Well, considering that Microsoft has been denying many users the right to patch, yes.
The "study" simply theorizes that pirated versions of Windows are to blame but offers no proof of that whatsoever. In any event, you can still patch pirated versions of Windows XP, AFAIK. Though I fail to see why Microsoft should be forced to provide updates to people who pirate their software.
Well, your distribution should make it easy to update, and most fasttrack security updates, so either you or your distributor.
So let me see if I get this right. If I have a "Windoze" server I fail to patch and it gets p0wn'd then "M$" is to blame, correct? But if I'm running Linux and I have an OpenSSH exploit that I fail to patch, then... who is at fault? Me? Yours? The easter bunny?
I'm going to leave alone how you just called most M$ customers idiots.
Maybe that's because he didn't. Oh, wait. I see what you did there. That's very clever!!
Why would consider someone lazy because they are forced to do all the work it takes to keep up a Windoze box?
What is all this "work" you refer to? Simple post-imaging or out-of-the-box configuration? With mostly GUI tools or automated WMI scripts to disable services and change DCOM configuration settings and whatnot? A process that can be easily encapsulated in simple sets of scripts and executed again and again against new boxes? And heck, it's not like Server 2003 doesn't ship in lock down state as it is. Updates? Wow, super hard to schedule download, install and automatic reboot, if needed.
What you don't mention is that most distributions have reasonable defaults for Apache because they can.
Again, how is this different from Server 2003?
In the free software world people are free to share
Yeah, I've never seen a web site that provides free tested WMI scripts for servers. Never.
As with desktop users, the only consistent trait and problem people with problems have is choosing the wrong OS
Until now just about every instance of Linux or BSD out there that hasn't been rooted is run and maintained by people whose knowledge of computing is eons away from the average "Windoze" user. That's a simple fact. When your painful "M$ sux" evangelizing finally conquers the world and you inherit 400 million completely clueless people, we'll have a chat.
Are the people who run Slashdot really this dumb? Or are they simply FUDing for ad impressions? They don't really care what the submission says, who is sending it or who initiated it, as long as it's juicy? What time is it? It's 2:00 PM?
Notice I placed a question mark after each one of my phrases so I cannot be held responsible for them. You know, just asking questions, like Fox News and their "Hillary Clinton turns tricks?" headlines.
Speaking of that, there's a hilarious Jon Stewart skit on YouTube about placing question marks after inflammatory statements that surprisingly enough targets Faux News, mostly. Might want to take a look at that? Thanks?
Why not simply release your code to the public domain?
That would be the best option, except for two things. First and most important is liability. You have to have some sort of disclaimer that says "you can do whatever you want with this here code, as long as you assume full responsibility for doing so" or some quack is going to sue you for $1,000,000,000,000 bazillion dollars because he lost some data due to a bug in your code.
Second, ego. Certainly less important, but at least the license says "John Q. Public did this", if nothing else. Developers. We're big on he ego thing, lemme tell you dat =)
It doesn't really matter, does it? All your questions are rethorical, disingenuous and are predicated on the idea that intellectual property should not exist and in order to "co-operate" NVidia should release all of their source code.
I guess that and the "M$" drivel (were we talking about Microsoft?) pretty much define your position, so why should the OP even bother to "set you straight" at all?
Not really, because if I'm going to plop down $500 for a device, I don't expect that it will do more than just sit there and look uber kewl.
Since no one outside of Steve Jobs and the dude in the ad (which might very well be Steve Jobs) have ever used an iPhone, your claims of superb usability simply cannot be taken seriously. Just wait until it's released and some random non-Apple-fanboy techie can write a real review based on facts instead of optimistic expectations.
It's also well known that estimate is generous but only half of the expected value because there are twice as many computer users as there were in 2001.
You realize of course that no matter how one looks at your numbers, an "M$" operating system is still shipping on 95-97% of all personal computers sold?
I've said it before and I'll say it again - Vista is not selling.
You said it before, and you were wrong before as well. You and all the other badvista peons need to just wait a couple of quarters before you start blabbering off on how "M$" is really doomed for sure this year.
The person who posted this journal and somehow got kdawson to get it to the front page is the same person posting under the "Erris" account. twitter thinks it's cool to shill his own submissions, probably because moderators have wised up to his twitter account and just mod him down on sight.
I think/.'ers need to see these stories, but kdawson needs to get a better source.
MS Office's change tracking, SharePoint (TM), etc. may be fine for some things, and it may be improving. But to say that Word has an "excellent revision control feature" is a bit over the top. I would say it is adequate for many purposes, but comes nowhere near a true version control system's capabilities for true collaboration and version control.
My comment was made in the context of simple collaboration as enabled by Word's revision control system, which dear old twitter claims can be easily and painlessly substituted by a non-existent OO.org/Subversion "solution". Classic mindless zealot drivel. Unlike him, I have used Word/SharePoint in a collaboration environment, I know how OO works because I've actually bothered to use it, and I fancy myself a Subversion/Collabnet expert of sorts since I use it extensively. twitter just thinks it's all "M$ shit" and does his authoritative dismissal based on that and that alone.
I never claimed Word's tracking feature can surpass an actual source control solution, mainly because it wasn't designed for that. But since I have actually used it any number of times in a manuscript revision cycle mode with 10-15 people involved and I know it works quite well, I feel I'm perfectly entitled to say it's excellent, at least within the constraints it was designed with. This is not about large-scale distributed revision control, which Subversion handles quite well. It's about simple collaboration.
So, please don't try to twist what I wrote, OK? When I lose my mind due to pathological hatred of a company and start blabbing on about how something is "shit" when I've obviously never used it, then you can give me your kettle-pot argument.
Oh, I wasn't referring to your pathological hatred of Microsoft products, just the fact that you can't waffle your "arguments" without someone calling you out on them. Can't claim the sky is blue one day and red the next one just because it's convenient, can we?
As a PVR it has poor uptime and should not be connected to the internet.
Really. Do you own one?
Just the same, the author should know that XP is more stable than Vista and there's more software and hardware available for XP to make a PVR than there is for Vista.
More software and hardware... As in the computer and Media Center? Do you even read what you write?
The future is free.
As long as the future does not include people like you, it can be free or non free as far as I'm concerned.
he would have known to use XP and third party applications for his media center.
I find this recommendation very intriguing twitter, considering posts of yours like this one. Quote:
Windows Media Center is meant to be a TiVo clone.... the proper mode of operation is to simply avoid rebooting by leaving it always-up.
Next thing you will do is say that it should be connected to the internet!
Windoze is lucky to get more than a day of uptime, especially when you run media applications on it. The only way to run a windoze computer is to turn it off at night so it won't crash and burn as much durring the day and firewall the hell out if it.
You can see where it's going. Using Linux to load an "up" image into RAM and turn control over to it is a great idea. That way, you can be sure the stupid thing booted right when you wake up and go to work. The approach can be used for any situation you need windoze drivers to make your hardware work. Microsoft will, of course, do everything they can to prevent this and anyone dumb enought to still be trying to make things work with them will get burnt.
At some point I suppose you decided that it was pointless to spend all your time spewing FUD about "Windoze XP" and you've now decided to switch gears to FUDing Vista instead.
Do you really expect people to trust you? That brusque tone of authority means absolutely nothing other than to show everyone on/. that you're scared to death of Vista for some reason.
I don't think it's "forbidden" to have sockpuppets, but I do think it's really bad form to shill one's own posts, regardless of twitter's claims that anyone who disagrees with him is a "M$ PR flak".
As usual twitter has gone from making a point to just saying "M$ windoze is teh sux". My reply to him was to his "argument" that people who rely on Word's excellent revision control feature would just as happy with Subversion and OpenOffice, which is completely ridiculous.
I have no problem with people not using Word to create scientific papers. It's not suited for that. Right tool for the job and all that.
You can't if it was written for Win 3.1 and is 16-bit and you are running Vista 64 bit.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.
Linux/GNU system was born.
That's true, but it's irrelevant as well, I think. Were it not for corporations Linux would still be the niche hobbyist OS it was for the first ten years of its existence. And it probably would have never reached the level of quality it has today.
It also forces you to use Windoze, which itself sucks life.
Yes, of course.
For collaboration, subversion works great. If it has not already been worked into Open Office and others
That sounds suspiciously like the "no Photoshop? no problem, use The GIMP!!" argument. I know any number of people in the publishing industry that would kill you if you tried to take away Word and its revision/collaboration features from them, not to mention SharePoint. Ever use Office 2003 with SharePoint twitter? Well, I guess it doesn't really matter. It's all "M$ shit" to you.
Subversion? Please. Are you also going to require they learn Perl as well? People just want to get their jobs done with the best tools available. In this case, that would be Microsoft Word, whether that causes your blood sugar to go off the scales or not.
Sometimes I really can't tell if you're being elitist or you're just permanently and completely blinded by your insane hatred of Microsoft. I bet even the most die-hard free advocate is capable of admitting there are niches and segments where free software simply has not reached an acceptable level of functionality. You are just "evangelizing" for the sake of it. And looking all the more ridiculous for it.
But MS developers are largely vertical developers. Their software scratches an itch and doesn't interact with anything else. It's disposable software
Yes, you sure have the pulse of the commercial software market pat down. That's what we call "the SourceForge blizzard": OMFG look at how much softwares there are for gnu/linux!!one!!1!.
And of course it's all disposable, I cannot possibly be using software written in 1995 on my Vista box. Unpossible!
Like I said earlier, MS wants to be the sole provider
Yes, that's why Microsoft ships Windows with a usable word processor, professional text editor, vector editor, Photoshop clone, spreadsheet, database, IDE. Oh, and a media player, except if you live in Europe where you have to use RealPlayer.
Comparatively, almost everything in Linux was written by a different person or organization.
Everything in Unix, you mean. Which saw the light of day thanks to corporations and universities.
Neither MS nor its developer community have made much contribution to computing in general.
Make the reductio ad absurdum case that Microsoft has never created or done anything of value == Karma!
Well, now that you've told us what's wrong with these companies, maybe you can tell us what's not wrong with BestBuy, Hewlett-Packard, IBM/Lenovo, Gateway, Sony, LG, Ericsson and all the others that are in the same segments as these poor victims of evil "M$"?
While you're at it, you could explain to us why Dell posted better than expected profits while doing what you consider to be their problem, if indeed you consider six months of poor post-RTM Vista sales to be able to have enough negative impact on a company this size for them to cut 8,000 jobs on short notice. Surely you don't expect to have it both ways, right?
Oh, and breakdown of PC sales profits/losses vs. all other products sold by CompUSA and Circuit City would also be nice. I'm sure you have proof that they're being "harmed by the collapse of non free", right? While you're doing that, something similar for BestBuy would also be nice
(some bullshit exaggeration and FUD, etc) Windoze and Office are pigs. They always were and they always will be.
I don't know at what "Fortune 500" you worked, but I see two possibilities here. 1) Your "Fortune 500" friends that forced you to boot daily and all that jazz were complete and utter retarded morons; or 2) You are just lying. Whichever it is, rest assured that your imagined hell on earth is nowhere near the reality I've been accustomed since I started working in this industry many years ago.
As for Amarok working "just fine" on your 486DX2, more power to you. Maybe one day I'll be a Linux expert and be able to tweak my box so it doesn't suck so much, but in the meantime I'll stick to what I know and enjoy. I don't really use Linux enough to care much about whether or not some bloated MP3 player works well on it or not.
Actually, let me reiterate that - Office is fucking lighting fast on most normal business hardware. The Office 2003 apps are actually faster to load than the 2000 ones were, and I can't tell the difference between 2003 and 2007 though I've noticed Word 2007 is actually slightly faster at loading larger documents, probably because it's doing more in the background. I haven't played much with the others.
With the possible exception of Outlook, I've never seen an Office app take more than 2-3 seconds to load. We're not talking prefetch or cache or the Office accelerator, which I always disable anyway. Go ahead and prove me wrong.
Anyone with half a brain that has ever used Office can tell you all this - unlike you I don't feel the need to make shit up about things I've never used. Your FUD doesn't actually change reality, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
That Amarok is slow might be irrelevant given the functionality it provides (I use XMMS mostly anyway), much like Firefox vs IE. But that doesn't mean it's not slow or that it doesn't leak memory for some reason.
Other than having to install xine to have it play MP3s, on my Ubuntu box Amarok is in pristine post-Synaptic install state. I cannot believe I did anything to make it slow, so I must conclude that it needs a beefier box to work well. That's OK, I don't have a problem with that at all. It just invalidates your bullshit fanboy claim that it works fantabulously on a 1GHz processor. Maybe you should stop using that "let me tell you how it is" tone in your posts, and no one would feel the need to constantly call you out on them.
ROFL, that's certainly not true. Amarok positively blows on my 1.0GHz PIII (Ubuntu). And for some reason it consumes more and more memory over time, never releasing it until closed. There might be some sort of tweak that can be done (maybe the real-time Wikipedia lookups or something) but in the default config it's not very usable.
On a 3.4MHz P4 it's acceptable, but I still see the memory thing.
Slashdot Mirror
The "study" simply theorizes that pirated versions of Windows are to blame but offers no proof of that whatsoever. In any event, you can still patch pirated versions of Windows XP, AFAIK. Though I fail to see why Microsoft should be forced to provide updates to people who pirate their software.
As opposed to Windows Update, for example?
Maybe that's because he didn't. Oh, wait. I see what you did there. That's very clever!!
What is all this "work" you refer to? Simple post-imaging or out-of-the-box configuration? With mostly GUI tools or automated WMI scripts to disable services and change DCOM configuration settings and whatnot? A process that can be easily encapsulated in simple sets of scripts and executed again and again against new boxes? And heck, it's not like Server 2003 doesn't ship in lock down state as it is. Updates? Wow, super hard to schedule download, install and automatic reboot, if needed.
Again, how is this different from Server 2003?
Yeah, I've never seen a web site that provides free tested WMI scripts for servers. Never.
Until now just about every instance of Linux or BSD out there that hasn't been rooted is run and maintained by people whose knowledge of computing is eons away from the average "Windoze" user. That's a simple fact. When your painful "M$ sux" evangelizing finally conquers the world and you inherit 400 million completely clueless people, we'll have a chat.
Notice I placed a question mark after each one of my phrases so I cannot be held responsible for them. You know, just asking questions, like Fox News and their "Hillary Clinton turns tricks?" headlines.
Speaking of that, there's a hilarious Jon Stewart skit on YouTube about placing question marks after inflammatory statements that surprisingly enough targets Faux News, mostly. Might want to take a look at that? Thanks?
That would be the best option, except for two things. First and most important is liability. You have to have some sort of disclaimer that says "you can do whatever you want with this here code, as long as you assume full responsibility for doing so" or some quack is going to sue you for $1,000,000,000,000 bazillion dollars because he lost some data due to a bug in your code.
Second, ego. Certainly less important, but at least the license says "John Q. Public did this", if nothing else. Developers. We're big on he ego thing, lemme tell you dat =)
The same sound you make when shilling your own posts, I suppose.
I guess that and the "M$" drivel (were we talking about Microsoft?) pretty much define your position, so why should the OP even bother to "set you straight" at all?
Since no one outside of Steve Jobs and the dude in the ad (which might very well be Steve Jobs) have ever used an iPhone, your claims of superb usability simply cannot be taken seriously. Just wait until it's released and some random non-Apple-fanboy techie can write a real review based on facts instead of optimistic expectations.
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/why/technology/g sm-gprs.jsp
You're welcome.
Unfortunately your "M$" reference is currently modded -1, Troll.
You realize of course that no matter how one looks at your numbers, an "M$" operating system is still shipping on 95-97% of all personal computers sold?
You said it before, and you were wrong before as well. You and all the other badvista peons need to just wait a couple of quarters before you start blabbering off on how "M$" is really doomed for sure this year.
I think /.'ers need to see these stories, but kdawson needs to get a better source.
My comment was made in the context of simple collaboration as enabled by Word's revision control system, which dear old twitter claims can be easily and painlessly substituted by a non-existent OO.org/Subversion "solution". Classic mindless zealot drivel. Unlike him, I have used Word/SharePoint in a collaboration environment, I know how OO works because I've actually bothered to use it, and I fancy myself a Subversion/Collabnet expert of sorts since I use it extensively. twitter just thinks it's all "M$ shit" and does his authoritative dismissal based on that and that alone.
I never claimed Word's tracking feature can surpass an actual source control solution, mainly because it wasn't designed for that. But since I have actually used it any number of times in a manuscript revision cycle mode with 10-15 people involved and I know it works quite well, I feel I'm perfectly entitled to say it's excellent, at least within the constraints it was designed with. This is not about large-scale distributed revision control, which Subversion handles quite well. It's about simple collaboration.
So, please don't try to twist what I wrote, OK? When I lose my mind due to pathological hatred of a company and start blabbing on about how something is "shit" when I've obviously never used it, then you can give me your kettle-pot argument.
Oh, I wasn't referring to your pathological hatred of Microsoft products, just the fact that you can't waffle your "arguments" without someone calling you out on them. Can't claim the sky is blue one day and red the next one just because it's convenient, can we?
Really. Do you own one?
More software and hardware... As in the computer and Media Center? Do you even read what you write?
As long as the future does not include people like you, it can be free or non free as far as I'm concerned.
You made a post to that story twitter. Why not link to that instead? Perhaps the -1, Troll moderation you got on it is inconvenient?
I'm still waiting for a reply on that one, BTW.
I find this recommendation very intriguing twitter, considering posts of yours like this one. Quote:
At some point I suppose you decided that it was pointless to spend all your time spewing FUD about "Windoze XP" and you've now decided to switch gears to FUDing Vista instead.
Do you really expect people to trust you? That brusque tone of authority means absolutely nothing other than to show everyone on /. that you're scared to death of Vista for some reason.
I don't think it's "forbidden" to have sockpuppets, but I do think it's really bad form to shill one's own posts, regardless of twitter's claims that anyone who disagrees with him is a "M$ PR flak".
I have no problem with people not using Word to create scientific papers. It's not suited for that. Right tool for the job and all that.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.
That's true, but it's irrelevant as well, I think. Were it not for corporations Linux would still be the niche hobbyist OS it was for the first ten years of its existence. And it probably would have never reached the level of quality it has today.
Yes, of course.
That sounds suspiciously like the "no Photoshop? no problem, use The GIMP!!" argument. I know any number of people in the publishing industry that would kill you if you tried to take away Word and its revision/collaboration features from them, not to mention SharePoint. Ever use Office 2003 with SharePoint twitter? Well, I guess it doesn't really matter. It's all "M$ shit" to you.
Subversion? Please. Are you also going to require they learn Perl as well? People just want to get their jobs done with the best tools available. In this case, that would be Microsoft Word, whether that causes your blood sugar to go off the scales or not.
Sometimes I really can't tell if you're being elitist or you're just permanently and completely blinded by your insane hatred of Microsoft. I bet even the most die-hard free advocate is capable of admitting there are niches and segments where free software simply has not reached an acceptable level of functionality. You are just "evangelizing" for the sake of it. And looking all the more ridiculous for it.
Yes, you sure have the pulse of the commercial software market pat down. That's what we call "the SourceForge blizzard": OMFG look at how much softwares there are for gnu/linux!!one!!1!.
And of course it's all disposable, I cannot possibly be using software written in 1995 on my Vista box. Unpossible!
Yes, that's why Microsoft ships Windows with a usable word processor, professional text editor, vector editor, Photoshop clone, spreadsheet, database, IDE. Oh, and a media player, except if you live in Europe where you have to use RealPlayer.
Everything in Unix, you mean. Which saw the light of day thanks to corporations and universities.
Make the reductio ad absurdum case that Microsoft has never created or done anything of value == Karma!
While you're at it, you could explain to us why Dell posted better than expected profits while doing what you consider to be their problem, if indeed you consider six months of poor post-RTM Vista sales to be able to have enough negative impact on a company this size for them to cut 8,000 jobs on short notice. Surely you don't expect to have it both ways, right?
Oh, and breakdown of PC sales profits/losses vs. all other products sold by CompUSA and Circuit City would also be nice. I'm sure you have proof that they're being "harmed by the collapse of non free", right? While you're doing that, something similar for BestBuy would also be nice
I don't know at what "Fortune 500" you worked, but I see two possibilities here. 1) Your "Fortune 500" friends that forced you to boot daily and all that jazz were complete and utter retarded morons; or 2) You are just lying. Whichever it is, rest assured that your imagined hell on earth is nowhere near the reality I've been accustomed since I started working in this industry many years ago.
As for Amarok working "just fine" on your 486DX2, more power to you. Maybe one day I'll be a Linux expert and be able to tweak my box so it doesn't suck so much, but in the meantime I'll stick to what I know and enjoy. I don't really use Linux enough to care much about whether or not some bloated MP3 player works well on it or not.
With the possible exception of Outlook, I've never seen an Office app take more than 2-3 seconds to load. We're not talking prefetch or cache or the Office accelerator, which I always disable anyway. Go ahead and prove me wrong.
Anyone with half a brain that has ever used Office can tell you all this - unlike you I don't feel the need to make shit up about things I've never used. Your FUD doesn't actually change reality, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
That Amarok is slow might be irrelevant given the functionality it provides (I use XMMS mostly anyway), much like Firefox vs IE. But that doesn't mean it's not slow or that it doesn't leak memory for some reason.
Other than having to install xine to have it play MP3s, on my Ubuntu box Amarok is in pristine post-Synaptic install state. I cannot believe I did anything to make it slow, so I must conclude that it needs a beefier box to work well. That's OK, I don't have a problem with that at all. It just invalidates your bullshit fanboy claim that it works fantabulously on a 1GHz processor. Maybe you should stop using that "let me tell you how it is" tone in your posts, and no one would feel the need to constantly call you out on them.
I should qualify that with "any PC hardware running any version of Windows". Not a big Mac user, really =)
On a 3.4MHz P4 it's acceptable, but I still see the memory thing.