'88 percent of respondents said that the quality, performance and reliability of Windows was equal to or better than Linux.'
Three years ago, it would have been "respondents said that the quality, performance and reliability of Linux was equal or less than Windows". Think about it; words are important, even when coming from a largely biased source like Yankee Group.
I thought that Cassler's syndrome was very well know since the first years of the '90.
You can probably get to know more on this problem by reading "Planetes", a (moderately) sci-fi manga in 4 volumes, instead of TFA.;-)
I read in an interview once (with RMS) that free software shouldn't be used because of its technical superiority, but simply because it's free. This isn't going to convince too many people to switch over to it any time soon.
The fact that you don't see the reason to appreciate any issue not-related with profit or money doesn't mean that these subjects haven't an impact on other people.
And the fact that the _point_ to make the switch is that the software is free as speech doesn't exclude that it can be also technically superior software.
If all the source code is freely given away for a piece of software, not only can someone just compile that source code, but also give away the compiled binaries for free.
You simply cannot understand the GPL, do you?
To the average user, one of the main benefits of using OSS is the fact that it's free. Not as in speech, but as in beer. Sure, you can make money on services, like all the distro companies, but that's not making money on the software.
True. Also RMS agrees, in saying that: the _side effect_ that software has little or no cost for students or simple citizens is nice; instead in the business world all the services related
Anyway, more than 60% of all the software produced in the world (speaking of commercial sofware) is made ad hoc on a custom basis. In this way, you would be paid for your software, AND also the services related. Any modifications of the software would be paid anyway, and logic says you would be the first one elegible to make those modifications, since the software was written by you in the first place and you already know the code. Note that most of the money that all the small and medium software houses in the world do comes from that.
I admit if you're a bad programmer, your customer may be tempted to change horse, and having the source code would made that easier (but, at least in Europe, many custom programs require to be shipped along with it anyway). So that's what most people that support proprietary solutions fear most: meritocracy, due to their ineptitude or Verrian opulence.
In stallman's day, there was no internet. He could still have his "free speech software" and people would still have to pay for the CDS to come through the mail. Now, software can easily be copied to millions of people.
I just assume you just lived on another planet in the last fifteen years of the Free Software movement, and when Internet arose.
Until his attitudes change, I will not be using in any of my business applications.
Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't.
Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.
I checked some of your previous comments in your user page here on./, and I must sadly conclude that you speak without being well informed about the subject. Sorry, I hope we'll have the possibility to discuss these themes in the future when you'll get to know them better.
Perhaps you should read again the main points of Free Software. I never found anywhere something on the lines of "you must die starving", or "you can't sell your product", or worse "you can't make money from your work".
In fact, I think that it is due to many fanatics and zealots, if the true values of Free Software itself are sometimes distorted and ruined. Probably this is one of the reason why OpenSource came to exist in the first place: not to react to a "proprietary" trend, but the bad advocacy of some bad documented, well, boys. You know how it is when you're fourteen and your playin' Mr. Revolutionary.
Although to someone he may seem too radical, I always found RMS explaining his ideas well and thouroughfully, in a very correct way. "MS evil for trying to make money" certainly doesn't belong to him. If you think that, I'm not even sure you read Stallman essays before speaking.
Please also note that most of the hate and critics to MS that I hear, come from Windows users (that have no idea of what OpenSource or FreeSoftware means, let alone "GNU/Linux", "RMS" or even "Apple"). So it's MS fault that came first, to have allowed it to be like this.
Well, I appreciate you comment although I personally disagree, but... having X in userspace is the whole point of it, really. It means less "critical" code to mantain, and it usually leads to less security flaws. More, I don't think that having X integrated with the OS would necessarily mean a faster X. Also keep in mind that X11 was born for truly different reasons than M$Win. Can you have more than a person using a Windows computer at the same time with a GUI available?
As for keeping in topic, I must say that I'm a lot quick developing in GNU/Linux than in Windows or MacOSX. Probably everything is about habit, when you get right down to it; but speaking as an ex 13yrs-long Windows user, I can say that I got fed up with it for its counter-intuitive (yes, you heard me right) interfaces. I find a console damn simpler (maybe because I started with MSDOS so I ain't afraid of typing), and it doesn't force me to do what M$ wants because I don't understand what I'm doing, I'm forced _to learn_. And someone that has learned _why_ a thing works that way, can use it faster and better the second time. Maybe this is why a lot of Unix users don't like Windows (more than for ethical / political issues): they find themselves limited, like passing from swimming in the sea to swim in a seven ft. depth pool.
Also, on my old PIII 500Mhz 128Mb RAM, a Gnome 2.4 DE was twice as fast than Win98!! I even tried XP once, you know, but it lasted three days or so, even on my new 2.4Ghz 256Mb RAM. Just opening "My computer" made me cringe, and gave me the time to rewatch a Kurosawa's movie from the beginning to the end.
Another thing I found really simplier in GNU/Linux, is installing new software. It gets where you would like it to get (I really like the Unix approach: divide the files by function, not by productor), and a good package manager (I use emerge) does everything you want: download the needed files for you, solves dependencies, and install it automagically.
In Windows, you had to go to the site, download the program, accept fourteen licenses, install it, wait for it to add 5000 keys to the register (and thus making it slow in a couple of days...), and so on.
Unix systems are known to apply the KISS philosophy. But in Windows I had to keep: Media Player for wma, DivX player for DivX, WinAMP to play OGG, Adobe Acrobat to see PDFs... in Linux I just type "mplayer filename" or "xpdf othername" and I'm set up.
Last time I tried to set up a network in Windows, I got those six or seven errors that are cryptic and inexplicable, such as "the host could be disconnected" (when I could ping it?) and "unknown error" (winxp, if you're wondering). To get two computer connected via crossover cable, I had to configure one, disable network for it (it takes >2 minutes, don't ask me why), disable network for the other one, enable it for the first, enable it for the second, disable it for the first, re-enable for the first (dhcp related problem). Okay, there's a good explanation and it's not the Right Way(tm) to do it, I can admit it. But what's up with an "ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1" on the first computer (with the dhcp server) and "dhcpcd eth0" on the other(s)? And it didn't took >2 min per operation, I assure you.
A thing I couldn't really do without, is the Unix "API". "CreateProcess" & friends give me the willies, when you just need a "fork()" and an "exec??()". I found Unix libraries syntax much more clean, less bloated and well built than its M$ counterpart. Do you need a pipe? "man pipe". Do you need a socket? "man socket". As simple as that. Threading? "apropos thread", "man pthread_create".
At the end, Unix was wrote in academics by academics for academics, while M$ products were wrote in corporation by corporates for corporations. The first one is a more "elegant" approach, which is often explained with elegant math formulas, stratified development and clean design. On the other side, it all seem to me a huge hack (except for NT 3.0, wrote by a VMS engineer
But I just hope in Terry Gilliam to find the budget to start Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens"!
Wouldn't that be great?
---
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the
machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said,
3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely
to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly,
absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the
manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be
allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to
treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would
result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very
thin watches.
You know, in Italy the privacy law says you can request to know exactly what sensible infos someone has about you, and ask the complete deletion of them.
I believe it's the same also in USA. So the former owner can request that all his (personal) data is deleted, the only thing that could be held by Blizzard is the auth key itself, and that can in fact be passed to the new owner.
What's more important Microsoft announced that they will integrate the electronic identification into the Windows Software so they can deliver more security and privacy on the internet.
That means that _they_ will have the personal infos of zillions of users? Oh well. Just when I thought that governments put their nose in our affairs a little too much, M$ comes to the rescue.
<whispering> So my infos will be just a secret between Bill & me? How romantìk!
No, it's the other way round: European countries have to go back to statal founding, because we always want to make it the American Way(tm), forgetting that what works in the USA doesn't always work in the Old Continent.
If you say that European countries need a culture of private sponsorship, it means that you haven't lived in Europe long enough. Private founding works for some time, but it will always concentrate where the flow cash come. America follows this profit-tied system, and it's okay, since we (Europeans) counter-balance the thing with some "no profit aimed" research. So everyone goes on with his/her business and we have both research done "for money" and research done because it's "right to do it".
Europe is really far different than USA. We should stop wanting to take them as a model. This doesn't mean that they should take us as a model for them - just that different cultures needs to follow different paradigms, and that an equilibrium is needed between things. I'm not a cold-war nostalgic (the other way round, actually), but I admit it had its purposes.
Beside that, if private founding is present in Europe scenario it's a good thing, just it hasn't to be the ONLY one (here in Italy, we haven't either kind of sponsorship anymore, and so the impact on our economy is huge, because the State stops giving money to research, Italian managers don't invest in it, and capable people escape from the country).
From TFA: "I think I killed over 20 people," he said. "You could see them, through your scope, 40 meters away, get hit by your bullet. Later in the day you thought, wow, I just killed someone. But it's not like they're innocent."
Instead of an artificial leg, they should have given him a new brain.
Yes, call me a troll, or say I'm OT. But I can't stand these abused sentences any more. You killed somebody, for heaven's sake! It's not like YOU are innocent at all. And you thought "wow"?
This is plain FUD. A friend of mine has company here in Italy and they release only under GPL/LGPL. I also worked for them for a couple of months (I'm still a student, so it was on summer only). His monthly income has doubled from the beginning of the last year.
Consider that more than 65% of software development (at least here in Italy) is released on a custom basis, where FOSS adds a value and takes away nothing.
Obviously, if you're a poor programmer, you've all to lose to release under GPL: if your users get fed up with you, then they own the source code of your (their? they paid for it, as you said) programs and they can look forward to another programmer. However, you're assured you can access to further modifications to the source code from third parties (by GPL), so you can re-balance the thing when you want by requesting it and continuing developing it from a still better starting point. We wouldn't have to start from scratch every damn time, we could simply get on doing better software.
Users aren't locked in to you any more, they're free to choose what is the best for them at any moment. Usually this is the base for capitalism.
I fear that people that are so reluctant to adopt FS licenses are just programmers that "rode the wave" in a favourable moment (back when you were a "pioneer", I remember people doing a couple of HTML pages back in 1997 and being paid >4000$), and now they aren't capable of keep up with the market anymore.
Oh Lord if I'm annoyed. These people are stealing our jobs, don't you realize that, people?? To keep their "status of wealth", they're cutting out capable individuals from the field.
To answer to the main question: free software values are far more important. They're something that remains in time, while money come and go. Maybe I'm a little biased: I would prefer doing a "poor" job, unrelated with computer science, and be free to develop software in the evenings for pleasure, than being forced to develop under a non-free license, which is something I find unethical. You can see it how you want, but at least don't spread FUD like "with FS you're starving". It's just the system to make money that has to change, because it's (in my view) plainly wrong until now.
That might actually be the incentive for the companies that still run windows 2000 for stability to switch over. That is their market.
You know, you just made me realize that Microsoft worst enemy, and best competitor, is Microsoft itself.
When you've got >90% of the desktop market share, you have to start baking money out of yourself, maybe by making people purchase upgrades, but you've also a lot of expenses to cover, due to software manteinance costs.
So, maybe, Microsoft losses in the last decade aren't due to GNU/Linux becoming a real alternative (for the "normal" user, mind!) to Windows, but just by them becoming a) overconfident and thus innovating a lot less b) having more expenses in marketing than investing in producing new code and c) being invised to the whole world, since they sometimes deliver low-quality products that aren't well supported as they should (when you've millions of users that all need assistance, and there is only one of you... while in the FOSS community people help other people a lot more easily). Who has phoned to Microsoft a couple of times knows this fact.
Mmmh... perehaps, one day, Microsoft will collapse like a black hole, thing that it resembles quite a lot.
or why Microsoft is forcing developers to abandon their code and start over again
If they were using open standards for the transition, I think they would get a lot less complains from the FOSS community. As for now, their efforts to force the programmers to switch to their new platforms / languages / etc... sounds like what it probably is: a way to lock in customers, programmers and end user to their own product, thus eliminating anyone that may rise to challenge them in a liberistic and capitalistic way, inside a market that's nowadays almost monopolistic (we're talking about desktops here).
I'm really glad of the recent ruling that forced microsoft to undisclose the smb protocol specifications. I hope it'll be just the first of a long list.
MS can't win on slashdot.
At least here, since as far as the outside world is concerned, they always have a ace up the sleeve... a dishonest ace.
Actually, I had explicitly to sign a separated piece of paper to prevent my (italian) bank to share my info with 3rd parties. And it was me that had to request it... so you're right: they can't unless you say to them they're free to do so, but you do such just by opening a new account (at least, here in italy it's part of the contract, heh), and if you don't pay attention they surely won't tell you... i think it was this the guy above wanted to say.
We do [...] have an open-source client running--just for competitive analysis. As an IT organization, I have no skills and no ability and no purchasing of those products.
So he's an IT manager with no skills in the IT industry other than MS-related? Someone could call this "to be blind and overconfident".
Me, I call him a lucky guy that is probably paid >= 4000€ a month to say to the world "I don't know a thing about IT, but with MS my income has doubled". Heck, being on Bill's bill, McBride can say that too!
For God's sake, how can a language be too bug prone? It's just scriptkiddies playing at Java nowadays, that's the problem!
The only problem I found in C++ is with the "export" keyword, and it's pretty useless anyway (you can live without with little or no cost). Else, it can be either a problem with the stl, the compiler, or your program. I bet 1000$ on your program 9 times out of 10.
And yes, I'm a NEW C++ programmer, so today we have as many as (++yesterday), and my university trains ~200 new C++ (not C#) programmers each year.
And, e.g., as for Java taking over etc etc, it's about six-seven yrs they say so. C++ hasn't nothing to take over: it leads the list with C. Okay, a lot of other languages are still pretty used, like COBOL, but new programs tends still to be mostly written in C/C++.
Re:Scary (saracasm)
on
A .Net CPU
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Although I agree with you that it isn't the case to troll everything that has "microsoft" into it, I think that an high income isn't the first requirement for someone that foreseek freedom of choice and information (why develop Free Software, else?).
The fact that 85% of the computer world use MS systems doesn't mean that it's the best thing to do. Still, things are (really) slowly changing. Maybe I'll live the day when the market share between MS and *nixes 'll be 50%-50%... and that would mean real competition, not just "smithe the infidel with teh big hammer" as almost everyone on both sides tries to do (often don't understanding really what's right to "fight" for).
Back in the good days, you actually had to know a lot in order to achieve something good with a computer. You had had to have a pretty good idea about how to traverse directories from the command line, for example, and to learn to use msdos commands; editing files by hand was everyday work (do you remember that damn config.sys?), and so on.
Now people click on a fancy icon that downloads an album from the internet and burn it on cd in thirty seconds, play doom3 and hl2 all the time, and thinks that "they know all there is to know, since they use internet, which is the icon on the desktop with the blue 'e'". Oh, Lord.
I teach to some children(aged between 10-16) how to use a pc, and I do it only with gnu/linux systems (usually eduKnoppix). They usually grow _asking_ questions, both to themselves and to others, and they demonstrate also pretty good knowledge of the underlying system. For a 12yrs old child, understanding what 'kernel' means is something you aren't accustomed to.
This not because they're geniuses (or, hell, I've an hit rate of more than 80% finding them among the youngsters). It's just because the different model and ideology that's behind the thing.
While I am at it, I've to say that the Good Games that Made You Think (tm) aren't there anymore (thanks LucasArts to have killed S&M2, btw...) because they have no market. Nobody seems to want to think, whatever is his age (we're talking about kids here, but what about older people? Do they stop learning?).
So a lot of the computer world can either make you really lazy (since they do all the work for you, and the thinking too!) or boost your knowledge (leaving the thinking to you, and just doing the hard job). It's just how you use them.
----
Ignorant people are people easier to control. Governments know it well...
Slashdot Mirror
'88 percent of respondents said that the quality, performance and reliability of Windows was equal to or better than Linux.'
Three years ago, it would have been "respondents said that the quality, performance and reliability of Linux was equal or less than Windows". Think about it; words are important, even when coming from a largely biased source like Yankee Group.
Where are the news? We already knew that Microsoft doesn't like competition.
(i'm just kidding, not trolling. laugh.)
I find this pletora of 1st April jokes really annoying: real articles risk to be ignored.
By all means: THIS IS NOT A JOKE. These news are true.
Too bad the timing... maybe it would have been better to wait a day or two before posting.
I thought that Cassler's syndrome was very well know since the first years of the '90. ;-)
You can probably get to know more on this problem by reading "Planetes", a (moderately) sci-fi manga in 4 volumes, instead of TFA.
I didn't know about it, thanks. Obviously it's a totally different approach than the X11 one, and it's limited to 2 people, but still, interesting.
I read in an interview once (with RMS) that free software shouldn't be used because of its technical superiority, but simply because it's free. This isn't going to convince too many people to switch over to it any time soon.
The fact that you don't see the reason to appreciate any issue not-related with profit or money doesn't mean that these subjects haven't an impact on other people.
And the fact that the _point_ to make the switch is that the software is free as speech doesn't exclude that it can be also technically superior software.
If all the source code is freely given away for a piece of software, not only can someone just compile that source code, but also give away the compiled binaries for free.
You simply cannot understand the GPL, do you?
To the average user, one of the main benefits of using OSS is the fact that it's free. Not as in speech, but as in beer. Sure, you can make money on services, like all the distro companies, but that's not making money on the software.
True. Also RMS agrees, in saying that: the _side effect_ that software has little or no cost for students or simple citizens is nice; instead in the business world all the services related
Anyway, more than 60% of all the software produced in the world (speaking of commercial sofware) is made ad hoc on a custom basis. In this way, you would be paid for your software, AND also the services related. Any modifications of the software would be paid anyway, and logic says you would be the first one elegible to make those modifications, since the software was written by you in the first place and you already know the code. Note that most of the money that all the small and medium software houses in the world do comes from that.
I admit if you're a bad programmer, your customer may be tempted to change horse, and having the source code would made that easier (but, at least in Europe, many custom programs require to be shipped along with it anyway). So that's what most people that support proprietary solutions fear most: meritocracy, due to their ineptitude or Verrian opulence.
In stallman's day, there was no internet. He could still have his "free speech software" and people would still have to pay for the CDS to come through the mail. Now, software can easily be copied to millions of people.
I just assume you just lived on another planet in the last fifteen years of the Free Software movement, and when Internet arose.
Until his attitudes change, I will not be using in any of my business applications.
Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.
I checked some of your previous comments in your user page here on ./, and I must sadly conclude that you speak without being well informed about the subject. Sorry, I hope we'll have the possibility to discuss these themes in the future when you'll get to know them better.
RMS isn't saying anything like that.
Perhaps you should read again the main points of Free Software. I never found anywhere something on the lines of "you must die starving", or "you can't sell your product", or worse "you can't make money from your work".
In fact, I think that it is due to many fanatics and zealots, if the true values of Free Software itself are sometimes distorted and ruined. Probably this is one of the reason why OpenSource came to exist in the first place: not to react to a "proprietary" trend, but the bad advocacy of some bad documented, well, boys. You know how it is when you're fourteen and your playin' Mr. Revolutionary.
Although to someone he may seem too radical, I always found RMS explaining his ideas well and thouroughfully, in a very correct way. "MS evil for trying to make money" certainly doesn't belong to him. If you think that, I'm not even sure you read Stallman essays before speaking.
Please also note that most of the hate and critics to MS that I hear, come from Windows users (that have no idea of what OpenSource or FreeSoftware means, let alone "GNU/Linux", "RMS" or even "Apple"). So it's MS fault that came first, to have allowed it to be like this.
Well, I appreciate you comment although I personally disagree, but... having X in userspace is the whole point of it, really. It means less "critical" code to mantain, and it usually leads to less security flaws. More, I don't think that having X integrated with the OS would necessarily mean a faster X. Also keep in mind that X11 was born for truly different reasons than M$Win. Can you have more than a person using a Windows computer at the same time with a GUI available?
As for keeping in topic, I must say that I'm a lot quick developing in GNU/Linux than in Windows or MacOSX. Probably everything is about habit, when you get right down to it; but speaking as an ex 13yrs-long Windows user, I can say that I got fed up with it for its counter-intuitive (yes, you heard me right) interfaces. I find a console damn simpler (maybe because I started with MSDOS so I ain't afraid of typing), and it doesn't force me to do what M$ wants because I don't understand what I'm doing, I'm forced _to learn_. And someone that has learned _why_ a thing works that way, can use it faster and better the second time. Maybe this is why a lot of Unix users don't like Windows (more than for ethical / political issues): they find themselves limited, like passing from swimming in the sea to swim in a seven ft. depth pool.
Also, on my old PIII 500Mhz 128Mb RAM, a Gnome 2.4 DE was twice as fast than Win98!! I even tried XP once, you know, but it lasted three days or so, even on my new 2.4Ghz 256Mb RAM. Just opening "My computer" made me cringe, and gave me the time to rewatch a Kurosawa's movie from the beginning to the end.
Another thing I found really simplier in GNU/Linux, is installing new software. It gets where you would like it to get (I really like the Unix approach: divide the files by function, not by productor), and a good package manager (I use emerge) does everything you want: download the needed files for you, solves dependencies, and install it automagically.
In Windows, you had to go to the site, download the program, accept fourteen licenses, install it, wait for it to add 5000 keys to the register (and thus making it slow in a couple of days...), and so on.
Unix systems are known to apply the KISS philosophy. But in Windows I had to keep: Media Player for wma, DivX player for DivX, WinAMP to play OGG, Adobe Acrobat to see PDFs... in Linux I just type "mplayer filename" or "xpdf othername" and I'm set up.
Last time I tried to set up a network in Windows, I got those six or seven errors that are cryptic and inexplicable, such as "the host could be disconnected" (when I could ping it?) and "unknown error" (winxp, if you're wondering). To get two computer connected via crossover cable, I had to configure one, disable network for it (it takes >2 minutes, don't ask me why), disable network for the other one, enable it for the first, enable it for the second, disable it for the first, re-enable for the first (dhcp related problem). Okay, there's a good explanation and it's not the Right Way(tm) to do it, I can admit it. But what's up with an "ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1" on the first computer (with the dhcp server) and "dhcpcd eth0" on the other(s)? And it didn't took >2 min per operation, I assure you.
A thing I couldn't really do without, is the Unix "API". "CreateProcess" & friends give me the willies, when you just need a "fork()" and an "exec??()". I found Unix libraries syntax much more clean, less bloated and well built than its M$ counterpart. Do you need a pipe? "man pipe". Do you need a socket? "man socket". As simple as that. Threading? "apropos thread", "man pthread_create".
At the end, Unix was wrote in academics by academics for academics, while M$ products were wrote in corporation by corporates for corporations. The first one is a more "elegant" approach, which is often explained with elegant math formulas, stratified development and clean design. On the other side, it all seem to me a huge hack (except for NT 3.0, wrote by a VMS engineer
Cool!
But I just hope in Terry Gilliam to find the budget to start Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens"!
Wouldn't that be great?
---
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
You know, in Italy the privacy law says you can request to know exactly what sensible infos someone has about you, and ask the complete deletion of them.
I believe it's the same also in USA. So the former owner can request that all his (personal) data is deleted, the only thing that could be held by Blizzard is the auth key itself, and that can in fact be passed to the new owner.
The good thing is, they cannot refuse.
What's more important Microsoft announced that they will integrate the electronic identification into the Windows Software so they can deliver more security and privacy on the internet.
That means that _they_ will have the personal infos of zillions of users? Oh well. Just when I thought that governments put their nose in our affairs a little too much, M$ comes to the rescue.
<whispering> So my infos will be just a secret between Bill & me? How romantìk!
No, it's the other way round: European countries have to go back to statal founding, because we always want to make it the American Way(tm), forgetting that what works in the USA doesn't always work in the Old Continent.
If you say that European countries need a culture of private sponsorship, it means that you haven't lived in Europe long enough. Private founding works for some time, but it will always concentrate where the flow cash come.
America follows this profit-tied system, and it's okay, since we (Europeans) counter-balance the thing with some "no profit aimed" research. So everyone goes on with his/her business and we have both research done "for money" and research done because it's "right to do it".
Europe is really far different than USA. We should stop wanting to take them as a model. This doesn't mean that they should take us as a model for them - just that different cultures needs to follow different paradigms, and that an equilibrium is needed between things. I'm not a cold-war nostalgic (the other way round, actually), but I admit it had its purposes.
Beside that, if private founding is present in Europe scenario it's a good thing, just it hasn't to be the ONLY one (here in Italy, we haven't either kind of sponsorship anymore, and so the impact on our economy is huge, because the State stops giving money to research, Italian managers don't invest in it, and capable people escape from the country).
Would you bet?
From TFA: "I think I killed over 20 people," he said. "You could see them, through your scope, 40 meters away, get hit by your bullet. Later in the day you thought, wow, I just killed someone. But it's not like they're innocent."
Instead of an artificial leg, they should have given him a new brain.
Yes, call me a troll, or say I'm OT. But I can't stand these abused sentences any more. You killed somebody, for heaven's sake! It's not like YOU are innocent at all. And you thought "wow"?
World isn't UT2004, ya' know.
If you can't express such a message without being so impolite, then probably you aren't worth the reading.
Consider that more than 65% of software development (at least here in Italy) is released on a custom basis, where FOSS adds a value and takes away nothing.
Obviously, if you're a poor programmer, you've all to lose to release under GPL: if your users get fed up with you, then they own the source code of your (their? they paid for it, as you said) programs and they can look forward to another programmer. However, you're assured you can access to further modifications to the source code from third parties (by GPL), so you can re-balance the thing when you want by requesting it and continuing developing it from a still better starting point. We wouldn't have to start from scratch every damn time, we could simply get on doing better software.
Users aren't locked in to you any more, they're free to choose what is the best for them at any moment. Usually this is the base for capitalism.
I fear that people that are so reluctant to adopt FS licenses are just programmers that "rode the wave" in a favourable moment (back when you were a "pioneer", I remember people doing a couple of HTML pages back in 1997 and being paid >4000$), and now they aren't capable of keep up with the market anymore.
Oh Lord if I'm annoyed. These people are stealing our jobs, don't you realize that, people?? To keep their "status of wealth", they're cutting out capable individuals from the field.
To answer to the main question: free software values are far more important. They're something that remains in time, while money come and go. Maybe I'm a little biased: I would prefer doing a "poor" job, unrelated with computer science, and be free to develop software in the evenings for pleasure, than being forced to develop under a non-free license, which is something I find unethical.
You can see it how you want, but at least don't spread FUD like "with FS you're starving". It's just the system to make money that has to change, because it's (in my view) plainly wrong until now.
Sorry if my english wasn't too understandable.
That might actually be the incentive for the companies that still run windows 2000 for stability to switch over. That is their market.
You know, you just made me realize that Microsoft worst enemy, and best competitor, is Microsoft itself.
When you've got >90% of the desktop market share, you have to start baking money out of yourself, maybe by making people purchase upgrades, but you've also a lot of expenses to cover, due to software manteinance costs.
So, maybe, Microsoft losses in the last decade aren't due to GNU/Linux becoming a real alternative (for the "normal" user, mind!) to Windows, but just by them becoming
a) overconfident and thus innovating a lot less
b) having more expenses in marketing than investing in producing new code and
c) being invised to the whole world, since they sometimes deliver low-quality products that aren't well supported as they should (when you've millions of users that all need assistance, and there is only one of you... while in the FOSS community people help other people a lot more easily). Who has phoned to Microsoft a couple of times knows this fact.
Mmmh... perehaps, one day, Microsoft will collapse like a black hole, thing that it resembles quite a lot.
or why Microsoft is forcing developers to abandon their code and start over again
If they were using open standards for the transition, I think they would get a lot less complains from the FOSS community. As for now, their efforts to force the programmers to switch to their new platforms / languages / etc... sounds like what it probably is: a way to lock in customers, programmers and end user to their own product, thus eliminating anyone that may rise to challenge them in a liberistic and capitalistic way, inside a market that's nowadays almost monopolistic (we're talking about desktops here).
I'm really glad of the recent ruling that forced microsoft to undisclose the smb protocol specifications. I hope it'll be just the first of a long list.
MS can't win on slashdot.
At least here, since as far as the outside world is concerned, they always have a ace up the sleeve... a dishonest ace.
All of your L33n00x are belong to us.
Actually, I had explicitly to sign a separated piece of paper to prevent my (italian) bank to share my info with 3rd parties. And it was me that had to request it... so you're right: they can't unless you say to them they're free to do so, but you do such just by opening a new account (at least, here in italy it's part of the contract, heh), and if you don't pay attention they surely won't tell you... i think it was this the guy above wanted to say.
We do [...] have an open-source client running--just for competitive analysis. As an IT organization, I have no skills and no ability and no purchasing of those products.
So he's an IT manager with no skills in the IT industry other than MS-related? Someone could call this "to be blind and overconfident".
Me, I call him a lucky guy that is probably paid >= 4000€ a month to say to the world "I don't know a thing about IT, but with MS my income has doubled". Heck, being on Bill's bill, McBride can say that too!
For God's sake, how can a language be too bug prone? It's just scriptkiddies playing at Java nowadays, that's the problem!
The only problem I found in C++ is with the "export" keyword, and it's pretty useless anyway (you can live without with little or no cost). Else, it can be either a problem with the stl, the compiler, or your program. I bet 1000$ on your program 9 times out of 10.
And yes, I'm a NEW C++ programmer, so today we have as many as (++yesterday), and my university trains ~200 new C++ (not C#) programmers each year.
And, e.g., as for Java taking over etc etc, it's about six-seven yrs they say so. C++ hasn't nothing to take over: it leads the list with C. Okay, a lot of other languages are still pretty used, like COBOL, but new programs tends still to be mostly written in C/C++.
Although I agree with you that it isn't the case to troll everything that has "microsoft" into it, I think that an high income isn't the first requirement for someone that foreseek freedom of choice and information (why develop Free Software, else?).
The fact that 85% of the computer world use MS systems doesn't mean that it's the best thing to do. Still, things are (really) slowly changing. Maybe I'll live the day when the market share between MS and *nixes 'll be 50%-50%... and that would mean real competition, not just "smithe the infidel with teh big hammer" as almost everyone on both sides tries to do (often don't understanding really what's right to "fight" for).
Back in the good days, you actually had to know a lot in order to achieve something good with a computer. You had had to have a pretty good idea about how to traverse directories from the command line, for example, and to learn to use msdos commands; editing files by hand was everyday work (do you remember that damn config.sys?), and so on.
Now people click on a fancy icon that downloads an album from the internet and burn it on cd in thirty seconds, play doom3 and hl2 all the time, and thinks that "they know all there is to know, since they use internet, which is the icon on the desktop with the blue 'e'". Oh, Lord.
I teach to some children(aged between 10-16) how to use a pc, and I do it only with gnu/linux systems (usually eduKnoppix). They usually grow _asking_ questions, both to themselves and to others, and they demonstrate also pretty good knowledge of the underlying system. For a 12yrs old child, understanding what 'kernel' means is something you aren't accustomed to.
This not because they're geniuses (or, hell, I've an hit rate of more than 80% finding them among the youngsters). It's just because the different model and ideology that's behind the thing.
While I am at it, I've to say that the Good Games that Made You Think (tm) aren't there anymore (thanks LucasArts to have killed S&M2, btw...) because they have no market. Nobody seems to want to think, whatever is his age (we're talking about kids here, but what about older people? Do they stop learning?).
So a lot of the computer world can either make you really lazy (since they do all the work for you, and the thinking too!) or boost your knowledge (leaving the thinking to you, and just doing the hard job). It's just how you use them.
----Ignorant people are people easier to control. Governments know it well...