The first problem with that is that scsi drives usually carry a 5yr warranty, as opposed to the 1yr warranty IDE drives carry.
The second is that in terms of performance there is a reduced efficientcy for every drive added to a raid.
The third is that controllers to handle an increased amount of drives are orders of magnitude more expensive and you can only have 15 devices on a scsi chain. With 146gb drives that gives you a max of 2.1TB on a chain, with 250gb drives that becomes 3.7TB on a chain, yeah it's only a terabyte, a terabyte is nothing right?
Also lets talk about speed, the max speed you can get on scsi is 320mb/s sustained, a single scsi drive can give you that, a 3 drive can give you that all the time. A 4 drive will only give you that. a 5 drive raid will only give you that, etc etc etc.
Once you have at least 3 drives will give you that 320mb sustained, what your really talking about now isn't sustained transfer, but latency. When I request data, how soon does the transfer start. This is critical for some applications, like most databases and webservers, in which requests will be for small amounts of data but need to be served quickly.
There is actually some overhead with a raid in every access request, but this is actually where a scsi raid excels and you want more drives. If you have 3 drives, and 3 simultaneous requests, each request will be served with transfer time + access time + minimum controller overhead. But if you have 4, the 4th will be queued. If you had 4 drives it wouldn't be. In theory, the more drives you have, the more simultaneous requests you can handle with a minimum delay.
So in short, there is no reason why people wouldn't want larger drives, there IS reason to want more smaller drives, but it depends on your needs. You have to weigh the amount of data being stored, the size of your average request, and the number of simultaneous requests.
People argue whether more smaller drives, or a multiple of larger drives is faster, and the truth is that it depends.
"Business do not want high-capacity single SCSI drives"
Why? they make for higher capacity raids.
The more devices the controller has to be able to handle the more expensive, also although more drives means better overall performance, the overall efficiency goes down.
The big thing is like beggers home users have pretty much been locked out of SCSI. Even a single scsi drive yields better performance than an IDE drive.
If scsi drives were offered widely in home pc's, there would obviously be a performance increase, but also most of the artificial price increase would disappear from them. Manufacturing methods would also be improved to support the increased demand and controllers would be included onboard as IDE are now. Before you know it SCSI would be just as cheap as IDE is today.
Wouldn't that be better?
It would be good for other things too, for instance faster buses would have already taken off in your standard desktop instead of just being a secondary bus in a few desktop boards and server boards.
The result in the end would be cheaper, faster, more reliable storage and bus technologies for everyone. Too bad the drive manufacturers know that and do their best to keep scsi on the server;)
Yeah but they can't handle 320mb/sec thoughput it requires faster pci slots but those are present on pretty well all server boards and some workstation/desktop boards as well.
Also a 10k RPM scsi drive is a cheapy, generally they are 15k RPM.
You also generally use scsi in raid configuration. SATA raid devices generally don't compare to intelligent scsi raid controllers.
There is also the quality and warranty on the drives, usually 5yr or more warranty with priority replacements. The replacements are usually advance RMA as well, meaning they send you the new one upon calling and you send them the bad when it gets there.
If the data is valuable enough to justify an expenditure for scsi, you want scsi, period. SATA doesn't change that. Serial SCSI may, but not SATA. SATA will pretty much replace IDE raid (is replacing I should say) and when it's done there will be no such thing as standard IDE raid.
"Install the security software and configure the nic before you attach it to the cable."
Better yet, just do the install behind a firewalled router.
"USB drives are very handy for toting around the net install updates (including virus protection and AdAware/SpyBot/etc. updates) to prevent worms."
Handy for moving the data off the old system to if it's from anything not too terribly ancient.
"You also forgot removing all of the AOL/MSN/Compuserve complimentary crap."
Yup there is that, also you'll want to disable at least the services you know they aren't going to want. There are a couple registry hacks you'll want to perform to make IE perform multiple simultaneous connections. You'll want to uninstall windows messenger completely with a handy third party util.
There are alot of things I could have added to that, and alot of tricks you can do to save time in the process. I was really just trying to make the point that your average user couldn't handle it.
Even without data transfer at all, the average user would be stumped at step one, setting the cd correctly in the boot order to start the setup.
Most users I think could struggle through the actual installer itself, but that isn't even half of installing windows.
"But the embedded company is not distributing source code. They are distributing a binary module, which due to the number of inline functions in the linux kernel more than likely does contain some "kernel code", and so could be seen as a derived work"
Yes but the kernel is distributed under a modified GPL that explicitly allows this. People seem to forget that, the kernel is NOT under the standard GPL. What is questionable under the standard GPL may not be questionable under the GPL with the kernel. In fact, in the case of kernel modules it's not questionable at all.
Somewhere above you'll find someone who posted the letter they sent their congressmen and the cookie cutter response they got back.
I've sent numerous letters to congressmen and gotten the same responses back. THEY DON"T READ THEM. Some aid reads them. There could be millions flooding in and the congressman won't even know it happened.
"So what, we should do nothing then? Just sit back and take it?"
NO. But the easy way out, emailing or mailing a letter to your congressman isn't the answer either. You have to make your voice heard publically. We have to create such a load roar AMONG THE PUBLIC, that it is heard by the ears of our congressman.
This bribe from the RIAA doesn't mean much if he knows he won't be reelected and therefore won't have the opportunity for bribes in the future.
Write editorials to the paper, stand in town square with a megaphone for gods sake. Put out flyers at libraries, grocery stores, local businesses, donate to the EFF, band together and raise funds for a cheap tv spot in place of an infomercial tonight.
Talk to your families and tell them to do the same, And yes, the sad truth is that you have to make the bold far flung attention getter statements out first, and debate details AFTER.
Start out with statements like they want to outlaw VCRs! And it's always been illegal to copy tapes, now they want to enforce it. They want to outlaw your computer and xerox machines and anything else that could be used to copy information, EVEN INFORMATION YOU OWN!
Start doing this now, not later. Do it now and this bill will die in commitee, do it later and they'll exempt devices that will piss the public off now and this will affect all innovations in the future.
Be loud slashdot, we DO have numbers here, we have enough numbers to take down most servers instantly at any time time of day simply by linking in a high modded comment for godsake.
If we all get the message to even 3 people that is a rumble, if they each get the message to even 2 people it's the start of a wildfire.
If america doesn't start getting loud about these issues, if we don't stand up and say that "we won't take this anymore". Then all we have to look forward to is being beaten down, slowly but surely, in small incremental steps until one day we wake up in a cott in our tiny 1 room apartment, with bars on the windows.
We look around prisoners in our homes, and we think about those barbaric uncivilized 3rd world nations where nobody needs a license to leave their homes during curfew hours, and they don't even doorlocks to ensure this and keep everyone safe.
Much like today when we think about those barbaric 3rd world countries where you don't need a license to drive a car, or to go fishing. Where you need no license to have a gun and anybody can plop down on public property, lay out a blanket and sell goods.
If you don't start making your voice heard on this issue, today, your that much less likely to do so tomorrow on the next issue, and the next, and the next. That is how we've gotten to the spot we are in today. It's not too late to stop it from getting worse tomorrow!
"Media piracy helps SBC, because they sell high speed internet access."
Not really, piraters actually utilize their high speed access. SBC just wants you to browse the web, not download. They want users who DON'T utilize their connection to the fullest, that way they can support more users on the same t1.
"Installing Windows is a walk in the park (relative to most Linux distros.)"
Who said anything about relative to most linux distros? I just said installing OS is beyond what most windows users can handle. ANY OS. A larger number could probably handle MacOS, since you got a pretty graphical interface from the get... but I'd say more than 50% couldn't handle it.
"they've pratically got to do it every other week to get their computer to work!"
This is why they buy computers with restore cd's, because they don't know how to reinstall the OS.
While the memory requirements are higher, the processor requirements are lower.
"Really? How odd. I've installed Mandrake, SUSE and Fedora, and they're all slower or barely equal to Windows XP on the same box."
That would depend on how your gauging performance, your basing it on how fast a window appears on screen after clicking the icon you'd be right. That performance is no better than windows.
I judge performance based on how fast tasks are completed.
Are they installing pirated copies of windows though? Our shop custom builds computers.
We ask what parts you need, assemble the computer and install windows for you. But it's a valid OEM windows license and is included in the price we tell you after you tell us the parts.
MOST users can't manage to install an application without an autorun, this is reality whether you like it or not.
At least half the users out there dont know how to find and run an application if there isn't a shortcut on the desktop.
"Seriously. Would Microsoft or Apple be raking in the GNP of a good portion of Europe if these things weren't so damned easy to use?"
Yes that is what techs and computer vendors and grandchildren are for.
"Have you ever seen the Windows XP Install?"
I've done literally hundreds. And I'm not the guy who builds the computers and installs the OS initially for our company. I'm the service tech who goes and fixes problems for those who don't know how to fix them themselves.
Lets go over a typical setup. First you go the old computer. copy the data out of the appropriate hidden folders for their email, addressbook, favorites. Their my documents folder of course. If they have quickbooks you probably want to grab at least the company file, but it's easier to grab the whole quickbooks folder and drop it overtop after installing quickbooks on the new machine.
You have to set the bios to boot from cd, since a smart vendor disables this as it confuses users when cd's boot. This step alone is far far beyond what a normal user can handle.
Possibly then hitting the key and loading the driver disk for your ide raid. Also beyond what users can handle.
NTFS or Fat, I'll lose all data??? dear god why!!!
Some users could handle the next questions asked computer name, activation, etc since they have that info from their ISP. Although computer name will baffle most, since they don't know if it's something they make up or something they should know.
And then the XP install is finished, BUT your not finished installing the OS yet, not by a long shot.
Now you have to find drivers for pretty much every piece of hardware in your system. Starting with the board chipset. Then video, sound, all usb devices. Because while xp detects these things faithfully, it doesn't have drivers for most hardware. Of course even if it did, you don't want Microsoft's drivers unless you have no choice.
After finding them, you have to install them, sometimes they'll be on a cd with an autorun, sometimes not. Sometimes they'll be a downloaded zip file and you'll have to install them inf style, going into the device manager, selecting the hardware and going into update the driver. Of course you have to recognize the right piece from the generic string, because XP helpfully, after identifying what the hardware was changes it to a generic name in the DM if you don't have the driver handy.
Of course then you have to run off power management on the system.
Now you have to go back to the other system and find and download the patches for blaster, etc.
You open the case (way beyond most users) pull the drive, and stick it into the new system, jumpering appropriately and so forth. Make sure the drive detects in the bios, and again detects in windows.
You can then copy my documents into the profile. Now you setup internet, today this is usually done by going into the network control panel, right clicking on the correct nic and inputting the settings. Unless you did the get connected to the internet thing (which you shouldn't have done) during setup. If so your already blastered.
Regardless once you have a net connection you have to install the blaster and other network worm patches and then run a scan to remove those you've already caught (there will be at least one).
Now you do the windows updates.
ok, now we can continue, you install av software of choice or download it, update said software.
Now you find the correct profile and drop the IE favorites in place. You then open outlook express, setup your email account with the correct settings. Then go into the addressbook and file import the wab file you got from the old system, importing their favorites. Then clo
There is nothing in copyright law which backs the Microsoft EULA, a opposed to the GPL which only loosens restrictions in copyright as copyright law explicitly decides it can do.
The Microsoft EULA imposes restrictions for use, something they assume they can do but copyright law doesn't say they can. Copyright law gives them some control over copying and control over distribution, it gives them no authority whatsoever regarding use.
"Even though a Linux module, distributed on it's own, might not classify as a derivative work triggering the GPL, the entire OS, distributed as part of the device and including the seme modules could concievably classify as a derivative work, and thus require the release of the entire source (including the otherwise standalone module) to classify as GPL compliant."
There isn't a grey area here as wide as people would like to make out. It only becomes this wide if you start magically deciding on your own despite the GPL that a derivative work is something which can be made to happen AFTER compilation. It can't, a binary or object derivative is NOT the same thing as a source derivative.
If a work can stand alone WITHOUT modification to the source, then that work is NEVER a derivative of the thing it can stand seperate from.
There is nothing grey or viral about the GPL. Derivative works is clearly about sourcecode, not object code or binaries or anything else.
The only time it becomes grey is if your trying to circumvent it, in order to steal the code without giving anything back... or if a certain monopoly is spreading FUD claiming it works in a manner it doesn't.
There are alot of things that aren't being considered in the numbers in the summary.
They would have been better off not throwing in a comment to demean the linux share of oem presales and just sticking with the numbers.
Whether people are reinstalling the OS that came with the computer with something else impacts the overall desktop marketshare. NOT the OEM preinstall numbers (which is what the estimated 5% was).
The difficulty of keeping recipts doesn't go up with the number? If you have to put away and remember where one is, you can just as easily stick two there. Actually in the smallest of places you could manage to squeeze one in you could just as easily put 50.
Personally I just chuck all important ones in a shoebox, for computer or anything else.
"because they choose not to pay the premium that goes along with buying a computer from any major brand"
Thats really not the only reason, or even the main one. They don't want the low quality components and poor performance (not to mention integrated hardware) that comes with buying from a Major brand.
Most component built systems yield higher performance and actually cost MORE than major brand systems. Better value for the dollar, but few are reducing their overall number of dollars spent, or have any intention of doing so.
Actually a good number of white box pc's are coming from small computer stores. MOST businesses want to support local business, and also prefer a company who can be onsite in 15min if they call. If these companies sell linux systems, they are usually the support provider and install download editions. At least we always did.
That's a pretty poor metric, it goes by the user agent string. I can't say I know any linux user (or any nonIE user for that matter) who doesn't change their user agent string to be IE 6sp1 on windows. They do this for a simple reason, 99% of the pages that don't load in alternative browsers, magically do load if the browser claims it's IE.
Pirated copies of windows amount to a pretty much insignificant amount of the desktop.
The reasons are simple, most users aren't capable of installing and OS period. Most of the "computer savy" kids aren't able to install an OS either, they are considered savy because they can download and install Kazaa, download some music and burn it to a cd. This convinces their parents and family they are a computer whiz.
The other reason is that windows typically comes on a new computer. When you couple this with number one, you quickly realize that the knowledge required to find the data and transfer it from all the various applications one might run is far more complicated than installing the OS alone.
Remember, those who do have knowledge to do these things are typically techs and admins. At work they won't be pirating windows. Outside of work THEY might pirate windows for themselves, friends and family, and might mostly associate with techs, their friends, and family. This means that your typical tech/admin will see lots of pirated windows copies floating around.
Remember also that all the techs, all their friends, and their families probably add up to less than 1% of the total desktop market.
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The first problem with that is that scsi drives usually carry a 5yr warranty, as opposed to the 1yr warranty IDE drives carry.
The second is that in terms of performance there is a reduced efficientcy for every drive added to a raid.
The third is that controllers to handle an increased amount of drives are orders of magnitude more expensive and you can only have 15 devices on a scsi chain. With 146gb drives that gives you a max of 2.1TB on a chain, with 250gb drives that becomes 3.7TB on a chain, yeah it's only a terabyte, a terabyte is nothing right?
Also lets talk about speed, the max speed you can get on scsi is 320mb/s sustained, a single scsi drive can give you that, a 3 drive can give you that all the time. A 4 drive will only give you that. a 5 drive raid will only give you that, etc etc etc.
Once you have at least 3 drives will give you that 320mb sustained, what your really talking about now isn't sustained transfer, but latency. When I request data, how soon does the transfer start. This is critical for some applications, like most databases and webservers, in which requests will be for small amounts of data but need to be served quickly.
There is actually some overhead with a raid in every access request, but this is actually where a scsi raid excels and you want more drives. If you have 3 drives, and 3 simultaneous requests, each request will be served with transfer time + access time + minimum controller overhead. But if you have 4, the 4th will be queued. If you had 4 drives it wouldn't be. In theory, the more drives you have, the more simultaneous requests you can handle with a minimum delay.
So in short, there is no reason why people wouldn't want larger drives, there IS reason to want more smaller drives, but it depends on your needs. You have to weigh the amount of data being stored, the size of your average request, and the number of simultaneous requests.
People argue whether more smaller drives, or a multiple of larger drives is faster, and the truth is that it depends.
"Business do not want high-capacity single SCSI drives"
;)
Why? they make for higher capacity raids.
The more devices the controller has to be able to handle the more expensive, also although more drives means better overall performance, the overall efficiency goes down.
The big thing is like beggers home users have pretty much been locked out of SCSI. Even a single scsi drive yields better performance than an IDE drive.
If scsi drives were offered widely in home pc's, there would obviously be a performance increase, but also most of the artificial price increase would disappear from them. Manufacturing methods would also be improved to support the increased demand and controllers would be included onboard as IDE are now. Before you know it SCSI would be just as cheap as IDE is today.
Wouldn't that be better?
It would be good for other things too, for instance faster buses would have already taken off in your standard desktop instead of just being a secondary bus in a few desktop boards and server boards.
The result in the end would be cheaper, faster, more reliable storage and bus technologies for everyone. Too bad the drive manufacturers know that and do their best to keep scsi on the server
Which is where more advanced raids come into play, raids of raids and so forth.
Yeah but they can't handle 320mb/sec thoughput it requires faster pci slots but those are present on pretty well all server boards and some workstation/desktop boards as well.
Also a 10k RPM scsi drive is a cheapy, generally they are 15k RPM.
You also generally use scsi in raid configuration. SATA raid devices generally don't compare to intelligent scsi raid controllers.
There is also the quality and warranty on the drives, usually 5yr or more warranty with priority replacements. The replacements are usually advance RMA as well, meaning they send you the new one upon calling and you send them the bad when it gets there.
If the data is valuable enough to justify an expenditure for scsi, you want scsi, period. SATA doesn't change that. Serial SCSI may, but not SATA. SATA will pretty much replace IDE raid (is replacing I should say) and when it's done there will be no such thing as standard IDE raid.
"Install the security software and configure the nic before you attach it to the cable."
Better yet, just do the install behind a firewalled router.
"USB drives are very handy for toting around the net install updates (including virus protection and AdAware/SpyBot/etc. updates) to prevent worms."
Handy for moving the data off the old system to if it's from anything not too terribly ancient.
"You also forgot removing all of the AOL/MSN/Compuserve complimentary crap."
Yup there is that, also you'll want to disable at least the services you know they aren't going to want. There are a couple registry hacks you'll want to perform to make IE perform multiple simultaneous connections. You'll want to uninstall windows messenger completely with a handy third party util.
There are alot of things I could have added to that, and alot of tricks you can do to save time in the process. I was really just trying to make the point that your average user couldn't handle it.
Even without data transfer at all, the average user would be stumped at step one, setting the cd correctly in the boot order to start the setup.
Most users I think could struggle through the actual installer itself, but that isn't even half of installing windows.
"But the embedded company is not distributing source code. They are distributing a binary module, which due to the number of inline functions in the linux kernel more than likely does contain some "kernel code", and so could be seen as a derived work"
Yes but the kernel is distributed under a modified GPL that explicitly allows this. People seem to forget that, the kernel is NOT under the standard GPL. What is questionable under the standard GPL may not be questionable under the GPL with the kernel. In fact, in the case of kernel modules it's not questionable at all.
Somewhere above you'll find someone who posted the letter they sent their congressmen and the cookie cutter response they got back.
I've sent numerous letters to congressmen and gotten the same responses back. THEY DON"T READ THEM. Some aid reads them. There could be millions flooding in and the congressman won't even know it happened.
"So what, we should do nothing then? Just sit back and take it?"
NO. But the easy way out, emailing or mailing a letter to your congressman isn't the answer either. You have to make your voice heard publically. We have to create such a load roar AMONG THE PUBLIC, that it is heard by the ears of our congressman.
This bribe from the RIAA doesn't mean much if he knows he won't be reelected and therefore won't have the opportunity for bribes in the future.
Write editorials to the paper, stand in town square with a megaphone for gods sake. Put out flyers at libraries, grocery stores, local businesses, donate to the EFF, band together and raise funds for a cheap tv spot in place of an infomercial tonight.
Talk to your families and tell them to do the same, And yes, the sad truth is that you have to make the bold far flung attention getter statements out first, and debate details AFTER.
Start out with statements like they want to outlaw VCRs! And it's always been illegal to copy tapes, now they want to enforce it. They want to outlaw your computer and xerox machines and anything else that could be used to copy information, EVEN INFORMATION YOU OWN!
Start doing this now, not later. Do it now and this bill will die in commitee, do it later and they'll exempt devices that will piss the public off now and this will affect all innovations in the future.
Be loud slashdot, we DO have numbers here, we have enough numbers to take down most servers instantly at any time time of day simply by linking in a high modded comment for godsake.
If we all get the message to even 3 people that is a rumble, if they each get the message to even 2 people it's the start of a wildfire.
If america doesn't start getting loud about these issues, if we don't stand up and say that "we won't take this anymore". Then all we have to look forward to is being beaten down, slowly but surely, in small incremental steps until one day we wake up in a cott in our tiny 1 room apartment, with bars on the windows.
We look around prisoners in our homes, and we think about those barbaric uncivilized 3rd world nations where nobody needs a license to leave their homes during curfew hours, and they don't even doorlocks to ensure this and keep everyone safe.
Much like today when we think about those barbaric 3rd world countries where you don't need a license to drive a car, or to go fishing. Where you need no license to have a gun and anybody can plop down on public property, lay out a blanket and sell goods.
If you don't start making your voice heard on this issue, today, your that much less likely to do so tomorrow on the next issue, and the next, and the next. That is how we've gotten to the spot we are in today. It's not too late to stop it from getting worse tomorrow!
I think when that happens we need to push from someone from the Library of congress to be fired. Immediately.
"Do you really think we'd be where we are (Iraqi quagmire with the entire free World hating our guts) "
You do realize that doesn't even hold a candle to either the Patriot Act or the DMCA, let alone both?
Thrashing the freedoms of people right here is slightly more important than how well we relate people out there.
First we need to fix the things we're fscking up right here. Then we can start worrying about what we're fscking up out there.
"Media piracy helps SBC, because they sell high speed internet access."
Not really, piraters actually utilize their high speed access. SBC just wants you to browse the web, not download. They want users who DON'T utilize their connection to the fullest, that way they can support more users on the same t1.
"Installing Windows is a walk in the park (relative to most Linux distros.)"
Who said anything about relative to most linux distros? I just said installing OS is beyond what most windows users can handle. ANY OS. A larger number could probably handle MacOS, since you got a pretty graphical interface from the get... but I'd say more than 50% couldn't handle it.
"they've pratically got to do it every other week to get their computer to work!"
This is why they buy computers with restore cd's, because they don't know how to reinstall the OS.
Linux is a little different, almost every linux user knows how to install an OS.
;)
If windows users were truely tech savy they'd be running linux
While the memory requirements are higher, the processor requirements are lower.
"Really? How odd. I've installed Mandrake, SUSE and Fedora, and they're all slower or barely equal to Windows XP on the same box."
That would depend on how your gauging performance, your basing it on how fast a window appears on screen after clicking the icon you'd be right. That performance is no better than windows.
I judge performance based on how fast tasks are completed.
Are they installing pirated copies of windows though? Our shop custom builds computers.
We ask what parts you need, assemble the computer and install windows for you. But it's a valid OEM windows license and is included in the price we tell you after you tell us the parts.
MOST users can't manage to install an application without an autorun, this is reality whether you like it or not.
At least half the users out there dont know how to find and run an application if there isn't a shortcut on the desktop.
"Seriously. Would Microsoft or Apple be raking in the GNP of a good portion of Europe if these things weren't so damned easy to use?"
Yes that is what techs and computer vendors and grandchildren are for.
"Have you ever seen the Windows XP Install?"
I've done literally hundreds. And I'm not the guy who builds the computers and installs the OS initially for our company. I'm the service tech who goes and fixes problems for those who don't know how to fix them themselves.
Lets go over a typical setup. First you go the old computer. copy the data out of the appropriate hidden folders for their email, addressbook, favorites. Their my documents folder of course. If they have quickbooks you probably want to grab at least the company file, but it's easier to grab the whole quickbooks folder and drop it overtop after installing quickbooks on the new machine.
You have to set the bios to boot from cd, since a smart vendor disables this as it confuses users when cd's boot. This step alone is far far beyond what a normal user can handle.
Possibly then hitting the key and loading the driver disk for your ide raid. Also beyond what users can handle.
NTFS or Fat, I'll lose all data??? dear god why!!!
Some users could handle the next questions asked computer name, activation, etc since they have that info from their ISP. Although computer name will baffle most, since they don't know if it's something they make up or something they should know.
And then the XP install is finished, BUT your not finished installing the OS yet, not by a long shot.
Now you have to find drivers for pretty much every piece of hardware in your system. Starting with the board chipset. Then video, sound, all usb devices. Because while xp detects these things faithfully, it doesn't have drivers for most hardware. Of course even if it did, you don't want Microsoft's drivers unless you have no choice.
After finding them, you have to install them, sometimes they'll be on a cd with an autorun, sometimes not. Sometimes they'll be a downloaded zip file and you'll have to install them inf style, going into the device manager, selecting the hardware and going into update the driver. Of course you have to recognize the right piece from the generic string, because XP helpfully, after identifying what the hardware was changes it to a generic name in the DM if you don't have the driver handy.
Of course then you have to run off power management on the system.
Now you have to go back to the other system and find and download the patches for blaster, etc.
You open the case (way beyond most users) pull the drive, and stick it into the new system, jumpering appropriately and so forth. Make sure the drive detects in the bios, and again detects in windows.
You can then copy my documents into the profile. Now you setup internet, today this is usually done by going into the network control panel, right clicking on the correct nic and inputting the settings. Unless you did the get connected to the internet thing (which you shouldn't have done) during setup. If so your already blastered.
Regardless once you have a net connection you have to install the blaster and other network worm patches and then run a scan to remove those you've already caught (there will be at least one).
Now you do the windows updates.
ok, now we can continue, you install av software of choice or download it, update said software.
Now you find the correct profile and drop the IE favorites in place. You then open outlook express, setup your email account with the correct settings. Then go into the addressbook and file import the wab file you got from the old system, importing their favorites. Then clo
Well gee golly, IT Managers don't make up a very significant portion of the marketshare.
What makes you say that?
It's more important to change the reality and show people how well the browser works.
Changing the real numbers is far more important than changing the market statistics.
There is nothing in copyright law which backs the Microsoft EULA, a opposed to the GPL which only loosens restrictions in copyright as copyright law explicitly decides it can do.
The Microsoft EULA imposes restrictions for use, something they assume they can do but copyright law doesn't say they can. Copyright law gives them some control over copying and control over distribution, it gives them no authority whatsoever regarding use.
"Even though a Linux module, distributed on it's own, might not classify as a derivative work triggering the GPL, the entire OS, distributed as part of the device and including the seme modules could concievably classify as a derivative work, and thus require the release of the entire source (including the otherwise standalone module) to classify as GPL compliant."
There isn't a grey area here as wide as people would like to make out. It only becomes this wide if you start magically deciding on your own despite the GPL that a derivative work is something which can be made to happen AFTER compilation. It can't, a binary or object derivative is NOT the same thing as a source derivative.
If a work can stand alone WITHOUT modification to the source, then that work is NEVER a derivative of the thing it can stand seperate from.
There is nothing grey or viral about the GPL. Derivative works is clearly about sourcecode, not object code or binaries or anything else.
The only time it becomes grey is if your trying to circumvent it, in order to steal the code without giving anything back... or if a certain monopoly is spreading FUD claiming it works in a manner it doesn't.
There are alot of things that aren't being considered in the numbers in the summary.
They would have been better off not throwing in a comment to demean the linux share of oem presales and just sticking with the numbers.
Whether people are reinstalling the OS that came with the computer with something else impacts the overall desktop marketshare. NOT the OEM preinstall numbers (which is what the estimated 5% was).
The difficulty of keeping recipts doesn't go up with the number? If you have to put away and remember where one is, you can just as easily stick two there. Actually in the smallest of places you could manage to squeeze one in you could just as easily put 50.
Personally I just chuck all important ones in a shoebox, for computer or anything else.
"because they choose not to pay the premium that goes along with buying a computer from any major brand"
Thats really not the only reason, or even the main one. They don't want the low quality components and poor performance (not to mention integrated hardware) that comes with buying from a Major brand.
Most component built systems yield higher performance and actually cost MORE than major brand systems. Better value for the dollar, but few are reducing their overall number of dollars spent, or have any intention of doing so.
Actually a good number of white box pc's are coming from small computer stores. MOST businesses want to support local business, and also prefer a company who can be onsite in 15min if they call. If these companies sell linux systems, they are usually the support provider and install download editions. At least we always did.
"Google's zietgeist"
That's a pretty poor metric, it goes by the user agent string. I can't say I know any linux user (or any nonIE user for that matter) who doesn't change their user agent string to be IE 6sp1 on windows. They do this for a simple reason, 99% of the pages that don't load in alternative browsers, magically do load if the browser claims it's IE.
Pirated copies of windows amount to a pretty much insignificant amount of the desktop.
The reasons are simple, most users aren't capable of installing and OS period. Most of the "computer savy" kids aren't able to install an OS either, they are considered savy because they can download and install Kazaa, download some music and burn it to a cd. This convinces their parents and family they are a computer whiz.
The other reason is that windows typically comes on a new computer. When you couple this with number one, you quickly realize that the knowledge required to find the data and transfer it from all the various applications one might run is far more complicated than installing the OS alone.
Remember, those who do have knowledge to do these things are typically techs and admins. At work they won't be pirating windows. Outside of work THEY might pirate windows for themselves, friends and family, and might mostly associate with techs, their friends, and family. This means that your typical tech/admin will see lots of pirated windows copies floating around.
Remember also that all the techs, all their friends, and their families probably add up to less than 1% of the total desktop market.