Re: Dangerous Because of Microsoft Patent Claims T
on
Mono Ships ASP.NET server
·
· Score: 3, Informative
IANAL, but don't you lose your rights to a patent if you don't aggressively defend it?
No. You're thinking of trademarks. If you let a trademark get diluted in the marketplace, your claim to that trademark grows weaker, or even goes away entirely. Patents don't work like that.
One: depth perception. Because we're watching movies of the demonstration instead of seeing it in person, it looks fairly good. But if you saw this technique in person, with binocular vision, you would be able to tell without any difficulty what you were seeing. If the background is sufficiently cluttered-- like a jungle backdrop-- and if the camouflaged thing is stationary, it might be good enough to fool a passing glance. But then again, so is your average ghilie suit.
Two: parallax. (This has been mentioned upthread already.) The demonstrations are all shot with a stationary camera. If the camera were to move, the illusion would be ruined. I'd imagine from looking at the illustrations that the geometry of the projector, reflector, mirror, and observer are all pretty critical. If the observer takes a step in any direction, the illusion will be broken.
All in all, I can't see how this could ever be practical. The most important flaw is that it's not even remotely adaptive. You have to have a perfect still photograph of your background to project against the mirror. If a bird flies behind the camouflaged object or person, the game is up.
Hmm. I have read some interesting responses to this so far. A couple of them basically were of the form, "I want to be able to see a store's inventory and pricing, so I can comparison shop. If you don't give me that information, I won't shop at your store." I think somebody else also called not having a web site for your store "myopic," but I could have mis-read that post.
Consider this question, though, from the point of view of the business owners. Having a web site, even just a brochure site, costs money. The only reason to do it is to drive sales, either indirectly (in the case of a brochure site) or directly (in the case of an e-commerce site). If the site doesn't drive sales, it's a waste of money and should be shut down.
Now, how many more widgets do you think WidgeCo would sell every year if they made comprehensive inventory and price information available on their web site? Three, maybe four? That hardly justifies the cost of keeping the web site up, much less the cost of developing it in the first place.
If web sites were free, I'd agree with your guys completely: everybody should have one, and it should have all the bells and whistles. But since they're not free, either to build or to operate, it just doesn't make any sense in a lot of cases.
I think, based on what I'm hearing in my segment of the market*, that more and more businesses are starting to realize this, and either scale their web sites back, take them down completely, or-- just the opposite-- investing in them to turn them into e-commerce profit centers. There's not really much of a sensible middle ground.
* I'm a partners in a fairly fancy-schmancy restaurant, and I'm a member of the local chapter of the association of professional chefs. At the last meeting, the conversation ended up on the topic of web sites. On one side of the table, you had some folks who had invested heavily in their restaurants' web sites, and who believed their business had improved because of it. On the other side you had the rest of us who were skeptical. None of the pro-web-site guys could offer any proof that their bookings had gone up because of their sites; over the same period of time, all of our bookings fluctuated by about the same amount, more or less. So it seemed to me, and some of the rest of us, that restaurant web sites are a big waste of time and money.
Yes, but the fucking bastards didn't include AbraCabubble on their list of products. If you want Bob the Builder Chocolate Covered Marshmallows, this site can tell you where to find them. If you want Dragon Ball Z Fruit Snacks, this site can tell you where to find them. But if all you want is to know where to find the fucking AbraCabubble then this site is fucking useless.
God damn you, Brach's! God damn you to hell!
(This message was brought to you by the spirit of the guy who writes the editorials for The Onion, which I was channeling at the time that I wrote it.)
The PowerBooks they're showing most prominently on their page are 5300's. Anybody who's ever owned one can tell you that these are far and away the worst laptops Apple ever made. They're bulky, hot, and they were even slow by the standards of their day.
I wouldn't wish this laptop on my worst enemy, even for $199. They should be paying people to haul their 5300's away.
It's not entirely clear how that $199 price applies to the PowerBook shown, anyway. Their price list shows the original PowerBooks-- the 100 and 140-- for $199, but the 5300's are $450 and up. At that price, they're definitely not worth it.
And check out their prices for the 3400's-- nearly a thousand bucks for a laptop with 16 MB of RAM and a 3 GB hard drive! Considering that you can get a brand new iBook for just a few dollars over that, these prices make no sense at all.
I'll be sorry to see Shreve Systems go, but at these prices, I honestly hope they don't get any takers.
While that looks to be a great Windows XP Media Center PC....
For $2,000!? I don't think so. It'll never be great until it costs less than your average HDTV.
Re:Don't do this...
on
Do You Homebrew?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I can easily see them touting the "great big tub and a bunch of bottles" as "apparatus for making terrorist equipment" and most people applauding enthusiastically as the haul off some innocent Arab homebrewer.
Oh, whatever. Believe it or not, most law enforcement people, just like most other people, are reasonable.
One second you're home-brewin', the next, you're in Camp X-Ray trying to explain why that rocket-fuel-makin' thingy in your basement isn't a rocket-fuel-makin' thingy...
Have you ever home-brewed? The "rocket-fuel-makin' thingy" you refer to looks a lot more like a "great big tub," or possibly like a "bunch of bottles."
probably the safest economical way to back up text documents is by printing them on high quality paper, and storing multiple copies in different locations
I stick with the tried and true: write 'em on calfskin, roll 'em up in clay jars, and store 'em in dry caves in the middle of the desert. My system isn't perfect, though. Back in the 40's, a bunch of my stash disappeared. I think somebody swiped some of my jars. Good thing I had backup copies.
A change would require the support of the politicians in office to work, and those politicians won't do anything to jeopardize their jobs.
You know, politics isn't an exclusive club. If you think you have a good idea that isn't popular with those currently holding or seeking office, get into politics yourself! Start by running for your local city council or something. Anybody can do it, and the only thing you have to do to win is to convince more people to vote for you than for the other guy.
If you're not willing to get into politics yourself to facilitate the kinds of changes you're talking about, then I respectfully suggest that your opinion on this matter isn't really worth as much as you might think it is.
It is inherently a good thing: the same program will be better if its GPL'ed and EULA'ed, because bugs will be fixed faster, and the user will know what (s)he has.
That's not quite right. I'll agree that it's inherently a good thing if software is better maintained. Being released with the GPL, however, is no guarantee that software will be better maintained. This is a common fallacy. In fact, since the GPL prohibits some classes of users from working on the software, I'd say it's even less likely for GPL-licensed software to be better maintained than software that does not include an exclusive and restrictive license.
The best software, of course, remains that which is commercially supported, and for which customers pay; the people who maintain that software do so because they are bound to do so by contracts, rather than by their own whims. A bug in a piece of "open source" software could, if no maintainer wants to fix it and no user is capable of doing so, go unfixed forever. No bug in a piece of commercially supported software could so go unfixed, however, because the vendor is contractually obligated to the customer. Having been on both sides of that particular equation, I can testify to its effectiveness.
Simply put, people using FS & OSS as opposed to proprietary software is meaningful and good if you value freedom.
But I just got through demonstrating to you that the GPL is not equivalent to freedom. The GPL is, in fact, equivalent to all the other restrictive licenses. Licenses like the BSD license, which place no practical restrictions on users, can truly be called free: those sorts of licenses leave the user free to do whatever he wants to do. The GPL does not leave the user free to do whatever he wants to do. The GPL, therefore, does not equate to freedom.
You can talk about licenses in terms of varying degrees of freedom, of course; one license might be "more free" than another depending on how many or few restrictions it places on its users. But it is not correct to simply, and without qualification, call the GPL "free."
This really isn't that complicated. You can use the GPL if you like-- I certainly don't mind-- but don't delude yourself or others into thinking that "GPL" equals "free."
It is.
It's not times infinity.:-P
I suppose I should re-state my original statment for slightly more clarity: "Assertions require proof to be accepted as fact." You may be some kind of lemming who will accept whatever some authority-figure tells you. You may expect others to do the same and accept whatever you tell them. But rational, responsible, thinking people don't.
Nope. Still wrong. People accept all kinds of assertions with no proof at all. Can you prove that the sky is blue? We both look at it and we agree that it's blue, but can you prove that I'm perceiving it the same way you are, and that my idea of "blue" coincides with yours? No. Can you prove that a baby is beautiful? No. Can you prove that you are a sentient, self-aware individual? No.
Proof is not required for truth. After all, Keats said, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." He had a point.
If you want a more technical, even scientific, explanation, look no further than Godel's incompleteness theorem. He said, as I'm sure you're well aware, that any system of symbolic logic will contain statements the truthfulness of which cannot be evaluated within the confines of the system.
Then again, it may be true that I am lying.;-)
Also, it's not about accepting what other people tell you. It's accepting what you see with your own eyes, what your conscience and your intuition tell you. The human mind has the capacity to recognize truth, and to recognize right and wrong, even in the absence of reason or intellect. I really don't understand why you deny this, and it makes me a little sad that you do.
I understand your point of view perfectly.
Obviously not.
You think that you are an absolute authority on right/wrong
No, I think I am an absolute authority on my own opinion of right and wrong, and I think that my opinion of right and wrong is just as good for you as it is for me. I hold others to the same standard of behavior as I hold myself. That doesn't mean that I know what's right; it only means that I have an opinion on the subject.
and that everyone should just accept what you say without thinking for themselves.
No. I do, however, think that people who rationalize away truth in the name of logic are missing the Great Universal Boat, if you know what I mean.
Furthermore, you think that you should be allowed to force your opinions regarding what is right/wrong on everyone who disagrees with you.
To the extent that I'm a voter, yes. Voting is, essentially, an act of violence. It is the forceful imposition of the will of some-- the majority, in our system-- over all. I get to cast one vote, just like everybody else, and that gives me the "right," if you don't mind a little verbal shorthand, to impose my will-- if I am in the majority on a given question-- on all citizens of our society. If I'm not in the majority, however, my "right" to impose my will evaporates.
I believe I have the same right to force my opinions on you that everybody else has.
I talk and I talk, and still he does not listen. Whatever shall I do?
They release their program, Z, under a standard draconian EULA. It subsequently becomes the dominant program for its type of function, obtaining 95% market share, and taking users away from programs X and Y (which formerly accounted for 100% of the market, and now account for only 5%).
That would only happen if Z were superior to X and Y; if it were not, or even if it were equivalent to X or Y, most people would continue to use X or Y rather than switching to Z. If you don't want people to use Z, the answer is not to restrict the freedom of the company that produced Z to release its software under whatever terms it likes. The answer is to improve X or Y to the point where it is a better option for users than Z. The answer, in other words, is to produce "open source" software that is better than its "closed source" competitors.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to make sure that nobody was ever able to use your product X for commercial gains, or whatever your own personal agenda might be, you're certainly entitled to release the software under the GPL or a similarly restrictive license. But if you do, don't call it "free." That's inaccurate and, at worst, deceptive.
Thus, by following your suggestions, we have went from a situation where 100% of the software used for a given problem was FS/OSS, to one where only 5% of it is.
To which the response would be "so what?" This is only meaningful if you accept that "open source" software is inherently a good thing. It's not. If all the software in the world were crappy, but "open source," that would be a bad state of affairs. If all the software in the world were excellent, but "closed source," that would be a good state of affairs.
So the fact that, in your example, more people used "closed source" software than "open source" software is not meaningful. What's meaningful is that product Z is superior to X and Y, and that's a good thing. If the GPL had been applied in your example, we would have been stuck with product X, or possibly product Y, which would have deprived us of the superior product Z. Which would be bad.
The revised-BSD type licenses offer more freedom initially, and the potential for greater freedom down the line if no-one proprietizes modifications; but they also allow for greater risks to invasions of proprietary software.
Again, that's only meaningful if you consider "proprietary" software to be an inherently bad thing. It's not.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact.
This is the most important thing you've said. On this point, you are absolutely incorrect. Until you realize this, you will never understand my point of view.
An in terms of enterprise acceptance......it's irrelevant. Movie special effects are not what people mean when they say "the enterprise." If you want to talk about Linux in the enterprise, you're going to have to talk about productivity and messaging and stuff like that. Stuff the average white-collar business drones need.
The reason SGI is probably selling less Irix machines is that Linux is available, cheaper, and does what buyers want.
No. Five years ago, SGI was selling fewer IRIX machines because Windows NT was available, cheaper, and did what buyers wanted. Two years ago, it was because Windows 2000 was available, cheaper, and did what buyers wanted. Last year it was Linux. This year it's Mac OS X. Who knows what it will be next year?
The fact that Linux is displacing IRIX in a lot of cases says much more about SGI than it does about Linux.
Its monopoly behavior because Microsoft was determined to be a monopoly.
Having a monopoly, in and of itself, is not against the law. Using a monopoly in one area to gain or attempt to gain a monopoly in another area, however, is.
The various departments of justice have accused Microsoft of every violation that could possibly be interpreted as illegal. And yet they have not accused Microsoft of any antitrust violations related to Microsoft Office.
Your obstinate praise for Microsoft and rejection of any other conceivable opinion amounts to FUD.
Wrong. If I were to say, for example, that you should avoid free software because the Tilly incident demonstrates that one well-placed claim from a current or former employer could yank a piece of so-called "free" software right out of the market leaving you with no easy alternatives and no support whatsoever, that would be FUD. Saying that Microsoft does some good work and deserves credit for it, and that anybody who wants to beat Microsoft at their game has to be at least as good, is not FUD. See the difference?
When the entire point of all of your posts is to say that the only viable office suite is MS Office, the main effect is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in other Slashdotters
Have you not been reading? The point of this thread is that "open source" competitors to Office are not currently good enough. The point is that there are no viable alternatives to Office yet. There is no sensible context in which this could possibly be construed as FUD. If anything, it should be a fucking rallying cry for people, such as yourself, you want to bring Microsoft Office's dominance of the market to an end. How to do that? Be better. But instead, people such as yourself get defensive, shout from the rooftops that Office sucks and that anybody who disagrees must be an idiot, a Mac user, or a Microsoft employee. Way to change the world, guys.
In my experience, MS Office is mediocre, at best, compared to Gobe Productive.
Your opinion is different from mine, and from most people's. That's not to say that you're wrong, but I do think it's worth wondering why, on such a relatively straightforward question, your opinion is so different from the commonly held one. Obviously your experiences have been different, but is that all there is to it?
Actually, your opinion of Microsoft reminds me of my opinion of California
You have not been listening, or perhaps I have not been communicating effectively. I have "lived" with other tools than Office. I started out, as I wrote before, using Microsoft Word 4.0 for the sole reason that it was the best word processor available. When Word 5.0 and 6.0 happened-- which were terrible-- I tried every alternative I could find. I wrote volumes of user documentation in LaTeX, for crying out loud. I've used practically every document tool, from Word to SimpleText to FrameMaker to QuarkXPress to Lyx to (shudder) Open Office. None of them is as good as Word 4.0 was then, or as Word 2000 or Word 10 are today. So the idea that I've never "lived anywhere else" is kinda off the mark.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, but don't you lose your rights to a patent if you don't aggressively defend it?
No. You're thinking of trademarks. If you let a trademark get diluted in the marketplace, your claim to that trademark grows weaker, or even goes away entirely. Patents don't work like that.
Yeah, but I'm not entirely sure that even the submitter would want seven and a half pounds of the stuff.
Like Groucho said, "I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while."
Two giant problems jump right out at me.
One: depth perception. Because we're watching movies of the demonstration instead of seeing it in person, it looks fairly good. But if you saw this technique in person, with binocular vision, you would be able to tell without any difficulty what you were seeing. If the background is sufficiently cluttered-- like a jungle backdrop-- and if the camouflaged thing is stationary, it might be good enough to fool a passing glance. But then again, so is your average ghilie suit.
Two: parallax. (This has been mentioned upthread already.) The demonstrations are all shot with a stationary camera. If the camera were to move, the illusion would be ruined. I'd imagine from looking at the illustrations that the geometry of the projector, reflector, mirror, and observer are all pretty critical. If the observer takes a step in any direction, the illusion will be broken.
All in all, I can't see how this could ever be practical. The most important flaw is that it's not even remotely adaptive. You have to have a perfect still photograph of your background to project against the mirror. If a bird flies behind the camouflaged object or person, the game is up.
Neat trick, but not very impressive.
Hmm. I have read some interesting responses to this so far. A couple of them basically were of the form, "I want to be able to see a store's inventory and pricing, so I can comparison shop. If you don't give me that information, I won't shop at your store." I think somebody else also called not having a web site for your store "myopic," but I could have mis-read that post.
Consider this question, though, from the point of view of the business owners. Having a web site, even just a brochure site, costs money. The only reason to do it is to drive sales, either indirectly (in the case of a brochure site) or directly (in the case of an e-commerce site). If the site doesn't drive sales, it's a waste of money and should be shut down.
Now, how many more widgets do you think WidgeCo would sell every year if they made comprehensive inventory and price information available on their web site? Three, maybe four? That hardly justifies the cost of keeping the web site up, much less the cost of developing it in the first place.
If web sites were free, I'd agree with your guys completely: everybody should have one, and it should have all the bells and whistles. But since they're not free, either to build or to operate, it just doesn't make any sense in a lot of cases.
I think, based on what I'm hearing in my segment of the market*, that more and more businesses are starting to realize this, and either scale their web sites back, take them down completely, or-- just the opposite-- investing in them to turn them into e-commerce profit centers. There's not really much of a sensible middle ground.
* I'm a partners in a fairly fancy-schmancy restaurant, and I'm a member of the local chapter of the association of professional chefs. At the last meeting, the conversation ended up on the topic of web sites. On one side of the table, you had some folks who had invested heavily in their restaurants' web sites, and who believed their business had improved because of it. On the other side you had the rest of us who were skeptical. None of the pro-web-site guys could offer any proof that their bookings had gone up because of their sites; over the same period of time, all of our bookings fluctuated by about the same amount, more or less. So it seemed to me, and some of the rest of us, that restaurant web sites are a big waste of time and money.
Yes, but the fucking bastards didn't include AbraCabubble on their list of products. If you want Bob the Builder Chocolate Covered Marshmallows, this site can tell you where to find them. If you want Dragon Ball Z Fruit Snacks, this site can tell you where to find them. But if all you want is to know where to find the fucking AbraCabubble then this site is fucking useless.
God damn you, Brach's! God damn you to hell!
(This message was brought to you by the spirit of the guy who writes the editorials for The Onion, which I was channeling at the time that I wrote it.)
The PowerBooks they're showing most prominently on their page are 5300's. Anybody who's ever owned one can tell you that these are far and away the worst laptops Apple ever made. They're bulky, hot, and they were even slow by the standards of their day.
I wouldn't wish this laptop on my worst enemy, even for $199. They should be paying people to haul their 5300's away.
It's not entirely clear how that $199 price applies to the PowerBook shown, anyway. Their price list shows the original PowerBooks-- the 100 and 140-- for $199, but the 5300's are $450 and up. At that price, they're definitely not worth it.
And check out their prices for the 3400's-- nearly a thousand bucks for a laptop with 16 MB of RAM and a 3 GB hard drive! Considering that you can get a brand new iBook for just a few dollars over that, these prices make no sense at all.
I'll be sorry to see Shreve Systems go, but at these prices, I honestly hope they don't get any takers.
I'm glad there are still people out there who evaluate the merits of patents based on reading them, rather than based merely on the titles. Bravo.
You, sir, just made my friends list.
Please don't talk about Shatner's yang.
While that looks to be a great Windows XP Media Center PC....
For $2,000!? I don't think so. It'll never be great until it costs less than your average HDTV.
I can easily see them touting the "great big tub and a bunch of bottles" as "apparatus for making terrorist equipment" and most people applauding enthusiastically as the haul off some innocent Arab homebrewer.
Oh, whatever. Believe it or not, most law enforcement people, just like most other people, are reasonable.
This is just silly.
Now if I put a piss bucket under the table nobody ever has to get up.
Way to associate your favorite hobby with sitting in puddles of your own excrement, dude.
One second you're home-brewin', the next, you're in Camp X-Ray trying to explain why that rocket-fuel-makin' thingy in your basement isn't a rocket-fuel-makin' thingy...
Have you ever home-brewed? The "rocket-fuel-makin' thingy" you refer to looks a lot more like a "great big tub," or possibly like a "bunch of bottles."
probably the safest economical way to back up text documents is by printing them on high quality paper, and storing multiple copies in different locations
I stick with the tried and true: write 'em on calfskin, roll 'em up in clay jars, and store 'em in dry caves in the middle of the desert. My system isn't perfect, though. Back in the 40's, a bunch of my stash disappeared. I think somebody swiped some of my jars. Good thing I had backup copies.
A change would require the support of the politicians in office to work, and those politicians won't do anything to jeopardize their jobs.
You know, politics isn't an exclusive club. If you think you have a good idea that isn't popular with those currently holding or seeking office, get into politics yourself! Start by running for your local city council or something. Anybody can do it, and the only thing you have to do to win is to convince more people to vote for you than for the other guy.
If you're not willing to get into politics yourself to facilitate the kinds of changes you're talking about, then I respectfully suggest that your opinion on this matter isn't really worth as much as you might think it is.
Because it costs more, is available, and does what buyers want?
;-)
Well, really just that last one.
Since when do personal attacks get moderated "insightful?" Somebody throw this guy a "-1,
;-)
flamebait" please.
(time passes...)
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Total=2.
Thank you.
It is inherently a good thing: the same program will be better if its GPL'ed and EULA'ed, because bugs will be fixed faster, and the user will know what (s)he has.
:-P
;-)
That's not quite right. I'll agree that it's inherently a good thing if software is better maintained. Being released with the GPL, however, is no guarantee that software will be better maintained. This is a common fallacy. In fact, since the GPL prohibits some classes of users from working on the software, I'd say it's even less likely for GPL-licensed software to be better maintained than software that does not include an exclusive and restrictive license.
The best software, of course, remains that which is commercially supported, and for which customers pay; the people who maintain that software do so because they are bound to do so by contracts, rather than by their own whims. A bug in a piece of "open source" software could, if no maintainer wants to fix it and no user is capable of doing so, go unfixed forever. No bug in a piece of commercially supported software could so go unfixed, however, because the vendor is contractually obligated to the customer. Having been on both sides of that particular equation, I can testify to its effectiveness.
Simply put, people using FS & OSS as opposed to proprietary software is meaningful and good if you value freedom.
But I just got through demonstrating to you that the GPL is not equivalent to freedom. The GPL is, in fact, equivalent to all the other restrictive licenses. Licenses like the BSD license, which place no practical restrictions on users, can truly be called free: those sorts of licenses leave the user free to do whatever he wants to do. The GPL does not leave the user free to do whatever he wants to do. The GPL, therefore, does not equate to freedom.
You can talk about licenses in terms of varying degrees of freedom, of course; one license might be "more free" than another depending on how many or few restrictions it places on its users. But it is not correct to simply, and without qualification, call the GPL "free."
This really isn't that complicated. You can use the GPL if you like-- I certainly don't mind-- but don't delude yourself or others into thinking that "GPL" equals "free."
It is.
It's not times infinity.
I suppose I should re-state my original statment for slightly more clarity: "Assertions require proof to be accepted as fact." You may be some kind of lemming who will accept whatever some authority-figure tells you. You may expect others to do the same and accept whatever you tell them. But rational, responsible, thinking people don't.
Nope. Still wrong. People accept all kinds of assertions with no proof at all. Can you prove that the sky is blue? We both look at it and we agree that it's blue, but can you prove that I'm perceiving it the same way you are, and that my idea of "blue" coincides with yours? No. Can you prove that a baby is beautiful? No. Can you prove that you are a sentient, self-aware individual? No.
Proof is not required for truth. After all, Keats said, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." He had a point.
If you want a more technical, even scientific, explanation, look no further than Godel's incompleteness theorem. He said, as I'm sure you're well aware, that any system of symbolic logic will contain statements the truthfulness of which cannot be evaluated within the confines of the system.
Then again, it may be true that I am lying.
Also, it's not about accepting what other people tell you. It's accepting what you see with your own eyes, what your conscience and your intuition tell you. The human mind has the capacity to recognize truth, and to recognize right and wrong, even in the absence of reason or intellect. I really don't understand why you deny this, and it makes me a little sad that you do.
I understand your point of view perfectly.
Obviously not.
You think that you are an absolute authority on right/wrong
No, I think I am an absolute authority on my own opinion of right and wrong, and I think that my opinion of right and wrong is just as good for you as it is for me. I hold others to the same standard of behavior as I hold myself. That doesn't mean that I know what's right; it only means that I have an opinion on the subject.
and that everyone should just accept what you say without thinking for themselves.
No. I do, however, think that people who rationalize away truth in the name of logic are missing the Great Universal Boat, if you know what I mean.
Furthermore, you think that you should be allowed to force your opinions regarding what is right/wrong on everyone who disagrees with you.
To the extent that I'm a voter, yes. Voting is, essentially, an act of violence. It is the forceful imposition of the will of some-- the majority, in our system-- over all. I get to cast one vote, just like everybody else, and that gives me the "right," if you don't mind a little verbal shorthand, to impose my will-- if I am in the majority on a given question-- on all citizens of our society. If I'm not in the majority, however, my "right" to impose my will evaporates.
I believe I have the same right to force my opinions on you that everybody else has.
I talk and I talk, and still he does not listen. Whatever shall I do?
Since when do personal attacks get moderated "insightful?" Somebody throw this guy a "-1, flamebait" please.
What sorts of specific things about the linux GUIs (KDE? Gnome? The widget sets?) compared to OS X are a problem?
;-)
KDE, Gnome, the widget sets. Yep, that pretty much covers it.
Perl is for idiots who think regexps can solve all problems.
s/idiots/wise souls/
s/think/know/
Problem solved.
They release their program, Z, under a standard draconian EULA. It subsequently becomes the dominant program for its type of function, obtaining 95% market share, and taking users away from programs X and Y (which formerly accounted for 100% of the market, and now account for only 5%).
That would only happen if Z were superior to X and Y; if it were not, or even if it were equivalent to X or Y, most people would continue to use X or Y rather than switching to Z. If you don't want people to use Z, the answer is not to restrict the freedom of the company that produced Z to release its software under whatever terms it likes. The answer is to improve X or Y to the point where it is a better option for users than Z. The answer, in other words, is to produce "open source" software that is better than its "closed source" competitors.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to make sure that nobody was ever able to use your product X for commercial gains, or whatever your own personal agenda might be, you're certainly entitled to release the software under the GPL or a similarly restrictive license. But if you do, don't call it "free." That's inaccurate and, at worst, deceptive.
Thus, by following your suggestions, we have went from a situation where 100% of the software used for a given problem was FS/OSS, to one where only 5% of it is.
To which the response would be "so what?" This is only meaningful if you accept that "open source" software is inherently a good thing. It's not. If all the software in the world were crappy, but "open source," that would be a bad state of affairs. If all the software in the world were excellent, but "closed source," that would be a good state of affairs.
So the fact that, in your example, more people used "closed source" software than "open source" software is not meaningful. What's meaningful is that product Z is superior to X and Y, and that's a good thing. If the GPL had been applied in your example, we would have been stuck with product X, or possibly product Y, which would have deprived us of the superior product Z. Which would be bad.
The revised-BSD type licenses offer more freedom initially, and the potential for greater freedom down the line if no-one proprietizes modifications; but they also allow for greater risks to invasions of proprietary software.
Again, that's only meaningful if you consider "proprietary" software to be an inherently bad thing. It's not.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact.
This is the most important thing you've said. On this point, you are absolutely incorrect. Until you realize this, you will never understand my point of view.
An in terms of enterprise acceptance... ...it's irrelevant. Movie special effects are not what people mean when they say "the enterprise." If you want to talk about Linux in the enterprise, you're going to have to talk about productivity and messaging and stuff like that. Stuff the average white-collar business drones need.
The reason SGI is probably selling less Irix machines is that Linux is available, cheaper, and does what buyers want.
No. Five years ago, SGI was selling fewer IRIX machines because Windows NT was available, cheaper, and did what buyers wanted. Two years ago, it was because Windows 2000 was available, cheaper, and did what buyers wanted. Last year it was Linux. This year it's Mac OS X. Who knows what it will be next year?
The fact that Linux is displacing IRIX in a lot of cases says much more about SGI than it does about Linux.
Its monopoly behavior because Microsoft was determined to be a monopoly.
Having a monopoly, in and of itself, is not against the law. Using a monopoly in one area to gain or attempt to gain a monopoly in another area, however, is.
The various departments of justice have accused Microsoft of every violation that could possibly be interpreted as illegal. And yet they have not accused Microsoft of any antitrust violations related to Microsoft Office.
Why do you think that is?
Your obstinate praise for Microsoft and rejection of any other conceivable opinion amounts to FUD.
Wrong. If I were to say, for example, that you should avoid free software because the Tilly incident demonstrates that one well-placed claim from a current or former employer could yank a piece of so-called "free" software right out of the market leaving you with no easy alternatives and no support whatsoever, that would be FUD. Saying that Microsoft does some good work and deserves credit for it, and that anybody who wants to beat Microsoft at their game has to be at least as good, is not FUD. See the difference?
When the entire point of all of your posts is to say that the only viable office suite is MS Office, the main effect is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in other Slashdotters
Have you not been reading? The point of this thread is that "open source" competitors to Office are not currently good enough. The point is that there are no viable alternatives to Office yet. There is no sensible context in which this could possibly be construed as FUD. If anything, it should be a fucking rallying cry for people, such as yourself, you want to bring Microsoft Office's dominance of the market to an end. How to do that? Be better. But instead, people such as yourself get defensive, shout from the rooftops that Office sucks and that anybody who disagrees must be an idiot, a Mac user, or a Microsoft employee. Way to change the world, guys.
In my experience, MS Office is mediocre, at best, compared to Gobe Productive.
Your opinion is different from mine, and from most people's. That's not to say that you're wrong, but I do think it's worth wondering why, on such a relatively straightforward question, your opinion is so different from the commonly held one. Obviously your experiences have been different, but is that all there is to it?
Actually, your opinion of Microsoft reminds me of my opinion of California
You have not been listening, or perhaps I have not been communicating effectively. I have "lived" with other tools than Office. I started out, as I wrote before, using Microsoft Word 4.0 for the sole reason that it was the best word processor available. When Word 5.0 and 6.0 happened-- which were terrible-- I tried every alternative I could find. I wrote volumes of user documentation in LaTeX, for crying out loud. I've used practically every document tool, from Word to SimpleText to FrameMaker to QuarkXPress to Lyx to (shudder) Open Office. None of them is as good as Word 4.0 was then, or as Word 2000 or Word 10 are today. So the idea that I've never "lived anywhere else" is kinda off the mark.