You need to have your basic needs comfortably taken care of before you can take time to develop software for free...I have this problem now.
Somehow I would be willing to bet that if you added up all the time you spent reading this interview, reading all the posts, and formulating and posting your response, you would have enough time to have pounded out quite a few lines of open source code. I hate the "I don't have time" line. We make time for what we want to do. Is coding any better of a recreation activity then posting on/.? Not really, it's your choice how you spend your time, but don't try to say you don't have time to code if you DO have time to surf the internet. That comes down to personal priority.
Unless of course you are getting paid to post on/. in which case your point was valid:)
I sure hope you are trying to troll, because I just don't get that at all.
If you come to a computer that needs work and you boot into a Knoppix CD you get...a desktop. On the other hand if you boot on to something like the ultimate boot cd you get a nice menu broken down by category of things like "File system utilities", "Memory Tests", and "Hard drive cloning". I just don't see how Knoppix can compare to that. I'm willing to listen though, if you care to explain what makes it so great for this.
I don't really have time to play games anymore, but when I was still a student I was hooked on the original Unreal Tournament. Me and a friend of mine were in a clan together and neither one of us ever cheated. Ever. But you know what? We got accused of it all the time. Especially him. I would sit there and watch him and it was amazing how good he was. Almost every map we would play on any server he would have the most frags by about 100. I would be number two about 10 higher than most people, except on 'thorns'. Man, I loved that map. Both of us could get 200 frags and be miles ahead of everyone else. I used to get so tired of these whiny teenage wimps not having enough ego to admit that we were better than them. They would start calling us cheaters and convince the admin to ban us. It got hard to find servers to play on. Of course my friend didn't help the situation any because he loved to talk trash and that would further lead people to think that he cheated. You can imagine the senario:
"How did you kill me!!!!!111 I had full armor and health!" "It's called a headshot. Get used to them." "WTF!! You kill me every time I walk around that corner!" "It's called 'aim', you should get some" "This SUX0RS. You are using an aim bot:(" "Aim bot? Is bot short for robot? I don't have one of those, but your mother says I love like a robot" 1@|\/|37_69 voted to kick+ban You_Suck
So let that be a lesson to all of you out there. Sometimes people ARE just that good.
While I don't agree with your rankings, Warcraft II definitely needs to be on the list. I still play it. In fact, I use it as my cut off for old hardware. If a computer is too old to run Warcraft II at playable speed, then I don't keep it. My only beef with it is that the PC version doesn't support direct TCP/IP. I wish Blizzard would open up the code so that could be done. I have to use one of my old power macs if I want to play over the internet with someone. (and yes, I know about Battle.net, I prefer a direct TCP/IP game when playing with people I know).
That just goes to show the REAL problem with FreeBSD is that no one on/. knows anything about it. If that guy had bought a box set and read the book he would have known about pkg_add, but he probably downloaded the ISO, installed it, tried apt-get, tried rpm, tried yast, and finding that none of them were installed said to himself "this OS doesn't have a binary package system!"
SELECT CLUE FROM $Slashdot_Comments WHERE (OS_Name IS NOT LIKE '%Linux%';)
That is a question that a lot of people are going to ask. The answer is, if you are asking that question then it is obviously not for you, but belive it or not there is acually a lot of uses for it, it's just a niche market that isn't going to be for the masses. It definatly is a great project though.
There is a lot of old DOS software that is still in use by people with old hardware that don't want to upgrade. Such as small businesses that can't afford consultants that still use the same Point of Sale equipment they bought 10 years ago. They can't afford an IT guy, let alone one that can set up a Linux system for them, and a new system would cost way too much. If their computer dies and they don't have the DOS disk anymore they can use FreeDos to install on another computer, or buy a Dell preloaded with it.
Another example are non-profit organizations such as churches, that also don't have money to spend on technology consultants and still try to use the software they already have. In fact I just spent Saturday morning at my church working on a DOS machine. They have a geneology library that is open to the community to come and do family history with, and they use old DOS software for it. Someone donated a 486 to them and I set it up so they could use their existing software. That one already had DOS, but if they get a computer in without an OS, or if I have to replace a harddrive, FreeDos will be the first thing I try.
Also on the freedos site they mention that freedos is used a lot by hardware manufactuers who need to make a bootable floppy do things like flash rom for bios updates and such.
I know this isn't exactly new info, but if you look at freedos.org you will see that they have a news post about it. It has been available for a while now, but only in Canada. The news is that it is for US also now.
FreeDos is a cool project. You should check it out if you haven't yet.
I totally agree with you that both members of the family working is not a step forward, but I disagree that it is not affordable to have a spouse stay home. I live outside of Madison Wisconsin, I make 15 dollars an hour, I am married with one child and my wife is a full time mom. She was a registered nurse making twice what I make but when we had our first child she decided to stay home with her. And guess what? We are totally out of debt, we have an aggresive savings plan that includes 401k, a Roth IRA, a money market, and a savings account, and we are looking to buy a house Q1 this year even though the property taxes in WI are insane, and I always donate 10% of my gross income to charity (no I'm not making this up)
It is more than possible to live on one income.
Also of note is that I don't have an iPod or a Tivo. There are no game consoles in my house, no XBox, no PS2, nothing. I have a PDA but it is an old Handspring visor that someone gave me for free. I'm typing this post on my "good" laptop which is a 350 mhz IBM thinkpad, my "good" desktop computer is a 1 ghz Athalon that I bought 4 years ago and during that time I have never payed more than $20 for a PC game. No, that doesn't mean that I pirate them all, that means that I wait till the price goes down, or I get them as gifts. I don't have cable TV or satalite. I get one local channel barely. My TV is a measly 19 inches and that was also a gift that we didn't pay for. It's so old that you have to use an adaptor to get a DVD player attached to it. We DO have a DVD player, that was a splurge a few Christmases ago, but hardly any DVD's. We like to get them from the Library. I didn't have a cell phone until work got me one and they pay the bill, I have never had a pager. We don't have a long distance plan. We use an internet-based calling card that gives us 2.9 cents per minute (it's called onesuite if you are interested). I do have to admit though, that I pay for broadband internet. That's my one splurge. I get DSL from Verizon for $35 per month, but hey, everyone has their vices right?
So, I'm not trying to say how great we are or anything, my only point is that people can afford a lot more than they realize if they take a good look at things. In my opinion there is nothing more important in my life than making sure that my children have a good home and to me that means that they have a mother that can be there for them. I'm willing to sacrifice anything that I have to meet that goal. Sure, it means that I may not have the latest geek toys when they come out, but it also means that when times come along like last year when I was out of work for three months, I've got the money to cover it with out going into debt or sending my wife back to work. Also please note that this is just what I want for MY family. I'm not passing any judgements against people in other situations, or single-parent families, or women that want to work. Just know that saying "I can't afford X" is a lot like saying "I don't have time for X". We make time for what we really want to do, just like we spend money on what we really want.
Now I know a lot of you are going to start saying evil things about this and my opinion isn't going to be very popular, but I don't really think it's all that bad of the RIAA to do this.
Think about this for a minute. I have always known that making a copy of a cd so that my original doesn't get scratched is perfectly fine to do, but making a copy of a cd so that I can give it away to my friends, it against the law. In fact, forget about the RIAA for a minute, what about the artists? If you pirate music the people who actually made the music don't get paid, and that is just wrong. The internet comes along and then p2p comes along and suddenly music pirating goes through the roof. The RIAA's first line of defense was to try to outlaw p2p which successfully got Napster shut down. That was totally wrong. People were using Napster to illegally trade music, but that doesn't mean that the protocol itself was at fault. I have always said from the beginning of this that the only fair way to do anything about this is to target the people who are actually breaking the law. If someone is pirating music, don't try to outlaw the program that they are using, sue them for copyright infringement! What else is the music industry supposed to do? If you are innocent then you will have the chance to prove it in court. I think working with IP addresses and the ISPs is a great way of handling this. The RIAA says to the court "we have $INCRIMIATING_EVIDENCE evidence that the IP address $IP_ADDRESS was sharing $TOTAL_SIZE gigs of illegal music on $DATE". If they have reasonable evidence then the court orders the ISP to turn over the mailing address so that they can be summoned to court. If they are an 80 year old with no computer then the case will get dismissed. If they are a college kid with a hard drive full of illegal songs then they will be found guilty and pay a fine.
Personally I feel that p2p song swapping is free publicity and will only help the music industry, but I think the RIAA is well within their rights when they do this.
I agree that Firebird is the best first choice, but the Google Toolbar is by far the best way that I have found to stop pop-ups in IE. There is no spyware, no service or systray icon running, and integrates google for fast searching. It's great!
You've got a great point there. The market it what will decided everything in this case, not the MS monopoly. What I love about this is that unless the competition pulls something out of thier hat quick Apple is well on thier way to perminently dominating digital music DISPITE Microsoft's monopoly. I think Microsoft forsaw the future of digital music a long time ago, and they made sure to have Windows Media Player, and the WMA format ready by the time the market matured. Thanks to Windows Media Player there is an WMA player in 90% of the home pcs on the planet. MS has every intention of levereing thier monopoly to force the market toward WMA just like they forced browsers toward internet explorer, but guess what? This time it didn't work! Dispite the fact that Microsoft has had it's format and media player for many more years than iTunes has been around, Apple has managed to come along and steal away the market and completely take the steam out of the monopoly. I love it. I know the battle is only just starting, and everything could still change, but I would put odds on Apple.
with the release of GarageBand, Apple is about one puzzle piece away from becoming a completely end-to-end music enterprise
I've thought about that before too, and it sounds nice, but it's not going to happen. There is still a little problem of a different copany called Apple, but this one is a record label. To quote FoxNews:
...the Beatles stand to pose a big problem for Apple Computer. That's because the Beatles own a holding company called Apple Corps, Ltd., which controls Apple Records, which released records by the Beatles and other artists...in the mid-1980s, Apple Computer started producing music files and software. It had to pony up $26 million when the Beatles sued, and again promised not to go into any more music.
So far Apple has gotten away with iTMS, but I don't thing that becoming a record label (which is basically what you are suggesting), indi or not, would fly any farther than you can toss a yellow submarine.
I wasn't talking about home users, I was talking about servers. You are implying that in order to have OSX Server you have to have an XServe, and that it not correct. You can buy OSX server edition for $499 for 10 clients or $999 for unlimited clients. This has nothing to do with the XServe and will run on any machine that supports the equivalent home version of OSX. In fact until recently you could buy regular desktop G4's that were labled as a G4 server. OSX has been running the most easy to use version of Apache for several years before the XServe hit the market.
Get your mod points ready because I'm about to troll.
Cheap? When I checked that auction you linked to it was past $100 and the reserve wasn't met yet! If you have that much money to toss around why don't you buy it for me then? For crying out loud! That's like asking why would you bother using an old 386 as a router when you can buy a linksys one for $50. Maybe because I don't have $50?!
This reminds me of a story one of my professors told me. A couple of decades ago some rich nut dropped like $50,000 to the university to pay for an entire computer lab. This was unheard of for such a small school, and everyone was excited about it. I don't remember the type of unit, but it would have been Apple II or something equivalent. In those days classrooms didn't have very many outlets on the walls so they had installed a running outlet strip that ran around the whole length of the room to plug all the computers into. They had a big grand opening ceremony, and with a grand flourish the professor flipped a switch to the power strip that was supposed to turn all the computers on at one time. Unfortunately they had wired the outlet strip backwards and instead, the entire room of donated computers was instantly fried. Fifty grand down the drain. I had a good chuckle out of that one.
Now if I was Microsoft right now, I would have to be asking myself this question:
Is the money that I make forcing people to buy things that they don't need (for example, an entire office license if all they need is Outlook) worth the money that I lose when people start flocking to free alternatives when they don't like I'm offering?
Microsoft (or any company for that matter) stands on very shaky ground when the market starts going in a different direction and they refuse to be flexible. This is just like the RIAA and file sharing. If the RIAA in the mid 90's when CD burners were about to hit the market had dropped the price of CD's, and offered a legitimate electronic distribution method, things like Napster would not have been such a big hit. They created unrest in the market by not being flexible and giving people what they want to buy, for the price they want. The same thing is now happening to MS. What does MS office have that OpenOffice doesn't? Nothing that mattered to Israel. So when they were forced to pay for something they didn't want or need, they looked for an alternative and found it.
Unless MS shapes up this will continue to happen and happen more rapidly. Mac OS, Linux, and all other *NIX will only gain market share as they become the viable alternative.
Just compare some of the licensing of Mac OS to MS. The new, fully loaded version of OSX? ~$130. The new fully loaded version of Windows XP? ~$200. The new fully loaded version of OSX Server? ~$1000 for unlimited users. The new fully loaded Windows server 2003? ~$4000 with 25 users. And that is not to mention Linux which is fully loaded for free!
They can't sustain this for long before something breaks.
I hate to break it to you, but ethernet is a bus too. The reason you can't split it has to do with the media (cat5) not the protocol. You have obviously never installed an vampire tap.
Yes, I have that problem too. For more info on AD google found me this link. AD does everything that a domain controler used to do in earlier version of Windows. It gives you authentication, and security for an entire network with lots of users. What's different that a traditional domain controler you ask? It's not backwards compatable, so you have to upgrade. Standard MS tactic. Take existing software, add a feature that nobody wants, and force you to upgrade to it. Case in point, my favorite version of Excel is '97. It did the best job of not getting in my way when I was tring to use it. It definatly had bugs that needed to be fixed, but MS has to "over-innovate" and add features that nobody ever asked for that always get in your way. Now excel is a bloated piece of crap that corrects everything I do, and sorts my numbers differently than I told it to. Blech.
Just having that kind of a desire to be ethical is a step in the right direction. One thing to keep in mind is that when you are fixing bugs and implementing features it is plain as day to the customer weather your priority is yourself or your customer. A perfect example of this: We use an accounting package where I work that is licenced on a concurrent users model. We have run tight on our licences and people are regularly not able to log in. However getting another five seats is so expensive we can't get approval to buy more. We discovered that lots of people have the application open for long periods of time with out using it. Ever since we ran tight on licences we have been begging to have a feature in the software that will time out and log off a user if they are inactive for an hour or two. Is the company going to give us that feature? Of course not. There is no incentive because otherwise we will eventually have to break down and buy more licences. This leaves us feeling like we are being taken advantage of. We are loyal customers, we do beta testing for them, but they still pull this little stunt that makes them look money hungry. Just remember that your customers arn't all dumb, and your true priorities come through if you like it or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Or in other words, Open Source software would have made deep inroads into these markets if /. HADN'T GIVEN THEM A BIG FAT WARNING!
Sheesh, are we tring to give MS business model advice?
</humor>
Somehow I would be willing to bet that if you added up all the time you spent reading this interview, reading all the posts, and formulating and posting your response, you would have enough time to have pounded out quite a few lines of open source code. I hate the "I don't have time" line. We make time for what we want to do. Is coding any better of a recreation activity then posting on /.? Not really, it's your choice how you spend your time, but don't try to say you don't have time to code if you DO have time to surf the internet. That comes down to personal priority.
Unless of course you are getting paid to post on /. in which case your point was valid :)
If you come to a computer that needs work and you boot into a Knoppix CD you get...a desktop. On the other hand if you boot on to something like the ultimate boot cd you get a nice menu broken down by category of things like "File system utilities", "Memory Tests", and "Hard drive cloning". I just don't see how Knoppix can compare to that. I'm willing to listen though, if you care to explain what makes it so great for this.
My desktop wallpaper is plastered with "Do you HAS what it takes?!"
"How did you kill me!!!!!111 I had full armor and health!" :("
"It's called a headshot. Get used to them."
"WTF!! You kill me every time I walk around that corner!"
"It's called 'aim', you should get some"
"This SUX0RS. You are using an aim bot
"Aim bot? Is bot short for robot? I don't have one of those, but your mother says I love like a robot"
1@|\/|37_69 voted to kick+ban You_Suck
So let that be a lesson to all of you out there. Sometimes people ARE just that good.
While I don't agree with your rankings, Warcraft II definitely needs to be on the list. I still play it. In fact, I use it as my cut off for old hardware. If a computer is too old to run Warcraft II at playable speed, then I don't keep it. My only beef with it is that the PC version doesn't support direct TCP/IP. I wish Blizzard would open up the code so that could be done. I have to use one of my old power macs if I want to play over the internet with someone. (and yes, I know about Battle.net, I prefer a direct TCP/IP game when playing with people I know).
SELECT CLUE FROM $Slashdot_Comments WHERE (OS_Name IS NOT LIKE '%Linux%';)
Zero rows returned;
There is a lot of old DOS software that is still in use by people with old hardware that don't want to upgrade. Such as small businesses that can't afford consultants that still use the same Point of Sale equipment they bought 10 years ago. They can't afford an IT guy, let alone one that can set up a Linux system for them, and a new system would cost way too much. If their computer dies and they don't have the DOS disk anymore they can use FreeDos to install on another computer, or buy a Dell preloaded with it.
Another example are non-profit organizations such as churches, that also don't have money to spend on technology consultants and still try to use the software they already have. In fact I just spent Saturday morning at my church working on a DOS machine. They have a geneology library that is open to the community to come and do family history with, and they use old DOS software for it. Someone donated a 486 to them and I set it up so they could use their existing software. That one already had DOS, but if they get a computer in without an OS, or if I have to replace a harddrive, FreeDos will be the first thing I try.
Also on the freedos site they mention that freedos is used a lot by hardware manufactuers who need to make a bootable floppy do things like flash rom for bios updates and such.
FreeDos is a cool project. You should check it out if you haven't yet.
It is more than possible to live on one income.
Also of note is that I don't have an iPod or a Tivo. There are no game consoles in my house, no XBox, no PS2, nothing. I have a PDA but it is an old Handspring visor that someone gave me for free. I'm typing this post on my "good" laptop which is a 350 mhz IBM thinkpad, my "good" desktop computer is a 1 ghz Athalon that I bought 4 years ago and during that time I have never payed more than $20 for a PC game. No, that doesn't mean that I pirate them all, that means that I wait till the price goes down, or I get them as gifts. I don't have cable TV or satalite. I get one local channel barely. My TV is a measly 19 inches and that was also a gift that we didn't pay for. It's so old that you have to use an adaptor to get a DVD player attached to it. We DO have a DVD player, that was a splurge a few Christmases ago, but hardly any DVD's. We like to get them from the Library. I didn't have a cell phone until work got me one and they pay the bill, I have never had a pager. We don't have a long distance plan. We use an internet-based calling card that gives us 2.9 cents per minute (it's called onesuite if you are interested). I do have to admit though, that I pay for broadband internet. That's my one splurge. I get DSL from Verizon for $35 per month, but hey, everyone has their vices right?
So, I'm not trying to say how great we are or anything, my only point is that people can afford a lot more than they realize if they take a good look at things. In my opinion there is nothing more important in my life than making sure that my children have a good home and to me that means that they have a mother that can be there for them. I'm willing to sacrifice anything that I have to meet that goal. Sure, it means that I may not have the latest geek toys when they come out, but it also means that when times come along like last year when I was out of work for three months, I've got the money to cover it with out going into debt or sending my wife back to work. Also please note that this is just what I want for MY family. I'm not passing any judgements against people in other situations, or single-parent families, or women that want to work. Just know that saying "I can't afford X" is a lot like saying "I don't have time for X". We make time for what we really want to do, just like we spend money on what we really want.
Think about this for a minute. I have always known that making a copy of a cd so that my original doesn't get scratched is perfectly fine to do, but making a copy of a cd so that I can give it away to my friends, it against the law. In fact, forget about the RIAA for a minute, what about the artists? If you pirate music the people who actually made the music don't get paid, and that is just wrong. The internet comes along and then p2p comes along and suddenly music pirating goes through the roof. The RIAA's first line of defense was to try to outlaw p2p which successfully got Napster shut down. That was totally wrong. People were using Napster to illegally trade music, but that doesn't mean that the protocol itself was at fault. I have always said from the beginning of this that the only fair way to do anything about this is to target the people who are actually breaking the law. If someone is pirating music, don't try to outlaw the program that they are using, sue them for copyright infringement! What else is the music industry supposed to do? If you are innocent then you will have the chance to prove it in court. I think working with IP addresses and the ISPs is a great way of handling this. The RIAA says to the court "we have $INCRIMIATING_EVIDENCE evidence that the IP address $IP_ADDRESS was sharing $TOTAL_SIZE gigs of illegal music on $DATE". If they have reasonable evidence then the court orders the ISP to turn over the mailing address so that they can be summoned to court. If they are an 80 year old with no computer then the case will get dismissed. If they are a college kid with a hard drive full of illegal songs then they will be found guilty and pay a fine.
Personally I feel that p2p song swapping is free publicity and will only help the music industry, but I think the RIAA is well within their rights when they do this.
I agree that Firebird is the best first choice, but the Google Toolbar is by far the best way that I have found to stop pop-ups in IE. There is no spyware, no service or systray icon running, and integrates google for fast searching. It's great!
It's so bad that even $1.00 costs $1.27
You've got a great point there. The market it what will decided everything in this case, not the MS monopoly. What I love about this is that unless the competition pulls something out of thier hat quick Apple is well on thier way to perminently dominating digital music DISPITE Microsoft's monopoly. I think Microsoft forsaw the future of digital music a long time ago, and they made sure to have Windows Media Player, and the WMA format ready by the time the market matured. Thanks to Windows Media Player there is an WMA player in 90% of the home pcs on the planet. MS has every intention of levereing thier monopoly to force the market toward WMA just like they forced browsers toward internet explorer, but guess what? This time it didn't work! Dispite the fact that Microsoft has had it's format and media player for many more years than iTunes has been around, Apple has managed to come along and steal away the market and completely take the steam out of the monopoly. I love it. I know the battle is only just starting, and everything could still change, but I would put odds on Apple.
I've thought about that before too, and it sounds nice, but it's not going to happen. There is still a little problem of a different copany called Apple, but this one is a record label. To quote FoxNews:
So far Apple has gotten away with iTMS, but I don't thing that becoming a record label (which is basically what you are suggesting), indi or not, would fly any farther than you can toss a yellow submarine.
I wasn't talking about home users, I was talking about servers. You are implying that in order to have OSX Server you have to have an XServe, and that it not correct. You can buy OSX server edition for $499 for 10 clients or $999 for unlimited clients. This has nothing to do with the XServe and will run on any machine that supports the equivalent home version of OSX. In fact until recently you could buy regular desktop G4's that were labled as a G4 server. OSX has been running the most easy to use version of Apache for several years before the XServe hit the market.
I wonder how much OS X has to do with this?
Cheap? When I checked that auction you linked to it was past $100 and the reserve wasn't met yet! If you have that much money to toss around why don't you buy it for me then? For crying out loud! That's like asking why would you bother using an old 386 as a router when you can buy a linksys one for $50. Maybe because I don't have $50?!
This reminds me of a story one of my professors told me. A couple of decades ago some rich nut dropped like $50,000 to the university to pay for an entire computer lab. This was unheard of for such a small school, and everyone was excited about it. I don't remember the type of unit, but it would have been Apple II or something equivalent. In those days classrooms didn't have very many outlets on the walls so they had installed a running outlet strip that ran around the whole length of the room to plug all the computers into. They had a big grand opening ceremony, and with a grand flourish the professor flipped a switch to the power strip that was supposed to turn all the computers on at one time. Unfortunately they had wired the outlet strip backwards and instead, the entire room of donated computers was instantly fried. Fifty grand down the drain. I had a good chuckle out of that one.
Am the only one who sees some irony in that statement?
Is the money that I make forcing people to buy things that they don't need (for example, an entire office license if all they need is Outlook) worth the money that I lose when people start flocking to free alternatives when they don't like I'm offering?
Microsoft (or any company for that matter) stands on very shaky ground when the market starts going in a different direction and they refuse to be flexible. This is just like the RIAA and file sharing. If the RIAA in the mid 90's when CD burners were about to hit the market had dropped the price of CD's, and offered a legitimate electronic distribution method, things like Napster would not have been such a big hit. They created unrest in the market by not being flexible and giving people what they want to buy, for the price they want. The same thing is now happening to MS. What does MS office have that OpenOffice doesn't? Nothing that mattered to Israel. So when they were forced to pay for something they didn't want or need, they looked for an alternative and found it.
Unless MS shapes up this will continue to happen and happen more rapidly. Mac OS, Linux, and all other *NIX will only gain market share as they become the viable alternative.
Just compare some of the licensing of Mac OS to MS. The new, fully loaded version of OSX? ~$130. The new fully loaded version of Windows XP? ~$200. The new fully loaded version of OSX Server? ~$1000 for unlimited users. The new fully loaded Windows server 2003? ~$4000 with 25 users. And that is not to mention Linux which is fully loaded for free!
They can't sustain this for long before something breaks.
I'm invincable!
I hate to break it to you, but ethernet is a bus too. The reason you can't split it has to do with the media (cat5) not the protocol. You have obviously never installed an vampire tap.
Yes, I have that problem too. For more info on AD google found me this link. AD does everything that a domain controler used to do in earlier version of Windows. It gives you authentication, and security for an entire network with lots of users. What's different that a traditional domain controler you ask? It's not backwards compatable, so you have to upgrade. Standard MS tactic. Take existing software, add a feature that nobody wants, and force you to upgrade to it. Case in point, my favorite version of Excel is '97. It did the best job of not getting in my way when I was tring to use it. It definatly had bugs that needed to be fixed, but MS has to "over-innovate" and add features that nobody ever asked for that always get in your way. Now excel is a bloated piece of crap that corrects everything I do, and sorts my numbers differently than I told it to. Blech.
Just having that kind of a desire to be ethical is a step in the right direction. One thing to keep in mind is that when you are fixing bugs and implementing features it is plain as day to the customer weather your priority is yourself or your customer. A perfect example of this: We use an accounting package where I work that is licenced on a concurrent users model. We have run tight on our licences and people are regularly not able to log in. However getting another five seats is so expensive we can't get approval to buy more. We discovered that lots of people have the application open for long periods of time with out using it. Ever since we ran tight on licences we have been begging to have a feature in the software that will time out and log off a user if they are inactive for an hour or two. Is the company going to give us that feature? Of course not. There is no incentive because otherwise we will eventually have to break down and buy more licences. This leaves us feeling like we are being taken advantage of. We are loyal customers, we do beta testing for them, but they still pull this little stunt that makes them look money hungry. Just remember that your customers arn't all dumb, and your true priorities come through if you like it or not.