"Why did Java take off at such tremendous speed and become so preeminent, when there are so many good languages out there?"
Because it is very hard to write bad code on it.
Wait a few years, and you get a (the only one today) maintanable codebase... And growing functionality (when everything else is stagnant)... And people start to respect the language.
What somehow contradicts your point is that people today are using computers. They didn't use them 2 decades ago, so they LEARNED how to use computers, and adapted to them.
But today, they refuse to learn how to use Linux. That happens because they aren't as compeled to learn Linux as they where compeled to learn "computers" at past. It can change (and only may change) if Linux becomes a lot more usable than Windows, but that must be a significative difference, like the GP says.
The problem is that it isn't only cooling, it is lost of solar energy what is much worse for agriculture (and basic human survivor) than global warming.
"B) There is NO WAY a single guy can run all those boxes. I'll defer to people who have been in this situation, but I suspect you'd need three guys to keep a hundred windows server farm from imploding."
No way that is true... Make it 10, then we can start to talk.
"I am curious if anyone has a good answer to this: supposing Microsoft were to raise their per-OS lisencing fees as retaliation against a PC manufacturer for selling a non-Microsoft OS, would they get sued for anticompetitive practices, or would they get away with it? Could they retaliate in other, more subtle ways?"
Microsoft was already sued because of worse things, and didn't stop the misbehaviour. Any OEM would be iluded if it thinks it can sue a competitive price (or anything else) out of MS.
Oh no... They have teeth, they just didn't have the chance of using it yet.
ECMA submitted the standard for ISO. ISO can't really edit it alone, since it would ceasse to be an ECMA standard, and as it is already a standard, it goes to fast tracking. Then, the draft goes to the members, so they can comment on it, and everybody can create a better standard toghether.
We are here now. ECMA simply refused to improve its standard to meet ISO expectations. ISO could take tha long route, and disscuss the subject for years, or it could take the short way, and decide now if they like or not the draft.
It choosed the short route, and 5 mounths from now the members will be able to show (or not) their teeth.
"The UN predicts several centimeters of raised sea-level over the coming century. That's what you're concerned about?"
Yep, there is where most people live. That means, it's where most people have everything they own. They may be able to escape, our economy, not.
"The fact that fertile growing regions might shift north by a few hundred miles?"
Give me a single piece of evidence that says that increasing the temperature (but not solar power) increases the fertility of land (I can give you several examples of the contrary). Permanently frozen lands excluded.
There is also the huge climate change, that will probably obsolet a lot of our housing investiment and take a lot of people lifes, the increase on wet of places that already have problems with it (that will probably be the most affected), and possible problems with the atmosphere (more tornadoes) and sea currents. Not to talk about the disruption that is already happenning at sea life.
I don't think it is a good idea to gamble on that.
They also have a custom delivery program, that creates a digitaly signed recipt at the client and enters the data directly at the database. The cost savings of this are huge.
After that, the data is analysed with data mining algorithms, correlated with other federal taxes and pernoal data, and a small* list of suspect declarations is automaticaly created for manual inspection. That makes things much faster and accurate.
In short, the governement gets much more by creating and distributing (for free) the program than by using paper. (Altough paper is still supported - your processing wil be slower on that case.)
*Not using paper also reduces the number of honest errors, helpping make the list small.
Here at Brazil most young people support free software. Since most young people are leftie, they correlate.
But taking only the young people as the sample, most free software supporters tend to the right (our right, that you'd probably still call left at the US).
There is a manual at www.debian.org, it shows how to include your project at Debian. You'll basicaly need to pack your code acordingly (what includes instalation procedures and minimal documentation) and get in touch with some Debian developer.
Keep in mind that Debian people is very anoyed with projects that are once included and never updated, so people may be a bit suspicious about you on the beginning.
One person salary isn't that different from the cost of the Microsoft solution (sometimes even lower) since he'll be over the machine just at instalation time. That is a really short time. (Hardware is relatively cheap, but you should take that into account too, samba runs on much cheaper hardware.)
And maintaining Samba is much cheaper than Windows. That counted on people time (as you said, that cost real $$$).
"A monopoly is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service..."
No, a monopoly is defined as a market situation where somebody DOMINATES the market of a product, having huge powers on its distribution. Google probably fits that (note that I said "arguably").
Slashdot Mirror
Are you implyig that Notepad is more usable than VI? No way... And I use Emacs...
Because it is very hard to write bad code on it.
Wait a few years, and you get a (the only one today) maintanable codebase... And growing functionality (when everything else is stagnant)... And people start to respect the language.
What somehow contradicts your point is that people today are using computers. They didn't use them 2 decades ago, so they LEARNED how to use computers, and adapted to them.
But today, they refuse to learn how to use Linux. That happens because they aren't as compeled to learn Linux as they where compeled to learn "computers" at past. It can change (and only may change) if Linux becomes a lot more usable than Windows, but that must be a significative difference, like the GP says.
I never saw a "mortal" using a monitor resolution that is not 800x600 on Windows. No problem here.
The problem is that it isn't only cooling, it is lost of solar energy what is much worse for agriculture (and basic human survivor) than global warming.
Don't forget that we (in a sense) are powered.
No way that is true... Make it 10, then we can start to talk.
Standardized DRM == no DRM.
As far as I know, Dell don't make devices. They just assembly them.
Microsoft was already sued because of worse things, and didn't stop the misbehaviour. Any OEM would be iluded if it thinks it can sue a competitive price (or anything else) out of MS.
You are wrong... Very wrong!
Debian wasn't the first distro.
Now... I won't contest the remainning :)
Oh no... They have teeth, they just didn't have the chance of using it yet.
ECMA submitted the standard for ISO. ISO can't really edit it alone, since it would ceasse to be an ECMA standard, and as it is already a standard, it goes to fast tracking. Then, the draft goes to the members, so they can comment on it, and everybody can create a better standard toghether.
We are here now. ECMA simply refused to improve its standard to meet ISO expectations. ISO could take tha long route, and disscuss the subject for years, or it could take the short way, and decide now if they like or not the draft.
It choosed the short route, and 5 mounths from now the members will be able to show (or not) their teeth.
Yep, there is where most people live. That means, it's where most people have everything they own. They may be able to escape, our economy, not.
Give me a single piece of evidence that says that increasing the temperature (but not solar power) increases the fertility of land (I can give you several examples of the contrary). Permanently frozen lands excluded.
There is also the huge climate change, that will probably obsolet a lot of our housing investiment and take a lot of people lifes, the increase on wet of places that already have problems with it (that will probably be the most affected), and possible problems with the atmosphere (more tornadoes) and sea currents. Not to talk about the disruption that is already happenning at sea life.
I don't think it is a good idea to gamble on that.
They also have a custom delivery program, that creates a digitaly signed recipt at the client and enters the data directly at the database. The cost savings of this are huge.
After that, the data is analysed with data mining algorithms, correlated with other federal taxes and pernoal data, and a small* list of suspect declarations is automaticaly created for manual inspection. That makes things much faster and accurate.
In short, the governement gets much more by creating and distributing (for free) the program than by using paper. (Altough paper is still supported - your processing wil be slower on that case.)
*Not using paper also reduces the number of honest errors, helpping make the list small.
Here at Brazil most young people support free software. Since most young people are leftie, they correlate.
But taking only the young people as the sample, most free software supporters tend to the right (our right, that you'd probably still call left at the US).
There is a manual at www.debian.org, it shows how to include your project at Debian. You'll basicaly need to pack your code acordingly (what includes instalation procedures and minimal documentation) and get in touch with some Debian developer.
Keep in mind that Debian people is very anoyed with projects that are once included and never updated, so people may be a bit suspicious about you on the beginning.
I search Wikipedia with Google...
One person salary isn't that different from the cost of the Microsoft solution (sometimes even lower) since he'll be over the machine just at instalation time. That is a really short time. (Hardware is relatively cheap, but you should take that into account too, samba runs on much cheaper hardware.)
And maintaining Samba is much cheaper than Windows. That counted on people time (as you said, that cost real $$$).
I 'm brazilian, and out there it is 30C (AKA 86F). No need for a warm feeling, your insensitive cloud. (But samba is welkome...)
No, a monopoly is defined as a market situation where somebody DOMINATES the market of a product, having huge powers on its distribution. Google probably fits that (note that I said "arguably").
Google is arguably a monopoly, and monopolies can't act any way they see fit.
Most bills are already written on as patches, with the authors indentified.
Too much water is also linked to lots of deaths cases every year (get your facts here).
If people are putting too much fluoride at your water, you should ask it to be reduced (how much is too much, by the way?), not banned.
Disks used to be measured on base 2 prefixes. It was a few years ago that they changed to base 10.
So we need a lawyer distribution program?
Why do people hate Sun? I remember there is a reason, but I cna't really remember what it is...