So I'd say that the bulk of what is referred to as Open Source is quite inaccessible to Bill.
The general pubic has no way to tell. Windows might be chock full of GPL or BSD code, who's to know? MS could very well be benefiting from Open Source in ways and degrees that surprise us. At the very least Gates must have teams of developers scanning Open Source projects for concepts and techniques.
"....the user experience of linux has continued to suck."
Odd, I have the opposite experience every time going back to an XP desktop from Fluxbox or XFCE4. Windows feels like such a primitive, poorly prioritized brick of a UI the experience is painful. If that's what you're clamouring for, count me out.
There's nothing natural about pushing a foot forward to go faster and moving your arms up and down to turn, yet hundreds of millions drive vehicles in just this 'unatural' manner. Your mistaken assumption is that a computer should never require learning anything, a ludicrous contention sold by commercial OS developers.
" Typical Linux Geek thinking ease-of-use = dumbing down and that a good interface means pretty icons."
Mention that to the authors of all the highly rated posts above this one decrying the ugliness of the Linux desktop and lack of qualified graphic artists in its development.
"..., is for EVERY application that is available for UserLinux to filter through a single point of contact."
Like every TCP request filters through a single point of contact to assure it's consistent? Obviously ridiclous, what's required are agreed standards, not a centralized control or authority for distribution. If you really want that send your $699 to Utah.
I think you are missing Darl McBride's point because you are not in his frame of mind.
And I think at this point we can agree Darl's frame of mind is best represtented by Woody Harrelson starring in Natural Born Litigators, free-riding with lawyers shooting up everything in site. Logical reasoning or the notion of an attainable end goal are no longer part of Darl's 'visions'.
Look at the bright side. When the League of Microsoft Moderators scramble to mod up a post so patently broken in fact and logical coherency, someone's in panic mode. That +5 is good news.
Better yet is LiteOn's LVD-2001 which plays AVIs, Divx, MPEG4, MP3's, DVDs, etc, etc and has a front loading memory card reader for displaying jpegs. I paid $169 CDN. It's still a bit clunky but the firmware (linux!) is easily upgradeable and appears to be under active development. A new one was released just two days ago to improve Divx 3.11 performance and support the.srt subtitle format.
Gee, maybe it's a bug. Yeah, I know, Microsoft never suffers from bugs.
MSN is the default page for IE and the default page for mis-typed URLs in IE. MSN must get hits in the hundreds of millions per day. Do you really want to suggest it's to Microsoft's credit that the front page has a bug of that magnitude? It's far kinder to call them dishonest.
Thanks for the suggestion, looks to be a promising second choice. It returns sponsored links clearly labeled and seperated by a divider. I like the Video, Audio and FTP tabs too.
What you say is quite likely true but it's not to Microsoft's credit. It boils down to: By design or by bug, Microsoft will leverage anything to gain an unfair advantage.
Did you ever stop to think that one of the reasons people don't support or take the time to learn about the various OSS movements is because of high-brow, elitist comments such as yours?
Where in the post to which you respond were Linux or OSS mentioned? My reading is that Nurb432 said 'we' as in computer literate Slashdot regulars, he never mentioned the OS he uses. Nice ad hominem slam against OSS anyway, some people apparently can't resist any opportunity no matter how tenuous is the connection.
Odd, I loaded Fedora on a P3 450 with 128 meg of RAM and it runs just fine, as well as my P4 1.7 XP + MacCrappy anti-virus work machine. Swaps a bit with Moz and OO running, but completely usable. OTOH, Redhat apparently still pulls the same old shit so check that sendmail, etc. aren't running. They loaded by default here.
"I truly believe that we should stick with pretty-GUI stuff for the desk/palmtop..."
Linux has pretty-GUI PDA stuff. You didn't follow the links? For my needs the Kompany-modified Sharp ROM for the SL-5500 syncs to work's Exchange servers just fine thanks, and still retains the Linux underpinnings to match my home network. This is no longer an either/or proposition.
Gentoo has a particularly difficult installation process that entails selecting compile optimization options from a set of dozens, setting processor optimizations, choosing which kernel sources to use and compiling a kernel, all in a chroot environment. This is for the simple Stage 3 install, Stages 1 and 2 are worse. It's been a long while since I tried but I still found the Debian process obtuse in comparison. The difference was documentation, not laziness. Gentoo's is very straightforward and linear. Activiting the NIC is step 2 and the links browser is immediately avaliable for scoping on-line installation resources.
With so many worthy distros around, I just didn't see where Debian was worth (even) more bother than Gentoo for a flat i386 optimized system.
One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.
Too bad Michael Robertson wasn't concerned with shipping quality product. I bought from them, more than once. The discs sold by the original MP3.com weren't properly manufactured CDs but blank-sided CDROMs, obviously.WAV rips of the mp3 material on their site instead of dubs of the master tapes or commercially printed discs. It would be no surprise to find out the receptionist was burning them while proceessing billing. Some were so poorly mastered a song appeared twice in a row or ended mid-way though. The CD sleeves were usually one-sided colour laser prints of a grainy scan.
The original mp3.com, for me, failed because of a poor and cynical business model and not because of the musical selection. The major label version of mp3.com seemed no different than joining the Sony or Vivendi Clubs (registration required) the one time I looked.
If MS were to pull out of Europe,..MS could damage the whole EU economy by threatening to walk...
I wouldn't be so sure without knowing what it means in concrete terms to pull out or walk away from Europe. Is it immediately closing down support offices and services? Good luck breaking all those corporate contracts. Unilaterally de-activate their software tomorrow? No too likely, MS's legal coffers are big but not that big. Refuse to ship to Europe? They have distribution agreements to uphold and I doubt starting a trade war would be to their benefit either. Europeans could simply stop enforcing anti-piracy laws where Microsoft was concerned while an alternative took shape.
Microsoft isn't omnipotent. There are limits in law and their business model to what they can do and how quickly. The only reasonable scenario I see is to stop developing new product with European needs in mind and allow existing contracts to laspe when they end, in other words a slow retreat. Nothing could be better for for alternate operating systems, and I'd expect to see a major alignment between the European economy and third world software powers too poor to buy Windows anyway. Software companies and investors worldwide would go nuts trying to fill the void left by a monopoly. A European dot.com 2.
MS pulling out of Europe would probably isolate the North American market, not the Europeans.
"....or do we need to wait until Linux is a monopoly."
That doesn't make any sense. Companies are monopolies, not products. As long as Linux remains GPL and multiple distros, packagers and support vendors exist the concept of a "Linux monopoly" in the sense of a "Microsoft monopoly" is nonsensical.
"The idea that "most people" using Windows are using an outside multimedia viewer/player when the software that comes with the system works fine is laughable."
Not my experience. Want Quicktime? It sets the sytem to use it as the default player. RealOne? Same. Music Match Jukebox, Winamp, they all behave the same. It's a rare desktop I see at work where WMP is still the default media player.
Slashdot Mirror
So how close are you and Balmer?
The general pubic has no way to tell. Windows might be chock full of GPL or BSD code, who's to know? MS could very well be benefiting from Open Source in ways and degrees that surprise us. At the very least Gates must have teams of developers scanning Open Source projects for concepts and techniques.
Odd, I have the opposite experience every time going back to an XP desktop from Fluxbox or XFCE4. Windows feels like such a primitive, poorly prioritized brick of a UI the experience is painful. If that's what you're clamouring for, count me out.
" Typical Linux Geek thinking ease-of-use = dumbing down and that a good interface means pretty icons."
Mention that to the authors of all the highly rated posts above this one decrying the ugliness of the Linux desktop and lack of qualified graphic artists in its development.
Like every TCP request filters through a single point of contact to assure it's consistent? Obviously ridiclous, what's required are agreed standards, not a centralized control or authority for distribution. If you really want that send your $699 to Utah.
Darl has no master-fu, just unworthy opponents. That answer was the equivalent of covering your eyes and chanting lalalalala.
Jeez, some people will do anything to shoehorn Microsoft into a thread. :o
And I think at this point we can agree Darl's frame of mind is best represtented by Woody Harrelson starring in Natural Born Litigators, free-riding with lawyers shooting up everything in site. Logical reasoning or the notion of an attainable end goal are no longer part of Darl's 'visions'.
Look at the bright side. When the League of Microsoft Moderators scramble to mod up a post so patently broken in fact and logical coherency, someone's in panic mode. That +5 is good news.
The thread to which I replied had none of the context you describe. I didn't realize you were responding to 'the general air', my mistake.
Better yet is LiteOn's LVD-2001 which plays AVIs, Divx, MPEG4, MP3's, DVDs, etc, etc and has a front loading memory card reader for displaying jpegs. I paid $169 CDN. It's still a bit clunky but the firmware (linux!) is easily upgradeable and appears to be under active development. A new one was released just two days ago to improve Divx 3.11 performance and support the .srt subtitle format.
MSN is the default page for IE and the default page for mis-typed URLs in IE. MSN must get hits in the hundreds of millions per day. Do you really want to suggest it's to Microsoft's credit that the front page has a bug of that magnitude? It's far kinder to call them dishonest.
Why can't it be both?
Thanks for the suggestion, looks to be a promising second choice. It returns sponsored links clearly labeled and seperated by a divider. I like the Video, Audio and FTP tabs too.
What you say is quite likely true but it's not to Microsoft's credit. It boils down to: By design or by bug, Microsoft will leverage anything to gain an unfair advantage.
Where in the post to which you respond were Linux or OSS mentioned? My reading is that Nurb432 said 'we' as in computer literate Slashdot regulars, he never mentioned the OS he uses. Nice ad hominem slam against OSS anyway, some people apparently can't resist any opportunity no matter how tenuous is the connection.
Odd, I loaded Fedora on a P3 450 with 128 meg of RAM and it runs just fine, as well as my P4 1.7 XP + MacCrappy anti-virus work machine. Swaps a bit with Moz and OO running, but completely usable. OTOH, Redhat apparently still pulls the same old shit so check that sendmail, etc. aren't running. They loaded by default here.
Linux has pretty-GUI PDA stuff. You didn't follow the links? For my needs the Kompany-modified Sharp ROM for the SL-5500 syncs to work's Exchange servers just fine thanks, and still retains the Linux underpinnings to match my home network. This is no longer an either/or proposition.
'Right' under a limited set of conditions: for Debian developers and the Debian familiar. Not at all right for users new to Linux or Debian.
With so many worthy distros around, I just didn't see where Debian was worth (even) more bother than Gentoo for a flat i386 optimized system.
A Slashdot dream band. Can I choose the trolls?
Too bad Michael Robertson wasn't concerned with shipping quality product. I bought from them, more than once. The discs sold by the original MP3.com weren't properly manufactured CDs but blank-sided CDROMs, obviously .WAV rips of the mp3 material on their site instead of dubs of the master tapes or commercially printed discs. It would be no surprise to find out the receptionist was burning them while proceessing billing. Some were so poorly mastered a song appeared twice in a row or ended mid-way though. The CD sleeves were usually one-sided colour laser prints of a grainy scan.
The original mp3.com, for me, failed because of a poor and cynical business model and not because of the musical selection. The major label version of mp3.com seemed no different than joining the Sony or Vivendi Clubs (registration required) the one time I looked.
I wouldn't be so sure without knowing what it means in concrete terms to pull out or walk away from Europe. Is it immediately closing down support offices and services? Good luck breaking all those corporate contracts. Unilaterally de-activate their software tomorrow? No too likely, MS's legal coffers are big but not that big. Refuse to ship to Europe? They have distribution agreements to uphold and I doubt starting a trade war would be to their benefit either. Europeans could simply stop enforcing anti-piracy laws where Microsoft was concerned while an alternative took shape.
Microsoft isn't omnipotent. There are limits in law and their business model to what they can do and how quickly. The only reasonable scenario I see is to stop developing new product with European needs in mind and allow existing contracts to laspe when they end, in other words a slow retreat. Nothing could be better for for alternate operating systems, and I'd expect to see a major alignment between the European economy and third world software powers too poor to buy Windows anyway. Software companies and investors worldwide would go nuts trying to fill the void left by a monopoly. A European dot.com 2.
MS pulling out of Europe would probably isolate the North American market, not the Europeans.
That doesn't make any sense. Companies are monopolies, not products. As long as Linux remains GPL and multiple distros, packagers and support vendors exist the concept of a "Linux monopoly" in the sense of a "Microsoft monopoly" is nonsensical.
Not my experience. Want Quicktime? It sets the sytem to use it as the default player. RealOne? Same. Music Match Jukebox, Winamp, they all behave the same. It's a rare desktop I see at work where WMP is still the default media player.