Business can route around GPL projects. By writing in house, purchasing non-gpl software, hiring the person who holds all the cards of a GPL project and can relicense it or use BSD or public domain code.
GPL projects can write their own stuff, or fork code of projects whos license change.
I think the real question is if CUPS moves to a non-GPL license and the project forks. In a years time, which code base will be better. The code for AppleCUPS with their new features, which cant use GPL code, or CUPS with opensource developers who cant see nor use AppleCUPS code?
Right now we don't have to worry about it. CUPS is still GPL.
Once upon a time, there were only horses on the roads. Then there was a car. At that point, no one stopped making carriages to make cars. There was no money in it. But there came a day, before the handwriting was on the wall, that making a switch was an investment in the future. Those still making carriages were in a dying industry and were going to lose out.
Yes, I am willing to starve out anyone who will sign with a major label. The way they treat musicians may be legal, but I would not call it moral, fair or equitable.
I want to see a fairer system prevail. The only way I know to get there, is to starve out the labels. What music I buy, is from artists selling it on line. Not labels.
It is the taxpayers fault, and they DESERVE to pay for it. Either by higher taxes or crummier education for their kids.
They had a inept, corrupt school system. 5 Million in computers go poof! Is their outrage? Who's head ended up on the block? Who had to pay for this? So far no one. IBM has been nice, and has made a 15 year 5 million dollar interest free loan.
People 15 and 20 years ago were responsible for this. The city, the school board, the voters and tax payers. They did not pay the piper....It has been put off till now. It is time to pay.
If the city had taken out loans, were improving the school district, etc. Then there was some big natural disaster, something beyond their control. I could see IBM feeling generous and forgiving the debt. But this is due to the school districts own stupidity.
If a car lot (yes another car analogy), sold you a car for $30,000.00, you have a million dollar home for collateral. Your worthless brother in law runs off with the car. You are having cash flow issues, and can't really afford to make the payments. Why should the car lot forgive you this loan?
They entered into a business deal with a party who had the ability to pay. Just the party mismanaged things and has the sob story, why should IBM have to eat it? Because "they can afford it" just does not cut it. IBM could also afford to cash out, take the money and run. To not sell hardware to anybody any more. But no, they are staying in business to do business. They are not extorting their customers. They should not have to eat it. Let the tax payers who allow such government pay for it.
Generally speaking, you don't hear a lot of anecdotal evidence of people returning anything for 3rd and 4th repairs....except for Xbox-360s.
And by your own knowledge 1 out of 15 or a 13% failure rate.
If vanguard for device failure rates in the home electronic market is 2%. It looks like Microsoft is out well past 5%.
So no, it is not an event of biblical proportions. However having a failure rate double or triple the industry standard is nothing to be proud of. I won't even make a joke about how it is costing MicroSoft it's street creed or reputation.
That really does put in doubt the notion of 'divide and conquer' as a way to describe this strategy by Microsoft.
The result will be that we have fewer, bigger distributions - fewer, but probably better choices.
No, we know Microsoft has been making these deals. It looks like it is spending a couple hundred million before it is all said and done.
The real question is, once all of these deals are made, what legal theories and FUD will Microsoft put fourth? Once we know that, we know if Linux will nimbly slip on through, and Microsoft is using XBox logic to take over the Linux market. Or if it is a noose that will be hard to escape and Microsoft is showing the shrewedness it showed (along with some dumb luck) back in the 90's.
Quite Frankly, the weasels that sell Linux distributions, offering no real free to try versions. The ones who tart things up to look like windows, and do not release any of their code back into the open. I can't wait to see them go. I think Microsoft has made an excellent investment for your average Linux user.
One example of the above, is how well Xandros integrates into a Active Directory domain. Where is all of that code? Good luck getting it.
Microsoft clearly want to divide and conquer: They know they cannot fight against the movement of open/free software, but they sure can influence companies. As long as there are big distro's as foolish to walk the path Microsoft lays down for them these kind of agreements will keep coming.
Microsoft is doing what they have always done. Made deals with other companies that in the long run, put Microsoft on top and kills the other company (if possible). IBM and Red Hat won't play this game, they are in business to prosper for a long time. Novel was stupid, and made a bad deal...they may yet survive it. It wont be the first mistake they have survived. That is why Microsoft got them in on the deal first. If these small frys had signed up first. Novel would have known it's a trap and not done the deal. So Novel survives, and all these dumb little you have to buy me Linux distros go bye bye. Somehow the Linux community will survive.
It is good that the business world has recognized the value of Linux. But Linux is not just composed of companies who have paid programmers to add things they need to GNU/Linux. It is made up of programmers who for their own reasons, want to work on this and add stuff to GNU/Linux. It is also world wide, so even these shenanigans in the US will not halt linux from moving on.
Who knows, even if Microsofts wet dream were to come through, and you could not sell a linux distro in the US, and it could not be used in a business environment. People in the US would still download, and help improve Linux.
Linux is not going away. The community will still be here, and it will still grow. Also, I think other countries like China or developing thrid world nations will standardize on it which would force readoption of Linux in the US at some point.
Truthfully, Eve has already bitten the apple. Linux is here to stay in the US. The military does not want to see it go away. Large companies, like Google or banks, rely on it and would not want to see it go away. IBM, who has the power to fight on this issue wants linux as well.
In the meantime we just have to wait and see how this plays out. I hope it is more of a XBox/Xbox 2, we loose money on every sale but will make it up on volume decision from Microsoft. Instead of the Micosoft of the Netscape/Wordperfect era.
When I first started using Linux back in 99 or as they say "Before the turn of the Century". I was running Red Hat, I spent 2 hours configuring X. Once I got it running, I was using Gnome. At least for the first day. Gnome had a very clean cut look, and yet for some reason it drove me nuts. So I switched to KDE 1.x. Loved it.
Over the years I have moved from Red Hat, to Slackware, to Mandrake, to the up and coming distro of the the week, to Fedora, back to Slackware and finally at home in xubuntu. During that time I would change window managers/desktop environments ever few months. Enlightenment 16, IceWM, XFCE 3, XFCE4, KDE 2, KDE 3, Fluxbox, Enlightenment 17 and Afterstep.
Nowdays I have to admit, that KDE keeps catching my eye, and I run it with Beryl when I want to impress people with Linux Eyecandy. However, for day to day operations. I have spent the last 2 years with Fluxbox.
Yes, it is light, it loads fast, very configurable. As far as menus go, I run mmaker to freshen up the menus, and then graft on my own custom items. The dock apps are to die for. Maximum screen real estate is available, virtual desktops help me organize my work.
But yes, I find the longer I am in linux, the more I seem to like a simple desktop that does not get in my way. Heck, give me a few more years, I might even run fvm.
Movies don't get made if there is no money. You figure out how much a movie will cost, and then you get enough investors to get that big pile of cash. All the people get paid, the movie gets made.
Maybe it will make money and the investors make a tidy profit, or maybe it loses money. You invest $1000.00 and it is gone forever, but Revenge of the Nerds 7 now adorns the shelf at the local video store.
Most movies don't make money. Studios are not stupid, they don't use their own money. They use investors money.
There are people who invest in a movie as a tax write off, sometimes they lose and the movie makes money. They will not be discouraged by piracy eating into movie profits.
There will always be stoopid people out there willing to invest in Scooby Doo 4 because it will be like "the matrix, but taking place in a haunted mansion with a butteyfly effect vibe to it". Piracy won't stop them either.
Besides, I am sure Bollywood is willing to pick up the slack.
My wireless network card, depending on the linux distro, will often be going after the first boot. Depending on the distro of windows I am running....oh only one maker of windows and you know what, the driver for my card is not included out of the box.
As far as TKIP, you can drop to WEP or unencrypted long enough to get it going.
YMMV. However I can tell you for sure, every year Linux improves in wireless networking. Windows just keeps marking time.
I think most mac apps look like chit. Can't stand quicktime or iTunes.
Wheras I fell in love with Amarok the first time I ran it. The only reason my wife ever goes back to windows is to play games. Amarok has her hooked on Linux.
Microsoft benefits from the spector of legitimacy. If Novel and SUSE felt a need to sign an agreement, then there must be something there. As someone wrote a week or so ago. If you work at a businss where everything is passed in front of a lawyer. What will a lawyer who is not a sepcialist in software patents do? A) Study up B) Refer you to a patant lawyer C) Avoid the whole mess and recomend you just stick to using Microsoft products? C is the most likely answer.
Microsoft has been able to rattle their sabers, and put the stench of death on open source for the uninformd PHB's out there. I am sure that is worth 40 million dollars. To slow the adoption of Linux for a year or two.
HTML is supposed to trim out unused white space. A series of hard returns and spaces are equal to one space. That is why their are entities like as well as
and
. To force more horizontal or vertical white space than the default one space.
Maybe congress will eventually get hit with a clue stick and stop this nonsense. Who knows, it may take them being voted out off office after the RIAA is allowed to search house to house for Brittany Spears CD's.
Microsoft not releasing the activation numbers is a sure sign that they are not good.
Beyond that, things even look less rosy. Yes there are plenty of places that have Vista licenses and have not bothered to load them, xp woks just fine.
My own personal antidote, I deal with 4 machines (laptops) that came with Vista. My wifes laptop at home, she could only put up with it for about 2 weeks. She dual boots Ubuntu and XP. With the XP only used for popcap games.
At work, there is my laptop, which now runs only Ubuntu, my boss, who has called Dell, and got a license to run XP on it. There is one other laptop with Vista, we have just been to lazy to get a license for it, but if it does anything flaky, it will get a nuke and pave. Since then we have ordered 3 other laptops...all with XP.
So of 4 activated Vista systems, only 1 is actually still Vista.
So with people who are not installing Vista but have a license, people given the OEM coupons, and people who are leaving Vista for Xp/linux. I would not be surprised if actual Vista adoption is as low as 10 million.
Microsofts most effective antipiracy measure yet, has been the quality of Vista. People just don't want to run it.
The fact that people don't even want to pirate it is a bad sign for Micosoft.
I think the figure I heard quoted above is 20 million computers a month are purchased....and they come with Vista. XP will not be available next year an SP1 for Vista will be out, and anyone's guess how good that will be.
No, Vista is not a resounding success. But they have been stockpiling cash for a long time. Vista just has to eventually succeed. If it takes 3 years to shake out some bugs, they can afford it.
So for now, No, it is not a real success. But no, Open Source has not won.
If Vista is the titanic, the iceberg is only on the horizon, it has not hit the good ship yet.
I agree with the general sentiment lets see what Q2 sales look like. By then there will be no more coupons or channel stuffing. Just new computers with XP counting as Vista sales, and actual Vista sales.
If Vista adoption does not pick up after SP1 is out, then Microsoft has some problems on their hands.
You cant use the OE functions if windows won't boot. You can move the store, and jig it go get it going again. But the passwords are history.
They have a logo program, but look at the programs that have the logo. I will start with Winfax, it has the logo, still does I believe. Even though a) every time you send or receive a fax, a temp file is created in the %windows% folder. So you MUST have read/write privileges on the %windows% folder, which should have toasted them from getting the logo in the first place. b) If you install it on a computer that is a member of a domain, you MUST log in as a local user on that machine with admin rights. If you log in as a domain user, and perform the install. You will get a toasted install of WinFax and will have to reformat the drive and reinstall windows on it to get it working.
Quickbooks has the logo. Every time you run it on Vista, you have to click through the UAC prompts and a nasty message to get it to run.
These are all programs that have the Windows Logo on it, have gone through the certification process. Which seems to me to be about long files names, using the correct file and printer dialogs, and registry entries not ini files. They will certify your app, no matter where you drop your dll's, no matter which keys you write to in HKCU or HKLM. These programs could not possibly pass the test of running on a restricted account. Yet the still have that logo.
Belive me, I wish you could just copy the entire profile. Take a machine with a crashed windows install, try to install on another computer, install all the software that was on the first machine (if you can get serial numbers from the end user) and then drop a profile onto the new machine and see how it works. It is NOT seemless. And yes, you can do it in Linux. Until I settled on Kubuntu last year, every 3 to 6 months, I would change linux distro's. I had no problem dragging my home folder around.
Seriously, lets talk application practices. Anyone who has ever admined a linux box would have some idea how thing should work. Most windows software is not designed for UAC. They write crap to HKLM more than needed. Write crap to their folder in the program files directory. Some programs like Microsoft products, create files with random names and bury it in keys spread out through the registry.
Just do what the big boys do, Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit, Adobe, and Autodesk. They all have spent a decade producing software that will not run under UAC. Unless you have a linux/unix background or are deep into security. You are pretty much bound to write software that will not work under UAC. All of your coding examples show a total disregard for it. I still say if you want to blame developers, I would start with the ones in Redmond Washington.
Not all applications are certified. Despite the fact there buried in MSDN there is some good advice. Take a thousand dollars, go to a book store, and buy some books (by Microsoft) on programing in Windows.
Microsoft teaches programmers how to get up to speed and write something in windows. Security is not even tacked on as an afterthought.
If you just "drop" the data file on the new machine, you still don't have any information about the POP account, or passwords. Trust me, when you move that stuff for someone who has a borked system, they ususally don't remember passwords and such.
The point is still valid, try moving Office, or Autocad, or Photoshop to another computer. Or even non-trivial freeware, like software that burns CDs or edits video. There are so many registered dll's, and system hooks in the registry. You are lucky if they thing will even run long enough to show you the application programs window.
Take a look at what we call "good programming practices" in the Windows world. Look at the windows programming bibles. Look at how many programs written by Microsoft that are not designed to be administrative programs break on Vista.
That's not fair, to expect Office 97 to run fine on Vista. Well actually it is. If you had followed all of Microsoft's best practices, and work the platform as designed....you end up right where we are at today.
Were Microsoft programs ever written to be run as a low privileged user working only with the users folder in "Documents and Settings" and only writing to HKCU. With the installer designed to be run once as an Administrator to write files to "Program Files" and HKLM?
Yes, you could always run a low privileged account and change permissions on certain registry keys. But face it, these are a hack. Until recently, Microsoft never wrote software that way. They never seriously advocated it either. If they did, professional software such as Quickbooks 2001 or 2005 would run just fine on Vista.
Hell, the whole registry thing was a bad idea. In the Linux world, when you move to a new box, you can copy an rc file or folder from/etc and your rc file from your home directory and the program is configured to run properly on the new machine. Bash_rc for example. Most well behaved programs make few if any changes to other programs rc files. Very few of those even need any files from/etc, usually just one file or folder from your user directory is enough.
Most of the time in Windows you can not even copy out the relevant section from HKLM and HKCU because of the shoddy programing practices as taught and evangelized by Microsoft. So many entries in the registry are spread out over so many places, the program won't run if you copy just one section from the registry. A good example is Outlook Express. You cant just copy out "Outlook Express" keys from HKCU and the data files and expect it to run.
If I had to point my finger at developers for bad practices. I will be pointing my finger towards Redmond Washington.
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The hours are good, the beatings are fairly regular.
I love the perks, like not having to panhandle, and telling everyone how I am sticking it to "the man".
It works both ways.
Business can route around GPL projects. By writing in house, purchasing non-gpl software, hiring the person who holds all the cards of a GPL project and can relicense it or use BSD or public domain code.
GPL projects can write their own stuff, or fork code of projects whos license change.
I think the real question is if CUPS moves to a non-GPL license and the project forks. In a years time, which code base will be better. The code for AppleCUPS with their new features, which cant use GPL code, or CUPS with opensource developers who cant see nor use AppleCUPS code?
Right now we don't have to worry about it. CUPS is still GPL.
You know, what I don't understand. Is in a country like China. Where they don't seem to care much about other countries IP.
Home come someone there does not get ahold of the specification and source code for those winblows Wi-Fi cards and put the code up.
At least in China for there own use.
This is exactly what Microsoft wants to hear right now
Once upon a time, there were only horses on the roads. Then there was a car. At that point, no one stopped making carriages to make cars. There was no money in it. But there came a day, before the handwriting was on the wall, that making a switch was an investment in the future. Those still making carriages were in a dying industry and were going to lose out.
Yes, I am willing to starve out anyone who will sign with a major label. The way they treat musicians may be legal, but I would not call it moral, fair or equitable.
I want to see a fairer system prevail. The only way I know to get there, is to starve out the labels. What music I buy, is from artists selling it on line. Not labels.
Sooner or later, they will feel the pinch....
It works for me, I have been using it for at least 4 or 5 years.
The nice thing about it, is on debian based distros it is never any farther away than apt-get install gtktalog
It is the taxpayers fault, and they DESERVE to pay for it. Either by higher taxes or crummier education for their kids.
They had a inept, corrupt school system. 5 Million in computers go poof! Is their outrage? Who's head ended up on the block? Who had to pay for this? So far no one. IBM has been nice, and has made a 15 year 5 million dollar interest free loan.
People 15 and 20 years ago were responsible for this. The city, the school board, the voters and tax payers. They did not pay the piper....It has been put off till now. It is time to pay.
If the city had taken out loans, were improving the school district, etc. Then there was some big natural disaster, something beyond their control. I could see IBM feeling generous and forgiving the debt. But this is due to the school districts own stupidity.
If a car lot (yes another car analogy), sold you a car for $30,000.00, you have a million dollar home for collateral. Your worthless brother in law runs off with the car. You are having cash flow issues, and can't really afford to make the payments. Why should the car lot forgive you this loan?
They entered into a business deal with a party who had the ability to pay. Just the party mismanaged things and has the sob story, why should IBM have to eat it? Because "they can afford it" just does not cut it. IBM could also afford to cash out, take the money and run. To not sell hardware to anybody any more. But no, they are staying in business to do business. They are not extorting their customers. They should not have to eat it. Let the tax payers who allow such government pay for it.
Generally speaking, you don't hear a lot of anecdotal evidence of people returning anything for 3rd and 4th repairs....except for Xbox-360s.
And by your own knowledge 1 out of 15 or a 13% failure rate.
If vanguard for device failure rates in the home electronic market is 2%. It looks like Microsoft is out well past 5%.
So no, it is not an event of biblical proportions. However having a failure rate double or triple the industry standard is nothing to be proud of. I won't even make a joke about how it is costing MicroSoft it's street creed or reputation.
The result will be that we have fewer, bigger distributions - fewer, but probably better choices.
No, we know Microsoft has been making these deals. It looks like it is spending a couple hundred million before it is all said and done.
The real question is, once all of these deals are made, what legal theories and FUD will Microsoft put fourth? Once we know that, we know if Linux will nimbly slip on through, and Microsoft is using XBox logic to take over the Linux market. Or if it is a noose that will be hard to escape and Microsoft is showing the shrewedness it showed (along with some dumb luck) back in the 90's.
Quite Frankly, the weasels that sell Linux distributions, offering no real free to try versions. The ones who tart things up to look like windows, and do not release any of their code back into the open. I can't wait to see them go. I think Microsoft has made an excellent investment for your average Linux user.
One example of the above, is how well Xandros integrates into a Active Directory domain. Where is all of that code? Good luck getting it.
I think the spam content of this is pretty big. The newer versions of Quickbooks require the .NET framework.
.NET.
If I was making my software cross platform, I would not do so by moving to
Microsoft is doing what they have always done. Made deals with other companies that in the long run, put Microsoft on top and kills the other company (if possible). IBM and Red Hat won't play this game, they are in business to prosper for a long time. Novel was stupid, and made a bad deal...they may yet survive it. It wont be the first mistake they have survived. That is why Microsoft got them in on the deal first. If these small frys had signed up first. Novel would have known it's a trap and not done the deal. So Novel survives, and all these dumb little you have to buy me Linux distros go bye bye. Somehow the Linux community will survive.
It is good that the business world has recognized the value of Linux. But Linux is not just composed of companies who have paid programmers to add things they need to GNU/Linux. It is made up of programmers who for their own reasons, want to work on this and add stuff to GNU/Linux. It is also world wide, so even these shenanigans in the US will not halt linux from moving on.
Who knows, even if Microsofts wet dream were to come through, and you could not sell a linux distro in the US, and it could not be used in a business environment. People in the US would still download, and help improve Linux.
Linux is not going away. The community will still be here, and it will still grow. Also, I think other countries like China or developing thrid world nations will standardize on it which would force readoption of Linux in the US at some point.
Truthfully, Eve has already bitten the apple. Linux is here to stay in the US. The military does not want to see it go away. Large companies, like Google or banks, rely on it and would not want to see it go away. IBM, who has the power to fight on this issue wants linux as well.
In the meantime we just have to wait and see how this plays out. I hope it is more of a XBox/Xbox 2, we loose money on every sale but will make it up on volume decision from Microsoft. Instead of the Micosoft of the Netscape/Wordperfect era.
When I first started using Linux back in 99 or as they say "Before the turn of the Century". I was running Red Hat, I spent 2 hours configuring X. Once I got it running, I was using Gnome. At least for the first day. Gnome had a very clean cut look, and yet for some reason it drove me nuts. So I switched to KDE 1.x. Loved it.
Over the years I have moved from Red Hat, to Slackware, to Mandrake, to the up and coming distro of the the week, to Fedora, back to Slackware and finally at home in xubuntu. During that time I would change window managers/desktop environments ever few months. Enlightenment 16, IceWM, XFCE 3, XFCE4, KDE 2, KDE 3, Fluxbox, Enlightenment 17 and Afterstep.
Nowdays I have to admit, that KDE keeps catching my eye, and I run it with Beryl when I want to impress people with Linux Eyecandy. However, for day to day operations. I have spent the last 2 years with Fluxbox.
Yes, it is light, it loads fast, very configurable. As far as menus go, I run mmaker to freshen up the menus, and then graft on my own custom items. The dock apps are to die for. Maximum screen real estate is available, virtual desktops help me organize my work.
But yes, I find the longer I am in linux, the more I seem to like a simple desktop that does not get in my way. Heck, give me a few more years, I might even run fvm.
Movies don't get made if there is no money. You figure out how much a movie will cost, and then you get enough investors to get that big pile of cash. All the people get paid, the movie gets made.
Maybe it will make money and the investors make a tidy profit, or maybe it loses money. You invest $1000.00 and it is gone forever, but Revenge of the Nerds 7 now adorns the shelf at the local video store.
Most movies don't make money. Studios are not stupid, they don't use their own money. They use investors money.
There are people who invest in a movie as a tax write off, sometimes they lose and the movie makes money. They will not be discouraged by piracy eating into movie profits.
There will always be stoopid people out there willing to invest in Scooby Doo 4 because it will be like "the matrix, but taking place in a haunted mansion with a butteyfly effect vibe to it". Piracy won't stop them either.
Besides, I am sure Bollywood is willing to pick up the slack.
My wireless network card, depending on the linux distro, will often be going after the first boot. Depending on the distro of windows I am running....oh only one maker of windows and you know what, the driver for my card is not included out of the box.
As far as TKIP, you can drop to WEP or unencrypted long enough to get it going.
YMMV. However I can tell you for sure, every year Linux improves in wireless networking. Windows just keeps marking time.
This seems to be pretty much personal peference.
I think most mac apps look like chit. Can't stand quicktime or iTunes.
Wheras I fell in love with Amarok the first time I ran it. The only reason my wife ever goes back to windows is to play games. Amarok has her hooked on Linux.
Microsoft benefits from the spector of legitimacy. If Novel and SUSE felt a need to sign an agreement, then there must be something there. As someone wrote a week or so ago. If you work at a businss where everything is passed in front of a lawyer. What will a lawyer who is not a sepcialist in software patents do? A) Study up B) Refer you to a patant lawyer C) Avoid the whole mess and recomend you just stick to using Microsoft products? C is the most likely answer.
Microsoft has been able to rattle their sabers, and put the stench of death on open source for the uninformd PHB's out there. I am sure that is worth 40 million dollars. To slow the adoption of Linux for a year or two.
HTML is supposed to trim out unused white space. A series of hard returns and spaces are equal to one space. That is why their are entities like as well as
and
. To force more horizontal or vertical white space than the default one space.
I say "Come on in, there is room for one more"
Maybe congress will eventually get hit with a clue stick and stop this nonsense. Who knows, it may take them being voted out off office after the RIAA is allowed to search house to house for Brittany Spears CD's.
Microsoft not releasing the activation numbers is a sure sign that they are not good.
Beyond that, things even look less rosy. Yes there are plenty of places that have Vista licenses and have not bothered to load them, xp woks just fine.
My own personal antidote, I deal with 4 machines (laptops) that came with Vista. My wifes laptop at home, she could only put up with it for about 2 weeks. She dual boots Ubuntu and XP. With the XP only used for popcap games.
At work, there is my laptop, which now runs only Ubuntu, my boss, who has called Dell, and got a license to run XP on it. There is one other laptop with Vista, we have just been to lazy to get a license for it, but if it does anything flaky, it will get a nuke and pave. Since then we have ordered 3 other laptops...all with XP.
So of 4 activated Vista systems, only 1 is actually still Vista.
So with people who are not installing Vista but have a license, people given the OEM coupons, and people who are leaving Vista for Xp/linux. I would not be surprised if actual Vista adoption is as low as 10 million.
Microsofts most effective antipiracy measure yet, has been the quality of Vista. People just don't want to run it.
The fact that people don't even want to pirate it is a bad sign for Micosoft.
I have a radical idea. If Nintendo makes a game with different game play...they can call it something else.
Well for now, Microsoft is doing fine.
I think the figure I heard quoted above is 20 million computers a month are purchased....and they come with Vista. XP will not be available next year an SP1 for Vista will be out, and anyone's guess how good that will be.
No, Vista is not a resounding success. But they have been stockpiling cash for a long time. Vista just has to eventually succeed. If it takes 3 years to shake out some bugs, they can afford it.
So for now, No, it is not a real success. But no, Open Source has not won.
If Vista is the titanic, the iceberg is only on the horizon, it has not hit the good ship yet.
I agree with the general sentiment lets see what Q2 sales look like. By then there will be no more coupons or channel stuffing. Just new computers with XP counting as Vista sales, and actual Vista sales.
If Vista adoption does not pick up after SP1 is out, then Microsoft has some problems on their hands.
You cant use the OE functions if windows won't boot. You can move the store, and jig it go get it going again. But the passwords are history.
They have a logo program, but look at the programs that have the logo. I will start with Winfax, it has the logo, still does I believe. Even though a) every time you send or receive a fax, a temp file is created in the %windows% folder. So you MUST have read/write privileges on the %windows% folder, which should have toasted them from getting the logo in the first place. b) If you install it on a computer that is a member of a domain, you MUST log in as a local user on that machine with admin rights. If you log in as a domain user, and perform the install. You will get a toasted install of WinFax and will have to reformat the drive and reinstall windows on it to get it working.
Quickbooks has the logo. Every time you run it on Vista, you have to click through the UAC prompts and a nasty message to get it to run.
These are all programs that have the Windows Logo on it, have gone through the certification process. Which seems to me to be about long files names, using the correct file and printer dialogs, and registry entries not ini files. They will certify your app, no matter where you drop your dll's, no matter which keys you write to in HKCU or HKLM. These programs could not possibly pass the test of running on a restricted account. Yet the still have that logo.
Belive me, I wish you could just copy the entire profile. Take a machine with a crashed windows install, try to install on another computer, install all the software that was on the first machine (if you can get serial numbers from the end user) and then drop a profile onto the new machine and see how it works. It is NOT seemless. And yes, you can do it in Linux. Until I settled on Kubuntu last year, every 3 to 6 months, I would change linux distro's. I had no problem dragging my home folder around.
Seriously, lets talk application practices. Anyone who has ever admined a linux box would have some idea how thing should work. Most windows software is not designed for UAC. They write crap to HKLM more than needed. Write crap to their folder in the program files directory. Some programs like Microsoft products, create files with random names and bury it in keys spread out through the registry.
Just do what the big boys do, Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit, Adobe, and Autodesk. They all have spent a decade producing software that will not run under UAC. Unless you have a linux/unix background or are deep into security. You are pretty much bound to write software that will not work under UAC. All of your coding examples show a total disregard for it. I still say if you want to blame developers, I would start with the ones in Redmond Washington.
Microsoft teaches programmers how to get up to speed and write something in windows. Security is not even tacked on as an afterthought.
If you just "drop" the data file on the new machine, you still don't have any information about the POP account, or passwords. Trust me, when you move that stuff for someone who has a borked system, they ususally don't remember passwords and such.
The point is still valid, try moving Office, or Autocad, or Photoshop to another computer. Or even non-trivial freeware, like software that burns CDs or edits video. There are so many registered dll's, and system hooks in the registry. You are lucky if they thing will even run long enough to show you the application programs window.
Hey, he was BASICly making a statement.
That's not fair, to expect Office 97 to run fine on Vista. Well actually it is. If you had followed all of Microsoft's best practices, and work the platform as designed....you end up right where we are at today.
Were Microsoft programs ever written to be run as a low privileged user working only with the users folder in "Documents and Settings" and only writing to HKCU. With the installer designed to be run once as an Administrator to write files to "Program Files" and HKLM?
Yes, you could always run a low privileged account and change permissions on certain registry keys. But face it, these are a hack. Until recently, Microsoft never wrote software that way. They never seriously advocated it either. If they did, professional software such as Quickbooks 2001 or 2005 would run just fine on Vista.
Hell, the whole registry thing was a bad idea. In the Linux world, when you move to a new box, you can copy an rc file or folder from /etc and your rc file from your home directory and the program is configured to run properly on the new machine. Bash_rc for example. Most well behaved programs make few if any changes to other programs rc files. Very few of those even need any files from /etc, usually just one file or folder from your user directory is enough.
Most of the time in Windows you can not even copy out the relevant section from HKLM and HKCU because of the shoddy programing practices as taught and evangelized by Microsoft. So many entries in the registry are spread out over so many places, the program won't run if you copy just one section from the registry. A good example is Outlook Express. You cant just copy out "Outlook Express" keys from HKCU and the data files and expect it to run.
If I had to point my finger at developers for bad practices. I will be pointing my finger towards Redmond Washington.