I'm sorry, I guess I'm missing your point here. Are you saying the US military kills more civilians than the terrorists? Or are you saying that the US military specifically targets civilians when it carries out operations?
The deaths in Baghdad you seem so concerned about are not "random", they are carefully targeted attacks explicitly carried out by terrorists to either escalate the sectarian divide or demoralize US forces. There's nothing "random" about strapping 10lb of high explosive and ball bearings around your torso and detonating them in the middle of a crowded market full of civilians.
twitter, I hope you retain enough dignity to reply to otaku42 and acknowledge that you are wrong as usual, because you allowed your religious zeal to get in the way of reality and facts.
You are not only not "intimately familiar" with "the code", you obviously have no idea at all how this driver works, and probably how the entire Linux driver model works, either.
Yeah, Real, WMV, ASF, AVI, OGG, MPEG, MOV, H.264, Theora, etc. Universal standards are great, because there's so many of them to choose from! Oh wait...
I was going to actually reply to your other message to point out that you obviously you missed the point of my comment about the misspelling. But I just realized who you are. So with that in mind, why don't you do us both a really big favor, put me in your "foes" list and then fuck off and die. OK? Awesome.
When the input box/message box loop of death "DDoS" thing that traps you in a page and forces you to manually kill the process was brought up to Mozila they said it wasn't a problem. Why is a similar DDoS/crash situation an issue for a Microsoft product again? In the past IE crashes have also been tagged as vulnerabilities even though they involved no further penetration into the target box or escalation of privileges.
The fact is, you can probably DDoS just about anything more complex than a text editor.
Javascript allows for less data to be sent and for the code to do the work of constructing an elaborate webpage
The GP is right though. It's literally the case that a "web designer" will create an impressively streamlined page with a careful mix of validating markup and external stylesheets... only to have you download a megabyte+ of JavaScript.
You know, I think that many of these people have forgotten what it's like to use dialup, and that's why their pages work "just fine". I have nothing against "AJAX" in particular - I think it's a technology that has its place like everything else. But seriously, it's getting out of hand.
You know, using a word like asymptotic to show off and then pooching the spelling looks really bad.
The trend I've noticed is less control, less flexibility, fewer 3rd party vendors (aka choice) and more annoyance and auto-wrong features. Security and stability have remained poor and have trended down.
You've "noticed" this trend even though by your own admission you don't even use Vista. That's impressive. And security has "trended down"? Wow, that's news for me.
They have pulled out the stops in their breakage of XP though.
So let me see if I get this right. Your "friend" didn't think of using an image to update these laptops*. So this is Microsoft's fault somewhow. And in your mind this is proof that Microsoft is "breaking" Windows XP. Breaking XP. Correct?
This time the "new one" is a computer with about 4 times the hardware.
That's interesting - I already upgraded two three year old computers from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium and they work just fine.
BadVista's got the scoop on this one
Oh, "BadVista". I'm sure they have the "scoop" for sure.
* Updating a post-SP2 XP install is a pain, no doubt about it. That's why you use an image (if you're doing more than 10 boxes, please) or use a slipstreamed install, which is pretty simple to do.
you mistakenly believe that your right to make a profit should have more power and validity than my right to be free
Oooh, can I be combative and cocky as well? Let me say this: your "freedom" stops precisely at the point where my right to make a profit starts. And since your hero Stallman has repeatedly claimed I'm a spawn of Satan (among other things) because I don't give him my code, we're likely to have a problem, no?
On the other hand, if you're whining about patents (I suppose that's the center of your argument), then keep in mind Microsoft has very rarely used patents offensively and have been victimized by them more often than not. Why don't you look behind you at what IBM et.al. are doing with their patents? I'm sure you'll be amused to no end.
Other than that, I have no software patents and I could care less about your crusade for "freedom". More power to you. So I'd appreciate it if you got off your morality horse and stop insulting my intelligence because I don't see the light with the same clarity as you obviously do.
The first part is a plausible theory. The "push Windows out of the desktop market" will very probably require a complete redefinition of what the "desktop" is, and Microsoft dropping the ball on that like they initially did in the Win95 timeframe and the Internet. I suppose that's a possibility as well, but we're talking quite a few years between now and then, I think.
Well, I'm sure we'll eventually get the memo on how it turns out =)
I see Microsoft competing with other companies and other companies competing with Microsoft, all of them using tactics akin to your concept of "FUD" as they've done since the IT industry was invented. You have cheapened the meaning of the term "FUD" to the point it is attached to anything, including constructive criticism (remember ESR saying that CUPS sucks? That was FUD!). So really, cry me a river and all that.
You know, Microsoft is not the only commercial software company in the world, and you are not the center of the world. Try to keep that in mind. It helps.
Microsoft hates
Microsoft "hates" nothing. Please stop attaching emotions to something that is a practical, commercial issue.
You can live in your dark and damp world and ignore these truths if you want.
ROFL! I don't know if your "world" is dark and damp, but it sure isn't close to the reality I live in.
but it doen't mean its right, and it most certainly doesn't mean that it can't be changed
You are correct there, of course.
And it has everything to do with software and freedom
You are (mostly) incorrect there, of course. That's an emotional response to a legal problem. That's also counterproductive.
Do you even understand why copyright was originally introduced?
Despite what you might think, I understand it well enough to know that you (and Stallman) are only partially correct in your approach. But that's your problem, not mine.
Oh, I see. I didn't realize he was talking about CD sales.
Vista for the average user dosn't really offer any major improvements over XP
No, of course not. It's 2001 all over again, Microsoft is going down, XP is no better than 2000, etc. And before that, 2000 is no better than 98, nobody will use it, requires too much hardware, etc. Ad nauseaum.
Yes well, we've already established that, haven't we?
Big corporate entities like Microsoft don't want you to use FSF software
Please don't be ridiculous. Microsoft doesn't want me to use anything other than Microsoft software, period. They'd rather I run SQL Server instead of Oracle and Windows instead of OS X. The same way Toyota would rather I drive a Camry than a Ford Mustang. Why do you people insist on attaching such deep significance to simple commercial and competitive realities? To further your "oh we're so good and they're so evil" agenda?
why does corporpate interest have so much influence over government decisions
Because that's - for better or for worse - the way the system works. It has nothing particular to do with software or Microsoft or "freedom" or anything else. I have no idea how this is relevant here. And the FSF & friends also do their share of lobbying, in case you've missed that.
but no one else is going to want them and their sales
Repeating that constantly is not going to warp reality, you know. And besides, you conveniently ignored his point, which is that your non sequitur about how TEH BADD Vista is was offtopic and irrelevant. You don't have a reading comprehension, so you're obviously waffling on purpose.
Their sales have been falling by 20% a year for years.
ROFL! Of course they've fallen as the markets saturate, but "20%"? Per year? Please. What's the point of all this FUD anyway? Who do you think you're convincing?
To answer your point, my relationship with Microsoft (and IBM and CA and Sybase and Oracle and Ford and Mazda) are purely commercial. If their products do what I purchased and/or licensed them for, then fine. Otherwise It's unlikely that I'll be using them much. Aside from organizing foreign wars of genocide, I really could care less about the morality of a corporation, mostly because I don't expect a corporation to be a moral entity at all.
That the FSF (or KDE or GNOME or whatever) is likely to do X and Y for "love" and not money simply does not enter into the equation. If their products (sold or given away) do what I need them to do, then I'll use them. Otherwise I won't.
It's code. It runs on my computer. Does it do the job? That's all. No different than my refrigerator.
The agenda of people like Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens and "twitter" here is to force me to acknowledge that dogma trumps functionality. That's fine, but it's not a POV I subscribe to. If Stallman wants to make copyright law go away, that's fine too. I agree it's broken in many ways, but then I don't think a software license like the GPL is the Ultimate Answer. That's just my opinion of course. You are entitled to yours.
Finally, my response to "twitter" was geared to making sure everyone realizes that he is exactly the thing he claims doesn't exist - a "partisan" that exhibits the worst possible type of "join us or die" extremist behavior which does a tremendous disservice to the very ideals he's supposed to be "evangelizing" 24/7 to anything that moves and has two ears. He (and people like him) has an agenda and he pushes it with the same insane zeal as Microsoft, to the point of driving attention away from things that really matters. FUD is a two way street.
The fact that you claim the moral high ground does not mean you are some sort of saintly martir. Everyone has an agenda. If you are one of these free software "advocates" I hope you're the exception rather than therule.
The company they represents thinks of developers as pawns to fuck over
Nice language. This seems to be your favorite soundbyte of the moment. Something some mid-level manager at a company with 60,000 employees said years ago. Talk about hanging on for dear life.
I was wondering though - what do you think about Stallman claiming anyone who does not subscribe to his beliefs is "immoral" and should be doing something else? Is that just his opinion, or should I generalize that to anyone who claims they're "advocating"? After all, if you can generalize your "pawns to fuck over" FUD, I don't see why Stallman's position should not apply to the community as well. Which means people would have a genuine right to be critical of him and by extension worried about the direction the GPL is taking.
You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to make a case for Microsoft or Vista here. I'm not claiming the poll is "partisan", only that it is meaningless. 71% of Americans think god exists, but that doesn't mean there is a god, does it? Your wet dreams might very well come true and Vista may indeed be a flop. Maybe that will even be a good thing, though I tend to make no personal value judgement either way.
The problem is that ignoring simple market inertia makes for a very narrow and naive point of view, independently of any techno-religious considerations or the popular "consensus" that everyone "hates" Microsoft or that Vista is "unusable". Why don't you sit around and wait maybe a few years to see if your doom and gloom comes true instead of trying to be clever and predicting the end of times on teh interwebs with trite phrases like "enjoy the fall".
When Slashdot reports anything about outsourcing the consensus around here seems to be that it's bad and evil. Especially when it involves someone like Microsoft, like when Gates says more visas are needed.
But when it's IBM, it's "refreshing" and "interesting"? That's just too funny.
Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe we have a context problem here. The person I was replying to is extrapolating a dinky poll into "the vast majority" of the half a billion+ Windows users in the world. I think perspectives change when you think about it that way.
Now, that only 12% of current Windows users will be using Vista in 5 years might be indeed the case, and we will eventually find if that's the case in a more realistic manner. But I'm pretty sure anyone intelligent enough can avoid making that extrapolation solely on the basis of this particular sample size and distribution given the sheer size of the statistical universe. On the other hand, the GP is implying things he can't possibly prove, but are convenient to his little jihad nonetheless. Which was the real reason for my reply to begin with.
Now, if you'd like to prove to me that the sky is blue, go right ahead. With that awkward grammar it should be amusing, if nothing else.
The point remains, the vast majority of users don't want Vista.
Is that a fact or did you imagine it just now? So what you're saying is that you have the pulse of several hundreds of millions of Windows users. Correct? And they don't want Vista. Correct? Can you show us some data to back this up?
When they find out they can only get a new computer with Vista, the likely result is to not buy a new computer.
How do you figure? I'm a little fuzzy on how this happens... How is this the "likely result"?
"I'm not having problems; therefore, nobody else could be having any, either."
Amusingly enough that's an often-used retort to people who claim Linux is not working for them for whatever reasons. But I guess here it's perfectly valid, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I guess I'm missing your point here. Are you saying the US military kills more civilians than the terrorists? Or are you saying that the US military specifically targets civilians when it carries out operations?
The deaths in Baghdad you seem so concerned about are not "random", they are carefully targeted attacks explicitly carried out by terrorists to either escalate the sectarian divide or demoralize US forces. There's nothing "random" about strapping 10lb of high explosive and ball bearings around your torso and detonating them in the middle of a crowded market full of civilians.
You are not only not "intimately familiar" with "the code", you obviously have no idea at all how this driver works, and probably how the entire Linux driver model works, either.
That's clever, yes. I suppose there has to be one of these in every "discussion". Thanks for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio and all that.
Yeah, Real, WMV, ASF, AVI, OGG, MPEG, MOV, H.264, Theora, etc. Universal standards are great, because there's so many of them to choose from! Oh wait...
I was going to actually reply to your other message to point out that you obviously you missed the point of my comment about the misspelling. But I just realized who you are. So with that in mind, why don't you do us both a really big favor, put me in your "foes" list and then fuck off and die. OK? Awesome.
The fact is, you can probably DDoS just about anything more complex than a text editor.
Oh yeah, that seems like a good plan. Of course when Microsoft does the same thing it's an outrage.
The GP is right though. It's literally the case that a "web designer" will create an impressively streamlined page with a careful mix of validating markup and external stylesheets... only to have you download a megabyte+ of JavaScript.
You know, I think that many of these people have forgotten what it's like to use dialup, and that's why their pages work "just fine". I have nothing against "AJAX" in particular - I think it's a technology that has its place like everything else. But seriously, it's getting out of hand.
You've "noticed" this trend even though by your own admission you don't even use Vista. That's impressive. And security has "trended down"? Wow, that's news for me.
So let me see if I get this right. Your "friend" didn't think of using an image to update these laptops*. So this is Microsoft's fault somewhow. And in your mind this is proof that Microsoft is "breaking" Windows XP. Breaking XP. Correct?
That's interesting - I already upgraded two three year old computers from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium and they work just fine.
Oh, "BadVista". I'm sure they have the "scoop" for sure.
* Updating a post-SP2 XP install is a pain, no doubt about it. That's why you use an image (if you're doing more than 10 boxes, please) or use a slipstreamed install, which is pretty simple to do.
Oooh, can I be combative and cocky as well? Let me say this: your "freedom" stops precisely at the point where my right to make a profit starts. And since your hero Stallman has repeatedly claimed I'm a spawn of Satan (among other things) because I don't give him my code, we're likely to have a problem, no?
On the other hand, if you're whining about patents (I suppose that's the center of your argument), then keep in mind Microsoft has very rarely used patents offensively and have been victimized by them more often than not. Why don't you look behind you at what IBM et.al. are doing with their patents? I'm sure you'll be amused to no end.
Other than that, I have no software patents and I could care less about your crusade for "freedom". More power to you. So I'd appreciate it if you got off your morality horse and stop insulting my intelligence because I don't see the light with the same clarity as you obviously do.
Well, I'm sure we'll eventually get the memo on how it turns out =)
I see Microsoft competing with other companies and other companies competing with Microsoft, all of them using tactics akin to your concept of "FUD" as they've done since the IT industry was invented. You have cheapened the meaning of the term "FUD" to the point it is attached to anything, including constructive criticism (remember ESR saying that CUPS sucks? That was FUD!). So really, cry me a river and all that.
You know, Microsoft is not the only commercial software company in the world, and you are not the center of the world. Try to keep that in mind. It helps.
Microsoft "hates" nothing. Please stop attaching emotions to something that is a practical, commercial issue.
ROFL! I don't know if your "world" is dark and damp, but it sure isn't close to the reality I live in.
You are correct there, of course.
You are (mostly) incorrect there, of course. That's an emotional response to a legal problem. That's also counterproductive.
Despite what you might think, I understand it well enough to know that you (and Stallman) are only partially correct in your approach. But that's your problem, not mine.
Oh, I see. I didn't realize he was talking about CD sales.
No, of course not. It's 2001 all over again, Microsoft is going down, XP is no better than 2000, etc. And before that, 2000 is no better than 98, nobody will use it, requires too much hardware, etc. Ad nauseaum.
Wow, you're so cool.
Yes well, we've already established that, haven't we?
Please don't be ridiculous. Microsoft doesn't want me to use anything other than Microsoft software, period. They'd rather I run SQL Server instead of Oracle and Windows instead of OS X. The same way Toyota would rather I drive a Camry than a Ford Mustang. Why do you people insist on attaching such deep significance to simple commercial and competitive realities? To further your "oh we're so good and they're so evil" agenda?
Because that's - for better or for worse - the way the system works. It has nothing particular to do with software or Microsoft or "freedom" or anything else. I have no idea how this is relevant here. And the FSF & friends also do their share of lobbying, in case you've missed that.
Repeating that constantly is not going to warp reality, you know. And besides, you conveniently ignored his point, which is that your non sequitur about how TEH BADD Vista is was offtopic and irrelevant. You don't have a reading comprehension, so you're obviously waffling on purpose.
ROFL! Of course they've fallen as the markets saturate, but "20%"? Per year? Please. What's the point of all this FUD anyway? Who do you think you're convincing?
Wow. Anger management issues?
That the FSF (or KDE or GNOME or whatever) is likely to do X and Y for "love" and not money simply does not enter into the equation. If their products (sold or given away) do what I need them to do, then I'll use them. Otherwise I won't.
It's code. It runs on my computer. Does it do the job? That's all. No different than my refrigerator.
The agenda of people like Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens and "twitter" here is to force me to acknowledge that dogma trumps functionality. That's fine, but it's not a POV I subscribe to. If Stallman wants to make copyright law go away, that's fine too. I agree it's broken in many ways, but then I don't think a software license like the GPL is the Ultimate Answer. That's just my opinion of course. You are entitled to yours.
Finally, my response to "twitter" was geared to making sure everyone realizes that he is exactly the thing he claims doesn't exist - a "partisan" that exhibits the worst possible type of "join us or die" extremist behavior which does a tremendous disservice to the very ideals he's supposed to be "evangelizing" 24/7 to anything that moves and has two ears. He (and people like him) has an agenda and he pushes it with the same insane zeal as Microsoft, to the point of driving attention away from things that really matters. FUD is a two way street.
Nice language. This seems to be your favorite soundbyte of the moment. Something some mid-level manager at a company with 60,000 employees said years ago. Talk about hanging on for dear life.
I was wondering though - what do you think about Stallman claiming anyone who does not subscribe to his beliefs is "immoral" and should be doing something else? Is that just his opinion, or should I generalize that to anyone who claims they're "advocating"? After all, if you can generalize your "pawns to fuck over" FUD, I don't see why Stallman's position should not apply to the community as well. Which means people would have a genuine right to be critical of him and by extension worried about the direction the GPL is taking.
The problem is that ignoring simple market inertia makes for a very narrow and naive point of view, independently of any techno-religious considerations or the popular "consensus" that everyone "hates" Microsoft or that Vista is "unusable". Why don't you sit around and wait maybe a few years to see if your doom and gloom comes true instead of trying to be clever and predicting the end of times on teh interwebs with trite phrases like "enjoy the fall".
But when it's IBM, it's "refreshing" and "interesting"? That's just too funny.
Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe we have a context problem here. The person I was replying to is extrapolating a dinky poll into "the vast majority" of the half a billion+ Windows users in the world. I think perspectives change when you think about it that way.
Now, that only 12% of current Windows users will be using Vista in 5 years might be indeed the case, and we will eventually find if that's the case in a more realistic manner. But I'm pretty sure anyone intelligent enough can avoid making that extrapolation solely on the basis of this particular sample size and distribution given the sheer size of the statistical universe. On the other hand, the GP is implying things he can't possibly prove, but are convenient to his little jihad nonetheless. Which was the real reason for my reply to begin with.
Now, if you'd like to prove to me that the sky is blue, go right ahead. With that awkward grammar it should be amusing, if nothing else.
Is that a fact or did you imagine it just now? So what you're saying is that you have the pulse of several hundreds of millions of Windows users. Correct? And they don't want Vista. Correct? Can you show us some data to back this up?
How do you figure? I'm a little fuzzy on how this happens... How is this the "likely result"?
That's how Microsoft pushes out the vast majority of licenses. Not through the retail channel.
This is nothing new, except for the constant "Vista is teh sux" drumbeat.
Amusingly enough that's an often-used retort to people who claim Linux is not working for them for whatever reasons. But I guess here it's perfectly valid, right?