Tasteless and annoying ads pollute the Net, that's for sure, but it's also true they make possible existence of some very important sites such as Google and even Slashdot.
>'Oh, gee... the internet was not created to be a worldwide marketplace, it was created to share information and we attempted to usurp it.
Usurp it? What exactly do you mean by that? Like, you register a domain retsopdam.net and advertisers will.... take it from you or force you to display ads on its Web pages?
>I couldn't a shit less
???
>The Internet is meant to share information, it's not meant to be a global market.
You can say that marketers share information - not all of them are selling, they are just marketing - sharing information.
If there were not for ads, you'd still be using MSN search.
>The only thing you're restrained from doing is restraining others,resulting in a net REDUCTION in restraints.
Doesn't GPL restrain others in the sense that any modifications or redistributions must be bundled with source code? Looking at it the way the grandparent post did, it does appear that GPL increases restraints - all downstream users are restricted in what they can do with GPL software (they _might_ get it and use it gratis (for free), though).
I use Firefox 0.9.2 on my Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 about 3-4 hours every day. It crashes (freezes, actually) more often than MS IE. But, as I said above, I did not say MS IE does not crash - it is marginally more stable, though. I think most Firefox/IE users would agree with this statement.
As I said, I use both browsers, each for about 50% of sites I visit and many of those sites are non-English. From personal experience, I can say that MS IE requires less manual selection of encodings and Web pages look better (I never attempted to quantify that, as I said). And - I just checked - in Firefox fonts also don't look as good as in MS IE - for example Google uses Sans Serif font and Firefox displays them using Serif font. Example: View this in both Firefox and MS IE: http://www.google.co.jp/ads/inquiry.html
>IE will show accented characters as the dumbass who created the site intended.
Noone can save a dumbass - they'll always find a way to screw up. I find the behavior you described correct. Of course that isn't to say MS IE is perfect - for example it can't properly handle UTF8 URLs (try to download a file with double-byte filename from a UTF8 page).
F***ing WTO is useless; supposedly members should open their markets and yet barriers like these force companies to relocate development overseas. And China is one of worst violators of its rules.
BTW imagine what happens when Oracle becomes considered an almost-local company in China. It's going to be a great politically correct source of commercial software and profit for everyone involved (no commercial software => low selling price => no money for "consulting" payouts => bad business)... Therefore mySQL and J2EE support contracts are going to remain a tough sell.
>Is it work trading security for a tiny bit of perceived usability?
This sounds as if starting IE is like signing one's own death penalty (if case you meant "worth"). How about this: Is it worth trading a tiny bit of security for a tiny bit of perceived usability?
I'd say it depends - I use FireFox because of the tabs (especially Open Link in New Tab - very useful for pr0n, among other things) but it tends to crash/freeze sometimes.
MS IE is definitively better for sites created for it and for multilingual sites. Because you probably haven't used FireFox in that context (or in many other contexts), you cannot say it's the same good as MS IE.
And finally, I run (freeware) anti-spyware software and am reasonably careful on the Web so I've never had any security problems with IE.
The problem you describe is not a problem of large projects - that is a problem of small scientists. They should go elsewhere. If they're really scientists they probably have a full time job at an institution with some kind of cluster or are affiliated with an institution that can provide access to resources commesurate with the scientist's ability.
If there's a guy with no previous record who claims he can create AI if they let him use TeraGrid exclusively for 6 months, should he be given access to TeraGrid? I say no.
The point here is, like one of the posts above says, that freedom of expression (even without responsibility) is allowed for articles but the same freedom of expression isn't allowed for comments which often get "flaimbait" or "troll" although they aren't any more or less such than the article they pertain to.
Articles should be rated and moderated the same as comments. The more so considering the declining quality of articles (if you've noticed there's almost one redundant article per week and so many others are of poor quality).
We already have quick polls so I don't think it'd be hard to implement.
I'm not against the idea of OSS as such, I just gave several examples how not everything is like the idealists think.
>huge asian countries are/will be rolling their own flavor of Linux
Couple of months ago Slashdot had an article about a guy who created a Web site that gives maps with locations of Linux kernel maintainers (the maps are automatically generated based on credits from source code). Well, the bad news is that contribution of China and India is zero (0). They're quite far from creating anything better than what already exists (Red Hat, for example).
Ultimately most governments will rely on Linux and/or OSS, but artificial attempts to make that hapen with government regulations aren't helpful at all. It just won't work.
>It kills jobs on US on Microsoft and other companies, but create jobs in local countries that support OSS for new companies.
Fantastic - Microsoft will shut down their Malaysian HQ and Red Hat... oh, sorry, I forgot - they will NOT open their office there because their products are relatively cheaper.
>Take for example Brazil, even the translation of Windows to brazilian portuguese is made on redmond, why should our government care if those jobs are closed?
You are clueless, Sir. Microsoft's localization is outsourced to localization partners whose translators may very well be in Malaysia (or native Malaysians at least).
>Then microsoft talks about the local reseller of windows, well, replace windows for another SO and the local retailers will be... THERE, just selling something different.
Well that's like... your idea, man.
What actually happens is that governments end up buying enterprise versions of Linux (USA! USA!) - Red Hat and Novell - because most enterprise software and hardware (like SAN storage and tape libraries) doesn't work with non-enterprise distributions.
Furthermore, as the local resellers lack the capability (RHCE isn't exactly cheap), service contracts will go to IBM, HP and the likes (USA! USA!).
>There is a LOT of jobs emerging around here that won't exist if everthing was Microsoft.
Yeah, right! Like what? Worst case scenario: Microsoft Malaysia may be closed, local translators will lose jobs, and resellers will NOT make any more money that they used to before...
>RedHat didn't produce it themselves, they just compiled it
Just adding a logo (for which they had expenses - design, registration), EULA (lawyer fees), creating an ISO (R&D lab expenses, Product Manager), buying a server (for FTP) and ISP traffic charges are not insignificant. Even if the average cost per download (1GB of data, or more) was just 50 cents, it was a cost and they were giving it away for free.
While others (SuSE, Turbolinux, for example) did not offer free ISO downloads, Red Hat did, so that was "dumping".
Or if you claim they gave ISOs away counting they'll make money on service, that again is the razor/blade model that is at work everywhere...
a) From printer companies to gaming console makers, they all "dump" their products and yet does anyone complain? Does Sony complain how Microsoft loses x dollars on every Xbox sold? Do customers complain? So what's the fucking problem?
b) As far as dumping goes there is no established way to estimate "cost" of software products because it is immaterial. You can't say one anti-virus application should cost 50 bucks and the other one shouldn't sell for 48 because 49 is "the cost"!
By your logic democratic governments worldwide should have sued Red Hat and others for providing (until recently) free downloads of their products (otherwise you claim Linux is worthless).
>Err, you are assuming they went from Solaris+Oracle to Red Hat + Oracle. They might go from Debian +MySQL or from OpenVMS+RDB or god knows what.
Fair enough, but that's what most people do - Solaris to Linux (we have had several customers migrating AIX and Solaris to Linux this year). On the other hand, I doubt that type of organization/company would use Debian/mySQL (no disrespect to Debian - my company uses it and it's great).
Backup: for example, if we _assume they used to have AIX, they probably used Tivoli to backup, if they had Sun, they probably used Veritas. Both of them have Linux agents which are much more expensive than Linux-focused backup software such as Arkeia and not to mention shell scripts.
Your observations are valid, but I just think from personal experience that TCO of UNIX in that kind of setup is somewhat higher.
It's not VoD because it doesn't have to be on demand - it's nearly on demand (at least you don't have to demand to play it - they play them all the time...).
Imagine if they had a collection of all movies ever made and if they started playing 100's of movies every second. If you had a Web interface you could choose one "on demand" and they could play it within a minute (for 99.6% of people - with thousands of movies starting every minute, it would seem on-demand although it wouldn't "really" be).
Re: DVDs will surely become obsolete when networks become fast enough to make owning and renting them inconvenient. Just look at MP3s vs. CD ROM...
I think with Sun (or whatever they had before) they'd still pay the same for Oracle but more for Sun servers and Sun maintenance & support.
Also you have to factor in the (supposedly) more expensive Sun training and sysadmins vs. cheap-to-train Linux sysadmins and the cost of 3rd party software which is generally more expensive for Sun (and for servers with more CPU) than for Linux (and for servers with less CPU). Backup software is one example.
> Anyone else have a clue why information about an open source anything would be in a proprietary MS format?
Yes - the reason is that OSS fanatics like you fill the Internet touting how good OpenOffice is (including reading proprietary formats) and yet when someone uses the format you bitch about it anyway.
I suppose the politically correct way would be to spend more time time to create the same goddamn thing using OO or perhaps write everything by hand, scan it and save as PNG. Hence the term "open sores".
(To those who will mod me down: go ahead. I have OO installed on all my Windows client systems. There's nothing wrong with the software itself but the way these Red Guards promote it does make a lot of people sick.)
> I love my PowerBook, I really do, but how 'bout making our warranty last 3 years instead of 1? That'd be perfect.
No, it wouldn't make sense for Apple. Why? See, you've already bought your PowerBook - precisely for the reason that you love it (as you say) so extending warranty for you would only be an unnecessary extra expense for Apple. Now, whether a 3 year warranty would make some Thinkpad user switch to PowerBook... I don't think so. Overall I reckon an extended warranty would not attract as many new customers to cover the extra cost.
Why don't you buy some replication software like RepliWeb RDS that can limit transfer rate and CPU loading. Then you install the server on your backup host and the client on your SQL servers and nightly (or whenever you want) collect SQL DB dumps and transfer them to the backup server with minimal impact?
>If you ignore windows ports of other GNU applications, you end up with linux having a great superiority over Windows
And if you ignore even more than just that, then both operating systems are the same, which was exactly the point of the guy quoted in this news.
# compilers! you can't program sh*t on a windows install without buying separate software.
Most people don't program anything (I do some simple Perl and shell scripting which work fine on Windows) and I use servers in production, not for development
# your choice of how your desktop environment looks
Thanks I don't have time for staring in my desktop and fscking with settings. Monocolor green is just fine.
# games, not just freecell and solitaire
Games? Are you still in kindergarten? I bought CS, though, great value!
# real networking tools, such as nmap, a variety of firewalls, heck the list is too long to begin here
A variety of firewalls... That's just great! There are several decent free firewalls for Windows (except the one included in OS!).
# a powerful command prompt for expert users
Oh, and let me guess that expert gamer slash user is you?
--
My point of course is that these arguments are nonsense and the same is true for similar pro-Windows arguments - who cares, people should use use whatever they want and shouldn't switch because of 5 lame arguments from a forum like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Tasteless and annoying ads pollute the Net, that's for sure, but it's also true they make possible existence of some very important sites such as Google and even Slashdot.
>'Oh, gee... the internet was not created to be a worldwide marketplace, it was created to share information and we attempted to usurp it.
Usurp it? What exactly do you mean by that?
Like, you register a domain retsopdam.net and advertisers will.... take it from you or force you to display ads on its Web pages?
>I couldn't a shit less
???
>The Internet is meant to share information, it's not meant to be a global market.
You can say that marketers share information - not all of them are selling, they are just marketing - sharing information.
If there were not for ads, you'd still be using MSN search.
>The only thing you're restrained from doing is restraining others,resulting in a net REDUCTION in restraints.
Doesn't GPL restrain others in the sense that any modifications or redistributions must be bundled with source code?
Looking at it the way the grandparent post did, it does appear that GPL increases restraints - all downstream users are restricted in what they can do with GPL software (they _might_ get it and use it gratis (for free), though).
>He's got a point! IE never tends to crash!
I never said IE never tends to crash - you did!
I use Firefox 0.9.2 on my Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 about 3-4 hours every day. It crashes (freezes, actually) more often than MS IE.
But, as I said above, I did not say MS IE does not crash - it is marginally more stable, though.
I think most Firefox/IE users would agree with this statement.
>How so?
As I said, I use both browsers, each for about 50% of sites I visit and many of those sites are non-English. From personal experience, I can say that MS IE requires less manual selection of encodings and Web pages look better (I never attempted to quantify that, as I said).
And - I just checked - in Firefox fonts also don't look as good as in MS IE - for example Google uses Sans Serif font and Firefox displays them using Serif font.
Example:
View this in both Firefox and MS IE:
http://www.google.co.jp/ads/inquiry.html
>IE will show accented characters as the dumbass who created the site intended.
Noone can save a dumbass - they'll always find a way to screw up. I find the behavior you described correct.
Of course that isn't to say MS IE is perfect - for example it can't properly handle UTF8 URLs (try to download a file with double-byte filename from a UTF8 page).
F***ing WTO is useless; supposedly members should open their markets and yet barriers like these force companies to relocate development overseas. And China is one of worst violators of its rules.
BTW imagine what happens when Oracle becomes considered an almost-local company in China. It's going to be a great politically correct source of commercial software and profit for everyone involved (no commercial software => low selling price => no money for "consulting" payouts => bad business)...
Therefore mySQL and J2EE support contracts are going to remain a tough sell.
>Is it work trading security for a tiny bit of perceived usability?
This sounds as if starting IE is like signing one's own death penalty (if case you meant "worth"). How about this:
Is it worth trading a tiny bit of security for a tiny bit of perceived usability?
I'd say it depends - I use FireFox because of the tabs (especially Open Link in New Tab - very useful for pr0n, among other things) but it tends to crash/freeze sometimes.
MS IE is definitively better for sites created for it and for multilingual sites.
Because you probably haven't used FireFox in that context (or in many other contexts), you cannot say it's the same good as MS IE.
And finally, I run (freeware) anti-spyware software and am reasonably careful on the Web so I've never had any security problems with IE.
The problem you describe is not a problem of large projects - that is a problem of small scientists.
They should go elsewhere. If they're really scientists they probably have a full time job at an institution with some kind of cluster or are affiliated with an institution that can provide access to resources commesurate with the scientist's ability.
If there's a guy with no previous record who claims he can create AI if they let him use TeraGrid exclusively for 6 months, should he be given access to TeraGrid? I say no.
The point here is, like one of the posts above says, that freedom of expression (even without responsibility) is allowed for articles but the same freedom of expression isn't allowed for comments which often get "flaimbait" or "troll" although they aren't any more or less such than the article they pertain to.
Articles should be rated and moderated the same as comments.
The more so considering the declining quality of articles (if you've noticed there's almost one redundant article per week and so many others are of poor quality).
We already have quick polls so I don't think it'd be hard to implement.
I'm not against the idea of OSS as such, I just gave several examples how not everything is like the idealists think.
>huge asian countries are/will be rolling their own flavor of Linux
Couple of months ago Slashdot had an article about a guy who created a Web site that gives maps with locations of Linux kernel maintainers (the maps are automatically generated based on credits from source code).
Well, the bad news is that contribution of China and India is zero (0).
They're quite far from creating anything better than what already exists (Red Hat, for example).
Ultimately most governments will rely on Linux and/or OSS, but artificial attempts to make that hapen with government regulations aren't helpful at all. It just won't work.
>It kills jobs on US on Microsoft and other companies, but create jobs in local countries that support OSS for new companies.
... your idea, man.
Fantastic - Microsoft will shut down their Malaysian HQ and Red Hat... oh, sorry, I forgot - they will NOT open their office there because their products are relatively cheaper.
>Take for example Brazil, even the translation of Windows to brazilian portuguese is made on redmond, why should our government care if those jobs are closed?
You are clueless, Sir.
Microsoft's localization is outsourced to localization partners whose translators may very well be in Malaysia (or native Malaysians at least).
>Then microsoft talks about the local reseller of windows, well, replace windows for another SO and the local retailers will be... THERE, just selling something different.
Well that's like
What actually happens is that governments end up buying enterprise versions of Linux (USA! USA!) - Red Hat and Novell - because most enterprise software and hardware (like SAN storage and tape libraries) doesn't work with non-enterprise distributions.
Furthermore, as the local resellers lack the capability (RHCE isn't exactly cheap), service contracts will go to IBM, HP and the likes (USA! USA!).
>There is a LOT of jobs emerging around here that won't exist if everthing was Microsoft.
Yeah, right! Like what?
Worst case scenario: Microsoft Malaysia may be closed, local translators will lose jobs, and resellers will NOT make any more money that they used to before...
You, Sir, are a clueless open source dreamer.
>RedHat didn't produce it themselves, they just compiled it
Just adding a logo (for which they had expenses - design, registration), EULA (lawyer fees), creating an ISO (R&D lab expenses, Product Manager), buying a server (for FTP) and ISP traffic charges are not insignificant. Even if the average cost per download (1GB of data, or more) was just 50 cents, it was a cost and they were giving it away for free.
While others (SuSE, Turbolinux, for example) did not offer free ISO downloads, Red Hat did, so that was "dumping".
Or if you claim they gave ISOs away counting they'll make money on service, that again is the razor/blade model that is at work everywhere...
What a nonsense!
a) From printer companies to gaming console makers, they all "dump" their products and yet does anyone complain? Does Sony complain how Microsoft loses x dollars on every Xbox sold? Do customers complain? So what's the fucking problem?
b) As far as dumping goes there is no established way to estimate "cost" of software products because it is immaterial.
You can't say one anti-virus application should cost 50 bucks and the other one shouldn't sell for 48 because 49 is "the cost"!
By your logic democratic governments worldwide should have sued Red Hat and others for providing (until recently) free downloads of their products (otherwise you claim Linux is worthless).
>Err, you are assuming they went from Solaris+Oracle to Red Hat + Oracle. They might go from Debian +MySQL or from OpenVMS+RDB or god knows what.
Fair enough, but that's what most people do - Solaris to Linux (we have had several customers migrating AIX and Solaris to Linux this year).
On the other hand, I doubt that type of organization/company would use Debian/mySQL (no disrespect to Debian - my company uses it and it's great).
Backup: for example, if we _assume they used to have AIX, they probably used Tivoli to backup, if they had Sun, they probably used Veritas. Both of them have Linux agents which are much more expensive than Linux-focused backup software such as Arkeia and not to mention shell scripts.
Your observations are valid, but I just think from personal experience that TCO of UNIX in that kind of setup is somewhat higher.
It's not VoD because it doesn't have to be on demand - it's nearly on demand (at least you don't have to demand to play it - they play them all the time...).
Imagine if they had a collection of all movies ever made and if they started playing 100's of movies every second. If you had a Web interface you could choose one "on demand" and they could play it within a minute (for 99.6% of people - with thousands of movies starting every minute, it would seem on-demand although it wouldn't "really" be).
Re: DVDs will surely become obsolete when networks become fast enough to make owning and renting them inconvenient. Just look at MP3s vs. CD ROM...
Strange reasoning.
It's easier to install mySQL 4 on Fedora than reinstall OS.
I think with Sun (or whatever they had before) they'd still pay the same for Oracle but more for Sun servers and Sun maintenance & support.
Also you have to factor in the (supposedly) more expensive Sun training and sysadmins vs. cheap-to-train Linux sysadmins and the cost of 3rd party software which is generally more expensive for Sun (and for servers with more CPU) than for Linux (and for servers with less CPU).
Backup software is one example.
Of course. I cannot believe that after Dell's demante and the follow-up news they can still create such stupid speculative post
Lately some articles here remind me of The Onion - untrue and laughable.
>seems to cause a few hurdles as well (i.e. publishing a print version of the Wikipedia).
If true that's only good news - it's going to save quite a few trees...
> Anyone else have a clue why information about an open source anything would be in a proprietary MS format?
Yes - the reason is that OSS fanatics like you fill the Internet touting how good OpenOffice is (including reading proprietary formats) and yet when someone uses the format you bitch about it anyway.
I suppose the politically correct way would be to spend more time time to create the same goddamn thing using OO or perhaps write everything by hand, scan it and save as PNG.
Hence the term "open sores".
(To those who will mod me down: go ahead. I have OO installed on all my Windows client systems. There's nothing wrong with the software itself but the way these Red Guards promote it does make a lot of people sick.)
>I had to get that by Limewire P2P
You _had_ to... Couldn't buy an MP3 player and convert your CD-ROMs to MP3s... You had to steal them over P2P.
Poor guy! In this time and age, people ought to have choices!
> I love my PowerBook, I really do, but how 'bout making our warranty last 3 years instead of 1? That'd be perfect.
No, it wouldn't make sense for Apple. Why? See, you've already bought your PowerBook - precisely for the reason that you love it (as you say) so extending warranty for you would only be an unnecessary extra expense for Apple.
Now, whether a 3 year warranty would make some Thinkpad user switch to PowerBook... I don't think so. Overall I reckon an extended warranty would not attract as many new customers to cover the extra cost.
Why don't you buy some replication software like RepliWeb RDS that can limit transfer rate and CPU loading. Then you install the server on your backup host and the client on your SQL servers and nightly (or whenever you want) collect SQL DB dumps and transfer them to the backup server with minimal impact?
>If you ignore windows ports of other GNU applications, you end up with linux having a great superiority over Windows
And if you ignore even more than just that, then both operating systems are the same, which was exactly the point of the guy quoted in this news.
# compilers! you can't program sh*t on a windows install without buying separate software.
Most people don't program anything (I do some simple Perl and shell scripting which work fine on Windows) and I use servers in production, not for development
# your choice of how your desktop environment looks
Thanks I don't have time for staring in my desktop and fscking with settings. Monocolor green is just fine.
# games, not just freecell and solitaire
Games? Are you still in kindergarten?
I bought CS, though, great value!
# real networking tools, such as nmap, a variety of firewalls, heck the list is too long to begin here
A variety of firewalls... That's just great!
There are several decent free firewalls for Windows (except the one included in OS!).
# a powerful command prompt for expert users
Oh, and let me guess that expert gamer slash user is you?
--
My point of course is that these arguments are nonsense and the same is true for similar pro-Windows arguments - who cares, people should use use whatever they want and shouldn't switch because of 5 lame arguments from a forum like this.
Beowulf
)
(www.linux.org.tw/CLDP/OLD/Beowulf-HOWTO-5.html