All those costs you describe, what's my monthly bill to my ISP for? That's the part that pays for the ability to communicate world wide.
The content can go back to being free.
I have to add that I personally don't think it'd go back to being 100% free -- a lot of companies I'm sure would actually figure out a way to have people pay them money for the priviledge of viewing their website (right now, I wouldn't pay to have a newspaper delivered, but I would pay to continue accessing the BBC webpage, for instance).
Yeah, I came across an article that specifically touched on this.
While researchers in Germany (I think they were German) were looking for the causes of allergies and other symptoms of a malfunctioning immune system they came across something interesting. 1) alergies are more or less a 1st world disease, very rare in the in the 3rd world. 2), they compared the living quarters of Germans in the city and Germans in the country, and found my more "nastiness" in general in the country houses (along with a much lower incidence of allergies). By nastiness, there was much more exposure to bugs and things that we naturally think of as undesireable from farm animal excrement, etc.
They theorized that, much like just about anything else about our bodies, the immune system needs some "training", especially when we're young. If you live in the city or other more or less anti-setptic enviroments, you're left with a less-exercised immune system, and more immune system illnesses (allergies, etc.).
I used to think the overuse of antibiotics was simply going to lead to our demise because we were creating better bugs, now in appears that we're also making it more likely that we'll drop dead, from say, eating a peanut (from an underutilized, underdeveloped and confused immune system).
We have *chosen* to have an oil based economy -- this is a decision we've made (well, not you and I, but the people who profit from the oily stuff made this decision and have somehow convinced people that it's the natural order of things. How sad).
We could choose to start moving away from oil, decrease independence (economic too), but that'd be the rational, smart thing to do -- so I doubt it'll happen in the states (this country definitely seems to be run by oil barons -- worse yet, the average joe jumps in and defends these interests even though they do not benefit anyone but the oil barons. The US is a weird place sometimes).
I've come across this several times in English sites; there's nothing new here (I thought when I first saw it). The English language is full of foreign words that were absorbed into the language when there didn't exist a native equivalent.
Most Americans already know that the Spanish word "gratis" (no cost) would translate into English as free. Funny that became better known before "libre", the Spanish word (and probably other romance languages) for "free as in freedom" that would unfortunately also just translate as "free".
Or does it also bother you that you can find the French word entrepreneur in an English dictionary? Hopefully you'll eventually be able to find libre in there too -- it'll avoid a lot of confusion (besides, it's an important concept -- it probably does deserve its own word).
I don't know what you're accusing the French of besides, the use of Libre with GPL software in English is really not new (maybe not exactly commonplace either, but I have run into it enough times to think that it was time that "libre" became better known, especially since "gratis" is already understood by enough Americans to hear it in commercials or on TV. Afterall, "libre" is a much more important concept than "gratis").
No weird French conspiracy here, just another important concept (and foreign word) hopefully becoming part of the English language. That's what I see.
not at all, the 9th circuit (they also spoke of this) happens to preside over a much much larger jurisdiction than any other court, and that's why they are also the busiest.
They covered this in NPR; it's a myth that the 9th circuit gets a higher % overturned. It happens to be one of the busiest circuits (I think *the* busiest), so more cases go through and more cases later get overturned. But their % of rulings later overturned is no higher than other courts.
For me, the hard part in finding stuff around town isn't the exact location (though I agree that this also might be useful in certain circumstances, that is if I knew what my address was in Lat/Long!), but how to navigate the streets.
So, a left at Main and a right 1.5 miles later on to Central is about as useful as directions get for me... (especially in cities with tons of 1-way streets and "No Turns" intersections, which is where I'm most likely to be lost!)
Even in the states, if you need to get around town, I'm not sure coordinates would be of much use (I think for the most part we don't really care where stuff is, just how to get there)
Gtk-Gnutella has worked for me on RH9 -- had a hard time with Xmule myself (didn't pursue it after "apt-get install gtk-gnutella" had me online and sharing). Oh, you might have to tweak Iptables to allow the port of your choosing (on my install pretty much everything was shut tight -- that was the one snafu for me).
Come to think of it, that may also be the problem you are having (and I was having) with Xmule -- don't remember if I had other problems with it (gtk-gnutella worked, but I was "firewalled" until the IPtables "tweak").
Just the opposite: doesn't this validate Taiwan's claims? Or do you think that every average Chinese person on the street magically has access to the source code? You bet your butt it's government programmers -- whether the code leaked is another matter -- and where's my copy, BTW-- (and I can't imagine MS didn't work out some way of keeping the code contained, but who knows).
At any rate, it *gives* legitimacy to Taiwan's claims, not the other way around. And yes, this would make it more likely that it's Chinese governement sponsored (and why is this surprising? The US and the UK, closest of buddies, play the cloak and dagger game against each other, why wouldn't China ?).
And, Knoppix has already sold several people on Linux (want to try this Linux thing you've been hearing about? Check this out, runs off the CDROM, nothing gets changed, and it all just works). Just the fact that fully functional OS boots from their CDROM the first time has a kewlness factor...
The problem is (I know it's a matter of personal preference, live and let live and all that) is that it's KDE and a not a very attractive version: I've personally been waiting for a Gnome-based Knoppix-like CD (again, personal taste, I like the color green, watermelon and Gnome over KDE -- for me it's a matter of aesthetics).
I think an attractive version of Knoppix will make it easier to "sell" linux to curious coworkers. Unfortunately, Gnome 2.4 won't be ready until later (they're using 2.2 -- still nice, but 2.4 is, IMHO, a gorgeous desktop)
The website did say that nice appearance was one of their goals (didn't see screenshots -- and the page was crawling already), they apparently also made other changes (with hardware detection, apparently), but personally, I've just been waiting for a purty Knoppix-like live CD to give to friends.
It's my understanding that the GPL provides something that the other "no restrictions" licenses don't: hijacking prevention.
The GPL is simply more practical in this regard, and IMHO, was created so that history wouldn't repeat itself. I personally think that it's a good thing that it's the most common license used.
Also, I have to disagree with your analogy: a more correct analogy is that the GPL states that you can learn to do division on the condition that you don't prevent anyone else from learning it too. That's a condition that I think makes sense, and actually provides more fundamental guarantees of freedom for all than simply "no strings attached".
Anyways, I don't think that these considerations were the reasongs why TiVo made the decisions they made: but I do think they play a role in the decisions of developers generally.
Isn't the windows version of Catia new? I thought that ran on Unix-like systems forever (meaning, I can't imagine Catia wouldn't run great or better on Unix than Windows).
I'm not sure if you guys just haven't picked up Linux in a looooong time, or if I'm missing the point.
There's point and drool interfaces to updating software (yes! it takes care, automagically, of the dependencies, downloading what's needed to run the program you've selected).
You can click on an RPM and it installs itself (on Gnome, havne't used KDE in a few months).
And, for something even easier (IMHO) apt-get install package-name. This also checks for missing dependencies and automagically downloads and installs those rpms too (though Synaptic, the GUI I had in mind above, is apparently a front end to apt-get).
All of these have been around for a while.
Seriously, *hours* configuring stuff on Linux? Only with installs of Windows (if we're going to be fair here, that is), download patches/drivers and reboot ad nauseum. The RH9 install took less time and effort to end up with more functionality on this here dual boot. And it looks prettier!
Nah, the only thing Linux needs to surmount now are momentum (the average Joe on the street thinks MS is a quality company -- no 1 in the US! Ah, the power of marketing!), and some sort of critical mass. That's really, in my view, the only advantage Windows enjoys -- it has nothing to do with what MS has done with/to Windows -- it's all critical mass! (to repeat a quote I've seen here often "Linux won't become mainstream until Linux becomes mainstream" -- critical mass will bring the changes most people complaing about now).
PS
I should clarify: my Linux/Windows experience is as a home desktop for Gaming (the need for Windows is gaming for me -- though almost gone thanks to emulators Wine/DosBox), surfing the web, e-mail, MP3 sharing, burning, video stuff, etc. Pretty typical, I think, home usage.
You see, the line of thinking (disclaimer, I subscribe to this line of thinking) always has been that Linux is less buggy *because* bugs are more readily found, resulting in safer, less buggy software.
Here's the line of thinking as I understand it, well written software, just due to human nature and the nature of programming, ends up with a more or less constant rate of glitches (constant in a statistical sense, I'm sure). Usually, the hardest part about making glitch-free software is just knowing about the bugs. Apparently, the most important part in bug-fixing (and the hardest) is the bug-finding.
You're assuming that the argument is that, because it's OSS, it's bug-free from inception. I don't think anyone has ever made that claim. OSS, the argument goes, is just better software (in a general way, of course. OSS is no guaranty of crappyness-free software, just as the fact that someone succesfully managed to charge for their software is no form of guarantee either) because the process in which it's developed (checkout The Cathedral and the Bazaar, insteresting stuff) more bugs are found faster.
Your post pretty much suports this view -- what you're showing is pretty much, according to OSS suporters, the superior bug squashing process taking place. In that light, according to your nice list, MS is 7 bugfixes behind! (doesn't it appeal to common sense also? What do you think is more likely, that the 7 bugs don't exist in MS software, or that MS hasn't found them yet?)
Well, the point was that if you tried Linux a year ago, it'd be worth to try again... the rate at which new hardware is recognized and autmagically configured is amazing.
In terms of the OS, at work when I boot into Windows (for some corporate maintenance software stuff that requires me to be in windows) it's Win2K, which still doesn't hold a candle in terms of OS enviroment to RH9 (appearance, functionality, etc. etc.) IMHO.
At home, I can't compare to anything other than Win98, since to run newer windows versions I'd pretty much have to upgrade my hardware since the drivers are more or less abandoned at versions for Win95/98 -- so it's still a valid comparison of what I *can* run at home (win 98, whatever Linux is most recent).
RedHat 9 install on my win-modem, cheap PC -- flawless. Pain in the neck is installing Win98 (which, according to the sticker, it was designed for!) -- lots of downloads, tweaks and reboots.
Of course, no matter what, I couldn't get Linux installed when I first tried about a year or a year and half ago...
Hopefully whatever esoteric hardware you're running will be covered soon -- it's been nice to have an OS that runs so well now, didn't realize what I was missing out on by sticking with Windows!
There are some (many?) of us that have no use for MS stuff. So we bristle at being charged for stuff we don't want and will not use.
This guy managed to get his money back after being charged for something he didn't want to buy in the first place.
That's the victory (as in, for the rest of us that want to get our money refunded because the MS OS was the thing we didn't want -- but couldn't avoid getting charged for. That's what people refer to as the MS tax).
It's not supposed to be proof of anything -- just how to get the money that you're owed back (the real victory would be to change things so that MS isn't in a position to charge computer users regardless of whether they ever plan on using their software).
OK, what about webservers? More people run Apache, more people get exploited from running MS junk.
Geez man, I thought this had been settled.
One of the MS executives was actually quoted as saying that he was embarrassed about the securting in Win2K. Security just wasn't a priority. What else do you want?
I read this to mean that it'd be nice if MS got contracts so infrequently, it'd be newsworthy.
All I can say now, is give it time! MS can only continue saying stuff like "don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain" for so long, and it looks like the time of effective MS FUD is coming to an end (remember when the discussions were about whether or not X was _actually_ going to install Linux, or whether they were using it as a tactic to get better pricing from MS?). At least some governments and companies are finally realizing that they're probably always just better off with OSS (at least, for pretty much anything they might give money to MS for).
PS
And it's news to me because it's Linux, and I'm constantly curious about rate of deployment / penetration (making sure it's still making progress, you could say!)
of course, there isn't hard data to back either claim up, but there is at least some evidence that the SCO thing isn't actually having a "chilling" effect on Linux. Actually, according to this article, it's having "no" effect on Linux deployment:
Teresa recalls only one minor -- and in the end harmless -- bit of fallout from the SCO brouhaha. "One customer put a temporary hold on Linux purchases because of the SCO letter," she says. "Then they let it go. It was a one-week delay."
Who knows what effect the SCO thing is actually having on Linux deployment, but at least it's muddled enough that it isn't clear. I think at least it seems very unlikely that the SCO temper tandrum is having a serious effect.
the link you offerred as differing actually supports it:
"But legal agreements are supposed to matter in our system. Just because the GPL turns the idea of intellectual property somewhat around doesn't make it less valid."
He does mention that he knows of some people that seem to think the GPL isn't a good idea, but wraps up the article with the above sentence.
Funny, just yesterday I found a really old cluncker IBM keyboard that was getting junked and I took it home.
Man, the thing is heavy, made in the US (really seems to hail from another era!), has the (pleasant to me) click feedback, and it does not have that annoying (to me) windows button. Perfect!
Anyways, to me it seemed like a good find, and an improvement over the keyboards that you find in stores and what orginally came with my computer (I always assumed most ppl hated the tactile, click feedback and that's why that keyboard design didn't last. But I like it!)
PS
At work I also have a black IBM keyboard -- it's OK, and it's nice and compact, but I actually would rather give up some real estate on my desk to have a bigger enter button, and to have the standard Delete, Insert, Home, End layout. Then again, I touch type, use the command line, and usually surf the web using the keyboard -- so I'd wager the keyboard is more important to me than the average persone (who probably prefers using the mouse for everything).
I've never been in Seattle, though I've lived in LA.
1) Less traffic in LA? WOW! Traffic must be really horrible in Seattle (LA: 405 freeway, at 5:30 AM ~2.5 hrs to go ~25 miles).
2) I understand that this was done on purpose: make it too easy to live in the suburbs and commute to downtown, you end up with the common decrepid american downtown (people move away, city loses revenue and economy, turns into nasty place). So, to discourage people from living outside the city where they work, and to keep a vibrant city (w/o economic hemorrage to the suburbs), they went the opposite way of LA (who leads the US in freeways).
I guess the real question (since I haven't seen downtown Seattle) is this: what does downtown Seattle look like?
Wouldn't if be fair to say that it's a system that's "hard to read but also write" because we're not used to thinking about it? (you're voicing my grandma's opinion on binary: who doesn't get it, to her it seems unnecessariy complicated: what the hell do we need it for?).:)
Seriously though, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, some wrote on clay, or stone, and here, it appears they used string.
The unique thing is they used binary -- pretty weird (and I thought interesting).
Not sure why you see it as a direct comparison of what system of writing / civilization is better... (what's your point?)
PS
like how long it took for the zero to be "discovered" It doesn't even make sense to me that there could be math without a zero, or that it was a concept that had to be discovered (it just seems so incredibly obvious --- but apparently it's not, it's more of a lack of perspective on my part).
Slashdot Mirror
The content was free.
All those costs you describe, what's my monthly bill to my ISP for? That's the part that pays for the ability to communicate world wide.
The content can go back to being free.
I have to add that I personally don't think it'd go back to being 100% free -- a lot of companies I'm sure would actually figure out a way to have people pay them money for the priviledge of viewing their website (right now, I wouldn't pay to have a newspaper delivered, but I would pay to continue accessing the BBC webpage, for instance).
Yeah, I came across an article that specifically touched on this.
While researchers in Germany (I think they were German) were looking for the causes of allergies and other symptoms of a malfunctioning immune system they came across something interesting. 1) alergies are more or less a 1st world disease, very rare in the in the 3rd world. 2), they compared the living quarters of Germans in the city and Germans in the country, and found my more "nastiness" in general in the country houses (along with a much lower incidence of allergies). By nastiness, there was much more exposure to bugs and things that we naturally think of as undesireable from farm animal excrement, etc.
They theorized that, much like just about anything else about our bodies, the immune system needs some "training", especially when we're young. If you live in the city or other more or less anti-setptic enviroments, you're left with a less-exercised immune system, and more immune system illnesses (allergies, etc.).
I used to think the overuse of antibiotics was simply going to lead to our demise because we were creating better bugs, now in appears that we're also making it more likely that we'll drop dead, from say, eating a peanut (from an underutilized, underdeveloped and confused immune system).
Interesting stuff.
We have *chosen* to have an oil based economy -- this is a decision we've made (well, not you and I, but the people who profit from the oily stuff made this decision and have somehow convinced people that it's the natural order of things. How sad).
We could choose to start moving away from oil, decrease independence (economic too), but that'd be the rational, smart thing to do -- so I doubt it'll happen in the states (this country definitely seems to be run by oil barons -- worse yet, the average joe jumps in and defends these interests even though they do not benefit anyone but the oil barons. The US is a weird place sometimes).
Simple, huh?
I've come across this several times in English sites; there's nothing new here (I thought when I first saw it). The English language is full of foreign words that were absorbed into the language when there didn't exist a native equivalent.
Most Americans already know that the Spanish word "gratis" (no cost) would translate into English as free. Funny that became better known before "libre", the Spanish word (and probably other romance languages) for "free as in freedom" that would unfortunately also just translate as "free".
Or does it also bother you that you can find the French word entrepreneur in an English dictionary? Hopefully you'll eventually be able to find libre in there too -- it'll avoid a lot of confusion (besides, it's an important concept -- it probably does deserve its own word).
I don't know what you're accusing the French of besides, the use of Libre with GPL software in English is really not new (maybe not exactly commonplace either, but I have run into it enough times to think that it was time that "libre" became better known, especially since "gratis" is already understood by enough Americans to hear it in commercials or on TV. Afterall, "libre" is a much more important concept than "gratis").
No weird French conspiracy here, just another important concept (and foreign word) hopefully becoming part of the English language. That's what I see.
not at all, the 9th circuit (they also spoke of this) happens to preside over a much much larger jurisdiction than any other court, and that's why they are also the busiest.
They covered this in NPR; it's a myth that the 9th circuit gets a higher % overturned. It happens to be one of the busiest circuits (I think *the* busiest), so more cases go through and more cases later get overturned. But their % of rulings later overturned is no higher than other courts.
For me, the hard part in finding stuff around town isn't the exact location (though I agree that this also might be useful in certain circumstances, that is if I knew what my address was in Lat/Long!), but how to navigate the streets.
... (especially in cities with tons of 1-way streets and "No Turns" intersections, which is where I'm most likely to be lost!)
So, a left at Main and a right 1.5 miles later on to Central is about as useful as directions get for me
Even in the states, if you need to get around town, I'm not sure coordinates would be of much use (I think for the most part we don't really care where stuff is, just how to get there)
Gtk-Gnutella has worked for me on RH9 -- had a hard time with Xmule myself (didn't pursue it after "apt-get install gtk-gnutella" had me online and sharing). Oh, you might have to tweak Iptables to allow the port of your choosing (on my install pretty much everything was shut tight -- that was the one snafu for me).
Come to think of it, that may also be the problem you are having (and I was having) with Xmule -- don't remember if I had other problems with it (gtk-gnutella worked, but I was "firewalled" until the IPtables "tweak").
Just the opposite: doesn't this validate Taiwan's claims? Or do you think that every average Chinese person on the street magically has access to the source code? You bet your butt it's government programmers -- whether the code leaked is another matter -- and where's my copy, BTW-- (and I can't imagine MS didn't work out some way of keeping the code contained, but who knows).
...
At any rate, it *gives* legitimacy to Taiwan's claims, not the other way around. And yes, this would make it more likely that it's Chinese governement sponsored (and why is this surprising? The US and the UK, closest of buddies, play the cloak and dagger game against each other, why wouldn't China ?).
Just *my* take on this
Mayne you need to update your software? Runs fine in Xine for me
And, Knoppix has already sold several people on Linux (want to try this Linux thing you've been hearing about? Check this out, runs off the CDROM, nothing gets changed, and it all just works). Just the fact that fully functional OS boots from their CDROM the first time has a kewlness factor...
The problem is (I know it's a matter of personal preference, live and let live and all that) is that it's KDE and a not a very attractive version: I've personally been waiting for a Gnome-based Knoppix-like CD (again, personal taste, I like the color green, watermelon and Gnome over KDE -- for me it's a matter of aesthetics).
I think an attractive version of Knoppix will make it easier to "sell" linux to curious coworkers. Unfortunately, Gnome 2.4 won't be ready until later (they're using 2.2 -- still nice, but 2.4 is, IMHO, a gorgeous desktop)
The website did say that nice appearance was one of their goals (didn't see screenshots -- and the page was crawling already), they apparently also made other changes (with hardware detection, apparently), but personally, I've just been waiting for a purty Knoppix-like live CD to give to friends.
Hurrah!
It's my understanding that the GPL provides something that the other "no restrictions" licenses don't: hijacking prevention.
The GPL is simply more practical in this regard, and IMHO, was created so that history wouldn't repeat itself. I personally think that it's a good thing that it's the most common license used.
Also, I have to disagree with your analogy: a more correct analogy is that the GPL states that you can learn to do division on the condition that you don't prevent anyone else from learning it too. That's a condition that I think makes sense, and actually provides more fundamental guarantees of freedom for all than simply "no strings attached".
Anyways, I don't think that these considerations were the reasongs why TiVo made the decisions they made: but I do think they play a role in the decisions of developers generally.
Isn't the windows version of Catia new? I thought that ran on Unix-like systems forever (meaning, I can't imagine Catia wouldn't run great or better on Unix than Windows).
I'm not sure if you guys just haven't picked up Linux in a looooong time, or if I'm missing the point. There's point and drool interfaces to updating software (yes! it takes care, automagically, of the dependencies, downloading what's needed to run the program you've selected). You can click on an RPM and it installs itself (on Gnome, havne't used KDE in a few months). And, for something even easier (IMHO) apt-get install package-name. This also checks for missing dependencies and automagically downloads and installs those rpms too (though Synaptic, the GUI I had in mind above, is apparently a front end to apt-get). All of these have been around for a while. Seriously, *hours* configuring stuff on Linux? Only with installs of Windows (if we're going to be fair here, that is), download patches/drivers and reboot ad nauseum. The RH9 install took less time and effort to end up with more functionality on this here dual boot. And it looks prettier! Nah, the only thing Linux needs to surmount now are momentum (the average Joe on the street thinks MS is a quality company -- no 1 in the US! Ah, the power of marketing!), and some sort of critical mass. That's really, in my view, the only advantage Windows enjoys -- it has nothing to do with what MS has done with/to Windows -- it's all critical mass! (to repeat a quote I've seen here often "Linux won't become mainstream until Linux becomes mainstream" -- critical mass will bring the changes most people complaing about now). PS I should clarify: my Linux/Windows experience is as a home desktop for Gaming (the need for Windows is gaming for me -- though almost gone thanks to emulators Wine/DosBox), surfing the web, e-mail, MP3 sharing, burning, video stuff, etc. Pretty typical, I think, home usage.
You see, the line of thinking (disclaimer, I subscribe to this line of thinking) always has been that Linux is less buggy *because* bugs are more readily found, resulting in safer, less buggy software.
Here's the line of thinking as I understand it, well written software, just due to human nature and the nature of programming, ends up with a more or less constant rate of glitches (constant in a statistical sense, I'm sure). Usually, the hardest part about making glitch-free software is just knowing about the bugs. Apparently, the most important part in bug-fixing (and the hardest) is the bug-finding.
You're assuming that the argument is that, because it's OSS, it's bug-free from inception. I don't think anyone has ever made that claim. OSS, the argument goes, is just better software (in a general way, of course. OSS is no guaranty of crappyness-free software, just as the fact that someone succesfully managed to charge for their software is no form of guarantee either) because the process in which it's developed (checkout The Cathedral and the Bazaar, insteresting stuff) more bugs are found faster.
Your post pretty much suports this view -- what you're showing is pretty much, according to OSS suporters, the superior bug squashing process taking place. In that light, according to your nice list, MS is 7 bugfixes behind! (doesn't it appeal to common sense also? What do you think is more likely, that the 7 bugs don't exist in MS software, or that MS hasn't found them yet?)
Well, the point was that if you tried Linux a year ago, it'd be worth to try again ... the rate at which new hardware is recognized and autmagically configured is amazing.
In terms of the OS, at work when I boot into Windows (for some corporate maintenance software stuff that requires me to be in windows) it's Win2K, which still doesn't hold a candle in terms of OS enviroment to RH9 (appearance, functionality, etc. etc.) IMHO.
At home, I can't compare to anything other than Win98, since to run newer windows versions I'd pretty much have to upgrade my hardware since the drivers are more or less abandoned at versions for Win95/98 -- so it's still a valid comparison of what I *can* run at home (win 98, whatever Linux is most recent).
Things change so quickly in the OSS world:
...
RedHat 9 install on my win-modem, cheap PC -- flawless. Pain in the neck is installing Win98 (which, according to the sticker, it was designed for!) -- lots of downloads, tweaks and reboots.
Of course, no matter what, I couldn't get Linux installed when I first tried about a year or a year and half ago
Hopefully whatever esoteric hardware you're running will be covered soon -- it's been nice to have an OS that runs so well now, didn't realize what I was missing out on by sticking with Windows!
Good luck!
it's a matter of principle.
There are some (many?) of us that have no use for MS stuff. So we bristle at being charged for stuff we don't want and will not use.
This guy managed to get his money back after being charged for something he didn't want to buy in the first place.
That's the victory (as in, for the rest of us that want to get our money refunded because the MS OS was the thing we didn't want -- but couldn't avoid getting charged for. That's what people refer to as the MS tax).
It's not supposed to be proof of anything -- just how to get the money that you're owed back (the real victory would be to change things so that MS isn't in a position to charge computer users regardless of whether they ever plan on using their software).
OK, what about webservers? More people run Apache, more people get exploited from running MS junk. Geez man, I thought this had been settled. One of the MS executives was actually quoted as saying that he was embarrassed about the securting in Win2K. Security just wasn't a priority. What else do you want?
I read this to mean that it'd be nice if MS got contracts so infrequently, it'd be newsworthy.
All I can say now, is give it time! MS can only continue saying stuff like "don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain" for so long, and it looks like the time of effective MS FUD is coming to an end (remember when the discussions were about whether or not X was _actually_ going to install Linux, or whether they were using it as a tactic to get better pricing from MS?). At least some governments and companies are finally realizing that they're probably always just better off with OSS (at least, for pretty much anything they might give money to MS for).
PS
And it's news to me because it's Linux, and I'm constantly curious about rate of deployment / penetration (making sure it's still making progress, you could say!)
of course, there isn't hard data to back either claim up, but there is at least some evidence that the SCO thing isn't actually having a "chilling" effect on Linux. Actually, according to this article, it's having "no" effect on Linux deployment:
2 20 8&mode=nested&tid=3
from ad link within slashdot, of all places:
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/06/23/21
Teresa recalls only one minor -- and in the end harmless -- bit of fallout from the SCO brouhaha. "One customer put a temporary hold on Linux purchases because of the SCO letter," she says. "Then they let it go. It was a one-week delay."
Who knows what effect the SCO thing is actually having on Linux deployment, but at least it's muddled enough that it isn't clear. I think at least it seems very unlikely that the SCO temper tandrum is having a serious effect.
the link you offerred as differing actually supports it:
"But legal agreements are supposed to matter in our system. Just because the GPL turns the idea of intellectual property somewhat around doesn't make it less valid."
He does mention that he knows of some people that seem to think the GPL isn't a good idea, but wraps up the article with the above sentence.
Funny, just yesterday I found a really old cluncker IBM keyboard that was getting junked and I took it home.
Man, the thing is heavy, made in the US (really seems to hail from another era!), has the (pleasant to me) click feedback, and it does not have that annoying (to me) windows button. Perfect!
Anyways, to me it seemed like a good find, and an improvement over the keyboards that you find in stores and what orginally came with my computer (I always assumed most ppl hated the tactile, click feedback and that's why that keyboard design didn't last. But I like it!)
PS
At work I also have a black IBM keyboard -- it's OK, and it's nice and compact, but I actually would rather give up some real estate on my desk to have a bigger enter button, and to have the standard Delete, Insert, Home, End layout. Then again, I touch type, use the command line, and usually surf the web using the keyboard -- so I'd wager the keyboard is more important to me than the average persone (who probably prefers using the mouse for everything).
I've never been in Seattle, though I've lived in LA.
1) Less traffic in LA? WOW! Traffic must be really horrible in Seattle (LA: 405 freeway, at 5:30 AM ~2.5 hrs to go ~25 miles).
2) I understand that this was done on purpose: make it too easy to live in the suburbs and commute to downtown, you end up with the common decrepid american downtown (people move away, city loses revenue and economy, turns into nasty place). So, to discourage people from living outside the city where they work, and to keep a vibrant city (w/o economic hemorrage to the suburbs), they went the opposite way of LA (who leads the US in freeways).
I guess the real question (since I haven't seen downtown Seattle) is this: what does downtown Seattle look like?
Wouldn't if be fair to say that it's a system that's "hard to read but also write" because we're not used to thinking about it? (you're voicing my grandma's opinion on binary: who doesn't get it, to her it seems unnecessariy complicated: what the hell do we need it for?). :)
... (what's your point?)
Seriously though, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, some wrote on clay, or stone, and here, it appears they used string.
The unique thing is they used binary -- pretty weird (and I thought interesting).
Not sure why you see it as a direct comparison of what system of writing / civilization is better
PS
like how long it took for the zero to be "discovered" It doesn't even make sense to me that there could be math without a zero, or that it was a concept that had to be discovered (it just seems so incredibly obvious --- but apparently it's not, it's more of a lack of perspective on my part).