The original vote was scheduled for Sep. 1st. The european parliament resceduled the vote to either the 22nd or the 26th of september. I don't know yet what exactly will be done in the meantime but it seems they will discuss the issue once more and maybe decide about changes.
The rescheduling took place because of the protests which means they were heard. Hopefully they will have deeper effects than just another date for the vote.
Yes, it might of course have been an explanatory diagram. Question is, what does it explain? It simply explains that there is code from other sources that was copied and unsed in the linux kernel. But what exactly does that tell the crowd? Nothing much really especially nothing at all related to SCO's claims. Additionally, why would they label the code Sys V code if it isn't Sys V code? Why would they risk being shot down in public the way they are if they actually have close to a million lines of code as they claim. What's a few lines for a slide out of about a million?
Naah, I think they used this piece because they really thought it was a good example and now they are backpaddeling and probably someone got his butt kicked for giving management "evidence" that useless.
My guess is that Darl McBribe will not so soon repeat the lines of code claim since they will probably do better checking and come up with much less lines if any. If he really doesn't repeat the close to a million claim I'd say that's a good indicator because they definately would if that number wasn't questionably in their minds.
There *will* be new Worms with Linux or more exactly Services running on Linux as a target. There will eventually be (more) Viruses (than the proof of concept viruses we have today). But to be fair, you have to make a difference between the types there are. Sobig is a completely different beast compared to the blaster thing. Blaster like outbreaks are definately possible with Linux. Eventually there will be another easy to use root exploit (think wuftp as an example) and then there will be worms exploiting it. It just has to be in a service that is default for most distributions. OpenSSH an Apache would probably be some of the most dangerous targets because of their installed base. Worms like blaster exploit programming errors. Since programming errors will always happen, there's always the chance of them happening in highly relevant places in regard to security.
The Sobig stuff is a completely different matter. Those are enduser worms. They need help of an enduser clicking on something. To be exact, those worms are outlook worms. Microsoft could stop or slow down those worms by making it harder for endusers to execute the malicious code. Linux is only (much) more secure here since poeple would have to save the attachment (seeing the full name, not just the xxx.txt part of xxx.txt.exe), make it executable and actually run it. As long as Linux mailers will not offer click and run for mail attachments, worms like that have the threat leavel of those sigs you sometimes see, saying hey, I'm a sig virus, please copy me to your sig. I'm sure though that an Outlook version that shows the full filename and does't allow executing attachments, maybe even marking them red will drastically reduce dangers of emailworms. And no, the recent methods to tackle the problem are not the right way. Blocking executable attachments completely will just make people disable the measure since it reduces peoples ability to use the software.
Why would they have to downplay? Don't take the shortened statement but the complete statement. As others have stated, there's not much to argue about. There will only be so many distributions that get certified, supported whatever by large commercial software companies or resellers. Most likely those few will be RedHat and SuSE. Maybe eventually the Chinese RedFlag Linux will be added if the market get's huge enough.
I don't think he wanted to say all other distros besides RedHat and SuSE will go away. They won't. Especially the non commercial ones like debian or gentoo or similar smaller ones are there to stay. Then again, if you look at Mandrake, they are commercial but even though they make my favourite laptop distribution, which I even bought, they are quite small and struggle. Hopefully they will survive but chances are they will eventually cease to exist, which would be a real loss.
I don't like SuSE very much, just a personal choice. I'm a Gentoo and Mandrake (Laptop) user but I can only add to the previous statement:
If I'm not wrong, SuSE has supported the development of reiserfs, employs KDE developers and is active in supporting the development of more projects than Qbertino and I have mentioned.
They differ in that they don't distribute ISOs and that yast is not GPLed. Ok, one can disagree with that. If you do, fine, don't use SuSE and especially don't buy SuSE but don't forget you can still get SuSE for free. If you have to, make yourself a local mirror of their FTP Server or do a direct net install. You get the same result as installing an ISO of some other distribution.
> So a company can spend millions of dollars > developing software and protocols, running servers, > paying for bandwidth and then they have the gall to > claim that every Joe Blow can't piggy back off of their > service!! How dare they!
Well as long as they nearly threaten people with new XP installations to FINALLY get a passport account and sign on to messanger, they are *again* misusing their position in the operating system market to push their services. They should at least let other clients interoperate with them, which they in fact do. kopete.kde.org still works fine with msn.
>Sheesh... another Slashdot MS is evil rant fest. Let me > know when there's a free Jabber server for public > logins...
No problem, here is a nice list.
http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.php No problem.
> I want an OS that works, out of the box, with MY system.
This is a perfectly valid requirement.
>Windows does this for me. Linux (so far as I have tried) does not.
Well, you are lucky. It can be the other way round. It all depends on your specific setup.
I'd suggest Mandrake for you. On the Systems I tried (2x 1600MP on Asus with USB and parallel printer, scanner, DVB Card, SB Live, USB Mouse, and various other things and Laptop) only the winmodem on my laptop wasn't found. You could try Knoppix first to check how much can be supported. You don't need to install, just put in the CD and give it a try. Mind though that Mandrake and certainly others too have highly extended kernels which include many drivers not available in the stock kernel.
KDE or Gnome? Well, I much prefer KDE over Gnome but that's basically a matter of personal choice. Try em and use the one you like. Bluecurve is just RedHat's miserable way of making both desktops suck.
What kind of DSL Modem do you have? USB? Those are critical since they usually are poorly documented pieces of proprietary *****. If it doesn't work for you, just don't. There sure is a lot of hardware that is not supported (completely) for various reasons, either don't buy unsupported hardware, live with it or don't use Linux. Same is true for Software. If there is something you need and that or an acceptable equivalent is not available for Linux, Linux isn't right for you.
Currently only Linux is the tool for me to get my work done. Mainly because my scanner doesn't work with windows and because of all the tools I use on a day to day basis which certainly are available for windows, too (cygwin) but need to be tuned and configured and are just there on linux.
It really depends on what you need. The Mandrake installation was extremely quick (40 Minutes for the operating System and a huge load of software), With XP, in that time only the plain installation was done and I just started installing the first SP. The Mandrake installation configured every piece of hardware except the winmodem (look at the name) and maybe the irda port, I never tried it. All the USB and PC-Card hardware I own works via hotplug except a new WLan card with an yet unsupported chipset. But that's something I knew about and I follow the development process, eventually even that will work.
So in the end, it really depends on various criteria. Just decide on these and you are ok, no matter what's the outcome. Isn't that the same with every tool? Just because you might not have use for a drill that is powered with pressurized air, it is still the perfect tool for others.
I tend to disagree. While many definately never heard of Ogg Vorbis, there probably won't be any ogg only player in the near future. For that reason, ogg products won't fail. But if there are players, buyers of these products might notice ogg and try it out.
Yeah, Alsa is a pita. Thank god it get's a lot better in 2.6. Don't ask me why but it worked much better with every sound integrated test kernel I tried.
Did your read the complaint RedHat's lawyers wrote? One paragraph talks about a holding behind SCO that's collecting the Money due to higher stock prices. If that is true, it seems they want to secure as much money as possible and then let SCO die or be bought by someone, (maybe MSFT after all?).
I tried something similar. I called the German branch and I planned to act dumb but besides vaious efforts they told me again and again to mail them so I did.
Of course in that mail I asked them what I would be paying for and asked not to send me the default answer (SCO's IP) but what exactly.
Let's see if they will ever reply.
Another fellow in a German news board managed to get through to a German SCO employee and he told him to write a mail as well and that he couldn't give any details because of an injunction (right word?) that disallows SCO or it's representatives any statements claiming that there is illegal code in Linux until they actually produce evidence.
Integration in the OS: There is a slight problem here. KDE is *not* a Linux GUI. It can be used on Linux but it's developed to be usable on *BSD, Linux, Solaris,... That leads to being able to change system settings not being a priority in the development process with of course all the resulting downsides.
SMB: First of all, is it surprising that a compatibility product that emulates little documented features of a closed OS doesn't work as well as the original? Do it the other way round. Try to get Windows mount NFS volumes and you get a different result except when you buy additional software. I'd guess your problem with samba was windows related after all. Mostly sharing directories is a matter of editing smb.conf to share the folders you want and then add a user and set a password with smbpasswd. After that, windows clients can access the folders quite fine. More advanced things are a little harder to do. All this doesn't work with windows XP though since it introduced something new. If Win XP has to talk to Samba you have to disable "require sign or seal" somewhere deep in the registry. After that it works. After all it's really easy but the documentation could be a lot better to get new users into it a bit quicker.
Your last sentence is also only partly true. If Linux is used on corporate desktops preconfigured by admins, it's almost as usable as Windows since the user isn't supposed to change the hard stuff anyways. For endusers it's another thing. But mostly Windows compatibility is a little harder to achieve. The daily tasks for normal usage usually work quite well using the configuration tools of modern distributions.
I got the same drive but it sometimes can't even read the media. No problems with any other disc I tried. Maybe I got a bad batch or they have different versions around. I wouldn't know.
Bittorrent slow? Maybe you should stop your traffic shaper.
As every other P2P Tool, bittorrent downloads are only as fast as people are willing to give. If you have 3 seeders with slow upstream lines and 300 leechers with big pipes downstream, no wonder speed is bad.
>and believe me I know what I am talking about, > having been unlucky enough to have lived in > Europe for some years
Good, every European Country is the same.
> But what we are talking about here is a bunch > of guys at the Munich who hate America so > much that they actually gave a contract to a bid > that was $12 million HIGHER, despite the fact > that have a huge budget dificit in that city.
The only true thing about that statement is that the deal was actually 12Million higher. The reasons were different though.
>And this is addition to the higher cost of >ownership of linux,
depends on who does the calculation. Unproven.
>the cost of training their 14,000 staff to use >completely new, more usesr unfriendly >software, the loss in productivity, etc etc.
Training would be needed anyways. Where exactly is the difference in userfriendlyness in a preconfigured desktop with linux and Windows XP when you are not allowed to change anything anyways.
>Why? >Well because President Bush and several >members of the US Congress own Microsoft >shares, so the American-hating Germans were >going to stick it to the United Sates weren't >they?
What about open standards, vendor lock in, more flexibility, way more open contracts, the BSI funded Ägypten Project etc? I believe you are so filled up with prejudice that you just can't get it. But I guess it's simpler to call everybody who doesn't buy american without thinking and who doesn't agree completely to everything you say is anti-american. I really don't get how people can get THAT narrowminded.
>And hey, it doesn't hurt if the manage to help a >German software company(SuSe) as well, does >it?
Of course not. Guess you'd prefer the American government spending American taxpayer's money on American products as well.
> Well two can play at that game. > Don't forget its Germany that has a huge trade > surplus with the US, not the other way around.
That's right but the trade between America and Germany is massive and significant in both directions. Why would you stop buying German products? Just because Munich didn't buy Microsoft Desktops? Are you serious? Or is it because of your prejudice and narrowmindedness that just doesn't let you get it?
> Lets see how you like it when we start voting > with our wallets away from German goods!
OMG, now one German City and hell, even the German Government are deploying linux. Let the trade war's roll. If it wasn't so sad, it'd be funny.
Guess I have to change my preferences... Now the same thing readable:
> I don't live in the US btw...
Sorry, I assumed that, obviously. Are you Canadian? I spent a year in Canada while in Highschool.
>If the anti-american sentiment is, as you claim, >more keenly focused on the current prez, etc., > you must then conclude that it is thus also > focused more keenly on Microsoft. George W's > politics and Microsoft's politics are very closely > aligned.
Uhm, sort of. I'm not sure about the general public but for me those two are different entities even though the american president traditionally has a lot of support especially before the elections to finance all the marketing.
I see MS as a powerful company that tries to become even more powerful and that tries to expand in ever more areas of my life (think PDAs, Game consoles, intelligent TVs...). That I dislike. Microsoft's success is not mainly based on products that are better than those of their competitors but also on luck and errors of others (original MS-Dos deals), being there before others, excellent marketing and quite a bit of anti-competative practices. Those are the reasons why I am not a friend of MS. From what I heard about the decision making process in Munich, things like having an open platform and based on open standards without vendor lock in were very important factors. There currently is a trend visible within the government that leads in that direction. For some people taking part in the decision making proces, your average conspiracy theory was probably also involved but I don't believe that was the deciding factor.
Looking at it this way, connections between Microsoft and the current president are not that important anymore. Additionally the decision was made by a city not by the state. George Bush's influence really isn't that important for the city of munich and while there might be some people in the munich government who see the link you mentioned, I really don't think it was the deciding factor. I'd say this was a business decision. If there was politics involved, it was to kick out a vendor that has a tendency to impose tight rules that became even tighter in the last couple of years, nothing more.
Guess I have to change my preferences...
Now the same thing readable:
> I don't live in the US btw...
Sorry, I assumed that, obviously. Are you Canadian? I spent a year in Canada while in Highschool.
>If the anti-american sentiment is, as you claim,
>more keenly focused on the current prez, etc.,
> you must then conclude that it is thus also
> focused more keenly on Microsoft. George W's
> politics and Microsoft's politics are very closely
> aligned.
Uhm, sort of. I'm not sure about the general public but for me those two are different entities even though the american president traditionally has a lot of support especially before the elections to finance all the marketing.
I see MS as a powerful company that tries to become even more powerful and that tries to expand in ever more areas of my life (think PDAs, Game consoles, intelligent TVs...). That I dislike. Microsoft's success is not mainly based on products that are better than those of their competitors but also on luck and errors of others (original MS-Dos deals), being there before others, excellent marketing and quite a bit of anti-competative practices. Those are the reasons why I am not a friend of MS. From what I heard about the decision making process in Munich, things like having an open platform and based on open standards without vendor lock in were very important factors. There currently is a trend visible within the government that leads in that direction. For some people taking part in the decision making proces, your average conspiracy theory was probably also involved but I don't believe that was the deciding factor.
Looking at it this way, connections between Microsoft and the current president are not that important anymore. Additionally the decision was made by a city not by the state. George Bush's influence really isn't that important for the city of munich and while there might be some people in the munich government who see the link you mentioned, I really don't think it was the deciding factor. I'd say this was a business decision. If there was politics involved, it was to kick out a vendor that has a tendency to impose tight rules that became even tighter in the last couple of years, nothing more.
> I don't live in the US btw...
Sorry, I assumed that, obviously.
>If the anti-american sentiment is, as you claim,
>more keenly focused on the current prez, etc.,
> you must then conclude that it is thus also
> focused more keenly on Microsoft. George W's
> politics and Microsoft's politics are very closely
> aligned.
Uhm, sort of. I'm not sure about the general public but for me those two are different entities even though the american president traditionally has a lot of support especially before the elections to finance all the marketing.
I see MS as a powerful company that tries to become even more powerful and that tries to expand in ever more areas of my life (think PDAs, Game consoles, intelligent TVs...). That I dislike. Microsoft's success is not mainly based on products that are better than those of their competitors but also on luck and errors of others (original MS-Dos deals), being there before others, excellent marketing and quite a bit of anti-competative practices. Those are the reasons why I am not a friend of MS. From what I heard about the decision making process in Munich, things like having an open platform and based on open standards without vendor lock in were very important factors. There currently is a trend visible within the government that leads in that direction. For some people taking part in the decision making proces, your average conspiracy theory was probably also involved but I don't believe that was the deciding factor.
Looking at it this way, connections between Microsoft and the current president are not that important anymore. Additionally the decision was made by a city not by the state. George Bush's influence really isn't that important for the city of munich and while there might be some people in the munich government who see the link you mentioned, I really don't think it was the deciding factor. I'd say this was a business decision. If there was politics involved, it was to kick out a vendor that has a tendency to impose tight rules that became even tighter in the last couple of years, nothing more.
>Let's face it, there's strong anti-American >sentiment in Europe, and Microsoft is seen >there as a rook in the game of chess that they >play with the states.
Do you really think repeating it over and over again increases the level of truth in it? True, a lot of people (, me included,) are not really big fans of your current president and his clumsy politics but that doesn't make us/me anti-american. At the most, it makes me/us anti-George W. Bush, more accurately it makes me/us question some of his decisions and actions and our politicians disagree and voice their oppinions. What's bad about this?
For sure, Schröder acted like an idiot and I question him as well. Using you logic, that makes me anti-German now. Interesting for a German, isn't it?
> This especially is true since the new U.S. > government dropped antitrust penalties.
I think you mean agains MS. Well I'd think that's something many Americans don't like either.
>If you're a German city councillor what are you >going to do - spend money that will go into >foreign, "imperialist" pockets? Or spend money >that will (at least partly for SuSE) stay in the >country?
This is a completely different thing. Remove all your negative attributes and it's something every government does or do you really believe, AirForce 1 will ever be an Airbus?
What strikes me here is the difference between the way many Americans seem to act and react. On one side, there is this great display of power and the deep understanding that the US has every right to apply it. This sentence was meant without any judgement, just wanted to note that since I'm not sure if my English is good enough to express that properly. On the other hand, there is this rather strange behaviour that reminds me of reactions of little children if they don't get their way. So there was some disagreement between the US and Europe about the war in Iraq. Admittedly, Schröder acted like the elephant in a china store but isn't it ok if Germany, France and other nations express their oppinions and decide not to follow the US and it's president's politics blindly? Where exactly is the problem? How does this make us anti-american in general? This is an honest question since it's really hard for me to understand.
Why are decisions of the governments of Germany, France and other nations judged that differently compared to the American government? If the US decides not to follow international treaties, that's ok. If Germany decides not to go to war with Iraq on the basis of questionable evidence that's pure evil. Please enlighten me, I simply don't get it.
What about not being able to fix all those security relevant bugs that tend to crop up?
The munich deal includes everything, also migration cost and cost for porting applications. That's what makes it initially more expensive. We'll se wether the choice was a wise one or not in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
The original vote was scheduled for Sep. 1st. The european parliament resceduled the vote to either the 22nd or the 26th of september. I don't know yet what exactly will be done in the meantime but it seems they will discuss the issue once more and maybe decide about changes.
The rescheduling took place because of the protests which means they were heard. Hopefully they will have deeper effects than just another date for the vote.
Well it goes even further. Pay now and sue after if SCO's claims weren't right or take the risk of high price after SCO wins, if that will happen.
Yes, it might of course have been an explanatory diagram. Question is, what does it explain? It simply explains that there is code from other sources that was copied and unsed in the linux kernel. But what exactly does that tell the crowd? Nothing much really especially nothing at all related to SCO's claims. Additionally, why would they label the code Sys V code if it isn't Sys V code? Why would they risk being shot down in public the way they are if they actually have close to a million lines of code as they claim. What's a few lines for a slide out of about a million?
Naah, I think they used this piece because they really thought it was a good example and now they are backpaddeling and probably someone got his butt kicked for giving management "evidence" that useless.
My guess is that Darl McBribe will not so soon repeat the lines of code claim since they will probably do better checking and come up with much less lines if any. If he really doesn't repeat the close to a million claim I'd say that's a good indicator because they definately would if that number wasn't questionably in their minds.
There *will* be new Worms with Linux or more exactly Services running on Linux as a target. There will eventually be (more) Viruses (than the proof of concept viruses we have today). But to be fair, you have to make a difference between the types there are. Sobig is a completely different beast compared to the blaster thing. Blaster like outbreaks are definately possible with Linux. Eventually there will be another easy to use root exploit (think wuftp as an example) and then there will be worms exploiting it. It just has to be in a service that is default for most distributions. OpenSSH an Apache would probably be some of the most dangerous targets because of their installed base. Worms like blaster exploit programming errors. Since programming errors will always happen, there's always the chance of them happening in highly relevant places in regard to security.
The Sobig stuff is a completely different matter. Those are enduser worms. They need help of an enduser clicking on something. To be exact, those worms are outlook worms. Microsoft could stop or slow down those worms by making it harder for endusers to execute the malicious code. Linux is only (much) more secure here since poeple would have to save the attachment (seeing the full name, not just the xxx.txt part of xxx.txt.exe), make it executable and actually run it. As long as Linux mailers will not offer click and run for mail attachments, worms like that have the threat leavel of those sigs you sometimes see, saying hey, I'm a sig virus, please copy me to your sig. I'm sure though that an Outlook version that shows the full filename and does't allow executing attachments, maybe even marking them red will drastically reduce dangers of emailworms. And no, the recent methods to tackle the problem are not the right way. Blocking executable attachments completely will just make people disable the measure since it reduces peoples ability to use the software.
Why would they have to downplay? Don't take the shortened statement but the complete statement. As others have stated, there's not much to argue about. There will only be so many distributions that get certified, supported whatever by large commercial software companies or resellers. Most likely those few will be RedHat and SuSE. Maybe eventually the Chinese RedFlag Linux will be added if the market get's huge enough.
I don't think he wanted to say all other distros besides RedHat and SuSE will go away. They won't. Especially the non commercial ones like debian or gentoo or similar smaller ones are there to stay. Then again, if you look at Mandrake, they are commercial but even though they make my favourite laptop distribution, which I even bought, they are quite small and struggle. Hopefully they will survive but chances are they will eventually cease to exist, which would be a real loss.
I don't like SuSE very much, just a personal choice. I'm a Gentoo and Mandrake (Laptop) user but I can only add to the previous statement:
If I'm not wrong, SuSE has supported the development of reiserfs, employs KDE developers and is active in supporting the development of more projects than Qbertino and I have mentioned.
They differ in that they don't distribute ISOs and that yast is not GPLed. Ok, one can disagree with that. If you do, fine, don't use SuSE and especially don't buy SuSE but don't forget you can still get SuSE for free. If you have to, make yourself a local mirror of their FTP Server or do a direct net install. You get the same result as installing an ISO of some other distribution.
> So a company can spend millions of dollars
o problem.
> developing software and protocols, running servers,
> paying for bandwidth and then they have the gall to
> claim that every Joe Blow can't piggy back off of their
> service!! How dare they!
Well as long as they nearly threaten people with new XP installations to FINALLY get a passport account and sign on to messanger, they are *again* misusing their position in the operating system market to push their services. They should at least let other clients interoperate with them, which they in fact do. kopete.kde.org still works fine with msn.
>Sheesh... another Slashdot MS is evil rant fest. Let me
> know when there's a free Jabber server for public
> logins...
No problem, here is a nice list.
http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.php
N
> I want an OS that works, out of the box, with MY system.
This is a perfectly valid requirement.
>Windows does this for me. Linux (so far as I have tried) does not.
Well, you are lucky. It can be the other way round. It all depends on your specific setup.
I'd suggest Mandrake for you. On the Systems I tried (2x 1600MP on Asus with USB and parallel printer, scanner, DVB Card, SB Live, USB Mouse, and various other things and Laptop) only the winmodem on my laptop wasn't found. You could try Knoppix first to check how much can be supported. You don't need to install, just put in the CD and give it a try. Mind though that Mandrake and certainly others too have highly extended kernels which include many drivers not available in the stock kernel.
KDE or Gnome? Well, I much prefer KDE over Gnome but that's basically a matter of personal choice. Try em and use the one you like. Bluecurve is just RedHat's miserable way of making both desktops suck.
What kind of DSL Modem do you have? USB? Those are critical since they usually are poorly documented pieces of proprietary *****. If it doesn't work for you, just don't. There sure is a lot of hardware that is not supported (completely) for various reasons, either don't buy unsupported hardware, live with it or don't use Linux. Same is true for Software. If there is something you need and that or an acceptable equivalent is not available for Linux, Linux isn't right for you.
Currently only Linux is the tool for me to get my work done. Mainly because my scanner doesn't work with windows and because of all the tools I use on a day to day basis which certainly are available for windows, too (cygwin) but need to be tuned and configured and are just there on linux.
It really depends on what you need. The Mandrake installation was extremely quick (40 Minutes for the operating System and a huge load of software), With XP, in that time only the plain installation was done and I just started installing the first SP. The Mandrake installation configured every piece of hardware except the winmodem (look at the name) and maybe the irda port, I never tried it. All the USB and PC-Card hardware I own works via hotplug except a new WLan card with an yet unsupported chipset. But that's something I knew about and I follow the development process, eventually even that will work.
So in the end, it really depends on various criteria. Just decide on these and you are ok, no matter what's the outcome. Isn't that the same with every tool? Just because you might not have use for a drill that is powered with pressurized air, it is still the perfect tool for others.
Well, then simply use the USB2 connector. Where's the problem?
I tend to disagree. While many definately never heard of Ogg Vorbis, there probably won't be any ogg only player in the near future. For that reason, ogg products won't fail. But if there are players, buyers of these products might notice ogg and try it out.
Yeah, Alsa is a pita. Thank god it get's a lot better in 2.6. Don't ask me why but it worked much better with every sound integrated test kernel I tried.
Did your read the complaint RedHat's lawyers wrote? One paragraph talks about a holding behind SCO that's collecting the Money due to higher stock prices. If that is true, it seems they want to secure as much money as possible and then let SCO die or be bought by someone, (maybe MSFT after all?).
I tried something similar. I called the German branch and I planned to act dumb but besides vaious efforts they told me again and again to mail them so I did. Of course in that mail I asked them what I would be paying for and asked not to send me the default answer (SCO's IP) but what exactly. Let's see if they will ever reply. Another fellow in a German news board managed to get through to a German SCO employee and he told him to write a mail as well and that he couldn't give any details because of an injunction (right word?) that disallows SCO or it's representatives any statements claiming that there is illegal code in Linux until they actually produce evidence.
Integration in the OS: There is a slight problem here. KDE is *not* a Linux GUI. It can be used on Linux but it's developed to be usable on *BSD, Linux, Solaris, ... That leads to being able to change system settings not being a priority in the development process with of course all the resulting downsides.
SMB: First of all, is it surprising that a compatibility product that emulates little documented features of a closed OS doesn't work as well as the original? Do it the other way round. Try to get Windows mount NFS volumes and you get a different result except when you buy additional software.
I'd guess your problem with samba was windows related after all. Mostly sharing directories is a matter of editing smb.conf to share the folders you want and then add a user and set a password with smbpasswd. After that, windows clients can access the folders quite fine. More advanced things are a little harder to do. All this doesn't work with windows XP though since it introduced something new. If Win XP has to talk to Samba you have to disable "require sign or seal" somewhere deep in the registry. After that it works. After all it's really easy but the documentation could be a lot better to get new users into it a bit quicker.
Your last sentence is also only partly true. If Linux is used on corporate desktops preconfigured by admins, it's almost as usable as Windows since the user isn't supposed to change the hard stuff anyways. For endusers it's another thing. But mostly Windows compatibility is a little harder to achieve. The daily tasks for normal usage usually work quite well using the configuration tools of modern distributions.
I got the same drive but it sometimes can't even read the media. No problems with any other disc I tried. Maybe I got a bad batch or they have different versions around. I wouldn't know.
Memorex DVD-RWs I tried have been by far the worst media I've ever tried.
Bittorrent slow? Maybe you should stop your traffic shaper. As every other P2P Tool, bittorrent downloads are only as fast as people are willing to give. If you have 3 seeders with slow upstream lines and 300 leechers with big pipes downstream, no wonder speed is bad.
>and believe me I know what I am talking about,
> having been unlucky enough to have lived in
> Europe for some years
Good, every European Country is the same.
> But what we are talking about here is a bunch
> of guys at the Munich who hate America so
> much that they actually gave a contract to a bid
> that was $12 million HIGHER, despite the fact
> that have a huge budget dificit in that city.
The only true thing about that statement is that the deal was actually 12Million higher. The reasons were different though.
>And this is addition to the higher cost of >ownership of linux,
depends on who does the calculation. Unproven.
>the cost of training their 14,000 staff to use
>completely new, more usesr unfriendly
>software, the loss in productivity, etc etc.
Training would be needed anyways. Where exactly is the difference in userfriendlyness in a preconfigured desktop with linux and Windows XP when you are not allowed to change anything anyways.
>Why?
>Well because President Bush and several
>members of the US Congress own Microsoft
>shares, so the American-hating Germans were
>going to stick it to the United Sates weren't
>they?
What about open standards, vendor lock in, more flexibility, way more open contracts, the BSI funded Ägypten Project etc? I believe you are so filled up with prejudice that you just can't get it. But I guess it's simpler to call everybody who doesn't buy american without thinking and who doesn't agree completely to everything you say is anti-american. I really don't get how people can get THAT narrowminded.
>And hey, it doesn't hurt if the manage to help a
>German software company(SuSe) as well, does
>it?
Of course not. Guess you'd prefer the American government spending American taxpayer's money on American products as well.
> Well two can play at that game.
> Don't forget its Germany that has a huge trade
> surplus with the US, not the other way around.
That's right but the trade between America and Germany is massive and significant in both directions. Why would you stop buying German products? Just because Munich didn't buy Microsoft Desktops? Are you serious? Or is it because of your prejudice and narrowmindedness that just doesn't let you get it?
> Lets see how you like it when we start voting > with our wallets away from German goods!
OMG, now one German City and hell, even the German Government are deploying linux. Let the trade war's roll. If it wasn't so sad, it'd be funny.
Guess I have to change my preferences...
Now the same thing readable:
> I don't live in the US btw...
Sorry, I assumed that, obviously. Are you Canadian? I spent a year in Canada while in Highschool.
>If the anti-american sentiment is, as you claim,
>more keenly focused on the current prez, etc.,
> you must then conclude that it is thus also
> focused more keenly on Microsoft. George W's
> politics and Microsoft's politics are very closely
> aligned.
Uhm, sort of. I'm not sure about the general public but for me those two are different entities even though the american president traditionally has a lot of support especially before the elections to finance all the marketing.
I see MS as a powerful company that tries to become even more powerful and that tries to expand in ever more areas of my life (think PDAs, Game consoles, intelligent TVs...). That I dislike. Microsoft's success is not mainly based on products that are better than those of their competitors but also on luck and errors of others (original MS-Dos deals), being there before others, excellent marketing and quite a bit of anti-competative practices. Those are the reasons why I am not a friend of MS. From what I heard about the decision making process in Munich, things like having an open platform and based on open standards without vendor lock in were very important factors. There currently is a trend visible within the government that leads in that direction. For some people taking part in the decision making proces, your average conspiracy theory was probably also involved but I don't believe that was the deciding factor.
Looking at it this way, connections between Microsoft and the current president are not that important anymore. Additionally the decision was made by a city not by the state. George Bush's influence really isn't that important for the city of munich and while there might be some people in the munich government who see the link you mentioned, I really don't think it was the deciding factor. I'd say this was a business decision. If there was politics involved, it was to kick out a vendor that has a tendency to impose tight rules that became even tighter in the last couple of years, nothing more.
Guess I have to change my preferences... Now the same thing readable: > I don't live in the US btw... Sorry, I assumed that, obviously. Are you Canadian? I spent a year in Canada while in Highschool. >If the anti-american sentiment is, as you claim, >more keenly focused on the current prez, etc., > you must then conclude that it is thus also > focused more keenly on Microsoft. George W's > politics and Microsoft's politics are very closely > aligned. Uhm, sort of. I'm not sure about the general public but for me those two are different entities even though the american president traditionally has a lot of support especially before the elections to finance all the marketing. I see MS as a powerful company that tries to become even more powerful and that tries to expand in ever more areas of my life (think PDAs, Game consoles, intelligent TVs...). That I dislike. Microsoft's success is not mainly based on products that are better than those of their competitors but also on luck and errors of others (original MS-Dos deals), being there before others, excellent marketing and quite a bit of anti-competative practices. Those are the reasons why I am not a friend of MS. From what I heard about the decision making process in Munich, things like having an open platform and based on open standards without vendor lock in were very important factors. There currently is a trend visible within the government that leads in that direction. For some people taking part in the decision making proces, your average conspiracy theory was probably also involved but I don't believe that was the deciding factor. Looking at it this way, connections between Microsoft and the current president are not that important anymore. Additionally the decision was made by a city not by the state. George Bush's influence really isn't that important for the city of munich and while there might be some people in the munich government who see the link you mentioned, I really don't think it was the deciding factor. I'd say this was a business decision. If there was politics involved, it was to kick out a vendor that has a tendency to impose tight rules that became even tighter in the last couple of years, nothing more.
> I don't live in the US btw... Sorry, I assumed that, obviously. >If the anti-american sentiment is, as you claim, >more keenly focused on the current prez, etc., > you must then conclude that it is thus also > focused more keenly on Microsoft. George W's > politics and Microsoft's politics are very closely > aligned. Uhm, sort of. I'm not sure about the general public but for me those two are different entities even though the american president traditionally has a lot of support especially before the elections to finance all the marketing. I see MS as a powerful company that tries to become even more powerful and that tries to expand in ever more areas of my life (think PDAs, Game consoles, intelligent TVs...). That I dislike. Microsoft's success is not mainly based on products that are better than those of their competitors but also on luck and errors of others (original MS-Dos deals), being there before others, excellent marketing and quite a bit of anti-competative practices. Those are the reasons why I am not a friend of MS. From what I heard about the decision making process in Munich, things like having an open platform and based on open standards without vendor lock in were very important factors. There currently is a trend visible within the government that leads in that direction. For some people taking part in the decision making proces, your average conspiracy theory was probably also involved but I don't believe that was the deciding factor. Looking at it this way, connections between Microsoft and the current president are not that important anymore. Additionally the decision was made by a city not by the state. George Bush's influence really isn't that important for the city of munich and while there might be some people in the munich government who see the link you mentioned, I really don't think it was the deciding factor. I'd say this was a business decision. If there was politics involved, it was to kick out a vendor that has a tendency to impose tight rules that became even tighter in the last couple of years, nothing more.
Munich itself is located in that part but the city of Munich itself is not governed by the conservative CSU but by the social democrats (SPD).
>Let's face it, there's strong anti-American
>sentiment in Europe, and Microsoft is seen
>there as a rook in the game of chess that they
>play with the states.
Do you really think repeating it over and over again increases the level of truth in it? True, a lot of people (, me included,) are not really big fans of your current president and his clumsy politics but that doesn't make us/me anti-american. At the most, it makes me/us anti-George W. Bush, more accurately it makes me/us question some of his decisions and actions and our politicians disagree and voice their oppinions. What's bad about this?
For sure, Schröder acted like an idiot and I question him as well. Using you logic, that makes me anti-German now. Interesting for a German, isn't it?
> This especially is true since the new U.S.
> government dropped antitrust penalties.
I think you mean agains MS. Well I'd think that's something many Americans don't like either.
>If you're a German city councillor what are you
>going to do - spend money that will go into
>foreign, "imperialist" pockets? Or spend money
>that will (at least partly for SuSE) stay in the
>country?
This is a completely different thing. Remove all your negative attributes and it's something every government does or do you really believe, AirForce 1 will ever be an Airbus?
What strikes me here is the difference between the way many Americans seem to act and react. On one side, there is this great display of power and the deep understanding that the US has every right to apply it. This sentence was meant without any judgement, just wanted to note that since I'm not sure if my English is good enough to express that properly. On the other hand, there is this rather strange behaviour that reminds me of reactions of little children if they don't get their way. So there was some disagreement between the US and Europe about the war in Iraq. Admittedly, Schröder acted like the elephant in a china store but isn't it ok if Germany, France and other nations express their oppinions and decide not to follow the US and it's president's politics blindly? Where exactly is the problem? How does this make us anti-american in general? This is an honest question since it's really hard for me to understand.
Why are decisions of the governments of Germany, France and other nations judged that differently compared to the American government? If the US decides not to follow international treaties, that's ok. If Germany decides not to go to war with Iraq on the basis of questionable evidence that's pure evil. Please enlighten me, I simply don't get it.
sort of, not at all for production though.
What about not being able to fix all those security relevant bugs that tend to crop up? The munich deal includes everything, also migration cost and cost for porting applications. That's what makes it initially more expensive. We'll se wether the choice was a wise one or not in the long run.