I guess it depends on the underlying motives. A lot of people assume companies are run by completely heartless bastards; but you'll find there are ones out there who will even listen to employee's lower done.
There was actually a mate who ran a company, he found out there was an individual stealing money - he later found out that the individual had a gambling problem; rather than punish the individual he actually went and helped the individual out. That individual still works there.
If there were mitigating circumstances, generally speaking it can be in the best interest for the two parties to come to an arrangement and have what ever is taken, repaid, then taking it to court and most likely getting nothing; if someone is truly repentant, they will pay back without needing to ask.
Oh, come on, stop bullshitting. There is a HUGE difference. Microsoft has BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollar with THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of programmers. What you're doing is comparing a small company to a multinational company. In the grand sceme of things, Apple is small in terms of head count and money generation.
Yes, I am willing to cut them a little slack, just as I'm willing to cut my ISP, which is a small company (struggling against Telecom NZ) to cut them a little slack.
Oh, and for those experiencing problems - stop installing shit like 'enhancers' and 'tweakers' - this goes for Windows and Mac OS X - don't install crap, keep it clean, and voila, reliability.
Don't come in hear waving your common sense around here young man! next you'll be saying that 'normal people' interact with other humans - and on occasions, have sex!
I'm involved in IT, and quite frankly, even I don't care about the details which the geeks here masturbate over. I want to load up my computer, surf the next, check my email, jerk off to some porn then go to bed. I don't want to spend hours/days/months/years of my life, dedicated to getting things to work properly.
For the record, I have a MacBook - yes, I know, boo, boo, Steve Jovs is the anti-Christ, DRM is evil and Stallman is the new massiah. For the rest of us, we don't care, we have a life - we'll keep being social, and you keep playing your computer related jihad going without me (and people like me).
That has the one thing that has really put me of ever running Linux on a laptop (along with the terrible selection of commercial software) - its great on the server, great on the technical workstation but when it comes to the laptop and general purpose computing, it falls apart.
Why would anyone care? When I am on the plane, I take my time, and when I get off the plane, I see no reason to rush to the door - the plane isn't going to leave if I don't get up in time. So I cruise along, take my time. So whilst all the people who got off early have been sitting around like idiots waiting for their bags, I've been taking my time - stress free.
I'm hoping not, since many things behave very oddly on Solaris. Non standard tools and such, but it would be one way to keep it from running on cracked PC's.
What are you smokeing - what ever it is, pass it this way. Non-standard or 'does not conform to the bastardised standards which GNU have embraced and extended'. Case in point, look at the number of nimrods who assume gnu grep and use gnu specific switches for their make scripts.
It isn't Solaris that it is non-standard, it is those who insist on using GNU tools and their extensions to the standard which are the non-standard.
Novell effectively admitted fault that the entire Linux community had infringed on patents, and if you hadn't signed a deal, you could be in trouble. I'd argue that severely hurt Linux and the F/OSS community.
However one action does not fully define a company. Novell has done a great deal to support Linux, but there is no taking away the patent fiasco.
Pardon? you do realise that EVERYONE infringes on EVERYONE elses patents. Almost every damn thing immaginable has been patented. Hell, I'd be surprised if this very post code hasn't been patented by some twit running a nameless patent harvesting company in some hick state.
Simply signing a patent agreement with Microsoft is no more an admission on Novells part than on Microsofts part regarding who is infridging what - and shock bloody horror, it might mean a working silverlight implementation on *NIX.
If you hate Silverlight - whats the alternative? the Linux hating outfit called Adobe who refuses to give Linux desktop the time of day - both in their crap support for Flash, their refusal to either work with wine to improve product support or port their applications to *NIX. The only thing left is JavaFX which is highly unlikely to take off given Sun's rank reputation for producing cruddy IDE's that make developing for their platform as painful as being kicked in the balls with steel cap boots.
Mate, people have stopped laughing, not because Microsoft has changed but because we've become so desensitised to the security issues it no longer brings the same attention it used to; its expected.
If Microsoft do want to correct their security issue, they need to start at the bottom and work their way up; they need to go through their product, they need to document, clean up, remove parts that are security risks, replace parts which are added because they're nice rather than needed. They need to stop the lie that 'computers are easy to use' when in reality, they're complex machines that actually might require a bit of book reading and learning (to the screams of the ignorant out there).
They also start needing to stop re-inventing the wheel and start working in groups; yes, groups are inefficient but like any brain storming, issues are raised which the original author might not have thought about - when you're an organisation all thinking along the same line, you can't adequately scrutinise the specification for every possible scenario - that is why standardisation is desirable. Issues of compatibility and security can be raised, and addressed. Microsoft on the other hand thinks because it has the cash and are a big organisation, it can address all the concerns internally.
I don't know how many people here are willing to hear it, but this is the biggest problem in general with OSS. It tends to be written by academics who may "computer science" experts, but are clueless as to what constitutes usability, as they generally don't have the required relevant experience. (Case in point is Eclipse. Personally I'm curious as to what Borland, who have excelled at usability for decades, are able to do with it with JBuilder 2007.)
It isn't so much the fact they don't understand usability, it is the fact they're unwilling to admit they don't understand it, and an unwillingness to allow another group, normally people who aren't programmers, to take control of developing the front end of the application. Its arrogance, not ignorance, which gets in the way of usability improvements. It isn't a uniquely OSS thing, just look at Microsoft and the debauched operating system that is Windows Vista as one example.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it that in order for a file format to be accepted as an ISO standard there has to be at least a couple of independent working implementations? If Microsoft's OOXML is amended but the only piece of software which implements OOXML doesn't even follow the standard presented to ISO, where does that leave the OOXML's standardization?
Personally, I think they need to go one step further beyond just 'documenting the standard' and demand that the standard and all reliant technologies are open sourced under a BSD/X11 licence for every tom, dick and harry to use in their products - royalty free. If you're not even going to allow that to happen, it should be made a standard, just that simple.
What do I mean by reliant? For example, OOXML and WMF; WMF has to be opensourced, same goes for all the other 'technologies' Microsoft wishes to embed into documents.
The market has spoken. Given that the GIMP does nearly everything that Photoshop does, and costs nothing, but hasn't managed to displace it, then just clone the damn Photoshop UI. It's not a difficult concept.
But doing something remotely practical like that would first require the GIMP developers having to admit they made a mistake; I pointed the mistake out to the developers over 2 years ago and even went so far as to draw mock ups of a new, better gui. I was quickly abused on the irc channel, kicked and then banned. If that is how the GIMP developers react to contributions then they can take their blog, roll it into a tiny roll and cram it.
This is, however, a symptom of a bigger issue; programmers failing to realise that they're programmers and failing to listen to usability people; let the usability experts design the interface - heck, there are tools to allow the separation between the two; then glue them together at the end. Let each team work on the area which they're good at. Admitting your weaknesses doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you an adult who understands what their limitations are.
No, maybe because we're feed up of fanboys jumping out of the bush naked offering us pleasure and a free Ubuntu CD when on our constitutional at nights. You might like Ubuntu but don't feel the need to advertise to us let alone advocate your OS lifestyle choice.
True, you'd think with the hatred of Microsoft at fever pitch people would be running some open source operating system on some open source hardware - feeling all very zen about their whole existence.
As a Microsoft product user, you may feel violated but remember, you wore the provocative, easy it to access, completely revealing OS for the world to gaze into - where as I prefer the Burka of OS's - Solaris; unsexy but no one can access my special bits;-)
Mate, in Aussie, I used to repair peoples computers and constantly used to hear, "oh, yeah, I've got a copy of Windows, I picked it up really cheap in Bali when I was on holiday".
This is bad - lets think about this guys; ludite judges being informed by two companies about the so-called 'value' of the said technology, and apparently this person who as much technical knowledge as my grandfather, is going to decide who and how much is appropriate.
It also deals in hypertheticals as well; the apparent value which is being debated over and whether it truly reflects the market value; what happens if the patent infringment is found very early in the product release, how does one make assumptions on whether the product is a success, and how much can be attributed to the infringed technology and the portion of revenue that should be transferred from the offending part to the patent holder.
I don't want to turn into some sort of morphed troll come rant but could Opera developers firstly realise that yes, us Solaris x86 people do want a dynamicly compiled version. Also, please for the love of pete, fix up the blogger/gmail support, it is pathetic at the moment.
Two big glaring problems which keep me from using it on my machine. I've contacted Opera twice through the forums and twice ignored. Is this the 'superior' replacement to Microsoft? If thats the case, I'd sooner have Microsofts 'customer service'.
What laptop and battery do you have?
I'm not saying power management is great on Linux, I've definitely had problems with sleeping and hibernating, but I'm using Fedora 6 (Fedora 7, which you say you've tried, is still in beta)on my old Dell Insprion with a Pentium M, speed stepping works fine, and I get 4 to 5 hours battery life, depending on what I'm doing (don't even try burning a DVD while on the battery). Compared to Fedora 3, XP seemed to get a little more battery life, but I don't notice a difference anymore.
Never tried Vista, and I'm not going to at home, though at work they've started testing the apps we use for compatibility.
The laptop is a HP dv6209tx - the issue is basically down to this, _PSS symbols aren't being exported which means that the way *NIX tries to manage power, can't be done. This isn't just an issue with HP laptops, its also seen in Toshiba ones as well. The battery, its the standard one included with an HP laptop. With that being said, there is also the lack of MiniDisc/ATRAC support - I don't blame the opensource community for that, who I blame are the *NIX/UNIX vendors who have the resources to pay for the technology who refuse to do so.
Another problem is this; all the atlernatives have terrible power management; for example, I tried Fedora 7, SLED 10 SP1, Solaris Express B70 (upgraded to B71) and all of them fail misserably to actually manage my power and enable me to use my computer off battery for longer than 1 hour.
This is not a troll, I'd love to see more competition but I (along with others) aren't going to bend over backwards and sacrifice functionality for the sake of 'sticking it to the man'.
My understanding was that when they said "no features" it means "no user visible features" - I am sure that since SP1 is based off Windows 2008 Server. There will be features that will be imported over from the server kernel that might help improve performance and reliability for Windows Vista, for example.
Actually, its a free product in Solaris x86/SPARC - as for Windows, ever thought that *maybe* Sun approached Google and will use that as a way to get people to atleast *try* StarOffice 8 - then if they want support and so forth, to pay for it? Its all about getting the Sun name and brand out there, making the name known by non-technical people; making it more accessible rather than it being viewed as the domain of the purely UNIX geeks.
For me, I hope Indiana/Sun hook up with Google and use the Google hype, and integration with Google and Indiana to push it further out there as an alternative to Windows.
Sun *NEVER* bought their rights off SCO - they bought drivers. Sun bought their rights off who ever owned SVR4 20+ years ago - IIRC Novell who bought UNIX Labs. Sun bought the most extensive rights to the code one could possibly have.
The issue in question *SHOULDN'T* be Sun but Microsoft who purchasing IP rights to UNIX for their Services for UNIX. Sun already bought them 20 years ago. The issue at play are sales of IP by SCO to third parties.
I've worked in IT and a number of other 'male dominated jobs' and its interesting to see how those females who are successful actually knuckle down and get on with work - those who sit around and whine about the injustices of the world simply come off as complainers with the "I should get promoted because I'm a....". I've seen it before, females being over looked for a job, then blaming the 'old boys club' when in reality they ignore the fact that 100s of men were looked over for the job as well - are they going to jump up and lay claim because of their hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, car colour or something else stopped them from moving up? Simply expecting to get the job because you happened to get the 'highest qualified' happens to ignore the reality of how people are selected for promotion.
Just as a side note; for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
I mean, I've worked in female dominated jobs, and believe me - females do not make it easy for males to merge themselves into the company culture. Heck, they're not even nice to their own sex! my sister was in a very similar situation - her rule, never work with females. This is a female who can't stand working with females. I think that speaks volumes.
When there are millions of females 'getting on' in male dominated situations, I think those who do complain have no legs to stand on. Like I've said, I've worked in male dominated jobs, and those females who do knuckle down and work - socialise and act like 'one of the boys' actually enjoy themselves.
Don't try to 'feminise' the work place - realise that its rome, and its up to you 'to do as the romans do'
Which would involve making very dangerous assumptions on the installers/developers part over the state of the computer.
Its up to YOU as a user to partition your computer - its not up to Ubuntu to make generalised assumptions on what you want to do with your computer.
I'm sorry, but this is absolutely pathetic; you call yourself 'technically knowledgeable' and can't even follow the most basic of partitioning tools included with the Ubuntu installation - do us all a favour, put that computer in a box, send it back to the manufacturer and purchase a type writer. Obviously you don't have the cranium capacity of being able to do some reading, learning and actually putting your brain into gear.
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I guess it depends on the underlying motives. A lot of people assume companies are run by completely heartless bastards; but you'll find there are ones out there who will even listen to employee's lower done.
There was actually a mate who ran a company, he found out there was an individual stealing money - he later found out that the individual had a gambling problem; rather than punish the individual he actually went and helped the individual out. That individual still works there.
If there were mitigating circumstances, generally speaking it can be in the best interest for the two parties to come to an arrangement and have what ever is taken, repaid, then taking it to court and most likely getting nothing; if someone is truly repentant, they will pay back without needing to ask.
Oh, come on, stop bullshitting. There is a HUGE difference. Microsoft has BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollar with THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of programmers. What you're doing is comparing a small company to a multinational company. In the grand sceme of things, Apple is small in terms of head count and money generation.
Yes, I am willing to cut them a little slack, just as I'm willing to cut my ISP, which is a small company (struggling against Telecom NZ) to cut them a little slack.
Oh, and for those experiencing problems - stop installing shit like 'enhancers' and 'tweakers' - this goes for Windows and Mac OS X - don't install crap, keep it clean, and voila, reliability.
Don't come in hear waving your common sense around here young man! next you'll be saying that 'normal people' interact with other humans - and on occasions, have sex!
I'm involved in IT, and quite frankly, even I don't care about the details which the geeks here masturbate over. I want to load up my computer, surf the next, check my email, jerk off to some porn then go to bed. I don't want to spend hours/days/months/years of my life, dedicated to getting things to work properly.
For the record, I have a MacBook - yes, I know, boo, boo, Steve Jovs is the anti-Christ, DRM is evil and Stallman is the new massiah. For the rest of us, we don't care, we have a life - we'll keep being social, and you keep playing your computer related jihad going without me (and people like me).
That has the one thing that has really put me of ever running Linux on a laptop (along with the terrible selection of commercial software) - its great on the server, great on the technical workstation but when it comes to the laptop and general purpose computing, it falls apart.
Why would anyone care? When I am on the plane, I take my time, and when I get off the plane, I see no reason to rush to the door - the plane isn't going to leave if I don't get up in time. So I cruise along, take my time. So whilst all the people who got off early have been sitting around like idiots waiting for their bags, I've been taking my time - stress free.
Well of course I have no girlfriend - I have a boyfriend!
What are you smokeing - what ever it is, pass it this way. Non-standard or 'does not conform to the bastardised standards which GNU have embraced and extended'. Case in point, look at the number of nimrods who assume gnu grep and use gnu specific switches for their make scripts.
It isn't Solaris that it is non-standard, it is those who insist on using GNU tools and their extensions to the standard which are the non-standard.
Pardon? you do realise that EVERYONE infringes on EVERYONE elses patents. Almost every damn thing immaginable has been patented. Hell, I'd be surprised if this very post code hasn't been patented by some twit running a nameless patent harvesting company in some hick state.
Simply signing a patent agreement with Microsoft is no more an admission on Novells part than on Microsofts part regarding who is infridging what - and shock bloody horror, it might mean a working silverlight implementation on *NIX.
If you hate Silverlight - whats the alternative? the Linux hating outfit called Adobe who refuses to give Linux desktop the time of day - both in their crap support for Flash, their refusal to either work with wine to improve product support or port their applications to *NIX. The only thing left is JavaFX which is highly unlikely to take off given Sun's rank reputation for producing cruddy IDE's that make developing for their platform as painful as being kicked in the balls with steel cap boots.
No longer a laughing stock?
Mate, people have stopped laughing, not because Microsoft has changed but because we've become so desensitised to the security issues it no longer brings the same attention it used to; its expected.
If Microsoft do want to correct their security issue, they need to start at the bottom and work their way up; they need to go through their product, they need to document, clean up, remove parts that are security risks, replace parts which are added because they're nice rather than needed. They need to stop the lie that 'computers are easy to use' when in reality, they're complex machines that actually might require a bit of book reading and learning (to the screams of the ignorant out there).
They also start needing to stop re-inventing the wheel and start working in groups; yes, groups are inefficient but like any brain storming, issues are raised which the original author might not have thought about - when you're an organisation all thinking along the same line, you can't adequately scrutinise the specification for every possible scenario - that is why standardisation is desirable. Issues of compatibility and security can be raised, and addressed. Microsoft on the other hand thinks because it has the cash and are a big organisation, it can address all the concerns internally.
It isn't so much the fact they don't understand usability, it is the fact they're unwilling to admit they don't understand it, and an unwillingness to allow another group, normally people who aren't programmers, to take control of developing the front end of the application. Its arrogance, not ignorance, which gets in the way of usability improvements. It isn't a uniquely OSS thing, just look at Microsoft and the debauched operating system that is Windows Vista as one example.
Personally, I think they need to go one step further beyond just 'documenting the standard' and demand that the standard and all reliant technologies are open sourced under a BSD/X11 licence for every tom, dick and harry to use in their products - royalty free. If you're not even going to allow that to happen, it should be made a standard, just that simple.
What do I mean by reliant? For example, OOXML and WMF; WMF has to be opensourced, same goes for all the other 'technologies' Microsoft wishes to embed into documents.
But doing something remotely practical like that would first require the GIMP developers having to admit they made a mistake; I pointed the mistake out to the developers over 2 years ago and even went so far as to draw mock ups of a new, better gui. I was quickly abused on the irc channel, kicked and then banned. If that is how the GIMP developers react to contributions then they can take their blog, roll it into a tiny roll and cram it.
This is, however, a symptom of a bigger issue; programmers failing to realise that they're programmers and failing to listen to usability people; let the usability experts design the interface - heck, there are tools to allow the separation between the two; then glue them together at the end. Let each team work on the area which they're good at. Admitting your weaknesses doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you an adult who understands what their limitations are.
No, maybe because we're feed up of fanboys jumping out of the bush naked offering us pleasure and a free Ubuntu CD when on our constitutional at nights. You might like Ubuntu but don't feel the need to advertise to us let alone advocate your OS lifestyle choice.
True, you'd think with the hatred of Microsoft at fever pitch people would be running some open source operating system on some open source hardware - feeling all very zen about their whole existence.
;-)
As a Microsoft product user, you may feel violated but remember, you wore the provocative, easy it to access, completely revealing OS for the world to gaze into - where as I prefer the Burka of OS's - Solaris; unsexy but no one can access my special bits
Mate, in Aussie, I used to repair peoples computers and constantly used to hear, "oh, yeah, I've got a copy of Windows, I picked it up really cheap in Bali when I was on holiday".
This is bad - lets think about this guys; ludite judges being informed by two companies about the so-called 'value' of the said technology, and apparently this person who as much technical knowledge as my grandfather, is going to decide who and how much is appropriate.
It also deals in hypertheticals as well; the apparent value which is being debated over and whether it truly reflects the market value; what happens if the patent infringment is found very early in the product release, how does one make assumptions on whether the product is a success, and how much can be attributed to the infringed technology and the portion of revenue that should be transferred from the offending part to the patent holder.
I don't want to turn into some sort of morphed troll come rant but could Opera developers firstly realise that yes, us Solaris x86 people do want a dynamicly compiled version. Also, please for the love of pete, fix up the blogger/gmail support, it is pathetic at the moment.
Two big glaring problems which keep me from using it on my machine. I've contacted Opera twice through the forums and twice ignored. Is this the 'superior' replacement to Microsoft? If thats the case, I'd sooner have Microsofts 'customer service'.
The laptop is a HP dv6209tx - the issue is basically down to this, _PSS symbols aren't being exported which means that the way *NIX tries to manage power, can't be done. This isn't just an issue with HP laptops, its also seen in Toshiba ones as well. The battery, its the standard one included with an HP laptop. With that being said, there is also the lack of MiniDisc/ATRAC support - I don't blame the opensource community for that, who I blame are the *NIX/UNIX vendors who have the resources to pay for the technology who refuse to do so.
Another problem is this; all the atlernatives have terrible power management; for example, I tried Fedora 7, SLED 10 SP1, Solaris Express B70 (upgraded to B71) and all of them fail misserably to actually manage my power and enable me to use my computer off battery for longer than 1 hour.
This is not a troll, I'd love to see more competition but I (along with others) aren't going to bend over backwards and sacrifice functionality for the sake of 'sticking it to the man'.
My understanding was that when they said "no features" it means "no user visible features" - I am sure that since SP1 is based off Windows 2008 Server. There will be features that will be imported over from the server kernel that might help improve performance and reliability for Windows Vista, for example.
Actually, its a free product in Solaris x86/SPARC - as for Windows, ever thought that *maybe* Sun approached Google and will use that as a way to get people to atleast *try* StarOffice 8 - then if they want support and so forth, to pay for it? Its all about getting the Sun name and brand out there, making the name known by non-technical people; making it more accessible rather than it being viewed as the domain of the purely UNIX geeks.
For me, I hope Indiana/Sun hook up with Google and use the Google hype, and integration with Google and Indiana to push it further out there as an alternative to Windows.
Sun *NEVER* bought their rights off SCO - they bought drivers. Sun bought their rights off who ever owned SVR4 20+ years ago - IIRC Novell who bought UNIX Labs. Sun bought the most extensive rights to the code one could possibly have.
The issue in question *SHOULDN'T* be Sun but Microsoft who purchasing IP rights to UNIX for their Services for UNIX. Sun already bought them 20 years ago. The issue at play are sales of IP by SCO to third parties.
I've worked in IT and a number of other 'male dominated jobs' and its interesting to see how those females who are successful actually knuckle down and get on with work - those who sit around and whine about the injustices of the world simply come off as complainers with the "I should get promoted because I'm a....". I've seen it before, females being over looked for a job, then blaming the 'old boys club' when in reality they ignore the fact that 100s of men were looked over for the job as well - are they going to jump up and lay claim because of their hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, car colour or something else stopped them from moving up? Simply expecting to get the job because you happened to get the 'highest qualified' happens to ignore the reality of how people are selected for promotion.
Just as a side note; for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
I mean, I've worked in female dominated jobs, and believe me - females do not make it easy for males to merge themselves into the company culture. Heck, they're not even nice to their own sex! my sister was in a very similar situation - her rule, never work with females. This is a female who can't stand working with females. I think that speaks volumes.
When there are millions of females 'getting on' in male dominated situations, I think those who do complain have no legs to stand on. Like I've said, I've worked in male dominated jobs, and those females who do knuckle down and work - socialise and act like 'one of the boys' actually enjoy themselves.
Don't try to 'feminise' the work place - realise that its rome, and its up to you 'to do as the romans do'
Why go to iceland when there is New Zealand which already has working and commercially viable geothermal generation.
Which would involve making very dangerous assumptions on the installers/developers part over the state of the computer.
Its up to YOU as a user to partition your computer - its not up to Ubuntu to make generalised assumptions on what you want to do with your computer.
I'm sorry, but this is absolutely pathetic; you call yourself 'technically knowledgeable' and can't even follow the most basic of partitioning tools included with the Ubuntu installation - do us all a favour, put that computer in a box, send it back to the manufacturer and purchase a type writer. Obviously you don't have the cranium capacity of being able to do some reading, learning and actually putting your brain into gear.