Certainly the UK system of government have 1 major problem - first past the post which means that a new entrant getting anywhere (eg Libertarian) is difficult.
That said, there's two other market controls - live abroad if you don't like it (drain of talent which damages nation) and that if a government is bad for the people and underperforms, other countries will outperform them.
Are you kidding? Look at somewhere like Hong Kong compared to mainstream China, or compare the state of the old East Germany with West Germany after the fall.
Communism was a total failure. A free-market which has controls against monopolies is all you need.
Free Software is more like people who operate in the voluntary sector.
If anything, it's more like a true free market than companies who practise lock-in, who are aiming to practise monopolistic behaviour (communism also is monopolistic because it believes in government control of the means of production).
Free software is like companies in a free market, where the best survive. If the Word file format was open, we may have better tools than we do now.
It's one of the reasons why I travel on the train to Manchester instead of going by car. Car is quicker, and if I was on most train companies trains, I'd get a couple hours of charge at best. On Virgin, I can go the whole journey, which means that I can work.
One thing I always do in cafes is ask if I can plug in my laptop to do some work or whatever. If they say that I can't (never happened yet), I won't be offended, won't try and covertly plug it in. I'll just never use that cafe for working in again.
I don't know how much electricity for a laptop costs, but I drink a ton of coffee in an afternoon.
The one thing that we have now is an incentive to perform. Underperforming rail companies can and do lose their operating licenses.
Personally I've noticed a few good things - Virgin Rail putting power points for laptops in, for example. In that situation, a delay is not that much of an issue for me - I can carry on working.
Even right now, I'm within a wifi hotspot in most of the UK. 3G connections are rolling out.
This is going to grow very large. 10 years from now, I reckon you'll be able to get broadband wireless anywhere except a few remote places like Dartmoor or the Highlands. The cost of the equipment as well as the cost of the connection and per/minute billing is going to be very cheap by today's standards.
There's a couple of major stores I know in the UK that don't like to give returns. And you know what? Once people experience an obstructive refund policy, they'll think twice about giving you any money again.
So, for the sake of 1 refund of 1 product, you can lose years of business, as well as people telling all their friends what a bunch of bastards you are.
Friends of mine have switched all their games shopping because one time a game failed to work, even though the computer met the spec. Rather than the store giving a refund out of grace, they argued like mad that "look, it works fine on our machine" and refused. Rather than pursue legal channels or spend time escalating it, they just have chosen to shop elsewhere now.
If Gmail also had features like tasks, calendar and you could share them around, then it would cause serious damage to Microsoft. I'd love to have all that information looked after by Google. No more dealing with having to talk to my desktop away from home - just get on the web and do it.
This is the new paradigm - services not software. Microsoft are probably fighting a losing battle on this one.
There's already been some apps that have been replaced by the web. Particularly where the storage was large, but the reply small. I don't use route planning software, I use route planning services (from either the AA or RAC). They aren't as pretty or quick as the software, but they get me the answer I need. They are updated constantly by the organisations, mean I don't have to go finding CDs to operate them.
At one time, offline mattered because online meant dialup at a home or an office. With wifi, 3G, broadband etc, it's there when and where you want it.
Incidentally, a lot of my customers want webapps, not desktop/server apps. For a whole host of reasons including simplicity. If you are a business, it's much simpler to get someone else to host/manage a solution outside than go and talk to the tech support people and deal with the implications on existing servers/server rooms/desktop rollouts. It's also that it means that their staff can talk to the systems from anywhere. In Edinburgh and want the latest figures? Find an internet cafe or hotspot and go read them.
Do your bit - don't deal with companies who don't support Moz/Firefox/Opera.
I've told companies that I was thinking of using that I won't because of their lack of browser support, but that I'd gladly tell their designers how to set it up. Not one reply asking how to do it, so I've told them that I'll find a competitor who does.
The more people leave companies who don't play nice, the more companies will be forced to support it.
Linux may not yet be at the Joe Bloggs "buying a USB scanner/modem/soundcard" stage.
I'm planning on putting together a Linux box in the new year with the intention of jumping off Windows in the medium term.
I'm buying a Shuttle barebones system because I know that they've worked with Mandrake on getting it to work together. I imagine that it's all going to work with something like Suse as well.
Every person going out and buying something with that intention is going to convince companies selling scanners/modems/soundcards that they need to work to support Linux too.
That's quite true - MS Access is a big deal to a lot of companies. There is a database tool being put into OOo 2.0 to address that. Not tried it myself yet.
I don't even ask about whether people's choices are in their interests or not. They are their choices and they can reach their own conclusions about whether they were worthwhile or not.
I've done things like travelling and sometimes I've learnt things and experienced amazing things, and other times been very disappointed or met no interesting people. But I'm even glad for the times when I went to a museum and thought it overrated. The experience taught me something.
Would you suggest limiting choice to things that you think are worthwhile only?
I think the only sad part about computer games is that the rate of change has slowed. There's rarely an original game because it's all been done. And that mainstream games are mostly boring.
That said, the independent games sector has some great games.
If anything I think that the next stage of computing is going to be more and more separate devices, not convergance.
I've tried things that try and do convergance, and they nearly always fail. Cameras on cellphones? Crap. I had a combined phone/pda and found it less usable than separate.
The big thing will be interfacing. Like having an iPod that talks to your PC, your Palm that talks to your PC. Maybe there will be a PVR that whilst you are surfing on your PC at work you can talk to via TCP/IP at home and tell it to set a program. But the PVR itself will have a simple remote control.
This will beat "convergance" because the price of components is so cheap as well. The components to build a small single-purpose computer running Linux is very little now (see prices of ADSL/firewall/routers). Even with a 160GB hard drive, it's a cheap machine.
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That said, there's two other market controls - live abroad if you don't like it (drain of talent which damages nation) and that if a government is bad for the people and underperforms, other countries will outperform them.
Are you kidding? Look at somewhere like Hong Kong compared to mainstream China, or compare the state of the old East Germany with West Germany after the fall.
Communism was a total failure. A free-market which has controls against monopolies is all you need.
If anything, it's more like a true free market than companies who practise lock-in, who are aiming to practise monopolistic behaviour (communism also is monopolistic because it believes in government control of the means of production).
Free software is like companies in a free market, where the best survive. If the Word file format was open, we may have better tools than we do now.
It's one of the reasons why I travel on the train to Manchester instead of going by car. Car is quicker, and if I was on most train companies trains, I'd get a couple hours of charge at best. On Virgin, I can go the whole journey, which means that I can work.
One thing I always do in cafes is ask if I can plug in my laptop to do some work or whatever. If they say that I can't (never happened yet), I won't be offended, won't try and covertly plug it in. I'll just never use that cafe for working in again. I don't know how much electricity for a laptop costs, but I drink a ton of coffee in an afternoon.
If a film's a bomb, at least they'll get a small initial audience in before word of mouth wipes it out.
Is that an offence then? To be honest, shouldn't Apple be addressing the individuals who did the leaking then?
Personally I've noticed a few good things - Virgin Rail putting power points for laptops in, for example. In that situation, a delay is not that much of an issue for me - I can carry on working.
Some software companies have invested huge amounts of money in some software and just wouldn't if it were open.
Even right now, I'm within a wifi hotspot in most of the UK. 3G connections are rolling out.
This is going to grow very large. 10 years from now, I reckon you'll be able to get broadband wireless anywhere except a few remote places like Dartmoor or the Highlands. The cost of the equipment as well as the cost of the connection and per/minute billing is going to be very cheap by today's standards.
Ask this question: why would doctors and hospitals be interested in doing such a thing?
It depends. If it means that you can get a patient treated faster, it can actually save on medical time later treating complications etc.
So, for the sake of 1 refund of 1 product, you can lose years of business, as well as people telling all their friends what a bunch of bastards you are.
Friends of mine have switched all their games shopping because one time a game failed to work, even though the computer met the spec. Rather than the store giving a refund out of grace, they argued like mad that "look, it works fine on our machine" and refused. Rather than pursue legal channels or spend time escalating it, they just have chosen to shop elsewhere now.
This is the new paradigm - services not software. Microsoft are probably fighting a losing battle on this one.
There's already been some apps that have been replaced by the web. Particularly where the storage was large, but the reply small. I don't use route planning software, I use route planning services (from either the AA or RAC). They aren't as pretty or quick as the software, but they get me the answer I need. They are updated constantly by the organisations, mean I don't have to go finding CDs to operate them.
At one time, offline mattered because online meant dialup at a home or an office. With wifi, 3G, broadband etc, it's there when and where you want it.
Incidentally, a lot of my customers want webapps, not desktop/server apps. For a whole host of reasons including simplicity. If you are a business, it's much simpler to get someone else to host/manage a solution outside than go and talk to the tech support people and deal with the implications on existing servers/server rooms/desktop rollouts. It's also that it means that their staff can talk to the systems from anywhere. In Edinburgh and want the latest figures? Find an internet cafe or hotspot and go read them.
I've told companies that I was thinking of using that I won't because of their lack of browser support, but that I'd gladly tell their designers how to set it up. Not one reply asking how to do it, so I've told them that I'll find a competitor who does.
The more people leave companies who don't play nice, the more companies will be forced to support it.
To be honest, if they had released a new version of Office, would anyone really have noticed? Most people could have O2K installed and work happily.
Are companies deliberately avoiding it and going with Symbian?
I've not yet found anything that I miss. I can write nice documents, export them to PDF and send them to clients.
I'm planning on putting together a Linux box in the new year with the intention of jumping off Windows in the medium term.
I'm buying a Shuttle barebones system because I know that they've worked with Mandrake on getting it to work together. I imagine that it's all going to work with something like Suse as well.
Every person going out and buying something with that intention is going to convince companies selling scanners/modems/soundcards that they need to work to support Linux too.
That's quite true - MS Access is a big deal to a lot of companies. There is a database tool being put into OOo 2.0 to address that. Not tried it myself yet.
The one thing I'd need to do is to be able to remotely access some Windows servers. Can that be easily done on a Mac?
(Heading to Apple store in London next month to have a look at Macs).
I've done things like travelling and sometimes I've learnt things and experienced amazing things, and other times been very disappointed or met no interesting people. But I'm even glad for the times when I went to a museum and thought it overrated. The experience taught me something.
Would you suggest limiting choice to things that you think are worthwhile only?
That said, the independent games sector has some great games.
Some fictional characters aren't believable. Would Jar Jar have survived that long without someone clubbing him to death?
I've tried things that try and do convergance, and they nearly always fail. Cameras on cellphones? Crap. I had a combined phone/pda and found it less usable than separate.
The big thing will be interfacing. Like having an iPod that talks to your PC, your Palm that talks to your PC. Maybe there will be a PVR that whilst you are surfing on your PC at work you can talk to via TCP/IP at home and tell it to set a program. But the PVR itself will have a simple remote control.
This will beat "convergance" because the price of components is so cheap as well. The components to build a small single-purpose computer running Linux is very little now (see prices of ADSL/firewall/routers). Even with a 160GB hard drive, it's a cheap machine.