[blockquote]The moral of the story is that we are supposed to be smart enough to check more than one source when using ANY reference tool unless we are ready to suffer being the fool.[/blockquote]
Which is a damned circular argument given the echo chamber Wikipedia encourages as this story shows. I'll bet it wasn't more than one reporter that used this bogus quote. In fact a search for the phrase, "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack." returns 616 references on Google. Granted, many are repeats of this article which further goes to the fact the Internet is an echo chamber. The point really is that the Internet should never be quoted as definitive in ANY research for news stories because it is too unreliable.
Being preempted by Britney is a bitch in any world but what makes you think that preemption doesn't happen in the standard way because that is what sells? Fluff will always trump substance and is far safer / cheaper to produce. You don't piss off local advertisers (the real ones paying for the paper) that way.
There's lots of really great, skilled people working on Linux, but no one cares. At least, not in the mainstream.
There are 3 issues any competing OS faces when going against the monopoly. First, machines that come with Windows pre-installed. People are lazy and won't change from what they got in the first place. Second, software availability. People want the software they buy to work. Since the software on the shelves are predominantly Windows, that means you need Windows to run it. Average users won't jump through hoops (vitalization / Wine) to get the program to run simply to stay in Linux. Lastly, there is still the perception that "Free" is garbage which comes from all the crapware that usually comes pre-installed as "Free" software (usually trials that expire or shareware / nagware).
As someone else pointed out, the reason the Linux pre-installed usually fail to sell properly is because when the customer gets it home a pops in their kids latest game it won't work so they are stuck with a game that requires Windows and an OS that won't play that game. How long before that machine sees a pirated version of Windows installed is only a matter how long it takes for them to torrent it.
So yes, as long as Microsoft has the monopoly, we will see lower than expected alternate OS numbers.
I have a different perspective on my BS in CS. It is the most useless thing I partially own, since I'm still paying for it. Let me give you the whole story here. The university I attended (we won't name it but it is in a rural state) was taking approx. 70 students a semester waiving their hands saying, "I'll be a computer science major". The math requirement for CS was 21 hours. 36 hours gets you a degree in math! Needless to say, the school graduated 5-7 CS students a year. That's one hell of an attrition rate wouldn't you say...
To add insult to injury, of the 5-7 graduates per year, 100% had to leave the state to get jobs in that field or they did like I did and completely changed fields if they wanted to stay in the state. Now I'm working in Emergency Management for the state making maps and running federal programs. I have no degree or formal training in GIS. The only thing the CS degree did was allow me to answer truthfully the check box "College graduate" on the application which gives me an extra $15.00 a pay over those in my section that don't have a degree.
Needless to say, the university has re-evaluated the CS program since I left and has come to the logical conclusion. They closed the program 2 years after I left citing the attrition rate and the fact that the university has a duty to serve the community and state it is in which wasn't being fulfilled by having graduates leave the state. I agree with them.
Sort of....My point added to PP's was that rural people tend to be poorer overall. They also tend to have more of an outside life especially in agricultural areas and have little online usage. This is a generalization based on where I live in WV and totally unsupported with data but is what I see when I look out the window...;-)
The problem as I see it with all these "they are faster than us" studies is the assumption that customers want the more expensive, faster solution in rural areas. I live in a rural state and can tell you that most here don't give a shit about speed and look more at the price because they tend to be poorer than the city dwellers. You can have a service that offers faster than light speed but if it costs an arm, leg and your first born, then people won't bite. Add to that the fact that most rural America sees a higher price because it is rural (and usually dominated by a single monopoly) and there is your reason uptake is slow out here in the boonies.
It's called discovery and both sides are entitled to it. If discovery is found to not be pertinent, then that discovery is discarded as non-responsive. That doesn't mean you can hide discovery and in fact if you do things can go heavily against you for spoliage. This goes doubly for corporations such as Facebook:
This has nothing to do with FOSS. It has to do with interstate commerce which the states are hindering. It is political pressure that got this passed and nothing but political pressure will undo it. Either a business will do something like this or they will comply with the law. Not complying is not an option since they can be hauled into court and if they don't show up, they get the default judgment. Which is worse, death by a thousand cuts or pointing pissed off people at their legislatures?
An even better idea would be a refusal to sell to residents of those states. The moment the billing / destination address is identified as a taxing state, refuse the sale based on the tax legislation. If it's online, link to it specifically. Nothing like political pressure to make a politician squirm. Once those states stop having sales from Internet based sources, they'll change their tune.
I never said forgive the debt. I said work with them meaning delay the payment until economies get better. Hell, even charge a small interest fee increasing the profits even more I would accept. But to drive a company into the arms of a bankruptcy judge will likely gain Microsoft a write off debt instead.
The flip-side is how much will Microsoft get out of a bankrupt company? More, how much will they get when it becomes known that Microsoft's demands for payment played a major role in putting those companies into bankruptcy? How many companies will be gun shy in the future when Microsoft comes trying to peddle their wares because of this? How many companies will see this and look for alternatives (not necessarily Linux) for Microsoft products?
In short, a failure to work with these companies in these financially troubled times can be a PR blunder that can cost them dearly. Add to that the failure of Microsoft to push Vista onto the business sector and their impending wish to push Windows 7 in this economy, and you have a recipe for escape from Microsoft right when Microsoft needs more, not less, business.
The idea of DRM is fine, there are probably cases where it is makes perfect sense.
No it isn't. The whole reason for copyright isn't to make money forever no matter how the publishing corporations want to spin it. It is to enhance the public domain which doesn't happen with DRM. If you want to DRM content, then it shouldn't be covered by copyright since you violated the very reason for copyright.
And how do they plan to stop 1st world countries from importing drugs from their developing brethren?
By introducing legislation banning it. How else? You don't think they have paid out those millions in bribes....er...Campaign contributions for nothing do you? You don't think they hired that army of lobbyists for the good of the people do you?
if you don't want your drunk, party, family reunion, college, work and so on photos being used as leverage against you in any way someone can find fitting, you still have the option of not posting them.
That may be true but it doesn't stop me from posting that picture of you at the party with a lampshade over your head naked as a jaybird screwing that goat does it? Worse, it doesn't stop me from tagging that image "Anonymous Coward screwing around at the party. A must see" and allowing Facebook to index it.
That would be all well and good but they aren't atoning for shit here. Let me count the ways for you:
1. Richer countries like the US and UK are subsidizing this drug program. You don't honestly think GSK is going to give up its profits now do you...
2. They are putting some of their patents in a "patent pool", whatever that means, instead of doing the real "right thing" and releasing those patents to the public domain. Torpedo patents anyone...
3. This isn't an attempt to "do good" more than it is an attempt to stop countries from ignoring their patents and developing generics on their own. A little profit is better than no profit in their eyes. Besides, as 1 above suggests, they will make it up off the richer countries.
This is a multi-billion dollar a year industry we are talking about here. They have no conscience and no morals. Profit is their only motivator. No company does anything out of the goodness of their heart unless it will lead to greater profits and/or market dominance. This is doubly so with the drug industry.
Who ever said it was important to give any company a handout loan or otherwise? I sure didn't. Show me a company that is too big to fail and I'll show you a company that needs to be split up in a bankruptcy court. Had these companies, every one of them, been forced into bankruptcy court, we wouldn't see things like $18 Bn in executive bonuses or other company acquisitions. Most of the bailout money went to the acquisition of competing banks making a "too big to fail" company even bigger. I say a pox on all their houses...
The automotive "bailout" (it wasn't only GM) was in the form of $18 Bn low interest loans that have to be repaid unlike the bank's $700 Bn or this $850 Bn pork barrel. This country has a fucked up sense of priorities that way.
What I don't get (about both you and Linus) is that the choice is either KDE 4 or Gnome. I use openSUSE 11.1 on my main desktop, and it has KDE 3.5.
*Maybe* it has something to do with the fact that to install KDE 3.5 you have to click "other" when the openSUSE installation asks you what desktop you want, but I'm not so sure.
It is more related to the fact (and yes it is a fact) that virtually all new development is being done for 4. There hasn't been any new features for 3.5 since KDE4 became the focus.
KDE 3.5 is not yet a completely dead end, newer KDE 4 / QT4 apps integrate well enough (like KTorrent and VirtualBox) and it just goes on where the old openSUSE installation left of, because you don't really "switch" your desktop. Plus, at least on openSUSE, the distribution still supports it very, very well.
The difference is, as I said above, that no new features are going into 3.5. All effort is directed at 4 which many view as a disaster. It hasn't helped that the KDE team released alpha code calling it complete. The PR around KDE4 sucks. Ever try getting answers on the KDE forums about problems in KDE4? Your answer is almost certainly going to be "it's coming in $NEXT-VERSION". Wash, rinse and repeat...
I'm equally disappointed with KDE 4 as the next KDE user (I didn't even have any high hopes to begin with, but I did expect KDE 4.1 to be usable), but that didn't make me turn to Gnome. I love KDE, and I love it because of KDE 3.5. Why not keep using that?
No new features and no real work on existing bugs because development effort being shifted to 4 is a show stopper for me. Personally, I'll wait for about 4.4 or 4.5 before I make any switch. By then it will be mature enough. However, choice gives me the option to switch to a different desktop if by then they are still screwed. Linus and others have simply decided not to wait any more.
When you are an elected official in this country, perhaps you should be familiar with the Constitution. There is a growing trend of elected officials who apparently have never heard of the thing.
Scarier is the citizens that don't know what it says. They don't even realize they are losing rights which is the way the elected officials want it.
Spore simply put a spotlight on the DRM problem. I suspect this move was instigated not really by consumers but by resellers of these games. Whole businesses have sprung up around used games that are threatened by DRM's violation of the First Sale Doctrine. There is more to this than consumer outrage. After all, since when did government care about public outrage...
Why is it so critical that generations worth of people, who did nothing to create the work get money out of it while tax payer money is spent protecting your work?
Not that I agree with it but the idea stems from real property inheritance. That's what you get when you refer to copyright as "Intellectual Property". The only problem with the idea is it isn't real people that wind up holding the copyright. It is a corporation that owns it in exchange for being published and promoted.
OpenOffice is a bit too big and too important to be under the copyright of millions of different people.
Sure, because that held Linux back.
Nice bit of bait and switch there. To answer the question PROPERLY you would have to say YES Linux was held back from making the switch to GPLv3. Nowhere in the world is it v3 because of the licensing wording. The OP wasn't saying the code was held back but the switch of license was.
I understand your point but the problem you can never overcome is the fact that those products that are running well for you now are either beyond or are close to their end of life. That means Microsoft will no longer support them or update them which in the Microsoft world is very, very dangerous. So enjoy it while it lasts and keep your head down and pray that it doesn't get exploited.
Umm...No. Joe pushed his way up to the rope line and yelled to get Obama's attention. He then proceeded to use the party lines "communism", "spread the wealth", etc. The rest of your statement is illogical since he didn't own the business, wasn't in line to own the business, wasn't making anywhere close to what he claimed....Shall I go on?
What I'm saying is the DTV isn't the same as HDTV as the GP was implying. You can have digital TV without HD capacity (AKA SD). Just because DTV is mandated, doesn't mean it will suddenly be HD. Many people are confusing the two.
Slashdot Mirror
[blockquote]The moral of the story is that we are supposed to be smart enough to check more than one source when using ANY reference tool unless we are ready to suffer being the fool.[/blockquote]
Which is a damned circular argument given the echo chamber Wikipedia encourages as this story shows. I'll bet it wasn't more than one reporter that used this bogus quote. In fact a search for the phrase, "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack." returns 616 references on Google. Granted, many are repeats of this article which further goes to the fact the Internet is an echo chamber. The point really is that the Internet should never be quoted as definitive in ANY research for news stories because it is too unreliable.
Being preempted by Britney is a bitch in any world but what makes you think that preemption doesn't happen in the standard way because that is what sells? Fluff will always trump substance and is far safer / cheaper to produce. You don't piss off local advertisers (the real ones paying for the paper) that way.
There are 3 issues any competing OS faces when going against the monopoly. First, machines that come with Windows pre-installed. People are lazy and won't change from what they got in the first place. Second, software availability. People want the software they buy to work. Since the software on the shelves are predominantly Windows, that means you need Windows to run it. Average users won't jump through hoops (vitalization / Wine) to get the program to run simply to stay in Linux. Lastly, there is still the perception that "Free" is garbage which comes from all the crapware that usually comes pre-installed as "Free" software (usually trials that expire or shareware / nagware).
As someone else pointed out, the reason the Linux pre-installed usually fail to sell properly is because when the customer gets it home a pops in their kids latest game it won't work so they are stuck with a game that requires Windows and an OS that won't play that game. How long before that machine sees a pirated version of Windows installed is only a matter how long it takes for them to torrent it.
So yes, as long as Microsoft has the monopoly, we will see lower than expected alternate OS numbers.
I have a different perspective on my BS in CS. It is the most useless thing I partially own, since I'm still paying for it. Let me give you the whole story here. The university I attended (we won't name it but it is in a rural state) was taking approx. 70 students a semester waiving their hands saying, "I'll be a computer science major". The math requirement for CS was 21 hours. 36 hours gets you a degree in math! Needless to say, the school graduated 5-7 CS students a year. That's one hell of an attrition rate wouldn't you say...
To add insult to injury, of the 5-7 graduates per year, 100% had to leave the state to get jobs in that field or they did like I did and completely changed fields if they wanted to stay in the state. Now I'm working in Emergency Management for the state making maps and running federal programs. I have no degree or formal training in GIS. The only thing the CS degree did was allow me to answer truthfully the check box "College graduate" on the application which gives me an extra $15.00 a pay over those in my section that don't have a degree.
Needless to say, the university has re-evaluated the CS program since I left and has come to the logical conclusion. They closed the program 2 years after I left citing the attrition rate and the fact that the university has a duty to serve the community and state it is in which wasn't being fulfilled by having graduates leave the state. I agree with them.
Sort of....My point added to PP's was that rural people tend to be poorer overall. They also tend to have more of an outside life especially in agricultural areas and have little online usage. This is a generalization based on where I live in WV and totally unsupported with data but is what I see when I look out the window...;-)
The problem as I see it with all these "they are faster than us" studies is the assumption that customers want the more expensive, faster solution in rural areas. I live in a rural state and can tell you that most here don't give a shit about speed and look more at the price because they tend to be poorer than the city dwellers. You can have a service that offers faster than light speed but if it costs an arm, leg and your first born, then people won't bite. Add to that the fact that most rural America sees a higher price because it is rural (and usually dominated by a single monopoly) and there is your reason uptake is slow out here in the boonies.
It's called discovery and both sides are entitled to it. If discovery is found to not be pertinent, then that discovery is discarded as non-responsive. That doesn't mean you can hide discovery and in fact if you do things can go heavily against you for spoliage. This goes doubly for corporations such as Facebook:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=900005516406
This has nothing to do with FOSS. It has to do with interstate commerce which the states are hindering. It is political pressure that got this passed and nothing but political pressure will undo it. Either a business will do something like this or they will comply with the law. Not complying is not an option since they can be hauled into court and if they don't show up, they get the default judgment. Which is worse, death by a thousand cuts or pointing pissed off people at their legislatures?
An even better idea would be a refusal to sell to residents of those states. The moment the billing / destination address is identified as a taxing state, refuse the sale based on the tax legislation. If it's online, link to it specifically. Nothing like political pressure to make a politician squirm. Once those states stop having sales from Internet based sources, they'll change their tune.
I never said forgive the debt. I said work with them meaning delay the payment until economies get better. Hell, even charge a small interest fee increasing the profits even more I would accept. But to drive a company into the arms of a bankruptcy judge will likely gain Microsoft a write off debt instead.
The flip-side is how much will Microsoft get out of a bankrupt company? More, how much will they get when it becomes known that Microsoft's demands for payment played a major role in putting those companies into bankruptcy? How many companies will be gun shy in the future when Microsoft comes trying to peddle their wares because of this? How many companies will see this and look for alternatives (not necessarily Linux) for Microsoft products?
In short, a failure to work with these companies in these financially troubled times can be a PR blunder that can cost them dearly. Add to that the failure of Microsoft to push Vista onto the business sector and their impending wish to push Windows 7 in this economy, and you have a recipe for escape from Microsoft right when Microsoft needs more, not less, business.
No it isn't. The whole reason for copyright isn't to make money forever no matter how the publishing corporations want to spin it. It is to enhance the public domain which doesn't happen with DRM. If you want to DRM content, then it shouldn't be covered by copyright since you violated the very reason for copyright.
By introducing legislation banning it. How else? You don't think they have paid out those millions in bribes....er...Campaign contributions for nothing do you? You don't think they hired that army of lobbyists for the good of the people do you?
That may be true but it doesn't stop me from posting that picture of you at the party with a lampshade over your head naked as a jaybird screwing that goat does it? Worse, it doesn't stop me from tagging that image "Anonymous Coward screwing around at the party. A must see" and allowing Facebook to index it.
That would be all well and good but they aren't atoning for shit here. Let me count the ways for you:
1. Richer countries like the US and UK are subsidizing this drug program. You don't honestly think GSK is going to give up its profits now do you...
2. They are putting some of their patents in a "patent pool", whatever that means, instead of doing the real "right thing" and releasing those patents to the public domain. Torpedo patents anyone...
3. This isn't an attempt to "do good" more than it is an attempt to stop countries from ignoring their patents and developing generics on their own. A little profit is better than no profit in their eyes. Besides, as 1 above suggests, they will make it up off the richer countries.
This is a multi-billion dollar a year industry we are talking about here. They have no conscience and no morals. Profit is their only motivator. No company does anything out of the goodness of their heart unless it will lead to greater profits and/or market dominance. This is doubly so with the drug industry.
Who ever said it was important to give any company a handout loan or otherwise? I sure didn't. Show me a company that is too big to fail and I'll show you a company that needs to be split up in a bankruptcy court. Had these companies, every one of them, been forced into bankruptcy court, we wouldn't see things like $18 Bn in executive bonuses or other company acquisitions. Most of the bailout money went to the acquisition of competing banks making a "too big to fail" company even bigger. I say a pox on all their houses...
The automotive "bailout" (it wasn't only GM) was in the form of $18 Bn low interest loans that have to be repaid unlike the bank's $700 Bn or this $850 Bn pork barrel. This country has a fucked up sense of priorities that way.
It is more related to the fact (and yes it is a fact) that virtually all new development is being done for 4. There hasn't been any new features for 3.5 since KDE4 became the focus.
The difference is, as I said above, that no new features are going into 3.5. All effort is directed at 4 which many view as a disaster. It hasn't helped that the KDE team released alpha code calling it complete. The PR around KDE4 sucks. Ever try getting answers on the KDE forums about problems in KDE4? Your answer is almost certainly going to be "it's coming in $NEXT-VERSION". Wash, rinse and repeat...
No new features and no real work on existing bugs because development effort being shifted to 4 is a show stopper for me. Personally, I'll wait for about 4.4 or 4.5 before I make any switch. By then it will be mature enough. However, choice gives me the option to switch to a different desktop if by then they are still screwed. Linus and others have simply decided not to wait any more.
Scarier is the citizens that don't know what it says. They don't even realize they are losing rights which is the way the elected officials want it.
Spore simply put a spotlight on the DRM problem. I suspect this move was instigated not really by consumers but by resellers of these games. Whole businesses have sprung up around used games that are threatened by DRM's violation of the First Sale Doctrine. There is more to this than consumer outrage. After all, since when did government care about public outrage...
Not that I agree with it but the idea stems from real property inheritance. That's what you get when you refer to copyright as "Intellectual Property". The only problem with the idea is it isn't real people that wind up holding the copyright. It is a corporation that owns it in exchange for being published and promoted.
Nice bit of bait and switch there. To answer the question PROPERLY you would have to say YES Linux was held back from making the switch to GPLv3. Nowhere in the world is it v3 because of the licensing wording. The OP wasn't saying the code was held back but the switch of license was.
I understand your point but the problem you can never overcome is the fact that those products that are running well for you now are either beyond or are close to their end of life. That means Microsoft will no longer support them or update them which in the Microsoft world is very, very dangerous. So enjoy it while it lasts and keep your head down and pray that it doesn't get exploited.
Umm...No. Joe pushed his way up to the rope line and yelled to get Obama's attention. He then proceeded to use the party lines "communism", "spread the wealth", etc. The rest of your statement is illogical since he didn't own the business, wasn't in line to own the business, wasn't making anywhere close to what he claimed....Shall I go on?
What I'm saying is the DTV isn't the same as HDTV as the GP was implying. You can have digital TV without HD capacity (AKA SD). Just because DTV is mandated, doesn't mean it will suddenly be HD. Many people are confusing the two.