Precisely. Releasing the specs doesn't compromise your onboard hardware secrets. "To do X shove Y into register Z." But there's this recent attitude that you can't let anyone know that there's a register Z.
Of course, ability to fork is a vital part of software freedom, but in a world of scarce developer time, it is vital not to let politics and personalities interfere with development of the best software.
My time may be scarce, but I am the one who gets to choose where it is spent. If you don't like it, for enough of your cash I might be persuaded to change my mind. But until I see the contents of your wallet I'm coding on what *I* want to code.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of whiny users arguing that politics and forceful personalities should be directing software development into single projects.
Run your Solaris applications on a Sun! You can get a Sparc V "pizza box" for about $20 at many surplus computer stores. They're the equivalent of a cheap ten year old Micron, but with a hundred times the sturdiness and reliability. They will be slow, but you don't need speed for Framemaker.
Several people at my work (including myself) used Solaris Framemaker from our Macs and Linux/BSD PCs. Eventually the company beat us until we confessed our crimes against the state and switched to Windows, but we still use Framemaker from Cygwin/X11 or Hummingbird.
Of course you have to write your code in a cross platform manner in the first place...
And therein lies the rub! It's rather easy to tell who is the Unix and Linux developers apart, by who has the easiest code to port to a different flavor of Unix. When even their shell scripts have a hardcoded "#!/bin/bash", it's quite clear that portibility is a non-requirement.
For a while the Mac was getting pigeonholed into a specialty market, but since the return of Steve Jobs the direction has changed. I'm quite surprised that you don't consier the Mac to be a home computer, as that's one of its primary markets at present. In fact, the entire iMac line was meant for the home user. I really don't see anyone picking up a Mini iMac for use as a professional video editing workstation. I really don't.
Macs were priced high not because of economy of scale, but because there is a cachet about them that allows Apple to ask for and get a higher price. If there were only one PC vendor, you would have a point, but while there are numerous PC vendors that are much larger than Apple in terms of numbers sold, there are numerous others that are smaller.
This still doesn't invalidate either of my points.
I'm not disputing those points of yours, I'm merely disputing the notion that the Mac is not a viable alternative to the Windows/PC platform.
Re:Full Disclosure doesn't apply for workers
on
The Naked Corporation
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I find it interesting that most pro-capitalism libertarians, like the authors are all about access to imformation for the investor and other corporations, but not for the workers.
As a pro-capitalism libertarian, I would have to say that this is not the attitude as well. There are two important points missed by your statement.
The first missed point is that the employment transaction is private. Bob's wages are not disclosed because Bob's wages are private to Bob and his employer. But don't let that discourage you. Finding out what the market price is for your position and experience level is not that difficult. You might not know how you stand with regards to Bob specifically, but you will know how you stand with regards to your industry as a whole. If another firm offers you a higher salary, and you accept their offer, then your previous salary was too low. If on the other hand, your present firm replaces you with Bangalore contractor, then your salary was too high. Crying that capitalism doesn't work because Bob won't tell you his salary, is silly.
The second missed point is that no libertarian wishes information to be coerced. I realize that much information is indeed coerced today, but that is not a result of libertarianism. Do not confuse the current state regulated corporatized capitalism for free market economics.
No it's not! It's competing in the same market as Windows/PC. While it's true that the Wintel platform is really two markets, one for the hardware and one for the software, in reality the vast majority of people buy PCs as a bundle. They don't buy the hardware and then ponder with OS to put on it. To Aunt Tillie, there is no essential difference between an iMac and a Dell.
For over ten years people have been claiming there is no choice in the home computer market. They claim they had no choice but to buy Windows. "I couldn't help it, they're a monopoly," was the excuse. Yet every time the Mac was brought up as a viable alternative to Windows/PC, it was decried as being too expensive.
No longer. The Mini iMac is as cheap as a PC+Windows. There are no longer any excuses for excluding Apple from the monopoly calculus. Critics of Microsoft now have a choice between equivalents, whether they like it or not!
It doesn't matter if the Mac is a niche. As long as Aunt Tillie can buy a Mac with equivalent functionality to a Dell/Microsoft for the same price, then Macs compete with Dell/Microsoft.
It's the difference between -STABLE and -CURRENT. The former only gets bug fixes, and if they've been tested to death, new drivers. As of 5.3, the 5.x branch became -STABLE, so for anything else, you have to use -CURRENT, and be patient and wait for 6.x to become STABLE.
Last time I checked MS hadn't made any innovative contributions to the world of computing.
Their big contribution was the integration and bundling of the software for the home consumer. Period. No one else seriously tried to do this before them. No systems software company ever gave more than a half-ass effort at this afterwards. And other than Microsoft, no office software company ever marketed to to the home user. With one exception(1). Microsoft had the exact same innovation most successful businesses had: discover a need in the marketplace and fill it.
(1) That one exception was Apple. I hear they're doing pretty good, at at least good enough to keep heir investors happy and their employees well paid. If mentioning Apple in the same topic as Microsoft's monopoly isn't good enough to get me modded down, here's an item that should: the new Mini iMac is inexpensive, thus eliminating the tired argument that the Mac isn't viable competition for the monopolized Wintel.
I grew up in a tiny rural town, and lived there until a few years ago. As a kid the only places to shop was downtown mainstreet (unless you wanted to drive thirty miles to the nearest city). You bought your groceries downtown. You bought your clothes and shoes downtown. You bought your lumber, hardware, automobiles and books downtown.
Then the first supermarket moved in. Today one of those downtown grocery stores is still there. The other one exanded so much it had to move out of downtown.
Then McDonalds and Taco Bell moved in. There are still two cafe's downtown. Not the same ones I remember growing up, but mainstreet-style cafe's nonetheless. The coming of an autopart's chain didn't cause the demise of the mom-and-pop parts store. There's still a three generation old auto dealership downtown, despite the arrival of a bit-lot Chevy dealership. The opening of Wells Fargo and Bank of America didn't spell the end of the local Thrift and Loan.
Finally, the evilest of the evil arrived. KMart and Walmart. Cries of economic apocalypse sounded from the editorial pages of the local paper. But that same shoe store from my childhood is still downtown (actually it moved down two adresses to a larger spot). Two of the clothing stores are still there. Ditto for a jewelry and a book store. The local JC Penny's did go out of business. It was replaced by a discount clothing outlet.
Granted, they character of downtown mainstreet changed. It was not longer a one-stop shopping mall. And the stores are mostly boutique-style now. But it still exists and it's still attracting customers. I drive by KMart and Walmart and the parking lots are three quarters empty. The economy isn't fantastic, but it's a far cry from the retail ghost town that was predicted for us.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close. Good for the consumers? No.
There goes those stupid consumers again! Don't they know any better than to not shop at the big bakery? Or was that Walmart? Or Target before that? Or KMart before that? In any case, the consumers are stupid for not paying higher prices at smaller stores.
</sarcasm>
Seriously, your underlying premise indeed seems to be that. Why shouldn't the consumer seek lower prices? Why shouldn't they seek larger stores that carry a larger variety and stock? Why shouldn't they seek stores that have convenient parking instead of those tiny boutiques downtown that you can't park next to?
That big bakery will certainly grab customers away from the small bakeries. Some people like lower prices. Heck, some people like lower prices even at the cost of lower quality. Others may like the larger selection of pastries. Others may like the convenient parking out front.
Not everyone will like the large bakery. Which is a good thing, because it would be extremely odd if the large bakery could even attempt to service the entire community. Some of those smaller bakeries will continue. Some of them will even thrive as their smaller competitors get thinned out.
It's fashionable on Slashdot to gripe about the tyranny of the current administration or congress. But the real tryants are not in the federal government, they're you're local city councilmen and mayors. They're the ones with the chutzpah to tell the citizens what stores they can or cannot shop at. Your neighbor Mrs. Pepperpot may seem like a sweet innocent old lady, but once she gets elected to city council she'll transform into pettiest of dicators, and take it upon herself to tell you what donuts you can or cannot buy.
A mini iMac is $499, and comes with all sort of interesting fun software. This is viable competition. Only a tiny fraction is open soure.
Really, this constant whine that Microsoft forces people to buy Microsoft is getting tiresome. It simply is not true. The argument that Mac's were too expensive to be considered in the monopoly equation are been summarily dismissed with the new mini iMac.
They are bigger and they will *always* win because they can make money on a more marketable product at a lower price than you can.
As a businessman you should already know that making more money is not the definition of winning in the marketplace. The market is not a winner-take-all footrace to a finish line. All successful businesses make money, and there will always be one that makes more money than another.
You don't run a 'going out of business' sale just because you're competitor down the street has lower prices. As long as you're making a profit, you're a winner. Even if your competition is making more than you.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
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· Score: 1
The variations I've seen in Gnome and KDE alone prove that the Linux desktop is not a consistant interface.
But KDE and GNOME are two separate destkops. If you don't want inconsistancy then don't mix and match two separate environments. You will find your consistancy once you settle on one environment or the other.
Of course, you will still find an odd app here or there that doesn't follow the rules and is inconsistant. But this occurs in Windows as well! Even when you look at only Microsoft supplied applications!
Framemaker 5 for Linux was a good example of this.
And I was so pissed that they pulled it! There was no UI difference between the Linux and Solaris versions. I will be the first to fully admit that X11/Framemaker is unsuitable for the newbie. It's even quite nasty for the intermediate user. But by the time you learn enough to be an expert, you'll find that you can be much more productive in X11/Framemaker than with MS Word, even assuming an identical level of expertise.
I spent the last six years using Solaris Framemaker but this year the nimrods in charge at work have finally made me use MSWord instead. What a productivity blow! While I am not a Framemaker expert, I find that I am productive every second while using it, but in MSWord I spend most of my time fighting the program. While I won't mention specifics, in a nutshell it seems that MSWord was designed to write memos, term papers, and christmas newsletters, while Framemaker was designed to write the hardcore technical documentation that I am required to produce at work.
I still don't understand why Adobe pulled it. The market for it, to me at least, seemed to be Solaris Framemaker users who were switching away from Sun on the desktop. Since Solaris FM and Linux FM had the exact same UI (right on down to that ugly pink color), claiming it was dropped due to usability issues is strange. In that case why didn't they drop Solaris FM as well?
but they literally found they couldn't afford to support it (and they did try)
If they couldn't afford to support it, then don't support it. Offer it at a cheaper price that doesn't come with support. But I dispute your claim that "they did try". They pulled the product BEFORE it was released. I was one of the beta testers, I should know. They cancelled Linux Framemaker in the last stages of the beta, and no reason was ever publicly announced. They never tried to support it because it was never released with an option for support!
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
I understand what you're saying, but I wonder if you do yourself. In a nutshell, you're saying the market can only one platform. Because more than that and you have to start asking people what platform/desktop they have. Welcome to UbiquityOS, produced by Microsoft.
I want a bit more choice in my computing, even if it means I have to read a frigging manual every once in a while.
(right click on network neighborhood/my network places - then double click on tcp/ip)
Good luck on the Windows system I have at work. It doesn't have a either of those icons on the desktop.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
If you don't want multiple desktops, the idea is that the problem is with you, the user, and you should be using multiple desktops.
Translation: If you don't like a single desktop, the Microsoft idea is that the problem is with you, the user, and you should be only ever want a single desktop.
Seriously, you seem to be arguing for lowest-common-denominator computing. Never ever include any feature in a desktop that isn't unanimously desired.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
If you're running a 1996-era UNIX, then that's your problem. Think back to 1996-era Windows. You had Win16, Win32s and Win32 apps running side by side. You had MFC and OWL fighting over look and feel. Some programs used.ini files, others used the registry. Etc, etc, etc.
Compare this years Unix desktop to this years Windows desktop on the same system (don't compare a 3.2GHz Win system to a SparcV running CDE). No, this years Unix desktop won't be perfect, but if you're honest, you will have to admit the same of Windows.
Re:Absolutely spot on ...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
Absolutely. My company used to be all Solaris. The only thing on the local workstations were the bare OS, everything else, including all the applications where on a central server. Then we got bought out and went to Windows. Aaaargh! I've got a nice comfortable ergonomic chair, trackball and keyboard in my cubicle, with an awesome 21" Trinitron CRT, but I still have to trudge over to the development lab and sit on a wobbly stool staring at a fuzzy monitor, using a mouse with five weeks of handcheese stuck to it, just because Windows requires a local presence. Sigh.
I was all set a few years ago to move to Idaho and telecommute. But with Windows I can't because Microsoft's idea of remote computing is an IR keyboard. So now I can't. Damn Microsoft!
Re:It's not the business model...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
Usually it's the BSD brigade that's quick to point out the Unix pedigre and how Linux isn't really Unix.;)
Linux really isn't Unix! I was talking about the perception of Linux by people on the outside who can't tell the difference betwen Unix and a bunch of harem guards. Within the community though, we all know that BSD is a blue ribbon purebred Husky and Linux a three legged alley cat that learned to bark:-)
Unix was slowly losing out to Windows simply because Windows ran on commodity hardware.
Actually, by the time commodity hardware was good enough to run Unix, Unix was available for commodity hardware. BSD/OS, and <cough> Unixware were two of them. Linux and the free BSDs arrived in a stable form very shortly afterwards.
Any tiny morsel of respect I might have had for Stern vanished when I heard that "interview". There's right, there's wrong, and then there's stupid. I don't care if Stern was right or wrong, he's stupid, and that alone got him in trouble.
To rephrase Voltaire, I disgree with what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it, But if you're an asshole about it don't expect me to be your character witness.
The broadcast frequencies are owned by the "public". As such, the government has seen fit to regulate there content, for exactly the same reason the government regulates commercial waterways and national parks. It's also why there will forever be a controversy over this.
Personally I don't think the airwaves should be owned by the government, even under the euphemistic title of "public". But as long as they are, the government get's to make the rules about them. As a democratic republic, we at least get some input into it.
Slashdot Mirror
Precisely. Releasing the specs doesn't compromise your onboard hardware secrets. "To do X shove Y into register Z." But there's this recent attitude that you can't let anyone know that there's a register Z.
Of course, ability to fork is a vital part of software freedom, but in a world of scarce developer time, it is vital not to let politics and personalities interfere with development of the best software.
My time may be scarce, but I am the one who gets to choose where it is spent. If you don't like it, for enough of your cash I might be persuaded to change my mind. But until I see the contents of your wallet I'm coding on what *I* want to code.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of whiny users arguing that politics and forceful personalities should be directing software development into single projects.
You might want to blame SuSE 9.2 then, because I've never seen this happen anywhere else.
Try this then: "The client is the machine running the application. The server is the machine with the display. Often they are the same machine."
Run your Solaris applications on a Sun! You can get a Sparc V "pizza box" for about $20 at many surplus computer stores. They're the equivalent of a cheap ten year old Micron, but with a hundred times the sturdiness and reliability. They will be slow, but you don't need speed for Framemaker.
Several people at my work (including myself) used Solaris Framemaker from our Macs and Linux/BSD PCs. Eventually the company beat us until we confessed our crimes against the state and switched to Windows, but we still use Framemaker from Cygwin/X11 or Hummingbird.
I'll have to remember that the next time my Mac developer friends get pretentious on me...
Bob [with nose in air]: "I wrote the whole site with BBEdit!"
Me [with finger in nose]: "Hah! That's nothing, I used Six!"
Bob: "What? You're not using the eMac's editor anymore?"
Of course you have to write your code in a cross platform manner in the first place...
And therein lies the rub! It's rather easy to tell who is the Unix and Linux developers apart, by who has the easiest code to port to a different flavor of Unix. When even their shell scripts have a hardcoded "#!/bin/bash", it's quite clear that portibility is a non-requirement.
You mean Ashcroft didn't do it? He didn't! But he's still evil, right? Whew, you had me worried there for a minute!
For a while the Mac was getting pigeonholed into a specialty market, but since the return of Steve Jobs the direction has changed. I'm quite surprised that you don't consier the Mac to be a home computer, as that's one of its primary markets at present. In fact, the entire iMac line was meant for the home user. I really don't see anyone picking up a Mini iMac for use as a professional video editing workstation. I really don't.
Macs were priced high not because of economy of scale, but because there is a cachet about them that allows Apple to ask for and get a higher price. If there were only one PC vendor, you would have a point, but while there are numerous PC vendors that are much larger than Apple in terms of numbers sold, there are numerous others that are smaller.
This still doesn't invalidate either of my points.
I'm not disputing those points of yours, I'm merely disputing the notion that the Mac is not a viable alternative to the Windows/PC platform.
I find it interesting that most pro-capitalism libertarians, like the authors are all about access to imformation for the investor and other corporations, but not for the workers.
As a pro-capitalism libertarian, I would have to say that this is not the attitude as well. There are two important points missed by your statement.
The first missed point is that the employment transaction is private. Bob's wages are not disclosed because Bob's wages are private to Bob and his employer. But don't let that discourage you. Finding out what the market price is for your position and experience level is not that difficult. You might not know how you stand with regards to Bob specifically, but you will know how you stand with regards to your industry as a whole. If another firm offers you a higher salary, and you accept their offer, then your previous salary was too low. If on the other hand, your present firm replaces you with Bangalore contractor, then your salary was too high. Crying that capitalism doesn't work because Bob won't tell you his salary, is silly.
The second missed point is that no libertarian wishes information to be coerced. I realize that much information is indeed coerced today, but that is not a result of libertarianism. Do not confuse the current state regulated corporatized capitalism for free market economics.
Mac is a special case...
No it's not! It's competing in the same market as Windows/PC. While it's true that the Wintel platform is really two markets, one for the hardware and one for the software, in reality the vast majority of people buy PCs as a bundle. They don't buy the hardware and then ponder with OS to put on it. To Aunt Tillie, there is no essential difference between an iMac and a Dell.
For over ten years people have been claiming there is no choice in the home computer market. They claim they had no choice but to buy Windows. "I couldn't help it, they're a monopoly," was the excuse. Yet every time the Mac was brought up as a viable alternative to Windows/PC, it was decried as being too expensive.
No longer. The Mini iMac is as cheap as a PC+Windows. There are no longer any excuses for excluding Apple from the monopoly calculus. Critics of Microsoft now have a choice between equivalents, whether they like it or not!
It doesn't matter if the Mac is a niche. As long as Aunt Tillie can buy a Mac with equivalent functionality to a Dell/Microsoft for the same price, then Macs compete with Dell/Microsoft.
Maybe we should rename it to Winfoo?
It's the difference between -STABLE and -CURRENT. The former only gets bug fixes, and if they've been tested to death, new drivers. As of 5.3, the 5.x branch became -STABLE, so for anything else, you have to use -CURRENT, and be patient and wait for 6.x to become STABLE.
Last time I checked MS hadn't made any innovative contributions to the world of computing.
Their big contribution was the integration and bundling of the software for the home consumer. Period. No one else seriously tried to do this before them. No systems software company ever gave more than a half-ass effort at this afterwards. And other than Microsoft, no office software company ever marketed to to the home user. With one exception(1). Microsoft had the exact same innovation most successful businesses had: discover a need in the marketplace and fill it.
(1) That one exception was Apple. I hear they're doing pretty good, at at least good enough to keep heir investors happy and their employees well paid. If mentioning Apple in the same topic as Microsoft's monopoly isn't good enough to get me modded down, here's an item that should: the new Mini iMac is inexpensive, thus eliminating the tired argument that the Mac isn't viable competition for the monopolized Wintel.
I grew up in a tiny rural town, and lived there until a few years ago. As a kid the only places to shop was downtown mainstreet (unless you wanted to drive thirty miles to the nearest city). You bought your groceries downtown. You bought your clothes and shoes downtown. You bought your lumber, hardware, automobiles and books downtown.
Then the first supermarket moved in. Today one of those downtown grocery stores is still there. The other one exanded so much it had to move out of downtown.
Then McDonalds and Taco Bell moved in. There are still two cafe's downtown. Not the same ones I remember growing up, but mainstreet-style cafe's nonetheless. The coming of an autopart's chain didn't cause the demise of the mom-and-pop parts store. There's still a three generation old auto dealership downtown, despite the arrival of a bit-lot Chevy dealership. The opening of Wells Fargo and Bank of America didn't spell the end of the local Thrift and Loan.
Finally, the evilest of the evil arrived. KMart and Walmart. Cries of economic apocalypse sounded from the editorial pages of the local paper. But that same shoe store from my childhood is still downtown (actually it moved down two adresses to a larger spot). Two of the clothing stores are still there. Ditto for a jewelry and a book store. The local JC Penny's did go out of business. It was replaced by a discount clothing outlet.
Granted, they character of downtown mainstreet changed. It was not longer a one-stop shopping mall. And the stores are mostly boutique-style now. But it still exists and it's still attracting customers. I drive by KMart and Walmart and the parking lots are three quarters empty. The economy isn't fantastic, but it's a far cry from the retail ghost town that was predicted for us.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close. Good for the consumers? No.
There goes those stupid consumers again! Don't they know any better than to not shop at the big bakery? Or was that Walmart? Or Target before that? Or KMart before that? In any case, the consumers are stupid for not paying higher prices at smaller stores.
</sarcasm>
Seriously, your underlying premise indeed seems to be that. Why shouldn't the consumer seek lower prices? Why shouldn't they seek larger stores that carry a larger variety and stock? Why shouldn't they seek stores that have convenient parking instead of those tiny boutiques downtown that you can't park next to?
That big bakery will certainly grab customers away from the small bakeries. Some people like lower prices. Heck, some people like lower prices even at the cost of lower quality. Others may like the larger selection of pastries. Others may like the convenient parking out front.
Not everyone will like the large bakery. Which is a good thing, because it would be extremely odd if the large bakery could even attempt to service the entire community. Some of those smaller bakeries will continue. Some of them will even thrive as their smaller competitors get thinned out.
It's fashionable on Slashdot to gripe about the tyranny of the current administration or congress. But the real tryants are not in the federal government, they're you're local city councilmen and mayors. They're the ones with the chutzpah to tell the citizens what stores they can or cannot shop at. Your neighbor Mrs. Pepperpot may seem like a sweet innocent old lady, but once she gets elected to city council she'll transform into pettiest of dicators, and take it upon herself to tell you what donuts you can or cannot buy.
What arrogance!
A mini iMac is $499, and comes with all sort of interesting fun software. This is viable competition. Only a tiny fraction is open soure.
Really, this constant whine that Microsoft forces people to buy Microsoft is getting tiresome. It simply is not true. The argument that Mac's were too expensive to be considered in the monopoly equation are been summarily dismissed with the new mini iMac.
They are bigger and they will *always* win because they can make money on a more marketable product at a lower price than you can.
As a businessman you should already know that making more money is not the definition of winning in the marketplace. The market is not a winner-take-all footrace to a finish line. All successful businesses make money, and there will always be one that makes more money than another.
You don't run a 'going out of business' sale just because you're competitor down the street has lower prices. As long as you're making a profit, you're a winner. Even if your competition is making more than you.
The variations I've seen in Gnome and KDE alone prove that the Linux desktop is not a consistant interface.
But KDE and GNOME are two separate destkops. If you don't want inconsistancy then don't mix and match two separate environments. You will find your consistancy once you settle on one environment or the other.
Of course, you will still find an odd app here or there that doesn't follow the rules and is inconsistant. But this occurs in Windows as well! Even when you look at only Microsoft supplied applications!
Framemaker 5 for Linux was a good example of this.
And I was so pissed that they pulled it! There was no UI difference between the Linux and Solaris versions. I will be the first to fully admit that X11/Framemaker is unsuitable for the newbie. It's even quite nasty for the intermediate user. But by the time you learn enough to be an expert, you'll find that you can be much more productive in X11/Framemaker than with MS Word, even assuming an identical level of expertise.
I spent the last six years using Solaris Framemaker but this year the nimrods in charge at work have finally made me use MSWord instead. What a productivity blow! While I am not a Framemaker expert, I find that I am productive every second while using it, but in MSWord I spend most of my time fighting the program. While I won't mention specifics, in a nutshell it seems that MSWord was designed to write memos, term papers, and christmas newsletters, while Framemaker was designed to write the hardcore technical documentation that I am required to produce at work.
I still don't understand why Adobe pulled it. The market for it, to me at least, seemed to be Solaris Framemaker users who were switching away from Sun on the desktop. Since Solaris FM and Linux FM had the exact same UI (right on down to that ugly pink color), claiming it was dropped due to usability issues is strange. In that case why didn't they drop Solaris FM as well?
but they literally found they couldn't afford to support it (and they did try)
If they couldn't afford to support it, then don't support it. Offer it at a cheaper price that doesn't come with support. But I dispute your claim that "they did try". They pulled the product BEFORE it was released. I was one of the beta testers, I should know. They cancelled Linux Framemaker in the last stages of the beta, and no reason was ever publicly announced. They never tried to support it because it was never released with an option for support!
I understand what you're saying, but I wonder if you do yourself. In a nutshell, you're saying the market can only one platform. Because more than that and you have to start asking people what platform/desktop they have. Welcome to UbiquityOS, produced by Microsoft.
I want a bit more choice in my computing, even if it means I have to read a frigging manual every once in a while.
(right click on network neighborhood/my network places - then double click on tcp/ip)
Good luck on the Windows system I have at work. It doesn't have a either of those icons on the desktop.
If you don't want multiple desktops, the idea is that the problem is with you, the user, and you should be using multiple desktops.
Translation: If you don't like a single desktop, the Microsoft idea is that the problem is with you, the user, and you should be only ever want a single desktop.
Seriously, you seem to be arguing for lowest-common-denominator computing. Never ever include any feature in a desktop that isn't unanimously desired.
If you're running a 1996-era UNIX, then that's your problem. Think back to 1996-era Windows. You had Win16, Win32s and Win32 apps running side by side. You had MFC and OWL fighting over look and feel. Some programs used .ini files, others used the registry. Etc, etc, etc.
Compare this years Unix desktop to this years Windows desktop on the same system (don't compare a 3.2GHz Win system to a SparcV running CDE). No, this years Unix desktop won't be perfect, but if you're honest, you will have to admit the same of Windows.
Absolutely. My company used to be all Solaris. The only thing on the local workstations were the bare OS, everything else, including all the applications where on a central server. Then we got bought out and went to Windows. Aaaargh! I've got a nice comfortable ergonomic chair, trackball and keyboard in my cubicle, with an awesome 21" Trinitron CRT, but I still have to trudge over to the development lab and sit on a wobbly stool staring at a fuzzy monitor, using a mouse with five weeks of handcheese stuck to it, just because Windows requires a local presence. Sigh.
I was all set a few years ago to move to Idaho and telecommute. But with Windows I can't because Microsoft's idea of remote computing is an IR keyboard. So now I can't. Damn Microsoft!
Usually it's the BSD brigade that's quick to point out the Unix pedigre and how Linux isn't really Unix. ;)
:-)
Linux really isn't Unix! I was talking about the perception of Linux by people on the outside who can't tell the difference betwen Unix and a bunch of harem guards. Within the community though, we all know that BSD is a blue ribbon purebred Husky and Linux a three legged alley cat that learned to bark
Unix was slowly losing out to Windows simply because Windows ran on commodity hardware.
Actually, by the time commodity hardware was good enough to run Unix, Unix was available for commodity hardware. BSD/OS, and <cough> Unixware were two of them. Linux and the free BSDs arrived in a stable form very shortly afterwards.
Any tiny morsel of respect I might have had for Stern vanished when I heard that "interview". There's right, there's wrong, and then there's stupid. I don't care if Stern was right or wrong, he's stupid, and that alone got him in trouble.
To rephrase Voltaire, I disgree with what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it, But if you're an asshole about it don't expect me to be your character witness.
The broadcast frequencies are owned by the "public". As such, the government has seen fit to regulate there content, for exactly the same reason the government regulates commercial waterways and national parks. It's also why there will forever be a controversy over this.
Personally I don't think the airwaves should be owned by the government, even under the euphemistic title of "public". But as long as they are, the government get's to make the rules about them. As a democratic republic, we at least get some input into it.