And it is not replacement for Photoshop, either. But post scriptum: for PROFESIONALS. For other crowd who pirates Photoshop just for little tweaks (who are also just people who takes "first hit for free") GIMP could be good enough.
See, I said - could be. Yes, GIMP has it's own share of problems and it feels somehow stagnated, sure. It could be better. So it is just too little confusing in GUI and lacks good help mode. That's all.
I don't get. They want legal system go down in smokes? It is total massive abuse of court system at it's best. Maybe we should start to sue everyone who breathes the air?
Seriously. She works with poors and disabled, she is specially educated as social worker (BA), she CARES to CHANGE things. She doesn't have very much for herself, be how much she gives from herself as human...
Money can be thrown in bilions, but if you don't have a human force, who works for example drugs, solutions, who does REAL job, then it's really waste-basket situation. Without them, money means nothing. Bill means nothing. And Jobs means nothing.
Exactly which part is anti-business? It is very vague claim. Issues about DRM? They exist and even lot of small business have problems with that. Problems with software patents? We just don't have to tell HOW big they are.
You just maybe don't like that FSF talks about issues which are hard to bear and deal with, because DRM and software patents are just FORCED by very powerful companies and people - in both real power and money.
How do you will fight back?
And, by the way, if someone have problems with provisions, they should just stick with BSD anyway, because it works for so many businesses. GPL has it's own statues for a reason.
Please, I talk about some common crowd and I talk about envorement GUI, GNOME/KDE based. I talk about very simple interface with one question and several choices.
No. They net MUCH more with every movie - $200mil is about domestic box office, it doesn't say ANYTHING about abroad, it doesn't say anything about DVD sales, etc.
For example, Incredibles propably has netted some 700$ milions for sure.
What he meant there should be definetly easy way to turn it on, of course, with warning that some security problems could arise. AFAIK, KDE and GNOME has both easy ways to create shares for now, but there is no way to configure SAMBA for just several default scenarios which could be - anonymous read-only, anonymous read-write, user-based read-only, user-based read-write, custom. Default could be user-based read-only. Or something like that.
For example, OS X Tiger server uses SAMBA for Windows support. Any mangling with configuration goes trough Server Admin GUI (you can mess with configuration file too), but any changes gets written back to standard smb.conf.
It could be very good and nice present for common crowd.
They thought that actual innovation happens only because of money. Seems a perfect money junkie thinking to me.
See, they see all world as property of something, someone. Anyone belongs to someone, there should be no free tools, free goods, and specially, no free knowledge. Someone should do money out of it.
Why they think so? Hmmm...what about some ill-based theory that greed is something "healthy"? Don't matter that couple of psyhologists would insist on something in lines about "luck of love" or "felt cold sting of powerty". See, lot of people want so much, because they just try to compensate something they lack.
Money is needed for power, but power is needed to fill the void inside your heart. Nothing more, nothing less. And more and more business people thinking that love is just "hippy thingy" and they have no time for this, you will see such things more and more.
It is some kind of circle which they are powerless to break - and after some time they find comfort within it.
I second this comment. Firefox is good and all that stuff, but what FF is really achieved (and I send really big THANK YOU to FF both teams - devs and marketing project guys) is that WWW standards is again taken seriosly. Just for notice, I have page in workings with rather much CSS and positioning - guess what - FF, Mozilla, Safari (newest one), Camino and Opera 8.x - shows equally. Safari even support AJAX used in that page - which surprised me most.
Yeah, IE still shows that fucked up, but I will get to work on it, eventually. But at least, if someone will have problems, I can stick a text on my page "If you expierence problems, it would be best to use lastest version of Firefox web browser, please refer www.getfirefox.com for download". And it would be only fair, because 15-25% users of the web - that browser should be good:))))
And again, thanks FF team for what they achieved. Sure, they still have work to do, but hey - nobody is perfect. Main idea is that market and competition is again alive and in full steam.
But there is quite possible to arrange public outrage to remove some very doubtful persons. As far as have I seen it, it works quite well. And as we know, EC should be accepted by EP, which showed big ressistance in creation of last EC.
...are my requirements. Ads should be well integrated in site, if I will have a interest, banner will earn a click from me anyway. Navigation should be easy to spot on - I usually check in five secs to see if site contains ANY information I need. If it doesn't, well, maybe I will return later. Maybe not.
And last, but certainly not least point is that site should be easy on eyes - no eye-bleeding content, no flashing (good looking moving objects are just fine), good balance. I personally think that it is one of main points why Google rocks [tm].
How hard is it to understand? I see that now many blank PC owners saw such a beauty and screamed at once "I WANT TO 0WN IT!" and started to modify and hack it. But who cares? There won't be official support for other platforms and propably Apple EULA will include that you can use it on Mac - for sake of support.
And in fact, OS X is not without its own share of serious problems, so it is "ooo shinny" mental factor workin here on geeks. Poor guys... For me OS X is just to get my work done, at work I better off with GNU/Linux.
Yes, but somehow it works for them (t.i.Apple with OS X). Strange, isn't it?
More to point - Microsoft "let's hack something for version 1.0 and then let's somehow provide workarounds" way of doing things are hitting them back hard time. And that is only and only their fault.
It should be something like that "Mafi...errrr, record cartel feels left out in the cold, threats collect their IP and go home". Ok, that was childish atempt of joke.
From my point of view, it feels so terribly wrong that I even start to doubt claim that greed is that force which moves civilization forward. I would say it is totally oposite - money gives you power and if you use it to do things - that moves us forward. Greed without any borders and reasoning (hint: Microsoft (not Bill personally), **AA, drug lords, arm resellers, etc.) just for a sake of personality is pervert form of understanding of power.
And what drives me insane that they use their pervert understanding of power to abuse laws, it's system. Creating numerous infinitive laws to protect their "Intelectual property" simply poisons all legal system (hint: patents) and in the end, it will be total anarchy.
And my pick is that it is what these guys want. They will have weapons, they will have money, they will have power. And no one will stand in their way, because goverment will be legally...gone.
Uhh....something reminds me that. Feodalism anyone?
To say something more to point - I don't understand RIAA. In fact, radio gives them free ad of the song, record, artist, whatever - and they fight against it? I don't get it, they are just plain stupid or they are overcalculated something? Of course some people will record song from a digital radio, will listen couple times or more and will forget it. But most people will listen, check it out what it was and will propably end it in their iPods.
I have problem that they fixed this problem only because someone discovered this ugly hack and they should do that. They didn't discovered by themselves, as some of other posters pointed out, in two major version upgrades - Windows 2000 and Windows XP. And they claimed that Vista will be secure. Can you say Vista will be secure if they don't check out and don't catch such obious old design bugs like this one?
It is not how the biggest and "greatest" software company in the world should do their homework.
What a hell is happening on Microsoft? They have a major Windows version upgrade and they don't even audit their portable old code for such things?! I would get a someone responsible about security in Windows Vista fired ASAP.
How they think will be migration from old versions of Windows if such things will countinue to happen? Yeah, I know, OEM will have Vista and that's all. But with Web applications my pick is that lot of enterprises will stick with their Windows 2000/XP.
No doubt that Microsoft will have hard time to make Vista as smash hit as they would like it to be.
I don't know, I was talking about iPod nano, which I use. No batteries dying, no bad firmware, no breakage after six months. And my point was that Apple iCell (well, at least one model) propably will be seperated and won't have actual playback function.
My pick is that it will be seperated package with very close support for all type iPod. It could be like that you can pair iPod and Apple iCell and listen to both trough handfree. When call arrives, iPod would silent a little bit or something like that.
I see that Apple like to seperate things, in same time ensure that simply would fit together and work. But if their cell phone will be the same quality as iPod (I mean not only technically, also in design and "working together"), then I would like to buy one, because there is serious problems to buy cell phone which would not suck. Seriosly. I don't need mp3 support. I don't need fm support. I don't need camera (thought I could live with it and even use it time after time, so no problem if there is one). I need good looking, stylish, working cell phone which I can call, I can sync numbers from address books, I can dump my messages to computer, etc.
There is NO standard format for streaming media, well, wasn't until recent times. All we had (and still have) is MPEG subformats, which are licensed to be used in varous containers - WMA, AVI, QT, etc. In fact, first real royality-free streaming format (it is allowed to implement support for them to any commercial/non-commercial vendor and it is also designed to maximum avoid any patents) is Ogg Vorbis/Theora.
For example, I have seen much radios embrase Ogg Vorbis streaming, including quite famious Virgin Radio in UK, check out here http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/str eams.html. Fluendo, as I have seen from GNOME Planet, has successful business plan with supporting Ogg with their rather cheap streaming services. And Ogg also has one supporter under their wing and it is...Real. Yeah, newest Real players (those without bloat) has quite good Ogg support.
So actually if we are talking about past, there was no competition for WMA and Real for some time, so it was quite natural that they were most used for streaming. But times are changing and it is good.
For Windows Media usage, it is clearly because Windows Media Player is aviable on every Windows box, period. It is cleary because of that. Also server support is very important - Windows Media Services offerings are quite effective (disclaimer: I love Ogg Vorbis/Theora and what Fluendo try to do) and Real Server was quite only solution for any streaming.
Streaming is technically very demanding from server software, so actually it is quite understandable that CNN or BBC uses Real and Windows Media to stream - because these formats are which have popular and usable players and their server parts.
They _are_ crooks. And they certanly aren't smart people, because, well, they overflood us with spam and then they hope we won't fight back? If they have cept their ammount low level, they would somehow get away with moderate protection and all. But so forcefully push to people accept spam resulted in big resistance, like laws, cases against spammers, better tools, etc. Yes, it was annoyance for some time, but for example all my three mailboxes are getting EXCELENT spam protection - Evolution with SpamAssasin turned on (SA was quite a memory sucker in previous versions, now it works just fine), work mail who is going trough OS X 10.4 (which has also SpamAssasin/ClamAV built in and have a nice configuration interface) and lands on OS X iMac II who has Mail program with spam protection too (who also works, no more no less). And in the end, for webmail I use gmail, which handles and fights with spam quite fine.
So what is the result? In reality checking, spammers brought an end to their business - common people get aware of the problem, they getting suspicious about their computers when they get slower and slower - there is no more urban legend that it should be and you have to buy new procesor or additional memory.
They are stupid and annoying (additionally - stupidly stubborn). Is the second twos which brothers me.
If you want to check and change the way you work, I suggest you to try WebObjects/EnterpriseObjects with Java. So THAT is really new way of doing things.
I think one of most important points is possible to code in C# for GNOME platform. C# is easy, object-oriented language (similar to Java), so it IS important to get various programmers which are familiar with Microsoft.NET Studio to even start to THINK about that. About Windows apps is also important, but I would not say that is is highly possible that all apps based on.NET will run on Mono - because, quite frankly,.NET is not as portable as Mono is.
I think we should move on and forget patent scare, because it is not how we are gonna win this war. Yes, someone will wonder - is there really a war? Do we need this? I want only my console, my Flubox, my Englightement minimalistic stylish desktop and that't all.
Problem is here if we won't fight, maybe tomorrow you won't have such freedom to run a simple console mp3 player on your old box and use it as jukebox.
So Mono is quite essental for getting "free desktop" to the masses.
Of course, there are problems. One of them are patents, quite clearly. I have thought about this and really, my pick is that is it is too obious that Microsoft would get penalty ticket about trying to force patents about.NET use. I simply think that Microsoft is not in position to attack open source with patents AND I have actually changed my mind about Microsoft and patents. They are clearly positioned to attack open source with different methods - marketing, PR stuff. It doesn't give away any possibility that it WILL happen, but I think in the case of Mono I trust Novell and lawyers of other companies who obivously have overlooked patents. If they use it - I think it should be safe.
Another problem is that Mono is not quite here for prime time - it is slow and sluggish. However, in last quater of 2005 I have seen lot of improvements of speed and memory usage of Mono base, so it is just time that Mono will be usable.
And in the end, I would like to point out that like it or not, quite lot of "killer apps" are written in Mono - F-Spot, Beagle, etc. I use them every day and they rock, period.
You hit the nail quite on target - it is main question about everything Microsoft does. Yes, Microsoft rules desktop and it _would_ rule in future, if it would like to coorporate and be open in mixed enviroment, in agreement that they are not "the wholy ones". My pick is that Microsoft overestemate importance of lock-in for they money flow - and it can hit back them very badly in nearest future.
So question is - does Microsoft understands that it HAS to change? It is no more age of begemoths when big, fat, juicy companies roared IT world. It will stay Titanic or some last minute changes in strategy will be made to avoid disaster?
And for sake of post scriptum, I mean "change" that way - at least provide support and help for interpolarity, no one asks to be totally open, be open at least about communication. Most people would like to stick with their Windows, and, if they want, hey, it's all about choice. But if current "there can be only one" seriously ill strategy stays, then...
Because there is too much information in the air, there is already said too much both from Microsoft ("well, we _could_ support OpenDocument, but...ohhhh, that's a nice clippy, isn't it?") and their lobbies in state institutions.
If they would step back, that would be disasterous for Microsoft's future efforts to lobby to use Microsoft Office and their "open" format. See, if someone sees that Microsoft simply forces influence, politicians will get resitant. Not only because they afraid of their outlook in voter's eyes, but also they understand the whole issue - Microsoft is desperate and getting very personal when someone wants to take away their monopoly at least for abit. So they will start to see the whole issue then. And that is what Microsoft wants to avoid, I guess.
So...yes. OpenDocument will be there and Microsoft will make export feature for goverments. And I don't think that they will embrace it or make specially with bugs or errors. They will try to fight it different way.
Slashdot Mirror
And it is not replacement for Photoshop, either. But post scriptum: for PROFESIONALS. For other crowd who pirates Photoshop just for little tweaks (who are also just people who takes "first hit for free") GIMP could be good enough.
See, I said - could be. Yes, GIMP has it's own share of problems and it feels somehow stagnated, sure. It could be better. So it is just too little confusing in GUI and lacks good help mode. That's all.
For professionals it is completely other story.
I don't get. They want legal system go down in smokes? It is total massive abuse of court system at it's best. Maybe we should start to sue everyone who breathes the air?
Gosh. Such shortsightness...
Seriously. She works with poors and disabled, she is specially educated as social worker (BA), she CARES to CHANGE things. She doesn't have very much for herself, be how much she gives from herself as human...
Money can be thrown in bilions, but if you don't have a human force, who works for example drugs, solutions, who does REAL job, then it's really waste-basket situation. Without them, money means nothing. Bill means nothing. And Jobs means nothing.
Human touch cannot be replaced by such "Heros".
Exactly which part is anti-business? It is very vague claim. Issues about DRM? They exist and even lot of small business have problems with that. Problems with software patents? We just don't have to tell HOW big they are.
You just maybe don't like that FSF talks about issues which are hard to bear and deal with, because DRM and software patents are just FORCED by very powerful companies and people - in both real power and money.
How do you will fight back?
And, by the way, if someone have problems with provisions, they should just stick with BSD anyway, because it works for so many businesses. GPL has it's own statues for a reason.
Please, I talk about some common crowd and I talk about envorement GUI, GNOME/KDE based.
I talk about very simple interface with one question and several choices.
No. They net MUCH more with every movie - $200mil is about domestic box office, it doesn't say ANYTHING about abroad, it doesn't say anything about DVD sales, etc.
For example, Incredibles propably has netted some 700$ milions for sure.
What he meant there should be definetly easy way to turn it on, of course, with warning that some security problems could arise. AFAIK, KDE and GNOME has both easy ways to create shares for now, but there is no way to configure SAMBA for just several default scenarios which could be - anonymous read-only, anonymous read-write, user-based read-only, user-based read-write, custom. Default could be user-based read-only. Or something like that.
For example, OS X Tiger server uses SAMBA for Windows support. Any mangling with configuration goes trough Server Admin GUI (you can mess with configuration file too), but any changes gets written back to standard smb.conf.
It could be very good and nice present for common crowd.
They thought that actual innovation happens only because of money. Seems a perfect money junkie thinking to me.
See, they see all world as property of something, someone. Anyone belongs to someone, there should be no free tools, free goods, and specially, no free knowledge. Someone should do money out of it.
Why they think so? Hmmm...what about some ill-based theory that greed is something "healthy"? Don't matter that couple of psyhologists would insist on something in lines about "luck of love" or "felt cold sting of powerty". See, lot of people want so much, because they just try to compensate something they lack.
Money is needed for power, but power is needed to fill the void inside your heart. Nothing more, nothing less. And more and more business people thinking that love is just "hippy thingy" and they have no time for this, you will see such things more and more.
It is some kind of circle which they are powerless to break - and after some time they find comfort within it.
I second this comment. Firefox is good and all that stuff, but what FF is really achieved (and I send really big THANK YOU to FF both teams - devs and marketing project guys) is that WWW standards is again taken seriosly. Just for notice, I have page in workings with rather much CSS and positioning - guess what - FF, Mozilla, Safari (newest one), Camino and Opera 8.x - shows equally. Safari even support AJAX used in that page - which surprised me most.
:))))
Yeah, IE still shows that fucked up, but I will get to work on it, eventually. But at least, if someone will have problems, I can stick a text on my page "If you expierence problems, it would be best to use lastest version of Firefox web browser, please refer www.getfirefox.com for download". And it would be only fair, because 15-25% users of the web - that browser should be good
And again, thanks FF team for what they achieved. Sure, they still have work to do, but hey - nobody is perfect. Main idea is that market and competition is again alive and in full steam.
No.
But there is quite possible to arrange public outrage to remove some very doubtful persons. As far as have I seen it, it works quite well. And as we know, EC should be accepted by EP, which showed big ressistance in creation of last EC.
...are my requirements. Ads should be well integrated in site, if I will have a interest, banner will earn a click from me anyway. Navigation should be easy to spot on - I usually check in five secs to see if site contains ANY information I need. If it doesn't, well, maybe I will return later. Maybe not.
And last, but certainly not least point is that site should be easy on eyes - no eye-bleeding content, no flashing (good looking moving objects are just fine), good balance. I personally think that it is one of main points why Google rocks [tm].
How hard is it to understand? I see that now many blank PC owners saw such a beauty and screamed at once "I WANT TO 0WN IT!" and started to modify and hack it. But who cares? There won't be official support for other platforms and propably Apple EULA will include that you can use it on Mac - for sake of support.
And in fact, OS X is not without its own share of serious problems, so it is "ooo shinny" mental factor workin here on geeks. Poor guys... For me OS X is just to get my work done, at work I better off with GNU/Linux.
Yes, but somehow it works for them (t.i.Apple with OS X). Strange, isn't it?
More to point - Microsoft "let's hack something for version 1.0 and then let's somehow provide workarounds" way of doing things are hitting them back hard time. And that is only and only their fault.
It should be something like that "Mafi...errrr, record cartel feels left out in the cold, threats collect their IP and go home". Ok, that was childish atempt of joke.
From my point of view, it feels so terribly wrong that I even start to doubt claim that greed is that force which moves civilization forward. I would say it is totally oposite - money gives you power and if you use it to do things - that moves us forward. Greed without any borders and reasoning (hint: Microsoft (not Bill personally), **AA, drug lords, arm resellers, etc.) just for a sake of personality is pervert form of understanding of power.
And what drives me insane that they use their pervert understanding of power to abuse laws, it's system. Creating numerous infinitive laws to protect their "Intelectual property" simply poisons all legal system (hint: patents) and in the end, it will be total anarchy.
And my pick is that it is what these guys want. They will have weapons, they will have money, they will have power. And no one will stand in their way, because goverment will be legally...gone.
Uhh....something reminds me that. Feodalism anyone?
To say something more to point - I don't understand RIAA. In fact, radio gives them free ad of the song, record, artist, whatever - and they fight against it? I don't get it, they are just plain stupid or they are overcalculated something? Of course some people will record song from a digital radio, will listen couple times or more and will forget it. But most people will listen, check it out what it was and will propably end it in their iPods.
Why they just don't get economics class...
I have problem that they fixed this problem only because someone discovered this ugly hack and they should do that. They didn't discovered by themselves, as some of other posters pointed out, in two major version upgrades - Windows 2000 and Windows XP. And they claimed that Vista will be secure. Can you say Vista will be secure if they don't check out and don't catch such obious old design bugs like this one?
It is not how the biggest and "greatest" software company in the world should do their homework.
What a hell is happening on Microsoft? They have a major Windows version upgrade and they don't even audit their portable old code for such things?! I would get a someone responsible about security in Windows Vista fired ASAP.
How they think will be migration from old versions of Windows if such things will countinue to happen? Yeah, I know, OEM will have Vista and that's all. But with Web applications my pick is that lot of enterprises will stick with their Windows 2000/XP.
No doubt that Microsoft will have hard time to make Vista as smash hit as they would like it to be.
I don't know, I was talking about iPod nano, which I use. No batteries dying, no bad firmware, no breakage after six months. And my point was that Apple iCell (well, at least one model) propably will be seperated and won't have actual playback function.
My pick is that it will be seperated package with very close support for all type iPod. It could be like that you can pair iPod and Apple iCell and listen to both trough handfree. When call arrives, iPod would silent a little bit or something like that.
I see that Apple like to seperate things, in same time ensure that simply would fit together and work. But if their cell phone will be the same quality as iPod (I mean not only technically, also in design and "working together"), then I would like to buy one, because there is serious problems to buy cell phone which would not suck. Seriosly. I don't need mp3 support. I don't need fm support. I don't need camera (thought I could live with it and even use it time after time, so no problem if there is one). I need good looking, stylish, working cell phone which I can call, I can sync numbers from address books, I can dump my messages to computer, etc.
Just simple as that.
There is NO standard format for streaming media, well, wasn't until recent times. All we had (and still have) is MPEG subformats, which are licensed to be used in varous containers - WMA, AVI, QT, etc. In fact, first real royality-free streaming format (it is allowed to implement support for them to any commercial/non-commercial vendor and it is also designed to maximum avoid any patents) is Ogg Vorbis/Theora.
r eams.html. Fluendo, as I have seen from GNOME Planet, has successful business plan with supporting Ogg with their rather cheap streaming services. And Ogg also has one supporter under their wing and it is...Real. Yeah, newest Real players (those without bloat) has quite good Ogg support.
For example, I have seen much radios embrase Ogg Vorbis streaming, including quite famious Virgin Radio in UK, check out here http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/st
So actually if we are talking about past, there was no competition for WMA and Real for some time, so it was quite natural that they were most used for streaming. But times are changing and it is good.
For Windows Media usage, it is clearly because Windows Media Player is aviable on every Windows box, period. It is cleary because of that. Also server support is very important - Windows Media Services offerings are quite effective (disclaimer: I love Ogg Vorbis/Theora and what Fluendo try to do) and Real Server was quite only solution for any streaming.
Streaming is technically very demanding from server software, so actually it is quite understandable that CNN or BBC uses Real and Windows Media to stream - because these formats are which have popular and usable players and their server parts.
You hit the nail on it's head.
They _are_ crooks. And they certanly aren't smart people, because, well, they overflood us with spam and then they hope we won't fight back? If they have cept their ammount low level, they would somehow get away with moderate protection and all. But so forcefully push to people accept spam resulted in big resistance, like laws, cases against spammers, better tools, etc. Yes, it was annoyance for some time, but for example all my three mailboxes are getting EXCELENT spam protection - Evolution with SpamAssasin turned on (SA was quite a memory sucker in previous versions, now it works just fine), work mail who is going trough OS X 10.4 (which has also SpamAssasin/ClamAV built in and have a nice configuration interface) and lands on OS X iMac II who has Mail program with spam protection too (who also works, no more no less). And in the end, for webmail I use gmail, which handles and fights with spam quite fine.
So what is the result? In reality checking, spammers brought an end to their business - common people get aware of the problem, they getting suspicious about their computers when they get slower and slower - there is no more urban legend that it should be and you have to buy new procesor or additional memory.
They are stupid and annoying (additionally - stupidly stubborn). Is the second twos which brothers me.
If you want to check and change the way you work, I suggest you to try WebObjects/EnterpriseObjects with Java. So THAT is really new way of doing things.
I think one of most important points is possible to code in C# for GNOME platform. C# is easy, object-oriented language (similar to Java), so it IS important to get various programmers which are familiar with Microsoft .NET Studio to even start to THINK about that. About Windows apps is also important, but I would not say that is is highly possible that all apps based on .NET will run on Mono - because, quite frankly, .NET is not as portable as Mono is.
.NET use. I simply think that Microsoft is not in position to attack open source with patents AND I have actually changed my mind about Microsoft and patents. They are clearly positioned to attack open source with different methods - marketing, PR stuff. It doesn't give away any possibility that it WILL happen, but I think in the case of Mono I trust Novell and lawyers of other companies who obivously have overlooked patents. If they use it - I think it should be safe.
I think we should move on and forget patent scare, because it is not how we are gonna win this war. Yes, someone will wonder - is there really a war? Do we need this? I want only my console, my Flubox, my Englightement minimalistic stylish desktop and that't all.
Problem is here if we won't fight, maybe tomorrow you won't have such freedom to run a simple console mp3 player on your old box and use it as jukebox.
So Mono is quite essental for getting "free desktop" to the masses.
Of course, there are problems. One of them are patents, quite clearly. I have thought about this and really, my pick is that is it is too obious that Microsoft would get penalty ticket about trying to force patents about
Another problem is that Mono is not quite here for prime time - it is slow and sluggish. However, in last quater of 2005 I have seen lot of improvements of speed and memory usage of Mono base, so it is just time that Mono will be usable.
And in the end, I would like to point out that like it or not, quite lot of "killer apps" are written in Mono - F-Spot, Beagle, etc. I use them every day and they rock, period.
You hit the nail quite on target - it is main question about everything Microsoft does. Yes, Microsoft rules desktop and it _would_ rule in future, if it would like to coorporate and be open in mixed enviroment, in agreement that they are not "the wholy ones". My pick is that Microsoft overestemate importance of lock-in for they money flow - and it can hit back them very badly in nearest future.
So question is - does Microsoft understands that it HAS to change? It is no more age of begemoths when big, fat, juicy companies roared IT world. It will stay Titanic or some last minute changes in strategy will be made to avoid disaster?
And for sake of post scriptum, I mean "change" that way - at least provide support and help for interpolarity, no one asks to be totally open, be open at least about communication. Most people would like to stick with their Windows, and, if they want, hey, it's all about choice. But if current "there can be only one" seriously ill strategy stays, then...
Because there is too much information in the air, there is already said too much both from Microsoft ("well, we _could_ support OpenDocument, but...ohhhh, that's a nice clippy, isn't it?") and their lobbies in state institutions.
If they would step back, that would be disasterous for Microsoft's future efforts to lobby to use Microsoft Office and their "open" format. See, if someone sees that Microsoft simply forces influence, politicians will get resitant. Not only because they afraid of their outlook in voter's eyes, but also they understand the whole issue - Microsoft is desperate and getting very personal when someone wants to take away their monopoly at least for abit. So they will start to see the whole issue then. And that is what Microsoft wants to avoid, I guess.
So...yes. OpenDocument will be there and Microsoft will make export feature for goverments. And I don't think that they will embrace it or make specially with bugs or errors. They will try to fight it different way.