Well for non-English speakers it will make quite a big difference. Let me give you two funny and/or embarrasing examples: Two municipality names in Sweden: Mnsters and Hrby. As you (hopefully) can see the first one has two dots over the "o" (called "umlaut" in german, i.e. a form of the letter "o", in Swedish it is considered a different letter in the alphabet) and a ring above the a and the latter name has two dots over the "o". Well, these municipalities have websites and since they can't get the dots and the rings the names are as follows:
www.monsteras.se
www.horby.se
Now comes the funny and embarrasing part, since the names have become words, which mean something, translations:
www.monstercarcass.se and www.hookervillage.se
Now, try to tell the not-so-internet-literate people what to type in their web browser and get some reactions:)
Exactly what innovations have we seen in IE lately!? I use mozilla+mouse gestures+multizilla all the time at home (on linux) and whenever I'm forced to use IE somewhere it feels like a browser that was obsolete years ago, oh wait...it actually was! It's so frustrating to use IE when you're used to clicking the middle mouse button to load links in the background and making gestures with the mouse to add bookmarks/open windows/close windows/move back/move forward/reload... (it's a long list).
I think his strength is rather the opposite. IIRC when he played against Deep Blue he lost because the machine made a "human" move according to him - i.e. he said afterwards that one move Deep Blue made was impossible for a computer to calculate and thus he completely lost concentration because he was so sure that there was some cheating going on, i.e. human assistance behind the scenes - and there have of course been rumours about that afterwards and Deep Blue has been scrapped so nobody can prove them wrong or right. I do, however, doubt that IBM would do such a thing but oviously I don't have the tiniest clue how to tell whether an opponent is a human player or a computer but professional chess players probably can - I remember reading how one professional player explained that they can tell the "depth" of the algorithm the computer uses after having played a while (regrettably the text was vague on details).
I certainly wish that they would be forced to sell just an operating system. It wouldn't be at all unfair towards MS since the cost for the web browser, media player and all other crap is included in the price anyway it's basically MS choosing which web browser and media player you buy, which, however, most definitely is unfair towards customers. But if they were forced to just sell the OS and then all other programs separately there would be fair competition; let's say that you buy the OS for X euros you can then choose to buy IE for Y euros but if you like you can choose to buy Opera instead, for Z euros. And MS could of course also choose to charge nothing for IE and then it would actually be free (unlike now) but since it wouldn't be included with the OS the customers would make the choice and the choice between IE and other free browsers would be based entirely on what the users consider to be the best one.
Also, there are _countless_ alternatives to Windows, and several alternatives to every MS product that is supposedly a monopoly.
Oh, so when Joe User is unhappy with windows, which operating system can he choose and still run all his apps?
So the monopoly issue depends on what you define as the product - and if the product is defined as "a Microsoft Windows compatible operating system" Microsoft most definitely has a monopoly. And just in case somebody wants to point out that the definition is stupid, try a different one: "A Ford compatible car". Well, there are quite a few other cars that can drive on the same roads...
Legally, according to the EULA, I can't sell it to anyone who could put it to good use. I also can't install it on another computer if someone else wanted it.
Are you really sure about that? I don't know about the US but in the EU, where I live (in Finland), consumer rights explicitly state that all EULAS are invalid - you can tell Microsoft to take their EULA and shove it. So reselling software that has come bundled with you computer isn't illegal in any way - at my previous job one of my coworkers had the job of selling software that came bundled and that we didn't need.
There should be some sort of percentage of profits reaped from the anti-competitive behavior...
That's not a very good idea - profits are easy to alter legally. Accounting offers possibilities, which might not be obvious for the lay-slashdotter, but easier to understand is eg. choosing to all of a sudden increase R&D, which will benefit the company later but only increase costs at the moment. And besides, theoretically a company could break the law and be unprofitable - should they then be receiving money?;)
The Linux Newbie Ask Question HowTo Wrong way: - How do I do <what you have a problem with> in Linux? Answer: - RTFM!!! Right way: - Linux sucks! Doing <what you have a problem with> is so easy in Windows, I'll switch back soon... Answer: - Don't switch! The solution to <what you have a problem with> is simple, just do this: <an elaborate, newbie-friendly answer>
Taxpayer money, spent by a government should be spent so that it benefits the taxpayers the most. So, in which case does it benefit them the most? A) Sent to Redmond
B) Paid to Brazilians providing developing open source software or providing support for it (and thus also developing and mainting technical skills in the country)
The answer is quite obivous - regardless of which software choice would be better otherwise (TCO or quality).
Actually, the company making TV sets etc. isn't the same as the mobile phone company anymore. A few years ago a company from Hong Kong bought Nokia's TV manufacturing and along with that the permission to use the "Nokia" name on them for a certain number of years (yes, the brand image is worth a lot so that pushed up the price).
I'm sorry if this is a bit O/T but it's something I've wanted to say here for a while and no closer topic has shown up lately either (so please don't mod down...): Since we (probably) all want to avoid lock-in and thus open formats to be more widespread (ie. other office suites than MS) I have a suggestion that others might want to follow. I've tried to help Open Office spread in the following way (the reason chose Open Office is that it's supported on more platforms than any of the others AFAIK and is thus most suitable for this purpose): I'm (among other things) a business student and frequently books on eg. finance include a CD-Rom with Excel spreadsheets as examples of some concepts in the book. I test whether the sheets work flawlessly in Open Office and if so send the authors a suggestion that since Open Office would definitely fit on the CD they could spread that along for free and thus allow students who don't have access to MS Office to use the additional material if they just have a computer. So my suggestion is simply that others too do this when they encounter such books. Please note, however, that the authors of such books are businesspeople and thus "MS Sucks, Open Source rulez!" is not the way to approach them - just try to emphasize that it adds value to their book and that it's very easy to implement (you can tell how easily it worked for you) and if you feel like it you might mention that MS surely needs some competition (and they certainly acknowledge that since MS has been used in books as an example of how a monopoly sets prices).
Nope. He is a Swedish-speaking Finn, ie. he belongs to the 6 % minority in Finland (heck, why do you think he'd otherwise speak perfect Finnish too?). In case you didn't know; Swedish is an official language in Finland due to that - ie. it has the very same status as Finnish (education, public services, everything is available in Swedish too). The minority is, however, not evenly distributed - most of it lives in southern and western Finland (ie. near the coasts, in the Helsinki area it's 15 %). A funny fact is that the world's most Swedish speaking municipality (called Korsnas) is actually located in Finland - all municipalities in Sweden have so many foreigners that the one in Finland has a higher percentage of Swedish-speakers. In case you speak Swedish: municipality = kommun
Quote from
the public comments on the revised proposal to final judgement:
373. However, the major comments concerning file formats request disclosure of the file formats of Microsoft products such as Office. Office does not meet the definition of Microsoft Middleware, and so it does not fall under Section III.D. Nor is Office implemented natively in a Windows Operating System Product, so it does not fall under Section III.E. Thus, the file formats for Office will not be disclosed or licensed pursuant to the RPFJ.
Paragraphs 371-375 on the page contain more information about it but that's the main point.
The invention of Post-It notes was quite funny - I got to know that on an industrial management course I took: 3M has had a policy of letting their employees spend a certain amount of time every week simply experimenting without a specific goal - and the result of one such experiment was "hmm, this glue doesn't stick very well and it doesn't dry - it's probably quite useless...or can we think of something?"...
I've tried quite a few other players before (including xine) but mplayer is by far the best one I've ever found - it plays whatever you throw at it. That means, eg. that if you go to a crippled web page (ie. one viewable with a certain browser only...) just look at the source to get the url: whateverprotocol://link.to/the/movie/file.format and then cut'n paste to "mplayer whateverprotocol://link.to/the/movie/file.format" in an xterm (or whatever you use) and you'll see it:)
is that they're called _Service_ Packs - MS portreys it as if they're doing their customers a favor by coming to the rescue when evil hackers, worms and viruses attack them. Since most people don't understand what a virus really is (other than something created by evil hackers and coming to damage their computers) and are being told that MS is giving a patch to protect them they think Microsoft is being nice and helping them. I wish they were forced to call them "We fucked up, and we're very sorry about it, here's our attempt at fixing it" -Packs, or something similar - but not _Service_ Packs.
...but it's going to take a while to get it going.
Don't worry. I used to run Debian but switched to Gentoo and installing it was very, very, convenient (and the instructions are good). If you already have a partition, on which you'll install it, just chroot to that and let Gentoo compile in the background whilst you use your SuSE installation until Gentoo is complete - which, if you compile X, KDE and so on will take 24+ hours unless you have an extremely fast computer, mine is a P3 450MHz and a complete compile to a desktop from scratch took almost 36 hours. So in the end, installing gentoo on a different partition whilst using a another Linux installation in the mean time was the most convenient (although configuration-wise not the easiest) Linux-installation I've ever done and the result was an OS I could boot into straight away and still compiled specifically for my system:) After using Debian I was impressed by the speed increase with Gentoo 1.2 and I'm looking forward to an even bigger speed increase with 1.4 since I'll be compiling it with pre-linking - instructions can be found here, if you want to try that straight away (and thus avoid a new compilation from scratch later). Happy compiling!
I couldn't agree more - languages are very fascinating. There are so many things that can be expressed with all languages but the way you do it can be very different - syntax and semantics, just like programming languages. I'm lucky enough to be bilingual in two very different languages - Finnish and Swedish (Finnish parents, grew up in Sweden). Having two so different native languages is very beneficial when studying foreign languages - already as a child I noticed that it was much easier for me than my classmates to feel that a completely different way of expressing something is natural in another language. In my specific case, the concepts of prepositions and cases - Swedish has more than 80 prepositions whilst Finnish has none, instead it has 15 cases. So what requires 5-6 words in Swedish can be said with one in Finnish - quite a difference but when that feels natural, nothing in other languages seems unnatural either.
Going to the gym can be both good and bad. Personally I go three times a week with at least one friend. The bad thing is that we usually go around 6 PM since it's hard to find a time suitable for everyone. Going at 6 PM is bad because when you get home it's 8 PM or 9 PM so you don't go to bed immediately but you're too exhausted to work or study efficiently - so the time before going to bed is simply wasted. Ideally I'd either go so early in the morning that you're still "waking up" afterwards and feel good working the rest of the day. Another alternative would be to go so late that you can go to sleep almost immediately afterwards (which would be good for your muscles too). The good thing about going to the gym is that you feel and look better. And if you go with some friends you get another advantage - competition! Not die hard competition of course but mutually beneficial for all of you. In my experience, even though I'm the one lifting the least on the bench, I'm motivated if I can make proportionally more progress than the others and in addition to that if I feel lazy I still go because I know that if I don't the others will make more progress than me. And in addition to the small competitive element, going with a few friends makes it part of your weekly/daily routine.
Not quite that simple. Since it's the government spending the money they should do it so that it benefits the taxpayers the most. And in that case the cost isn't the only issue - equally important is where the money is going. If it's OSS it's more likely that the money will go to buying support locally and thus the money goes back to the taxpayers instead of Microsoft, which will benefit the taxpayers more.
Re:Know why Linux will fail on the desktop?
on
Linux on the Desktop
·
· Score: 1
It's pretty much just the apps that matter - what do most people do with their OS (if they even know what that is..)? They run the apps - clicking on icon X on the desktop to start a web browser, click on icon Y to start a word processor. So switching (a desktop) OS is not that much of an issue as switching apps.
I doubt that, since usually there are two kinds of pupils - those who are very interested in computers and thus easily learn to use them and those who aren't and have difficulties learning. When they grow up the ones that learnt well will choose what's best for them (no I'm not claiming that it will obviously be Linux) since they'll have the knowledge and probably more advanced needs too and the ones that didn't learn much will probably have limited needs (since they won't know what else they could do with computers anyway) and thus they'll try to stick to exactly what they learnt in school because that will be the easiest alternative for them.
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Well for non-English speakers it will make quite a big difference. Let me give you two funny and/or embarrasing examples: Two municipality names in Sweden: Mnsters and Hrby. As you (hopefully) can see the first one has two dots over the "o" (called "umlaut" in german, i.e. a form of the letter "o", in Swedish it is considered a different letter in the alphabet) and a ring above the a and the latter name has two dots over the "o". Well, these municipalities have websites and since they can't get the dots and the rings the names are as follows: www.monsteras.se www.horby.se Now comes the funny and embarrasing part, since the names have become words, which mean something, translations: www.monstercarcass.se and www.hookervillage.se Now, try to tell the not-so-internet-literate people what to type in their web browser and get some reactions :)
Exactly what innovations have we seen in IE lately!? I use mozilla+mouse gestures+multizilla all the time at home (on linux) and whenever I'm forced to use IE somewhere it feels like a browser that was obsolete years ago, oh wait...it actually was! It's so frustrating to use IE when you're used to clicking the middle mouse button to load links in the background and making gestures with the mouse to add bookmarks/open windows/close windows/move back/move forward/reload... (it's a long list).
I think his strength is rather the opposite. IIRC when he played against Deep Blue he lost because the machine made a "human" move according to him - i.e. he said afterwards that one move Deep Blue made was impossible for a computer to calculate and thus he completely lost concentration because he was so sure that there was some cheating going on, i.e. human assistance behind the scenes - and there have of course been rumours about that afterwards and Deep Blue has been scrapped so nobody can prove them wrong or right. I do, however, doubt that IBM would do such a thing but oviously I don't have the tiniest clue how to tell whether an opponent is a human player or a computer but professional chess players probably can - I remember reading how one professional player explained that they can tell the "depth" of the algorithm the computer uses after having played a while (regrettably the text was vague on details).
I certainly wish that they would be forced to sell just an operating system. It wouldn't be at all unfair towards MS since the cost for the web browser, media player and all other crap is included in the price anyway it's basically MS choosing which web browser and media player you buy, which, however, most definitely is unfair towards customers. But if they were forced to just sell the OS and then all other programs separately there would be fair competition; let's say that you buy the OS for X euros you can then choose to buy IE for Y euros but if you like you can choose to buy Opera instead, for Z euros. And MS could of course also choose to charge nothing for IE and then it would actually be free (unlike now) but since it wouldn't be included with the OS the customers would make the choice and the choice between IE and other free browsers would be based entirely on what the users consider to be the best one.
Also, there are _countless_ alternatives to Windows, and several alternatives to every MS product that is supposedly a monopoly.
Oh, so when Joe User is unhappy with windows, which operating system can he choose and still run all his apps?
So the monopoly issue depends on what you define as the product - and if the product is defined as "a Microsoft Windows compatible operating system" Microsoft most definitely has a monopoly. And just in case somebody wants to point out that the definition is stupid, try a different one: "A Ford compatible car". Well, there are quite a few other cars that can drive on the same roads...
Legally, according to the EULA, I can't sell it to anyone who could put it to good use. I also can't install it on another computer if someone else wanted it.
Are you really sure about that? I don't know about the US but in the EU, where I live (in Finland), consumer rights explicitly state that all EULAS are invalid - you can tell Microsoft to take their EULA and shove it. So reselling software that has come bundled with you computer isn't illegal in any way - at my previous job one of my coworkers had the job of selling software that came bundled and that we didn't need.
There should be some sort of percentage of profits reaped from the anti-competitive behavior...
;)
That's not a very good idea - profits are easy to alter legally. Accounting offers possibilities, which might not be obvious for the lay-slashdotter, but easier to understand is eg. choosing to all of a sudden increase R&D, which will benefit the company later but only increase costs at the moment. And besides, theoretically a company could break the law and be unprofitable - should they then be receiving money?
The Linux Newbie Ask Question HowTo
Wrong way:
- How do I do <what you have a problem with> in Linux?
Answer:
- RTFM!!!
Right way:
- Linux sucks! Doing <what you have a problem with> is so easy in Windows, I'll switch back soon...
Answer:
- Don't switch! The solution to <what you have a problem with> is simple, just do this: <an elaborate, newbie-friendly answer>
Taxpayer money, spent by a government should be spent so that it benefits the taxpayers the most. So, in which case does it benefit them the most?
A) Sent to Redmond
B) Paid to Brazilians providing developing open source software or providing support for it (and thus also developing and mainting technical skills in the country)
The answer is quite obivous - regardless of which software choice would be better otherwise (TCO or quality).
Actually, the company making TV sets etc. isn't the same as the mobile phone company anymore. A few years ago a company from Hong Kong bought Nokia's TV manufacturing and along with that the permission to use the "Nokia" name on them for a certain number of years (yes, the brand image is worth a lot so that pushed up the price).
I'm sorry if this is a bit O/T but it's something I've wanted to say here for a while and no closer topic has shown up lately either (so please don't mod down...): Since we (probably) all want to avoid lock-in and thus open formats to be more widespread (ie. other office suites than MS) I have a suggestion that others might want to follow. I've tried to help Open Office spread in the following way (the reason chose Open Office is that it's supported on more platforms than any of the others AFAIK and is thus most suitable for this purpose): I'm (among other things) a business student and frequently books on eg. finance include a CD-Rom with Excel spreadsheets as examples of some concepts in the book. I test whether the sheets work flawlessly in Open Office and if so send the authors a suggestion that since Open Office would definitely fit on the CD they could spread that along for free and thus allow students who don't have access to MS Office to use the additional material if they just have a computer. So my suggestion is simply that others too do this when they encounter such books. Please note, however, that the authors of such books are businesspeople and thus "MS Sucks, Open Source rulez!" is not the way to approach them - just try to emphasize that it adds value to their book and that it's very easy to implement (you can tell how easily it worked for you) and if you feel like it you might mention that MS surely needs some competition (and they certainly acknowledge that since MS has been used in books as an example of how a monopoly sets prices).
Nope. He is a Swedish-speaking Finn, ie. he belongs to the 6 % minority in Finland (heck, why do you think he'd otherwise speak perfect Finnish too?). In case you didn't know; Swedish is an official language in Finland due to that - ie. it has the very same status as Finnish (education, public services, everything is available in Swedish too). The minority is, however, not evenly distributed - most of it lives in southern and western Finland (ie. near the coasts, in the Helsinki area it's 15 %). A funny fact is that the world's most Swedish speaking municipality (called Korsnas) is actually located in Finland - all municipalities in Sweden have so many foreigners that the one in Finland has a higher percentage of Swedish-speakers. In case you speak Swedish: municipality = kommun
TextMaker promises "to seamlessly read and write Microsoft Word documents" but I haven't heard anybody's experiences with it. Has anybody here tried it?
Quote from the public comments on the revised proposal to final judgement:
373. However, the major comments concerning file formats request disclosure of the file formats of Microsoft products such as Office. Office does not meet the definition of Microsoft Middleware, and so it does not fall under Section III.D. Nor is Office implemented natively in a Windows Operating System Product, so it does not fall under Section III.E. Thus, the file formats for Office will not be disclosed or licensed pursuant to the RPFJ.
Paragraphs 371-375 on the page contain more information about it but that's the main point.
The invention of Post-It notes was quite funny - I got to know that on an industrial management course I took: 3M has had a policy of letting their employees spend a certain amount of time every week simply experimenting without a specific goal - and the result of one such experiment was "hmm, this glue doesn't stick very well and it doesn't dry - it's probably quite useless...or can we think of something?"...
I've tried quite a few other players before (including xine) but mplayer is by far the best one I've ever found - it plays whatever you throw at it. That means, eg. that if you go to a crippled web page (ie. one viewable with a certain browser only...) just look at the source to get the url: whateverprotocol://link.to/the/movie/file.format and then cut'n paste to "mplayer whateverprotocol://link.to/the/movie/file.format" in an xterm (or whatever you use) and you'll see it :)
Ok, here you go! Not that I know why you want to strip Cascading Style Sheet tags from HTML documents... ;)
is that they're called _Service_ Packs - MS portreys it as if they're doing their customers a favor by coming to the rescue when evil hackers, worms and viruses attack them. Since most people don't understand what a virus really is (other than something created by evil hackers and coming to damage their computers) and are being told that MS is giving a patch to protect them they think Microsoft is being nice and helping them. I wish they were forced to call them "We fucked up, and we're very sorry about it, here's our attempt at fixing it" -Packs, or something similar - but not _Service_ Packs.
...but it's going to take a while to get it going. :) After using Debian I was impressed by the speed increase with Gentoo 1.2 and I'm looking forward to an even bigger speed increase with 1.4 since I'll be compiling it with pre-linking - instructions can be found here, if you want to try that straight away (and thus avoid a new compilation from scratch later). Happy compiling!
Don't worry. I used to run Debian but switched to Gentoo and installing it was very, very, convenient (and the instructions are good). If you already have a partition, on which you'll install it, just chroot to that and let Gentoo compile in the background whilst you use your SuSE installation until Gentoo is complete - which, if you compile X, KDE and so on will take 24+ hours unless you have an extremely fast computer, mine is a P3 450MHz and a complete compile to a desktop from scratch took almost 36 hours. So in the end, installing gentoo on a different partition whilst using a another Linux installation in the mean time was the most convenient (although configuration-wise not the easiest) Linux-installation I've ever done and the result was an OS I could boot into straight away and still compiled specifically for my system
I couldn't agree more - languages are very fascinating. There are so many things that can be expressed with all languages but the way you do it can be very different - syntax and semantics, just like programming languages. I'm lucky enough to be bilingual in two very different languages - Finnish and Swedish (Finnish parents, grew up in Sweden). Having two so different native languages is very beneficial when studying foreign languages - already as a child I noticed that it was much easier for me than my classmates to feel that a completely different way of expressing something is natural in another language. In my specific case, the concepts of prepositions and cases - Swedish has more than 80 prepositions whilst Finnish has none, instead it has 15 cases. So what requires 5-6 words in Swedish can be said with one in Finnish - quite a difference but when that feels natural, nothing in other languages seems unnatural either.
http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/ It seems very interesting and probably much nicer to use (once it's finsihed) since you get an autopilot :)
Going to the gym can be both good and bad. Personally I go three times a week with at least one friend. The bad thing is that we usually go around 6 PM since it's hard to find a time suitable for everyone. Going at 6 PM is bad because when you get home it's 8 PM or 9 PM so you don't go to bed immediately but you're too exhausted to work or study efficiently - so the time before going to bed is simply wasted. Ideally I'd either go so early in the morning that you're still "waking up" afterwards and feel good working the rest of the day. Another alternative would be to go so late that you can go to sleep almost immediately afterwards (which would be good for your muscles too). The good thing about going to the gym is that you feel and look better. And if you go with some friends you get another advantage - competition! Not die hard competition of course but mutually beneficial for all of you. In my experience, even though I'm the one lifting the least on the bench, I'm motivated if I can make proportionally more progress than the others and in addition to that if I feel lazy I still go because I know that if I don't the others will make more progress than me. And in addition to the small competitive element, going with a few friends makes it part of your weekly/daily routine.
Not quite that simple. Since it's the government spending the money they should do it so that it benefits the taxpayers the most. And in that case the cost isn't the only issue - equally important is where the money is going. If it's OSS it's more likely that the money will go to buying support locally and thus the money goes back to the taxpayers instead of Microsoft, which will benefit the taxpayers more.
It's pretty much just the apps that matter - what do most people do with their OS (if they even know what that is..)? They run the apps - clicking on icon X on the desktop to start a web browser, click on icon Y to start a word processor. So switching (a desktop) OS is not that much of an issue as switching apps.
I doubt that, since usually there are two kinds of pupils - those who are very interested in computers and thus easily learn to use them and those who aren't and have difficulties learning. When they grow up the ones that learnt well will choose what's best for them (no I'm not claiming that it will obviously be Linux) since they'll have the knowledge and probably more advanced needs too and the ones that didn't learn much will probably have limited needs (since they won't know what else they could do with computers anyway) and thus they'll try to stick to exactly what they learnt in school because that will be the easiest alternative for them.