My point was that a bad option an be the best of a limited set of options, and this applies to the original situation as well.
I was also making the point that, despite US propaganda aimed at persuading people otherwise, Iran is no worse than other oppressive countries in the region (and better than some).
Of course Iran does look pretty bad to those of us who have been luckier where we live - I have not lived anywhere much worse than Manchester...
Incidentally, my first reaction on seeing your name on the comment was "I know that name, its the TCL developer!".
"I was tired of North Korea's harsh penalties for being a citizen. That's why I moved to Iran!";)
The problem with that analogy is that Iran is a much better place to live than North Korea. Democratic structures with limited powers as opposed to none, limited toleration of dissent as opposed to none, a harsh system of justice as opposed to throwing anyone who might have said or done the wrong thing in a concentration camp and their family in another. Given a limited choice (say North Korea, Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia), Iran might be the best choice.
Similarly the GP might have a limited choice of shops, and find Compusa better than Best Buy. Of course, these days, he should be able to buy most things on-line.
So by your logic because there is a Eula, as opposed to nothing, MS is on the hook for your whims? Incredible.
Yes, if MS requires a EULA, you have the right to reject it.
What if I wanted Windows but decided to use another OS because I did not wish to agree with a clause in the EULA? I already own the hardware and have every right to keep it, so I should be able reject the EULA and get a refund on Windows.
According to you, MS should be able to impose whatever arbitrary conditions they want on the use of a produce AFTER getting paid for it, and consumers should have no alternatives other than not using the product (which they have paid for) or agreeing to MS's conditions. Now that really is incredible.
As for paying for the war etc., are you suggesting that no-one should raise any minor issue until all major political issues are sorted out? Then you can NEVER raise any consumer rights issue because there will always be something more important.
You do realise that complaining about MS does not preclude caring about other issues. I am opposed to the US invasion of Iraq AND corruption AND anti-competitive product bundling.
Yes, I can actually have opinions on three issues at once. If your brain explodes if you have to think about more than one issue a month, that is your problem.
I thought the EULA just meant that you could return the computer
For that to apply you would have to sign an agreement when you bought the computer. You agree to the EULA after you have bought the hardware, so it cannot affect your ownership of the hardware. In any case, it is an MS EULA that only applies to the software.
Time to break out the classic analogy
Time to break out the classic flawed analogy.
Corrected that for you.
I want a Ford with a Chevy engine, should Ford take back the engine and give me back a portion of my money?
The first time you start the Ford does it flash up a notice saying: "before using this engine, you must agree to these terms, otherwise return the engine for a refund"? If it does then yes, otherwise no.
How about I buy a mac, should Apple refund me the cost of the OS since I want windows?
They exclude anything for which there is a Linux driver already, even if the driver offers only limited functionality.
If anything is at all widely used, there will have been some attempt at writing a driver, so they are only really interested in obscure hardware for which none has been bothered to try hard enough to get anywhere AND which needs a kernel space driver.
So, this is not going to help with reasonably common problems like Broadcom wireless or getting 3d acceleration on many (most) SiS integrated video.
A possible exception are cases where it is impossible to get anywhere without info from the manufacturer, in which case they MIGHT be able to get the info under an NDA and work on it.
So they have 300 developers ready to work on driver for either obscure hardware, or in a very narrow set of circumstances, and they are surprised that they do not have much to do.
I have been using KPDF for years without encountering any problems. I am pretty sure that most Linux and Mac users use the default readers for their platforms rather than Acrobat, and I have never heard of anyone having problems.
I am using Mandriva "out of the box" (except I may have deleted a few fonts) and the fonts look fine to me.
The main problem is that there are a few really crappy looking fonts, and when they substitute for a Windows font it looks terrible. The best solution is probably to delete them.
I am not sure what you mean by "dick around with internals": installing and removing fonts and changing anti-aliasing settings are done through reasonable GUI in most dsitros.
Microsoft could easily buy the two largest open-source companies on the planet without denting their reserves. If Microsoft ever suspects Linux is a significant threat, they'll just buy out the largest players.
1) If MS started buy the price would go up a LOT, probably far more than the usual 30% or so, possibly several times. 2) You are assuming that competition regulators would be completely asleep to allow a company which already has a monopoly position to buy out its few competitors (incidentally, there is no contradiction there, you can have monopoly pricing power even with limited competition).
I do the same. In practice I usually send stuff as PDFs because they look better, and there is no real need for anyone to edit anything I send them these days.
There is one document that I have needed to send someone in a format they could edit in the last few weeks, and he requested that I share it through Google Documents.
I was pretty impressed with Google docs (first time I used it btw), and that might be the real threat to MS office as an interchange format.
How common is this, really? I don't recall any occasion when I've expected somebody from outside my company to edit a document that I started.
1) Contracts 2) Specifications 3) Documentation that is customised for a particular client
etc.
This is usually fun because you can see not just the recent changes but the whole lot.
I was once going through the client's changes to a document and decided to step back as far as I could. The client's expensive consultant had charged them tens of thousands of dollars to do little more than go through a document taken from his former employer, replacing [former employer's name] with [client name].
I did see some comments to the effect that Dell has done a fairly shoddy job of installing Linux (getting the best drivers installed etc).
In that case, you might as well buy any laptop that is known to be compatible (and there are websites that help you check), and install Linux yourself.
Alternatively, you could go to someone like system76 who are Linux specialists and more likely to care about making sure installation is done right.
The point is that FOSS does not leave you completely dependent on a single supplier: you can buy support and enhancements elsewhere. If there are lots of unsatisfied users, there is likely to be a fork.
Suppose Urchin had been FOSS. It would have been forked by now, and the devs of the forked version would be offering support.
I am a definite fan of KDE and many KDE based apps, with the notable exception of Koffice: my favourite spreadsheet is Gnumeric, for word processing I use Open Office for short documents and Latex for long ones.
I have also tried Gnome (though not for as long for six months)
As you seem to have almost exactly opposite likes to mine and you ave actually tested the alternatives, it seems worth asking why you prefer Gnome?
My preference for KDE is relatively straightforward: Konqueror, various little apps (panel applets like the quick file browser, Katapult, Klipper), I use slightly more KDE than Gtk apps, and various KIOslaves.
Markets do not give people choice. It is more the other way around. Choice is a pre-requisite for a competitive market, not the result of one.
In the case of software, the dangers of vendor lock-in, and the ease with which monopolies form, means that proprietary software gives people very limited choices.
Ubuntu passed the 8m mark abouut 9 months ago, based on the number of people updating from Ubuntu servers.
Note that updates can be cached, there are probably people sho do not update (for example because they have slow internet connection), and there are people who update from mirrors, so it is probably an undercount.
Ubutntu and Linux are growing, so the numbers are higher now
If Ubuntu alone has that many users it seems probable that desktop Linux is ahead of Mac OS's 20m+.
Now we have 3 additional people on the core team, and have released more than 15 releases in the last year, and our userbase is growing by leaps and bounds.
Is the growth bringing you benefits? Are you getting new paying customers because of it?
I agree, the fact that Linux will probably run OK on random PC hardware is a bonus, it is far preferable to buy hardware that you know is properly and painlessly supported.
Of course this reduces the choice of PC hardware compared to Windows, but it still leaves us with much more choice than MacOS, so it is not too bad.
I fell into the trap of thinking that because several successive PCs on which I installed Linux (Mandriva and Ubuntu) all worked flawlessly, that everything would and failed to check properly next time: big mistake, fortunately the problems are either fixable (less than optimum graphics performance) or minor (card reader does not work).
At QTopia prices, it very much discourages commercial development for the platform. Furthermore, although QTopia is released under the GPL, nobody other than Troll Tech can actually realistically develop or enhance it--if anybody tried to ship their own version of QTopia, none of the commercial QTopia apps could run on it.
1) So the commercial apps (by which I presume you mean proprietary: sloppy thinking or wording there) whose development is being discouraged are going to be important enough to lock people in? 2) Do you have the same objection to MySQL? 3) Is the cost really that high compared to paying developers or licensing other platforms? 4) Surely a fork can remain compatible? I can see that proprietary developers would have to compile against Troll Tech's version, why would end users have to have it?
There are plenty of ways around it, but governments do not care about expensive workarounds, or those that require technical knowledge. They want to stop the mass of the people from seeing things.
I doubt the Burmese government cares much about us seeing the pictures, they want their own people to be not sure what is going on. They do not, for example, want people in other cities seeing the protests in Rangoon, and starting their own.
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My point was that a bad option an be the best of a limited set of options, and this applies to the original situation as well. I was also making the point that, despite US propaganda aimed at persuading people otherwise, Iran is no worse than other oppressive countries in the region (and better than some). Of course Iran does look pretty bad to those of us who have been luckier where we live - I have not lived anywhere much worse than Manchester... Incidentally, my first reaction on seeing your name on the comment was "I know that name, its the TCL developer!".
So he has, in effect, outsourced to Strike Iron, Workday and Visual Sciences.
The problem with that analogy is that Iran is a much better place to live than North Korea. Democratic structures with limited powers as opposed to none, limited toleration of dissent as opposed to none, a harsh system of justice as opposed to throwing anyone who might have said or done the wrong thing in a concentration camp and their family in another. Given a limited choice (say North Korea, Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia), Iran might be the best choice.
Similarly the GP might have a limited choice of shops, and find Compusa better than Best Buy. Of course, these days, he should be able to buy most things on-line.
What if I wanted Windows but decided to use another OS because I did not wish to agree with a clause in the EULA? I already own the hardware and have every right to keep it, so I should be able reject the EULA and get a refund on Windows.
According to you, MS should be able to impose whatever arbitrary conditions they want on the use of a produce AFTER getting paid for it, and consumers should have no alternatives other than not using the product (which they have paid for) or agreeing to MS's conditions. Now that really is incredible.
As for paying for the war etc., are you suggesting that no-one should raise any minor issue until all major political issues are sorted out? Then you can NEVER raise any consumer rights issue because there will always be something more important.
You do realise that complaining about MS does not preclude caring about other issues. I am opposed to the US invasion of Iraq AND corruption AND anti-competitive product bundling.
Yes, I can actually have opinions on three issues at once. If your brain explodes if you have to think about more than one issue a month, that is your problem.
Corrected that for you.
The first time you start the Ford does it flash up a notice saying: "before using this engine, you must agree to these terms, otherwise return the engine for a refund"? If it does then yes, otherwise no. If they have a similar EULA, then yes.They will not do most of those.
They exclude anything for which there is a Linux driver already, even if the driver offers only limited functionality.
If anything is at all widely used, there will have been some attempt at writing a driver, so they are only really interested in obscure hardware for which none has been bothered to try hard enough to get anywhere AND which needs a kernel space driver.
So, this is not going to help with reasonably common problems like Broadcom wireless or getting 3d acceleration on many (most) SiS integrated video.
A possible exception are cases where it is impossible to get anywhere without info from the manufacturer, in which case they MIGHT be able to get the info under an NDA and work on it.
So they have 300 developers ready to work on driver for either obscure hardware, or in a very narrow set of circumstances, and they are surprised that they do not have much to do.
The PDF spec is published.
I have been using KPDF for years without encountering any problems. I am pretty sure that most Linux and Mac users use the default readers for their platforms rather than Acrobat, and I have never heard of anyone having problems.
I am using Mandriva "out of the box" (except I may have deleted a few fonts) and the fonts look fine to me.
The main problem is that there are a few really crappy looking fonts, and when they substitute for a Windows font it looks terrible. The best solution is probably to delete them.
I am not sure what you mean by "dick around with internals": installing and removing fonts and changing anti-aliasing settings are done through reasonable GUI in most dsitros.
1) If MS started buy the price would go up a LOT, probably far more than the usual 30% or so, possibly several times.
2) You are assuming that competition regulators would be completely asleep to allow a company which already has a monopoly position to buy out its few competitors (incidentally, there is no contradiction there, you can have monopoly pricing power even with limited competition).
I do the same. In practice I usually send stuff as PDFs because they look better, and there is no real need for anyone to edit anything I send them these days.
There is one document that I have needed to send someone in a format they could edit in the last few weeks, and he requested that I share it through Google Documents.
I was pretty impressed with Google docs (first time I used it btw), and that might be the real threat to MS office as an interchange format.
1) Contracts
2) Specifications
3) Documentation that is customised for a particular client
etc.
This is usually fun because you can see not just the recent changes but the whole lot.
I was once going through the client's changes to a document and decided to step back as far as I could. The client's expensive consultant had charged them tens of thousands of dollars to do little more than go through a document taken from his former employer, replacing [former employer's name] with [client name].
I did see some comments to the effect that Dell has done a fairly shoddy job of installing Linux (getting the best drivers installed etc). In that case, you might as well buy any laptop that is known to be compatible (and there are websites that help you check), and install Linux yourself. Alternatively, you could go to someone like system76 who are Linux specialists and more likely to care about making sure installation is done right.
About the same time as they had a viable business model.
The point is that FOSS does not leave you completely dependent on a single supplier: you can buy support and enhancements elsewhere. If there are lots of unsatisfied users, there is likely to be a fork.
Suppose Urchin had been FOSS. It would have been forked by now, and the devs of the forked version would be offering support.
I am a definite fan of KDE and many KDE based apps, with the notable exception of Koffice: my favourite spreadsheet is Gnumeric, for word processing I use Open Office for short documents and Latex for long ones.
I have also tried Gnome (though not for as long for six months)
As you seem to have almost exactly opposite likes to mine and you ave actually tested the alternatives, it seems worth asking why you prefer Gnome?
My preference for KDE is relatively straightforward: Konqueror, various little apps (panel applets like the quick file browser, Katapult, Klipper), I use slightly more KDE than Gtk apps, and various KIOslaves.
In the case of software, the dangers of vendor lock-in, and the ease with which monopolies form, means that proprietary software gives people very limited choices.
Thanks for the reply. It sounds like a great example of open source working like it is supposed to.
Ubuntu passed the 8m mark abouut 9 months ago, based on the number of people updating from Ubuntu servers.
Note that updates can be cached, there are probably people sho do not update (for example because they have slow internet connection), and there are people who update from mirrors, so it is probably an undercount.
Ubutntu and Linux are growing, so the numbers are higher now
If Ubuntu alone has that many users it seems probable that desktop Linux is ahead of Mac OS's 20m+.
Any system that allows power to concentrate will end up an oligarchy.
Is the growth bringing you benefits? Are you getting new paying customers because of it?
I agree, the fact that Linux will probably run OK on random PC hardware is a bonus, it is far preferable to buy hardware that you know is properly and painlessly supported.
Of course this reduces the choice of PC hardware compared to Windows, but it still leaves us with much more choice than MacOS, so it is not too bad.
I fell into the trap of thinking that because several successive PCs on which I installed Linux (Mandriva and Ubuntu) all worked flawlessly, that everything would and failed to check properly next time: big mistake, fortunately the problems are either fixable (less than optimum graphics performance) or minor (card reader does not work).
Oh yes they do.
1) So the commercial apps (by which I presume you mean proprietary: sloppy thinking or wording there) whose development is being discouraged are going to be important enough to lock people in?
2) Do you have the same objection to MySQL?
3) Is the cost really that high compared to paying developers or licensing other platforms?
4) Surely a fork can remain compatible? I can see that proprietary developers would have to compile against Troll Tech's version, why would end users have to have it?
There are plenty of ways around it, but governments do not care about expensive workarounds, or those that require technical knowledge. They want to stop the mass of the people from seeing things.
I doubt the Burmese government cares much about us seeing the pictures, they want their own people to be not sure what is going on. They do not, for example, want people in other cities seeing the protests in Rangoon, and starting their own.
Theodp, are you related to Sir Humphrey Appleby? Or the perhaps the USPTO panel are?