> They do not know the true cost of Windows (£100 over here in the UK).
I think it doesn't matter. People compare everything vs. everything (i.e. item A vs. item B). I don't think average Joe cares about OEM price of Linux, Windows, Celeron or Samsung LCD (in their non-Samsung LCD monitor).
They look at the shit and decide if they want it. The fact is that to majority Windows users Linux just isn't attractive enough (the looks, the features they care about, the learning curve, etc.) to switch. Sure there are many "clueless" pee-cee users who use stupid reddish desktop themes but that's how people are.
Until today it would have been impossible to comprehend the meaning of "my security cameras have been slashdotted". Well, that is what some of security camera owners will be saying tomorrow morning.
> the city collects the data, uses it, but doesn't share with others - appparently at all.
Of course. Their MIS isn't organized for sharing data. If they wanted to share data with other departments, they'd need to do a lot of work - revise security procedures, get a bunch of security software, firewalls and networking hardware, etc. It's not impossible but it's not easy either.
>at least the citizens will support (vote for, etc) what is needed to get these problems fixed.
Well, not actually. About a month ago there was an article about how some huge percentage of water facilities (and there are thousands of those!) in the U.S. are not protected (against terrorist attacks) at all. There's no money, my dear.
Why spend taxpayers money to finance dissemination of those images/data and then spend MORE money to fix security risks created by that unnecessary dissemination in the first place?
About the article: typical bullshit anti-government FUD. Like someone really needs those images. If you really need them, you can afford to pay for them from commercial providers. AFAIK they could make them available by-request so that applicants must leave contact info and reason why they ask for those, but if the cost is significant they should have the right to decline any request. Why the hell would 99% of taxpayers who do NOT need such data have to be taxed to pay for such bullshit? If the government made the info available at a cost, the same asshole who complains about this non-availability of data would then complain about "bloated" government, high taxes and similar crap.
If data older than say 90 months get archived on tapes then there's no need for as many Web servers and disk-based storage.
If those large files must be on SATA on even FC disk arrays that require over $100K/year (a pop!) to maintain/expand/manage, then it does become a big deal to provide all that for free.
> Have you ever used google ? have you ever looked at a website running on linux/bsd/apache ? ever downloaded a bittorrent file? or ripped a dvd? > The chances are that you have - and all of these things were made possible to you by people excercising their right to create, use and modify free software.
Look at these examples and you will realize that none of it is exclusively enabled by "free software" - all those things have been possible on Windows with shareware/commercial and freeware apps. In other words - no big deal, we would be able to do all those things even if free software didn't exist. (And WTF is the Google example about? They run proprietary code which could run on proprietary UNIX or (with some effort) Windows.)
> And ask yourself this question... what about all those developing countries who are choosing Linux/FOSS are they and their people not going to benefit directly or indirectly from the fact that their goverments have less ties with redmond in america?
Are they not going to benefit from any software anyway? Another truth is that people find it easy to use Windows and fucking around with OS is boring so that many users even in your developing countries don't want to bother with it. Then they buy Novell and Red Hat Linux which is perhaps cheaper than Windows but they had never paid for their Windows licenses anyway. So instead of Redmond the money ends up in Provo or whereever. At least Microsoft may print the CDs locally; these Linux vendors doesn't even do that, hahaha...
I have lived in several developing countries and I haven't noticed any revolutionary effects of "free" software. What changes them, if anything, is the fact that people have more money so they can buy computers (usually bundled with Windows OS - why? - because majority of users don't give a damn about "free" software). Average Undeveloped Joe gets an illegal copy of Windows and if he wants to do a Web site he might install LAMP on it or get a pirated copy of VMWare to play with Linux while keeping the convenience of his Windows GUI.
Free software is not BAD, but it's no big deal - people around the world have been using pirated commercial software (for free) for many years.
Anyone remembers those bozos? I wonder how Wired forgot about them!
The two press releases that shook the world: http://www.specopslabs.com/publicity.htm
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
Death toll: please post a follow up here after they detonate "the bomb".
> 2 years of US anti-terrorism operations: 100,000 deaths and counting.
That's just a proof of greater firepower of the U.S. forces and the figures aren't comparable because of different nature of conflicts (terrorist attacks vs. war). Most of those victims were largely military personnel while terrorists' victims were civilians.
>It's in Microsoft's hands being delayed so their buddies over at intel have time to finish knocking off a copy of AMD's instruction set.
It's a while that Intel has been able to use AMD64 patents free of charge because of the licensing agreement between the two. There's nothing they would need to "knock off".
>2^57 for SATA is equivalent to 131072TB. No data in current standards will ever be able to fit in that much space in any practical application.
If you meant to say that's too much, you're wrong.
"When the Large Hadron Collider begins operating in 2006, it will generate between 5 and 20 petabytes of raw data each year" http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK200 20208S0 007
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/ sez: >This case raises a question of critical importance at the border between copyright and innovation: when should the distributor of a multi-purpose tool be held liable for the infringements that may be committed by end-users of the tool?
This and the invitation for sharing legal purposes is pointless - the problem is not in legal but illegal use.
And why should the distributor of the tool be held liable? Because the fuckos didn't bother to implement basic checking/policing in the code. The other day an expert witness said that should have been fairly easy. (And why didn't they do that? Because they didn't WANT - lower coding costs, increase popularity of the software. Well they've must have saved enough to pay for expenses they'll incur along the way in this lawsuit).
Someone compared P2P to guns - distributors are liable if they don't do basic background checks on potential customers. If they require the same level of due dilligence on content that goes thru P2P software, what's the big deal?
And that comes from crowd that usually trashes Microsoft for it's "bloatware" and ridicules Windows users who install cute/stupid add-ons and desktop themes and whatnot.
Software industry is moving to subscription model anyway - once it completes the migration, open source and closed source will cost the same.
Some here mention RH "making money off OSS" - they are because others are debugging and developing for them (they do have their own contributors, true) but for less popular OSS apps if you have to develop and debug by yourself and you collect maintenance and support money only, how do you do research and development within the same budget? You can't innovate significantly on a shitty budget - you can only GPL-code what has been done by someone else.
Those who charge for maintenance and support alone can't by definition be much more cost-efficient from closed source competitors who do the same (perhaps the OSS guys wouldn't spend on ads and lawyers, but apart from that, I just don't see why would OSS be more cost effective - at least not to the 99% of corporate customers that aren't interested in the code itself).
And RH-like companies' ability to make money off OSS is proportional to the lock-in effect they can create with their distribution or application. If transparency and portability between different versions of Linux becomes 100%, then price becomes the only remaining differentiation which pushes the distros in deadly price competition. Just imagine how easy it would be to ask RH for a discount if you could migrate your Oracle on RH to Oracle on Debian in an hour, or move from one OSS firewall to another by simply loading the exported settings into another tool...
As horrible as it may seem to some/.ers most people don't really care about their privacy - convenience is more important. Hence this acceptance of spyware and reluctance to switch from Windows to a less spyware-prone system. No wonder many prefer spyware-infested Windows box to a clean Linux system - it's more convenient that way.
The other day I installed Firefox extension SearchStatus 1.0.4 - the main features being display of PageRan and Alexa rank of pages browsed. Of course soon afterwards I realized in order for it to work the extension sends all URL I visit to Alexa.com (and Google, which is indicated in their toolbar privacy-related help pages). This is how convenience wins over privacy (I disabled the Alexa Rank only).
I've heard from several ISPs that some customers complain when all spam is blocked - they LIKE to receive spam because they're bored or like "specials".
>The difficulty comes when you get someone with 500k to spend and likes the look,
Hah, that's so funny! I guess everyone has such customers in their respective fields. I had a friend who used to sell alarm systems. Once a rich guy asked him how loud was the alarm. The guy says 120dB. The rich guy says I wanna 200dB. The alarm guy says - 120dB is enough. The rich guys says don't worry, it's all right I'll pay whatever it costs...:-)
It's great to see how far(in respect with environment-friendliness, ergonomics, energy conservation, etc.) homebuilding technology has advanced.
Doesn't "NT admins" mean Windows server administrators?
My point is that a stupid admin is a stupid admin and will always be a stupid admin no matter what OS he or she uses. I know some stupid admins who used to be stupid NT admins and their company has switched to Linux lately. They're now stupid Linux admins. Same people. There's no need to single out Windows users.
> It took quite a lot of deliberate undermining the foundation to cause the dome to finally collapse.
While looking at the photos, I wondered how well can those homes handle quakes, especially those up-down quakes. I don't know anything about civil engineering, but those homes just don't _look_ very quake-resistant.
It's even worse that on Windows - while screensaver on Windows had to be liked by a particularly stupid admin in order to be enabled, on Linux it was enabled by the manufacturer - how fucking stupid is that?
As recently as Red Hat 8.0, they had screensaver activated by default, and it was known to cause system freeze-ups. Not to mention that X-Windows shouldn't have been installed by default anyway.
It's inexcusable to be stupid, but how stupid one has to be to knowingly make stupidity a system default?
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> They do not know the true cost of Windows (£100 over here in the UK).
I think it doesn't matter. People compare everything vs. everything (i.e. item A vs. item B).
I don't think average Joe cares about OEM price of Linux, Windows, Celeron or Samsung LCD (in their non-Samsung LCD monitor).
They look at the shit and decide if they want it.
The fact is that to majority Windows users Linux just isn't attractive enough (the looks, the features they care about, the learning curve, etc.) to switch. Sure there are many "clueless" pee-cee users who use stupid reddish desktop themes but that's how people are.
Couple of them were dead.
Until today it would have been impossible to comprehend the meaning of "my security cameras have been slashdotted".
Well, that is what some of security camera owners will be saying tomorrow morning.
> the city collects the data, uses it, but doesn't share with others - appparently at all.
Of course. Their MIS isn't organized for sharing data. If they wanted to share data with other departments, they'd need to do a lot of work - revise security procedures, get a bunch of security software, firewalls and networking hardware, etc. It's not impossible but it's not easy either.
>at least the citizens will support (vote for, etc) what is needed to get these problems fixed.
Well, not actually.
About a month ago there was an article about how some huge percentage of water facilities (and there are thousands of those!) in the U.S. are not protected (against terrorist attacks) at all.
There's no money, my dear.
Why spend taxpayers money to finance dissemination of those images/data and then spend MORE money to fix security risks created by that unnecessary dissemination in the first place?
About the article: typical bullshit anti-government FUD. Like someone really needs those images. If you really need them, you can afford to pay for them from commercial providers. AFAIK they could make them available by-request so that applicants must leave contact info and reason why they ask for those, but if the cost is significant they should have the right to decline any request. Why the hell would 99% of taxpayers who do NOT need such data have to be taxed to pay for such bullshit?
If the government made the info available at a cost, the same asshole who complains about this non-availability of data would then complain about "bloated" government, high taxes and similar crap.
Bullshit.
If data older than say 90 months get archived on tapes then there's no need for as many Web servers and disk-based storage.
If those large files must be on SATA on even FC disk arrays that require over $100K/year (a pop!) to maintain/expand/manage, then it does become a big deal to provide all that for free.
> it penalizes people who are not smart enough to do it on their own or who cannot afford to pay a professional preparer.
The rich get richer, that is the law of the land.
Isn't the same with investing, education and pretty much everything else?
> Have you ever used google ? have you ever looked at a website running on linux/bsd/apache ? ever downloaded a bittorrent file? or ripped a dvd?
... what about all those developing countries who are choosing Linux/FOSS are they and their people not going to benefit directly or indirectly from the fact that their goverments have less ties with redmond in america?
> The chances are that you have - and all of these things were made possible to you by people excercising their right to create, use and modify free software.
Look at these examples and you will realize that none of it is exclusively enabled by "free software" - all those things have been possible on Windows with shareware/commercial and freeware apps.
In other words - no big deal, we would be able to do all those things even if free software didn't exist.
(And WTF is the Google example about? They run proprietary code which could run on proprietary UNIX or (with some effort) Windows.)
> And ask yourself this question
Are they not going to benefit from any software anyway?
Another truth is that people find it easy to use Windows and fucking around with OS is boring so that many users even in your developing countries don't want to bother with it. Then they buy Novell and Red Hat Linux which is perhaps cheaper than Windows but they had never paid for their Windows licenses anyway. So instead of Redmond the money ends up in Provo or whereever. At least Microsoft may print the CDs locally; these Linux vendors doesn't even do that, hahaha...
I have lived in several developing countries and I haven't noticed any revolutionary effects of "free" software. What changes them, if anything, is the fact that people have more money so they can buy computers (usually bundled with Windows OS - why? - because majority of users don't give a damn about "free" software). Average Undeveloped Joe gets an illegal copy of Windows and if he wants to do a Web site he might install LAMP on it or get a pirated copy of VMWare to play with Linux while keeping the convenience of his Windows GUI.
Free software is not BAD, but it's no big deal - people around the world have been using pirated commercial software (for free) for many years.
Anyone remembers those bozos?
I wonder how Wired forgot about them!
The two press releases that shook the world:
http://www.specopslabs.com/publicity.htm
Death toll: please post a follow up here after they detonate "the bomb".
> 2 years of US anti-terrorism operations: 100,000 deaths and counting.
That's just a proof of greater firepower of the U.S. forces and the figures aren't comparable because of different nature of conflicts (terrorist attacks vs. war).
Most of those victims were largely military personnel while terrorists' victims were civilians.
>It's in Microsoft's hands being delayed so their buddies over at intel have time to finish knocking off a copy of AMD's instruction set.
It's a while that Intel has been able to use AMD64 patents free of charge because of the licensing agreement between the two. There's nothing they would need to "knock off".
> You will now need around 100 DVD-Rs & a day or more to back your drive up..
Which is why more and more people backup to disk.
>2^57 for SATA is equivalent to 131072TB. No data in current standards will ever be able to fit in that much space in any practical application.
0 20208S0 007
If you meant to say that's too much, you're wrong.
"When the Large Hadron Collider begins operating in 2006, it will generate between 5 and 20 petabytes of raw data each year"
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20
> But simply using p2p should not be illegal.
He didn't say that.
> Your argument is like saying crack houses are bad, so let's ban houses.
No, his argument is that things shouldn't be allowed or disallowed based on ease of manufacture or make.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/ sez:
>This case raises a question of critical importance at the border between copyright and innovation: when should the distributor of a multi-purpose tool be held liable for the infringements that may be committed by end-users of the tool?
This and the invitation for sharing legal purposes is pointless - the problem is not in legal but illegal use.
And why should the distributor of the tool be held liable? Because the fuckos didn't bother to implement basic checking/policing in the code.
The other day an expert witness said that should have been fairly easy. (And why didn't they do that? Because they didn't WANT - lower coding costs, increase popularity of the software. Well they've must have saved enough to pay for expenses they'll incur along the way in this lawsuit).
Someone compared P2P to guns - distributors are liable if they don't do basic background checks on potential customers. If they require the same level of due dilligence on content that goes thru P2P software, what's the big deal?
Very interesting and informative.
Good luck with moderators, though - you'll need it!
Judging by the current account deficit, it seems everyone's got SUPPLIERS who are in China...
>With bullets.
Congrats - you're the first OST (Open Source Terrorist)!
And that comes from crowd that usually trashes Microsoft for it's "bloatware" and ridicules Windows users who install cute/stupid add-ons and desktop themes and whatnot.
Software industry is moving to subscription model anyway - once it completes the migration, open source and closed source will cost the same.
Some here mention RH "making money off OSS" - they are because others are debugging and developing for them (they do have their own contributors, true) but for less popular OSS apps if you have to develop and debug by yourself and you collect maintenance and support money only, how do you do research and development within the same budget? You can't innovate significantly on a shitty budget - you can only GPL-code what has been done by someone else.
Those who charge for maintenance and support alone can't by definition be much more cost-efficient from closed source competitors who do the same (perhaps the OSS guys wouldn't spend on ads and lawyers, but apart from that, I just don't see why would OSS be more cost effective - at least not to the 99% of corporate customers that aren't interested in the code itself).
And RH-like companies' ability to make money off OSS is proportional to the lock-in effect they can create with their distribution or application. If transparency and portability between different versions of Linux becomes 100%, then price becomes the only remaining differentiation which pushes the distros in deadly price competition.
Just imagine how easy it would be to ask RH for a discount if you could migrate your Oracle on RH to Oracle on Debian in an hour, or move from one OSS firewall to another by simply loading the exported settings into another tool...
someone drooling icecream over his freshly made photograph!
As horrible as it may seem to some /.ers most people don't really care about their privacy - convenience is more important. Hence this acceptance of spyware and reluctance to switch from Windows to a less spyware-prone system.
No wonder many prefer spyware-infested Windows box to a clean Linux system - it's more convenient that way.
The other day I installed Firefox extension SearchStatus 1.0.4 - the main features being display of PageRan and Alexa rank of pages browsed. Of course soon afterwards I realized in order for it to work the extension sends all URL I visit to Alexa.com (and Google, which is indicated in their toolbar privacy-related help pages).
This is how convenience wins over privacy (I disabled the Alexa Rank only).
I've heard from several ISPs that some customers complain when all spam is blocked - they LIKE to receive spam because they're bored or like "specials".
Thanks, that's very informative.
:-)
>The difficulty comes when you get someone with 500k to spend and likes the look,
Hah, that's so funny! I guess everyone has such customers in their respective fields. I had a friend who used to sell alarm systems. Once a rich guy asked him how loud was the alarm. The guy says 120dB. The rich guy says I wanna 200dB. The alarm guy says - 120dB is enough. The rich guys says don't worry, it's all right I'll pay whatever it costs...
It's great to see how far(in respect with environment-friendliness, ergonomics, energy conservation, etc.) homebuilding technology has advanced.
Doesn't "NT admins" mean Windows server administrators?
My point is that a stupid admin is a stupid admin and will always be a stupid admin no matter what OS he or she uses.
I know some stupid admins who used to be stupid NT admins and their company has switched to Linux lately. They're now stupid Linux admins. Same people. There's no need to single out Windows users.
> It took quite a lot of deliberate undermining the foundation to cause the dome to finally collapse.
While looking at the photos, I wondered how well can those homes handle quakes, especially those up-down quakes.
I don't know anything about civil engineering, but those homes just don't _look_ very quake-resistant.
>Fucking NT admins.
Yeah, like Linux admins are all Einsteins.
It's even worse that on Windows - while screensaver on Windows had to be liked by a particularly stupid admin in order to be enabled, on Linux it was enabled by the manufacturer - how fucking stupid is that?
As recently as Red Hat 8.0, they had screensaver activated by default, and it was known to cause system freeze-ups. Not to mention that X-Windows shouldn't have been installed by default anyway.
It's inexcusable to be stupid, but how stupid one has to be to knowingly make stupidity a system default?