Your questions belong in the "absolute beginners" forum at ubuntuforums.org.
it is difficult to post questions to an online forum when you can't get online. a distro targeting beginners is headed for trouble if it doesn't work out of the box, no hand-holding required.
maybe someone who did can answer a question for me:
Are there any costs for the user associated with this?
There are other questions worth asking as well:
How many South Africans own personal computers? In absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population. Where do they live, how much do they earn? What sort of hardware are they buying, what operating system and applications are they using now? What is the street price for Windows, for Office, for PC games?
Is it a smart decision, the right decision, to be offering only Linux software?
Don't forget that Bill Gate's Mom served on the same boards and charities (Red Cross?) that an IBM VP served on. It's all about who you know.
It re-writes hstory to suggest that Microsoft was an unknown quantity to IBM.
In three years, from 1975-1978, Microsoft had become dominant in computer languages for the eight-bit micros, with the release of MBASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL.
If you license WinCE...you get to pay Microsoft for every device you ship, which means that Microsoft gets much richer if you develop the next iPod.
The iPOd is based on a proprietary OS licensed by Apple:
The iPod uses PortalPlayer's "Digital Media Platform", which is marketed as a turn-key solution as it includes System-On-Chip integrated circuits (ICs), a customizable firmware suite, integrated third party services, PC software, and so on. The iPod uses PortalPlayer's PP50xx chip, which contains two ARM7TDMI microprocessor cores. The iPod's embedded operating system, including its encoding and decoding components, also come from PortalPlayer. iPod's OS
Have you heard Steve Jobs whining about the The PortalPlayer Tax? I didn't think so.
why is the product being rated based on said effectively disabled content?
because hot coffee is not effectively disabled when it can be easily unlocked on three different platforms.
because rockstar denied creating the sex game and became hopelessly entangled in this single, stupid, lie. its public relations offensive collapsing into mush.
If tomorrow there is a terrorist attack that the FBI failed to prevent because they were busy arresting some copyright violator, I'm going to be mighty pissed.
Here are some numbers for you:
Total Number of FBI employees 28,576
Special Agents 12,156
Support: 16,420 including 1,300 analysts and 1,000 IT specialists Bureau Employees Permanently Stationed Overseas: 200 New Hires Since 9/11 5,606
The federal government has the resources to investigate economic and property crimes that cross state and national boundaries. There is no hiding behind Osama's skirts.
More and more I think we should line all the politicians up and shoot them. Get me close enough to any of the bastards behind this and I'll spit in his face.
Get a grip. GTA began as a video game. If it has become something more to you, if you keep talking to strangers like a man about to go postal, then just maybe the other side has a point.
Why is blowing people's heads off considered less serious than sex? I San Andres I could conduct a drive-by shooting, or otherwise brutally murder someone. But having sex results in an older age limit?
The role-playing of gang violence, violence against women, violence against the police, in GTA: San Andreas appeals to a young male demographic and to no one else. The entire genre of games of which GTA has become the symbol is profoundly distrusted and despised outside the gaming community. You have to see this clearly: The knives were out for Rockstar and a pliant ESRB ratings board long before Hot Coffee.
Rockstar made the ingenious and fatal argument that it was not responsible for a pornographic sex game which could only be unlocked through a trivial "third-party" mod. "Plausible Denial" is the operative phrase. It didn't work for Nixon and it didn't work for GTA: San Andreas.
Are you really that frightened not being able to dial 911?
You bet I am. My brother collapsed from a wasp sting this summer. No pulse. No breath when he reached the hospital. The next sting will hit harder and faster. It will never be safe for him to be caught without a hypo kit and a telephone. As an asthmatic, I have lived under similiar constraints since I was ten years old.
Will stores no longer be able to carry games that aren't ESRB rated? It would seem that publishers could just choose not to have certain games rated..
which means that sales will be restricted to the red-light district of your local adult bookstore. until the states and federal government impose mandatory rating systems with teeth.
The kid is making this happen, but she's blaming anyone but the kid.
The kid didn't burn AO content to disk in three different versions of GTA: San Andreas. The kid wasn't caught in a lie when the heat was on.
The more she does stupid things like this, the easier it will be to defeat her when she runs for President.
The role-playing of gang violence, violence against women, violence against the police, in GTA appeals to a young male demographic and to no one else.
You cannot overstate how deeply the gangster game genre is distrusted and despised outside the gaming community. I had a small taste of this when a teen shootout upstate played out like a parody of a GTA scenario. Hillary Clinton has been saying nothing more than what both the inner city and suburbia have wanted to hear for a very long time.
The problem for the masses is: are they going to care about ANY new features for Windows when they haven't figured out how to use XP yet? Based on the 60% or so market penetration of XP, that leaves a lot of people who didn't care about XP and aren't likely to care about Visa.
That 60% share you mention looks like the number from W3Schools.
NT and W2K were never sold to the masses. XP has been the default install on home computers, SOHO office machines and laptops for the better part of four years.
Meanwhile Linux will achieve 10% - possibly even 20% - market penetration
I think you need to be looking more closely and more critically at how Window's dominance outside the office affects the take-up of Linux in the office.
Certainly there was an explosion in the field personal computers in the early 80s: Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair to name but a few. All released home computers before the PC
Few of these computers came with a standard keyboard. None had a modular design that made significant upgrades easy or even possible. You would be lucky to find one that offered a disk drive, 80 column printer or monitor, even as an option.
MBASIC was prized because it was as close to compatibility between systems as you could get.
The reason MS did so well was because they had the OS on the platform that emerged dominant. And the reason for this dominance is that IBM legitimised personal computing with the IBM PC. Business bought PCs, and people bought a home computer to be compatible with work.
"King's Quest" and "Commander Keen" demonstrated very early on that the MSDOS PC could be a very successful gaming platform. I'll take that as the divide between the PC as a SOHO dedicated office machine and the PC as a general-purpose home computer.
The pressure from Microsoft on OEMs is very, very well known
You'll find on Walmart.com a merry-go-round of Linux systems that come and go without making the slightest impression. Perhaps this week it will be Sun and JDS, and the next, Microtel and Xandros.
The one constant is Windows. Windows sells. It is strongly positioned in every niche but the very bottom, and the bottom isn't as attractive to Walmart as it used to be.
The poor aren't buying computers at any price, and the middle class, drawn to more upscale retailers like Target, hasn't shown the slightest interest in Linux.
it used to be (ala early - mid 90s) that the hardware was about 85% of the cost, and the software 15%. Now, hardware costs have plummeted, whereas software prices have gone up. Now when you buy a computer, about 65% of the price is hardware, and 35% is software. Good points, if you ask me.
You have an installed base of 300-500 million Windows systems, a platform that everyone builds for, and you wonder why hardware prices have come down?
Now someone tell me how Microsoft prices Windows XP $20 cheaper than the same PC with a free operating system
Dell recently committed to buying 300,000 14" wide-screen laptops a month from a single Chinese OEM. That is one model in one segment of its Windows product line.
Windows flies out the door while FreeDOS sits on a pallete in a warehouse. That is not Dell's way of doing business.
the user will be given the oppportunity to purchase a legitimate copy of the software for a discounted price, upon providing proof of purchase
"Customers who discover that their copy of Windows is pirated have two options.
They can get a free version of Windows if they fill out a counterfeit report identifying the source of the software, providing proof of purchase and returning the counterfeit CD.
If they are unable to provide all the information, filling out a report will entitle them to receive a copy of Windows XP Home Edition for the reduced price of £56 or Windows XP Professional Edition for £86." Microsoft steps up piracy fight
If you don't like the games, stop buying them. Vote with your dollars, people
Women are voting with their dollars. But their dollars aren't being spent on Grand Theft Auto. They are going to politicians who would rein in developers like Rockstar.
Dell and MS marketing execs probably spend many a sleepless night trying to figure out how they can come up with something with nearly the same cost to value ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
you call people sheep, they tend to turn on you like wolves.
it is difficult to post questions to an online forum when you can't get online. a distro targeting beginners is headed for trouble if it doesn't work out of the box, no hand-holding required.
Are there any costs for the user associated with this?
There are other questions worth asking as well:
How many South Africans own personal computers? In absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population. Where do they live, how much do they earn? What sort of hardware are they buying, what operating system and applications are they using now? What is the street price for Windows, for Office, for PC games?
Is it a smart decision, the right decision, to be offering only Linux software?
Microsoft/Claria Deal Dead (July 12)
It re-writes hstory to suggest that Microsoft was an unknown quantity to IBM.
In three years, from 1975-1978, Microsoft had become dominant in computer languages for the eight-bit micros, with the release of MBASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL.
The iPOd is based on a proprietary OS licensed by Apple:
The iPod uses PortalPlayer's "Digital Media Platform", which is marketed as a turn-key solution as it includes System-On-Chip integrated circuits (ICs), a customizable firmware suite, integrated third party services, PC software, and so on. The iPod uses PortalPlayer's PP50xx chip, which contains two ARM7TDMI microprocessor cores. The iPod's embedded operating system, including its encoding and decoding components, also come from PortalPlayer. iPod's OS
Have you heard Steve Jobs whining about the The PortalPlayer Tax? I didn't think so.
because hot coffee is not effectively disabled when it can be easily unlocked on three different platforms.
because rockstar denied creating the sex game and became hopelessly entangled in this single, stupid, lie. its public relations offensive collapsing into mush.
god forbid that the government should take an interest in an industry that employs millions of people and generates billions in export dollars.
Here are some numbers for you:
Total Number of FBI employees 28,576
Special Agents 12,156
Support: 16,420 including 1,300 analysts and 1,000 IT specialists
Bureau Employees Permanently Stationed Overseas: 200
New Hires Since 9/11 5,606
The FBI Work Force By The Numbers (2004)
The federal government has the resources to investigate economic and property crimes that cross state and national boundaries. There is no hiding behind Osama's skirts.
Get a grip. GTA began as a video game. If it has become something more to you, if you keep talking to strangers like a man about to go postal, then just maybe the other side has a point.
With a magnifying glass. Maybe. Nothing to lose sleep over.
The role-playing of gang violence, violence against women, violence against the police, in GTA: San Andreas appeals to a young male demographic and to no one else. The entire genre of games of which GTA has become the symbol is profoundly distrusted and despised outside the gaming community. You have to see this clearly: The knives were out for Rockstar and a pliant ESRB ratings board long before Hot Coffee.
Rockstar made the ingenious and fatal argument that it was not responsible for a pornographic sex game which could only be unlocked through a trivial "third-party" mod. "Plausible Denial" is the operative phrase. It didn't work for Nixon and it didn't work for GTA: San Andreas.
You bet I am. My brother collapsed from a wasp sting this summer. No pulse. No breath when he reached the hospital. The next sting will hit harder and faster. It will never be safe for him to be caught without a hypo kit and a telephone. As an asthmatic, I have lived under similiar constraints since I was ten years old.
which means that sales will be restricted to the red-light district of your local adult bookstore. until the states and federal government impose mandatory rating systems with teeth.
The kid didn't burn AO content to disk in three different versions of GTA: San Andreas. The kid wasn't caught in a lie when the heat was on.
The more she does stupid things like this, the easier it will be to defeat her when she runs for President.
The role-playing of gang violence, violence against women, violence against the police, in GTA appeals to a young male demographic and to no one else.
You cannot overstate how deeply the gangster game genre is distrusted and despised outside the gaming community. I had a small taste of this when a teen shootout upstate played out like a parody of a GTA scenario. Hillary Clinton has been saying nothing more than what both the inner city and suburbia have wanted to hear for a very long time.
That 60% share you mention looks like the number from W3Schools.
NT and W2K were never sold to the masses. XP has been the default install on home computers, SOHO office machines and laptops for the better part of four years.
Meanwhile Linux will achieve 10% - possibly even 20% - market penetration
I think you need to be looking more closely and more critically at how Window's dominance outside the office affects the take-up of Linux in the office.
another Geek with an ego the size of the planet...
Ever wonder why you see so many dupes on Slashdot? The editors need to throw out a hunk of red meat every few minutes to keep the juices flowing.
Think AM Talk Radio in print. There is nothing to be gained by paying people to post here. Your voice just gets lost in all the shouting.
Few of these computers came with a standard keyboard. None had a modular design that made significant upgrades easy or even possible. You would be lucky to find one that offered a disk drive, 80 column printer or monitor, even as an option.
MBASIC was prized because it was as close to compatibility between systems as you could get.
The reason MS did so well was because they had the OS on the platform that emerged dominant. And the reason for this dominance is that IBM legitimised personal computing with the IBM PC. Business bought PCs, and people bought a home computer to be compatible with work.
"King's Quest" and "Commander Keen" demonstrated very early on that the MSDOS PC could be a very successful gaming platform. I'll take that as the divide between the PC as a SOHO dedicated office machine and the PC as a general-purpose home computer.
You'll find on Walmart.com a merry-go-round of Linux systems that come and go without making the slightest impression. Perhaps this week it will be Sun and JDS, and the next, Microtel and Xandros.
The one constant is Windows. Windows sells. It is strongly positioned in every niche but the very bottom, and the bottom isn't as attractive to Walmart as it used to be.
The poor aren't buying computers at any price, and the middle class, drawn to more upscale retailers like Target, hasn't shown the slightest interest in Linux.
You have an installed base of 300-500 million Windows systems, a platform that everyone builds for, and you wonder why hardware prices have come down?
Dell recently committed to buying 300,000 14" wide-screen laptops a month from a single Chinese OEM. That is one model in one segment of its Windows product line.
Windows flies out the door while FreeDOS sits on a pallete in a warehouse.
That is not Dell's way of doing business.
"Customers who discover that their copy of Windows is pirated have two options.
They can get a free version of Windows if they fill out a counterfeit report identifying the source of the software, providing proof of purchase and returning the counterfeit CD.
If they are unable to provide all the information, filling out a report will entitle them to receive a copy of Windows XP Home Edition for the reduced price of £56 or Windows XP Professional Edition for £86." Microsoft steps up piracy fight
Patent Law
Trademark Law
Copyright Law
Technology Contract law
Product Quality Law
Women are voting with their dollars. But their dollars aren't being spent on Grand Theft Auto. They are going to politicians who would rein in developers like Rockstar.
Depending on who you believe, sales of the Mac Mini run about 30-40,000 units a month. How many Mac minis did Apple sell last quarter? Nothing there to keep anyone awake.