Linux has lower penetration in areas of high piracy because people who just want a free operating system rip off Windows instead of using Linux. How does that contribute profit to MS? If they use it as a price discrimination tool and raise the price in high priracy areas (presumably thinking that "low Linux penetration" means less competition), more people will pirate it!
I agree, Microsoft doesn't want to sell at higher prices in poorer countries--the kind of "price discrimination" they want is the reverse, selling at *lower* prices in poorer countries.
By enforcing copyright more or less depending on the wealth of the country, they effectively perform a kind of price discrimination, making it on average cheaper (in terms of sticker price and legal risk) to acquire a copy in a poor country than in a rich country. And they still do make *some* money in the poorer countries--governments and businesses that can afford legal copies, and that are susceptible to anti-piracy pressure, will still buy legal copies, especially since the country's existing install base (even if mostly illegal) will make it difficult for them to adopt anything other than Windows.
If a CEO embraced a plan to cull 12% of the company's existing customer base in one fell swoop, the board would having him packing his office into boxes the next day.
But they're not counting by customer; the 12% seems to be per *TV*. Which strikes me as a completely useless number. If a family has 3 TV sets, one used for broadcast TV and 2 dedicated to other purposes, that doesn't mean that precisely 1/3 of the family will be pissed off when the broadcast TV goes away....
I rate them a 9, only because I think the cost is a bit high. But, service is exceptional and reliable.
Just a "me too" on everything but the cost, which seems pretty reasonable to me. I've had them a few years now. It's been completely reliable, and the rare times that I've asked for any customer service they seemed efficient and knowledgeable.
All my mail is delivered directly to my home machine (and I also run low-traffic personal web service and stuff), and it's never caused me any problems.
If Opera didn't render something quite right, and they had any market share, I'd only be able to work around that if they identified themselves to my web server correctly.
Ugh. Next time you notice that my browser doesn't render your page correctly, would you please, please, please just go whine at the browser developers to fix their bug? I'd rather live with your page not rendering correctly for a while and get my browser fixed. In the long run that's how we're going to get browsers and web pages that really interoperate reliably....
Everyone already knows that Linux needs a lot of work to become a viable mass market desktop. We've known it for quite a while. We even know a lot of the specific was in which it could be improved to bring it closer to this goal. So why isn't it getting done?
Well, it clearly is *getting* done: anyone who's actually used Gnome, for example, for the last five years or so can see that enormous amounts of work have gone into making a usable desktop.
As for why it isn't actually *done* yet, there's a much simpler reason: because it's really, really hard work, and that kind of thing takes time.
Linux development happens mostly through hobbyists...
Really? These days there are a *ton* of people working full-time on linux development (I should know, I am one...), so a statement like that requires evidence....
The PCs that are below $300 may be 'brand name' but they are hardly what I'd call 'fully loaded.' Usually 128MB memory and a Celeron or Sempron.
Look again. When I visited my parents a couple weeks ago I got my mom a new machine (emachines something-or-other) for just under $300 (no monitor): it was a celeron, but with 512M, a DVD burner, etc., and it ran firefox, Word, etc., just fine.
Last I checked Dell also had a $300 machine with monitor that looked OK.
Not top performers, but definitely more than adequate for most of the things people want to do with them.
I think "fully loaded" in this context means that it has all the components you need (drives, etc.), not that each of the components are the fastest available.
I can't help feeling that any decent programmer would have been able to overcome the same little roadhumps on the way without so much as a sigh. They might even have bothered to fix the troublesome programs themselves.
Well, right, and as a (hopefully) "decent programmer", what I've found is that a) yes, I can indeed figure out this sort of thing eventually, and maybe even submit patches, but b) that doesn't change the fact that it's tedious and time-consuming.
To my mind, none of this excuses the sort of whiny indignation people use to discuss these problems. There's a certain group of people that seems to want to attribute any failing in software to characters flaws in the people that wrote it. (Hard-to-use user interface? Must be "elitist" developers. Bugs? Must be developers not working hard enough, or working on the wrong things. Etc., etc.)
The fact is that writing, from the ground up, an entire free operating system that runs on every piece of hardware known to man, that has no bugs, and that has a user interface that is intuitive and consistent, is an incredible amount of work.
For some people, that work is close enough to being done to make the OS useful. For some it isn't, but that's not because linux developers are intentionally trying to make their lives miserable....
Okay, you've got a deal. I'll check out 400 Blows.
"Stolen Kisses" is another one that's a bunch of people's favorite--same director, same character (played by the same actor, in fact), but older, so he's a bit easier to relate to in some ways. I actually liked the 400 Blows better after seeing the later ones.
Jesus, how I wish I could keep five pins in the air...
It's a lot of hours out of your life for one trick! And I still can't really keep it stable for more than half a minute or so. (OK, but it's fun....)
Some movies let you sit back and show you see the things you need to see without having to think about it.
Some movies are more like math books--you get a lot out of them, but only if you actually pay attention and do the exercises.
Sometimes I don't want a movie where I have to "do the exercises" to get the point, and that's fine. But I appreciate the place for such movies--I *like* learning stuff, and being made to stretch. I think I'd get bored without at least some of the movies I saw being movies that made me work a bit.
I mean for real, come on people. Read the description for a movie on the list such as The 400 Blows or Umberto D and ask yourself, does this sound better than the quality movies (note: not the crap) that are coming out today?
The 400 Blows rocks. Go see it a couple times. Really. The sequels are fun too. (Given your preference for newer movies you might actually want to start with the later ones. There's no real need to see them in order.)
Since I can plug a VoIP phone in anywhere, how is the dispatch going to know where you are like they would with a POTS line? Run a traceroute??
From the article:
Under the order, VoIP carriers must provide a way for customers to update their location and callback numbers when they travel. Failure to update that information would cause an emergency operator to assume the call was coming from the last registered location.
The order also requires VoIP carriers to explain to their customers the capabilities and limitations of the emergency response service they are getting with their Internet phones. Connection to a 911 operator, for example, would not be possible for a VOIP customer if there is a power failure or loss of Internet connection.
So I get the impression the relatively straightforward cases, like VOIP on a home DSL line, are expected to be handled automatically, but the more complicated cases--tunneling your connection back through your home network or whatever--fall under some sort of "well, we warned you, and gave you a way to tell us where you were, it's not our fault if you didn't bother" defense.
The public at large (Joe Sixpack) gets all confused with this 2-format thing.
It's not just Joe Sixpack. I'm a nerdy slashdot-reading gadget-susceptible linux kernel developer, and I don't want to have to compare the string of logos on the back of the disc with my drive's spec sheet every time I buy a friggin' album either....
It's "cachet", no accent.
Aha, thanks for that, here I was thinking it was aFrenchy type of word all along. I sit corrected.
No, it is from French, you were right, and it's pronounced "ca-shay". It's only the spelling you got wrong--it's spelled cachet both in French and English.
Maybe I'm mixing terms here, but I was under the impression that linux is NOT monolithic - its quite modular. Monolithic translates to no modules, correct?
No, you're mixing terms.
We say something has a modular design if it's divided into pieces that communicate with each other through small well-defined API's.
Linux's kernel modules are bits of kernel code that can be loaded into the kernel at runtime. Usually these modules are also examples of modularity, but they don't have to be. Modules have full access to the kernel's memory, so can do anything the kernel can.
In a microkernel drivers, filesystems, etc., all live in a completely separate address space from the kernel, so if, for example, a driver goes bonkers and starts writing to random pieces of memory, the kernel is protected. This forces the design to be somewhat "modular", but again isn't quite the same thing.
So, the linux kernel supports kernel modules, and its design is to some degree "modular" (as any project that size would have to be), but noone would claim it to be a microkernel.
The introductory calculus course I taught a few times had an amusing exercise that went something like:
In 19xx, the New York Times reported Mr. X as saying that "the growth in unemployment is increasing at a slower rate." Which derivative was he talking about?
.... Which serves to point out one of those cases where ordinary language just isn't very precise, I guess.
The issue is the way he is behaving in public. The flames, the "fuck off" attitude towards people working on the kernel, etc...I don't think that is the issue at hand. The issue is the way he is behaving in public. The flames, the "fuck off" attitude towards people working on the kernel, etc...
The kernel did not get where it is with his current attitude.
Oh, yes it did--go spend a few hours reading the lkml archives. He's always flamed people, and always been happy to drop patches that he thought weren't right for one reason or another. There's no sudden change here.... (But I wouldn't call it a "fuck off" attitude. Even when he flames someone he rarely seems to actually hold a grudge, or be unwilling to work with anyone.)
I wish people would stop recommending that "people write their congress rep" eveything an innane law pops up. These people don't care, hell I bet most don't even read their own mail.
Of course they don't--not the representatives themselve, anyway. They get absolutely massive quantities of mail. But *someone* (probably just some volunteer, intern, or whatever) will probably read it, and their office *will* notice when they get a bunch of mail about something.
What you should do is write your local newspapers
That's a fine idea too.
Turn the heat up a bit and they'll be less likely to try to slip something like this under the radar again.
Because there's not enough open source software to meet the needs of everyone. Either the open source software hasn't reached the feature level of the top-dog closed source program (postgreSQL vs Oracle or Gimp vs Photoshop), or the market for a program is such a niche that no one has written anything for it yet, and likely never will.
OK, fine, that I more or less agree with. But I'd summarize that position with something more like "there are many users who currently depend on proprietary software, and at least a few who may depend on it indefinitely," rather than (emphasis mine):
If linux is
ever going to be used by a business, a regular end user...
#4. Get rid of the RPM requirement. Instead, specify the BASIC functionality that the package management system will have and the basic information contained within a package and the format.
So you don't want to standardize on rpm, but you *do* want to specify the "format" of the package? Have you thought this through?
That way, the various systems can ADD that functionality to their existing systems.
I don't get it. What problem are you trying to solve here? What on earth is wrong with just using rpm? It's simple enough and it works on every distribution I know of....
That's not exactly true. Unless the user starts the virus as root.
I'm not sure I've made it clear the sort of attack I'm talking about:
The "virus" first gets access as user joe.
Using joe's privileges, it installs some sort of wrapper for su, or keystroke logger, or whatever. It can't, of course, replace/bin/su, or log every keystroke from the keyboard, because it doesn't have root yet; but it should be able to do the equivalent for the purposes of capturing joe's activity, by modifying dot-files, etc.
Wait for joe to su to root.
At this point it shouldn't be hard to capture the root password that joe uses. No local root exploit required.
Whether there are actually automated scripts that make this easy right now, I don't know. I don't imagine it would be that difficult to write one. So it'll probably happen some day.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, Microsoft doesn't want to sell at higher prices in poorer countries--the kind of "price discrimination" they want is the reverse, selling at *lower* prices in poorer countries.
By enforcing copyright more or less depending on the wealth of the country, they effectively perform a kind of price discrimination, making it on average cheaper (in terms of sticker price and legal risk) to acquire a copy in a poor country than in a rich country. And they still do make *some* money in the poorer countries--governments and businesses that can afford legal copies, and that are susceptible to anti-piracy pressure, will still buy legal copies, especially since the country's existing install base (even if mostly illegal) will make it difficult for them to adopt anything other than Windows.
--Bruce Fields
But they're not counting by customer; the 12% seems to be per *TV*. Which strikes me as a completely useless number. If a family has 3 TV sets, one used for broadcast TV and 2 dedicated to other purposes, that doesn't mean that precisely 1/3 of the family will be pissed off when the broadcast TV goes away....
--Bruce Fields
Just a "me too" on everything but the cost, which seems pretty reasonable to me. I've had them a few years now. It's been completely reliable, and the rare times that I've asked for any customer service they seemed efficient and knowledgeable.
All my mail is delivered directly to my home machine (and I also run low-traffic personal web service and stuff), and it's never caused me any problems.
--Bruce Fields
Ugh. Next time you notice that my browser doesn't render your page correctly, would you please, please, please just go whine at the browser developers to fix their bug? I'd rather live with your page not rendering correctly for a while and get my browser fixed. In the long run that's how we're going to get browsers and web pages that really interoperate reliably....
Well, it clearly is *getting* done: anyone who's actually used Gnome, for example, for the last five years or so can see that enormous amounts of work have gone into making a usable desktop.
As for why it isn't actually *done* yet, there's a much simpler reason: because it's really, really hard work, and that kind of thing takes time.
Really? These days there are a *ton* of people working full-time on linux development (I should know, I am one...), so a statement like that requires evidence....
--Bruce Fields
Look again. When I visited my parents a couple weeks ago I got my mom a new machine (emachines something-or-other) for just under $300 (no monitor): it was a celeron, but with 512M, a DVD burner, etc., and it ran firefox, Word, etc., just fine.
Last I checked Dell also had a $300 machine with monitor that looked OK.
Not top performers, but definitely more than adequate for most of the things people want to do with them.
I think "fully loaded" in this context means that it has all the components you need (drives, etc.), not that each of the components are the fastest available.
Well, right, and as a (hopefully) "decent programmer", what I've found is that a) yes, I can indeed figure out this sort of thing eventually, and maybe even submit patches, but b) that doesn't change the fact that it's tedious and time-consuming.
To my mind, none of this excuses the sort of whiny indignation people use to discuss these problems. There's a certain group of people that seems to want to attribute any failing in software to characters flaws in the people that wrote it. (Hard-to-use user interface? Must be "elitist" developers. Bugs? Must be developers not working hard enough, or working on the wrong things. Etc., etc.)
The fact is that writing, from the ground up, an entire free operating system that runs on every piece of hardware known to man, that has no bugs, and that has a user interface that is intuitive and consistent, is an incredible amount of work.
For some people, that work is close enough to being done to make the OS useful. For some it isn't, but that's not because linux developers are intentionally trying to make their lives miserable....
Yeah, would someone who has one of these portable video players explain what they're actually *for*?
I can see that a DVR that you can occasionally carry from one place to another might be nifty.
But I can't see it for, say, watching movies on the commute--anything that fits in my pocket is going to be too small to watch.
"Stolen Kisses" is another one that's a bunch of people's favorite--same director, same character (played by the same actor, in fact), but older, so he's a bit easier to relate to in some ways. I actually liked the 400 Blows better after seeing the later ones.
It's a lot of hours out of your life for one trick! And I still can't really keep it stable for more than half a minute or so. (OK, but it's fun....)
--b.
Some movies let you sit back and show you see the things you need to see without having to think about it.
Some movies are more like math books--you get a lot out of them, but only if you actually pay attention and do the exercises.
Sometimes I don't want a movie where I have to "do the exercises" to get the point, and that's fine. But I appreciate the place for such movies--I *like* learning stuff, and being made to stretch. I think I'd get bored without at least some of the movies I saw being movies that made me work a bit.
--Bruce Fields
The 400 Blows rocks. Go see it a couple times. Really. The sequels are fun too. (Given your preference for newer movies you might actually want to start with the later ones. There's no real need to see them in order.)
--Bruce Fields
So I get the impression the relatively straightforward cases, like VOIP on a home DSL line, are expected to be handled automatically, but the more complicated cases--tunneling your connection back through your home network or whatever--fall under some sort of "well, we warned you, and gave you a way to tell us where you were, it's not our fault if you didn't bother" defense.
--Bruce Fields
It's not just Joe Sixpack. I'm a nerdy slashdot-reading gadget-susceptible linux kernel developer, and I don't want to have to compare the string of logos on the back of the disc with my drive's spec sheet every time I buy a friggin' album either....
--Bruce Fields
No, it is from French, you were right, and it's pronounced "ca-shay". It's only the spelling you got wrong--it's spelled cachet both in French and English.
--Bruce Fields
No, you're mixing terms.
So, the linux kernel supports kernel modules, and its design is to some degree "modular" (as any project that size would have to be), but noone would claim it to be a microkernel.
--Bruce Fields
The introductory calculus course I taught a few times had an amusing exercise that went something like:
.... Which serves to point out one of those cases where ordinary language just isn't very precise, I guess.
Oh, so I need three 4 GHz computers with a gig of RAM....
Oh, yes it did--go spend a few hours reading the lkml archives. He's always flamed people, and always been happy to drop patches that he thought weren't right for one reason or another. There's no sudden change here.... (But I wouldn't call it a "fuck off" attitude. Even when he flames someone he rarely seems to actually hold a grudge, or be unwilling to work with anyone.)
--Bruce Fields
Of course they don't--not the representatives themselve, anyway. They get absolutely massive quantities of mail. But *someone* (probably just some volunteer, intern, or whatever) will probably read it, and their office *will* notice when they get a bunch of mail about something.
That's a fine idea too.
Hah. I missed that on the first reading.
--Bruce Fields
... and "open source programmers" never get paid. Right.
--Bruce Fields
OK, fine, that I more or less agree with. But I'd summarize that position with something more like "there are many users who currently depend on proprietary software, and at least a few who may depend on it indefinitely," rather than (emphasis mine):
--Bruce Fields
Why?
So you don't want to standardize on rpm, but you *do* want to specify the "format" of the package? Have you thought this through?
I don't get it. What problem are you trying to solve here? What on earth is wrong with just using rpm? It's simple enough and it works on every distribution I know of....
--Bruce Fields
Oh, good grief, rpm's work just *fine* on non-rpm-based distributions. (Try apt-get install rpm on a debian box some time.)
--Bruce Fields
I'm not sure I've made it clear the sort of attack I'm talking about:
At this point it shouldn't be hard to capture the root password that joe uses. No local root exploit required.
Whether there are actually automated scripts that make this easy right now, I don't know. I don't imagine it would be that difficult to write one. So it'll probably happen some day.
Well, that should slow it down at least.
--Bruce Fields