to inform the Pope. But seriously, mainstream Christians (Pope included) have been saying that evolution and faith are completely compatible for many years.
In other words, the cost of these trial studies is not in the tens of millions, it's more likely in the (upper) tens of thousands.
My wife works for as a research scientist for a large pharma company. Your guess is orders of magnitude off. Tens of thousands of dollars would not even cover her salary while doing clinical trials on one drug. Any clinical trial to prove a drug effective and find the correct dosing is going to cost millions of dollars at an absolute minimum.
I suppose you could get patients that would volunteer to take the drug for free. But you'd still have to have research scientists to design the clinical trials, doctors and nurses to administer the drug and collect the data during the trials, and research scientists to analyze the data from the trials and present the evidence to the FDA to prove that the drug is an effective cure for cancer. That still costs many millions of dollars.
If the drug already exists, companies can mass-produce it cheaply because they also don't have to pay somebody else who owns the patent. That handles the profitability side...
The major expense in developing a drug is proving that it's safe and effective. Those studies cost tens of millions of dollars to run. If no companies can patent the drug, and there is no monopoly granted, any pharmaceutical company that undertakes the clinical studies needed to bring the drug to market will lose money. As soon as the drug is approved, generic companies will mass-produce the drug and drive the margins so thin that the original company can't recoup their costs. This seems to be a case where donations or government grants should be used to fund the trials needed for approval.
No matter what theme you use, the user interfaces of SeaMonkey and Firefox are quite different. SeaMonkey's interface remains close to that Mozilla, Netscape 6, and Netscape 4. Firefox's interface is simplified and streamlined. As one small example, SeaMonkey's Tools menu contains ten items, six of which have menus of their own! Firefox's Tools menu has eight items, none of which has its own submenu.
The nature of Mozilla development in the past has induced regressions. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think much has changed, so I don't see why future memory leaks (new features, etc) cannot pop up.
That's the nature of any software development. New versions of software have new features as well as new bugs ("regressions"). Why would Mozilla software be any different? If there are any new memory leaks, report them as bugs and they will be fixed.
And I disagree, unless users complain about something it typically will not get attention.
What I've noticed is that users complaining about vague problems ("fix the memory leak") is generally useless. What's much more effective is filing a bug report ("when I go to this URL, the leak-gauge.pl script reports a leak"). By all means complain, but complain by giving specifics of the problems to the developers by submitting bug reports. If you can't figure out the specifics of a problem, discuss it in the MozillaZine forums. Making statements such as "they should fix the memory leak" are utterly unhelpful and do nothing to help get the problems fixed.
Many bugs in software are there because there are acceptable work arounds. And after a while, known bugs, become "features". The workaround I've been told, and I quote: "buy more memory, memory is cheap".
However, I've just demonstrated that Mozilla developers have been fixing memory leaks instead of recommending workarounds. I'm sure no developer responded to a memory leak bug report by suggesting that you buy more memory. That's pure FUD again.
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I heard that about Vincent Vega's sister.
If you need to run Windows, why not just run Windows? Isn't that just easier than running Windows and another operating system, especially Mac OS X? It sounds like you're advocating using other operating systems just for the sake of bragging rights. You're not doing it to stick it to Microsoft if you cave and pay for a Windows license anyway.
Personally, I'm thinking about buying a Mac, but if I did that it would only be if I could get by without any Microsoft software at all. Otherwise, what's the point? Even running an open-source Windows emulator would admit defeat.
That may be so, but many industries have been running Windows for years. They may have problems, but they at least know there are no showstoppers. Switching to Linux is expensive in the short term, and has lots of risks compared to running the old tried-and-true OS.
Let me make this point clear with a concrete example. I'm the sole IT person for a new startup. All the employees in the startup are coming from an industry where everyone uses Windows and MS Office on the desktop. Most of the employees run many (perhaps dozens) of different applications successfully. Do you think I should try to use Linux on the desktop on the computers for this startup? I don't know if it would be able to run all their programs successfully, even under Windows emulation. I don't know how long it would take for me to even find out. Go ahead and convince me why I should take the time and expense to evaluate using Linux on the desktop, rather than just going forward with Windows which I'm absolutely sure will work. What should I say to convince everyone else to go along?
The only bad thing is that Michael Zalewski is not following Mozilla policy for reporting security bugs. He should first report them to Mozilla privately and give them some time to fix the problems. Instead, he publicly announces the vulnerabilities so the bad guys can exploit them before Mozilla has any chance to fix the problems. In short, Zalewski seems to believe in full disclosure instead of responsible disclosure.
Evolution is a scientific theory. It is an idea that explains the fossil and DNA evidence available to us and makes testable predictions. As such, it deserves to be taught in science classrooms and textbooks.
There are many things that are true or may be true that are not taught in science class. History is one of them. Religion is another. There is no scientific "controversy" about evolution, so no controversy to cover in science classrooms and textbooks.
That's exactly correct, as I explain above. Darwin's book did not discuss the origin of life itself, only the origin of individual species.
If you bother the RTFA, you'll see the whole reason they looked up who the key contributors were and how much they contributed was to "see how or if Mozilla could provide any resources." Those resources will likely to turn out to be either money or something that costs money. There's your remuneration for you.
The theory of evolution is not faith. It is based on scientific evidence. There are fossils. There is DNA. We can see that DNA and fossils changed over time, at a rate which can be predicted by how quickly mutations occur in genes. We can tell how long ago two species diverged by measuring the differences in the DNA of the two species and the mutation rate. Evolution explains how species change and evolve, and makes testable predictions which are quite accurate.
Evolution means more than "adaptation of species and nothing more." It also explains the origin of new species, as explained in Darwin's original work Origin of Species.
You are correct that the origin of life itself, as in the origin of the first species ever from which all species evolved from, is a different subject. Evolution doesn't state how that occurred, just how all other life evolved from it. It's similar to how the "big bang" theory says nothing about the big bang itself, only how the universe evolved from a hot, dense state just after the big bang to its present cold, sparse one.
You're absolutely correct on all counts. However, Intelligent Design does not question evolution in any scientific way. It presents no evidence of a theory to compete with evolution. The best ID does is point to things that evolution does not yet answer completely and claim without evidence that some entity (God or a "designer") is needed to explain the gaps. This is called the "God of the gaps" view. The problem with this view is that as science fills in the gaps, the religion that occupied them is squeezed out.
Damn. And I was going to blame all of my software's problems on divine intervention! Either that or aliens.
A wider range of visitors than "people with an interest for web technologies" perhaps?
How about Wikipedia's browser stats? It lists stats from many different sources, not just one web developer oriented site.
And Wikipedia is already trying out the "editor" plan anyway.
I suppose you could get patients that would volunteer to take the drug for free. But you'd still have to have research scientists to design the clinical trials, doctors and nurses to administer the drug and collect the data during the trials, and research scientists to analyze the data from the trials and present the evidence to the FDA to prove that the drug is an effective cure for cancer. That still costs many millions of dollars.
No matter what theme you use, the user interfaces of SeaMonkey and Firefox are quite different. SeaMonkey's interface remains close to that Mozilla, Netscape 6, and Netscape 4. Firefox's interface is simplified and streamlined. As one small example, SeaMonkey's Tools menu contains ten items, six of which have menus of their own! Firefox's Tools menu has eight items, none of which has its own submenu.
What I've noticed is that users complaining about vague problems ("fix the memory leak") is generally useless. What's much more effective is filing a bug report ("when I go to this URL, the leak-gauge.pl script reports a leak"). By all means complain, but complain by giving specifics of the problems to the developers by submitting bug reports. If you can't figure out the specifics of a problem, discuss it in the MozillaZine forums. Making statements such as "they should fix the memory leak" are utterly unhelpful and do nothing to help get the problems fixed.
However, I've just demonstrated that Mozilla developers have been fixing memory leaks instead of recommending workarounds. I'm sure no developer responded to a memory leak bug report by suggesting that you buy more memory. That's pure FUD again.