I'm sorry but far too many of you programmers seem to have this very "black and white" view of the world.
A lot of OSS contributors are in full-time jobs on commercial projects and just work on OSS in spare time.
Others are probably university students working on programming papers for degrees.
A few maybe have sponsorship from their companies to work within OSS projects.
If you're a programmer who's motivated by money then fine, what's the problem? Go work in the commercial sector, get paid and pay the mortgage.
But please don't judge everyone else by your own standards - the OSS community is blessed with a great number of altruistic people who program for fame or just because they enjoy doing it.
Deal with it.
Re:No slouching!
on
3D Monitor
·
· Score: 3, Funny
We have to sit rigidly in front of the monitor's centerline?
Don't be such a silly billy!
For $150 you buy a Sharp XL52 Head Mount for the monitor. Strap the chrome and black cage over your head and attach the screen to the two rods that permanently fix the screen at 9" from your eyes but keep it aligned with any head movements.
Of course, you then have the problem of weak neck muscles...
...which is why for $160, you can by the Sharp YP28 Neck Brace. Stap the chrome and black cage around your neck and using the two straps attach it to your shoulders to lock your neck permanently in position but fully supported by your shoulders.
For those with weak lower backs, for $200, there is the Sharp ZD12 Back Brace. Strap the chrome and black corset around your waste and...
Correct me if I am wrong but all the SCO vs Linux stuff has now died away.
The Linux kernel can mount devices formatted under a whole heap of filesystems including System V, UNIXWare and other UNIX-type partitions. Presumably, since SCO holds the UNIX name, SCO also holds the patents to some of these filesystems.
So why didn't SCO carry out legal action based on patent infringement within the Linux kernel for building in that filesystem support?
Isn't this exactly the same type of attack we would expect from Microsoft for FAT, NTFS & Joliet support in the kernel?
Couldn't this be a sign that attacking Linux on patents might therefore simply not be worth it based on the money & time that would be involved?
...in deference to the 1970s US punk band, "The Ramones".
James Napster, Kirk Napster and Robert Napster were all unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
Lars Napster was available for comment (as usual) but since no-one ever listens to the loudmouth twat drummer anyway, we didn't either.
The band are about to embark on their "Going All Thrashy Again Was A Bad Career Move" World Tour 2004 to promote their new album "Yes, It Has Got A Black Cover Again But There Are A Few Ballads On It Honestly".
Their latest single "Nothing Else Still Matters" reached number 98 of the US top 100 before finally giving up trying and going home.
And yes, the feeling of belonging to a community does make you emotionally biased, but is that bad ?
No, of course it's not bad and I do have very strong feelings towards a community that is achieving something simply because "it is the right thing to do".
Analysts and financial bozos measure "success" in terms of profit and market penetration - they, therefore, are the one's trying to put Linux in competition with Microsoft and whichever the one achieves 51% or more of the market share will be deemed to be the success while the other is the failure.
However, it isn't that black and white at all. For starters, there's a wealth of OSS software on Windows, not least Firefox, OpenOffice, The GIMP, etc and nobody is saying you have to use any of them - merely that you have a choice to use them.
To me, Linux (and all free software) will be a success if it simply manages to ensure that information exchange is always free & open and that standards are never closed source.
For example, if the pressures that Mozilla is putting on IE forces MS to restart browser development, that is a good thing provided that it forces MS to truly adopt the W3C and CSS2 standards - that means that web developers are forced to conform to those standards and hopefully we end up with all of us having the ability to surf any web site with any standards compliant browser.
What the Windows community seem to refuse to accept is that MS is doing it's best to suck them dry of money in the future - closed standards and a rental model forcing you to pay subscriptions to keep what you previously had freely. If and when that happens, it makes information exchange more difficult for all of us so it's in everyone's interests to push back on that now.
I really felt very reassured when I read this one statement by Mr Taylor because I now realise that this is nothing more than Microsoft settling some old playground dispute with Novell (and IBM no doubt) rather than actually developing a proper strategy to deal with the competition.
Emperor Billy didn't manage to trash the Novell rebellion with his Death Star first time around - now he's really sore and is sending out Darth Taylor in Death Star II to finish the job...
Sounds to me like a few MS CEOs need to get some maturity, forget about "revenge attacks" and just deal with it in a mature business-like fashion.
Maybe then they'll start to realise that Novell (IBM, Red Hat, etc.) are competent allies for Linux to have but are nothing more than the customer-facing front-end of the FOSS movement.
Destroy one of those and, like the hydras tentacles, another will just grow in its place.
So compete. Make FOSS better in terms of what customers want. Acknowledge that our competitors are legitimate organizations with legitimate products.
The only way you compete properly is to have a vibrant sales force going in and snapping up any available business that it can. Microsoft has this, Linux has it in a more fragmented fashion through front end sales and support companies like Red Hat and Novell (SusE) and consultancy services as offered through the likes of IBM.
I don't see this as a problem because I don't see the main aim of FOSS as being to trash MS - it's prime aim is to provide high quality free software, end of story.
However, this is counterproductive to truly competing with MS because an end customer's expectation would be to be delivered a specific level of functionality in an application within specific timescales - using FOSS is like going into a huge supermarket and having a myriad of products that you can pick off the shelf and assemble however you want but the fact is that there may be items you want that they don't stock.
I hate MS with a passion but I really have little interest in what they do as long as my rights not to use their products are maintained. A great proportion of the FOSS community has a similar attitude, I believe.
As a result, if you want to an MS-trashing organisation to exist, you'll probably have to go create it yourself - otherwise Linux will just continue the way it is going, keen to maintain open standards and having little interest in business politics.
While no company would like to have to do it, Microsoft really need a back-up plan and need a strategy of how to deal with a vastly shrinking market share in OSes and office software.
I don't think that shrinkage of market share has happened as of yet though.
If you take the Internet backbone and the servers that sit on it and at ISPs, those have always been UNIX servers handling the major mail traffic and web serving - some are possibly Linux but there's also a huge amount of Solaris, HP-UX and other UNIXes out there.
In the corporate environment, Apache has probably bitten into the corporate web server market quite severely - again, possibly on Linux but could be on other UNIXes, even Windows. On the mail server side of things, I guess a lot of corps would like to drop Exchange and Outlook because of the number of worms and resulting downtime - but the fact is that there isn't a Linux mailserver that offers the equivalent level of calendaring, scheduling and other features that Exchange offers. Sure, there are Linux products on the horizon but they're not there yet.
In the corporate user environments, the users are stuck with whatever their IT departments tell them to use - the fact is that working in for a telecoms company myself that provides Linux-based telephony servers to corporations, I am amazed at how ignorant most IT departments are of Linux administration still and how unwilling they are to accept it into the enterprise purely because they are mostly MCSEs with no knowledge of UNIX or Linux. To get Linux into the enterprise needs an assault on the CEOs to get their buy-in to force their IT people to deploy it.
Finally, on the home user side, a lot of people are trying Linux as a dual boot alongside their Windows installations but games are a very big player here and is an area where Linux cannot compete at the moment. That will only change when games developers recognise Linux and port games to it.
They simply can't grow their PC based business any longer and users are less likely to want to cough up hundreds of dollars for Office and Windows.
Unfortunately, this is an area of business that Microsoft is very good at protecting by offering cut-price licenses to keep existing customers from migrating. Remember, it costs a lot of money to migrate corporate users to a different application, even if that application is free.
Their problem is they've been so focussed on boring office applications for so long that they're not exactly that good at other market areas.
It's the fact that market areas like X-Box and embedded Windows that have not done particularly well have been propped up by the OS and Office business which makes Microsoft more determined to keep to those profitable areas. I'm sure they'll continue to go into those and new areas because it can only be a matter of time before there is no money to be made from OSes and applications unless they are very specialised. This is why MS wants to adopt a rental model for everything - to be a utility provider in the same way as you electricity, water and telephone providers are.
Anyone who has had to really use Windows XP knows that the current versions of Linux distributions have fallen down miserably in terms of performance and "shininess" in the GUI.
Why is the GUI relevant in this instance? Of course, a lot of people run Linux as desktop systems and Linux has not yet made any real inroads into the corporate desktop environment yet.
Microsoft is currently hurting from Linux displacing Windows in the server environment where the GUI side of things is pretty much irrelevant. In this area, it's about cost, speed and stability, not how the system looks. Besides, when you get to corporate server level, the main criteria is how good your sysadmin people are (whether on Linux or Windows) and a good Linux sysadmin can shell-script a lot of configuration stuff to make any Linux server as easy (or easier) to maintain than a Windows one.
As to the GUI side of things, that's pretty much personal opinion anyway - I don't use KDE, for example, because I consider it as bloated as the Windows GUI, preferring a more sleeker windowmanager like Fluxbox. However, I don't see the functionality of KDE as being much less than Windows these days anyway...
Where Linux does have a weakness on the desktop side is the perception of a lack of applications compared to Windows - in reality, you can do just about anything on a Linux box that you can do on a Windows one (if not more) but you might be reliant on command line tools and scripting to get some of those things done.
...because there are so many pirated copies of Windows XP out there that a large proportion of the XP user-base is afraid to go to legitimate Microsoft sources just in case their piracy and lack of a legitimate registration key is uncovered.
This is still just P2P being used to download software that many people have no legitimate right to run...
How about we don't help their distribution either?
Sorry, but just how do you help the distribution of Linux updates then? Not that I actually think it needs any help because updates are distributed on a per package basis from the web sites of the application developers or the Linux distro vendors - about the biggest single Linux application archive there is is the kernel at about 25MB of source (much less if you just download the kernel patches).
I write software for a living - and wherever I can, I use open source. However, you can't tell millions of people out there to change overnight - you certainly can't be a prick on a messageboard posting 'yah boo sucks' type posts and expect people to take you seriously.
Personally, I don't care whether people use Windows or Linux, it's their choice. However, I see no harm in making people aware of the other effects their choice of software has on my Internet. Remember, Windows worms and viruses have far-reaching effects on all of us in terms of Internet slowdown, contact ISPs for genuine support, etc.- why should I suffer because of buggy, poorly implemented security on Windows and most end-user machines when I use Windows rarely and always keep my my machines updated? (No, I don't use and never will use XP.)
But what effect do you think millions of people downloading a 250MB patch has on my Internet connection??? Particularly at my ISP end with the bandwidth contention this will create on my broadband connection.
I am trying to highlight the stupidity of an arrogant company that is far too complacent to distribute updates to it's operating system on a much more "per application" basis (like in the Linux world) simply because it does not want it's userbase to know exactly what they are installing.
Or is it a company that considers it's user base far too stupid to go through a list of updates and work out which ones they do and don't need?
I'm sorry but distributing a single service pack that is bigger than most reasonably-sized complete operating systems is ridiculous!
They're fighting on a tight budget, for something that affects us all (the RIAA cartel).
Then you are contradicting yourself by this statement. On one hand, you are happy to download and install a 250MB single XP update which no doubt contains a whole heap of new Microsoft DRM elements that essentially support what the RIAA is doing yet, on the other hand, you don't like what the RIAA is doing???
It is a smart move to use the RIAAs hated p2p to help distribution of a blatantly legal product.
Ah, so it's okay for a commercial, profit-making enterprise to steal everyone else's bandwidth for the free distribution of their software rather than spend money on a better download infrastructure within their own corporation, is it?
I'm sorry but whilst I don't agree with piracy, I do consider (and call me a Communist if you wish) P2P technologies as "designed by the people for the people". It's one thing using P2P to distribute Linux updates for free software but not to steal the bandwidth I pay for as a non-XP user for distribution of their software (and, yes, that would equally apply to Red Hat or SuSE Linux updates as they are also both profit-making companies.)
Hell, it's even worth you Linux users seeding the torrent. It'll mean your dsl connection gets less hammered with 0wn3d Windows boxes doing port scans.
Nah, sorry. We're too busy growing like a cancerour tumour on Ballmer's backside to have the time for that.
[Administrator] Ah, Mr Gates, welcome to our delivery room. As you can see, here we have the operating table, anaesthesia equipment & the surgeon's tools on this stand here... and of course our patient, Mrs Edna Sprockett on the table.
[Gates] (pointing to a machine with lots of flashing lights) And that is?
[Administrator] Aha, that's the Windows XP machine that goes "ping"!
[Gates] (beaming) Very good... very good... and the patient? What's she here for?
[Administrator] She's shortly to give birth, Mr Gates.
[Gates] A birth, eh? So what's one of those then?
[Administrator] That's when the doctor takes the baby from the lady's tummy.
[Gates] Ah, I see. And will you be using the machine that goes "ping"?
[Administrator] Of course, Mr Gates.
[Gates] And you'll be wanting the upgrade of course...
[Administrator] Upgrade, Mr Gates?
[Gates](putting his arm round the adminstrator's shoulders) Administrator, as of Service Pack 2, your machine that goes "ping" will become a machine that goes "thweep ftang chortle whoop".
[Administrator] Really, Mr Gates? Well, we'd better have one of those then.
[Gates] (taking out a pen and a contract) Excellent! Well, if I can just have your signature here and a deposit for £100,000, I'll have the upgrade winging it's way to you first thing in the morning.
[Administrator] (after signing contract and giving Gates a cheque) So, any other questions, Mr Gates?
[Gates] (beaming) Yes, actually there is one. The patient? What's she here for?
[Administrator] She's shortly to give birth, Mr Gates.
Let's face it, the poor old geezer never had much luck in the original series bedding the women and he can't be too much longer for this world so how about letting him put a smile on grumpy old T'Pol's face at the same time...
--
(Over dinner in the Enterprise mess)
T'Pol: So tell me about yourself, Captain Kirk?
Kirk: Well, I was the captain on a future Enterprise with a Vulcan first officer named Spock.
T'Pol: Intriguing, Captain. Was Spock a full Vulcan?
Kirk: No, he had some human in him... something I think you need also, T'Pol...
T'Pol: I must say, I find humans... "intriguing".
(Sound of a zipper)
etc.
etc.
Actually, as an old Star Trek fan, how about an episode where Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have cameo appearances and get ejected into space from an airlock for causing 10 years of misery to the entire human race! (Namely, from the point "Voyager" started to the present day.)
On the other hand, the most recent stats I can find from the National Health Service (NHS) seem to indicate that teen pregnancy rates are declining in the UK, and have been since 1998 [nhsinherts.nhs.uk].
I think you'll find this is a "massaging" of the figures somewhat. STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) are rising atronomically in the UK heterosexual youth population as are abortions so while there are probably less births, the pregnancy rate is increasing.
The most recent NHS data that I could find seem to indicate that alcohol and drug use have also remained relatively flat over the last five years (changes were mostly small and within the margins of error of the survey.)
The rate of "binge-drinking" and antisocial behaviour by drunk youths is also increasing here. NHS data can only be based on the cases of alcoholism actually treated by them - the problem here is that it is virtually impossible for the police to arrest under-18s for any offence so the number of underage drinkers the social services can direct into alcohol treatment centres is minimal compared to the number of teenagers actually getting drunk. Believe me, many town centres in the UK have become no-go zones on weekend evenings because of these kids, a problem exacerbated by the fact that town and district councils accept bribes from theme pub chains that create entire streets of bars in our towns.
With respect to depression, I haven't checked the figures; they weren't mentioned in the original post. Part of the increase may be due to increased (over-?) diagnosis.
A poster by the Samaritans (a charity here in the UK that provides counselling by phone to those who need someone to speak to) I saw recently claimed that more teenagers in the UK are currently on anti-depressants than voted for "Pop Idol". (Well, "Pop Idol" depresses me also...)
Joking aside, it doesn't matter what the figures say because it is very visible wherever you go in the UK now that general teenage lawlessness is on the increase.
Well, you seem pretty coherent for someone who's just nineteen years old so maybe there's hope for the younger generation yet.:-)
I'm in my 40s and we don't have any kids because the missus is a "career girl" and I did the parenting stuff for a while during my early 20s caring for two teenage sisters after we lost our parents at different times. But a lot of my friends have just started families, my sister has a daughter just turned 18 and all of them seem to be pretty decent & caring parents with decent kids - I guess a lot of it has to do with all of us being fairly "middle class" with good houses, a couple of cars, etc.
But when I drive around my town, I see kids sat in car parks drinking, fighting and vandalising, my initial anger at them lessens because I begin to wonder if they actually understand responsibility and what it is live in a society with other people.
Sure, I had my moments of misbehaviour during my youth but I never got in trouble with the police and even to this day, treat an officer of the law respectfully, even if it's just to ask directions!
But these kids are abusive to the police because they know they are too young to be prosecuted and I begin to understand how I might have been the same as them. I was always in the environment of adults with friends and relatives of my parents always at our house or us at their houses - these adults took an interest in me, how I was doing at school, whether I had a girlfriend or not, etc. and so I learnt a lot about self-worth and how responsible adults behaved at an early age.
When a lot of today's kids have parents that take no interest in them, they turn to material goods to make up to the lack of parental love and care in their lives.
Add to that the constant bombardment they have from the media about "cool" - "these" trainers, "this" mobile phone, etc. - and I do start to see why kids are so messed up these days - the pressure to conform is so overwhelming...
I've gone off-topic a bit but the point I'm trying to make is that if these kids have no concept of being part of a society because their so concerned about themselves and their image, it isn't surprising that we're bringing up a generation that is totally apathetic towards government and their own rights and freedoms - they've become totally materialistic, obsessed with the "quick fix" of personal gratification.
You've demonstrated that a lot of young people are beyond that generalisation I've made - I just hope there's enough of you to make a difference and prove me wrong...
The teenage pregnancy (and abortion) rates in the United States are actually significantly lower now than they have been in the past two decades.
Yes, I appreciate that but the world does not just begin and end in the US. I am in the UK and the figures here are increasing, as are those for sexually transmitted infections and teenage depression and alcoholism.
It's probably safe to assume that Microsoft's IE 7 programming team have taken a look at the Firefox source code to understand how some of it's features have been done.
Isn't it possible those programmers would be in violation of the GPL if they incorporated any of that code (even from memory) into IE but kept IE closed source?
Let's hope the IE 7 source code gets stolen so we can do some comparisons!
DirectX has long surpassed OpenGL in usability and usage.
Its just easier to code for, it just works.
This is like the Betamax / VHS argument all over again. Betamax was the better technology but because of clever marketing only, VHS succeeded.
If Microsoft are one thing, they are a very good marketing company.
I just love coding for windows, its nice documented (b4 you scream, go see how many pages msdn.microsoft.com google has indexed) and WORKS.
Try typing "Linux" into Google one day and see how many pages of documentation there are for that also. Even better, go have a look at the O'Reilly web site and see the amount of excellent books there are for programming in UNIX (and Windows) there are.
nlike on Linux where I have to fight with tree hugging barefeet READTHEFUCKINGMANPAGE dopesmoking hippies who havent tried windows since Win95 and use this knowledge as a basis for real discussions
By the sound of it, you're hardly a Linux expert yourself. Stay off topics you quite clearly do not understand.
Arcane makefiles my ass, I love Visual Studio, I dig C#.
Your choice, your opinion - just stop dissing Linux purely because you cannot be bothered to take the time to learn to program in it's environments.
Anyone who can load up a Visual Studio environment can write a program - but that does not make it a good program.
I'd argue that taking the time to learn makefiles etc. makes you a much better programmer because you have a better core understanding of how the bits of the source code all fits together.
I had to write a C++ device driver over the weekend, and string operations are just so tedious compared to C# - not even talking about memory managment etc.
I pray for the day where devices drivers are all user mode &.NET
Buddy, when everything is.NET you will not be able to program device drivers apart from your own - that's because every piece of hardware and software will be so wrapped up in patents and closed source, you'll have no idea how to program it unless you pay your monthly fees to Microsoft.
Why are most Linux users smoking dope? Judging by their ego and state of mind one has to think they are constantly high on cokain.
But it's our dope grown by our fair hands rather than the factory manufactured ecstasy pills you Windows zealots are on.
Unless you're using an anonymiser service or address translation mechanism, anywhere you go to on the Internet using any service will have your IP address because that's part of how the whole thing works - just set up a simple logging system (any UNIX sysadmin knows this well already) and that's it.
Then, one you have an IP address, run it through DNS and you get the name of the ISP or company that owns that address - anyone can do it with "nslookup" on just about any computer.
The fact is that most Internet servers have such huge logfiles that it's more likely that nobody's taken the time to look at them - but you can guarantee your IP address will be in there somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of OSS contributors are in full-time jobs on commercial projects and just work on OSS in spare time.
Others are probably university students working on programming papers for degrees.
A few maybe have sponsorship from their companies to work within OSS projects.
If you're a programmer who's motivated by money then fine, what's the problem? Go work in the commercial sector, get paid and pay the mortgage.
But please don't judge everyone else by your own standards - the OSS community is blessed with a great number of altruistic people who program for fame or just because they enjoy doing it.
Deal with it.
Don't be such a silly billy!
For $150 you buy a Sharp XL52 Head Mount for the monitor. Strap the chrome and black cage over your head and attach the screen to the two rods that permanently fix the screen at 9" from your eyes but keep it aligned with any head movements.
Of course, you then have the problem of weak neck muscles...
For those with weak lower backs, for $200, there is the Sharp ZD12 Back Brace. Strap the chrome and black corset around your waste and...
etc.
The Linux kernel can mount devices formatted under a whole heap of filesystems including System V, UNIXWare and other UNIX-type partitions. Presumably, since SCO holds the UNIX name, SCO also holds the patents to some of these filesystems.
So why didn't SCO carry out legal action based on patent infringement within the Linux kernel for building in that filesystem support?
Isn't this exactly the same type of attack we would expect from Microsoft for FAT, NTFS & Joliet support in the kernel?
Couldn't this be a sign that attacking Linux on patents might therefore simply not be worth it based on the money & time that would be involved?
Any comments?
I see Mr Ballmer's joined us again this evening...
James Napster, Kirk Napster and Robert Napster were all unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
Lars Napster was available for comment (as usual) but since no-one ever listens to the loudmouth twat drummer anyway, we didn't either.
The band are about to embark on their "Going All Thrashy Again Was A Bad Career Move" World Tour 2004 to promote their new album "Yes, It Has Got A Black Cover Again But There Are A Few Ballads On It Honestly".
Their latest single "Nothing Else Still Matters" reached number 98 of the US top 100 before finally giving up trying and going home.
No, of course it's not bad and I do have very strong feelings towards a community that is achieving something simply because "it is the right thing to do".
Analysts and financial bozos measure "success" in terms of profit and market penetration - they, therefore, are the one's trying to put Linux in competition with Microsoft and whichever the one achieves 51% or more of the market share will be deemed to be the success while the other is the failure.
However, it isn't that black and white at all. For starters, there's a wealth of OSS software on Windows, not least Firefox, OpenOffice, The GIMP, etc and nobody is saying you have to use any of them - merely that you have a choice to use them.
To me, Linux (and all free software) will be a success if it simply manages to ensure that information exchange is always free & open and that standards are never closed source.
For example, if the pressures that Mozilla is putting on IE forces MS to restart browser development, that is a good thing provided that it forces MS to truly adopt the W3C and CSS2 standards - that means that web developers are forced to conform to those standards and hopefully we end up with all of us having the ability to surf any web site with any standards compliant browser.
What the Windows community seem to refuse to accept is that MS is doing it's best to suck them dry of money in the future - closed standards and a rental model forcing you to pay subscriptions to keep what you previously had freely. If and when that happens, it makes information exchange more difficult for all of us so it's in everyone's interests to push back on that now.
I really felt very reassured when I read this one statement by Mr Taylor because I now realise that this is nothing more than Microsoft settling some old playground dispute with Novell (and IBM no doubt) rather than actually developing a proper strategy to deal with the competition.
Emperor Billy didn't manage to trash the Novell rebellion with his Death Star first time around - now he's really sore and is sending out Darth Taylor in Death Star II to finish the job...
Sounds to me like a few MS CEOs need to get some maturity, forget about "revenge attacks" and just deal with it in a mature business-like fashion.
Maybe then they'll start to realise that Novell (IBM, Red Hat, etc.) are competent allies for Linux to have but are nothing more than the customer-facing front-end of the FOSS movement.
Destroy one of those and, like the hydras tentacles, another will just grow in its place.
The only way you compete properly is to have a vibrant sales force going in and snapping up any available business that it can. Microsoft has this, Linux has it in a more fragmented fashion through front end sales and support companies like Red Hat and Novell (SusE) and consultancy services as offered through the likes of IBM.
I don't see this as a problem because I don't see the main aim of FOSS as being to trash MS - it's prime aim is to provide high quality free software, end of story.
However, this is counterproductive to truly competing with MS because an end customer's expectation would be to be delivered a specific level of functionality in an application within specific timescales - using FOSS is like going into a huge supermarket and having a myriad of products that you can pick off the shelf and assemble however you want but the fact is that there may be items you want that they don't stock.
I hate MS with a passion but I really have little interest in what they do as long as my rights not to use their products are maintained. A great proportion of the FOSS community has a similar attitude, I believe.
As a result, if you want to an MS-trashing organisation to exist, you'll probably have to go create it yourself - otherwise Linux will just continue the way it is going, keen to maintain open standards and having little interest in business politics.
I don't think that shrinkage of market share has happened as of yet though.
If you take the Internet backbone and the servers that sit on it and at ISPs, those have always been UNIX servers handling the major mail traffic and web serving - some are possibly Linux but there's also a huge amount of Solaris, HP-UX and other UNIXes out there.
In the corporate environment, Apache has probably bitten into the corporate web server market quite severely - again, possibly on Linux but could be on other UNIXes, even Windows. On the mail server side of things, I guess a lot of corps would like to drop Exchange and Outlook because of the number of worms and resulting downtime - but the fact is that there isn't a Linux mailserver that offers the equivalent level of calendaring, scheduling and other features that Exchange offers. Sure, there are Linux products on the horizon but they're not there yet.
In the corporate user environments, the users are stuck with whatever their IT departments tell them to use - the fact is that working in for a telecoms company myself that provides Linux-based telephony servers to corporations, I am amazed at how ignorant most IT departments are of Linux administration still and how unwilling they are to accept it into the enterprise purely because they are mostly MCSEs with no knowledge of UNIX or Linux. To get Linux into the enterprise needs an assault on the CEOs to get their buy-in to force their IT people to deploy it.
Finally, on the home user side, a lot of people are trying Linux as a dual boot alongside their Windows installations but games are a very big player here and is an area where Linux cannot compete at the moment. That will only change when games developers recognise Linux and port games to it.
They simply can't grow their PC based business any longer and users are less likely to want to cough up hundreds of dollars for Office and Windows.
Unfortunately, this is an area of business that Microsoft is very good at protecting by offering cut-price licenses to keep existing customers from migrating. Remember, it costs a lot of money to migrate corporate users to a different application, even if that application is free.
Their problem is they've been so focussed on boring office applications for so long that they're not exactly that good at other market areas.
It's the fact that market areas like X-Box and embedded Windows that have not done particularly well have been propped up by the OS and Office business which makes Microsoft more determined to keep to those profitable areas. I'm sure they'll continue to go into those and new areas because it can only be a matter of time before there is no money to be made from OSes and applications unless they are very specialised. This is why MS wants to adopt a rental model for everything - to be a utility provider in the same way as you electricity, water and telephone providers are.
Why is the GUI relevant in this instance? Of course, a lot of people run Linux as desktop systems and Linux has not yet made any real inroads into the corporate desktop environment yet.
Microsoft is currently hurting from Linux displacing Windows in the server environment where the GUI side of things is pretty much irrelevant. In this area, it's about cost, speed and stability, not how the system looks. Besides, when you get to corporate server level, the main criteria is how good your sysadmin people are (whether on Linux or Windows) and a good Linux sysadmin can shell-script a lot of configuration stuff to make any Linux server as easy (or easier) to maintain than a Windows one.
As to the GUI side of things, that's pretty much personal opinion anyway - I don't use KDE, for example, because I consider it as bloated as the Windows GUI, preferring a more sleeker windowmanager like Fluxbox. However, I don't see the functionality of KDE as being much less than Windows these days anyway...
Where Linux does have a weakness on the desktop side is the perception of a lack of applications compared to Windows - in reality, you can do just about anything on a Linux box that you can do on a Windows one (if not more) but you might be reliant on command line tools and scripting to get some of those things done.
This is still just P2P being used to download software that many people have no legitimate right to run...
Of course they do.
How about we don't help their distribution either?
Sorry, but just how do you help the distribution of Linux updates then? Not that I actually think it needs any help because updates are distributed on a per package basis from the web sites of the application developers or the Linux distro vendors - about the biggest single Linux application archive there is is the kernel at about 25MB of source (much less if you just download the kernel patches).
I write software for a living - and wherever I can, I use open source. However, you can't tell millions of people out there to change overnight - you certainly can't be a prick on a messageboard posting 'yah boo sucks' type posts and expect people to take you seriously.
Personally, I don't care whether people use Windows or Linux, it's their choice. However, I see no harm in making people aware of the other effects their choice of software has on my Internet. Remember, Windows worms and viruses have far-reaching effects on all of us in terms of Internet slowdown, contact ISPs for genuine support, etc.- why should I suffer because of buggy, poorly implemented security on Windows and most end-user machines when I use Windows rarely and always keep my my machines updated? (No, I don't use and never will use XP.)
But what effect do you think millions of people downloading a 250MB patch has on my Internet connection??? Particularly at my ISP end with the bandwidth contention this will create on my broadband connection.
I am trying to highlight the stupidity of an arrogant company that is far too complacent to distribute updates to it's operating system on a much more "per application" basis (like in the Linux world) simply because it does not want it's userbase to know exactly what they are installing.
Or is it a company that considers it's user base far too stupid to go through a list of updates and work out which ones they do and don't need?
I'm sorry but distributing a single service pack that is bigger than most reasonably-sized complete operating systems is ridiculous!
They're fighting on a tight budget, for something that affects us all (the RIAA cartel).
Then you are contradicting yourself by this statement. On one hand, you are happy to download and install a 250MB single XP update which no doubt contains a whole heap of new Microsoft DRM elements that essentially support what the RIAA is doing yet, on the other hand, you don't like what the RIAA is doing???
It is a smart move to use the RIAAs hated p2p to help distribution of a blatantly legal product.
Ah, so it's okay for a commercial, profit-making enterprise to steal everyone else's bandwidth for the free distribution of their software rather than spend money on a better download infrastructure within their own corporation, is it?
I'm sorry but whilst I don't agree with piracy, I do consider (and call me a Communist if you wish) P2P technologies as "designed by the people for the people". It's one thing using P2P to distribute Linux updates for free software but not to steal the bandwidth I pay for as a non-XP user for distribution of their software (and, yes, that would equally apply to Red Hat or SuSE Linux updates as they are also both profit-making companies.)
Cretin.
That's as may be but you, sir, are blind.
Since, by this statement, you admit Windows fallibilities, how about you upgrading to Linux then?
And, no I would rather drink beer from Ballmer's skull...
Nah, sorry. We're too busy growing like a cancerour tumour on Ballmer's backside to have the time for that.
I wouldn't trust anything with a Microsoft logo on it full stop.
[Gates] (pointing to a machine with lots of flashing lights) And that is?
[Administrator] Aha, that's the Windows XP machine that goes "ping"!
[Gates] (beaming) Very good... very good... and the patient? What's she here for?
[Administrator] She's shortly to give birth, Mr Gates.
[Gates] A birth, eh? So what's one of those then?
[Administrator] That's when the doctor takes the baby from the lady's tummy.
[Gates] Ah, I see. And will you be using the machine that goes "ping"?
[Administrator] Of course, Mr Gates.
[Gates] And you'll be wanting the upgrade of course...
[Administrator] Upgrade, Mr Gates?
[Gates](putting his arm round the adminstrator's shoulders) Administrator, as of Service Pack 2, your machine that goes "ping" will become a machine that goes "thweep ftang chortle whoop".
[Administrator] Really, Mr Gates? Well, we'd better have one of those then.
[Gates] (taking out a pen and a contract) Excellent! Well, if I can just have your signature here and a deposit for £100,000, I'll have the upgrade winging it's way to you first thing in the morning.
[Administrator] (after signing contract and giving Gates a cheque) So, any other questions, Mr Gates?
[Gates] (beaming) Yes, actually there is one. The patient? What's she here for?
[Administrator] She's shortly to give birth, Mr Gates.
[Gates] A birth, eh? So what's one of those then?
etc.
--
(Over dinner in the Enterprise mess)
T'Pol: So tell me about yourself, Captain Kirk?
Kirk: Well, I was the captain on a future Enterprise with a Vulcan first officer named Spock.
T'Pol: Intriguing, Captain. Was Spock a full Vulcan?
Kirk: No, he had some human in him... something I think you need also, T'Pol...
T'Pol: I must say, I find humans... "intriguing".
(Sound of a zipper)
etc.
etc.
Actually, as an old Star Trek fan, how about an episode where Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have cameo appearances and get ejected into space from an airlock for causing 10 years of misery to the entire human race! (Namely, from the point "Voyager" started to the present day.)
I think you'll find this is a "massaging" of the figures somewhat. STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) are rising atronomically in the UK heterosexual youth population as are abortions so while there are probably less births, the pregnancy rate is increasing.
The most recent NHS data that I could find seem to indicate that alcohol and drug use have also remained relatively flat over the last five years (changes were mostly small and within the margins of error of the survey.)
The rate of "binge-drinking" and antisocial behaviour by drunk youths is also increasing here. NHS data can only be based on the cases of alcoholism actually treated by them - the problem here is that it is virtually impossible for the police to arrest under-18s for any offence so the number of underage drinkers the social services can direct into alcohol treatment centres is minimal compared to the number of teenagers actually getting drunk. Believe me, many town centres in the UK have become no-go zones on weekend evenings because of these kids, a problem exacerbated by the fact that town and district councils accept bribes from theme pub chains that create entire streets of bars in our towns.
With respect to depression, I haven't checked the figures; they weren't mentioned in the original post. Part of the increase may be due to increased (over-?) diagnosis.
A poster by the Samaritans (a charity here in the UK that provides counselling by phone to those who need someone to speak to) I saw recently claimed that more teenagers in the UK are currently on anti-depressants than voted for "Pop Idol". (Well, "Pop Idol" depresses me also...)
Joking aside, it doesn't matter what the figures say because it is very visible wherever you go in the UK now that general teenage lawlessness is on the increase.
I'm in my 40s and we don't have any kids because the missus is a "career girl" and I did the parenting stuff for a while during my early 20s caring for two teenage sisters after we lost our parents at different times. But a lot of my friends have just started families, my sister has a daughter just turned 18 and all of them seem to be pretty decent & caring parents with decent kids - I guess a lot of it has to do with all of us being fairly "middle class" with good houses, a couple of cars, etc.
But when I drive around my town, I see kids sat in car parks drinking, fighting and vandalising, my initial anger at them lessens because I begin to wonder if they actually understand responsibility and what it is live in a society with other people.
Sure, I had my moments of misbehaviour during my youth but I never got in trouble with the police and even to this day, treat an officer of the law respectfully, even if it's just to ask directions!
But these kids are abusive to the police because they know they are too young to be prosecuted and I begin to understand how I might have been the same as them. I was always in the environment of adults with friends and relatives of my parents always at our house or us at their houses - these adults took an interest in me, how I was doing at school, whether I had a girlfriend or not, etc. and so I learnt a lot about self-worth and how responsible adults behaved at an early age.
When a lot of today's kids have parents that take no interest in them, they turn to material goods to make up to the lack of parental love and care in their lives.
Add to that the constant bombardment they have from the media about "cool" - "these" trainers, "this" mobile phone, etc. - and I do start to see why kids are so messed up these days - the pressure to conform is so overwhelming...
I've gone off-topic a bit but the point I'm trying to make is that if these kids have no concept of being part of a society because their so concerned about themselves and their image, it isn't surprising that we're bringing up a generation that is totally apathetic towards government and their own rights and freedoms - they've become totally materialistic, obsessed with the "quick fix" of personal gratification.
You've demonstrated that a lot of young people are beyond that generalisation I've made - I just hope there's enough of you to make a difference and prove me wrong...
Yes, I appreciate that but the world does not just begin and end in the US. I am in the UK and the figures here are increasing, as are those for sexually transmitted infections and teenage depression and alcoholism.
...for Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Isn't it possible those programmers would be in violation of the GPL if they incorporated any of that code (even from memory) into IE but kept IE closed source?
Let's hope the IE 7 source code gets stolen so we can do some comparisons!
This is like the Betamax / VHS argument all over again. Betamax was the better technology but because of clever marketing only, VHS succeeded.
If Microsoft are one thing, they are a very good marketing company.
I just love coding for windows, its nice documented (b4 you scream, go see how many pages msdn.microsoft.com google has indexed) and WORKS.
Try typing "Linux" into Google one day and see how many pages of documentation there are for that also. Even better, go have a look at the O'Reilly web site and see the amount of excellent books there are for programming in UNIX (and Windows) there are.
nlike on Linux where I have to fight with tree hugging barefeet READTHEFUCKINGMANPAGE dopesmoking hippies who havent tried windows since Win95 and use this knowledge as a basis for real discussions
By the sound of it, you're hardly a Linux expert yourself. Stay off topics you quite clearly do not understand. Arcane makefiles my ass, I love Visual Studio, I dig C#.
Your choice, your opinion - just stop dissing Linux purely because you cannot be bothered to take the time to learn to program in it's environments.
Anyone who can load up a Visual Studio environment can write a program - but that does not make it a good program.
I'd argue that taking the time to learn makefiles etc. makes you a much better programmer because you have a better core understanding of how the bits of the source code all fits together.
I had to write a C++ device driver over the weekend, and string operations are just so tedious compared to C# - not even talking about memory managment etc. I pray for the day where devices drivers are all user mode & .NET
Buddy, when everything is .NET you will not be able to program device drivers apart from your own - that's because every piece of hardware and software will be so wrapped up in patents and closed source, you'll have no idea how to program it unless you pay your monthly fees to Microsoft.
Why are most Linux users smoking dope? Judging by their ego and state of mind one has to think they are constantly high on cokain.
But it's our dope grown by our fair hands rather than the factory manufactured ecstasy pills you Windows zealots are on.
Then, one you have an IP address, run it through DNS and you get the name of the ISP or company that owns that address - anyone can do it with "nslookup" on just about any computer.
The fact is that most Internet servers have such huge logfiles that it's more likely that nobody's taken the time to look at them - but you can guarantee your IP address will be in there somewhere.
The other alternative, of course, is that a few more of us learn First Aid techniques and look out a bit more for our fellow human beings...