Amen, brother! I've said here many times that eternal copyright is theft of our cultural heritage. Until they're ready to deal square, let's have no deal at all.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
Less Than Free
·
· Score: 1
You will be pleased to hear if you haven't yet that in the recent spectrum auction the D-block single nationwide license did not sell and will be auctioned off at a future date. We may yet get a Google Wireless Network. If the cellular providers decide to try and jerk Google around, that makes it even more likely in the light of this fine article. The potential for that to occur should make the incumbent radio packet vendors more amenable to diplomatic negotiations. Google has already stepped up and made them bid a fair price. On Monday we'll hear more about this as the quiet period ends and the press releases fly.
This is win, no matter what the carriers try to do.
It's more than a win. If the carriers try and limit Google's desires in the cellular arena they'll find themselves in the same situation that Garmin and TomTom did. Google can just buy up some spectrum and hang repeaters on every point of presence they have. They already have far more bandwidth into most of America than the cellular providers are using, just to dish YouTube. Make a googlephone with data-only and voip with Google's aggressive economies and lack of telco sense of entitlement, and the traditional wireless providers get a rude introduction to competetive capitalism.
Remember that Google forced the open-access provisions of the spectrum auctions last year, so cellular providers cannot prevent users from using any wireless device they wish, or downloading any application they desire. If the providers try they're going to find themselves on the wrong side of a gang of lawyers. Google could have bought spectrum, and they still might just buy the D-block. The D-block of spectrum, 10 MHz (758-763 / 788-793 MHz) was one national license but the highest bid didn't meet the minimum qualifying bid so it was not sold and is still available. With a little warning Google could probably scratch together $30-40B and bring that home. All the other auctioned spectrum went for less than $20B. The quiet period where all parties are forbidden to discuss the auction ends Monday at 6PM ET. You may expect some interesting press reports after close of business Monday, some of which might even be true.
Google isn't going to force carriers to do things a particular way.
From here it looks like the cellular providers can play with Google fairly, or they can play Googleball which appears to be a much more challenging game.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
Less Than Free
·
· Score: 1
A phone is a device that doesn't work so well without a network, and cell networks are definitely not open in any sense of the word.
We could definitely use some of that open spectrum for a national Wireless Free America. But that would require a lot of people to run their own relay cells and at least one mesh router guru.
Android is just the first chapter of a very long story. Patience.
If you're listening to the codec then you're doing it wrong.
Maybe I'm blind
on
Less Than Free
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I fail to see the harm. In order for this sort of thing to be illegal, some user somewhere has to come to actual harm somewhere. Instead of paying through the nose for navigation information (much of which is already public knowledge), people get it provided by advertising sponsors like they get their free TV. There's room for free TV and cable also. As long as the other providers provide a premium experience and content, they'll be fine.
Should they fail to provide a premium experience and content, they'll lose customers. Isn't that what's supposed to happen?
In the article he points out that Google wanted to do some things with the data that they didn't want to let Google do. They told Google no. In the old world, where the buyer of that data had no choice that would have been the end of the story. But now, apparently Google has the resources to build their own data and publish it however they like - they're not held hostage by the vendor of their information.
It seems fair to me that if Google takes the trouble to drive a car through and photograph every major intersection in the country, index it against their map, address and aerial photographs, they ought to be able to publish that data any way they like.
In a world where we have monopoly after monopoly leveraging their power to prevent progress, here we have a powerful company leveraging its tremendous market power to cause progress to occur. I think that's fabulous.
Somebody down below posted a link to this document. Here's a relevant clip:
101. The development of an alternative platform to challenge Windows was not the primary objective of Intel's NSP efforts. In fact, Intel was interested in providing APIs and DDIs only to the extent the effort was necessary to ensure the development of applications and devices that would spark demand for Intel's most advanced microprocessors. Understanding Intel's limited ambitions, Microsoft hastened to assure Intel that if it would stop promoting NSP's interfaces, Microsoft would accelerate its own work to incorporate the functions of the NSP software into Windows, thereby stimulating the development of applications and devices that relied on the new capabilities of Intel's microprocessors. At the same time, Microsoft pressured the major OEMs to not install NSP software on their PCs until the software ceased to expose APIs. NSP software could not find its way onto PCs without the cooperation of the OEMs, so Intel realized that it had no choice but to surrender the pace of software innovation to Microsoft. By the end of July 1995, Intel had agreed to stop promoting its NSP software. Microsoft subsequently incorporated some of NSP's components into its operating-system products. Even as late as the end of 1998, though, Microsoft still had not implemented key capabilities that Intel had been poised to offer consumers in 1995.
102. Microsoft was not content to merely quash Intel's NSP software. At a second meeting at Intel's headquarters on August 2, 1995, Gates told Grove that he had a fundamental problem with Intel using revenues from its microprocessor business to fund the development and distribution of free platform-level software. In fact, Gates said, Intel could not count on Microsoft to support Intel's next generation of microprocessors as long as Intel was developing platform-level software that competed with Windows. Intel's senior executives knew full well that Intel would have difficultly selling PC microprocessors if Microsoft stopped cooperating in making them compatible with Windows and if Microsoft stated to OEMs that it did not support Intel's chips. Faced with Gates' threat, Intel agreed to stop developing platform-level interfaces that might draw support away from interfaces exposed by Windows.
103. OEMs represent the primary customers for Intel's microprocessors. Since OEMs are dependent on Microsoft for Windows, Microsoft enjoys continuing leverage over Intel. To illustrate, Gates was able to report to other senior Microsoft executives in October 1995 that "Intel feels we have all the OEMs on hold with our NSP chill." He added:
This is good news because it means OEMs are listening to us. Andy [Grove] believes Intel is living up to its part of the NSP bargain and that we should let OEMs know that some of the new software work Intel is doing is OK. If Intel is not sticking totally to its part of the deal let me know.
In short, you're complaining that Microsoft does what it can to prevent compatibility and discourage open interfaces and drivers - as if that's a slam against Linux. Here's the thing: everybody who knows about this should be willing to go to the extra trouble to be free of the abusive relationship this represents.
I want to thank you for that post. Slashdot humor can be so blunt that it's juvenile. On a rare day I come a cross a gem like this and it takes a moment and then I get a good giggle. Well done.
Eventually they'll open up the entire Windows Mobile stack under a BSD license. The goal is to get it out in front of enough developers that one of them can figure out how to make it not suck.
It's not as hard as you might think. Grandma knows that "HP printers work with my computer". If she ever needs a new printer she'll get an HP printer. She already has an HP printer though (a C6180), and she's quite proficient with using it to upload her photos, scan and print multipage documents, print what she wants and so on. The ink is pricey, but she's happy with what she gets for what she pays. And the Christmas cards she send out are really amazing. She doesn't know that it's network connected and she doesn't care. If I'm ever over with my laptop I can use its wireless to print documents without plugging in to her wired network.
Linux is more compatible with hardware than any other operating system ever. This is not even debatable.
Microsoft has prevented their partners from opening their APIs to Linux applications to the detriment of their partners and the pace of innovation in many ways. For myself I can find no better example than Parallax, where an open interface would have saved their USB servo controller for wide use but instead they have discontinued it for no reason. It would have enabled robotic control for all forms of Linux and drivers were under way.
So you guys are down to AC posts now? I suppose that's a win. Moderation works. Most of us have AC discounted to -2 which makes our post invisible to most everybody.
Here I'm going to just point out that you had to post AC. That's some weak stuff there. You've said some things that are not true and now that you're AC we can't take away from you your credibility with downmods. If you want to make some substantive allegations the least you could do is log in.
Ok. I've got a real person onsite with with real needs. I'm happy to have an opportunity to help, as I'm sure many other slashdotters would be.
How can we help you? Really. If you ask for help here we should be able to provide you with what you need. Think carefully and ask. What do you need? Computers? Money? Software? We can do those things as long as we're sure you're not in league with evil folk.
If you prefer private comms you can reach me at symbolset.com. Any email address will do for the part before the @, as I receive all email that hits that domain.
Russia is a very large country that has a far richer history than the US. A good Russian church has more years of history than our country has. America is not as old as a firmly built Russian manor house, let alone a well established Russian Orthedox cathedral.
American English is the language of global commerce and I assure you it's commonly taught in Russian schools as well as Japanese, Canadian, Bolivian and German schools. My adventures abroad have found no lack of folk to talk to, though I am unfortunately linguistically impaired.
I've said this before in this thread so I'll cut you some slack and refer to my other posts. In Soviet Russia manpower is cheap. It's a very top-down management system. People are so resourceful that some of them don't just build their own schools from raw trees, they have to go out and earn the scratch to buy the tools to do so with manual labor or barter. This doesn't just apply to schools - in some ways their space program works the same way. It's terrible to think about what an engineer will do to actually get to perform some engineering. The whole ROI thing does not work in Russia. If people protest that they need Windows it's because they have been paid to do so or incentivised to do so by other people who have been paid to motivate them to protest, and even in that they accept some risk. In most cases these folks are glad to have books, heat, one computer per classroom and a classroom to teach in. This is nothing close to a free market economy. They achieve great things with these constraints because they are well motivated (inspired) and because they hope to bring about progress. On average, they're also bright because being stupid is in their system more fatal than it is in ours and in this case Darwin wins.
Urban Russia is not like this but Russia is vast and Urban Russia is but a small fraction of the schools and those few are even more politically (and unoficially) motivated.
Russians are very adaptable and resourceful in ways you cannot imagine. The difficulty in switching software systems is absolutely nothing to them. It's background noise. Compared to the difficulties of their normal lives outside of teaching it's not worth considering. Some teachers have not been paid their salaries for years and eke by on donations from the families of their students or in barter where they develop value above and beyond their official duties.
Russia is a very different place than you are used to. So no, overcoming the objections you mount are so trivial to them as to not be worth consideration.
OSS is great, but it is rarely free for non-personal use.
Ok now you're just plain lying. There are some OSS solutions that are not also free, but they're so rare and limited as to be unworthy of consideration. How desperate must you be to lie about the plainly obvious? In FOSS not only can the average user download an operating system and 50,000 useful applications for every endeavor, they can do with it what they will whether it's personal or government or corporate use, without the risk of years in a Siberian prison that Microsoft solutions provide. They can install it on a billion machines and the only restriction is that if they make changes and share them outside their organization they have to include the source code. If they build on BSD they don't even have that problem as they can even sell their innovations for a profit and not share the source code. This may sound harsh to you but as an alternative to using your spare time to turn trees into homes for favored Russians who have cash, it's a slam dunk. The fact that Linux runs well on the legacy hardware they're faced with is just a bonus.
It is very un-Russian to complain unless you are motivated to complain by some promised money. Where is this money coming from?
OK, I've reviewed my posts from your reply to the top of the thread and nowhere did I say it was Microsoft's fault. It is an observed fact. It is, and to Russians to whom the blame belongs is irrelevant. They can choose to use free software or they can choose the risk. Microsoft has backed off some for now and so the risk is less, but eventually the risk will return because the software is not free and their Russian channel can never be reliably honest. In the Russian language corrupt government provisioning is so assumed that the reverse must be made explicit. I believe Chinese languages are similarly cynical. The safe choice is to be free forever. Free contains no risk.
If you want to fix the blame on Microsoft for not dropping the suit after finding out that the affected individual was in no way to blame for the piracy, that's on you. I didn't say that.
As to Microsoft's ROI, well, I don't know what to say here. Given the current state of free I can see how they must struggle to prove where they add value - especially when dealing with the malware ecosystem mounted against them which at some accounts is larger than the Windows market itself. I'm sure it's hard to deliver on this nine year old commitment when you can't even get your network software geeks to check their inputs on the most basic service they provide or even read the licenses of the software they publish.
You should probably check the corkboard on the way out of the blog center. I think there's a note there about me. Take your stuff with you when you go or you might not see it again.
I don't know about the GP, but I've never done any command line or text file management of the Debian box I'm typing this on (up about a year now). Until I read your post I hadn't thought about at all but yeah, things have changed quite a bit in the last few years. I still wget on the command line and edit files by hand for programming projects, but for system admin? Not any more. I can't remember how long it's been.
Now, to config a server to give some options to a thousand netbooted clients whether to start various types of thin client, VDI, DBAN, Clonezilla or select from available installer images? That's going to be a text file, but what the heck - you can't do that in Windows no matter what you edit. But xorg.conf or.desktop? I don't even remember the syntax. Are they still on M4 or whatever the heck that heinous syntax was?
This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual. Also, most Russians are quite adaptable and resourceful - by necessity as they've been more challenged than we have in the west. Some of these teachers built their own schools from raw logs, and they had to do manual labor to get the tools to work the logs. I'm not kidding. After that experience figuring out Linux should be a cinch. In short these are not typically your inner-city career button pushers. The ability of Russians to endure travails without complaint that would wreck our average American polar explorer is legendary - they're almost British in this way.
Localization is trivial. I believe Russian interface is supported in every Linux variant I've ever used. It's just Cryllic alphabet, keywords and fonts anyway. It's not like it's got some fancy top-to-bottom or right-to-left glyph sequence or anything. Lots of Russians use Linux by choice and I'm sure lots of them have figured this out. This isn't Windows: localization has been part of the standard GNU project template for many years.
If they're complaining that they can't do it then it's because they've been paid handsomely to make such a complaint. Otherwise they wouldn't be Russian. Now, who would pay them to do that? And why is anybody listening?
Ooh mister smartypants -the teacher did in fact buy the Windows from the government's official vendor at the going rate and he had no way to know they sold him cracked software. Nice try. You have no idea how government business is conducted in Russia, do you?
Most folks here talk about "Oh, Linux is free!" but sorry, that's bullshit. Yeah the OS may be free, but you ever priced a Linux Guru?
I'm feeling my years. My grandmother has quite a few of them on me. It took me an hour to install her Linux over a year ago, and it still works fine. Nothing bad happened. I showed her how to install software and now she's got quite a lot of it. One of these days she's going to ask me to debug her wget scripts. Grandma never did learn to drive but she can MySpace like nobody's business.
Where I'm at Linux geeks are more common than the other kind so they're not expensive. Your mileage may vary.
Windows admins are cheap
Not always, but sometimes, you do get what you pay for. The problem with Windows admins is that you also need a LOT of them. Just techs to clean malware and fix twitchy software is >1% of headcount for some large organizations. IMHO most Windows admins see the internal workings of the machine as a "black box" and they are neither able to nor interested in understanding the lower level of activity that drives the magic blinky lights. Linux geeks are a different breed indeed.
Free software doesn't mean no costs. It just means cheaper, and usually only in long term. You have installation, training, support, cost of porting existing applications and data, etc.
Somebody needs to explain some things to these folks. It's not that hard: you install LTSP on a server, all the clients boot to the network. Install all the software you want on the server. If instead of (or in addition to) thin client/shared desktop you want an image on the desktop you configure the PXE server to dish an installer image.
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Amen, brother! I've said here many times that eternal copyright is theft of our cultural heritage. Until they're ready to deal square, let's have no deal at all.
You will be pleased to hear if you haven't yet that in the recent spectrum auction the D-block single nationwide license did not sell and will be auctioned off at a future date. We may yet get a Google Wireless Network. If the cellular providers decide to try and jerk Google around, that makes it even more likely in the light of this fine article. The potential for that to occur should make the incumbent radio packet vendors more amenable to diplomatic negotiations. Google has already stepped up and made them bid a fair price. On Monday we'll hear more about this as the quiet period ends and the press releases fly.
This is win, no matter what the carriers try to do.
It's more than a win. If the carriers try and limit Google's desires in the cellular arena they'll find themselves in the same situation that Garmin and TomTom did. Google can just buy up some spectrum and hang repeaters on every point of presence they have. They already have far more bandwidth into most of America than the cellular providers are using, just to dish YouTube. Make a googlephone with data-only and voip with Google's aggressive economies and lack of telco sense of entitlement, and the traditional wireless providers get a rude introduction to competetive capitalism.
Remember that Google forced the open-access provisions of the spectrum auctions last year, so cellular providers cannot prevent users from using any wireless device they wish, or downloading any application they desire. If the providers try they're going to find themselves on the wrong side of a gang of lawyers. Google could have bought spectrum, and they still might just buy the D-block. The D-block of spectrum, 10 MHz (758-763 / 788-793 MHz) was one national license but the highest bid didn't meet the minimum qualifying bid so it was not sold and is still available. With a little warning Google could probably scratch together $30-40B and bring that home. All the other auctioned spectrum went for less than $20B. The quiet period where all parties are forbidden to discuss the auction ends Monday at 6PM ET. You may expect some interesting press reports after close of business Monday, some of which might even be true.
Google isn't going to force carriers to do things a particular way.
From here it looks like the cellular providers can play with Google fairly, or they can play Googleball which appears to be a much more challenging game.
A phone is a device that doesn't work so well without a network, and cell networks are definitely not open in any sense of the word.
We could definitely use some of that open spectrum for a national Wireless Free America. But that would require a lot of people to run their own relay cells and at least one mesh router guru.
Android is just the first chapter of a very long story. Patience.
Zbot. This is a Windows, thing, right? So if you don't use Windows, it's not a problem.
If you're listening to the codec then you're doing it wrong.
I fail to see the harm. In order for this sort of thing to be illegal, some user somewhere has to come to actual harm somewhere. Instead of paying through the nose for navigation information (much of which is already public knowledge), people get it provided by advertising sponsors like they get their free TV. There's room for free TV and cable also. As long as the other providers provide a premium experience and content, they'll be fine.
Should they fail to provide a premium experience and content, they'll lose customers. Isn't that what's supposed to happen?
In the article he points out that Google wanted to do some things with the data that they didn't want to let Google do. They told Google no. In the old world, where the buyer of that data had no choice that would have been the end of the story. But now, apparently Google has the resources to build their own data and publish it however they like - they're not held hostage by the vendor of their information.
It seems fair to me that if Google takes the trouble to drive a car through and photograph every major intersection in the country, index it against their map, address and aerial photographs, they ought to be able to publish that data any way they like.
In a world where we have monopoly after monopoly leveraging their power to prevent progress, here we have a powerful company leveraging its tremendous market power to cause progress to occur. I think that's fabulous.
Somebody down below posted a link to this document. Here's a relevant clip:
101. The development of an alternative platform to challenge Windows was not the primary objective of Intel's NSP efforts. In fact, Intel was interested in providing APIs and DDIs only to the extent the effort was necessary to ensure the development of applications and devices that would spark demand for Intel's most advanced microprocessors. Understanding Intel's limited ambitions, Microsoft hastened to assure Intel that if it would stop promoting NSP's interfaces, Microsoft would accelerate its own work to incorporate the functions of the NSP software into Windows, thereby stimulating the development of applications and devices that relied on the new capabilities of Intel's microprocessors. At the same time, Microsoft pressured the major OEMs to not install NSP software on their PCs until the software ceased to expose APIs. NSP software could not find its way onto PCs without the cooperation of the OEMs, so Intel realized that it had no choice but to surrender the pace of software innovation to Microsoft. By the end of July 1995, Intel had agreed to stop promoting its NSP software. Microsoft subsequently incorporated some of NSP's components into its operating-system products. Even as late as the end of 1998, though, Microsoft still had not implemented key capabilities that Intel had been poised to offer consumers in 1995.
102. Microsoft was not content to merely quash Intel's NSP software. At a second meeting at Intel's headquarters on August 2, 1995, Gates told Grove that he had a fundamental problem with Intel using revenues from its microprocessor business to fund the development and distribution of free platform-level software. In fact, Gates said, Intel could not count on Microsoft to support Intel's next generation of microprocessors as long as Intel was developing platform-level software that competed with Windows. Intel's senior executives knew full well that Intel would have difficultly selling PC microprocessors if Microsoft stopped cooperating in making them compatible with Windows and if Microsoft stated to OEMs that it did not support Intel's chips. Faced with Gates' threat, Intel agreed to stop developing platform-level interfaces that might draw support away from interfaces exposed by Windows.
103. OEMs represent the primary customers for Intel's microprocessors. Since OEMs are dependent on Microsoft for Windows, Microsoft enjoys continuing leverage over Intel. To illustrate, Gates was able to report to other senior Microsoft executives in October 1995 that "Intel feels we have all the OEMs on hold with our NSP chill." He added: This is good news because it means OEMs are listening to us. Andy [Grove] believes Intel is living up to its part of the NSP bargain and that we should let OEMs know that some of the new software work Intel is doing is OK. If Intel is not sticking totally to its part of the deal let me know.
In short, you're complaining that Microsoft does what it can to prevent compatibility and discourage open interfaces and drivers - as if that's a slam against Linux. Here's the thing: everybody who knows about this should be willing to go to the extra trouble to be free of the abusive relationship this represents.
I want to thank you for that post. Slashdot humor can be so blunt that it's juvenile. On a rare day I come a cross a gem like this and it takes a moment and then I get a good giggle. Well done.
Eventually they'll open up the entire Windows Mobile stack under a BSD license. The goal is to get it out in front of enough developers that one of them can figure out how to make it not suck.
It's not as hard as you might think. Grandma knows that "HP printers work with my computer". If she ever needs a new printer she'll get an HP printer. She already has an HP printer though (a C6180), and she's quite proficient with using it to upload her photos, scan and print multipage documents, print what she wants and so on. The ink is pricey, but she's happy with what she gets for what she pays. And the Christmas cards she send out are really amazing. She doesn't know that it's network connected and she doesn't care. If I'm ever over with my laptop I can use its wireless to print documents without plugging in to her wired network.
Linux is more compatible with hardware than any other operating system ever. This is not even debatable.
Microsoft has prevented their partners from opening their APIs to Linux applications to the detriment of their partners and the pace of innovation in many ways. For myself I can find no better example than Parallax, where an open interface would have saved their USB servo controller for wide use but instead they have discontinued it for no reason. It would have enabled robotic control for all forms of Linux and drivers were under way.
So you guys are down to AC posts now? I suppose that's a win. Moderation works. Most of us have AC discounted to -2 which makes our post invisible to most everybody.
Here I'm going to just point out that you had to post AC. That's some weak stuff there. You've said some things that are not true and now that you're AC we can't take away from you your credibility with downmods. If you want to make some substantive allegations the least you could do is log in.
Ok. I've got a real person onsite with with real needs. I'm happy to have an opportunity to help, as I'm sure many other slashdotters would be.
How can we help you? Really. If you ask for help here we should be able to provide you with what you need. Think carefully and ask. What do you need? Computers? Money? Software? We can do those things as long as we're sure you're not in league with evil folk.
If you prefer private comms you can reach me at symbolset.com. Any email address will do for the part before the @, as I receive all email that hits that domain.
I direct you sir to the Wikipedia page that documents 27 "official" Russian languages, 13 "near extinction" languages, and 11 "endangered" languages. . That's not considering dialects or local fluency in the languages of former and recently independent republics.
Russia is a very large country that has a far richer history than the US. A good Russian church has more years of history than our country has. America is not as old as a firmly built Russian manor house, let alone a well established Russian Orthedox cathedral.
American English is the language of global commerce and I assure you it's commonly taught in Russian schools as well as Japanese, Canadian, Bolivian and German schools. My adventures abroad have found no lack of folk to talk to, though I am unfortunately linguistically impaired.
I've said this before in this thread so I'll cut you some slack and refer to my other posts. In Soviet Russia manpower is cheap. It's a very top-down management system. People are so resourceful that some of them don't just build their own schools from raw trees, they have to go out and earn the scratch to buy the tools to do so with manual labor or barter. This doesn't just apply to schools - in some ways their space program works the same way. It's terrible to think about what an engineer will do to actually get to perform some engineering. The whole ROI thing does not work in Russia. If people protest that they need Windows it's because they have been paid to do so or incentivised to do so by other people who have been paid to motivate them to protest, and even in that they accept some risk. In most cases these folks are glad to have books, heat, one computer per classroom and a classroom to teach in. This is nothing close to a free market economy. They achieve great things with these constraints because they are well motivated (inspired) and because they hope to bring about progress. On average, they're also bright because being stupid is in their system more fatal than it is in ours and in this case Darwin wins.
Urban Russia is not like this but Russia is vast and Urban Russia is but a small fraction of the schools and those few are even more politically (and unoficially) motivated.
Russians are very adaptable and resourceful in ways you cannot imagine. The difficulty in switching software systems is absolutely nothing to them. It's background noise. Compared to the difficulties of their normal lives outside of teaching it's not worth considering. Some teachers have not been paid their salaries for years and eke by on donations from the families of their students or in barter where they develop value above and beyond their official duties.
Russia is a very different place than you are used to. So no, overcoming the objections you mount are so trivial to them as to not be worth consideration.
OSS is great, but it is rarely free for non-personal use.
Ok now you're just plain lying. There are some OSS solutions that are not also free, but they're so rare and limited as to be unworthy of consideration. How desperate must you be to lie about the plainly obvious? In FOSS not only can the average user download an operating system and 50,000 useful applications for every endeavor, they can do with it what they will whether it's personal or government or corporate use, without the risk of years in a Siberian prison that Microsoft solutions provide. They can install it on a billion machines and the only restriction is that if they make changes and share them outside their organization they have to include the source code. If they build on BSD they don't even have that problem as they can even sell their innovations for a profit and not share the source code. This may sound harsh to you but as an alternative to using your spare time to turn trees into homes for favored Russians who have cash, it's a slam dunk. The fact that Linux runs well on the legacy hardware they're faced with is just a bonus.
It is very un-Russian to complain unless you are motivated to complain by some promised money. Where is this money coming from?
OK, I've reviewed my posts from your reply to the top of the thread and nowhere did I say it was Microsoft's fault. It is an observed fact. It is, and to Russians to whom the blame belongs is irrelevant. They can choose to use free software or they can choose the risk. Microsoft has backed off some for now and so the risk is less, but eventually the risk will return because the software is not free and their Russian channel can never be reliably honest. In the Russian language corrupt government provisioning is so assumed that the reverse must be made explicit. I believe Chinese languages are similarly cynical. The safe choice is to be free forever. Free contains no risk.
If you want to fix the blame on Microsoft for not dropping the suit after finding out that the affected individual was in no way to blame for the piracy, that's on you. I didn't say that.
As to Microsoft's ROI, well, I don't know what to say here. Given the current state of free I can see how they must struggle to prove where they add value - especially when dealing with the malware ecosystem mounted against them which at some accounts is larger than the Windows market itself. I'm sure it's hard to deliver on this nine year old commitment when you can't even get your network software geeks to check their inputs on the most basic service they provide or even read the licenses of the software they publish.
You should probably check the corkboard on the way out of the blog center. I think there's a note there about me. Take your stuff with you when you go or you might not see it again.
I don't know about the GP, but I've never done any command line or text file management of the Debian box I'm typing this on (up about a year now). Until I read your post I hadn't thought about at all but yeah, things have changed quite a bit in the last few years. I still wget on the command line and edit files by hand for programming projects, but for system admin? Not any more. I can't remember how long it's been.
Now, to config a server to give some options to a thousand netbooted clients whether to start various types of thin client, VDI, DBAN, Clonezilla or select from available installer images? That's going to be a text file, but what the heck - you can't do that in Windows no matter what you edit. But xorg.conf or .desktop? I don't even remember the syntax. Are they still on M4 or whatever the heck that heinous syntax was?
This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual. Also, most Russians are quite adaptable and resourceful - by necessity as they've been more challenged than we have in the west. Some of these teachers built their own schools from raw logs, and they had to do manual labor to get the tools to work the logs. I'm not kidding. After that experience figuring out Linux should be a cinch. In short these are not typically your inner-city career button pushers. The ability of Russians to endure travails without complaint that would wreck our average American polar explorer is legendary - they're almost British in this way.
Localization is trivial. I believe Russian interface is supported in every Linux variant I've ever used. It's just Cryllic alphabet, keywords and fonts anyway. It's not like it's got some fancy top-to-bottom or right-to-left glyph sequence or anything. Lots of Russians use Linux by choice and I'm sure lots of them have figured this out. This isn't Windows: localization has been part of the standard GNU project template for many years.
If they're complaining that they can't do it then it's because they've been paid handsomely to make such a complaint. Otherwise they wouldn't be Russian. Now, who would pay them to do that? And why is anybody listening?
Ooh mister smartypants -the teacher did in fact buy the Windows from the government's official vendor at the going rate and he had no way to know they sold him cracked software. Nice try. You have no idea how government business is conducted in Russia, do you?
Most folks here talk about "Oh, Linux is free!" but sorry, that's bullshit. Yeah the OS may be free, but you ever priced a Linux Guru?
I'm feeling my years. My grandmother has quite a few of them on me. It took me an hour to install her Linux over a year ago, and it still works fine. Nothing bad happened. I showed her how to install software and now she's got quite a lot of it. One of these days she's going to ask me to debug her wget scripts. Grandma never did learn to drive but she can MySpace like nobody's business.
Where I'm at Linux geeks are more common than the other kind so they're not expensive. Your mileage may vary.
Windows admins are cheap
Not always, but sometimes, you do get what you pay for. The problem with Windows admins is that you also need a LOT of them. Just techs to clean malware and fix twitchy software is >1% of headcount for some large organizations. IMHO most Windows admins see the internal workings of the machine as a "black box" and they are neither able to nor interested in understanding the lower level of activity that drives the magic blinky lights. Linux geeks are a different breed indeed.
Free software doesn't mean no costs. It just means cheaper, and usually only in long term. You have installation, training, support, cost of porting existing applications and data, etc.
TCO for Windows involves the risk of 17 years in a siberian prison.
TCO for Linux involves asking some people to work an hour late one day a week for a few months.
Plugging that into my ROI calculator gives a time to recover investment of... 1.2 milliseconds.
Let's remember the original cause of this Linux migration, shall we?
Free software costs too much? Really?
Somebody needs to explain some things to these folks. It's not that hard: you install LTSP on a server, all the clients boot to the network. Install all the software you want on the server. If instead of (or in addition to) thin client/shared desktop you want an image on the desktop you configure the PXE server to dish an installer image.