I went into computers thirty years ago because I figured I could make more money than doing clerical work. BUT I had always had an interest in computing even before that. Even then, I recognized that computers were a technology that could empower people.
When I was taking my original college classes back in the '70's, at least thirty percent of my classes were divorcees who figured being in IT was more profitable than being a waitress or a secretary. They had ZERO interest in computing or the application of computing per se.
These are the people who end up doing most of the jobs in IT - which is why, as Woody Allen says, "Nothing works and nobody cares."
And they are led by managers who care even less about IT - or even about whatever business the IT shop is serving - and more about being "managers" (read: alpha chimps.)
I'm offering insanely cheap, flat-rate, unlimited, telephone, remote access AND onsite IT support WITH remote monitoring to my (potential) customers.
Apparently nobody cares. Because nobody is calling.
So now I have to slash the prices even MORE until these morons decide they're getting it damn near for FREE.
Even then, I expect not to get any clients - because apparently nobody in small business cares about IT support AT ALL until their boxes or their network crashes or they get sued because some hacker stole all their customers credit card numbers. (In fact, I just read an article yesterday about how small business is storing all kinds of customer info they aren't supposed to and they aren't protecting it worth a damn, so the credit card companies are pressuring them into doing more.)
Maybe I should go the other way - start charging insanely HIGH prices for NOTHING. Apparently this works with many managers. Somebody said something the other day about how OSS software goes nowhere because managers think something has to cost $30,000 per box to be valuable.
Based on the prices I see for niche software in the trades, this sure sounds right.
My problem with Firefox stems from sites like Rapidshare.
When you go through the Rapidshare process to download a file, at some point you get the Firefox prompt to download the file. When you click on the download radio button, Firefox does "something", I don't know what, and Rapidshare proceeds to tell you that either you've already downloaded the file, or some other weird error message.
I have similar problems with other similar sites - so many that I gave up using Firefox's download process and instead installed the DownThemAll extension which works fine with these sites.
I think it's not so much an issue with the Firefox download process as it is with the JavaScript or something used by certain sites to control downloads. I haven't bothered to burrow into the source code for these pages to see what it might be, as the DownThemAll extension works well and offers additional flexibility.
But the odd thing is that this doesn't appear to be a problem with the Windows version of Firefox. That I don't understand.
How else is Microsoft going to get their product into the hands of people fed up with their crap except by promoting "piracy"?
Didn't somebody at Microsoft just say recently that they'd rather have the Chinese pirating Windows than using Linux?
Bill Gates is no longer relying on his monopoly contracts with resellers. Now he's actively relying on "piracy" to sell his crap - as long as it results in the same end-user lock-in he's been relying on for years with corporate systems.
This is how big a threat Linux is to his consumer base. Just because Linux only has two or three percent of the market, and Apple another two or three percent, doesn't mean Bill doesn't see this as his doom in the future. So he heads it off now by doing whatever is necessary to insure that people use HIS crap, and not somebody's else's.
That's why he's giving away his OS products to students for free, and even only charging Australian students $75 for Office whereas before Office was not included.
Heh, heh, wait until you have to UPDATE Norton - which will then fail one of its updates - not the actual AV update, one of their other half dozen different updates - TWO of my clients have this problem now.
Or wait until it tells you that it has an "internal problem" and must be uninstalled and reinstalled - one of those two clients has THAT problem on yet another machine. TWO different Norton problems on two machines out of 22 machines - that's a ten percent failure rate.
Then wait until you have to uninstall it - and it doesn't.
Then you have to go their support Web site, jump through hoops to download a tool to REALLY uninstall it.
Norton is total bloated, slow, resource-hogging, unreliable CRAP - which is no longer in the top five AV detectors anyway based on AV Comparatives studies. Nobody should use it regardless of their AV needs.
Why not a patch? This is a product that updates itself.
I also see no comment about the retail boxes promoting it as supporting Windows Vista.
I know you're trying to keep your job after having said that security is a "little thing" at Microsoft, but this won't help you...it's too lame.
The bottom line: the product pushes someone to buy another product that is unsupported by the product.
No amount of weaseling changes that. It's just stupid - not to mention probably deliberately fraudulent. It's on a par with AT&T offering 3Mbps DSL service to people too far out of range to actually get it.
I have to admit that while I believe Linux can be used to replaced Windows in a corporate environment, the REAL issue is precisely this sort of human relations problem.
It could be that when you put the initial Linux solution in, there wasn't enough "prep" of the users. So ANY change would have been resisted, not just Linux.
You get taught this in decent system analysis classes - the "user prep" is critical to making ANY IT change work.
I changed the user accounts on the machines of one of my clients from administrator to limited as the start of a basic security hardening. I explained to the users that this was a basic necessity - never run as administrator. The users complained they have to switch to administrator too often to run like this. Even after I pointed out the "runas" command, they still had complaints. They viewed their machines as if they were home machines, not corporate machines attached to a network. They couldn't see that running as administrator, while easier from a production standpoint, was a threat to the entire network and that if a virus got in, it could drop the whole network - a serious production impediment.
Finally, I had to switch them back to administrator mode. They were attaching customer hard drives to their machines (to convert customer video files) and the NTFS wouldn't allow anybody but administrator to access the drives. The files on the drives were owned by an SID which was not recognized by the host system. On XP Pro, you could change the permissions to give the Everyone account full control of those drives - but half their machines run XP Home (and the owner doesn't want to spend money upgrading them to Pro.) On Home you have to go into Safe Mode to access the system Administrator account (or use a command line tool) - which is way too much work. Even my admin-level account can't do it in XP Home. I considered having them take ownership - which could be done from my admin account - but the problem with that is that when the drives are returned to the customer, then the customer wouldn't be able to access them. Having the Everyone account have full control would have been an acceptable compromise, but isn't feasible under XP Home because of the need to do it from Safe Mode.
You just can't win. There are just too many mistakes compounded on other mistakes in the typical business environment.
Interesting you mention printing PDFs in the context of printing problems with Windows and IE.
I had a client just last night who called because she couldn't print a PDF from a Web site from within IE 6.
She printed one PDF with no problem, although the printing was "slow" (due to the rendering needed for the HP LaserJet to print the complex PDF formatting, I told her.) But the second one she tried to print did not print at all.
I checked the print queue - it wasn't there. I had her go to the Web site, view the document, which opened in Adobe Reader. I used the Adobe printer icon to print the file - no problem. Then I tried using the IE File menu Print command - it wouldn't send the document to the printer at all!
Got out of IE, went back in, went to the Web site, opened the document, tried again - this time it printed from the IE File menu print button.
Only explanation I could give her was, as usual, "Windows wierdness."
She had been told by some other techie always to use the File menu Print command, so my using the Adobe PDF printer icon confused her. I told her if a document is opened by an application within another application, it's probably better to use the inner application's print button since it's the one actually presenting the document. I also told her that when she has stupid issues like this, to exit the application (in this case, IE), then go back in and try again. If it still doesn't work, reboot Windows and try again.
In other words, as usual, Windows and the products running on it are utterly unreliable.
Although to be fair, nothing infuriates me more than to click on an application shortcut in Linux, watch the bouncing ball bounce for a while, then go away, and the application does not even start up. This is equally pathetic. Regardless of the UNIX tendency to perform "quietly", it would nice to be told WHY the frikkin' application couldn't run! Usually, restarting the session, as opposed to rebooting the machine, corrects such problems - but they shouldn't exist in the first place.
Opera has been faster than IE for at least the last six years. It has also been more stable than IE for that length of time. Back when I using IE 5.0 - and 5.5, that POS crashed on me daily, if not hourly.
I think Firefox is less stable than Opera as well, although that may be merely a perception of mine since I use it more than I do Opera. At the moment, since Firefox's file download process doesn't work with tons of Web sites (on Kubuntu Linux anyway, seems to be OK on Windows), I use Opera to download files from those sites with no problems. The ability to Bittorrent on Opera is nice, too, although I use it rarely.
Yeah, this guy definitely will be on the unemployment line tomorrow.
The things he said will get him canned in a heartbeat.
Not that they weren't all true, but Microsoft is into "truthiness", not "truth."
This is also a clear demonstration that Bill's intention in getting into the antivirus business was simply another attempt to soak his customers for money after being the cause of the problem in the first place.
This guy's statement that "security is only a little part of Microsoft" clearly shows the attitude at Microsoft. No matter how "little" it may be, if Bill can make some money out of it, he will - regardless of how crappy the software is that's being sold.
Bill Gates - one of the truly pathetic assholes of the world.
BTW, you can't use propaganda on someone who's not had their brains removed earlier...that was the point (besides trying to get modded funny, which apparently didn't work.)
"they obviously don't have the same moral...standards that I do... and they seem determined to turn me into a criminal for some reason."
Welcome to the state.
This is the nature of the state: "You do everything we tell you and give us everything you have, and we'll protect you from the bad people inside and outside our borders. And if there aren't any bad people, we'll make some."
This is how it's done.
Not enough "drug dealers" in prison - so start making everybody who owns a gun, smokes, reads the Koran, or downloads music to be a criminal.
Anything will do - it doesn't matter. Just rev up some "moral outrage" or whatever and start labeling some group of people as "criminals", "degenerates", "threats" and "terrorists". Every primate will buy into it, because every primate wants to be on the side of the hierarchical authority. It's hardwired into your primate brain.
Eventually EVERYBODY is labelled to some degree - and you control it all. And everybody lets you - except for the REAL malcontents like me.
Go watch "V for Vendetta" again - especially the scene where Sutler is screaming, "I want EVERYBODY to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"
That movie is the most important movie ever made (that I can remember anyway.) It lays the process and nature of the state out completely in scenes anybody can understand.
Especially watch the scene where Evey loses her fear - THAT is the most important scene ever filmed.
I don't think anybody has claimed potatoes yet, have they?
Drop the drunk image and take up potato chips instead.
Since my favorite band is the Corrs, you could also just start claiming that Ireland has the world's most beautiful women AND best bands (since you can claim U2 as well.)
Ireland has the world's best potatos, the most beautiful women, and the best rock bands!
Doesn't that sound better than "Ireland has the most drunks"?
(Even if Andrea has been caught on camera having to be helped out of a pub by her friends on occasion...compared to Tara Reid, that's nothing.)
That's why I say they should sell or resell support from the people who know Linux.
Dell diagnostics are pretty good at detecting hardware problems - at least to the point that Dell is willing to ship a replacement part. If the video card's busted, it should be possible to tell if it's hardware. If it isn't hardware, then the paid support for the distro comes into play. If the customer doesn't realize that his hardware depends on both hardware and drivers, then he's out of luck if he doesn't want to ante up for driver support.
Alternatively, Dell could certify drivers for all the hardware they sell. Then if the device fails, it's by definition not a hardware problem (if the Dell diagnostics partition doesn't say so) or the driver (since Dell said it would work.) Then again it becomes a distro problem.
In other words, this sort of thing can be worked out so the ground rules for assigning blame and support responsibility are known in advance. And if the customer doesn't opt for Linux support and uses Linux, well, that's his problem.
If he isn't a happy camper, well, there are plenty of Dell owners who aren't happy campers with Dell's Windows support NOW. I don't see that as a huge impediment to providing some sort of Linux support on Dell hardware. Again, the only question is how much will it cost to provide what level of support vs how many customer sales will they get over and above that to justify it. And again, it's corporate sales they should be looking at, not home user sales, to justify that investment.
I agree that Dell should consider providing an option for corporations who want a Linux desktop to go with their Linux servers - and of course Dell should provide Linux servers.
I'm not sure about them providing a "naive end-user" version. That WOULD be generating support problems for them. Granted, they have those NOW with Windows naive end users since Windows isn't THAT easy for naive users to handle (even Macs aren't THAT easy).
But I think they should provide a "no OS" version which the option to purchase any Linux distro you want from them directly, with the CDs being supplied by the distros themselves, and then offer paid support in concert with support deals with the distros handling at least the second-tier support. It wouldn't cost Dell the earth to supply the basic distro documentation to their help desk people with some scripts to walk people through the obvious problems Linux users may have (getting Java installed or the Flash plugin for Firefox) IF they were getting paid to provide that support. Anything more complex, they switch the call to a distro support line for those distros offering paid support. The distros can then offer that paid support via Dell and make some money themselves. Everybody wins.
No, he said deliver it without an OS installed but with an Ubuntu CD in the box.
Ahem, that IS saying "deliver it with my distro".
A better idea would be for Dell to just dump FIVE CDs in the box - the latest Fedora, the latest Mandriva, the latest Ubuntu, the latest openSUSE, and the latest Debian (or pick any other five - I'd include freeSpire and any open version of Xandros that might exist).
THAT would be Dell offering the user some choice without being committed to supporting any of it or favoring any given distro.
Of course, those CDs would cost Dell money. But if the distros supplied the CDs, all Dell has to pay for is the labor to unpack them and dump them in the box.
But for Shuttleworth to say put only an Ubuntu CD in the box IS advocating his distro.
For an individual company NOW it may not be an option.
That doesn't translate to whether it WILL be an option for the industry at some point. The question is merely whether and when the applications on which your industry thrives which are currently written for Microsoft will be developed by OSS developers interested in your industry.
Many European companies are leading in this area. They are financing OSS developers to develop critical enterprise infrastructure for their given industries. Unfortunately it seems that US companies are loath to expend any effort that doesn't improve their stock price over the next quarter.
Nonetheless it will happen. There are niche markets all over the place just waiting for a group of enterprising OSS developers to drop the current commercial market leader and make money selling installation and support for those niche markets.
Sooner or later, someone will fill those niche markets.
It's a no-brainer. You want to do OSS and make money? Find a niche market that interests you and start designing and coding.
There may be some markets resistant to this - markets that require highly technical software that can only be developed by either cooperation of companies in that industry or with considerable private investment in the development team. As I indicated, European companies seem to want to support OSS development in such markets. The US corporations seem to be more short-sighted in this area. They prefer to pay out money forever to other companies rather than invest in their future.
This is no surprise. Ultimately it's not going to prevent the emergence of Linux in corporations either.
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You don't want a "creative accountant"?
Guess you don't work for Enron, eh?
Yours is a truly stupid post.
Creativity is needed in EVERY profession, including ditch digger.
Anybody who says otherwise is a moron.
How MUCH creativity MAY be a legitimate issue. If you want to make that point, try again.
Better yet, don't. Since it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about if you think IT people don't need "creativity".
I agree with this.
I went into computers thirty years ago because I figured I could make more money than doing clerical work. BUT I had always had an interest in computing even before that. Even then, I recognized that computers were a technology that could empower people.
When I was taking my original college classes back in the '70's, at least thirty percent of my classes were divorcees who figured being in IT was more profitable than being a waitress or a secretary. They had ZERO interest in computing or the application of computing per se.
These are the people who end up doing most of the jobs in IT - which is why, as Woody Allen says, "Nothing works and nobody cares."
And they are led by managers who care even less about IT - or even about whatever business the IT shop is serving - and more about being "managers" (read: alpha chimps.)
Gotta agree with this.
I'm offering insanely cheap, flat-rate, unlimited, telephone, remote access AND onsite IT support WITH remote monitoring to my (potential) customers.
Apparently nobody cares. Because nobody is calling.
So now I have to slash the prices even MORE until these morons decide they're getting it damn near for FREE.
Even then, I expect not to get any clients - because apparently nobody in small business cares about IT support AT ALL until their boxes or their network crashes or they get sued because some hacker stole all their customers credit card numbers. (In fact, I just read an article yesterday about how small business is storing all kinds of customer info they aren't supposed to and they aren't protecting it worth a damn, so the credit card companies are pressuring them into doing more.)
Maybe I should go the other way - start charging insanely HIGH prices for NOTHING. Apparently this works with many managers. Somebody said something the other day about how OSS software goes nowhere because managers think something has to cost $30,000 per box to be valuable.
Based on the prices I see for niche software in the trades, this sure sounds right.
Mod parent up!
Oh, wait, they did...
Well, mod him up some more!
Asshole managers - that's the whole game in a nutshell.
Well, actually "asshole primates" is the whole game in a nutshell - asshole managers are just a subset.
Vision error - there is no "of" in the quoted part "time to start water cooling."
Nice try, typo Nazi...
My problem with Firefox stems from sites like Rapidshare.
When you go through the Rapidshare process to download a file, at some point you get the Firefox prompt to download the file. When you click on the download radio button, Firefox does "something", I don't know what, and Rapidshare proceeds to tell you that either you've already downloaded the file, or some other weird error message.
I have similar problems with other similar sites - so many that I gave up using Firefox's download process and instead installed the DownThemAll extension which works fine with these sites.
I think it's not so much an issue with the Firefox download process as it is with the JavaScript or something used by certain sites to control downloads. I haven't bothered to burrow into the source code for these pages to see what it might be, as the DownThemAll extension works well and offers additional flexibility.
But the odd thing is that this doesn't appear to be a problem with the Windows version of Firefox. That I don't understand.
How else is Microsoft going to get their product into the hands of people fed up with their crap except by promoting "piracy"?
Didn't somebody at Microsoft just say recently that they'd rather have the Chinese pirating Windows than using Linux?
Bill Gates is no longer relying on his monopoly contracts with resellers. Now he's actively relying on "piracy" to sell his crap - as long as it results in the same end-user lock-in he's been relying on for years with corporate systems.
This is how big a threat Linux is to his consumer base. Just because Linux only has two or three percent of the market, and Apple another two or three percent, doesn't mean Bill doesn't see this as his doom in the future. So he heads it off now by doing whatever is necessary to insure that people use HIS crap, and not somebody's else's.
That's why he's giving away his OS products to students for free, and even only charging Australian students $75 for Office whereas before Office was not included.
Lock-in. Monopoly.
It's the Microsoft way.
Microsoft security guru wants Vista bugs rated less serious
Any more questions?
You can't fool everybody all the time - but you can fool the thirty percent who still support me all the time!
Same with Bill - the fact that there's no shortage of Windows shills here on
Microsoft's new slogans:
Microsoft - we innovate bugs faster than anyone.
Microsoft - we innovate bloat.
Microsoft - we innovate computer insecurity. Beat that, Linux!
Heh, heh, wait until you have to UPDATE Norton - which will then fail one of its updates - not the actual AV update, one of their other half dozen different updates - TWO of my clients have this problem now.
Or wait until it tells you that it has an "internal problem" and must be uninstalled and reinstalled - one of those two clients has THAT problem on yet another machine. TWO different Norton problems on two machines out of 22 machines - that's a ten percent failure rate.
Then wait until you have to uninstall it - and it doesn't.
Then you have to go their support Web site, jump through hoops to download a tool to REALLY uninstall it.
Norton is total bloated, slow, resource-hogging, unreliable CRAP - which is no longer in the top five AV detectors anyway based on AV Comparatives studies. Nobody should use it regardless of their AV needs.
Why not a patch? This is a product that updates itself.
I also see no comment about the retail boxes promoting it as supporting Windows Vista.
I know you're trying to keep your job after having said that security is a "little thing" at Microsoft, but this won't help you...it's too lame.
The bottom line: the product pushes someone to buy another product that is unsupported by the product.
No amount of weaseling changes that. It's just stupid - not to mention probably deliberately fraudulent. It's on a par with AT&T offering 3Mbps DSL service to people too far out of range to actually get it.
Marcus Ranum's rant "Stupid on Software" covers this situation in detail.
NO corporation EVER sues a software company for non-performance.
I have to admit that while I believe Linux can be used to replaced Windows in a corporate environment, the REAL issue is precisely this sort of human relations problem.
It could be that when you put the initial Linux solution in, there wasn't enough "prep" of the users. So ANY change would have been resisted, not just Linux.
You get taught this in decent system analysis classes - the "user prep" is critical to making ANY IT change work.
I changed the user accounts on the machines of one of my clients from administrator to limited as the start of a basic security hardening. I explained to the users that this was a basic necessity - never run as administrator. The users complained they have to switch to administrator too often to run like this. Even after I pointed out the "runas" command, they still had complaints. They viewed their machines as if they were home machines, not corporate machines attached to a network. They couldn't see that running as administrator, while easier from a production standpoint, was a threat to the entire network and that if a virus got in, it could drop the whole network - a serious production impediment.
Finally, I had to switch them back to administrator mode. They were attaching customer hard drives to their machines (to convert customer video files) and the NTFS wouldn't allow anybody but administrator to access the drives. The files on the drives were owned by an SID which was not recognized by the host system. On XP Pro, you could change the permissions to give the Everyone account full control of those drives - but half their machines run XP Home (and the owner doesn't want to spend money upgrading them to Pro.) On Home you have to go into Safe Mode to access the system Administrator account (or use a command line tool) - which is way too much work. Even my admin-level account can't do it in XP Home. I considered having them take ownership - which could be done from my admin account - but the problem with that is that when the drives are returned to the customer, then the customer wouldn't be able to access them. Having the Everyone account have full control would have been an acceptable compromise, but isn't feasible under XP Home because of the need to do it from Safe Mode.
You just can't win. There are just too many mistakes compounded on other mistakes in the typical business environment.
Interesting you mention printing PDFs in the context of printing problems with Windows and IE.
I had a client just last night who called because she couldn't print a PDF from a Web site from within IE 6.
She printed one PDF with no problem, although the printing was "slow" (due to the rendering needed for the HP LaserJet to print the complex PDF formatting, I told her.) But the second one she tried to print did not print at all.
I checked the print queue - it wasn't there. I had her go to the Web site, view the document, which opened in Adobe Reader. I used the Adobe printer icon to print the file - no problem. Then I tried using the IE File menu Print command - it wouldn't send the document to the printer at all!
Got out of IE, went back in, went to the Web site, opened the document, tried again - this time it printed from the IE File menu print button.
Only explanation I could give her was, as usual, "Windows wierdness."
She had been told by some other techie always to use the File menu Print command, so my using the Adobe PDF printer icon confused her. I told her if a document is opened by an application within another application, it's probably better to use the inner application's print button since it's the one actually presenting the document. I also told her that when she has stupid issues like this, to exit the application (in this case, IE), then go back in and try again. If it still doesn't work, reboot Windows and try again.
In other words, as usual, Windows and the products running on it are utterly unreliable.
Although to be fair, nothing infuriates me more than to click on an application shortcut in Linux, watch the bouncing ball bounce for a while, then go away, and the application does not even start up. This is equally pathetic. Regardless of the UNIX tendency to perform "quietly", it would nice to be told WHY the frikkin' application couldn't run! Usually, restarting the session, as opposed to rebooting the machine, corrects such problems - but they shouldn't exist in the first place.
ALL software is CRAP.
Opera SLOW?
What version were you using -
Opera has been faster than IE for at least the last six years. It has also been more stable than IE for that length of time. Back when I using IE 5.0 - and 5.5, that POS crashed on me daily, if not hourly.
I think Firefox is less stable than Opera as well, although that may be merely a perception of mine since I use it more than I do Opera. At the moment, since Firefox's file download process doesn't work with tons of Web sites (on Kubuntu Linux anyway, seems to be OK on Windows), I use Opera to download files from those sites with no problems. The ability to Bittorrent on Opera is nice, too, although I use it rarely.
Yeah, this guy definitely will be on the unemployment line tomorrow.
The things he said will get him canned in a heartbeat.
Not that they weren't all true, but Microsoft is into "truthiness", not "truth."
This is also a clear demonstration that Bill's intention in getting into the antivirus business was simply another attempt to soak his customers for money after being the cause of the problem in the first place.
This guy's statement that "security is only a little part of Microsoft" clearly shows the attitude at Microsoft. No matter how "little" it may be, if Bill can make some money out of it, he will - regardless of how crappy the software is that's being sold.
Bill Gates - one of the truly pathetic assholes of the world.
"oddles"?
"oddles"?!
Have you mis-spelt "oodles"?
BTW, you can't use propaganda on someone who's not had their brains removed earlier...that was the point (besides trying to get modded funny, which apparently didn't work.)
"they obviously don't have the same moral...standards that I do ... and they seem determined to turn me into a criminal for some reason."
Welcome to the state.
This is the nature of the state: "You do everything we tell you and give us everything you have, and we'll protect you from the bad people inside and outside our borders. And if there aren't any bad people, we'll make some."
This is how it's done.
Not enough "drug dealers" in prison - so start making everybody who owns a gun, smokes, reads the Koran, or downloads music to be a criminal.
Anything will do - it doesn't matter. Just rev up some "moral outrage" or whatever and start labeling some group of people as "criminals", "degenerates", "threats" and "terrorists". Every primate will buy into it, because every primate wants to be on the side of the hierarchical authority. It's hardwired into your primate brain.
Eventually EVERYBODY is labelled to some degree - and you control it all. And everybody lets you - except for the REAL malcontents like me.
Go watch "V for Vendetta" again - especially the scene where Sutler is screaming, "I want EVERYBODY to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"
That movie is the most important movie ever made (that I can remember anyway.) It lays the process and nature of the state out completely in scenes anybody can understand.
Especially watch the scene where Evey loses her fear - THAT is the most important scene ever filmed.
See how legislation expands previous legislation?
Up until now, the only thing being removed from children was their brains by the national educational infrastructure established many decades ago.
Now we have arms, legs and teeth being removed.
Where will it end?
It's like the income tax!
I don't think anybody has claimed potatoes yet, have they?
Drop the drunk image and take up potato chips instead.
Since my favorite band is the Corrs, you could also just start claiming that Ireland has the world's most beautiful women AND best bands (since you can claim U2 as well.)
Ireland has the world's best potatos, the most beautiful women, and the best rock bands!
Doesn't that sound better than "Ireland has the most drunks"?
(Even if Andrea has been caught on camera having to be helped out of a pub by her friends on occasion...compared to Tara Reid, that's nothing.)
That's why I say they should sell or resell support from the people who know Linux.
Dell diagnostics are pretty good at detecting hardware problems - at least to the point that Dell is willing to ship a replacement part. If the video card's busted, it should be possible to tell if it's hardware. If it isn't hardware, then the paid support for the distro comes into play. If the customer doesn't realize that his hardware depends on both hardware and drivers, then he's out of luck if he doesn't want to ante up for driver support.
Alternatively, Dell could certify drivers for all the hardware they sell. Then if the device fails, it's by definition not a hardware problem (if the Dell diagnostics partition doesn't say so) or the driver (since Dell said it would work.) Then again it becomes a distro problem.
In other words, this sort of thing can be worked out so the ground rules for assigning blame and support responsibility are known in advance. And if the customer doesn't opt for Linux support and uses Linux, well, that's his problem.
If he isn't a happy camper, well, there are plenty of Dell owners who aren't happy campers with Dell's Windows support NOW. I don't see that as a huge impediment to providing some sort of Linux support on Dell hardware. Again, the only question is how much will it cost to provide what level of support vs how many customer sales will they get over and above that to justify it. And again, it's corporate sales they should be looking at, not home user sales, to justify that investment.
I agree that Dell should consider providing an option for corporations who want a Linux desktop to go with their Linux servers - and of course Dell should provide Linux servers.
I'm not sure about them providing a "naive end-user" version. That WOULD be generating support problems for them. Granted, they have those NOW with Windows naive end users since Windows isn't THAT easy for naive users to handle (even Macs aren't THAT easy).
But I think they should provide a "no OS" version which the option to purchase any Linux distro you want from them directly, with the CDs being supplied by the distros themselves, and then offer paid support in concert with support deals with the distros handling at least the second-tier support. It wouldn't cost Dell the earth to supply the basic distro documentation to their help desk people with some scripts to walk people through the obvious problems Linux users may have (getting Java installed or the Flash plugin for Firefox) IF they were getting paid to provide that support. Anything more complex, they switch the call to a distro support line for those distros offering paid support. The distros can then offer that paid support via Dell and make some money themselves. Everybody wins.
No, he said deliver it without an OS installed but with an Ubuntu CD in the box.
Ahem, that IS saying "deliver it with my distro".
A better idea would be for Dell to just dump FIVE CDs in the box - the latest Fedora, the latest Mandriva, the latest Ubuntu, the latest openSUSE, and the latest Debian (or pick any other five - I'd include freeSpire and any open version of Xandros that might exist).
THAT would be Dell offering the user some choice without being committed to supporting any of it or favoring any given distro.
Of course, those CDs would cost Dell money. But if the distros supplied the CDs, all Dell has to pay for is the labor to unpack them and dump them in the box.
But for Shuttleworth to say put only an Ubuntu CD in the box IS advocating his distro.
For an individual company NOW it may not be an option.
That doesn't translate to whether it WILL be an option for the industry at some point. The question is merely whether and when the applications on which your industry thrives which are currently written for Microsoft will be developed by OSS developers interested in your industry.
Many European companies are leading in this area. They are financing OSS developers to develop critical enterprise infrastructure for their given industries. Unfortunately it seems that US companies are loath to expend any effort that doesn't improve their stock price over the next quarter.
Nonetheless it will happen. There are niche markets all over the place just waiting for a group of enterprising OSS developers to drop the current commercial market leader and make money selling installation and support for those niche markets.
Sooner or later, someone will fill those niche markets.
It's a no-brainer. You want to do OSS and make money? Find a niche market that interests you and start designing and coding.
There may be some markets resistant to this - markets that require highly technical software that can only be developed by either cooperation of companies in that industry or with considerable private investment in the development team. As I indicated, European companies seem to want to support OSS development in such markets. The US corporations seem to be more short-sighted in this area. They prefer to pay out money forever to other companies rather than invest in their future.
This is no surprise. Ultimately it's not going to prevent the emergence of Linux in corporations either.