W2K runs all of hw and sw. It's fast, and stable, it's not obtrusive, I know how to use it, and I don't need a new PC to run it. Not only do I not need that "eye candy" I hate it, I want my gui to look serious, not like a toy. W2K does not have all the DRM, WGA, and authentication cr@p.P
W2K was never a mass-market OS.
In the February W3Schools stats at a 2% share it barely edges out Vista. OS Platform Stats
W2K's strength wasn't in media play or gaming. Licensing and rights management issues in-house were headaches for your employer, not you. But if you want to watch Forbidden Planet in HD at home it won't matter much whether you chose the stand-alone player or the PC drive. The movie will still be protected against casual redistribution.
The pastels of Luna may have been an irritant for the Geek, but the felt green of corporate Classic was fatiguing for others.
On some fundamental level, the GUI will always be a "toy," since its job is to provide a relaxed, familiar and unintimidating connection between the user and the machine.
So what does Vista do for me? How will Vista make me more productive? How will Vista save me money? Seems like paying money for an additional annoyance. I am not saying msft sucks, I am not saying vista sucks. But, this seems to be the worst "upgrade" imaginable.
Most Windows users upgrade when they see significant advantages in bundling new hardware and software at OEM prices. The dual or quad core CPU. The 50 GB Optical Drive. DX10 Video. The 500 GB Hybrid SATA HDD. ReadyBoost Flash...
There's no help for it. The Vista drivers will mature. The hardware will be cheaper and more advanced. Developers will push the limits of the new platform as it gains market share. Your W2K system will be "the horse and buggy."
It seems to me that the threat of a lawsuit unless one pays up is exactly what constitutes extortion. Anyone know of any cases where people are standing up and taking legal action against the RIAA/corporations the RIAA is representing?
It is not extortion when you are offered a chance to settle a claim out-of-court.
The alleged infringer has to be realistic about his choices. The rules of evidence. The cost of litigation.
In the federal system the odds are about 1 in 100 that a civil case will go to a benverdict.
It takes a lot of time and money to get that far. The odds of winning on a verdict are rarely much better than fifty-fifty. But you won't like the bill if you lose, because, chances are, the damages will be substantial.
4,... 3,... 2,... 1,...
Seriously, how many brilliant inventions have we heard of lately, and how many of those vanish just days after being announced?
In 1874 the Hudson River Tunnel Company was talking up the idea of using compressed air locomotives. Penn Station Lives!
Compressed air is generally used when alternative sources of power are too clumsy or too dangerous for the job, not because the CA system (when seen as a whole) is cleaner or more efficient.
People are just looking for an excuse not to use Linux, so they say Photoshop. Most home users don't need photoshop, probably haven't paid for it, and could do just as well with GIMP.
Home users have other choices than the GIMP.
Paint Shop Pro has been around since 1992. Street price $60.
Older versions, retail boxed, with a thick printed manual, can be found almost anywhere -- and are arguably the less painful choice than learning the GIMP UI.
The user isn't always as addicted to piracy as the Geek choses to believe, nor is all commercial software priced like Photoshop at retail list.
I forgot to add that this is priced with the Vista Premium install, not Basic. You want the CPU and graphics horsepower needed for the media PC or Windows PC gaming, Walmart will sell you that too.
Certainly not the amount of time that currently is set in the copyright laws. It's just too long. A lot of great content is locked up by this law, no one in this generation will ever learn of them if this law will still stand.
There are over 1,000 titles in print in the Penguin Classics series alone. 750 pounds of books. 80 linear feet. The Penguin Classics Complete
The Movies Unlimited catalog runs to 800 pages.
Conservation costs money. Restoration costs money. That is why your $2 commercial DVD rip of a movie from a public domain source and not a studio master looks and sounds like crap.
There is nothing significant missing from the Disney studio achieves. Its archieves are self-financing.
That can be said of almost no other film and television studio in the world.
I'm always wondering why Linksys, or their OEMs, or anybody, don't sell a 'naked' router, or 'micro PC' that runs linux, and by default doesn't do much more.
The answer is simple and the answer is always the same. The direct seller and big box retailer doesn't need and doesn't want the hobbyist. You build and ship for the profitable - predictable - mass-market sale.
How much do you suppose "James Bond" and "Harry Potter" have returned to the UK? J.K. Rowling went from being on the dole to being richer than the Queen in under ten years.
You cannot arbitrarily sale of a PC to windows. I agree that the alternate market may pale in comparison, but there has to a good 1 or 2% of computers running linux.
It is fair to attribute sales to Windows in markets where Windows is featured in every four-color add, tv spot and web page.
When the Home Shopping Network bundles Vista systems for sale during the Christmas holidays, you can be quite sure that it isn't the Linux Geek who is buying.
This is a predictable result of managing tons of users who all want to treat a complex machine that can perform millions of functions as though it were an appliance like a toaster or a microwave.... Think about it this way. A car does only one thing, and yet you are required to obtain training and a license before you are allowed to use one. The idea that you can use a general-purpose device and not have to learn anything about how it works is an absurd pipe dream that has generated a lot of profit for the likes of Microsoft...
--- and everyone else since Henry Ford who has discovered that there is profit in abstraction.
In simplifying tasks to the point where the technology fades into the background. In focusing on the skills which are central to the job and not peripheral.
Not so very long ago, a professional photographer had to be part mechanic and part industrial chemist. Photographic Processing Hazards
But expertise in materials handling, Potassium Cyanide, is no longer part of his job description.
I've read articles where the RIAA have sued a person who had no computer.
You read these articles in an echo chamber which repeats these tales endlessly as if they were the norm.
Settlements are made every day with downloaders whose sob stories rate no more than a paragraph or two in their local newspaper -- and are instantly forgotten thereafter.
How do you prove you did not commit anything ? Find an alibi ? That's right : in most of the case you won't be able to prove you DID NOT commit anything. Proving a negative/absence of crime is illogical and neigh impossible. That should be the RIAA job to prove you commited infringement without reasonable doubt.
What is it about the Geek that he can never quite grasp the most elemental distinctions between civil and criminal law?
The RIAA doesn't have to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
The RIAA only has to persuade a judge and jury that, on balance, its explanation is the more plausible.
More to the point - since the odds are a bare 1% that a civil case ever will go to trial - much less to a verdict - it only has to make a credible argument for a pre-trial settlement.
As the government / business workers gain familiarity with Linux at work, they'll be more comfortable using Linux at home. But the home market will be he LAST market that Linux will crack. And it will take YEARS
The home is a distinct - divergent - market. It is not government. It is not business.
It is a market with its own rules and its own values, rules and values the Geek only dimly understands.
For all his talk of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, it is the Linux Geek who has the deepest faith in the mandate from heaven, the top-down solution. He has forgotten what drove users in mass to the PC in the first place.
It wasn't a development model. It wasn't the technical superiority of an application or an OS. It was the freedom to use a computer outside the control of his employer. It was freedom from the system-nazi. Freedom from the Geek.
Freedom to play a game. Watch a movie. Work at your own pace and with your own tools. Without having to answer to anyone because you chose Photoshop over the GIMP. The $30 Blu-Ray HD video over the amateur's DiVX rip.
f you want to bring the home market around quicker, you need to focus on bringing WINE up to speed for their applications
Expedients like WINE and BootCamp are fundamentally an admission of failure. You need them because applications don't exist for your platform, but among those for whom Windows is the platform of choice, they make no compelling argument for migration.
home users have a LOT of different apps
Open Linspire's Click'N'Run catalog. 20,000 programs.
Subtract the number that have no interest to the non-technical home user. From what remains, subtract the number that have been ported to Windows or began as a native Windows apps. Not much left, is there?
Try to find a replacement for something as basic as Print Shop.
Programs of the sort which have been staples on the home PC for thirty years.
Doing the homework on why your new FOSS app will be better, stronger, easier to maintain and ultimately cheaper than the "off the shelf" version of your solution is the way to go here. Good luck!
When IT is one guy you go with the "off the shelf" solution.
why they can't make a small stipulation to sell X% of units raw to folks that are DIY'ers, is beyond me.
To anyone but a Geek DIY is as dead as Heathkit---and it was never an easy or an inexpensive market to service.
It only gets worse with the shift to the media center PC and the desktop replacement. That's a big investment in a complex mix of hardware and software.
many analysts I've read think the main PC sellers actually make money just by including Windows because of all the other stuff they install on the PC with it
It could never be that it is simply more profitable to service the overwhelming number of buyers who want the OEM Windows install.
Fully half of Apple's revenues can be traced back to iTunes and the iPod.
Once again proving you can make a great deal of money leveraging Windows dominance in the home market to your own advantage.
---with Linux, you get bubkis.
Not so very long ago, the Geek was trumpeting Walmart's backing of OEM Linux. The world's largest and most ruthlessly competitive retailer. What could possibly go wrong?
On Day 1 Walmart.com had thirty OEM Vista systems ready for sale.
$500 for the Acer Vista Basic laptop. $900 for the Toshiba Vista Premium laptop.
Buried - and buried deep - one lone Xandros desktop. With specs and pricing that wouldn't draw a second look if they were re-written as ad copy for a TigerDirect close-out special.
I have a felony conviction on my record for possession of illegal explosives. I've flown many times since 9/11 and gone through customs several times, never been selected for searches or been treated differently from anyone else.
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. ~R.E. Shay
The answer is simple. End-to-end encryption of _everything_.
One wonders how the Chinese government would respond to that.
Encrypted traffic moves nowhere unless government sanctioned. The Internet Cafe is locked down tight. China has a tradition of centralized - bureaucratic - power that goes back over two thousand years.
Slashdot Mirror
or maybe after seeing the end product of an all-nighter they want to put an end to it.
W2K was never a mass-market OS.
In the February W3Schools stats at a 2% share it barely edges out Vista. OS Platform Stats
W2K's strength wasn't in media play or gaming.
Licensing and rights management issues in-house were headaches for your employer, not you.
But if you want to watch Forbidden Planet in HD at home it won't matter much whether you chose the stand-alone player or the PC drive. The movie will still be protected against casual redistribution.
The pastels of Luna may have been an irritant for the Geek, but the felt green of corporate Classic was fatiguing for others.
On some fundamental level, the GUI will always be a "toy," since its job is to provide a relaxed, familiar and unintimidating connection between the user and the machine.
So what does Vista do for me? How will Vista make me more productive? How will Vista save me money? Seems like paying money for an additional annoyance. I am not saying msft sucks, I am not saying vista sucks. But, this seems to be the worst "upgrade" imaginable.
Most Windows users upgrade when they see significant advantages in bundling new hardware and software at OEM prices. The dual or quad core CPU. The 50 GB Optical Drive. DX10 Video. The 500 GB Hybrid SATA HDD. ReadyBoost Flash... There's no help for it. The Vista drivers will mature. The hardware will be cheaper and more advanced. Developers will push the limits of the new platform as it gains market share. Your W2K system will be "the horse and buggy."
It is not extortion when you are offered a chance to settle a claim out-of-court.
The alleged infringer has to be realistic about his choices. The rules of evidence. The cost of litigation.
In the federal system the odds are about 1 in 100 that a civil case will go to a benverdict.
It takes a lot of time and money to get that far. The odds of winning on a verdict are rarely much better than fifty-fifty. But you won't like the bill if you lose, because, chances are, the damages will be substantial.
Seriously, how many brilliant inventions have we heard of lately, and how many of those vanish just days after being announced?
In 1874 the Hudson River Tunnel Company was talking up the idea of using compressed air locomotives. Penn Station Lives!
Compressed air locomotives saw significant commercial development and use from 1900 to 1930. The Air Car has been around since at least 1979. Pnematics Options Research Library: air car research since 1979
A Korean company demonstrated a hybrid pneumatic-electric car in 2005 Car that runs on compressed air
Compressed air is generally used when alternative sources of power are too clumsy or too dangerous for the job, not because the CA system (when seen as a whole) is cleaner or more efficient.
Home users have other choices than the GIMP.
Paint Shop Pro has been around since 1992. Street price $60.
Older versions, retail boxed, with a thick printed manual, can be found almost anywhere -- and are arguably the less painful choice than learning the GIMP UI.
The user isn't always as addicted to piracy as the Geek choses to believe, nor is all commercial software priced like Photoshop at retail list.
I forgot to add that this is priced with the Vista Premium install, not Basic. You want the CPU and graphics horsepower needed for the media PC or Windows PC gaming, Walmart will sell you that too.
Repeat until the lesson is learned:
What passes for Gospel truth on the Geek forums is not always true in the larger world.
Walmart made a try at selling OEM Linux to the masses but has left the game:
Compaq Presario w/19 inch LCD Monitor Athlon 64 CPU. 1 GB RAM. 200 GB HDD. DVD Burner. Memory Card Reader. $700
which reminds me
how do you explain the bad spelling on Slashdot when ieSpell, the Google Toolbar, and Firefox are there to help you?
The Virginia planter was sunk in debt before the Revolution. The Virginia planter would be sunk in debt after the Revolution.
Export low priced agricultural goods. Import high priced manufactured goods.
Work the soil to exhaustion. Tie up your capital in slaves and land. Invest in nothing else.
The trade financed at both ends by bankers in London and New York, at a very good rate of interest.
There are over 1,000 titles in print in the Penguin Classics series alone. 750 pounds of books. 80 linear feet. The Penguin Classics Complete
The Movies Unlimited catalog runs to 800 pages.
Conservation costs money. Restoration costs money. That is why your $2 commercial DVD rip of a movie from a public domain source and not a studio master looks and sounds like crap.
There is nothing significant missing from the Disney studio achieves. Its archieves are self-financing.
That can be said of almost no other film and television studio in the world.
The answer is simple and the answer is always the same. The direct seller and big box retailer doesn't need and doesn't want the hobbyist. You build and ship for the profitable - predictable - mass-market sale.
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun
The call to arms from the privileged elite. You never quite know whether to cry or to laugh.
Is it still so easy when your only source for Linux is the sidewalk vendor and your only access to the net is the Internet Cafe?
To keep your domestic cultural product -- your cultural heritage -- from being utterly extinquished by cheap foreign imports?
Copy Wrong: Internet Piracy and Dickens and Melville
To help build and protect an export market?
How much do you suppose "James Bond" and "Harry Potter" have returned to the UK? J.K. Rowling went from being on the dole to being richer than the Queen in under ten years.
The last PC I saw set out for pick-up was a 486 Packard Bell. PCs migrate from den to bedroom to basement...
Windows users upgrade hardware and software together at OEM pricing. Upgrading the OS alone doesn't give you a system that can play Oblivion.
It is fair to attribute sales to Windows in markets where Windows is featured in every four-color add, tv spot and web page.
When the Home Shopping Network bundles Vista systems for sale during the Christmas holidays, you can be quite sure that it isn't the Linux Geek who is buying.
--- and everyone else since Henry Ford who has discovered that there is profit in abstraction.
In simplifying tasks to the point where the technology fades into the background. In focusing on the skills which are central to the job and not peripheral.
Not so very long ago, a professional photographer had to be part mechanic and part industrial chemist. Photographic Processing Hazards
But expertise in materials handling, Potassium Cyanide, is no longer part of his job description.
You read these articles in an echo chamber which repeats these tales endlessly as if they were the norm.
Settlements are made every day with downloaders whose sob stories rate no more than a paragraph or two in their local newspaper -- and are instantly forgotten thereafter.
What is it about the Geek that he can never quite grasp the most elemental distinctions between civil and criminal law?
The RIAA doesn't have to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
The RIAA only has to persuade a judge and jury that, on balance, its explanation is the more plausible.
More to the point - since the odds are a bare 1% that a civil case ever will go to trial - much less to a verdict - it only has to make a credible argument for a pre-trial settlement.
The home is a distinct - divergent - market. It is not government. It is not business.
It is a market with its own rules and its own values, rules and values the Geek only dimly understands.
For all his talk of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, it is the Linux Geek who has the deepest faith in the mandate from heaven, the top-down solution. He has forgotten what drove users in mass to the PC in the first place.
It wasn't a development model. It wasn't the technical superiority of an application or an OS. It was the freedom to use a computer outside the control of his employer. It was freedom from the system-nazi. Freedom from the Geek.
Freedom to play a game. Watch a movie. Work at your own pace and with your own tools. Without having to answer to anyone because you chose Photoshop over the GIMP. The $30 Blu-Ray HD video over the amateur's DiVX rip.
f you want to bring the home market around quicker, you need to focus on bringing WINE up to speed for their applications
Expedients like WINE and BootCamp are fundamentally an admission of failure. You need them because applications don't exist for your platform, but among those for whom Windows is the platform of choice, they make no compelling argument for migration.
home users have a LOT of different apps
Open Linspire's Click'N'Run catalog. 20,000 programs.
Subtract the number that have no interest to the non-technical home user. From what remains, subtract the number that have been ported to Windows or began as a native Windows apps. Not much left, is there?
Try to find a replacement for something as basic as Print Shop.
Programs of the sort which have been staples on the home PC for thirty years.
When IT is one guy you go with the "off the shelf" solution.
To anyone but a Geek DIY is as dead as Heathkit---and it was never an easy or an inexpensive market to service.
It only gets worse with the shift to the media center PC and the desktop replacement. That's a big investment in a complex mix of hardware and software.
It could never be that it is simply more profitable to service the overwhelming number of buyers who want the OEM Windows install.
Fully half of Apple's revenues can be traced back to iTunes and the iPod.
Once again proving you can make a great deal of money leveraging Windows dominance in the home market to your own advantage.
---with Linux, you get bubkis.
Not so very long ago, the Geek was trumpeting Walmart's backing of OEM Linux. The world's largest and most ruthlessly competitive retailer. What could possibly go wrong?
On Day 1 Walmart.com had thirty OEM Vista systems ready for sale.
$500 for the Acer Vista Basic laptop. $900 for the Toshiba Vista Premium laptop.
Buried - and buried deep - one lone Xandros desktop. With specs and pricing that wouldn't draw a second look if they were re-written as ad copy for a TigerDirect close-out special.
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. ~R.E. Shay
One wonders how the Chinese government would respond to that.
Encrypted traffic moves nowhere unless government sanctioned. The Internet Cafe is locked down tight. China has a tradition of centralized - bureaucratic - power that goes back over two thousand years.