Mobile video will never be as ubiquitous as mobile audio is today.
I agree completely. There is of course a niche market, but it won't be like audio is. As an example, look back at the pre-iPod world. Back in the day, the Sony Walkman and prior to that the transistor radio was all the rage. Portable TVs with 3 or 4 inch screens have been available forever, but have never seen widespread acceptance. Same thing with portable DVD players. They've been around in the consumer market what, 3-4 years? They fill a niche market for people that spend a significant amount of time traveling, like kids in a car on vacation, but for regular use they just haven't caught on.
You are also completely correct about the ability to multitask when watching video. I recently joined a gym that had TVs on the cardio machines. I've found I work harder if I just leave my MP3 player on than I do if I watch the TV.
If you Google for "Web Design" they come up as #4 for me.
Thing is, every time I look for templates I search for 'web templates', 'css templates' or something of that nature. I wouldn't search 'Web Design' unless I was actually looking for a web designer, thus I've never heard of them either, until today.
In the case of social in-security, it isn't just corporate interests that want it changed...those of us working and want a meaningful retirement savings do too....
I agree completely. I would also support any SS reform that allowed me to invest money that I'm putting into FICA or even just let me invest more money tax free, but you and I appear to be in the minority for two reasons.
First, people of retirement age constitue the majority of voters in this country, they may actually constitute an overall majority, but I'd have to look at some census estimates.
Second, there are many people out there that think investing in ANYTHING other than a bank account is like gambling with all your money in Vegas. My parents, who aren't dumb people at all, think this way. They have had some bad experiences in the past and are extremely gunshy on investing. They probably believe that their money is safer with the government.
Bottom line, there isn't a large citizen group of any kind with any orgainziation that is really pushing for SS reform, and there is a major one in the AARP that is against it. Same thing with the IP restrictions. There is are major groups that are pushing for it, but there isn't much of an organized effort to change copyright law.
At which point they cut off two toes, restore the hard drive image they were playing with, and start over.
Which is why I said corrupt, not delete. A wily criminal would have an algorithim that replaced the incriminating data with innocuous data, either just replacing individual files, or something more interesting. I don't know about you, but I've got thousands of files in my home directory and it's subdirectories on my personal machine. If I didn't pick really obvious file names like "Dates I'm going to blow stuff up.txt" and had enough extraneous noise it wouldn't be difficult to just rewrite my evil plans with a few passages from the Bible during the decryption process. That would be a little difficult to detect.
Whose lining the politician's pockets to make them see the issue in such a way? No-one that's who. Because your important politicians follow their constituents that give them cash, instead of their constituents, your freedoms will continue to be done away with.
Actually, it's worse than that. The general popluation really doesn't care. Maybe in 20-30 years when all the 15 year olds are grown up, but unless you are like the grandpa that got sued because of his grandson downloading the incredibles nobody over 35, which is most of the voting public, cares about this. It's not just corporate money that drives the politicians, it's also citizens and their representative groups. Look at the changes Bush wanted to make to Social Security. Do you think there weren't corporate interests all for getting all those investment dollars? The voting retired community and their representatives, the AARP made damn sure that reform didn't happen, regardless of how much sense it made.
The *AA and other corporate entities are pushing this, but much of the reason it's passing is there's no organized citizen groups, that actually vote, that are opposing it.
That's the main problem. They probably can't make that one copy for commercial uses. Yes, ad revenue does count, so their use would be considered commercial.
Ahh, but that's where the grey area is. They aren't using it for 'ad revenue'. They aren't directly using the content in advertisements, they are using the content to provide service to their customers and arguably the authors. They just happen to advertise to those people that search on it. If you argue that it is directly ad revenue then you can also argue they shouldn't advertise while displaying search results from copyrighted web pages. Look at the copyright office's website, there is not any hard and fast definition of what 'fair use' is - it's for the courts to decide, if it gets that far.
Whoa, your statement was 'apps that don't have a Linux equivalent', not apps that work exactly like they do in Windows or the same apps that are available on Windows. Linux may need a 'Win32 compatibility layer', but I'm doubtful that will happen for two reasons. The first is a Win32 layer would almost certainly involve either copyright or patent infringement on Microsoft proprietary technology, which would result in lawsuits and do nothing to further Linux use. Second, Win32 is, at best, a broken architecture. Microsoft, with it's billions of dollars in development has not been able to make it both stable and backword compatible. XP is an improvement, but it's still a poor architecture. Adding that functionality to Linux would be a step backward and not one the Linux developers are likely to take.
Believing that a better product will automatically shift Microsoft on merit alone is incredibly naive
How so? Linux has already shifted Microsoft in the server market. Google has shifted Microsoft. Those are two 'products' that have succeeded on merit alone. In a true free market the product that offers the best performance for it's cost Should always win out eventually. The only time it doesn't is when existing market forces use uncompetitve tactics to stifle the superior product like RCA did with the FM radio.
Ahhh... I belive you are correct. So what we have here is another RIAA who is not actually representing the creators of the original material, but their own interests. They are concerned that they are going to be cut out as a middle man. Interesting theory.
In the United States, there's no law that ensures the right of a publisher or an author to make a sale. There is a law that protects the right to make copies.
I'm no copyright attorney, but from what I've always understood copyright law is both. Copyright law deals not only with the copying of material, but the distributing and production (sale) of said copies. I was always told, and again IANAL, that you could make a copy of a recording of music and GIVE it to another individual as long as you were not doing a mass distribution or collecting any money for the copy - that this fell in to fair use. Now this may not be true, or it may not be true now under the DMCA, but that was always my impression. Regardless, copyright law definitely protects the right of the author to sell his own work, at least the first time.
Copyright is not as simple as you seem to want to make it out to be. I looked at the US Copyright office's page on fair use and it is EXTREMELY vague.
Re:You are confusing two issues
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In neither of these cases are there copies made. Google is making copies!!! If you fail to see that difference you really amazes me. It is the creation of those copies that are the copyright infringement.
Actually, I do see the difference. The the parent's example the publishers lost a sale because a consumer purchased the book in a secondary market. Google does NOT intend to redistribute content. They are making ONE copy of each book for their own used, not to resell. Now they are going to use that content to enhance their searches, but I don't know if that's against fair use.
The publishers are just pissed that Google's making money and they aren't, it has nothing to do with copyright or fair use. If it's such an issue, why don't they just encourage all of their authors to opt-out and setup their own search index to compete. That's not what they want at all, they just want a bigger piece of the pie than they are already going to get from purchases of searched books. Don't assign altruistic values to the publishing companies, they are just greedy like everyone else.
The LP presidential candidate in 2004 is an A1 Whack Job, and yes, I am basing that on personal conversations with him. His plan to end the war was somthing like, put all the GI's on a plane and bring them home. Who gives a fuck what happens next?
You may very well be correct. I didn't personally talk to him, but are you really going to tell me Kerry and Bush aren't "Whack Job"s too? I didn't vote for the LP candidate because I was afraid Kerry might actually get into office and the guy didn't appear to have any principals at all. At least Bush has principals even if they are a bit misguided. Doesn't even seem to me that putting all the GIs on a plane and bringing them home would be such a bad idea, that's how they got there in the first place, but you do have a point. If the withdrawl wasn't handled properly it could add signficant instability to the region.
Cutting spending? All federal agencies go away, immediately. What do you mean unemployement just went off the charts? What charts?
Again, you might be right, but is federal employment a valid way to combat unemployment statistics. An artifically supported economy isn't much better than one that's tanked.
I do agree with you that the LP platform has some ideas that aren't so great. I agree with them in principal, but some of their ideas are wacky. I think they would have a shot at actually being a force if they would drop that 10% of ideas that makes the rest of the country think they are a cult.
Since when did not having a physical presence in a place exempt you from from their laws?
Ummm... since always. Since when is committing an action outside of a jurisdiction break the law within the jurisdiction? That's why states can't collect sales tax from mail order companies located outside their state. That's why gambling sites operate from offshore servers. It's extremely difficult to enforce laws across state or national boundaries. If said company was contracting with a consulting or advertising firm from out of state would that firm be expected to pay income tax in New York state? If said company is purchasing wholesale goods from out of state is the out of state wholesale company expected to pay New York income tax? Of course not. Why should it be any different for a telecommuter. He may be drawing income form their economy, but with free trade between states that's not a punishable expense. In this case, since he is traveling there a significant portion of his time he should probably pay some tax, but when he's home in Tenessee and not gaining any benefit from any of the services the New York state government provides, why should he have to pay tax?
You do have one thing right, everyone does expect free beer, and the biggest group with their glasses reaching for the Keg are our government officials.
Most libertarians I've met focus on petty technicalities which are only important if you ignore the big picture of murder, mayhem, and general starvation and deprivation. Their worries generally fall into the category of counting angels on pin heads.
Funny, most Democrats I've met focus on petty technicalities too. Actually, most Republicans as well. What was the last presidential election focused on? The war in Iraq? The economy? Murder, Mayhem, and General Starvation and Deprivation? No...as I recall it was primarily about Gay marriage and if John Kerry deserved the medals he got in Vietnam. If those two issues aren't petty I don't know what is.
The Libertarian candidate, OTOH, was commited to ending the War, cutting spending, and balancing the budget. Those don't seem like petty items to me. If you research the Libertarian party some I think you will find that, at it's core, it is all about addressing the major issues and bypassing much of the pettiness that bloats our current government. You may be correct in the observation that many party members aren't focused on the major issues, but the parties focus is definitely on major issues.
Wrong. It's all the apps that don't have a Linux equivalent
Like what? There are thousands of OSS apps out there that cover nearly every need you could possibly have on Linux. There is arguably more software available for Linux than Windows. There are browsers (opera, firefox, konquerer), email clients (evolution), word processors (abiword, kword, writer), spreadsheets (gnumeric, calc, kspread), audio players (xmms) and video players (realplayer, quicktime, kplayer). Of the items I mentioned there are many more alternatives available. As far as specialized software there are many projects specifically dedicated to scientific, business, engineering, and of course computing. You name your need and I could probably find either find a project that would address it or a web based alternative that would fit your needs. The only apps that really fit your description are specific industry based apps that are designed for a particular market segment. For example, I don't know of any Estate Tax software products that run on Linux. The demand just isn't there yet.
If you think that there are an inadequate amount of applications available for Linux or insufficient realistic equivalents, you are sadly mistaken. Take a look at sourceforge.com or freshmeat.net and look at the thousands of OSS projects that are available. Finally, one more time for anyone that hasn't caught it yet, Linux is NOT an "OS that wants to compete effectively with Windows". Linux isn't a brand, Linux isn't a company, Linux is a free unix kernel designed to work on the X386 architecture that was originated by a guy from Finland. It's only specific agenda is to be the best possible operating system available. The sooner people get that into their heads the better off we will all be. Linux exists and has a market share because it's the better product, not because some company spent billions in sales, exclusive contracts, non-competitive behavior and TV commercials to promote it.
Well, I personally think the idea has merit. VB is great for bashing up a quick app to do, well, anything you want so long as it's not really complex and even then you can always do parts of things in Vis C and plug them into VB.
I never said the idea didn't have merit, I said it would never work as an OSS project. I think this is a great opportunity for a commercial product if a development company could work around the legal hurdles. Microsoft doesn't want to support VB anymore, but they probably don't want you supporting it either.
The real problem is there are some FOSS developers that don't really want to make it easier for users...
You key word there is 'some'. I've seen OSS developers on every end of the spectrum. Let's not forget, there are people lacking basic social skills in every industry. Sure, some developers are real a-holes, and some are super cool. There are members of the OSS community that have a very elitist view and don't want anyone else to join their little club and there are those that want Linux on every desktop. Thing is, you aren't going to change any developers mind by ranting about their irritating attitudes. The productive thing would be to start your own projects and be a nice developer, volunteer for a quality project (you mentioned Ubuntu) or if you don't have programming skills, donate.
Linux has grown primarily because of the community, we can't let a few bad eggs ruin the experience for everyone. If you believe in OSS software help provide a better experience for other new users.
Linux is the name of the kernel. I run Debian, and the specific distribution is Knoppix.
This is something that the author of this article, like many people in the business world, appearantly just doesn't get. It's amazing how foriegn this idea that Linux is the OS and not a brand name is.
From the article:
The brand Linux should stand for an entire operating system not just a kernel. There should be only one true Linux and perhaps many derivatives that should have their own brand and name.
Who exactly is going to make this determination? Who is going to establish the one true "Linux" and make everyone use it? It's not going to happen. Linux is not a 'brand name' and one tru Linux is not going to appear. The point that so many people seem to miss is there is no one driving force behind the GNU/Linux operating system. There is no CEO or corporate board that is trying to increase market share and make their stock price go up, at least not for the whole OS. For the most part, the only reasons that we want others to adopt a Linux system is because we belive it's better and don't want to have to work on a Windows architecture.
The author states that
Linux should stop copying Microsoft feature for feature and embrace the differences and features that advanced users love.
Bottom line is the developers on the features that copy Microsoft want those products in their Linux environment. If you are a developer and want to write an open source clone of application X for Linux, go for it.
Personally, having used Linux for the last 6-7 years I have seen constant improvements. When I was first introduced to Linux the installation was painful, hardware support was sketchy and apps were incomplete. Now I can do almost anything on my Linux desktop that I could do on a Windows. I don't worry that my new piece of hardware isn't going to work. I have better, free tools than most things you can buy for windows. Ultimately Linux will continue to get better while Microsoft will remain more of the same, even though Linux is not a brand name.
There is an opportunity for the open source community to create a VB compatible IDE that could compile applications for both to Windows and Linux.
TFA is OK up until this point. Is this guy off his rocker? No self respecting Open Source geek is going to implement anything for VB. He would get laughed off of slashdot, sourceforge and every OSS community on the net in seconds.
No harm is done (to expert users) if a smart company decides to release a user-friendly linux distro.
Umm... this is already happening. Linspire and Red Hat have both been working on this for years. Linux 'out of the box' usability is not the issue. There are two issues that are keeping Linux from overtaking Microsoft on the desktop.
Microsoft's current operating system dominance. Like it or not people don't want to change. They don't like change, they don't like anything new.
Microsoft's dominance in the web browser, email and office suite arena. Everyone uses these products, web developers have to test their pages in a sucky microsoft browser and most business people use outlook for all of their email, scheduling, etc...
Unless Microsoft releases Linux versions of IE and Outlook we will just have to wait for the gradual increase in market share to trickle down to the consumer level.
I definately smell a hint of doom on Microsoft, though...
I'm not sure if it's doom, but definitely desperation. Thing that I find funny is the company I work for has a product that's very similar to what Microsoft is doing (check it out at http://www.ike.com/ as far as workflow, Instant messaging, document management and process autmomation. We have struggled for the last two years attempting to get customers and can't find a marketplace for it. Microsoft has immense marketing muscle, so maybe it will work for them, but in our experience the market isn't ready for a complex product like they are preparing to launch. I suppose desparate times call for desparate measures...
Untrue. Many people rely on medications of one sort or another to keep them alive and narcotic addicts generally have a physical dependancy on the products.
Bottom line is it's all about FREEDOM. Most things you and I do every day we don't HAVE to do, does that make them any less important to our quality of life? Thing is about this article, it goes beyond the idea of piracy. If Hollywood controls what people can see is, that not a violation of our basic rights. Shouldn't the average citizen have just as much right to create and distribute content as Hollywood does? The whole purpose behind this proposition is to control the content by controlling the hardware. I don't want to give our government or any particular special interest group that kind of control over our society.
They need to learn the wonderful world of old technology will never allow for this to happen.
It's not just old technology. You think if they pass something like this there won't be tech all over the net that will convert/bypass/ignore the new laws. It will be a boon for Ebay and retailers outside the US. The government can't stop drug sales (illegal, perscription, performance enhancing) on the Internet, how are they going to stop illegal video cards. All rules like this do is create a black market and more criminals.
The thing is, with the loss of local diversity the world will end up with just a few giant news organizations, and there won't be anyone left to investigate the local news.
Here's a newsflash. This has already happened. Many newspapers in the US are owned by big companies that own multiple papers. Same thing with radio stations. I live in Colorado and even the two big Denver papers, The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News, are owned by the same company. I hope that the death of the newspaper will result in the creation of some local news websites that will increase the diversity of our news.
Slashdot Mirror
Mobile video will never be as ubiquitous as mobile audio is today.
I agree completely. There is of course a niche market, but it won't be like audio is. As an example, look back at the pre-iPod world. Back in the day, the Sony Walkman and prior to that the transistor radio was all the rage. Portable TVs with 3 or 4 inch screens have been available forever, but have never seen widespread acceptance. Same thing with portable DVD players. They've been around in the consumer market what, 3-4 years? They fill a niche market for people that spend a significant amount of time traveling, like kids in a car on vacation, but for regular use they just haven't caught on.
You are also completely correct about the ability to multitask when watching video. I recently joined a gym that had TVs on the cardio machines. I've found I work harder if I just leave my MP3 player on than I do if I watch the TV.
If you Google for "Web Design" they come up as #4 for me.
Thing is, every time I look for templates I search for 'web templates', 'css templates' or something of that nature. I wouldn't search 'Web Design' unless I was actually looking for a web designer, thus I've never heard of them either, until today.
In the case of social in-security, it isn't just corporate interests that want it changed...those of us working and want a meaningful retirement savings do too....
I agree completely. I would also support any SS reform that allowed me to invest money that I'm putting into FICA or even just let me invest more money tax free, but you and I appear to be in the minority for two reasons.
First, people of retirement age constitue the majority of voters in this country, they may actually constitute an overall majority, but I'd have to look at some census estimates.
Second, there are many people out there that think investing in ANYTHING other than a bank account is like gambling with all your money in Vegas. My parents, who aren't dumb people at all, think this way. They have had some bad experiences in the past and are extremely gunshy on investing. They probably believe that their money is safer with the government.
Bottom line, there isn't a large citizen group of any kind with any orgainziation that is really pushing for SS reform, and there is a major one in the AARP that is against it. Same thing with the IP restrictions. There is are major groups that are pushing for it, but there isn't much of an organized effort to change copyright law.
At which point they cut off two toes, restore the hard drive image they were playing with, and start over.
Which is why I said corrupt, not delete. A wily criminal would have an algorithim that replaced the incriminating data with innocuous data, either just replacing individual files, or something more interesting. I don't know about you, but I've got thousands of files in my home directory and it's subdirectories on my personal machine. If I didn't pick really obvious file names like "Dates I'm going to blow stuff up.txt" and had enough extraneous noise it wouldn't be difficult to just rewrite my evil plans with a few passages from the Bible during the decryption process. That would be a little difficult to detect.
Whose lining the politician's pockets to make them see the issue in such a way? No-one that's who. Because your important politicians follow their constituents that give them cash, instead of their constituents, your freedoms will continue to be done away with.
Actually, it's worse than that. The general popluation really doesn't care. Maybe in 20-30 years when all the 15 year olds are grown up, but unless you are like the grandpa that got sued because of his grandson downloading the incredibles nobody over 35, which is most of the voting public, cares about this. It's not just corporate money that drives the politicians, it's also citizens and their representative groups. Look at the changes Bush wanted to make to Social Security. Do you think there weren't corporate interests all for getting all those investment dollars? The voting retired community and their representatives, the AARP made damn sure that reform didn't happen, regardless of how much sense it made.
The *AA and other corporate entities are pushing this, but much of the reason it's passing is there's no organized citizen groups, that actually vote, that are opposing it.
Because they can immediately test the answers, lying won't save you as it could in open-ended intelligence gathering.
Sure, unless the first code I give you corrupts all the data.
That's the main problem. They probably can't make that one copy for commercial uses. Yes, ad revenue does count, so their use would be considered commercial.
Ahh, but that's where the grey area is. They aren't using it for 'ad revenue'. They aren't directly using the content in advertisements, they are using the content to provide service to their customers and arguably the authors. They just happen to advertise to those people that search on it. If you argue that it is directly ad revenue then you can also argue they shouldn't advertise while displaying search results from copyrighted web pages. Look at the copyright office's website, there is not any hard and fast definition of what 'fair use' is - it's for the courts to decide, if it gets that far.
Whoa, your statement was 'apps that don't have a Linux equivalent', not apps that work exactly like they do in Windows or the same apps that are available on Windows. Linux may need a 'Win32 compatibility layer', but I'm doubtful that will happen for two reasons. The first is a Win32 layer would almost certainly involve either copyright or patent infringement on Microsoft proprietary technology, which would result in lawsuits and do nothing to further Linux use. Second, Win32 is, at best, a broken architecture. Microsoft, with it's billions of dollars in development has not been able to make it both stable and backword compatible. XP is an improvement, but it's still a poor architecture. Adding that functionality to Linux would be a step backward and not one the Linux developers are likely to take.
Believing that a better product will automatically shift Microsoft on merit alone is incredibly naive
How so? Linux has already shifted Microsoft in the server market. Google has shifted Microsoft. Those are two 'products' that have succeeded on merit alone. In a true free market the product that offers the best performance for it's cost Should always win out eventually. The only time it doesn't is when existing market forces use uncompetitve tactics to stifle the superior product like RCA did with the FM radio.
Ahhh... I belive you are correct. So what we have here is another RIAA who is not actually representing the creators of the original material, but their own interests. They are concerned that they are going to be cut out as a middle man. Interesting theory.
In the United States, there's no law that ensures the right of a publisher or an author to make a sale. There is a law that protects the right to make copies.
I'm no copyright attorney, but from what I've always understood copyright law is both. Copyright law deals not only with the copying of material, but the distributing and production (sale) of said copies. I was always told, and again IANAL, that you could make a copy of a recording of music and GIVE it to another individual as long as you were not doing a mass distribution or collecting any money for the copy - that this fell in to fair use. Now this may not be true, or it may not be true now under the DMCA, but that was always my impression. Regardless, copyright law definitely protects the right of the author to sell his own work, at least the first time.
Copyright is not as simple as you seem to want to make it out to be. I looked at the US Copyright office's page on fair use and it is EXTREMELY vague.
In neither of these cases are there copies made. Google is making copies!!! If you fail to see that difference you really amazes me. It is the creation of those copies that are the copyright infringement.
Actually, I do see the difference. The the parent's example the publishers lost a sale because a consumer purchased the book in a secondary market. Google does NOT intend to redistribute content. They are making ONE copy of each book for their own used, not to resell. Now they are going to use that content to enhance their searches, but I don't know if that's against fair use.
The publishers are just pissed that Google's making money and they aren't, it has nothing to do with copyright or fair use. If it's such an issue, why don't they just encourage all of their authors to opt-out and setup their own search index to compete. That's not what they want at all, they just want a bigger piece of the pie than they are already going to get from purchases of searched books. Don't assign altruistic values to the publishing companies, they are just greedy like everyone else.
The LP presidential candidate in 2004 is an A1 Whack Job, and yes, I am basing that on personal conversations with him. His plan to end the war was somthing like, put all the GI's on a plane and bring them home. Who gives a fuck what happens next?
You may very well be correct. I didn't personally talk to him, but are you really going to tell me Kerry and Bush aren't "Whack Job"s too? I didn't vote for the LP candidate because I was afraid Kerry might actually get into office and the guy didn't appear to have any principals at all. At least Bush has principals even if they are a bit misguided. Doesn't even seem to me that putting all the GIs on a plane and bringing them home would be such a bad idea, that's how they got there in the first place, but you do have a point. If the withdrawl wasn't handled properly it could add signficant instability to the region.
Cutting spending? All federal agencies go away, immediately. What do you mean unemployement just went off the charts? What charts?
Again, you might be right, but is federal employment a valid way to combat unemployment statistics. An artifically supported economy isn't much better than one that's tanked.
I do agree with you that the LP platform has some ideas that aren't so great. I agree with them in principal, but some of their ideas are wacky. I think they would have a shot at actually being a force if they would drop that 10% of ideas that makes the rest of the country think they are a cult.
Since when did not having a physical presence in a place exempt you from from their laws?
Ummm... since always. Since when is committing an action outside of a jurisdiction break the law within the jurisdiction? That's why states can't collect sales tax from mail order companies located outside their state. That's why gambling sites operate from offshore servers. It's extremely difficult to enforce laws across state or national boundaries. If said company was contracting with a consulting or advertising firm from out of state would that firm be expected to pay income tax in New York state? If said company is purchasing wholesale goods from out of state is the out of state wholesale company expected to pay New York income tax? Of course not. Why should it be any different for a telecommuter. He may be drawing income form their economy, but with free trade between states that's not a punishable expense. In this case, since he is traveling there a significant portion of his time he should probably pay some tax, but when he's home in Tenessee and not gaining any benefit from any of the services the New York state government provides, why should he have to pay tax?
You do have one thing right, everyone does expect free beer, and the biggest group with their glasses reaching for the Keg are our government officials.
Most libertarians I've met focus on petty technicalities which are only important if you ignore the big picture of murder, mayhem, and general starvation and deprivation. Their worries generally fall into the category of counting angels on pin heads.
Funny, most Democrats I've met focus on petty technicalities too. Actually, most Republicans as well. What was the last presidential election focused on? The war in Iraq? The economy? Murder, Mayhem, and General Starvation and Deprivation? No...as I recall it was primarily about Gay marriage and if John Kerry deserved the medals he got in Vietnam. If those two issues aren't petty I don't know what is.
The Libertarian candidate, OTOH, was commited to ending the War, cutting spending, and balancing the budget. Those don't seem like petty items to me. If you research the Libertarian party some I think you will find that, at it's core, it is all about addressing the major issues and bypassing much of the pettiness that bloats our current government. You may be correct in the observation that many party members aren't focused on the major issues, but the parties focus is definitely on major issues.
Wrong. It's all the apps that don't have a Linux equivalent
Like what? There are thousands of OSS apps out there that cover nearly every need you could possibly have on Linux. There is arguably more software available for Linux than Windows. There are browsers (opera, firefox, konquerer), email clients (evolution), word processors (abiword, kword, writer), spreadsheets (gnumeric, calc, kspread), audio players (xmms) and video players (realplayer, quicktime, kplayer). Of the items I mentioned there are many more alternatives available. As far as specialized software there are many projects specifically dedicated to scientific, business, engineering, and of course computing. You name your need and I could probably find either find a project that would address it or a web based alternative that would fit your needs. The only apps that really fit your description are specific industry based apps that are designed for a particular market segment. For example, I don't know of any Estate Tax software products that run on Linux. The demand just isn't there yet.
If you think that there are an inadequate amount of applications available for Linux or insufficient realistic equivalents, you are sadly mistaken. Take a look at sourceforge.com or freshmeat.net and look at the thousands of OSS projects that are available. Finally, one more time for anyone that hasn't caught it yet, Linux is NOT an "OS that wants to compete effectively with Windows". Linux isn't a brand, Linux isn't a company, Linux is a free unix kernel designed to work on the X386 architecture that was originated by a guy from Finland. It's only specific agenda is to be the best possible operating system available. The sooner people get that into their heads the better off we will all be. Linux exists and has a market share because it's the better product, not because some company spent billions in sales, exclusive contracts, non-competitive behavior and TV commercials to promote it.
Well, I personally think the idea has merit. VB is great for bashing up a quick app to do, well, anything you want so long as it's not really complex and even then you can always do parts of things in Vis C and plug them into VB.
I never said the idea didn't have merit, I said it would never work as an OSS project. I think this is a great opportunity for a commercial product if a development company could work around the legal hurdles. Microsoft doesn't want to support VB anymore, but they probably don't want you supporting it either.
The real problem is there are some FOSS developers that don't really want to make it easier for users...
You key word there is 'some'. I've seen OSS developers on every end of the spectrum. Let's not forget, there are people lacking basic social skills in every industry. Sure, some developers are real a-holes, and some are super cool. There are members of the OSS community that have a very elitist view and don't want anyone else to join their little club and there are those that want Linux on every desktop. Thing is, you aren't going to change any developers mind by ranting about their irritating attitudes. The productive thing would be to start your own projects and be a nice developer, volunteer for a quality project (you mentioned Ubuntu) or if you don't have programming skills, donate.
Linux has grown primarily because of the community, we can't let a few bad eggs ruin the experience for everyone. If you believe in OSS software help provide a better experience for other new users.
Linux is the name of the kernel. I run Debian, and the specific distribution is Knoppix.
This is something that the author of this article, like many people in the business world, appearantly just doesn't get. It's amazing how foriegn this idea that Linux is the OS and not a brand name is.
From the article:
The brand Linux should stand for an entire operating system not just a kernel. There should be only one true Linux and perhaps many derivatives that should have their own brand and name.
Who exactly is going to make this determination? Who is going to establish the one true "Linux" and make everyone use it? It's not going to happen. Linux is not a 'brand name' and one tru Linux is not going to appear. The point that so many people seem to miss is there is no one driving force behind the GNU/Linux operating system. There is no CEO or corporate board that is trying to increase market share and make their stock price go up, at least not for the whole OS. For the most part, the only reasons that we want others to adopt a Linux system is because we belive it's better and don't want to have to work on a Windows architecture.
The author states that
Linux should stop copying Microsoft feature for feature and embrace the differences and features that advanced users love.
Bottom line is the developers on the features that copy Microsoft want those products in their Linux environment. If you are a developer and want to write an open source clone of application X for Linux, go for it.
Personally, having used Linux for the last 6-7 years I have seen constant improvements. When I was first introduced to Linux the installation was painful, hardware support was sketchy and apps were incomplete. Now I can do almost anything on my Linux desktop that I could do on a Windows. I don't worry that my new piece of hardware isn't going to work. I have better, free tools than most things you can buy for windows. Ultimately Linux will continue to get better while Microsoft will remain more of the same, even though Linux is not a brand name.
There is an opportunity for the open source community to create a VB compatible IDE that could compile applications for both to Windows and Linux.
TFA is OK up until this point. Is this guy off his rocker? No self respecting Open Source geek is going to implement anything for VB. He would get laughed off of slashdot, sourceforge and every OSS community on the net in seconds.
Umm... this is already happening. Linspire and Red Hat have both been working on this for years. Linux 'out of the box' usability is not the issue. There are two issues that are keeping Linux from overtaking Microsoft on the desktop.
- Microsoft's current operating system dominance. Like it or not people don't want to change. They don't like change, they don't like anything new.
- Microsoft's dominance in the web browser, email and office suite arena. Everyone uses these products, web developers have to test their pages in a sucky microsoft browser and most business people use outlook for all of their email, scheduling, etc...
Unless Microsoft releases Linux versions of IE and Outlook we will just have to wait for the gradual increase in market share to trickle down to the consumer level.That would explain the mass exodus of Apache users moving to IIS 6.
I definately smell a hint of doom on Microsoft, though...
I'm not sure if it's doom, but definitely desperation. Thing that I find funny is the company I work for has a product that's very similar to what Microsoft is doing (check it out at http://www.ike.com/ as far as workflow, Instant messaging, document management and process autmomation. We have struggled for the last two years attempting to get customers and can't find a marketplace for it. Microsoft has immense marketing muscle, so maybe it will work for them, but in our experience the market isn't ready for a complex product like they are preparing to launch. I suppose desparate times call for desparate measures...
We don't HAVE to buy drugs
Untrue. Many people rely on medications of one sort or another to keep them alive and narcotic addicts generally have a physical dependancy on the products.
Bottom line is it's all about FREEDOM. Most things you and I do every day we don't HAVE to do, does that make them any less important to our quality of life? Thing is about this article, it goes beyond the idea of piracy. If Hollywood controls what people can see is, that not a violation of our basic rights. Shouldn't the average citizen have just as much right to create and distribute content as Hollywood does? The whole purpose behind this proposition is to control the content by controlling the hardware. I don't want to give our government or any particular special interest group that kind of control over our society.
Damn! You beat me to it.
They need to learn the wonderful world of old technology will never allow for this to happen.
It's not just old technology. You think if they pass something like this there won't be tech all over the net that will convert/bypass/ignore the new laws. It will be a boon for Ebay and retailers outside the US. The government can't stop drug sales (illegal, perscription, performance enhancing) on the Internet, how are they going to stop illegal video cards. All rules like this do is create a black market and more criminals.
The thing is, with the loss of local diversity the world will end up with just a few giant news organizations, and there won't be anyone left to investigate the local news.
Here's a newsflash. This has already happened. Many newspapers in the US are owned by big companies that own multiple papers. Same thing with radio stations. I live in Colorado and even the two big Denver papers, The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News, are owned by the same company. I hope that the death of the newspaper will result in the creation of some local news websites that will increase the diversity of our news.