Actually I switched to FreeBSD partly because of this goal. Unfortunately there are all too many people in the Linux community who have made that their goal. But that's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Windows user who think Linux is a direct competitor.
Yesterday at Fry's while standing in line at the return counter (the most frequented part of the store) the person in front of me was saying "Linux needs to seriously drop its price so it can beat Windows while there's still the opportunity." While this guy was clearly clueless on the topic, it still illustrates that perception that Linux is nothing more than another runner on the racetrack with Windows.
Back when I told people I used Linux, their response would commonly be "okay sure, but Linux isn't going to beat Windows." Huh? Now that I've switched, when I tell them I use FreeBSD, people as "oh really, what's that?" See the difference?
p.s. Of all the people that know I use FreeBSD, none of the Windows or OSX users give a rat's ass that I use it, but there's this one Linux user who just can't stand it. It drives him nuts. "You're just helping Microsoft" he tells me. Obviously he thinks I should be part of the effort to "beat Windows".
On the other hand, you do need to be a driver in order to drive a car. There's simply no way around that. Heck, most people actually have to take a cheesy class and pass a test and get a government license before they get to drive.
Toilets are simple. Cars are complex. Computers are so complex they make cars look like toilets.
Very complicated. most Americans have a hard time explaining it to you.
Actually it's very easy to explain. You just have to look at it from the right perspective.
The United States of America is just what its name says: united states. There are fifty distinct and sovereign nations here. While the states did in the past collectively vote via a civil war that none of them could seceed, the fact remains that they are still states and not provinces or districts.
Now from that perspective the electoral college makes sense. It isn't the individual voters who are electing a president, but the states instead. As a resident of California I have no business or right deciding who gets to rule Iowa.
They have to give a rat's ass about safety, otherwise they'll go broke in a week. Of course, they can't be too hardnosed about safety or they'll lose customers. This means that minor speeding is ignored, but they will still stick it too you for major speeding.
Except that insurance companies are not the government. Even in states where it is required to have automobile insurance, you still have a choice of numerous companies. And in my state at least, you can post a bond instead of insurance.
Also, what about those of us who constantly go 5 mph above the speed limit? Would we be targeted as reckless drivers because we "speed" most of the time?
Insurance companies only care about risk, and could care less about the actual letter of law. If five miles over the speed limit is safe then they won't care. They WILL care if you're driving at the speed limit while everyone else is driving five miles over, though.
Until insurance companies are nationalized, or they start offering ticket insurance, don't worry about it.
It wouldn't help Microsoft to do their own distro. While it may keep a few customers from bailing, it won't stop the long term hemorrhage. Replacing a $100-300 operating system with a $50 distro isn't going to help their bottom line.
Their real revenue geneating products aren't operating systems however. They're the applications. Port MS Office, Exchange, Outlook, IIS, etc., to Linux/BSD/Solaris. Then they will still have a project even after Windows is dead and buried. It would be a crapload of work, but if they remove its presence in kernel land, they can even port over their entire desktop.
I would rather have that one time pain of lancing the boil in my big toe, than the constant low-level never ending pain that is Microsoft's arthritis in your big toe.
I was thinking of trying this out, but I see it's currently Windows only. WTF? Ignore all the specious licensing arguments regarding Qt, if VCF can't run on my platform, then it really doesn't matter how free it is, does it?
There's a difference between increasing shareholder value, and increasing shareholder value by any and every means possible. Profit can still be your number one priority without having to gut priorities two and three.
I'm specifically thinking of the case of NVidia and FreeBSD, where the driver is incredibly unstable under 5.2.1, and NVidia saying they're not going to do anything about it until 5.3 comes out. A friend told me similar stories right after Linux 2.6 came out. Basically the kernels have become bass-ackwards dependent upon the drivers.
The ultrasound machine that they use on you isn't running windows.
I work for the number one ultrasound company, and half of our products already run Windows, and the other half is being ported over as we speak. Our competitors are no different.
You are somewhat right, in that the low level FPGAs and DSPs aren't running Windows. But so what? Every real CPU on the system is!
Most aren't on the internet, but they still are on the hospital intranet. Why? Because the physicians and administrators want them there! For some applications it would be stupid to have it any other way.
So a physician brings his laptop into his office and *BANG* the entire hospital is infected.
As someone who works for one of the "Big Three" multinational medical corporations, the answer is clear to me.
Brandybuck's Law of Corporate Intelligence sstates that "the collective intelligence of an organization is inversely proportional to its size". A medical corporation is no different than a non-medical corporation, and PHBs in medical corporations are just as stupic as those in non-medical corporations.
As I write this I am witnessing the replacement of a realtime embedded Unix by Windows XP Embedded, for a medical imaging device. We have spent the last three years planning and porting our software over to Windows, and we probably have another two years ahead of us.
Why? Because the people in a corporation who make decisions are typically those least qualified to make them. The very first requirement the business unit gave to our engineering department was to use a Windows-only third party component. No flexibility was given.
p.s. Don't look to the FDA or other government agencies to fix this problem. These agencies are even bigger with a corresponding reduction in collective intelligence. All the FDA cares about is the process of signing documents.
p.p.s. The solution is to abolish software patents, as these huge portfolios are all that's keeping competition from the Big Three. Yeah, there will still be significant hardware patents in the way of the little guy, but at least it's a surmountable obstacle.
The biggest divide in the wireless community is support for non-Windows operating systems. A coworker and I have been trying to get wireless working on our laptops for several weeks now. We've been trying Linux 2.4, Linux 2.6 and FreeBSD 5.2. It's been extremely difficult because the cards supported by native Open Source drivers are considered horribly obsolete in the marketplace.
Will the future be Windows and Ndis wrappers only? How free will our software be when all of our hardware is held hostage by Windows-binary-only drivers?
If Java developers were built buildings, they would refuse to even use bricks. Why, if the whole damn wall wasn't prebuilt they wouldn't bother! These are the guys who hated Legos as children.
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Does one have to actually use the AOL? If not, then the $585.80 isn't too terrible a price to pay for a new computer.
Have they worked on the spell checker that would sometimes just turn off... if aspell or ispell are not installed?
No, they're too busy trying to fix the bug where the window manager sometimes just turns off if XFree86 or X.org are not installed...
Is the goal of linux to beat windows?
Actually I switched to FreeBSD partly because of this goal. Unfortunately there are all too many people in the Linux community who have made that their goal. But that's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Windows user who think Linux is a direct competitor.
Yesterday at Fry's while standing in line at the return counter (the most frequented part of the store) the person in front of me was saying "Linux needs to seriously drop its price so it can beat Windows while there's still the opportunity." While this guy was clearly clueless on the topic, it still illustrates that perception that Linux is nothing more than another runner on the racetrack with Windows.
Back when I told people I used Linux, their response would commonly be "okay sure, but Linux isn't going to beat Windows." Huh? Now that I've switched, when I tell them I use FreeBSD, people as "oh really, what's that?" See the difference?
p.s. Of all the people that know I use FreeBSD, none of the Windows or OSX users give a rat's ass that I use it, but there's this one Linux user who just can't stand it. It drives him nuts. "You're just helping Microsoft" he tells me. Obviously he thinks I should be part of the effort to "beat Windows".
On the other hand, you do need to be a driver in order to drive a car. There's simply no way around that. Heck, most people actually have to take a cheesy class and pass a test and get a government license before they get to drive.
Toilets are simple. Cars are complex. Computers are so complex they make cars look like toilets.
Very complicated. most Americans have a hard time explaining it to you.
Actually it's very easy to explain. You just have to look at it from the right perspective.
The United States of America is just what its name says: united states. There are fifty distinct and sovereign nations here. While the states did in the past collectively vote via a civil war that none of them could seceed, the fact remains that they are still states and not provinces or districts.
Now from that perspective the electoral college makes sense. It isn't the individual voters who are electing a president, but the states instead. As a resident of California I have no business or right deciding who gets to rule Iowa.
Lucky you, we only have Terrible and Terrible, with a couple of minor Worse and Worse parties. Oh how we wish we had a choice of "Bad".
I sure hope that weasel/stoat/whatever doesn't forget to remind kids that they have Fair Use rights too, guaranteed by law!
p.s. As for a name, I'm torn between "Frank Burns" and "Ratfink".
Is that your Corolla? I say that on the street and I just about drove off the road I was laughing so hard.
That, and he totally ignored the project that gave us TCP/IP and told AT&T where to stick their silly lawsuits.
They have to give a rat's ass about safety, otherwise they'll go broke in a week. Of course, they can't be too hardnosed about safety or they'll lose customers. This means that minor speeding is ignored, but they will still stick it too you for major speeding.
Except that insurance companies are not the government. Even in states where it is required to have automobile insurance, you still have a choice of numerous companies. And in my state at least, you can post a bond instead of insurance.
The story title is about a competitor to Qt. While it may be in the future, it certainly is not one now.
Also, what about those of us who constantly go 5 mph above the speed limit? Would we be targeted as reckless drivers because we "speed" most of the time?
Insurance companies only care about risk, and could care less about the actual letter of law. If five miles over the speed limit is safe then they won't care. They WILL care if you're driving at the speed limit while everyone else is driving five miles over, though.
Until insurance companies are nationalized, or they start offering ticket insurance, don't worry about it.
It wouldn't help Microsoft to do their own distro. While it may keep a few customers from bailing, it won't stop the long term hemorrhage. Replacing a $100-300 operating system with a $50 distro isn't going to help their bottom line.
Their real revenue geneating products aren't operating systems however. They're the applications. Port MS Office, Exchange, Outlook, IIS, etc., to Linux/BSD/Solaris. Then they will still have a project even after Windows is dead and buried. It would be a crapload of work, but if they remove its presence in kernel land, they can even port over their entire desktop.
I would rather have that one time pain of lancing the boil in my big toe, than the constant low-level never ending pain that is Microsoft's arthritis in your big toe.
unless you're a republican
Don't you mean "Democrat"? That's a good two thirds of their debating tactics.
I was thinking of trying this out, but I see it's currently Windows only. WTF? Ignore all the specious licensing arguments regarding Qt, if VCF can't run on my platform, then it really doesn't matter how free it is, does it?
So why the hell can't they document as they write the code? Have they not heard of Doxygen? Oh wait, Doxygen uses Qt, so they can't do that...
There's a difference between increasing shareholder value, and increasing shareholder value by any and every means possible. Profit can still be your number one priority without having to gut priorities two and three.
I'm specifically thinking of the case of NVidia and FreeBSD, where the driver is incredibly unstable under 5.2.1, and NVidia saying they're not going to do anything about it until 5.3 comes out. A friend told me similar stories right after Linux 2.6 came out. Basically the kernels have become bass-ackwards dependent upon the drivers.
The ultrasound machine that they use on you isn't running windows.
I work for the number one ultrasound company, and half of our products already run Windows, and the other half is being ported over as we speak. Our competitors are no different.
You are somewhat right, in that the low level FPGAs and DSPs aren't running Windows. But so what? Every real CPU on the system is!
Most aren't on the internet, but they still are on the hospital intranet. Why? Because the physicians and administrators want them there! For some applications it would be stupid to have it any other way.
So a physician brings his laptop into his office and *BANG* the entire hospital is infected.
As someone who works for one of the "Big Three" multinational medical corporations, the answer is clear to me.
Brandybuck's Law of Corporate Intelligence sstates that "the collective intelligence of an organization is inversely proportional to its size". A medical corporation is no different than a non-medical corporation, and PHBs in medical corporations are just as stupic as those in non-medical corporations.
As I write this I am witnessing the replacement of a realtime embedded Unix by Windows XP Embedded, for a medical imaging device. We have spent the last three years planning and porting our software over to Windows, and we probably have another two years ahead of us.
Why? Because the people in a corporation who make decisions are typically those least qualified to make them. The very first requirement the business unit gave to our engineering department was to use a Windows-only third party component. No flexibility was given.
p.s. Don't look to the FDA or other government agencies to fix this problem. These agencies are even bigger with a corresponding reduction in collective intelligence. All the FDA cares about is the process of signing documents.
p.p.s. The solution is to abolish software patents, as these huge portfolios are all that's keeping competition from the Big Three. Yeah, there will still be significant hardware patents in the way of the little guy, but at least it's a surmountable obstacle.
The biggest divide in the wireless community is support for non-Windows operating systems. A coworker and I have been trying to get wireless working on our laptops for several weeks now. We've been trying Linux 2.4, Linux 2.6 and FreeBSD 5.2. It's been extremely difficult because the cards supported by native Open Source drivers are considered horribly obsolete in the marketplace.
Will the future be Windows and Ndis wrappers only? How free will our software be when all of our hardware is held hostage by Windows-binary-only drivers?
If Java developers were built buildings, they would refuse to even use bricks. Why, if the whole damn wall wasn't prebuilt they wouldn't bother! These are the guys who hated Legos as children.
</sarcasm>