Maybe, but it's "free" not as in "freedom" or even "beer", but as in "Windows comes for 'free' with a new PC".
Let's face it, the students are paying for MS Office, it's just that the price is hidden in their tuition, and they have no choice in the matter.
It's the "MS tax" all over again. Once again Redmond shows their strongest skill: leveraging their monopoly to the point at which people are essentially forced to buy their software.
Not quite correct. Picasa was ported using winelib; however Google Earth is a native Linux binary using the QT toolkit for portability. I can't say what Google Desktop for Linux uses.
IIRC, the difference in difficulty between horizontal and vertical scrolling on Atari 8-bits was due to the video memory not having a fixed origin. To scroll down, all you had to do was increment the memory location that controlled the video memory origin by one row's worth of pixels, and vice-versa to scroll up.
Another factor was the "player-missle" graphics (Atari's term for sprites). Typically in a vertical scroller, the player would move side-to-side, which was trivially accomplished by setting another memory location. Vertical player movement was much trickier, one had to actually move the bitmap in memory.
I use Win XP at work (where I don't have a choice what I run) and Linux (Kubuntu 7.10) on my home desktop, where I do. I run plenty of FOSS apps at home that are better than the proprietary stuff I'm stuck with at work:
KWin/Kicker beats Windows shell
Ark beats WinZip
Quanta beats Frontpage
Konqueror beats Windows Explorer
Gwenview beats MS Image Viewer
Inkscape beats MS-Drawing
KolourPaint beats MS-Paint
Konsole beats HyperTerminal
K3B beats Nero
Bash beats Command Prompt
Amarok beats Windows Media Player
Kate beats Notepad
Adept beats "Install/Remove Programs"
KPatience beats Windows Solitaire
I find that nearly every KDE component is much more capable than its counterpart which comes with Windows.
The article is wrong but could easily be corrected:
s/Apple/Microsoft/g
Within 5 years, MS will completely dominate the entertainment electronics biz with its XBOX/Zune/Windows Media Center; just like they dominate eveything else on the damned planet.
It's never a sound business plan to be a Microsoft competitor. Once you're in the Borg's sites, you are toast!
If Office 2k7's UI had been produced by some OSS outfit, slashdotters would be praising it to the heights and mocking Microsoft for being stuck behind the times.
If Office 2k7's UI had been produced by some OSS outfit, all the Microsoft Genuine Believers(TM) would be criticizing it for being too radically different from MS-Office and way too difficult for their coworkers to learn how to use.
Sure, proprietary software is also able to monopolize the market. But that situation can be fixed by means of anti-monopoly laws
Then why haven't they "fixed" the MS monopoly on operating systems, office software, email clients/servers, etc.? I'll tell you why; because they can't. Repeat after me... It's not illegal to have a monopoly on a product!
They only reason the Justice Department went after Microsoft and ended up giving them a gentle slap on the wrist was that they were abusing their monopoly position in one field (operating systems) to dominate another market (web browsers); and only that violates anti-trust laws. If they hadn't done that, they would have never seen the inside of a courtroom.
and/or software owner going bankrupt (what will eventually happen to Microsoft, hopefully)
I'd love to see that myself, but I'm not naive enough to believe it will ever happen. Even in this day and age where GPL and OSS software exists to compete with most of Microsoft's products, The Redmond Juggernaut's revenues keep increasing at a rate that's staggeringly high... especially for a company that already dominates the marketplace
if GPL'd software dominates the market, it will likely stay that way for ever.
And why? Because Slashdot Prophet RCL says so, that's why! Actual facts are so pre-9/11!;-)
GPL makes creation of closed source private-owned applications infeasible.
Look, I write software for a living... "closed source private-owned applications". Has the onset of GPL and OSS software destroyed my employment? No, my company can't hire developers fast enough! Do you want to tell my CEO that what we're doing is "infeasible"? Maybe you'd like to give a presentation at the next Microsoft shareholders meeting that all their numbers must be fabrications becase they couldn't possibly be making and selling proprietary software?
History is paved with the the body of software companies that were either destroyed or marginalized by one particular proprietary software behemoth. Among those companies: Digital Research, Wordperfect Corp., Borland International, Ashton-Tate, Geoworks Inc., Netscape, Lotus, Powersoft, Software Publishing Corporation (makers of Harvard Graphics), and so forth.
Please point me to a list of all the GPL victims you are mourning? After all, the GPL has been around almost 20 years (1989), so it must've racked up quite a body count by now.
You keep saying one thing (with no facts or evidence whatsoever to back up this hypothesis) while actual experience shows something entirely different. I call "FUD"!
With proprietary software, a single product can monopolize the market. The industry (or, more exactly, the largest corporation within the industry, e.g. a company like Microsoft) will prevent smaller companies trying to "reinvent the wheel" with alternative (perhaps closed-source) products from joining the market.
Close. Vista, as Ballmer stated, is a "work in progress"; while the successive releases of most Linux distros (and, to be fair, MacOS as well) are works of progress.
The difference? In a work of progress, each release is delivered in a state that builds on the capabilities and quality of the prior one. The opinion of the masses have spoken, and to the majority, Vista as delivered doesn't represent a net improvement over the seven year old XP.
Microsoft is hardly the only commercial software vendor in the planet
There's still a few left that haven't yet been absorbed or eliminated by Ballmer & company, but have some faith in Redmond... they will eventually get to the others.
I still don't like the large amount of Java in OOo
To my knowledge, the usage of Java in OOo is really quite limited. The "Base" component uses the embedded Java DBMS HSQLDB; the original StarOffice DB component didn't have open-sourceable licensing and presumably the OOo developers didn't feel like "re-inventing the wheel" in order to replace it. I believe that you could use OOo sans Java if you're using it as a front-end to a standalone DB (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.)
The UI designer part of the OOo Macro "IDE" uses Java as well; I'm not aware of the history of that code. I would guess, however, that those who develop macros with dialogs would constitute a small minority of the OOo user community.
The vast majority of the OOo codebase, I have read, is implemented in C++.
The MS Fanboys take joy in stating that Windows scales much better than Linux. Yet I see Linux everywhere from tiny handhelds to supercomputers, and apparently MS can't figure out how to run on modern low-end laptops? Please explain what y'all mean be "scaling better."
The Bush administration doesn't speak for every Republican or Conservative in America.
Maybe not all, granted, but the vast majority. You people ELECTED him... TWICE! (just in case you've forgotten). By endorsing his anti-constitutional policies you are every bit as responsible for f**king up this once great country as he is.
Sorry to break it to you, but unfortunately, EULAs have been proven actionable in court. Also, the prevailing viewpoint of the BSA and their Redmondian masters is that the mere act of installing software to use it constitutes "making a copy", and is permitted only at the whim of the license they provide; lest you be violating their copyright. Furthermore, in this post-DMCA era, copyright infringement is now considered a federal offense (I'm assuming you live in the US, as I do).
If you're a reasonable person, and like me don't care for this unjust situation, there is a solution. Use software that values your rights and freedoms
Yes, retail buyers can do that one time. I have a hunch that most owners of XP got the OEM version and don't have that right (how many people are still using 7+ year old desktops?).
People (i.e. you 95-percenters who created this problem) are going to going to buy new PCs (and get Vista) then go out and buy a copy of XP. Pity poor MS, who gets paid twice for one PC! Maybe old Ballmer's a lot brighter than I ever give him credit for.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but it's "free" not as in "freedom" or even "beer", but as in "Windows comes for 'free' with a new PC".
Let's face it, the students are paying for MS Office, it's just that the price is hidden in their tuition, and they have no choice in the matter.
It's the "MS tax" all over again. Once again Redmond shows their strongest skill: leveraging their monopoly to the point at which people are essentially forced to buy their software.
-a.d.-
Not quite correct. Picasa was ported using winelib; however Google Earth is a native Linux binary using the QT toolkit for portability. I can't say what Google Desktop for Linux uses.
-a.d.-
Another factor was the "player-missle" graphics (Atari's term for sprites). Typically in a vertical scroller, the player would move side-to-side, which was trivially accomplished by setting another memory location. Vertical player movement was much trickier, one had to actually move the bitmap in memory.
-a.d.-
Q: How to build and install Gadgets for Linux on Ubuntu 8.04?
A: You need install a number of development packages, including:
- libgtk2.0-dev
- libmozjs-dev
- libxul-dev
- libcurl4-openssl-dev
- libgstreamer0.10-dev
- libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
- libdbus-1-dev
- libxml2-dev
- librsvg2-dev
Dependent packages required by the packages above also need to be installed.
Doesn't look Wine based - it's based mostly on GTK and Mozilla-related libraries.-a.d.-
I use Win XP at work (where I don't have a choice what I run) and Linux (Kubuntu 7.10) on my home desktop, where I do. I run plenty of FOSS apps at home that are better than the proprietary stuff I'm stuck with at work:
KWin/Kicker beats Windows shell
Ark beats WinZip
Quanta beats Frontpage
Konqueror beats Windows Explorer
Gwenview beats MS Image Viewer
Inkscape beats MS-Drawing
KolourPaint beats MS-Paint
Konsole beats HyperTerminal
K3B beats Nero
Bash beats Command Prompt
Amarok beats Windows Media Player
Kate beats Notepad
Adept beats "Install/Remove Programs"
KPatience beats Windows Solitaire
I find that nearly every KDE component is much more capable than its counterpart which comes with Windows.
-a.d.-
Very well put!
I just wish my modpoints had not run out earlier today.
-a.d.-
The article is wrong but could easily be corrected:
s/Apple/Microsoft/g
Within 5 years, MS will completely dominate the entertainment electronics biz with its XBOX/Zune/Windows Media Center; just like they dominate eveything else on the damned planet.
It's never a sound business plan to be a Microsoft competitor. Once you're in the Borg's sites, you are toast!
-a.d.-
If Office 2k7's UI had been produced by some OSS outfit, all the Microsoft Genuine Believers(TM) would be criticizing it for being too radically different from MS-Office and way too difficult for their coworkers to learn how to use.
-a.d.-
Please don't let "Please don't let this become a slashdot meme" become a slashdot meme!
Sure, proprietary software is also able to monopolize the market. But that situation can be fixed by means of anti-monopoly laws
Then why haven't they "fixed" the MS monopoly on operating systems, office software, email clients/servers, etc.? I'll tell you why; because they can't. Repeat after me... It's not illegal to have a monopoly on a product!
They only reason the Justice Department went after Microsoft and ended up giving them a gentle slap on the wrist was that they were abusing their monopoly position in one field (operating systems) to dominate another market (web browsers); and only that violates anti-trust laws. If they hadn't done that, they would have never seen the inside of a courtroom.
and/or software owner going bankrupt (what will eventually happen to Microsoft, hopefully)
I'd love to see that myself, but I'm not naive enough to believe it will ever happen. Even in this day and age where GPL and OSS software exists to compete with most of Microsoft's products, The Redmond Juggernaut's revenues keep increasing at a rate that's staggeringly high... especially for a company that already dominates the marketplace
if GPL'd software dominates the market, it will likely stay that way for ever.
And why? Because Slashdot Prophet RCL says so, that's why! Actual facts are so pre-9/11!
GPL makes creation of closed source private-owned applications infeasible.
Look, I write software for a living... "closed source private-owned applications". Has the onset of GPL and OSS software destroyed my employment? No, my company can't hire developers fast enough! Do you want to tell my CEO that what we're doing is "infeasible"? Maybe you'd like to give a presentation at the next Microsoft shareholders meeting that all their numbers must be fabrications becase they couldn't possibly be making and selling proprietary software?
History is paved with the the body of software companies that were either destroyed or marginalized by one particular proprietary software behemoth. Among those companies: Digital Research, Wordperfect Corp., Borland International, Ashton-Tate, Geoworks Inc., Netscape, Lotus, Powersoft, Software Publishing Corporation (makers of Harvard Graphics), and so forth.
Please point me to a list of all the GPL victims you are mourning? After all, the GPL has been around almost 20 years (1989), so it must've racked up quite a body count by now.
You keep saying one thing (with no facts or evidence whatsoever to back up this hypothesis) while actual experience shows something entirely different. I call "FUD"!
Regards,
-a.d.-
There; fixed that for you.
Now it should pass the reality filter.
-a.d.-
Damn, that's gotta be the most Microsoft Love(tm) I've ever seen in a single paragraph!
I'm glad you found your soulmate; pity it's a software company, though.
Regards,
-a.d.-
Evil, but not quite evil enough. It would probably be something more like "dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda"
-a.d.-
Close. Vista, as Ballmer stated, is a "work in progress"; while the successive releases of most Linux distros (and, to be fair, MacOS as well) are works of progress.
The difference? In a work of progress, each release is delivered in a state that builds on the capabilities and quality of the prior one. The opinion of the masses have spoken, and to the majority, Vista as delivered doesn't represent a net improvement over the seven year old XP.
-a.d.-
There's still a few left that haven't yet been absorbed or eliminated by Ballmer & company, but have some faith in Redmond... they will eventually get to the others.
-a.d.-
It's not perfect, but the open source DTP program Scribus can open/import PDF documents.
-a.d-
To my knowledge, the usage of Java in OOo is really quite limited. The "Base" component uses the embedded Java DBMS HSQLDB; the original StarOffice DB component didn't have open-sourceable licensing and presumably the OOo developers didn't feel like "re-inventing the wheel" in order to replace it. I believe that you could use OOo sans Java if you're using it as a front-end to a standalone DB (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.)
The UI designer part of the OOo Macro "IDE" uses Java as well; I'm not aware of the history of that code. I would guess, however, that those who develop macros with dialogs would constitute a small minority of the OOo user community.
The vast majority of the OOo codebase, I have read, is implemented in C++.
-a.d.
So, by your logic, FreeBSD should be a helluva lot more "ready for the desktop" than Linux.
How good is the driver support for 3d video cards and laptop WI-FI on there?
-a.d.-
The MS Fanboys take joy in stating that Windows scales much better than Linux. Yet I see Linux everywhere from tiny handhelds to supercomputers, and apparently MS can't figure out how to run on modern low-end laptops? Please explain what y'all mean be "scaling better."
-a.d.-
Maybe not all, granted, but the vast majority. You people ELECTED him... TWICE! (just in case you've forgotten). By endorsing his anti-constitutional policies you are every bit as responsible for f**king up this once great country as he is.
-a.d.-
Sorry to break it to you, but unfortunately, EULAs have been proven actionable in court. Also, the prevailing viewpoint of the BSA and their Redmondian masters is that the mere act of installing software to use it constitutes "making a copy", and is permitted only at the whim of the license they provide; lest you be violating their copyright. Furthermore, in this post-DMCA era, copyright infringement is now considered a federal offense (I'm assuming you live in the US, as I do).
If you're a reasonable person, and like me don't care for this unjust situation, there is a solution. Use software that values your rights and freedoms
-a.d.-
One can only hope the mind control works in one directory only.
-a.d.-
Why was it not as beneficial to Microsoft as he hoped it would be?
-a.d.-
Dunno, but he seems to have a fetish for developers!
-a.d.-
Yes, retail buyers can do that one time. I have a hunch that most owners of XP got the OEM version and don't have that right (how many people are still using 7+ year old desktops?).
People (i.e. you 95-percenters who created this problem) are going to going to buy new PCs (and get Vista) then go out and buy a copy of XP. Pity poor MS, who gets paid twice for one PC! Maybe old Ballmer's a lot brighter than I ever give him credit for.
-a.d.-