They will stop calling it piracy when the gamer geek is willing to settle for less than the production values of a $150 million dollar theatrical feature and the game play of Grand Theft Auto.
For Enterprise use, where all the critical applications (the Apache suite and virtually everything that runs over it, Kerberos, OpenLDAP, Samba, Various IMAP daemons, various MTAs, etc) are all supported natively, and it works well as a Xen domain, the support for ZFS makes it arguably a superior option to RHEL
What the heck does any of this have to do with the laptop market?
80% of people doesn't need Windows. When people acknowledge that then this year will be the year of Linux.
Statistics pulled out of your ass are worth no more than a fart. Windows hardware, software, and peripherals are available everywhere and at every price point. The non-technical end-user is the target market and everything is oriented to his needs, interests and values.
You can no longer base your security on obscurity.
The geek trusts far too much in his own memes.
The arrests in India ought at least to remind the geek that the Google logo on his tee shirt does not make it an armored vest.
"GPS, camera, satellites are ubiquitous." The gadget may be ubiquitous. The satellite is not. Google is not.
Google can be shut down or locked wherever and whenever it becomes too arrogant, adventurous or inconvenient. Laws change. Courts change. People change. "The death of privacy" is not a goal that everyone shares.
In or out of government.
Just make officially all those things public, and find new ways to implement security for your important places, for people, for the country...
Be damn careful what you ask for. You just might get it.
In fact, we have more - MANDATED adoption of Linux or other OSS desktops.
THAT is the problem.
Too often, the adoption of Linux isn't being driven by user choice or market forces, it's being driven by ideology and politics.
Your target is the third world education minister and your driving force, El Presidente, elected for life.
But El Presidente exits the stage.
The petro king finds a new hobbyhorse to ride - and funding for the XO-1 heads South. The Green Party in your coalition loses strength in the municipal elections. You have won the elite, but you have never won the masses.
The mandate is a subtle and dangerous temptation for the geek - who is fundamentally technocratic not libertarian and more in tune with the cathedral than the bazaar.
I know the Brits and Americans are friends, but still, running an OS that is doing Bill-knows-what doesn't sound very secure in many ways
Microsoft has no problem exposing Windows source code to the Royal Navy:
The United Kingdom is the latest country to join a Microsoft programme that lets governments around the world see the otherwise secret source code underlying Windows.
Microsoft unveiled the Government Security Program (GSP) two weeks ago as a way to address concerns various governments have about the security of its Windows operating system.
The programme, widely viewed as Microsoft's response to the complete openness of the open-source movement, already includes Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as members.
Under Microsoft's new programme, governments may visit Microsoft's campus, see the millions of lines of source code that make up Windows, run analysis tools on the source code and build versions of Windows for themselves from the raw materials. Officials will be able to see source code for Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and CE.UK government gets access to Windows source code [Feb 3, 2003]
I would also humbly suggest that if that if your cyber intelligence is so limited that you haven't been able to deconstruct Win2K in eight years, you have no business building military grade submersibles.
Didn't the Brits hear about what happened to the USS Yorktown when they tried Windows as a naval solution. God save the Queen, please.
The Aegis Cruiser Yorktown [In service 1984-2004] was chosen in 1995 as the first "smart ship."
The test bed.
Test beds are pushed to failure.
The core technologies installed in YORKTOWN [were] a 16 workstation fiber optic Local Area Network (LAN), Integrated Bridge System (IBS), Voyage Management System (VMS), Damage Control System(DCS), Integrated Conditioning and Assessment System (ICAS), HYDRA wireless communication system, and Standard Machinery Control System (SMCS)
It says something when you have to go back twelve years to make your point - and all you have to point to is a single incident in the introduction of COTS technology.
The article goes on to skewer the year of Linux thing
The old-time reporter kept stories in his head for the days when he was too sloshed to do any real work.
The only hardware barrier to MS Office and Windows on the XO-1 was 1 or 2 GB of flash.
The 1.6 GHz $400 Windows XP ATOM netbook at Walmart has a 9" screen, 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB HDD.
This is quite plausibly a Vista Basic or Win-7 netbook.
You could do worse than hit the Christmas shopping season at that price point with a CPU released no earlier than April the same year.
The "Year of the Netbook" was a win for Windows.
I wrote earlier today that this year's stocking stuffer for the Windows PC is the $200 pocket HD camcorder.
"All those wonderful toys" are for the PC and the Mac. Walmart.com doesn't point you to so much as a printer.
The integrated HDTV tuner? The Blu-Ray drive? The humongous HDD? The 64 Bit OS with all the RAM you can eat for $800? The gamer's PC at a deep discount price?
Pure fantasy.
If you doing your shopping at WalMart - as most of us are these days - OEM Linux lies six feet under.
I see nothing irrational or excessive at all. The US has deliberately sent the Lucetania* into a battle zone in order to enter WWI, disregarded intelligence that could have prevented Pearl Harbor, entered a virtual battle in Tonkin to enter Vietnam, and made up stories on WMD to enter Iraq.
The Lusitania was a Cunard liner.
In 1915 nothing on this Earth could be more British. She was torpedoed just south of Queenstown, Ireland, on May 7, 1915. The ship went down in 18 minutes. 1,195 died, including 123 Americans. The U.S. was a neutral in 1915 and her ports were open to ships of all nations. The Lost Liners - Lusitania [Robert Ballard, PBS 2000]
That Japan was about to make a move against the U.S. was known.
But where?
The Pearl Harbor attack was a hit and run raid, and, in the end, the attack bought Japan only six months of naval superiority in the Pacific. Pearl, after all, was nothing more or less than a forward naval base. It wasn't where ships were being built or men being trained. It wasn't rubber or oil or other strategic materials. Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded Warning About Pearl Harbor [Dec 6, 2008]
There was - let us say - fair reason to be a tad suspicious about Iraq's abandonment of WMDs:
In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector..showed Taha documents...that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure; Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin, a castor-bean derivative which can kill by impeding circulation. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
_____
* - Spell-checking is built into Firefox and the ieSpellplug-in has been around for quite some time as well.
There should only be restrictions while the users are at school. There shouldn't be any restrictions outside of school--it's in loco parentis, not semper parentis.
Traditionally, schools have always had some authority over kids outside the classroom - and the computers themselves remain school property. Which raises an interesting question for the geek: how much freedom do you have in using a customized laptop provided by your employer? I am betting he has to live within some limits as well.
People want different things from their last mile connections.
That doesn't change the fundamental fact that their provider is stringing wire, burying cable, or building a chain of wireless relay towers.
The expense and waste of duplicating all this infrastructure makes no sense.
If each of the last mile providers can attract a significant portion of the market, they should each be able to achieve a customer base large enough to bring down the costs of the network
That is a pretty big "If."
New York Telephone began providing service here during the McKinley Administration. Its successors inherited a central office and rights-of-way that have been in place for 100 years. if you wanted to enter this market today, you would be competition against Verizon and Time-Warner Cable.
--- and you would be competing in a market that has lost at least one third of its population in their prime earning years.
--- a market that had seen the return of Mom & Pop dial-up at $10/month.
This is what I call an "ASSHOLE LAW", where someone obviously evil to most people, but clearly within the confines of what is "legal". In the old days... people like this would get their asses kicked, and the law would look away.
The primary function of the criminal law is to take revenge out of the picture.
When the law looks away, matters like this aren't resolved by an ass-kicking, they are resolved by a 12 gauge or ten feet of hemp:
There is nothing you can imagine that has not been done.
Then pass a law that obligates Comcast to run cable internet, Verizon to run DSL, Dish Satellite to provide satellite internet, Sprint to provide cellular internet, to any customer who asks for it
Without regard to cost or practicality?
You home lies at the bottom of Suicide Hill. The escarpment runs 65 miles east-west. You don't have a sight line to the satellite.
You are 56,000-112,000 feet from the co-op's central office.
There are two smallish clusters of rural estate homes - but, looked at honestly, this is a poor and thinly settled district - expensive to service, even for a non-profit.
GM killed electric trolley public transportation on the East Coast decades ago, pushing for city buses made by GMC that used internal combustion.
Trolley lines were steep decline before World War One.
It cost about a penny a mile to transport a family of four in a Ford. There would be room for a dog and a week's worth of groceries.
The trolley fare would be 5 cents each plus transfers. Your dry goods parcels shipped by Downtown Merchants Delivery and the dog stayed home.
The trolley line had tracks and overheads to maintain. The big city line could employ 7,000 people and still not consistently show a profit with wages of 21 cents an hour. $2.50 a day when Ford was paying workers on the line $5 a day.
The open cars of the rural lines were a joy in mid-summer. Navigating the streets of the Garment District to board a car in mid-winter not so much.
The $400 linux version is able to edit/create word files; if you want to do the same with the $400 win version, you'll have to pay $179 extra for the home/student version of office.
Last I heard, OpenOffice.org was a free download for Windows.
Three seat license. $50 if purchased with a qualifying laptop. If you have student ID and a collegiate e-mail address, Office Ultimate is $70 - direct from Microsoft. If you employer has a volume licensing plan, MS Office can be yours for the S&H costs of the media.
Walmart has yet to bundle a printer with a Linux PC - or link to a printer that has a Linux driver. If ink and paper are within your budget, then MS Office is within your budget.
Massive download. Check. OGG. Check. Torrent. Check. Christmas release. Check. All the geek's bases are covered. His sense of timing perfected. But does he have a movie that anyone else will be watching?
MS will litteraly give XP away to the vendors now rather than risk having people/customers break free of the win32 app stack.
Calling it "a wash," was, I think, far too charitable. Walmart's XP netboooks - "available in stores' - all ship with a 9" screen, an Atom CPU, 1 GB RAM and a 160 GB HDD.
Walmart is pounding the Linux netbook into the sand at a price point the Geek still believes Windows cannot reach even when the evidence is right in front of him.
Walmart has never been able to do more than firmly anchor Linux's reputation as a bottom feeder -
and "anchor" is surely the right word here.
The "high end" at Walmart is the $1600-2000 "desktop replacement."
The 64 Bit Vista Premium media PC with HDTV, Blu-Ray and a 26" TouchSmart display. Entry level for 64 Bit Vista at Walmart is $800.
32 Bit Vista Premium starts at $450-$500. You'll have plenty of raw horsepower, RAM amd storage at anything above entry level - and you won't find anything in OEM Linux that is competitive even there.
Slashdot Mirror
It's always "just a prank" to the geek.
But the cop who pulls you over has to consider other - more dangerous - possibilities and he won't be taking any chances.
The dumb-ass move you make now can put you in a body bag.
It isn't likely to end that way - but it can end that way. That is why you get ninety days in the cooler to think things over.
They will stop calling it piracy when the gamer geek is willing to settle for less than the production values of a $150 million dollar theatrical feature and the game play of Grand Theft Auto.
As far as the mass consumer market is concerned, Windows is free.
Try finding a competitive OEM Linux system at any price point at Walmart.com.
Walmart has never been able to significantly undercut Windows on price, and it has not been lack of trying.
Now and again Walmart still introduces an oddity for the geek scavenging among the bottom feeders:
the gOS desktop without a working modem, in a market that still needs dial-up.
If the sun, moon and stars are in alignment you might find a Dell netbook with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB Flash and Ubuntu.
Online sales only, here today, gone tomorrow.
What the heck does any of this have to do with the laptop market?
Statistics pulled out of your ass are worth no more than a fart. Windows hardware, software, and peripherals are available everywhere and at every price point. The non-technical end-user is the target market and everything is oriented to his needs, interests and values.
The geek trusts far too much in his own memes.
The arrests in India ought at least to remind the geek that the Google logo on his tee shirt does not make it an armored vest.
"GPS, camera, satellites are ubiquitous." The gadget may be ubiquitous. The satellite is not. Google is not.
Google can be shut down or locked wherever and whenever it becomes too arrogant, adventurous or inconvenient. Laws change. Courts change. People change. "The death of privacy" is not a goal that everyone shares.
In or out of government.
Just make officially all those things public, and find new ways to implement security for your important places, for people, for the country...
Be damn careful what you ask for. You just might get it.
THAT is the problem.
Too often, the adoption of Linux isn't being driven by user choice or market forces, it's being driven by ideology and politics.
Your target is the third world education minister and your driving force, El Presidente, elected for life.
But El Presidente exits the stage.
The petro king finds a new hobbyhorse to ride - and funding for the XO-1 heads South. The Green Party in your coalition loses strength in the municipal elections. You have won the elite, but you have never won the masses.
The mandate is a subtle and dangerous temptation for the geek - who is fundamentally technocratic not libertarian and more in tune with the cathedral than the bazaar.
Microsoft has no problem exposing Windows source code to the Royal Navy:
The United Kingdom is the latest country to join a Microsoft programme that lets governments around the world see the otherwise secret source code underlying Windows.
Microsoft unveiled the Government Security Program (GSP) two weeks ago as a way to address concerns various governments have about the security of its Windows operating system.
The programme, widely viewed as Microsoft's response to the complete openness of the open-source movement, already includes Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as members. Under Microsoft's new programme, governments may visit Microsoft's campus, see the millions of lines of source code that make up Windows, run analysis tools on the source code and build versions of Windows for themselves from the raw materials. Officials will be able to see source code for Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and CE. UK government gets access to Windows source code [Feb 3, 2003]
In the years since, access to the Windows source code has become rather easy for the student or the developer: Microsoft Expands Access to Windows Source Code {Jul 2004], Microsoft Shared Source Initiative
I would also humbly suggest that if that if your cyber intelligence is so limited that you haven't been able to deconstruct Win2K in eight years, you have no business building military grade submersibles.
The Aegis Cruiser Yorktown [In service 1984-2004] was chosen in 1995 as the first "smart ship."
The test bed.
Test beds are pushed to failure.
The core technologies installed in YORKTOWN [were] a 16 workstation fiber optic Local Area Network (LAN), Integrated Bridge System (IBS), Voyage Management System (VMS), Damage Control System(DCS), Integrated Conditioning and Assessment System (ICAS), HYDRA wireless communication system, and Standard Machinery Control System (SMCS)
The Yorktown's last saw combat service in the Gulf in 2004. USS Yorktown CV-10 Association
It says something when you have to go back twelve years to make your point - and all you have to point to is a single incident in the introduction of COTS technology.
The Nimitz-class carrier USS Ronald Reagan runs Windows.
For projects on this scale, Microsoft Federal Systems becomes a sub-contractor working with the largest and most experienced of military contractors.
The old-time reporter kept stories in his head for the days when he was too sloshed to do any real work.
The only hardware barrier to MS Office and Windows on the XO-1 was 1 or 2 GB of flash.
The 1.6 GHz $400 Windows XP ATOM netbook at Walmart has a 9" screen, 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB HDD.
This is quite plausibly a Vista Basic or Win-7 netbook.
You could do worse than hit the Christmas shopping season at that price point with a CPU released no earlier than April the same year.
The "Year of the Netbook" was a win for Windows.
I wrote earlier today that this year's stocking stuffer for the Windows PC is the $200 pocket HD camcorder.
"All those wonderful toys" are for the PC and the Mac. Walmart.com doesn't point you to so much as a printer.
The integrated HDTV tuner? The Blu-Ray drive? The humongous HDD? The 64 Bit OS with all the RAM you can eat for $800? The gamer's PC at a deep discount price?
Pure fantasy.
If you doing your shopping at WalMart - as most of us are these days - OEM Linux lies six feet under.
Barely visible and scarcely worth the exhumation.
The Lusitania was a Cunard liner.
In 1915 nothing on this Earth could be more British. She was torpedoed just south of Queenstown, Ireland, on May 7, 1915. The ship went down in 18 minutes. 1,195 died, including 123 Americans. The U.S. was a neutral in 1915 and her ports were open to ships of all nations. The Lost Liners - Lusitania [Robert Ballard, PBS 2000]
That Japan was about to make a move against the U.S. was known.
But where?
The Pearl Harbor attack was a hit and run raid, and, in the end, the attack bought Japan only six months of naval superiority in the Pacific. Pearl, after all, was nothing more or less than a forward naval base. It wasn't where ships were being built or men being trained. It wasn't rubber or oil or other strategic materials. Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded Warning About Pearl Harbor [Dec 6, 2008]
Tonkin didn't feel like a virtual battle to those who fought in it. Anatomy of a crisis [March 2004], What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam? [May 1988]
There was - let us say - fair reason to be a tad suspicious about Iraq's abandonment of WMDs:
In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector..showed Taha documents...that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure; Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin, a castor-bean derivative which can kill by impeding circulation. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
_____
* - Spell-checking is built into Firefox and the ieSpellplug-in has been around for quite some time as well.
Traditionally, schools have always had some authority over kids outside the classroom - and the computers themselves remain school property. Which raises an interesting question for the geek: how much freedom do you have in using a customized laptop provided by your employer? I am betting he has to live within some limits as well.
"Mom, will you please, please, please, buy me another laptop. I can't do a thing with the Mac they gave me at school."
Mom is thinking is "What did I do to deserve this?" What she is saying is "I'm sorry, kiddo. But we just don't have that kind of money right now."
So did I.
Until the day I came across Slashdot.
The geek's will to believe can make one long for the more mature and analytical minds of AM Talk Radio.
what rational person expects to have good results when operating an extremely complex machine that they don't understand?
We all place our trust in systems and machines we do not understand. We all make decisions based on instinct and convenience.
I can't say with any certainty that I'd derive any direct benefit from the sort of ubiquity that Windows and IE currently enjoy
The $200 HD Camcorder is this year's high-tech stocking stuffer.
You can drop this in your WalMart cart and leave the store thinking that all the fun stuff is being made for Windows.
trust me on this one. maintaining a well or a septic tank is best left to the pros.
That doesn't change the fundamental fact that their provider is stringing wire, burying cable, or building a chain of wireless relay towers.
The expense and waste of duplicating all this infrastructure makes no sense.
If each of the last mile providers can attract a significant portion of the market, they should each be able to achieve a customer base large enough to bring down the costs of the network
That is a pretty big "If."
New York Telephone began providing service here during the McKinley Administration. Its successors inherited a central office and rights-of-way that have been in place for 100 years. if you wanted to enter this market today, you would be competition against Verizon and Time-Warner Cable.
--- and you would be competing in a market that has lost at least one third of its population in their prime earning years.
--- a market that had seen the return of Mom & Pop dial-up at $10/month.
The primary function of the criminal law is to take revenge out of the picture.
When the law looks away, matters like this aren't resolved by an ass-kicking, they are resolved by a 12 gauge or ten feet of hemp:
There is nothing you can imagine that has not been done.
Without Sanctuary - Lynching Photography in America
I urge you strongly to take a look at these photographs - and not for one second forget that they are postcards - produced and sold like any other.
Without regard to cost or practicality?
You home lies at the bottom of Suicide Hill. The escarpment runs 65 miles east-west. You don't have a sight line to the satellite.
You are 56,000-112,000 feet from the co-op's central office.
There are two smallish clusters of rural estate homes - but, looked at honestly, this is a poor and thinly settled district - expensive to service, even for a non-profit.
Trolley lines were steep decline before World War One.
It cost about a penny a mile to transport a family of four in a Ford. There would be room for a dog and a week's worth of groceries.
The trolley fare would be 5 cents each plus transfers. Your dry goods parcels shipped by Downtown Merchants Delivery and the dog stayed home.
The trolley line had tracks and overheads to maintain. The big city line could employ 7,000 people and still not consistently show a profit with wages of 21 cents an hour. $2.50 a day when Ford was paying workers on the line $5 a day.
The open cars of the rural lines were a joy in mid-summer. Navigating the streets of the Garment District to board a car in mid-winter not so much.
Especially, perhaps, for a woman.
Sun's corporate PR spins talk of "accelerating our delivery of open source solutions."
But the company is hurting. Sales down about 30%, losses approaching $2 billion in its third quarter.
I think the days of open-handed corporate funding of open source - without a clearly defined plan to make it profitable - are over.
Sun Microsystems Cuts 6,000 Jobs
Last I heard, OpenOffice.org was a free download for Windows.
MS Office Home and Student is $70 at Amazon.com.
Three seat license. $50 if purchased with a qualifying laptop. If you have student ID and a collegiate e-mail address, Office Ultimate is $70 - direct from Microsoft. If you employer has a volume licensing plan, MS Office can be yours for the S&H costs of the media.
Walmart has yet to bundle a printer with a Linux PC - or link to a printer that has a Linux driver. If ink and paper are within your budget, then MS Office is within your budget.
only if you consider the stand-alone eight-bit micro on your desktop an alternative to the VT100 terminal.
"Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee."
Massive download. Check. OGG. Check. Torrent. Check. Christmas release. Check. All the geek's bases are covered. His sense of timing perfected. But does he have a movie that anyone else will be watching?
Calling it "a wash," was, I think, far too charitable. Walmart's XP netboooks - "available in stores' - all ship with a 9" screen, an Atom CPU, 1 GB RAM and a 160 GB HDD.
Walmart is pounding the Linux netbook into the sand at a price point the Geek still believes Windows cannot reach even when the evidence is right in front of him.
Walmart has never been able to do more than firmly anchor Linux's reputation as a bottom feeder -
and "anchor" is surely the right word here.
The "high end" at Walmart is the $1600-2000 "desktop replacement."
The 64 Bit Vista Premium media PC with HDTV, Blu-Ray and a 26" TouchSmart display. Entry level for 64 Bit Vista at Walmart is $800.
32 Bit Vista Premium starts at $450-$500. You'll have plenty of raw horsepower, RAM amd storage at anything above entry level - and you won't find anything in OEM Linux that is competitive even there.