"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?""
Hello? Many Slashdotters have been calling for Microsoft to embrace Bittorrent to distribute their software. If they did that, then you'd be "subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs", so how is this any different? Anyway, the only ones "subsidizind Microsoft's bandwidth costs" are those that download the software.
Seems that the "subsidizing bandwidth" remark was tacked on to add some lame MS-bashing that would help ensure that slashdot accepted the story and/or score brownie points with those particular slashdotters on the low end of the intelligence bell curve. Pathetic.
"Technology now allows anyone with minimal finance to create their own movies or music."
Sorry, I prefer high production values. You want to know the results of your proposal? Imagine that nearly every TV program is a YouTube video. That's the kind of TV quality you're be talking about. Home made movies would be only slightly better.
The stats aren't sales per month, but web usage share per month. So people like you wouldn't change the stats any. Tiger users are already counted as Mac users and upgrading to Leopard won't change that.
"Rude Awakening wrote with a PC World article, saying that XP sales will actually be higher next year than they were in 2007. Despite Vista's release, Microsoft admitted this week that it expects the previous version of its operating system to make up a larger percentage of its OS sales in 2008."
---------- The slashdot summary was wrong (as usual). What the article said was this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134908-page,1/ar ticle.html "During a conference call with analysts following the earnings results release Thursday afternoon, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the company has changed its fiscal year 2008 forecast from an 85/15 split in sales between Vista and XP to a 78/22 split. Windows XP sales will, in other words, be nearly 50 percent higher in the next 12 months than Microsoft had estimated earlier."
The article said *nothing* regarding 2008 XP sales vs 2007 sales.
"Seriously, ALMOST beating OS X's 6% market share when you are a predatory monopolist who has been cramming Vista down vendor's throats for six+ months now isn't something to be proud of."
If nearly beating Apple's market share after just six months is nothing to be proud of, what does that say for Linux? According to the same set of stats, both OSX and Vista have nearly an order of magnitude higher share than does Linux, despite Linux being free as in beer and getting 10 straight years of unqualified praise by both the tech and mainstream press, and despite having 500,000* programmers working on it for free. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2
But we've been hearing for years from slashdotters that XP was utter garbage that blue-screens daily (if not hourly) and suffers major malware attacks every couple months. Was all that just bullshit?
That "insecurity" seems not all that different from what you find in the OSS community. Whenever a commercial company comes up with a new product or feature, OSS community feels compelled to make OSS knock-offs shortly thereafter. Many slashdot comments regarding a new product/feature are along the lines of "We (i.e. OSS community) need to make an open source version of this".
The rule is new, but it's summertime. Students will be well aware of this rule before paying tuition for the fall term, so you can thow that excuse out. It was smart of KU to announce this policy during the summer, when only those few students taking summer classes will be able to use the "you changed the rules after I paid" excuse.
We've seen articles like this on slashdot regading Stanford, U. of Washington, etc (those KU's looks to be the harshest), and slashdotters say, "boycott the school, attend colleget elsewhere; that'll teach them a lesson when their enrollment plummets!!". The fact is, colleges are tired of students using the college network (paid for by tax payers, in the case of public schools) for piracy by spoiled brats. Then risk of enrollment decrease is insignificant (and those that think otherwise are living in a fantasy land).
OSS devs are willing to work for free but can't donate a couple of bucks in license fee donations???
Don't slashdotters advocate a utopia where music and movies are made with donation-based funding where donations are placed into escrow and when there's enough money, the music or movie is made, allowing the music/movie to be immediately placed into public domain so they can be legally shared by all? How can you on the one hand advocate that the LOTR movies could be made with donation-based funding yet claim that license fees can't be paid the same way?
Besides, the required donations would be a drop in the bucket to OSS-backers like IBM, Red Hat, Google. Why don't they step up to the plate and put their money where their mouths are and pay for the license fees?
What about personal/commercial usage? Some of the codecs distributed with VLC are patented and require you to pay royalties to their licensors. These are mostly the MPEG style codecs.
With many products the producer pays the license body (in this case MPEG LA) so the user (commercial or personal) does not have to take care of this. VLC (and ffmpeg and libmpeg2 which it uses in most of these cases) cannot do this because they are Free and Open Source implementations of these codecs. The software is not sold and therefore the end-user becomes responsible for complying to the licensing and royalty requirements. You will need to contact the licensor on how to comply to these licenses.
This goes for playing a DVD with VLC for your personal joy ($2.50 one time payment to MPEG LA) as well as for using VLC for streaming a live event in MPEG-4 over the Internet.
OSS devs should handle the legal stuff themselves rather than passing the burden to the user. If they can't come up with the funds to pay for the license fees (because they don't sell the software and can't sell support (because something like a media player doesn't require support (not enough to charge for, anyway))), then they can accept donations from the OSS community at large to cover any and all license fees so their users don't need to worry about it.
GPL3 goes after Tivo and MS for violating the spirit of GPL, by closing certain loopholes, but leaves fully in place the web-app loophole allowing Google to use GPL code in its multi-billion dollare operation, distribute their web-apps for use to the public but not release their own code because they distributed the app as a web-app rather than a local binary.
Why is Google allowed to violate the spirit of GPL? Google is the biggest violator of GPL spirit in history yet they get a pass?
The desired effect was to discourage companies from doing business with Microsoft.
Ever heard of the concept that making laws specific to particular case makes for bad law? If GPL3 was made with regards to one company, you can be sure that it's a bad license too.
So are you saying that as a practical matter, GPL3 gives devs carte-blanche to violate patents? I seriously doubt that. If a closed source dev sees OSS devs blatantly and wantonly violating their patents and publicly sticking their toungues at the closed source dev saying, "nyah nyah nyah - we violate your patents with impunity because GPL3 says we can!!", then that closed source dev will indeed take legal action.
Historically, companies would pay for patent licenses or make cross-licensing deals, or whatever. For some reason Red Hat refuses to do this. It is only now that particular software companies like Red Hat feel that they can violate patents at will because a particular license allows such. Well GPL3 doesn't trump patent law.
You guys are under the belief that MS's patent claims carry zero weight. We've seen courts uphold the most ridiculous of patents. Do you really believe that ZERO of Microsoft's 250 patents will be upheld? This is a very dangerous game you guys are playing. Remember that RMS is an anti-capitalist who has nothing at stake himself. Dancing to his tune is not very prudent, especially when it's so easy to make the patent-licensing deals that have been made for years between companies. THe old system worked well and seems more proper than some companies decided to violate patents at will.
I think the actual quote is more along the lines of, "I don't need to worry about all of your spyware and viruses...". Which is true, Macs don't need to worry about Windows-specific malware. So it's not "false" advertising. However, it is "misleading", "deceptive", etc.
Technically no. Your ~/Applications can be modified by you but the main/Applications folder is only modifiable by Administrators.
But since OSX accounts are admin by default, I'd guess that 90% of Mac users are running as admin. That's not as powerful as root (like Windows admin is), but it allows modifying a bunch of stuff outside of the user's home folder, including the main/Applications folder. And that's how most Mac apps are installed: drag the package to the main/Applications folder. Malware could be installed the same way.
At least Windows, since XP SP2, checks for valid digital sig before running a downloaded program, and warns the user if there is no sig or if it's invalid. (Even if there is a valid sig, it still warns the user, and displays the sig info (who the sig was assigned to, and even the actual sig details, if the use desires to see them)). OSX has nothing like that.
If you think that OSX is super-secure, just take a gander at the security updates Apple has released from 2005 up til now. Hell, just 2007 has had many security updates and huge ones at that, much more than Windows has had during the same time period. That nobody takes time to exploit the hundreds of holes doens't mean they don't exist.
So what? OSS's prime advantage is that it's free as in beer. If MS undercuts that advantage, then OSS will have to rely on some other advantage instead ("security", I guess).
BTW, the Student/Home edition of Office already comes with a license allowing it to be installed on three computers, so the "consession" only applies to Office Pro/Standard/Ulitimate. I'd be interested to know what percentage of Office installs in question are Student/Home. If most of then are Student/Home, then it's not much of a "consession" at all.
Why do companies feel the need to publicly announce what software they use or that they are switching software solutions? Who cares? Their customers couldn't care less. I don't know what software my local supermarket uses, and I don't care. And I hope to never see them publicly announce it either.
Slashdot Mirror
"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?""
Hello?
Many Slashdotters have been calling for Microsoft to embrace Bittorrent to distribute their software. If they did that, then you'd be "subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs", so how is this any different? Anyway, the only ones "subsidizind Microsoft's bandwidth costs" are those that download the software.
Seems that the "subsidizing bandwidth" remark was tacked on to add some lame MS-bashing that would help ensure that slashdot accepted the story and/or score brownie points with those particular slashdotters on the low end of the intelligence bell curve. Pathetic.
Whatever happened to (the GPL-violating) RedFlag Linux? Did it ever really exist, or was it just urban legend?
"Technology now allows anyone with minimal finance to create their own movies or music."
Sorry, I prefer high production values.
You want to know the results of your proposal? Imagine that nearly every TV program is a YouTube video. That's the kind of TV quality you're be talking about. Home made movies would be only slightly better.
The stats aren't sales per month, but web usage share per month.
So people like you wouldn't change the stats any. Tiger users are already counted as Mac users and upgrading to Leopard won't change that.
2 days ago I read on slashdot:
r ticle.html
"Rude Awakening wrote with a PC World article, saying that XP sales will actually be higher next year than they were in 2007. Despite Vista's release, Microsoft admitted this week that it expects the previous version of its operating system to make up a larger percentage of its OS sales in 2008."
----------
The slashdot summary was wrong (as usual).
What the article said was this:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134908-page,1/a
"During a conference call with analysts following the earnings results release Thursday afternoon, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the company has changed its fiscal year 2008 forecast from an 85/15 split in sales between Vista and XP to a 78/22 split. Windows XP sales will, in other words, be nearly 50 percent higher in the next 12 months than Microsoft had estimated earlier."
The article said *nothing* regarding 2008 XP sales vs 2007 sales.
"What would make far more sense would be to compare Vista + XP vs OSX. That would give a far better MS vs OSX comparison."
OK, according to the cited stats, that would be:
Vista + XP = 91%
OSX = 6%
I don't think that helps MS-haters' cause much.
(Nor does the fact that Linux's share remains microscopic.)
"Seriously, ALMOST beating OS X's 6% market share when you are a predatory monopolist who has been cramming Vista down vendor's throats for six+ months now isn't something to be proud of."
= 2
If nearly beating Apple's market share after just six months is nothing to be proud of, what does that say for Linux? According to the same set of stats, both OSX and Vista have nearly an order of magnitude higher share than does Linux, despite Linux being free as in beer and getting 10 straight years of unqualified praise by both the tech and mainstream press, and despite having 500,000* programmers working on it for free.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
*500,000 = "one million eyes" / 2.
But we've been hearing for years from slashdotters that XP was utter garbage that blue-screens daily (if not hourly) and suffers major malware attacks every couple months. Was all that just bullshit?
Your link's stats indicate that Latvia makes up 4% of web usage, which is BS.= 2 for more accurate stats.
See http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
That "insecurity" seems not all that different from what you find in the OSS community. Whenever a commercial company comes up with a new product or feature, OSS community feels compelled to make OSS knock-offs shortly thereafter. Many slashdot comments regarding a new product/feature are along the lines of "We (i.e. OSS community) need to make an open source version of this".
The rule is new, but it's summertime. Students will be well aware of this rule before paying tuition for the fall term, so you can thow that excuse out. It was smart of KU to announce this policy during the summer, when only those few students taking summer classes will be able to use the "you changed the rules after I paid" excuse.
We've seen articles like this on slashdot regading Stanford, U. of Washington, etc (those KU's looks to be the harshest), and slashdotters say, "boycott the school, attend colleget elsewhere; that'll teach them a lesson when their enrollment plummets!!". The fact is, colleges are tired of students using the college network (paid for by tax payers, in the case of public schools) for piracy by spoiled brats. Then risk of enrollment decrease is insignificant (and those that think otherwise are living in a fantasy land).
OSS devs are willing to work for free but can't donate a couple of bucks in license fee donations???
Don't slashdotters advocate a utopia where music and movies are made with donation-based funding where donations are placed into escrow and when there's enough money, the music or movie is made, allowing the music/movie to be immediately placed into public domain so they can be legally shared by all? How can you on the one hand advocate that the LOTR movies could be made with donation-based funding yet claim that license fees can't be paid the same way?
Besides, the required donations would be a drop in the bucket to OSS-backers like IBM, Red Hat, Google. Why don't they step up to the plate and put their money where their mouths are and pay for the license fees?
For example, this is what VideoLAN says regarding their VLC player:
http://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questio
OSS devs should handle the legal stuff themselves rather than passing the burden to the user. If they can't come up with the funds to pay for the license fees (because they don't sell the software and can't sell support (because something like a media player doesn't require support (not enough to charge for, anyway))), then they can accept donations from the OSS community at large to cover any and all license fees so their users don't need to worry about it.
Huh, I was just about to post the same thing wrt the bundling of OO.o. :p
"GPL2 or later versions of GPL" doesn't mean "GPL2 AND later versions of GPL".
Oh, and you don't know what "implicit" means either, genious.
GPL3 goes after Tivo and MS for violating the spirit of GPL, by closing certain loopholes, but leaves fully in place the web-app loophole allowing Google to use GPL code in its multi-billion dollare operation, distribute their web-apps for use to the public but not release their own code because they distributed the app as a web-app rather than a local binary.
Why is Google allowed to violate the spirit of GPL? Google is the biggest violator of GPL spirit in history yet they get a pass?
Ever heard of the concept that making laws specific to particular case makes for bad law? If GPL3 was made with regards to one company, you can be sure that it's a bad license too.
So are you saying that as a practical matter, GPL3 gives devs carte-blanche to violate patents? I seriously doubt that. If a closed source dev sees OSS devs blatantly and wantonly violating their patents and publicly sticking their toungues at the closed source dev saying, "nyah nyah nyah - we violate your patents with impunity because GPL3 says we can!!", then that closed source dev will indeed take legal action.
Historically, companies would pay for patent licenses or make cross-licensing deals, or whatever. For some reason Red Hat refuses to do this. It is only now that particular software companies like Red Hat feel that they can violate patents at will because a particular license allows such. Well GPL3 doesn't trump patent law.
You guys are under the belief that MS's patent claims carry zero weight. We've seen courts uphold the most ridiculous of patents. Do you really believe that ZERO of Microsoft's 250 patents will be upheld? This is a very dangerous game you guys are playing. Remember that RMS is an anti-capitalist who has nothing at stake himself. Dancing to his tune is not very prudent, especially when it's so easy to make the patent-licensing deals that have been made for years between companies. THe old system worked well and seems more proper than some companies decided to violate patents at will.
I think the actual quote is more along the lines of, "I don't need to worry about all of your spyware and viruses...". Which is true, Macs don't need to worry about Windows-specific malware. So it's not "false" advertising. However, it is "misleading", "deceptive", etc.
But since OSX accounts are admin by default, I'd guess that 90% of Mac users are running as admin. That's not as powerful as root (like Windows admin is), but it allows modifying a bunch of stuff outside of the user's home folder, including the main
At least Windows, since XP SP2, checks for valid digital sig before running a downloaded program, and warns the user if there is no sig or if it's invalid. (Even if there is a valid sig, it still warns the user, and displays the sig info (who the sig was assigned to, and even the actual sig details, if the use desires to see them)). OSX has nothing like that.
If you think that OSX is super-secure, just take a gander at the security updates Apple has released from 2005 up til now. Hell, just 2007 has had many security updates and huge ones at that, much more than Windows has had during the same time period. That nobody takes time to exploit the hundreds of holes doens't mean they don't exist.
Who cares? The Wii games suck ass.
You had to go back 10 years to find an example? Have you tried using OO.o 2.0 to read a StarOffice file form 10 years ago?
Anyway, I have no problem opening a file from WinWord 2 (circa 1991) in Word 2003, so I don't know what you're talking about.
So what? OSS's prime advantage is that it's free as in beer. If MS undercuts that advantage, then OSS will have to rely on some other advantage instead ("security", I guess).
BTW, the Student/Home edition of Office already comes with a license allowing it to be installed on three computers, so the "consession" only applies to Office Pro/Standard/Ulitimate. I'd be interested to know what percentage of Office installs in question are Student/Home. If most of then are Student/Home, then it's not much of a "consession" at all.
Why do companies feel the need to publicly announce what software they use or that they are switching software solutions? Who cares? Their customers couldn't care less. I don't know what software my local supermarket uses, and I don't care. And I hope to never see them publicly announce it either.