Don't they realise that 90% of albums make a loss?! That marketing and distribution is incredibly expensive? That the few artists who do make a profit essentially provide a subsidy so the record companies can go out and find new talent?
Do these busybodies not grasp that record company executives need to have two new luxury cars every year?
Do they not realise that by the time you've bribed DJs all around the world to play your music rather than the interesting demo some promising new band sent them, there's only enough money left for bonuses in the region of $20 million/year? How can record companies hope to continue attracting the best chief executives if they can only pay $20million in bonuses?
Yes, but you didn't necessarily know when you bought the computer that you'd want to use Skype. The whole point of a general-purpose computer is that if your needs change, it doesn't matter.
Or is only licensed to one user at a time. I lost track of the number of packages which were clearly intended for an entire class to use, yet licenses were only sold individually.
Within an unrealistic timescale quite often lacking essential documentation.
That documentation was lacking for the fundamental reason that it never existed. Actual Telephone Call between Me and Software Company (this was in the days before.msi files even existed; the install routine was hardcoded to run from the root of the CD-ROM drive):
Me: Hi, I'm looking at the installation instructions for this software we've got. I see it says "insert CD-ROM into drive, type D:\setup" SW company: Yes Me: Well, we've got the site license for over 100 systems, and I need to get it installed on all of them. What's the procedure for rolling it out? SW company: Go to all of the systems, insert the CD-ROM into the drive, type D:\setup. Me: Sorry, I don't follow you. I'm expected to go to over 100 computers individually and install the software by hand? SW company: Yes. Me: There's over 100 of them! It'll take forever! SW company: Ooh. We never thought of that.
Eventually I wound up rolling installations out by simply copying the relevant files and setting up registry keys as part of the login script.
A good friend of mine left a job not that long ago in the private sector to to go work in a University's IT department.
School != University.
In all fairness, the parent's comment is probably a reasonable generalisation, though it's not true in all cases.
In the UK, for example, there seem to be two ways to run a business:
1. Produce a half-decent product/service, hire good staff, work with your customers to give them the results they want. Try and get people and/or businesses to buy your product/service.
2. Produce a half-arsed product/service, hire lousy staff, throw the same "solution" at all your customers without finding out their needs. Print 10,000 flyers proclaiming yourself to be "Specialists in Education" and send them to every school in the country.
The upshot of it is you've got a handful of companies which have essentially got everything up to (and in some cases, including) University level markets sewn up. They claim that the school doesn't need experienced, capable IT staff, as they can provide the service themselves. All the school might need is someone to add user accounts, change tapes and printer cartridges.
Teaching students to use software, instead of a specific application. Teaching someone to use Microsoft Office XP is equivilant to giving them a fish. Teaching them to use office software, and reinforcing the lesson by making them use several different version to accomplish the same task is teaching them to fish. For instance, students could work on projects in KOffice, OpenOffice, abiword/that calc program I'm blanking on/wiki software/etc. If I were an employer, I would want an employee who could quickly and efficiently learn new software and teach those around me, rather than someone who had to be sent to classes just to use what I currently run.
In all fairness, the last time I worked in a school was some time ago, and it's in the UK so I don't know how well it translates to US requirements.
First, let's consider the general case: Computers as a tool. A geography teacher doesn't want to argue about what software his/her pupils use, they want the work presented to them. How the pupil goes about doing it is only relevant insofar as the subject is concerned - "which word processor is used" is of little/no consequence.
Furthermore, teachers are very good at picking up proprietary software, throwing it at their IT staff and expecting it to work. Refusing to provide the infrastructure for that to be possible may fly for financial grounds - provided you can convince the Powers That Be that the saving (which isn't going to be anywhere near as much as it would be for a business, because of heavy educational discounts) is worth it.
In the face of "Oh yes, one minor drawback, unless I'm incredibly lucky, there's a fair bit of software your staff currently require which will not work and for which there isn't a direct replacement", it's going to be a pretty hard sell.
I'm not actually trolling, but it's sweet of you to say so.
The GPL does have one restriction - which is considered by many commercial organisations to be a pretty damn big restriction. You know, that bit where it says "derivative code must also be GPL'd". Essentially, all the article is saying boils down to "if you are not aware of this, and you don't read the license, such a restriction may come back and bite you".
Well, duh. But seriously, is there anyone in IT today who is completely unaware of the GPL or its implications should they wish to include GPL'd software in their own code? I stand by my assertion that the purpose of this document is to get management who don't understand it to go speak to these lawyers for advice at $BIGNUM per hour. FUD, maybe. FUD intended to prop up Microsoft - no, I don't think so.
You've actually raised a very good point there. It's often argued that Microsoft has become it's own worst competitor - specifically, old versions versus new.
I'm not quite sure what will happen in the long term, but I think things could get interesting. There are still businesses using Office '97 or 2000; by the time Vista is actually being taken seriously as "something to roll out across a business" (which if history is anything to go by is at least a year after initial release), Office '97 will be 10 years old.
I can see Microsoft forcibly breaking compatability with older versions of Office on Vista, then removing the "or any older version" clause from business annually-renewable licenses.
It's not FUD, it is simply "OSS for the uninitiated - be warned that if you're developing software, you might want to actually read the license of anything else you or your contractors plan to use rather than just ignoring it like you usually do". The general tone is "You can use OSS, but be careful".
It's not terribly well written, mainly because it seems to add a load of guff to licenses which are by and large pretty easy to read. And it uses some contentious terminology which is likely to cause concern. ("Infectious", anyone?)
Doubtless a whole boatload of slashbots who didn't RTFA will be a long in a moment to say "yeah but no but it's microsoft FUD ignore it don't give it publicity etc etc" - I'm not going to debate that one. I actually think it's more likely to be an attempt on the part of the law firm to drum up a bit of business. Something along the lines of "Now you've read this article, contact us for further advice!"
You could at least have read the comment I posted;)
unless you're a really big name... who can offer a unique selling point
Apple has a unique selling point: integration into iTunes, and thus the iPod.
You go out, buy an iPod. It's got something like 70-80% market share, all your friends have one. You install the software that comes with it - iTunes. First thing you see: BUY MUSIC FROM THE iTUNES MUSIC STORE!
Apple was also first to market with the iTMS. (Yes I know other companies were legitimately selling music online before then. How many of them were selling well-known popular music - you know, the sort that makes money and arranges for Britney Spears to go in for a knee operation and come out with bigger boobs?)
If you mean "sell things in AAC format", they'd probably want to license that to avoid any risk of a lawsuit. And Apple isn't licensing it. Even if they did, the big benefit of iTMS is "integrates with iTunes" - I don't see Napster being able to do that, as they don't control iTunes.
If you mean "devise their own DRM, media player plugins and server infrastructure" - well, there's a whole heckuva lot more work needed to do that than there is in just hooking into Windows Media Player - and unless you're a really big name (rather than one which was once synonymous with free music but has been all-but forgotten) who can offer a unique selling point, you'll be trampled all over by the other companies who are doing the exact same thing but can do so more cheaply as they didn't have to R&D a whole new DRM mechanism.
One simple reason: Savings would no longer be taxed.
Ah, the sweet innocence of youth.
Here in the UK my savings are taxed as if they were any other form of income - and I pay 17.5% VAT on most things (food, books, children's clothing are exempt, fuel is taxed at a lower rate). However, my income tax is staggered:
The biggest drawback to this system is if my income goes above £31,400, any subsequent payrises need to be pretty damn big to make the remotest difference.
Now when your parents get the popup that some application wants to access the network, and are presented with all these options for "finer granularity of which applications can use network resources", they'll just turn them all on and go instead of actually learning the ins and outs of TCP security
While I haven't asked her, I'm fairly certain my mother doesn't really want to learn the ins and outs of TCP security. My gf certainly doesn't - she received a phishing email all of 30 seconds ago, asked for help in analysing it but when I suggested she view the full headers she refused.
Perhaps a secure operating system (rather than one which keeps on popping idiot messages up) is the solution?
If you want it, you must upgrade... everything. Unless, of course, you're currently running the latest blood-still-flowing-from-the-wounds-edge game machine, in which case you'll just need more memory and a better video card.
TBH, I always suspected that the amount of money Microsoft made out of boxed copies of Windows sold through PC World (or CompUSA if you're in the US) was negligible compared to the amount made out of OEM copies included with new PCs.
- Halo 2 requires Vista. - Sooner or later, new hardware will require Vista (and the XP/2K drivers, if they even exist, will blow goats) - Sooner or later, new software will require Vista.
Writable USB mass-storage devices aren't really hot-swappable on Windows or Linux.
They can be in Linux - simply mount them with the "sync" option.
However performance will go to hell, as normally the request to write data gets shunted to the background so the kernel can worry about it some other time - all of a sudden any write will be committed immediately.
Even so, it's still a bad idea to hotswap a USB key because any modern multitasking OS may have applications writing to it which aren't immediately apparent - at least not without something like an lsof.
All joking aside, it is possible to run an entire server infrastructure on Linux with users on Windows - I do so. Unified logins (LDAP is blooming marvellous), domain control, file shares, email, webmail, web server the lot. And it all ticks along very nicely (touch wood).
But, despite what all the zealots on/. will tell you, it isn't a simple "get the latest SuSE, drop it in, bob's your uncle" - that may be possible on a new site where there's no existing infrastructure and you don't need more than 1 server, but there aren't many of them around these days.
Research what you're doing carefully, test it to destruction before you start getting people using it, be prepared to spend a lot of time using Google and give over your inbox to various mailing lists and you should be OK.
actually plan making it a domain controller instead of our windows box
The immense likelihood is that's done through Samba. In which case, I've just been setting up a Samba domain controller so I can offer you a few gotchas if you weren't already aware:
Domain Controlling is limited to NT4 style domains with a few extra boltons rather than full-blown Active Directory. This isn't really a problem, as long as you've planned for it;)
AFAIK, you can't mix & match Samba domain controllers with Windows ones on the same domain.
The Windows NT 4 domain administration tools mostly work - but there are a few issues which are still in the process of being worked out. You haven't lost your mind if User Manager for Domains doesn't work properly!
I was doing it the "really hard way" - which is "install the free version on Gentoo". At the time I did it, there was a whacking great HOWTO but no ebuild.
If you've ordered the commercial version of OpenExchange you should be OK as it claims to be fully supported, nice'n'easy. Don't know how true that is though - I s'pose you'll find that one out in time. Good luck!
While I have no doubt that Linux is ready for such a task, I'm not sure your average school teacher is.
Good luck explaining to them that they can't use some fancy piece of educational software they've already bought, or if they can but it will sort-of work and sort-of not work thanks to Wine. IME, few teachers would accept being told this - and regardless of whether or not you should educating youngsters in a specific operating system, you may have a hard time convincing teachers of this.
I know it's not what you asked for, but what I'd do is set up a Linux server to hold everyone's files and act as a domain controller so profiles are centralised. I'd keep Windows on the client systems (though I might try and rationalise it to just one or two versions) and set up disk images on the Linux server from which the clients can be rebuilt very quickly. Finally, I'd put a boot loader on with an option to "Rebuild this computer" which downloads an appropriate image from the fileserver and installs it.
All that being said, if you can get the staff to agree from an early stage, you might be all right. But don't say you weren't warned.
Well, clearly mileage varies. I was installing OpenExchange the hard way rather than getting it all done for me, which I can tell you isn't much fun at all.
Windows can, if carefully administered, be a perfectly acceptable server platform (That noise you just heard was my karma evaporating). However, it means you've got to be very strict with how you administer it - buy decent hardware, only install what's necessary to do the task in hand, keep a spare server to the exact same software configuration to test patches on first, make sure you've got a good backup before you make changes. Really you should be doing all this anyway no matter what you're administering, but it's surprising how many people don't. And if it's already been completely stuffed up, you're probably best cutting your losses and reinstalling.
I reserve the right to be completely wrong, but the last time I checked KDE didn't exactly shout this from the rooftops. You had to explicitly point Konqueror at the CD-ROM drive to get it to do that, and for people who are used to either firing up a third-party application or Windows automatically opening Media Player, this is counter-intuitive.
Not that I'm advocating an Autorun feature; just something like on my Mac where it detects the type of disk on insertion and prompts you for what you'd like to do with it.
I dont think even if I were the head of a company that I'd be 'happy' to pay more for being able to handle more processors, when OSes like linux just work to what you have.
Out here in the Real World, we have these things called Applications. Sometimes, there exist things you wish to do in Windows.
Granted, these are becoming fewer as time goes by, but they exist. For example, there still isn't a compelling replacement for Exchange.
Yes, there's OpenExchange, or a plethora of web-based things such as Horde or phpGroupware. But none of them integrate with Outlook anywhere near as neatly as Exchange does. At the end of the day, if you're head of the company and your staff need that functionality, and there's enough staff that you need a beefy box to handle it, you'll drop the extra money on the Enterprise edition. It may be dearer, but it's a sight less hassle than trying to persuade everyone that Outlook is going to be replaced with something less slick - and "amount of hassle" has a real value.
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Don't they realise that 90% of albums make a loss?! That marketing and distribution is incredibly expensive? That the few artists who do make a profit essentially provide a subsidy so the record companies can go out and find new talent?
Do these busybodies not grasp that record company executives need to have two new luxury cars every year?
Do they not realise that by the time you've bribed DJs all around the world to play your music rather than the interesting demo some promising new band sent them, there's only enough money left for bonuses in the region of $20 million/year? How can record companies hope to continue attracting the best chief executives if they can only pay $20million in bonuses?
Yes, but you didn't necessarily know when you bought the computer that you'd want to use Skype. The whole point of a general-purpose computer is that if your needs change, it doesn't matter.
Which can include demo software
.msi files even existed; the install routine was hardcoded to run from the root of the CD-ROM drive):
Or is only licensed to one user at a time. I lost track of the number of packages which were clearly intended for an entire class to use, yet licenses were only sold individually.
Within an unrealistic timescale quite often lacking essential documentation.
That documentation was lacking for the fundamental reason that it never existed. Actual Telephone Call between Me and Software Company (this was in the days before
Me: Hi, I'm looking at the installation instructions for this software we've got. I see it says "insert CD-ROM into drive, type D:\setup"
SW company: Yes
Me: Well, we've got the site license for over 100 systems, and I need to get it installed on all of them. What's the procedure for rolling it out?
SW company: Go to all of the systems, insert the CD-ROM into the drive, type D:\setup.
Me: Sorry, I don't follow you. I'm expected to go to over 100 computers individually and install the software by hand?
SW company: Yes.
Me: There's over 100 of them! It'll take forever!
SW company: Ooh. We never thought of that.
Eventually I wound up rolling installations out by simply copying the relevant files and setting up registry keys as part of the login script.
A good friend of mine left a job not that long ago in the private sector to to go work in a University's IT department.
School != University.
In all fairness, the parent's comment is probably a reasonable generalisation, though it's not true in all cases.
In the UK, for example, there seem to be two ways to run a business:
1. Produce a half-decent product/service, hire good staff, work with your customers to give them the results they want. Try and get people and/or businesses to buy your product/service.
2. Produce a half-arsed product/service, hire lousy staff, throw the same "solution" at all your customers without finding out their needs. Print 10,000 flyers proclaiming yourself to be "Specialists in Education" and send them to every school in the country.
The upshot of it is you've got a handful of companies which have essentially got everything up to (and in some cases, including) University level markets sewn up. They claim that the school doesn't need experienced, capable IT staff, as they can provide the service themselves. All the school might need is someone to add user accounts, change tapes and printer cartridges.
Teaching students to use software, instead of a specific application. Teaching someone to use Microsoft Office XP is equivilant to giving them a fish. Teaching them to use office software, and reinforcing the lesson by making them use several different version to accomplish the same task is teaching them to fish. For instance, students could work on projects in KOffice, OpenOffice, abiword/that calc program I'm blanking on/wiki software/etc. If I were an employer, I would want an employee who could quickly and efficiently learn new software and teach those around me, rather than someone who had to be sent to classes just to use what I currently run.
In all fairness, the last time I worked in a school was some time ago, and it's in the UK so I don't know how well it translates to US requirements.
First, let's consider the general case: Computers as a tool. A geography teacher doesn't want to argue about what software his/her pupils use, they want the work presented to them. How the pupil goes about doing it is only relevant insofar as the subject is concerned - "which word processor is used" is of little/no consequence.
Furthermore, teachers are very good at picking up proprietary software, throwing it at their IT staff and expecting it to work. Refusing to provide the infrastructure for that to be possible may fly for financial grounds - provided you can convince the Powers That Be that the saving (which isn't going to be anywhere near as much as it would be for a business, because of heavy educational discounts) is worth it.
In the face of "Oh yes, one minor drawback, unless I'm incredibly lucky, there's a fair bit of software your staff currently require which will not work and for which there isn't a direct replacement", it's going to be a pretty hard sell.
Ah. OK. I bow to your superior research ;)
I've just got visions of G. W. bush sitting in his office, demanding fricking sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads.
I'm not actually trolling, but it's sweet of you to say so.
The GPL does have one restriction - which is considered by many commercial organisations to be a pretty damn big restriction. You know, that bit where it says "derivative code must also be GPL'd". Essentially, all the article is saying boils down to "if you are not aware of this, and you don't read the license, such a restriction may come back and bite you".
Well, duh. But seriously, is there anyone in IT today who is completely unaware of the GPL or its implications should they wish to include GPL'd software in their own code? I stand by my assertion that the purpose of this document is to get management who don't understand it to go speak to these lawyers for advice at $BIGNUM per hour. FUD, maybe. FUD intended to prop up Microsoft - no, I don't think so.
You've actually raised a very good point there. It's often argued that Microsoft has become it's own worst competitor - specifically, old versions versus new.
I'm not quite sure what will happen in the long term, but I think things could get interesting. There are still businesses using Office '97 or 2000; by the time Vista is actually being taken seriously as "something to roll out across a business" (which if history is anything to go by is at least a year after initial release), Office '97 will be 10 years old.
I can see Microsoft forcibly breaking compatability with older versions of Office on Vista, then removing the "or any older version" clause from business annually-renewable licenses.
It's not FUD, it is simply "OSS for the uninitiated - be warned that if you're developing software, you might want to actually read the license of anything else you or your contractors plan to use rather than just ignoring it like you usually do". The general tone is "You can use OSS, but be careful".
It's not terribly well written, mainly because it seems to add a load of guff to licenses which are by and large pretty easy to read. And it uses some contentious terminology which is likely to cause concern. ("Infectious", anyone?)
Doubtless a whole boatload of slashbots who didn't RTFA will be a long in a moment to say "yeah but no but it's microsoft FUD ignore it don't give it publicity etc etc" - I'm not going to debate that one. I actually think it's more likely to be an attempt on the part of the law firm to drum up a bit of business. Something along the lines of "Now you've read this article, contact us for further advice!"
You could at least have read the comment I posted ;)
unless you're a really big name... who can offer a unique selling point
Apple has a unique selling point: integration into iTunes, and thus the iPod.
You go out, buy an iPod. It's got something like 70-80% market share, all your friends have one. You install the software that comes with it - iTunes. First thing you see: BUY MUSIC FROM THE iTUNES MUSIC STORE!
Apple was also first to market with the iTMS. (Yes I know other companies were legitimately selling music online before then. How many of them were selling well-known popular music - you know, the sort that makes money and arranges for Britney Spears to go in for a knee operation and come out with bigger boobs?)
Can you remember who was second? No?
If you mean "sell things in AAC format", they'd probably want to license that to avoid any risk of a lawsuit. And Apple isn't licensing it. Even if they did, the big benefit of iTMS is "integrates with iTunes" - I don't see Napster being able to do that, as they don't control iTunes.
If you mean "devise their own DRM, media player plugins and server infrastructure" - well, there's a whole heckuva lot more work needed to do that than there is in just hooking into Windows Media Player - and unless you're a really big name (rather than one which was once synonymous with free music but has been all-but forgotten) who can offer a unique selling point, you'll be trampled all over by the other companies who are doing the exact same thing but can do so more cheaply as they didn't have to R&D a whole new DRM mechanism.
One simple reason: Savings would no longer be taxed.
Ah, the sweet innocence of youth.
Here in the UK my savings are taxed as if they were any other form of income - and I pay 17.5% VAT on most things (food, books, children's clothing are exempt, fuel is taxed at a lower rate). However, my income tax is staggered:
First £4895 ("personal allowance"): Tax free
Starting rate 10%: £0 - 2020
Basic rate 22%: £2,021 - 31,400
Higher rate 40%: Over £31,400
Source: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/index.htm
The biggest drawback to this system is if my income goes above £31,400, any subsequent payrises need to be pretty damn big to make the remotest difference.
Now when your parents get the popup that some application wants to access the network, and are presented with all these options for "finer granularity of which applications can use network resources", they'll just turn them all on and go instead of actually learning the ins and outs of TCP security
While I haven't asked her, I'm fairly certain my mother doesn't really want to learn the ins and outs of TCP security. My gf certainly doesn't - she received a phishing email all of 30 seconds ago, asked for help in analysing it but when I suggested she view the full headers she refused.
Perhaps a secure operating system (rather than one which keeps on popping idiot messages up) is the solution?
If you want it, you must upgrade... everything. Unless, of course, you're currently running the latest blood-still-flowing-from-the-wounds-edge game machine, in which case you'll just need more memory and a better video card.
TBH, I always suspected that the amount of money Microsoft made out of boxed copies of Windows sold through PC World (or CompUSA if you're in the US) was negligible compared to the amount made out of OEM copies included with new PCs.
You missed some very important features out:
- Halo 2 requires Vista.
- Sooner or later, new hardware will require Vista (and the XP/2K drivers, if they even exist, will blow goats)
- Sooner or later, new software will require Vista.
It did make use of a C:\Users\ folder, however, which was rather nice.
So does XP and 2000. But in them, it's called C:\Documents and Settings.
And in NT it was called C:\WINNT\Profiles.
Writable USB mass-storage devices aren't really hot-swappable on Windows or Linux.
They can be in Linux - simply mount them with the "sync" option.
However performance will go to hell, as normally the request to write data gets shunted to the background so the kernel can worry about it some other time - all of a sudden any write will be committed immediately.
Even so, it's still a bad idea to hotswap a USB key because any modern multitasking OS may have applications writing to it which aren't immediately apparent - at least not without something like an lsof.
Are you absolutely sure you're not me?
/. will tell you, it isn't a simple "get the latest SuSE, drop it in, bob's your uncle" - that may be possible on a new site where there's no existing infrastructure and you don't need more than 1 server, but there aren't many of them around these days.
All joking aside, it is possible to run an entire server infrastructure on Linux with users on Windows - I do so. Unified logins (LDAP is blooming marvellous), domain control, file shares, email, webmail, web server the lot. And it all ticks along very nicely (touch wood).
But, despite what all the zealots on
Research what you're doing carefully, test it to destruction before you start getting people using it, be prepared to spend a lot of time using Google and give over your inbox to various mailing lists and you should be OK.
The immense likelihood is that's done through Samba. In which case, I've just been setting up a Samba domain controller so I can offer you a few gotchas if you weren't already aware:
I was doing it the "really hard way" - which is "install the free version on Gentoo". At the time I did it, there was a whacking great HOWTO but no ebuild.
If you've ordered the commercial version of OpenExchange you should be OK as it claims to be fully supported, nice'n'easy. Don't know how true that is though - I s'pose you'll find that one out in time. Good luck!
While I have no doubt that Linux is ready for such a task, I'm not sure your average school teacher is.
Good luck explaining to them that they can't use some fancy piece of educational software they've already bought, or if they can but it will sort-of work and sort-of not work thanks to Wine. IME, few teachers would accept being told this - and regardless of whether or not you should educating youngsters in a specific operating system, you may have a hard time convincing teachers of this.
I know it's not what you asked for, but what I'd do is set up a Linux server to hold everyone's files and act as a domain controller so profiles are centralised. I'd keep Windows on the client systems (though I might try and rationalise it to just one or two versions) and set up disk images on the Linux server from which the clients can be rebuilt very quickly. Finally, I'd put a boot loader on with an option to "Rebuild this computer" which downloads an appropriate image from the fileserver and installs it.
All that being said, if you can get the staff to agree from an early stage, you might be all right. But don't say you weren't warned.
Well, clearly mileage varies. I was installing OpenExchange the hard way rather than getting it all done for me, which I can tell you isn't much fun at all.
Windows can, if carefully administered, be a perfectly acceptable server platform (That noise you just heard was my karma evaporating). However, it means you've got to be very strict with how you administer it - buy decent hardware, only install what's necessary to do the task in hand, keep a spare server to the exact same software configuration to test patches on first, make sure you've got a good backup before you make changes. Really you should be doing all this anyway no matter what you're administering, but it's surprising how many people don't. And if it's already been completely stuffed up, you're probably best cutting your losses and reinstalling.
I reserve the right to be completely wrong, but the last time I checked KDE didn't exactly shout this from the rooftops. You had to explicitly point Konqueror at the CD-ROM drive to get it to do that, and for people who are used to either firing up a third-party application or Windows automatically opening Media Player, this is counter-intuitive.
Not that I'm advocating an Autorun feature; just something like on my Mac where it detects the type of disk on insertion and prompts you for what you'd like to do with it.
I dont think even if I were the head of a company that I'd be 'happy' to pay more for being able to handle more processors, when OSes like linux just work to what you have.
Out here in the Real World, we have these things called Applications. Sometimes, there exist things you wish to do in Windows.
Granted, these are becoming fewer as time goes by, but they exist. For example, there still isn't a compelling replacement for Exchange.
Yes, there's OpenExchange, or a plethora of web-based things such as Horde or phpGroupware. But none of them integrate with Outlook anywhere near as neatly as Exchange does. At the end of the day, if you're head of the company and your staff need that functionality, and there's enough staff that you need a beefy box to handle it, you'll drop the extra money on the Enterprise edition. It may be dearer, but it's a sight less hassle than trying to persuade everyone that Outlook is going to be replaced with something less slick - and "amount of hassle" has a real value.