Microsoft - The "Spoilt Brat" Corporation
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When Think Tanks Attack
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I accept that there are a whole heap of people that like Windows, Office and a whole heap of other Microsoft products, whether rightly or wrongly - that's not something I'm questioning here.
However, I have yet to speak to anyone who *likes* Microsoft the company, apart from a few people I've crossed paths with who "used to work there".
Therefore, based on the fact that very few people *seem* to like of trust Microsoft, why do Microsoft believe that funding pro-MS think tanks is going to sway public opinion away from Open Source?
To me, Microsoft just seems to be acting like a "spoilt child" these days. No longer is it getting everything it wants when it wants it and so has now gone into a "tantrum" mode and just lashing out to the world.
I'm no business guru but it strikes me that if you head up a company that no-one particularly likes, then you spend some resource improving your reputation in the eyes of the public - try to convince everyone that you care about your image in their eyes, that you want to be seen as a corporation that listens and that you change some of your business processes based upon what people tell you is wrong with the way you do things.
I don't actually care about what these think-tanks say about Open Source because I don't trust Microsoft to tell the truth, let alone the quangos they fund. Why should the rest of the world care about what these think tanks say?
Sometimes, I really get the impression that Gates and his cronies have absolutely no perception of customer perceptions and relaitonships...
Perhaps if it went to as much trouble to actually release a few more interesting movies rather than endless bland sequels and even blander remakes of classics, the consumer would be more inclined to see them at the cinema, buy them on DVD, etc.
Perhaps if the movie industry didn't create an artificial environment for legalised extortion (namely region coding), the consumer would be more inclined to feel some guilt when copying movies...
Perhaps if the movie industry priced movies fairly in the first place (why are DVDs more expensive than VHS when DVD is obviously the cheaper media format of the two?), the consumer would be more likely to pay for product rather than steal it...
You're correct in much of what you are saying - for starters, I can remember having endless DLL problems in Windows 3.11 & Windows 95 but not since then - registry bloat/corruption is another issue though...
However, I think people's perceptions & expectations of Linux is wrong, particularly if they come from a Windows environment.
When commercial software vendors create applications for Windows, their prime concern is to make the UI as foolproof as possible - on the basis that the majority of PC owners have absolutely no idea what lies at the core of Windows or how their hardware works. If the interface of a Windows program requires any degree of learning from the user, then that product will fail and the vendor will go out of business.
In the Open Source world, the prime concern is to create good stable software and not necessarily to create applications that are immediately intuitive to Joe Bloke. This is why, for example, emacs and vi are viewed as great software in the "geek" community because they are immensely powerful pieces of software but they do have a very steep learning curve to the uninitiated - a lot of Windows users would probably give up trying to use either of those within a few minutes.
The portrait I am trying to paint is that the Open Source community does not care about displacing Windows in favour of Linux - it just cares about good software which is why there is a huge amount of OSS software on Windows also.
Since the OSS community has no remit to "sell" large volumes of product, why should it concentrate on trying to woo Windows users across?
The fact is that if Windows users want Linux to be as easy to use, then no-one in the OSS community is going to deliver that software to them on a plate. They need to communicate what they want to the OSS community.
The issue of installation, glibc, etc. may never be resolved, purely because there is only so much complexity that can be hidden behind a pretty GUI. Again, look at Windows - intuitive interface but get a bit of requstry corruption and you need a techie with some registry knowledge to sort the problem out for you.
In my case, I use Gentoo Linux because I can compile everything against the latest libraries anyway and it's easy just doing an "emerge" occasionally - the trade off for that is having to learn a little about C and source code to fix a problem when something doesn't compile properly.
People who expect Linux to "come to them" are probably better off not using it in the first place - the idea of a community is that everyone contributes, not just in producing software but also giving feedback and ideas to the OSS developers.
who is going to pay to convert hundres of millions of business PC's
Absolutely no-one - but then that's the type of question I expect to be asked by somebody who doesn't fully understand what the Open Source model is.
The fact is that Linux has already denied Microsoft a substantial share of the server market & is starting to eat into the desktop space. Despite the backing of the likes of IBM, it has not done this through clever marketing and advertising campaigns but because the word has been getting out of a viable alternative to Windows that people have tried and liked. There will never be a "mass conversion to Linux" because in the corporate environment, these decisions are made on purely financial benefits.
However, as MS increases its Windows licensing costs, as Windows suffers more and more from downtime as a result of worms and viruses, the cost of running Windows is getting more expensive as time goes on.
I myself am in a customer-facing support role and deal with a lot of IT departments in big corporations and have been doing so for something like 20 years now.
Five years ago, I would never have seen a Linux server in any of these locations but these days, there is always at least one SuSE or RedHat box on a desk or in a server room.
This in turn means that those same companies already have people capable of administering and maintaining those servers (many of these customers are big financial institutions with incredibly restrictive security policies in place). Those admins, in turn, can educate others.
The fact is that the uptake of Linux will continue but will be at a relatively slow rate - but then, nobody in the community (apart from the zealots) really care about that unless it's because demand for Linux knowledge increases and so salaries get even higher (we may be "eggheads" but we still like our fat salaries!)
Take your head out of the sand and just accept that it is happening, albeit at a slow rate...
You need to do your research a little better, I'm afraid.
For starters, there is a huge increase in the use of Gentoo Linux - a distribution designed to be optimised & customised so that you only install the applications you need.
Secondly, on commercial distros like SuSE & RedHat, it is possible to do a very granular-level install and just select individual packages - the fact is that new users don't bother because it's time consuming to go to that level. To my knowledge, with my limited experience of XP, the Windows installation options still do not allow you to not install IE (for example) at installation time unless you use a 3rd party utility like XPLite.
Thirdly, while I agree that KDE & Gnome do include a certain degree of bloat, the fact is that there are many alternative environments like FWVM, Fluxbox that just provide basic window management and allow you to install whatever apps you want.
You need to remember that certain groups in the Open Source community have decided to devote energies to creating Windows-like environments for Linux like KDE & Gnome - these, rightfully, encourage new users to Linux and are probably the most widespread Linux desktops used.
However, you must realise that in Linux, the GUI enviroment is entirely separate from the core OS (its just a few more applications running on top of it) and there is therefore no such thing as an "average" Linux distribution.
I think that the "ease of use" issue is simply a case of familiarity with Windows - there's always going to be a need to take some time to adjust to any new OS.
However, I do agree that it is more important for Open Source to make its presence known on Windows to at least make the users aware that there are good, free alternatives to commercial offerings.
Personally, one of the best things that can happen now is for IE to be displaced as the preferred browser by Mozilla - then at least we can hope to see a WWW that approaches standards compliance as web developers have to adjust their programming to be more cross-browser friendly.
Once people see the positive results of open standards on the web, then I think closed standards of any nature will start to subside.
I can fully accept that there are a minority of MS Office users who, usually in corporate environments, have to work with VB programs and macros in Excel, Word, etc.
However, the vast majority of Windows users run MS Office purely because they've managed to get it free from work or a colleague, not because they need all of the features it gives them.
I've actually made a point of exploring Open Office myself and there is very little that it will not at the level I need an office package to function - my only real qualms with it are the occasional but minor compatibility issues when importing MS Office documents.
If, like me, you're in the process of migrating to Linux then, yes, you will probably keep a Windows installation handy for the occasional game or for running some specific software to control some piece of hardware (say for a digital camera) but apart from that, it's up to we same people to encourage Open Source developers to take the packages we use in the right directions.
We're already seeing a large number of very high profile Open Source projects coming into the public eye - Mozilla, Open Office, Ethereal, GIMP, etc. - and the great thing about all of these is that they run in Windows & Linux natively. In other words, start using these now so that they become "the norm", make sure the developers of these packages are aware of what features you need them to implement and when the time comes to migrate from Windows to Linux, it will be much less painful.
I admire the technical wizardry of the developers of VM and emulation software like VMWare and Win4Lin but, ultimately, this is just encouraging commercial developers to simply not develop for Linux natively and that can only be bad for us in the end.
Ah, now, that's where you are making an incorrect assumption...
You are assuming I am guilty of copyright theft before such has been proven - exactly the same as the the RIAA and record companies are doing at the moment.
The fact is that I actually don't use Kazaa or any P2P service - but I do have an MP3 player and a love of self-compiled CDs for when I am driving in the car. That's why I want to maintain my rights to my music.
However, by your logic, if a speeding BMW driver knocks over and kills a pedestrian, it would be valid to restrict all BMW cars to a maximum speed within the speed limit as a result.
The fact is that there is no evidence of loss of sales as a result of copying or sharing - the Internet is just an extension of what people have always done, namely shared music together because that is what music essentially is - a social experience.
I don't support file sharing for the purposes of piracy (i.e. somebody selling illegal copies of somebody else's work) but social sharing, to me, is harmless.
If the profiteering music companies offered better quality and value to the consumer, they would sell more product - simple economics.
1. I go into a record store or on an Internet CD seller's web site.
2a. I buy one or two standard format CDs from the large range on display for a reasonable price that is identical (in my own local currency) no matter what part of the world I am in or
2b. I buy separate tracks in an open format like MP3 or OGG and burn them to a standard CD either in the record store or at home.
3. I play, rip, burn my songs in whatever format I like on whatever application I like on whatever OS I like.
A revolutionary idea, I agree, but I think it might just work...
The perception from some (mainly Windows) people is that because a program is GUI based, it is faster & more intuitive than the command line.
Notepad is a text editor and a large number of commands at the UNIX command line (e.g. sed, awk, grep, cat) all give you the ability to edit to text.
My demonstration illustrates that using a GUI is not necessarily faster than the command line.
What the original poster likely meant to say is that there is a Win32 port for most if not all of the tools that you mentioned.
Yes, I've tried the Win32 GUI port of WinGrep for example - it serves the purpose but it's much slower than using grep at the command line.
That's why I suggested Cygwin - to have UNIX command-line tools in Windows.
While there are compelling reasons to avoid Windows for some folks you have not pointed out any of them.
Sorry, I thought I'd expressed very clearly a very good reason - the power of the UNIX shell.
Put in any UNIX-type OS and you immediately have a very powerful suite of command-line tools that you can strap together in an infinite number of ways to create very powerful shell scripts and automation tasks.
There are many other reasons also, just look at the other posts.
I also fail to see what the problem is with governments forcing credit card companies to monitor who uses their card services to sell this kind of content - after all, Amex, Visa, Mastercard, etc. are the people making money out of this so make them do something.
I have no interest or desire to see this type of material either, just like you and the remaining 99.999% of Internet users - but I find it personally insulting when a business or government censors on my behalf rather than allowing me to act as a responsible adult based on my own perceptions of morality.
If you spend a bit of time hacking around with Windows 98 you can get it to run pretty fast and mean and relatively stably - provided you're not leaving it powered on for longer than a day or so wherein the really BAD memory management starts to bite.
You do need to set up config.sys and autoexec.bat properly though... it is STILL just MS-DOS at the core.
I refuse to use XP at all because of it's patronising bloaty interface and the fact it phones home far too frequently - Windows 2000 will be the last MS OS I ever use.
With that said, Gentoo Linux is tops and now drives around 75% of my computing needs.
Then you do not understand the power available to you at the UNIX shell.
I run a short Linux course at work occasionally and my students come into class with Windows laptops and just telnet into the classroom Linux server to do the hands on stuff.
My favourite exercise is giving them a text file to edit in wierd and wonderful ways in Notepad - e.g. strip out an entire column of text, change words from lowercase to uppercase, substitute words, etc.
I let them get on with it and then do the same things using sed, awk, tr, etc. at the Linux comand line. Invariably I finish the whole thing just as they're finishing the first simple task.
If you're serious about power computing and working fast and efficiently, a UNIX environment is the way to go - EVERYTHING in UNIX is a file and you can use just about any tool on any file.
The least you can do is for yourself is put Cygwin on Windows to give you the power of grep, sed, awk, etc at the command line. If your like me, you store all the files you work on a Linux server and run SAMBA to mount them as a network drive in Windows - that way you can work on your files in whichever one OS is more appropriate to the job you are doing.
You really should give Mandrake 10 a try - it's a big improvement over 8.1 and does much better hardware recognition.
Whilst I recognise your frustration with video cards, this is not a fault with Linux per se. Both nVidia and ATI only release closed-source drivers that are not allowed to be released with Linux distros - you therefore have to get X-Windows working with non-accelerated drivers first, they download the pre-compiled drivers for your kernel release. Once they're in place, you then have to change some configuration options in X-Windows to get OpenGL working properly.
With new hardware, the general rule of thumb with Linux is to give it 6-12 months before the support will be there in the kernel properly (unless you want to try a development kernel!)
The last piece of advice I can give you is to try Knoppix. You can run that off a bootable CD without touching your hard drive and use that as a measure to see how well your hardware is supported. Just check the kernel version in Knoppix and find an installable distro with the same or later kernel.
Don't give up on Linux yet - once you get it up and running, you can make comparisons between Windows and Linux properly - and then migrate if and when you are ready to.
I have always used DOS & Windows to a degree and I still use Windows 2000 - partly because of work but also because I'm used to hacking Windows (to turn off all the CPU-cyle-consuming desktop enhancements) and because I play games. I also have to agree that Windows 2000 is the stablest Microsoft OS I've used.
With that said, Linux drives about 75% of my computer work these days and that percentage is gradually increasing as I get more and more of my hardware and data to work in Linux.
I intend to complete that migration fully to Linux as soon as I can without "cutting my nose off to spite my face" - I firmly believe in using the software that does the job you want it to do no matter who makes it.
As things stand today, I prefer Linux to Windows, having had a fair degree of UNIX experience over the past 15 or so years anyway. I can now shell-script, do a little PERL & C hacking and enjoy showing these skills off at work where I'm fortunate to support a number of Linux-based IP telephony plaforms.
However, from a personal perspective, I point blank refuse to hand over my hard-earned money or time over to corporations who I consider show little morality in their business practices. I don't eat in McDonalds or fast food restaurants because of what these corporations are doing to the farming industry, I don't watch MTV because of their push behind plasticised modern music, I don't buy copy-protected CDs because of the infringement of my rights to fair use & I won't support Microsoft's bullying business practices and the fact that they are trying harder than ever to pushed closed file standards & DRM.
It may take me another six months or so to get there but every Microsoft product will be uninstalled from all of my PCs unless MS start behaving like they care about their users & focus less on just screwing them for as much money as possible.
Sorry, I don't understand how you "create wealth" when the resources you can sell are finite.
You can "redistribute wealth" - for example, if I buy a sack of seeds and grow a field of wheat, I make my wealth from the flour makers that buy my wheat from me. In other words, they lose some of their wealth (initially, before they make and sell flour) to give me wealth.
Capitalism is surely more about constantly redistributing the finite amount of wealth there is, not creating or destroying it.
I'm using the scientific analogy that "matter is neither created or destroyed" but since there is finite matter, then there has to be finite wealth.
Been through Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE & Slackware and I'm now at Gentoo and sticking with it.
The idiots that moan about compile times don't understand the timesavings of just doing an "emerge" occasionally to update the system after it's built. Sure, it's not foolproof but then what OS is?
Gentoo has a cool attitude - to just make a damn good product and not give a damn about how much money they can make from it.
How about those of us that get a "warm & fuzzy feeling" about just being part of a global community ?
A question I always put to capitalist people is "What do you deem to be *ENOUGH* money?" to which I can never seem to get an answer.
I fail to understand the mechanics of using money to just make more money. Surely there is a point when you have enough money (say, to buy that new Learjet or something) in which case there is some goal to aim for.
This is why I never understand the pro-Microsoft people who always quote the "$60 billion in the bank" figure.
So what? That money's not *doing* anything apart from sitting their getting bigger.
Call me a Communist hippy or whatever but I find life's more fun when I *don't* spend any of it thinking about money...
It's easy to bash Microsoft about insecurities and bugs and, yes, MS do have a lot to answer for when it comes to security holes in Windows.
But the fact is that it's the *majority* of Windows users, without a clue about the mechanics of their PCs and the Internet that create the problems for those of us who take the time to understand how IP networks & OSes work - whether that's Windows, Linux, UNIX, OS X, etc. etc.
Now is the time for ISPs to start coming down hard on their subscribers and not handing out Internet access to people until they have proven a degree of computer proficiency first - even to have to present a "License to use a computer on the public Intenet". I'm sure ISPs could make some money out of providing training for those licenses also.
I am tired of hearing the same old Windows v Linux arguments - they're *irrelevant* in this case, it's just about the people who don't know what they're doing (yes, 99.9% of them do use Windows) making it bad for those of that do know what we are doing.
The only defence Linux has is that Joe Bloke users who just want to play games and check email have no reason to not use the OS that came with their PC, namely Windows. Those of us that do use Linux do so out of choice and have gone through a high learning curve while using it - therefore, the average Linux user probably knows a lot more about how OSes & networks function than the average Windows user.
There is one purpose only for buying a superfast gaming PC and that is to get the highest possible frame rates at the highest possible resolution on the basis that the higher all those numbers are, the more realistic the game is.
For the past 20 years, I have been an avid computer gamer and have had countless hours of fun playing games from Manic Miner and Jetpac, through Speedball 2 and Alien Breed, to Doom(s), Civilization(s), Half-Life & Unreal (Tournament(s)).
Today, I still play all of those games, some through the marvels of emulators. All of them, and more, are as immersive now as they were then.
However, I think we would be in agreement that playing Manic Miner at a higher frame rate or resolution would not enhance, in any way, the excellent playability of the original game.
Carrying this forward through my list of games, whilst many of them enjoy 3D rendering technology and first-person perspective, they all have one thing in common - they are all just games.
What I mean by this statement is that I do not need to be immersed in lifelike graphics in order to enjoy gaming - that's because I am possessed of an intellect that tells me that when I am staring at a PC monitor blasting aliens/jumping ledges, I am in a fantasy state of conciousness. At this level of conciousness, I immerse myself (thank you very much) into a game - sure, graphics will assist in my self-propelled immersion but the main catalyst for rocketing me into that world of make believe will be... and allow me to blow the dust off of this word as it has not one that is often used... gameplay.
Now, call me revolutionary but I don't actually give a tinker's nostril about a game that is whizzing past me at 50000 frames per second at 20480 x 10240 resolution if I have to keep simultaneously poking my brain through my earhole to stop it going comatose through lack of stimulation.
Therefore, if you don't mind, I think I'd rather stay just here, building my bland white-coloured PCs with 100 pound/euro/dollar graphic cards for 1/4 of the cost of one of your "HumungoFastPenileViper GX" gaming PCs, secure in the knowledge that I retain enough currency to enjoy financing some social contact and interaction in the real world also.
Does that mean that me here on my 486 Linux server with a Bash prompt, slrn and Usenet access onto alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* will have to sit here downloading music for free instead then?
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However, I have yet to speak to anyone who *likes* Microsoft the company, apart from a few people I've crossed paths with who "used to work there".
Therefore, based on the fact that very few people *seem* to like of trust Microsoft, why do Microsoft believe that funding pro-MS think tanks is going to sway public opinion away from Open Source?
To me, Microsoft just seems to be acting like a "spoilt child" these days. No longer is it getting everything it wants when it wants it and so has now gone into a "tantrum" mode and just lashing out to the world.
I'm no business guru but it strikes me that if you head up a company that no-one particularly likes, then you spend some resource improving your reputation in the eyes of the public - try to convince everyone that you care about your image in their eyes, that you want to be seen as a corporation that listens and that you change some of your business processes based upon what people tell you is wrong with the way you do things.
I don't actually care about what these think-tanks say about Open Source because I don't trust Microsoft to tell the truth, let alone the quangos they fund. Why should the rest of the world care about what these think tanks say?
Sometimes, I really get the impression that Gates and his cronies have absolutely no perception of customer perceptions and relaitonships...
Perhaps if the movie industry didn't create an artificial environment for legalised extortion (namely region coding), the consumer would be more inclined to feel some guilt when copying movies...
Perhaps if the movie industry priced movies fairly in the first place (why are DVDs more expensive than VHS when DVD is obviously the cheaper media format of the two?), the consumer would be more likely to pay for product rather than steal it...
However, I think people's perceptions & expectations of Linux is wrong, particularly if they come from a Windows environment.
When commercial software vendors create applications for Windows, their prime concern is to make the UI as foolproof as possible - on the basis that the majority of PC owners have absolutely no idea what lies at the core of Windows or how their hardware works. If the interface of a Windows program requires any degree of learning from the user, then that product will fail and the vendor will go out of business.
In the Open Source world, the prime concern is to create good stable software and not necessarily to create applications that are immediately intuitive to Joe Bloke. This is why, for example, emacs and vi are viewed as great software in the "geek" community because they are immensely powerful pieces of software but they do have a very steep learning curve to the uninitiated - a lot of Windows users would probably give up trying to use either of those within a few minutes.
The portrait I am trying to paint is that the Open Source community does not care about displacing Windows in favour of Linux - it just cares about good software which is why there is a huge amount of OSS software on Windows also.
Since the OSS community has no remit to "sell" large volumes of product, why should it concentrate on trying to woo Windows users across? The fact is that if Windows users want Linux to be as easy to use, then no-one in the OSS community is going to deliver that software to them on a plate. They need to communicate what they want to the OSS community.
The issue of installation, glibc, etc. may never be resolved, purely because there is only so much complexity that can be hidden behind a pretty GUI. Again, look at Windows - intuitive interface but get a bit of requstry corruption and you need a techie with some registry knowledge to sort the problem out for you.
In my case, I use Gentoo Linux because I can compile everything against the latest libraries anyway and it's easy just doing an "emerge" occasionally - the trade off for that is having to learn a little about C and source code to fix a problem when something doesn't compile properly.
People who expect Linux to "come to them" are probably better off not using it in the first place - the idea of a community is that everyone contributes, not just in producing software but also giving feedback and ideas to the OSS developers.
Absolutely no-one - but then that's the type of question I expect to be asked by somebody who doesn't fully understand what the Open Source model is.
The fact is that Linux has already denied Microsoft a substantial share of the server market & is starting to eat into the desktop space. Despite the backing of the likes of IBM, it has not done this through clever marketing and advertising campaigns but because the word has been getting out of a viable alternative to Windows that people have tried and liked. There will never be a "mass conversion to Linux" because in the corporate environment, these decisions are made on purely financial benefits.
However, as MS increases its Windows licensing costs, as Windows suffers more and more from downtime as a result of worms and viruses, the cost of running Windows is getting more expensive as time goes on.
I myself am in a customer-facing support role and deal with a lot of IT departments in big corporations and have been doing so for something like 20 years now.
Five years ago, I would never have seen a Linux server in any of these locations but these days, there is always at least one SuSE or RedHat box on a desk or in a server room.
This in turn means that those same companies already have people capable of administering and maintaining those servers (many of these customers are big financial institutions with incredibly restrictive security policies in place). Those admins, in turn, can educate others.
The fact is that the uptake of Linux will continue but will be at a relatively slow rate - but then, nobody in the community (apart from the zealots) really care about that unless it's because demand for Linux knowledge increases and so salaries get even higher (we may be "eggheads" but we still like our fat salaries!)
Take your head out of the sand and just accept that it is happening, albeit at a slow rate...
You need to do your research a little better, I'm afraid.
For starters, there is a huge increase in the use of Gentoo Linux - a distribution designed to be optimised & customised so that you only install the applications you need.
Secondly, on commercial distros like SuSE & RedHat, it is possible to do a very granular-level install and just select individual packages - the fact is that new users don't bother because it's time consuming to go to that level. To my knowledge, with my limited experience of XP, the Windows installation options still do not allow you to not install IE (for example) at installation time unless you use a 3rd party utility like XPLite.
Thirdly, while I agree that KDE & Gnome do include a certain degree of bloat, the fact is that there are many alternative environments like FWVM, Fluxbox that just provide basic window management and allow you to install whatever apps you want.
You need to remember that certain groups in the Open Source community have decided to devote energies to creating Windows-like environments for Linux like KDE & Gnome - these, rightfully, encourage new users to Linux and are probably the most widespread Linux desktops used.
However, you must realise that in Linux, the GUI enviroment is entirely separate from the core OS (its just a few more applications running on top of it) and there is therefore no such thing as an "average" Linux distribution.
However, I do agree that it is more important for Open Source to make its presence known on Windows to at least make the users aware that there are good, free alternatives to commercial offerings.
Personally, one of the best things that can happen now is for IE to be displaced as the preferred browser by Mozilla - then at least we can hope to see a WWW that approaches standards compliance as web developers have to adjust their programming to be more cross-browser friendly.
Once people see the positive results of open standards on the web, then I think closed standards of any nature will start to subside.
However, the vast majority of Windows users run MS Office purely because they've managed to get it free from work or a colleague, not because they need all of the features it gives them.
I've actually made a point of exploring Open Office myself and there is very little that it will not at the level I need an office package to function - my only real qualms with it are the occasional but minor compatibility issues when importing MS Office documents.
If, like me, you're in the process of migrating to Linux then, yes, you will probably keep a Windows installation handy for the occasional game or for running some specific software to control some piece of hardware (say for a digital camera) but apart from that, it's up to we same people to encourage Open Source developers to take the packages we use in the right directions.
We're already seeing a large number of very high profile Open Source projects coming into the public eye - Mozilla, Open Office, Ethereal, GIMP, etc. - and the great thing about all of these is that they run in Windows & Linux natively. In other words, start using these now so that they become "the norm", make sure the developers of these packages are aware of what features you need them to implement and when the time comes to migrate from Windows to Linux, it will be much less painful.
I admire the technical wizardry of the developers of VM and emulation software like VMWare and Win4Lin but, ultimately, this is just encouraging commercial developers to simply not develop for Linux natively and that can only be bad for us in the end.
You are assuming I am guilty of copyright theft before such has been proven - exactly the same as the the RIAA and record companies are doing at the moment.
The fact is that I actually don't use Kazaa or any P2P service - but I do have an MP3 player and a love of self-compiled CDs for when I am driving in the car. That's why I want to maintain my rights to my music.
However, by your logic, if a speeding BMW driver knocks over and kills a pedestrian, it would be valid to restrict all BMW cars to a maximum speed within the speed limit as a result.
The fact is that there is no evidence of loss of sales as a result of copying or sharing - the Internet is just an extension of what people have always done, namely shared music together because that is what music essentially is - a social experience.
I don't support file sharing for the purposes of piracy (i.e. somebody selling illegal copies of somebody else's work) but social sharing, to me, is harmless.
If the profiteering music companies offered better quality and value to the consumer, they would sell more product - simple economics.
Erm, ever heard of traceroute, maybe followed by a quick packet sniff?
Can't see why it would take more than a few minutes to prove this sort of problem as being outside of your responsibility and network.
2a. I buy one or two standard format CDs from the large range on display for a reasonable price that is identical (in my own local currency) no matter what part of the world I am in or
2b. I buy separate tracks in an open format like MP3 or OGG and burn them to a standard CD either in the record store or at home.
3. I play, rip, burn my songs in whatever format I like on whatever application I like on whatever OS I like.
A revolutionary idea, I agree, but I think it might just work...
In a sense, yes.
The perception from some (mainly Windows) people is that because a program is GUI based, it is faster & more intuitive than the command line.
Notepad is a text editor and a large number of commands at the UNIX command line (e.g. sed, awk, grep, cat) all give you the ability to edit to text.
My demonstration illustrates that using a GUI is not necessarily faster than the command line.
What the original poster likely meant to say is that there is a Win32 port for most if not all of the tools that you mentioned.
Yes, I've tried the Win32 GUI port of WinGrep for example - it serves the purpose but it's much slower than using grep at the command line.
That's why I suggested Cygwin - to have UNIX command-line tools in Windows.
While there are compelling reasons to avoid Windows for some folks you have not pointed out any of them.
Sorry, I thought I'd expressed very clearly a very good reason - the power of the UNIX shell.
Put in any UNIX-type OS and you immediately have a very powerful suite of command-line tools that you can strap together in an infinite number of ways to create very powerful shell scripts and automation tasks.
There are many other reasons also, just look at the other posts.
I also fail to see what the problem is with governments forcing credit card companies to monitor who uses their card services to sell this kind of content - after all, Amex, Visa, Mastercard, etc. are the people making money out of this so make them do something.
I have no interest or desire to see this type of material either, just like you and the remaining 99.999% of Internet users - but I find it personally insulting when a business or government censors on my behalf rather than allowing me to act as a responsible adult based on my own perceptions of morality.
You do need to set up config.sys and autoexec.bat properly though... it is STILL just MS-DOS at the core.
I refuse to use XP at all because of it's patronising bloaty interface and the fact it phones home far too frequently - Windows 2000 will be the last MS OS I ever use.
With that said, Gentoo Linux is tops and now drives around 75% of my computing needs.
I run a short Linux course at work occasionally and my students come into class with Windows laptops and just telnet into the classroom Linux server to do the hands on stuff.
My favourite exercise is giving them a text file to edit in wierd and wonderful ways in Notepad - e.g. strip out an entire column of text, change words from lowercase to uppercase, substitute words, etc.
I let them get on with it and then do the same things using sed, awk, tr, etc. at the Linux comand line. Invariably I finish the whole thing just as they're finishing the first simple task.
If you're serious about power computing and working fast and efficiently, a UNIX environment is the way to go - EVERYTHING in UNIX is a file and you can use just about any tool on any file.
The least you can do is for yourself is put Cygwin on Windows to give you the power of grep, sed, awk, etc at the command line. If your like me, you store all the files you work on a Linux server and run SAMBA to mount them as a network drive in Windows - that way you can work on your files in whichever one OS is more appropriate to the job you are doing.
Ignore the UNIX shell at your peril...
Whilst I recognise your frustration with video cards, this is not a fault with Linux per se. Both nVidia and ATI only release closed-source drivers that are not allowed to be released with Linux distros - you therefore have to get X-Windows working with non-accelerated drivers first, they download the pre-compiled drivers for your kernel release. Once they're in place, you then have to change some configuration options in X-Windows to get OpenGL working properly.
With new hardware, the general rule of thumb with Linux is to give it 6-12 months before the support will be there in the kernel properly (unless you want to try a development kernel!)
The last piece of advice I can give you is to try Knoppix. You can run that off a bootable CD without touching your hard drive and use that as a measure to see how well your hardware is supported. Just check the kernel version in Knoppix and find an installable distro with the same or later kernel.
Don't give up on Linux yet - once you get it up and running, you can make comparisons between Windows and Linux properly - and then migrate if and when you are ready to.
With that said, Linux drives about 75% of my computer work these days and that percentage is gradually increasing as I get more and more of my hardware and data to work in Linux.
I intend to complete that migration fully to Linux as soon as I can without "cutting my nose off to spite my face" - I firmly believe in using the software that does the job you want it to do no matter who makes it.
As things stand today, I prefer Linux to Windows, having had a fair degree of UNIX experience over the past 15 or so years anyway. I can now shell-script, do a little PERL & C hacking and enjoy showing these skills off at work where I'm fortunate to support a number of Linux-based IP telephony plaforms.
However, from a personal perspective, I point blank refuse to hand over my hard-earned money or time over to corporations who I consider show little morality in their business practices. I don't eat in McDonalds or fast food restaurants because of what these corporations are doing to the farming industry, I don't watch MTV because of their push behind plasticised modern music, I don't buy copy-protected CDs because of the infringement of my rights to fair use & I won't support Microsoft's bullying business practices and the fact that they are trying harder than ever to pushed closed file standards & DRM.
It may take me another six months or so to get there but every Microsoft product will be uninstalled from all of my PCs unless MS start behaving like they care about their users & focus less on just screwing them for as much money as possible.
You can "redistribute wealth" - for example, if I buy a sack of seeds and grow a field of wheat, I make my wealth from the flour makers that buy my wheat from me. In other words, they lose some of their wealth (initially, before they make and sell flour) to give me wealth.
Capitalism is surely more about constantly redistributing the finite amount of wealth there is, not creating or destroying it.
I'm using the scientific analogy that "matter is neither created or destroyed" but since there is finite matter, then there has to be finite wealth.
The idiots that moan about compile times don't understand the timesavings of just doing an "emerge" occasionally to update the system after it's built. Sure, it's not foolproof but then what OS is?
Gentoo has a cool attitude - to just make a damn good product and not give a damn about how much money they can make from it.
A question I always put to capitalist people is "What do you deem to be *ENOUGH* money?" to which I can never seem to get an answer.
I fail to understand the mechanics of using money to just make more money. Surely there is a point when you have enough money (say, to buy that new Learjet or something) in which case there is some goal to aim for.
This is why I never understand the pro-Microsoft people who always quote the "$60 billion in the bank" figure.
So what? That money's not *doing* anything apart from sitting their getting bigger.
Call me a Communist hippy or whatever but I find life's more fun when I *don't* spend any of it thinking about money...
But the fact is that it's the *majority* of Windows users, without a clue about the mechanics of their PCs and the Internet that create the problems for those of us who take the time to understand how IP networks & OSes work - whether that's Windows, Linux, UNIX, OS X, etc. etc.
Now is the time for ISPs to start coming down hard on their subscribers and not handing out Internet access to people until they have proven a degree of computer proficiency first - even to have to present a "License to use a computer on the public Intenet". I'm sure ISPs could make some money out of providing training for those licenses also.
I am tired of hearing the same old Windows v Linux arguments - they're *irrelevant* in this case, it's just about the people who don't know what they're doing (yes, 99.9% of them do use Windows) making it bad for those of that do know what we are doing.
The only defence Linux has is that Joe Bloke users who just want to play games and check email have no reason to not use the OS that came with their PC, namely Windows. Those of us that do use Linux do so out of choice and have gone through a high learning curve while using it - therefore, the average Linux user probably knows a lot more about how OSes & networks function than the average Windows user.
1. My other PC has noisy fans also.
2. Bleeding edge hardware = no Linux.
3. This PC has no side window - so just assume it's cream coloured on the inside also.
4. It's cream on the outside but inside lives a 486 speed demon.
5. Slowing my thinking down to 200Mhz speed stops my brain frying.
For the past 20 years, I have been an avid computer gamer and have had countless hours of fun playing games from Manic Miner and Jetpac, through Speedball 2 and Alien Breed, to Doom(s), Civilization(s), Half-Life & Unreal (Tournament(s)).
Today, I still play all of those games, some through the marvels of emulators. All of them, and more, are as immersive now as they were then.
However, I think we would be in agreement that playing Manic Miner at a higher frame rate or resolution would not enhance, in any way, the excellent playability of the original game.
Carrying this forward through my list of games, whilst many of them enjoy 3D rendering technology and first-person perspective, they all have one thing in common - they are all just games.
What I mean by this statement is that I do not need to be immersed in lifelike graphics in order to enjoy gaming - that's because I am possessed of an intellect that tells me that when I am staring at a PC monitor blasting aliens/jumping ledges, I am in a fantasy state of conciousness. At this level of conciousness, I immerse myself (thank you very much) into a game - sure, graphics will assist in my self-propelled immersion but the main catalyst for rocketing me into that world of make believe will be... and allow me to blow the dust off of this word as it has not one that is often used... gameplay.
Now, call me revolutionary but I don't actually give a tinker's nostril about a game that is whizzing past me at 50000 frames per second at 20480 x 10240 resolution if I have to keep simultaneously poking my brain through my earhole to stop it going comatose through lack of stimulation.
Therefore, if you don't mind, I think I'd rather stay just here, building my bland white-coloured PCs with 100 pound/euro/dollar graphic cards for 1/4 of the cost of one of your "HumungoFastPenileViper GX" gaming PCs, secure in the knowledge that I retain enough currency to enjoy financing some social contact and interaction in the real world also.
Good day to you.
Then I'll be able to mod you up - you've summed it up perfectly in those 3 lines.
Does that mean that me here on my 486 Linux server with a Bash prompt, slrn and Usenet access onto alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* will have to sit here downloading music for free instead then?
Or do you want to come over to my house for a home-cooked chilli, a few beers and some classic rock music cranked up to full volume on my hi-fi?
Enough said...