When I look back, I remember ICQ being the king of IM. Nowadays, I barely know anyone who still uses it. MSN Messenger took most of the users from them. Now, how did they do that? ICQ had an incredibly large audience, but when masses shifted, lot of other (even geek) people did too. They didn't drive their users away, it was only that another service proved more useful... because it had more people to talk to, and that was because it was more appealing to less tech-savvy audiences...
So, what can we learn from that? For me, that more users, even when they don't use an "official" client, will eventually mean a wider adoption, thus more people will finish up using the official client anyway, even if there are also more people who don't.
Perhaps the mailbox space race will eventually reflect itself in the big competitors IM services... I wouldn't be surprised if google's next big thing is a IM app. Did we need another free email service? Probably not. But people shift, and people seem to be liking gmail. What kind of mess would we get if we get yet another IM? Why can't we all just get along?
It is sad that IM isn't seen as a series of interconnected networks (like email...):(
I don't think it the "Live CD" kind of evaluation... I remember installing 6.4 from it. No limitations whatsoever. Even in those days, the live-type of evaluations hadn't come around yet. The first live cd evaluation I remember is 7.something, which I had to install from FTP for the first time.
As a side note, in that time, SuSE sent us a bunch of 6.4 evaluation CDs themselves for our Linux User Group, and I remember them being the same as the one you could download off the internet, with no restrictions.
Trying to put some distinction between one distro and another is hard. I guess SuSE's strongest points are/were their administration and configuration tools. YaST is pretty amazing. There are certain downsides to it, but in overall it is very useful and intuitive.
I remember while I started liking SuSE in the first place. It was because other distro's tools were not at the same level by far (it has been a long time since I've stopped trying every distro I could get my hands on). Back when I started using it (1998 I guess), it was impressively ahead of the competition in this regard. I couldn't say how it holds up today if we were to compare current distros though.
Other than that, I just get a very professional / polished feeling about it, unlike some other distros I've used over time. This is very subjective, but I guess more than 1 person can say the same.
Correcting myself a little, this was back in April 2000. It was labeled as an "Evaluation version", which would be roughly similar to their personal version these days.
BTW, YaST was the main reason this distro had been attacked by free software purists (because of it being propietary), and it was very unclear as to whether SuSE could be legally copied and distributed because of it. I hope that their new ISO distribution scheme helps them become a popular and mainstream distro. I really like what novell is doing towards linux, and SuSE has been my favorite distro for years.
This is plainly false. This is not the first time SuSE distributes their Linux Distro CD image.
I remember back in 1997 or so, SuSE used to distribute their ISO's. That was even before their split their product versions in personal and professional. Last version I kind of remember they did that was 6.4.
Well, we're talking about spyware here. The only thing that comes close to "spying" what you are doing in your car are the infamous black boxes, which record events for the last few seconds. Other than that, there are no constant malicious people wanting to hijack your car (well, maybe there are...), but a computer gets far more attempts from software trying to collect information about the user.
Car security is like securing a lot of other things. Lock up your car, put an alarm and pray that nothing bad happens. Thieves distinguish between nice and bad cars. Spyware programmers don't, for them, every computer is a potential target. You can certainly notice when something bad happens to your car, but it's not so easy in a computer.
In these times, it is sad to see that it should be now a standard part of user education to teach them how to detect malicious attemps to do something bad in their computer. Virus scanners, spyware removal tools, spam, scams, who knows what will be next?:(
Consider Mexico. We're as close to the US as anyone can be. We are "officially" Region 4, but you can find Multi-region (at least region 1/4) virtually anywhere (including big retail stores). You can also buy Region 1 DVDs in Record and video stores, including the latest US DVD Releases.
So, that brings us to compare the US releases with the Mexico Theatrical releases. Not all movies get to movie theaters here before they get releases in DVD in the US, so it is not rare to find Movies on sale on DVD when they are still on theaters (altough most major movie releases are pretty much in sync with the US to prevent this kind of thing, I suppose). Not that lots of people would buy the DVDs all the time, but it certainly can hurt the movie theaters.
Rentals here are on pair with Mexico DVD releases, which can differ months with the US release. So why wait when you can find the movies around (legally) way before they are officially released?
On the other hand, as a consumer, I've felt frequently cheated, not only on DVDs, but in other media. Somehow companies manage to make crappy stuff to sell in Mexico (lower quality, missing features, and so on), so I tend to prefer the US ones. This problem is not only about the region codes, it is also about the content of the region release and the consumer deciding what does he want to get, not the movie company.
Slashdot Mirror
When I look back, I remember ICQ being the king of IM. Nowadays, I barely know anyone who still uses it. MSN Messenger took most of the users from them. Now, how did they do that? ICQ had an incredibly large audience, but when masses shifted, lot of other (even geek) people did too. They didn't drive their users away, it was only that another service proved more useful... because it had more people to talk to, and that was because it was more appealing to less tech-savvy audiences...
So, what can we learn from that? For me, that more users, even when they don't use an "official" client, will eventually mean a wider adoption, thus more people will finish up using the official client anyway, even if there are also more people who don't.
Perhaps the mailbox space race will eventually reflect itself in the big competitors IM services... I wouldn't be surprised if google's next big thing is a IM app. Did we need another free email service? Probably not. But people shift, and people seem to be liking gmail. What kind of mess would we get if we get yet another IM? Why can't we all just get along?
It is sad that IM isn't seen as a series of interconnected networks (like email...) :(
I don't think it the "Live CD" kind of evaluation... I remember installing 6.4 from it. No limitations whatsoever. Even in those days, the live-type of evaluations hadn't come around yet. The first live cd evaluation I remember is 7.something, which I had to install from FTP for the first time.
As a side note, in that time, SuSE sent us a bunch of 6.4 evaluation CDs themselves for our Linux User Group, and I remember them being the same as the one you could download off the internet, with no restrictions.
Who knows, maybe my memory is failing me...
Trying to put some distinction between one distro and another is hard. I guess SuSE's strongest points are/were their administration and configuration tools. YaST is pretty amazing. There are certain downsides to it, but in overall it is very useful and intuitive.
I remember while I started liking SuSE in the first place. It was because other distro's tools were not at the same level by far (it has been a long time since I've stopped trying every distro I could get my hands on). Back when I started using it (1998 I guess), it was impressively ahead of the competition in this regard. I couldn't say how it holds up today if we were to compare current distros though.
Other than that, I just get a very professional / polished feeling about it, unlike some other distros I've used over time. This is very subjective, but I guess more than 1 person can say the same.
I found this old story here on slashdot:
SuSE 6.4 ISO Now available
Correcting myself a little, this was back in April 2000. It was labeled as an "Evaluation version", which would be roughly similar to their personal version these days.
BTW, YaST was the main reason this distro had been attacked by free software purists (because of it being propietary), and it was very unclear as to whether SuSE could be legally copied and distributed because of it. I hope that their new ISO distribution scheme helps them become a popular and mainstream distro. I really like what novell is doing towards linux, and SuSE has been my favorite distro for years.
This is plainly false. This is not the first time SuSE distributes their Linux Distro CD image. I remember back in 1997 or so, SuSE used to distribute their ISO's. That was even before their split their product versions in personal and professional. Last version I kind of remember they did that was 6.4.
Well, we're talking about spyware here. The only thing that comes close to "spying" what you are doing in your car are the infamous black boxes, which record events for the last few seconds. Other than that, there are no constant malicious people wanting to hijack your car (well, maybe there are...), but a computer gets far more attempts from software trying to collect information about the user. Car security is like securing a lot of other things. Lock up your car, put an alarm and pray that nothing bad happens. Thieves distinguish between nice and bad cars. Spyware programmers don't, for them, every computer is a potential target. You can certainly notice when something bad happens to your car, but it's not so easy in a computer. In these times, it is sad to see that it should be now a standard part of user education to teach them how to detect malicious attemps to do something bad in their computer. Virus scanners, spyware removal tools, spam, scams, who knows what will be next? :(
Consider Mexico. We're as close to the US as anyone can be. We are "officially" Region 4, but you can find Multi-region (at least region 1/4) virtually anywhere (including big retail stores). You can also buy Region 1 DVDs in Record and video stores, including the latest US DVD Releases.
So, that brings us to compare the US releases with the Mexico Theatrical releases. Not all movies get to movie theaters here before they get releases in DVD in the US, so it is not rare to find Movies on sale on DVD when they are still on theaters (altough most major movie releases are pretty much in sync with the US to prevent this kind of thing, I suppose). Not that lots of people would buy the DVDs all the time, but it certainly can hurt the movie theaters.
Rentals here are on pair with Mexico DVD releases, which can differ months with the US release. So why wait when you can find the movies around (legally) way before they are officially released?
On the other hand, as a consumer, I've felt frequently cheated, not only on DVDs, but in other media. Somehow companies manage to make crappy stuff to sell in Mexico (lower quality, missing features, and so on), so I tend to prefer the US ones. This problem is not only about the region codes, it is also about the content of the region release and the consumer deciding what does he want to get, not the movie company.