'The day they invent replicators, will we all be paying merely for the raw material that bread and cars are made from (and the machines themselves?), or will you perhaps start thinking you deserve to be making a little extra cash in exchange for your recipe/car design/widget architecture that's not the latest craze sweeping the planet? "No, it'll be free just for the satisfaction of sharing my art." Well, unless you're producing raw carbon/silicon/iron, etc...you'll have to pay for it for your replicator to produce anything, and that money's gotta come from somewhere.'
The day they invent replicators I will still expect designers to be paid by the hour or by the design not to be paid everytime someone replicates. If it takes a year to develop a great design who will pay the great costs? I suspect that raw material and replicator manufacturers will be all too willing to cough up the dough. If raw materials are plentiful enough for everyone to replicate without concern then suddenly socialism becomes the ideal system with the free market relegated to service industries.
Nobody is claiming that those performing a more difficult or rare task shouldn't be paid for that. That doesn't mean that they should be paid on a model that rewards someone for the rest of their life for a task that they only performed once. The better the content creator the more you pay them per hour spent creating. Copyright does not exist for the benefit of content creators it exists for the benefit of the public. If copyright is allowing content producers to earn a living producing less than they otherwise would produce then it running contrary to its intent. It isn't as if anyone owes content producers a living via copyright, the burden is on content producers to find ways to profit from their skills.
Although you shouldn't fool yourself about the scarcity of content creators either, for every good content creator you have helped make a millionaire there are hundreds of equally skilled content creators starving or working at restaurants. Skilled writers, musicians, and artists have never been scarce; they only appear to be due a poor signal to noise ratio.
'Presumably you are referring to Mac OS X, because in Windows, you don't need a "service pack" to get new drivers - they come on a CD with the hardware you buy, or you get them of the Internet. That's why XP is still clicking with hardware that was released 5 years after it.'
If you are willing to settle for that then you could skip even the service pack. However I was referring to updating the included driver database so that you don't need to load a disk for every common piece of hardware you plug in. I realize plug and play has been a pretty terrible concept on windows from the get go and that hardware actually being loaded and available upon plugging it in is a rare experience under windows but that doesn't mean you should give up on the concept altogether.
Just build a social networking site that revolves around music then. Let those who do have time rate the songs they listen to and associate it with a genre. Those who don't have time just look at the stuff that tops the charts. The site profits via advertising. Then you don't need the labels anymore.
After you eat the loaf the baker made he doesn't get a cut everytime someone bakes a loaf like it afterward. If he wants to get paid again he has to bake another loaf. Why shouldn't you?
okay. So Vista didn't destroy your computing experience. Great.
'Vista is the next version of the OS with the broadest hardware and software compatibility. $109 is a pretty cheap price for that.'
Can you think of any compelling reason why you should be paying $109 for a new version of the OS instead of receiving a free service pack that updates the driver database with new drivers?
'Most people using Linux in the workplace already have their preferred Linux hardware vendor. Most people that are Dell shops are MS exclusively.'
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that Dell wouldn't be interested in investing the time and effort in stable linux support on their hardware in order to sell to their existing customers. They are doing this in hopes of gaining a piece of the millions of computers running linux.
'Verifying hardware and drivers and support staff will take time and money. They can't switch overnight, not Dell. They are too big to do it quickly. If they don't do it right the first time, they will alienate everybody that may have been interested in the past as well as losing the money they spent on failing. If they take their time and do it right, they can start eating in to HP and other hardware vendors that ship with Linux certified.'
On that point I couldn't agree more. When this is done and it is successful it will be a huge milestone for Linux. First Linux was considered a joke for actual use. It wasn't polished like windows and wasn't considered stable and secure like traditional unix. Then it creeped into the server and now it is a proven and even common server solution. Now Linux is generally considered the ideal choice for the backroom unless vendor lockin ties your business to a windows only feature. In recognition of this Dell offers server systems with Linux pre-installed. This will be the next step that means that means the time of Linux on the business desktop is here. It will take awhile to fill this segment. Just like it took awhile for Linux to move from internet related servers only to being accepted for every server room function. Eventually the secretary will be running Linux and it will be informally trickling into the home user desktop.
Every year they claim it is the year of the linux desktop. What people seem to forget is that Linux will never go out of business. The linux on the desktop cause has no need for this year to be the year. Five, ten, or twenty years from now is just as good as this year. Every year the linux desktops outpace the proprietary systems in development and close compatability gaps. Every year the desktops become more polished and suitable for new classes of users. Every year the battles in the real desktop war, that of mindshare, continue to be won and the current desktop monopoly retreats a bit more.
'If your program doesnt install correctly on your Dell, you call MS, not Dell.'
bzzzt wrong. Dell and every other major vendor ships an OEM copy of windows with their machine. Support for windows and all the other oem software shipped with the machine is provided by Dell. If you call MS they will want per incident fees.
'I dont understand why tech support would be the thing holding Dell back. Maybe this is a cop-out?'
It isn't like Dell is saying that Linux isn't coming. They just have a certification process to make sure the hardware is well supported before they ship anything preloaded on their systems. They do the same thing before offering hardware with any particular version of windows as well.
Now no. That is a product that must become available before common household applications come to light. As long as it costs $50+ they won't be used much so this has a long way to go. If they are mass produced in a lightweight handheld version with an idiotified interface then I can see this being used all over the place.
That really isn't different than a number of similar windows scenerios I remember from phone tech support. For instance:
tech: what seems to be the problem? customer: the internet is broken. tech: the internet is broken? What do you mean? Do you mean that you are unable to retrieve email or that web pages don't come up? customer: don't talk down to me. I'm a NASA engineer. tech: oh I see, the internet is broken. What web browser are you running? customer: hunh? What is that? tech: you know the thing you use to browse the internet customer: browse the internet? I just go online. tech: ooookay, when you go online do you click the big blue E? customer: yeah, yeah it is a blue e with a swirl thing around it
I remember repeating this process at least 10 times a day at sony and during a brief spell at bellsouth that is practically all I did. KDE and GNOME would be the same thing with different questions. There was also a similar experience when win98se/ME/win2k were around the steps were different in each and the customer would usually tell you they had windows 95 no matter what they were running.
'An application crash has zero to do with the OS it's running on.'
Unless of course a bug in the OS or system libraries caused the crash. A VM problem can crash an app in a heartbeat and that has everything to do with the OS. An explorer crash that hides the application and displays a grey box instead of the flight arrivals application at the airport is also a direct failure of the OS (at least microsoft claims explorer is part of the OS).
Some of it depends upon your definition of OS. I personally like a clinical definition that excludes everything but the kernel. But in the windows world there is no difference between the OS and the core distribution since users do not have the option to seperate the two. So when talking about windows I am referring to all bundled software that can't be removed through add/remove programs.
No question about it, DOS stability was the direct result of its simplicity. There is still no reason I can think of for ships computers which run entirely proprietary and custom applications to run a complex OS. They need disk io, memory management, a network stack (in some cases), and a console display.
Actually the error was too fuzzy to read but it wasn't a blue screen of death proper. It was a normal grey fatal error window. The flight information application and any desktop contents were missing from the display so I can only assume that it was an explorer crash of some sort or the application was started was the 'shell'.
As you said though, when the application you are running is the nuclear launch sequence initializer application this can be a fairly serious problem.
'I was just saying that Windows may not be as bad as some people would think, especially in these non-DOS days.'
I'd rather see DOS 6.22 running than windows on a mission critical system. You couldn't do much with DOS but it didn't really crash much when operated within parameters.
I suspect you didn't really mean DOS though, I suspect you meant pre-NT-style windows. I haven't seen NT style windows to be all its cracked up to be. My observations are that security features are more abundent but severe actively exploited security flaws are as well. Crashes are less frequent but that is offset by performance issues WinXP runs dog slow compared to win98se on the same hardware and crashes certainly still occur. Spyware seems to be a bigger issue on NT systems, using the so called permissions to run with full system privs so that even the administrator can't stop them once they are running. Some spyware you actually have to remove from the recovery console!
All in all I'd still take NT systems over preNT microsoft but I wouldn't run either on a warship.
You do realize there are sites full of nothing but pictures of BSOD/other errors on closed systems with a dedicated purpose, no internet access, and running a single application? The last such system I saw was at the Miami Internation Airport about two weeks ago. Just as you approach security you look up and there is a monitor with blue background and a windows fatal error popped up on the screen.
A competent windows admin can harden windows, he can harden it more than an incompetent *nix admin can. But windows simply can't be hardened to the degree that *nix can. With a *nix system you can remove everything that is not neccesary right down to unused kernel components. You will never be able to say that, windows will always have tens of thousands of lines of code with bug potential running that have nothing to do with your application.
The interface is also fairly irrelevent when you are running a single application fullscreen. These aren't desktops.
'#1. The "support" has to include ALL the hardware on the box.
Why wouldn't it?'
It is not unusual to see a supposedly linux compatable system with an unsupported sound card or winmodem. Or a desktop with sata1, sata2, and ide where the sata or sata2 controllers aren't supported. I would take this a step further, it isn't enough for all the hardware to be supported, all the functionality supported for that hardware on the windows system but be supported under Linux as well.
'The problem is that many (but certianly not all) people are attracted to Linux because it's "free," but what they tend to ignore is all the time and effort they spend selecting, installing, configuring, and self-supporting a distribution and/or the associated hardware, by which I mean the Linux user is generally his own tech support. When someone else takes on those roles, the costs shift accordingly, and you pay for it in dollars rather than man hours. For some reason, seeing their man hours of work translated into $100-$200 is shocking, and people think "I'll just buy the Windows system and install Linux myself." What they need to realize that Linux is not "free as in beer," because there is no such thing.'
I can easily setup most linux configurations in half the time I can setup a comparable windows configuration. Of course that assumes linux compatable hardware. There is no reason that Dell couldn't manage to do the same. First, most people are their own tech support when running windows as well. Have you ever wasted time calling Microsoft or a pc vendor? Few people make that mistake twice unless hardware fails and they have to RMA something. Second, you strongly imply that Linux somehow takes more time to configure and administer than windows and that is simply false.
'The gap widens further when you factor in the lack of "advertising" (in the form of pre-installed trial software).'
That is a valid point. However when purchasing a windows machine from Dell you can pick a radio button to not have that software installed without a price change. If it doesn't add to my price tag to choose the windows system without the preinstalled software than Dell should not charge more for a linux system without said software.
'what total nonsense. WInzip isnt popular because of piracy. Its popular because the demo has no serious usage limitatiomns.'
There are loads of applications that work as well as winzip and many of them offer fully functional trials as well. With Winzip on day 31 the program remains fully functional and you ARE pirating the software. Simply because Winzip makes piracy effortless does not mean that it isn't piracy!
'And I'm sick of hearing this nonsense about people being placed neatly in the 'legit user' or 'leeching pirate scum' category. There are shades of grey in verything. Many people pirating games still pay for a MMORPG account. Many people who buy all their games will admit to maybe having a dodgy copy of photoshop. Saying pirates wouldnt buy anyway is just self-justification to make those pirates seem less like leeches for doing what they do.'
Without question but people who pirate photoshop are still people who wouldn't pay for photoshop anyway regardless of whether or not they pay for games. The biggest pirate category is probably those who buy one copy of an application and then install it on all their computers.
'If someone was vandalising my house, I might feel that it was just- or at least practical- to break the guy's f*****g arm. Whether this is actually right is another issue.'
It doesn't change your point that people often want extreme revenge against those who do them wrongs but it is worth pointing out that a vandal is harming you via your property. The developer(s) haven't been wronged by those they are attacking in any way. Even the bandwidth required to distribute the material would be expended in this case when the demo is distributed so the infringer isn't even costing him that.
'I'm not convinced that this is axiomatic.'
No, but examples that prove the point are easily found. This is a well established argument that has been debated many times before and I will refrain from engaging in that same debate again. An excellent example is probably the most commonly pirated program in existance; winzip.
He has already distributed them a copy of his software. It is impossible to steal an intangible item. Can't be done. Almost everyone who pirates software doesn't buy software and therefore would never have bought this software. Since it is a digital copy then pirating the software costs the developers nothing (except some bandwidth that they would have expended distributing their demo anyway). If anything piracy helps grow the userbase of an application. Look at winzip, it is pirated so heavily that people actually think its free. If it weren't for piracy nobody would have ever heard of winzip.
This is not a piracy deterent anyway. It is a developer who thinks the software belongs to him (copyright items are literally ideas and therefore unownable, he owns a copyright and that is it) and that anyone who manages to get a copy without him getting a chunk of change is stealing from him. This pissed him off and pissed him off some more until he implemented this measure out of spite figuring that if he couldn't stop the piracy he would at least get revenge. This is also illustrated in his comments that if piracy doesn't stop then development would stop. This is not rational thought, since piracy has little or no impact on legitimate sales he is simply picking a target for his frustration and venting on that target.
Finally, whether i am pirating your software or not, you have no right to do ANYTHING on my machine without explicit authorization.
So you're saying that you don't think he cares about getting justice. You believe that he acting out of pure spite?
Could be. I have met numerous emotionally imbalanced individuals who would act in this manner. They care more getting their revenge against those who have committed imaginary slights than about progressing and growing in their own lives. In this case his revenge against people who weren't hurting him in any way (if anything an application gains a larger user base through piracy since those who pirate software aren't the people who would buy the program anyway) and it will certainly hurt his business. This will probably destroy his application.
'there is only your bigotry to suggest that it would be any more flawed than anyone else's.'
I am not saying there is any security flaw in this issue. But bigotry doesn't really fit when someone bases their performance expectations on a proven performance track record. Microsoft has a well earned reputation for faulty security and poor implementation that is backed by a solid (or unsolid as the case may be) track record that dates back as far as the company and those problems have gotten worse over time. There may be lower profile companies with worse records but there aren't really any high profile companies with such a poor track record that I am aware of. Hence, the actual odds of coming up with a solution that is not flawed from a random respected high profile development team are far lower than from Microsoft. Unfortunately a solid, secure, and fast implementation from Microsoft would be the exception rather than the rule.
You may like Microsoft programs. You may believe they make great stuff that is easy to implement. But that doesn't change the fact that a betting man would choose another vendor when looking for a solution that requires fast performance, interoperability, stability, security, or any sort of critical data handling. If a betting man is choosing Microsoft solutions then these are secondary requirements for him (he may have decided that Microsoft solutions meet the 'good enough' benchmark in these areas) and some other primary concern such as ease of implmentation or conformity (so that one might interoperate with others who also conform) is the most important criteria.
'Obviously your scenario is not comparable because you don't get to take %'s of revenue from your customers just for repairing their machine, which makes me wonder why you even proffered it - but there you go;)'
Because it is an irrelevant point. If the revenue source were illegal then it would be the entire point but the revenue source is perfectly legal in this case. The business google is engaged in is 100% legal from source to destination.
You also seem to be ignoring the biggest point of all. Here in the US nobody is a criminal or guilty of breaking a law until the point has been proven in a court of law. Now there is a chain of people needed to establish whether or not criminal activity is occuring, first there is the person/customer/company themselves; next comes the police; then the district attorney has to feel there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing; and then comes both a judge and a jury of peers. Last I checked neither I nor Google are in the list. Niether of us are qualified to determine what actions are legal or not (especially actions like copyright infringment that aren't even criminal matters). Niether of us are in the moral right if we punish you by refusing to business with you despite the fact that you have never been shown to do anything wrong.
'I wouldn't go so far. In principle, they can be; in practice, they are somewhat harmonized (kiddie-porn and murder are immoral and illegal for basically the same ultimate reasons). It's not necessarily a perfect harmony, though.'
Just because some things are both does not make a harmony between the two concepts.
For instance, wet and delicious are two unrelated concepts yet lobster is both. Being wet does not make the lobster delicious anymore than being legal makes moral actions moral.
Personally I think we should find out what utility company provided the electricity that enabled these violent criminals (okay so they commited no violence or actions which were immoral, only illegal) to commit these heinous acts and chase them down with pitchforks! Or water, lets go after the water provider. How about their maid? That's vile hag is clearly responsible. Their mechanic? Yup, we gotta kill him off too! How about the restaurant they ate at last night?
Google provides advertising. It is not their responsibility to judge their customers or their activities. It is not for Google to investigate and determine if in Google's opinion their activities are illegal. The only time Google should need concern themselves is if the image of the site would negatively reflect upon Google's own image.
'you are clearly working with criminals you have a moral and legal obligation to stop dealing with them'
Now now, lets not confuse legality with morality. Criminal activities aren't neccesarily immoral. Legal and moral are entirely unrelated concepts. You have a legal obligation if the law says so. You have a moral obligation if you a dealing with someone who is doing something immoral.
'Why is everyone defending this?'
I run a respectable computer service business. My business is fixing computers not judging customers. I don't care what activities my customers engage in; even with the computers. They could be into porn, the mob, neo-nazi's, democrats, or republicans. I am not the police nor am I a judge. I provide and repair tools I am not responsible for how people choose to use those tools.
I don't see that Google has any responsibility to police websites anymore than automotive shop that fixed the site owner's car last week had an obligation to refuse him service. That responsibility falls on others.
'Ooh but it does contradicts your statement that Adam Smith advocated "that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others." Caring about and taking care of others as Smith advocated is totally different than driving a luxury vehicle despite the consequences.'
How so? Smith is maintaining that your right to a luxury vehicle trumps the right of someone less fortunate to eat. Simply because he doesn't believe you will choose the luxury vehicle over your fellow man doesn't change that.
'How many choices of landline phone service do you have? Now compare it to how many choices of cellphone service you have. While there is no competition for landline service, it's a government granted monopoly, many places have at least two competitors to choose from for cellphone service. And because of this cellphone service is cheaper unless the phone is used alot, then again if it is used a lot but it's used for long distance it's still cheaper. The only phone I have is a cellphone, though I don't use it much most of my airtime is long distance which the service provider does not charge for and I pay less than when I had a landline. Though the cellphone market isn't truely a free market it is a lot more open than landline service and is cheaper for many. VOIP is also having an impact on phone service.'
You are picking a young market. That hardly tells us anything about where a free market ends up. Landline phones started with a series of patents and men with clubs so lets look elsewhere for mature markets. How about soda, tobacco or credit cards. Last I checked there is an illusion of lots of choices in areas but these markets are ultimately controlled by one or two massive conglomerates. There are regulations but they apply to all the competitors equally so it is safe to say they aren't responsible for the lack of competition.
Slashdot Mirror
'The day they invent replicators, will we all be paying merely for the raw material that bread and cars are made from (and the machines themselves?), or will you perhaps start thinking you deserve to be making a little extra cash in exchange for your recipe/car design/widget architecture that's not the latest craze sweeping the planet? "No, it'll be free just for the satisfaction of sharing my art." Well, unless you're producing raw carbon/silicon/iron, etc...you'll have to pay for it for your replicator to produce anything, and that money's gotta come from somewhere.'
The day they invent replicators I will still expect designers to be paid by the hour or by the design not to be paid everytime someone replicates. If it takes a year to develop a great design who will pay the great costs? I suspect that raw material and replicator manufacturers will be all too willing to cough up the dough. If raw materials are plentiful enough for everyone to replicate without concern then suddenly socialism becomes the ideal system with the free market relegated to service industries.
Nobody is claiming that those performing a more difficult or rare task shouldn't be paid for that. That doesn't mean that they should be paid on a model that rewards someone for the rest of their life for a task that they only performed once. The better the content creator the more you pay them per hour spent creating. Copyright does not exist for the benefit of content creators it exists for the benefit of the public. If copyright is allowing content producers to earn a living producing less than they otherwise would produce then it running contrary to its intent. It isn't as if anyone owes content producers a living via copyright, the burden is on content producers to find ways to profit from their skills.
Although you shouldn't fool yourself about the scarcity of content creators either, for every good content creator you have helped make a millionaire there are hundreds of equally skilled content creators starving or working at restaurants. Skilled writers, musicians, and artists have never been scarce; they only appear to be due a poor signal to noise ratio.
'Presumably you are referring to Mac OS X, because in Windows, you don't need a "service pack" to get new drivers - they come on a CD with the hardware you buy, or you get them of the Internet. That's why XP is still clicking with hardware that was released 5 years after it.'
If you are willing to settle for that then you could skip even the service pack. However I was referring to updating the included driver database so that you don't need to load a disk for every common piece of hardware you plug in. I realize plug and play has been a pretty terrible concept on windows from the get go and that hardware actually being loaded and available upon plugging it in is a rare experience under windows but that doesn't mean you should give up on the concept altogether.
Just build a social networking site that revolves around music then. Let those who do have time rate the songs they listen to and associate it with a genre. Those who don't have time just look at the stuff that tops the charts. The site profits via advertising. Then you don't need the labels anymore.
After you eat the loaf the baker made he doesn't get a cut everytime someone bakes a loaf like it afterward. If he wants to get paid again he has to bake another loaf. Why shouldn't you?
okay. So Vista didn't destroy your computing experience. Great.
'Vista is the next version of the OS with the broadest hardware and software compatibility. $109 is a pretty cheap price for that.'
Can you think of any compelling reason why you should be paying $109 for a new version of the OS instead of receiving a free service pack that updates the driver database with new drivers?
'Most people using Linux in the workplace already have their preferred Linux hardware vendor. Most people that are Dell shops are MS exclusively.'
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that Dell wouldn't be interested in investing the time and effort in stable linux support on their hardware in order to sell to their existing customers. They are doing this in hopes of gaining a piece of the millions of computers running linux.
'Verifying hardware and drivers and support staff will take time and money. They can't switch overnight, not Dell. They are too big to do it quickly. If they don't do it right the first time, they will alienate everybody that may have been interested in the past as well as losing the money they spent on failing. If they take their time and do it right, they can start eating in to HP and other hardware vendors that ship with Linux certified.'
On that point I couldn't agree more. When this is done and it is successful it will be a huge milestone for Linux. First Linux was considered a joke for actual use. It wasn't polished like windows and wasn't considered stable and secure like traditional unix. Then it creeped into the server and now it is a proven and even common server solution. Now Linux is generally considered the ideal choice for the backroom unless vendor lockin ties your business to a windows only feature. In recognition of this Dell offers server systems with Linux pre-installed. This will be the next step that means that means the time of Linux on the business desktop is here. It will take awhile to fill this segment. Just like it took awhile for Linux to move from internet related servers only to being accepted for every server room function. Eventually the secretary will be running Linux and it will be informally trickling into the home user desktop.
Every year they claim it is the year of the linux desktop. What people seem to forget is that Linux will never go out of business. The linux on the desktop cause has no need for this year to be the year. Five, ten, or twenty years from now is just as good as this year. Every year the linux desktops outpace the proprietary systems in development and close compatability gaps. Every year the desktops become more polished and suitable for new classes of users. Every year the battles in the real desktop war, that of mindshare, continue to be won and the current desktop monopoly retreats a bit more.
'If your program doesnt install correctly on your Dell, you call MS, not Dell.'
bzzzt wrong. Dell and every other major vendor ships an OEM copy of windows with their machine. Support for windows and all the other oem software shipped with the machine is provided by Dell. If you call MS they will want per incident fees.
'I dont understand why tech support would be the thing holding Dell back. Maybe this is a cop-out?'
It isn't like Dell is saying that Linux isn't coming. They just have a certification process to make sure the hardware is well supported before they ship anything preloaded on their systems. They do the same thing before offering hardware with any particular version of windows as well.
Now no. That is a product that must become available before common household applications come to light. As long as it costs $50+ they won't be used much so this has a long way to go. If they are mass produced in a lightweight handheld version with an idiotified interface then I can see this being used all over the place.
That really isn't different than a number of similar windows scenerios I remember from phone tech support. For instance:
tech: what seems to be the problem?
customer: the internet is broken.
tech: the internet is broken? What do you mean? Do you mean that you are unable to retrieve email or that web pages don't come up?
customer: don't talk down to me. I'm a NASA engineer.
tech: oh I see, the internet is broken. What web browser are you running?
customer: hunh? What is that?
tech: you know the thing you use to browse the internet
customer: browse the internet? I just go online.
tech: ooookay, when you go online do you click the big blue E?
customer: yeah, yeah it is a blue e with a swirl thing around it
I remember repeating this process at least 10 times a day at sony and during a brief spell at bellsouth that is practically all I did. KDE and GNOME would be the same thing with different questions. There was also a similar experience when win98se/ME/win2k were around the steps were different in each and the customer would usually tell you they had windows 95 no matter what they were running.
'An application crash has zero to do with the OS it's running on.'
Unless of course a bug in the OS or system libraries caused the crash. A VM problem can crash an app in a heartbeat and that has everything to do with the OS. An explorer crash that hides the application and displays a grey box instead of the flight arrivals application at the airport is also a direct failure of the OS (at least microsoft claims explorer is part of the OS).
Some of it depends upon your definition of OS. I personally like a clinical definition that excludes everything but the kernel. But in the windows world there is no difference between the OS and the core distribution since users do not have the option to seperate the two. So when talking about windows I am referring to all bundled software that can't be removed through add/remove programs.
No question about it, DOS stability was the direct result of its simplicity. There is still no reason I can think of for ships computers which run entirely proprietary and custom applications to run a complex OS. They need disk io, memory management, a network stack (in some cases), and a console display.
Actually the error was too fuzzy to read but it wasn't a blue screen of death proper. It was a normal grey fatal error window. The flight information application and any desktop contents were missing from the display so I can only assume that it was an explorer crash of some sort or the application was started was the 'shell'.
As you said though, when the application you are running is the nuclear launch sequence initializer application this can be a fairly serious problem.
'I was just saying that Windows may not be as bad as some people would think, especially in these non-DOS days.'
I'd rather see DOS 6.22 running than windows on a mission critical system. You couldn't do much with DOS but it didn't really crash much when operated within parameters.
I suspect you didn't really mean DOS though, I suspect you meant pre-NT-style windows. I haven't seen NT style windows to be all its cracked up to be. My observations are that security features are more abundent but severe actively exploited security flaws are as well. Crashes are less frequent but that is offset by performance issues WinXP runs dog slow compared to win98se on the same hardware and crashes certainly still occur. Spyware seems to be a bigger issue on NT systems, using the so called permissions to run with full system privs so that even the administrator can't stop them once they are running. Some spyware you actually have to remove from the recovery console!
All in all I'd still take NT systems over preNT microsoft but I wouldn't run either on a warship.
You do realize there are sites full of nothing but pictures of BSOD/other errors on closed systems with a dedicated purpose, no internet access, and running a single application? The last such system I saw was at the Miami Internation Airport about two weeks ago. Just as you approach security you look up and there is a monitor with blue background and a windows fatal error popped up on the screen.
A competent windows admin can harden windows, he can harden it more than an incompetent *nix admin can. But windows simply can't be hardened to the degree that *nix can. With a *nix system you can remove everything that is not neccesary right down to unused kernel components. You will never be able to say that, windows will always have tens of thousands of lines of code with bug potential running that have nothing to do with your application.
The interface is also fairly irrelevent when you are running a single application fullscreen. These aren't desktops.
'#1. The "support" has to include ALL the hardware on the box.
Why wouldn't it?'
It is not unusual to see a supposedly linux compatable system with an unsupported sound card or winmodem. Or a desktop with sata1, sata2, and ide where the sata or sata2 controllers aren't supported. I would take this a step further, it isn't enough for all the hardware to be supported, all the functionality supported for that hardware on the windows system but be supported under Linux as well.
'The problem is that many (but certianly not all) people are attracted to Linux because it's "free," but what they tend to ignore is all the time and effort they spend selecting, installing, configuring, and self-supporting a distribution and/or the associated hardware, by which I mean the Linux user is generally his own tech support. When someone else takes on those roles, the costs shift accordingly, and you pay for it in dollars rather than man hours. For some reason, seeing their man hours of work translated into $100-$200 is shocking, and people think "I'll just buy the Windows system and install Linux myself." What they need to realize that Linux is not "free as in beer," because there is no such thing.'
I can easily setup most linux configurations in half the time I can setup a comparable windows configuration. Of course that assumes linux compatable hardware. There is no reason that Dell couldn't manage to do the same. First, most people are their own tech support when running windows as well. Have you ever wasted time calling Microsoft or a pc vendor? Few people make that mistake twice unless hardware fails and they have to RMA something. Second, you strongly imply that Linux somehow takes more time to configure and administer than windows and that is simply false.
'The gap widens further when you factor in the lack of "advertising" (in the form of pre-installed trial software).'
That is a valid point. However when purchasing a windows machine from Dell you can pick a radio button to not have that software installed without a price change. If it doesn't add to my price tag to choose the windows system without the preinstalled software than Dell should not charge more for a linux system without said software.
'what total nonsense. WInzip isnt popular because of piracy. Its popular because the demo has no serious usage limitatiomns.'
There are loads of applications that work as well as winzip and many of them offer fully functional trials as well. With Winzip on day 31 the program remains fully functional and you ARE pirating the software. Simply because Winzip makes piracy effortless does not mean that it isn't piracy!
'And I'm sick of hearing this nonsense about people being placed neatly in the 'legit user' or 'leeching pirate scum' category. There are shades of grey in verything. Many people pirating games still pay for a MMORPG account. Many people who buy all their games will admit to maybe having a dodgy copy of photoshop.
Saying pirates wouldnt buy anyway is just self-justification to make those pirates seem less like leeches for doing what they do.'
Without question but people who pirate photoshop are still people who wouldn't pay for photoshop anyway regardless of whether or not they pay for games. The biggest pirate category is probably those who buy one copy of an application and then install it on all their computers.
'If someone was vandalising my house, I might feel that it was just- or at least practical- to break the guy's f*****g arm. Whether this is actually right is another issue.'
It doesn't change your point that people often want extreme revenge against those who do them wrongs but it is worth pointing out that a vandal is harming you via your property. The developer(s) haven't been wronged by those they are attacking in any way. Even the bandwidth required to distribute the material would be expended in this case when the demo is distributed so the infringer isn't even costing him that.
'I'm not convinced that this is axiomatic.'
No, but examples that prove the point are easily found. This is a well established argument that has been debated many times before and I will refrain from engaging in that same debate again. An excellent example is probably the most commonly pirated program in existance; winzip.
He has already distributed them a copy of his software. It is impossible to steal an intangible item. Can't be done. Almost everyone who pirates software doesn't buy software and therefore would never have bought this software. Since it is a digital copy then pirating the software costs the developers nothing (except some bandwidth that they would have expended distributing their demo anyway). If anything piracy helps grow the userbase of an application. Look at winzip, it is pirated so heavily that people actually think its free. If it weren't for piracy nobody would have ever heard of winzip.
This is not a piracy deterent anyway. It is a developer who thinks the software belongs to him (copyright items are literally ideas and therefore unownable, he owns a copyright and that is it) and that anyone who manages to get a copy without him getting a chunk of change is stealing from him. This pissed him off and pissed him off some more until he implemented this measure out of spite figuring that if he couldn't stop the piracy he would at least get revenge. This is also illustrated in his comments that if piracy doesn't stop then development would stop. This is not rational thought, since piracy has little or no impact on legitimate sales he is simply picking a target for his frustration and venting on that target.
Finally, whether i am pirating your software or not, you have no right to do ANYTHING on my machine without explicit authorization.
So you're saying that you don't think he cares about getting justice. You believe that he acting out of pure spite?
Could be. I have met numerous emotionally imbalanced individuals who would act in this manner. They care more getting their revenge against those who have committed imaginary slights than about progressing and growing in their own lives. In this case his revenge against people who weren't hurting him in any way (if anything an application gains a larger user base through piracy since those who pirate software aren't the people who would buy the program anyway) and it will certainly hurt his business. This will probably destroy his application.
'there is only your bigotry to suggest that it would be any more flawed than anyone else's.'
I am not saying there is any security flaw in this issue. But bigotry doesn't really fit when someone bases their performance expectations on a proven performance track record. Microsoft has a well earned reputation for faulty security and poor implementation that is backed by a solid (or unsolid as the case may be) track record that dates back as far as the company and those problems have gotten worse over time. There may be lower profile companies with worse records but there aren't really any high profile companies with such a poor track record that I am aware of. Hence, the actual odds of coming up with a solution that is not flawed from a random respected high profile development team are far lower than from Microsoft. Unfortunately a solid, secure, and fast implementation from Microsoft would be the exception rather than the rule.
You may like Microsoft programs. You may believe they make great stuff that is easy to implement. But that doesn't change the fact that a betting man would choose another vendor when looking for a solution that requires fast performance, interoperability, stability, security, or any sort of critical data handling. If a betting man is choosing Microsoft solutions then these are secondary requirements for him (he may have decided that Microsoft solutions meet the 'good enough' benchmark in these areas) and some other primary concern such as ease of implmentation or conformity (so that one might interoperate with others who also conform) is the most important criteria.
'Obviously your scenario is not comparable because you don't get to take %'s of revenue from your customers just for repairing their machine, which makes me wonder why you even proffered it - but there you go ;)'
Because it is an irrelevant point. If the revenue source were illegal then it would be the entire point but the revenue source is perfectly legal in this case. The business google is engaged in is 100% legal from source to destination.
You also seem to be ignoring the biggest point of all. Here in the US nobody is a criminal or guilty of breaking a law until the point has been proven in a court of law. Now there is a chain of people needed to establish whether or not criminal activity is occuring, first there is the person/customer/company themselves; next comes the police; then the district attorney has to feel there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing; and then comes both a judge and a jury of peers. Last I checked neither I nor Google are in the list. Niether of us are qualified to determine what actions are legal or not (especially actions like copyright infringment that aren't even criminal matters). Niether of us are in the moral right if we punish you by refusing to business with you despite the fact that you have never been shown to do anything wrong.
'I wouldn't go so far. In principle, they can be; in practice, they are somewhat harmonized (kiddie-porn and murder are immoral and illegal for basically the same ultimate reasons). It's not necessarily a perfect harmony, though.'
Just because some things are both does not make a harmony between the two concepts.
For instance, wet and delicious are two unrelated concepts yet lobster is both. Being wet does not make the lobster delicious anymore than being legal makes moral actions moral.
Personally I think we should find out what utility company provided the electricity that enabled these violent criminals (okay so they commited no violence or actions which were immoral, only illegal) to commit these heinous acts and chase them down with pitchforks! Or water, lets go after the water provider. How about their maid? That's vile hag is clearly responsible. Their mechanic? Yup, we gotta kill him off too! How about the restaurant they ate at last night?
Google provides advertising. It is not their responsibility to judge their customers or their activities. It is not for Google to investigate and determine if in Google's opinion their activities are illegal. The only time Google should need concern themselves is if the image of the site would negatively reflect upon Google's own image.
'you are clearly working with criminals you have a moral and legal obligation to stop dealing with them'
Now now, lets not confuse legality with morality. Criminal activities aren't neccesarily immoral. Legal and moral are entirely unrelated concepts. You have a legal obligation if the law says so. You have a moral obligation if you a dealing with someone who is doing something immoral.
'Why is everyone defending this?'
I run a respectable computer service business. My business is fixing computers not judging customers. I don't care what activities my customers engage in; even with the computers. They could be into porn, the mob, neo-nazi's, democrats, or republicans. I am not the police nor am I a judge. I provide and repair tools I am not responsible for how people choose to use those tools.
I don't see that Google has any responsibility to police websites anymore than automotive shop that fixed the site owner's car last week had an obligation to refuse him service. That responsibility falls on others.
'Ooh but it does contradicts your statement that Adam Smith advocated "that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others." Caring about and taking care of others as Smith advocated is totally different than driving a luxury vehicle despite the consequences.'
How so? Smith is maintaining that your right to a luxury vehicle trumps the right of someone less fortunate to eat. Simply because he doesn't believe you will choose the luxury vehicle over your fellow man doesn't change that.
'How many choices of landline phone service do you have? Now compare it to how many choices of cellphone service you have. While there is no competition for landline service, it's a government granted monopoly, many places have at least two competitors to choose from for cellphone service. And because of this cellphone service is cheaper unless the phone is used alot, then again if it is used a lot but it's used for long distance it's still cheaper. The only phone I have is a cellphone, though I don't use it much most of my airtime is long distance which the service provider does not charge for and I pay less than when I had a landline. Though the cellphone market isn't truely a free market it is a lot more open than landline service and is cheaper for many. VOIP is also having an impact on phone service.'
You are picking a young market. That hardly tells us anything about where a free market ends up. Landline phones started with a series of patents and men with clubs so lets look elsewhere for mature markets. How about soda, tobacco or credit cards. Last I checked there is an illusion of lots of choices in areas but these markets are ultimately controlled by one or two massive conglomerates. There are regulations but they apply to all the competitors equally so it is safe to say they aren't responsible for the lack of competition.