How can you not see that suggesting it's only about undefined "real food" and exercise is hugely beneficial to the meat industry (among others)?
Remember the tobacco company motto "Doubt is our product." This is an awful study deliberately created for that purpose.
and incapable of truly deriving the conclusion it suggests. An explanation of a similar study can be found here: https://nutritionfacts.org/vid...
Dietary science isn't as contradictory as it seems. A lot of industry-sponsored science just tries to manufacture doubt in order to make it harder for consumers to be decisive in their dietary choices.
Wouldn't this greatly bias the process (age, gender, ethnicity)? If this were happening in tech, we'd scream bloody murder. I'm sure Australia has different laws than the US.
Just like all technology, it will trickle down and become cheaper. The cost of any such new treatment is likely to be prohibitive but I don't get your attitude.
It's not as if every poor person is in their situation just due to life circumstances. My dad came from Romania to the US with a few dollars to his name but had an excellent education and is now doing very well financially. Other people from no better family circumstances are quite poor and that's often reflected in their choices. I know the system's not totally fair and neither is the environment we're born in. However, we still have some control.
I find it strange that there is a discussion about this issue at all. What people do with their money as long as they aren't hurting others is their business. The government has no right to snoop around and play Big Brother.
Moreover, it gets even more ridiculous due to the sheer hypocrisy of it all. The government is just fine with lotteries or land-based gaming interests (with powerful lobbies) but suddenly when it's online everything changes. They want a piece of the pie but are too stupid to know how and so they try to destroy everything.
The whole thing is completely absurd and incoherent - especially when it comes to poker. Poker is not even gambling, it's a game of skill. It's not chess but the skill element is still undeniable - as players who've won millions of dollars over millions of hands have proven. It could almost be considered a branch of applied mathematics for some forms that are almost solved like limit holdem. Yes, luck plays a big role in any hand but once you get to a reasonable sample size like 100k hands or more it's negligible. I play poker in my spare time and I think it's an interesting challenge that also helps me better understand myself. The variance and multitude of situations will help you become more disciplined, aware when you're not at peak performance and help you deal with failure better. Poker players constantly face failure even when they are ahead but good players don't let it affect them and play the same logical, disciplined game - weighing the odds and understanding their opponents. Online poker is still legal but the thought of the government intruding into one of my hobbies disgusts me.
All poker involves both skill and luck, this is a consequence of a game with unknown and dynamic starting variables. However, this doesn't make it any less a game of skill, it just increases variance. This is partly why poker is so popular... anyone can win on a given day and think he's a poker genius. It's especially true for tournaments where the skill edge of the participants is greatly reduced since the stacksizes are small. there is a fear of busting out and there are so many players changing tables (not giving much time to develop reads). However, over the long term, the same 1,326 hand combinations will be dealt pretty evenly to every player and the difference will be how they play them and the appropriate situations. Sometimes the long-term is only 50K hands and sometimes it's 500K but inevitably, the best player (assuming unbalanced skill levels) will be the biggest winner. The smaller the skill edge, the higher the variance and the larger the required sample. For instance if I'm playing 5NL and beating it for 50bb/100 over 10K hands, it's pretty unlikely that I'm not a winner even though my winrate is probably unsustainable. However, if I were only beating it for 5bb/100, it's still not clear I will be a long term winner. If anyone doubts this, there are countless databases with billions of hands tracking hundreds of thousands of players. There are clearly some VERY long-term winners that have played poker at the highest levels professionally over more hands than one can imagine.
Poker is ultimately gambling only in the sense that you have incomplete information but must still make a decision. However, good players know the rough chances of success for a given action and situation. Sometimes it's just math... I have a nut-flush draw and two overs, he will have TPTK 90% of the time here and I'm a slight favorite to outdraw him so I'm happy to get the money in. Whether you win or lose, you made a +EV decision. Other times it's much more involved and read dependent. For instance, you might see a player 3-bet all his aces better than AT from the BTN against a CO raise deep stacked but calls with Axs etc.. Then, when he 3-bets you and an A flops, you know that he doesn't have it. Thus, he may have KK but you will outplay him by increasing the pressure until he's forced to fold. Many players are predictable in such ways and that's something you definitely don't want to be in poker... especially in online poker where good players will have plenty of statistics on you (VPIP, PFR, 3B, F3B, CB, FCB, TCB, FTCB, SQZ%, AGG%, AF, WTSD%, W$SD%, and much more). To anyone who doubts that poker is a game of skill, pick-up a good book on it like the Mathematics of Poker or watch some high stakes videos by top players. The game is simple at face value but beneath it lies a lot of depth and that's part of the beauty. For me it's a hobby and I treat it like a math puzzle. I usually do range and equity analysis but nothing too brave and it works for me. Better players can push much bigger edges. To call poker gambling is to call meteorology random. In poker, you control the action and most hands don't even go to showdown (only about 25% reach showdown). Most governments have recognized this, as well and it's remarkable to me that this is still debated in the US. Although, it is uninformed debate, much like the debate between creationism and evolution. Poker is an interesting and challenging game with many lessons to offer. Of course, one needs discipline and should play at appropriate stakes... or for some, even play money. In fact, it's even used as a teaching tool by a Harvard professor: http://www.pokerlistings.com/learning-from-the-game-poker-in-academia-22258 My suspicion is that the opposition to poker by some members of government is due to corruption by casino-monopolies, a lack of understanding and a misguided sense of morality. Of course, online poker is still legal in the US, but the fact that it was even attached to this bill is rather ridiculous.
Sorry for rambling!
Comcast charges me a lot for their service, yet when I try to get a return for my money by actually using what they claim to offer - I'm kicked out. This false advertising is appalling and I hope a class action lawsuit will follow. They disgusted me off with their "no criticize" clause and this is the last straw.
These guys do not lock their hardware, offer and suppott open source software and they offer the best deal and quality. I have switched and I am very happy with them.
I'm especially happy about Arthur and the new Qt Designer, we will finally have an accelerated OpenGL? desxtop and all will be smooth due to double buffering.
My only gripe is that the performance is still not great, but that should be expected with debugging code and all.
I guess we can't give it the "slowest toolkit on Linux" award. Now to come up with a new award will be challenging, but I'm sure the GTK+ team hasn't forgotten the Slashdot whiners,
I for one am very pleased with the name change and I strongly feel that it made business sense for Lindows.
The transition will be easy for customers because Lindows's flagship product is already using the new name. Mostly everyone in the Linux community and afar knows that Linspire is just a replacement name for Lindows. The web site designers did a good job of introducing visitors to the new name with animated graphics showing the "dows" being pushed away and many redirects from previous web site names such as lindows.com to linspire.com. I doubt that anybody which would have given Linspire a shot remains confused.
This settlement is also fantastic news for Lindows and it proves to us all that even Microsoft lost faith in their trademark and case. By paying Lindows $20,000,000 dollars and providing them with royalty free licensing for Windows Media, the suit that Microsoft initiated backfired horribly. Some of you may think that $20 million dollars is not that much for Microsoft and losing the trademark in the United States would have cost Microsoft more and you might be right. While it may not be a lot for the richest company in the world, it is a huge sum of money for a company which has yet to become five years old and which was probably not worth more than $20 million previously. That leads to question whether a name which sounds hauntingly like Windows is worth more than the company which sports it and especially at a time when the company has a new name which customers are familiar with.
If your sole goal is to hurt Microsoft quickly, you will be disappointed with this settlement. It would take much more than $20 million to put a dent in Microsoft's profit machine, even two BILLION would not be a world of hurt for Microsoft. You cannot stop Microsoft by giving them meaningless fees, or going after their name because they are the richest company in the world and they will recover from billions in fees in less than a year and with their resources a name change is not as difficult as one might think. Lindows could not drag this on forever, especially since with every day of compounded legal fees they were hurt more than Microsoft was by the lawsuits and even if they won some, there are always so many more countries which Microsoft can challenge them in. Attacking Microsoft in the way mentioned above is like stepping on individual ants in an anthill rather than cutting of their food supply or poisoning their queen. The key is to cut Microsoft's food supply, make a better product than Windows and Office and eventually you will see their margins drop and even if you do not intend to hurt Microsoft it will be an inevitable consequence.
If your goal is to give consumers a better alternative at a better price than Microsoft should really be afraid because the side effect of this will hurt Microsoft more than any fee or name change can. It will put an end to their ridiculous pricing and put them on alert, they will serve their customers with the dilligence they deserve. Microsoft's unhealthy dominance will not last!
With this settlement Lindows can finally compete without being hassled and attacked daily by Microsoft's enormous team of lawyers. In addition to this, Lindows is getting a big cash injection, for a company like Lindows 20 million is definitely not pocket change. This money will only help Lindows grow at an ever faster rate and provide products of much higher quality than Microsoft's all at a lower price. This is Microsoft's real fear and their unwittingly making it come to life. Microsoft will be in a world of hurt when their core business becomes seriously challenged by open source, Linux and brave companies like Lindows.
I can only judge Lindows from the limited information I have, but from what I know I'm certain that Lindows made the right choice and do not see other viable alternatives. Regardless of the situation in the United States courts Lindows would have been at risk from attacks in the rest of the 190+ countries and as we all know Microsoft was busy
I currently think that the Rio player is a much ebtter bang for the buck than the iPod.
* It's smaller and just as stylish
* It's much cheaper
* It supports more formats
* It doesn't lock you down like Apple does and works on mroe platforms well
* It has a longer battery life
* etc.
What exactly is the reason to buy an iPod if you are not into the whole "online music store" thing?
Maybe Japanese people are less obsessed with blowing things up pointlessly and hence prefer better quality entertainment with a solid story and more things to do. They consider video gaming much more of an art, an investment, almost a career. Extremely talented video gamers are close to worshipped, especially in strategy games such as StarCraft. Maybe they also like and want to support their own video game industry.
In addition, "Enter the Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" were abysmal games developed quickly to take advantage of the sucess of the movies their based upon. Of course, these movies are exceptionally popular in the US, and it is sure that rabid fans will buy them because they feature their favourite charachters. However, in Japan these movies are not so popular and without playing on the success of the movies, they really do not appeal to many.
Even American game networks such as GameSpy, GameSpot and many others rated these games poorly. As usual, most games that are spin offs of movies suck, god I still get nightmares about the Survivor game. [http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/survivor-ultimate-editio n/5505p1.html]
Don't be suprised that games which base their success on culturally dependent factors such as how well a movie is received, rather than how good the gameplay is don't do well in other places than where the movie is popular.
Linspire always tells the suer on install that it is best to create a separate account with a password and not run as root. They also offer a user managing dialog on install.
It is your choice to run as root or not and Linspire advises you to do the right thing and make a user.
I really wish Slashdot mistrolls that have heard a lie often would do so much as to check on it before they stupidly repeat it.
If the author submitted it to KDE-Look it is expected that he releaes it under a free license. Just as one would expect that screenshots found on KDE-LOOK and legally be used in a product if no specific license is mentioned.
Unfortuantely, he did not make not fo the license and so Lindows just used it.
This news item is jsut flamebaid and does not deserve a news item.
What worries me is the future problem for Linux that SUN may light up.
SUN and Microsoft now share their IP portfolios and you can bet hefty amount that as Scwartz hinted, they will incorporate Micrrosoft technologies into JDS in order to be as interoperable as possible. This will probably include DRM, Windows Media, and much more.
This added edge of being able to cooperate better than anyone with 90% of the world's x86 desktop computers might make SUN the king of desktop Linux. Other companies will realize that liek SUN, they need a real edge which cannot be easily destroyed and so they will follow SUN's lead and add many proprietary technologies to their distributions. Many of these proprietary extensions will become standard to many people and distributions that do not have them will either need to make up for it in a big way, specialize for a niche or die out.
Linux will grow in marketshare, perhaps to about 15% in just a few short years, but the growth will really be just for Novell, SUN and IBM. The other distributions which remain free will only remain popular within the geek and hardcore userbase because these distributions will not have the money to license expensive technology from Microsoft and other companies in order to comepete on the same level. They will also not have the marketing or credibility to further their product.
I'm worried because in the end it seems clear that Linux distros will be partly open for the core things but much of the rest will be closed.
What do you guys think?
BTW: I think SUN may be tredging legal waters by not mentioning that most of JDS is GPL. I also thinkt hat they are hurting the potential of Linux by detaching themselves from it. Linux will grow much faster if it is marketed than if each distro markets itself only. You have to establish that Linux is sexy before you establish that your Linux distribution is. If people will be ignorant enough to follow these leads and actually think that JDS and SUSE are totally separate operating systems, there will be a lot of confusion and much more bashing than necessary.
It is critical that it be established that Linux is the paltform that JDS, SUSE, Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros etc. is built upon and that this platform is one and the same. Market Linux before your product. As in car commercials, make cars themselves important and sexy, your brand is pretty much irrelevant in that way. People will think, cars are cool, I should get one, hmm...
Also,
Qt 4 sounds amazing, I just hope that they will be able to deliver, that's a hume amount of stuff their promising and none of it is trivial. I'm very happy with the direction Trolltech is taking with Qt 4 and I wish them the best of luck!
I'm also looking forward to Mark Summerfield and Jasmin Blachette's book on Qt 4.0. I've already got their book on 3.2.x and I found it to be pretty good, though still a bit too advanced for me (I don't know C++ well).
Slashdot Mirror
It's "We're taking your privacy, seriously."
How can you not see that suggesting it's only about undefined "real food" and exercise is hugely beneficial to the meat industry (among others)?
Remember the tobacco company motto "Doubt is our product." This is an awful study deliberately created for that purpose.
and incapable of truly deriving the conclusion it suggests. An explanation of a similar study can be found here: https://nutritionfacts.org/vid...
Dietary science isn't as contradictory as it seems. A lot of industry-sponsored science just tries to manufacture doubt in order to make it harder for consumers to be decisive in their dietary choices.
Wouldn't this greatly bias the process (age, gender, ethnicity)? If this were happening in tech, we'd scream bloody murder. I'm sure Australia has different laws than the US.
It wouldn't be justice because those people would have had nothing to do with the massacre in Hiroshima. That logic doesn't follow at all.
Just like all technology, it will trickle down and become cheaper. The cost of any such new treatment is likely to be prohibitive but I don't get your attitude.
It's not as if every poor person is in their situation just due to life circumstances. My dad came from Romania to the US with a few dollars to his name but had an excellent education and is now doing very well financially. Other people from no better family circumstances are quite poor and that's often reflected in their choices. I know the system's not totally fair and neither is the environment we're born in. However, we still have some control.
I find it strange that there is a discussion about this issue at all. What people do with their money as long as they aren't hurting others is their business. The government has no right to snoop around and play Big Brother.
Moreover, it gets even more ridiculous due to the sheer hypocrisy of it all. The government is just fine with lotteries or land-based gaming interests (with powerful lobbies) but suddenly when it's online everything changes. They want a piece of the pie but are too stupid to know how and so they try to destroy everything.
The whole thing is completely absurd and incoherent - especially when it comes to poker. Poker is not even gambling, it's a game of skill. It's not chess but the skill element is still undeniable - as players who've won millions of dollars over millions of hands have proven. It could almost be considered a branch of applied mathematics for some forms that are almost solved like limit holdem. Yes, luck plays a big role in any hand but once you get to a reasonable sample size like 100k hands or more it's negligible. I play poker in my spare time and I think it's an interesting challenge that also helps me better understand myself. The variance and multitude of situations will help you become more disciplined, aware when you're not at peak performance and help you deal with failure better. Poker players constantly face failure even when they are ahead but good players don't let it affect them and play the same logical, disciplined game - weighing the odds and understanding their opponents. Online poker is still legal but the thought of the government intruding into one of my hobbies disgusts me.
All poker involves both skill and luck, this is a consequence of a game with unknown and dynamic starting variables. However, this doesn't make it any less a game of skill, it just increases variance. This is partly why poker is so popular... anyone can win on a given day and think he's a poker genius. It's especially true for tournaments where the skill edge of the participants is greatly reduced since the stacksizes are small. there is a fear of busting out and there are so many players changing tables (not giving much time to develop reads). However, over the long term, the same 1,326 hand combinations will be dealt pretty evenly to every player and the difference will be how they play them and the appropriate situations. Sometimes the long-term is only 50K hands and sometimes it's 500K but inevitably, the best player (assuming unbalanced skill levels) will be the biggest winner. The smaller the skill edge, the higher the variance and the larger the required sample. For instance if I'm playing 5NL and beating it for 50bb/100 over 10K hands, it's pretty unlikely that I'm not a winner even though my winrate is probably unsustainable. However, if I were only beating it for 5bb/100, it's still not clear I will be a long term winner. If anyone doubts this, there are countless databases with billions of hands tracking hundreds of thousands of players. There are clearly some VERY long-term winners that have played poker at the highest levels professionally over more hands than one can imagine. Poker is ultimately gambling only in the sense that you have incomplete information but must still make a decision. However, good players know the rough chances of success for a given action and situation. Sometimes it's just math... I have a nut-flush draw and two overs, he will have TPTK 90% of the time here and I'm a slight favorite to outdraw him so I'm happy to get the money in. Whether you win or lose, you made a +EV decision. Other times it's much more involved and read dependent. For instance, you might see a player 3-bet all his aces better than AT from the BTN against a CO raise deep stacked but calls with Axs etc.. Then, when he 3-bets you and an A flops, you know that he doesn't have it. Thus, he may have KK but you will outplay him by increasing the pressure until he's forced to fold. Many players are predictable in such ways and that's something you definitely don't want to be in poker... especially in online poker where good players will have plenty of statistics on you (VPIP, PFR, 3B, F3B, CB, FCB, TCB, FTCB, SQZ%, AGG%, AF, WTSD%, W$SD%, and much more). To anyone who doubts that poker is a game of skill, pick-up a good book on it like the Mathematics of Poker or watch some high stakes videos by top players. The game is simple at face value but beneath it lies a lot of depth and that's part of the beauty. For me it's a hobby and I treat it like a math puzzle. I usually do range and equity analysis but nothing too brave and it works for me. Better players can push much bigger edges. To call poker gambling is to call meteorology random. In poker, you control the action and most hands don't even go to showdown (only about 25% reach showdown). Most governments have recognized this, as well and it's remarkable to me that this is still debated in the US. Although, it is uninformed debate, much like the debate between creationism and evolution. Poker is an interesting and challenging game with many lessons to offer. Of course, one needs discipline and should play at appropriate stakes... or for some, even play money. In fact, it's even used as a teaching tool by a Harvard professor: http://www.pokerlistings.com/learning-from-the-game-poker-in-academia-22258 My suspicion is that the opposition to poker by some members of government is due to corruption by casino-monopolies, a lack of understanding and a misguided sense of morality. Of course, online poker is still legal in the US, but the fact that it was even attached to this bill is rather ridiculous. Sorry for rambling!
It's not far.
Comcast charges me a lot for their service, yet when I try to get a return for my money by actually using what they claim to offer - I'm kicked out. This false advertising is appalling and I hope a class action lawsuit will follow. They disgusted me off with their "no criticize" clause and this is the last straw.
Can we do without the misleading and sensational headlines please. You might get me to read the story, but my respect for Slashdot will only dwindle.
These guys do not lock their hardware, offer and suppott open source software and they offer the best deal and quality. I have switched and I am very happy with them.
I'm especially happy about Arthur and the new Qt Designer, we will finally have an accelerated OpenGL? desxtop and all will be smooth due to double buffering.
My only gripe is that the performance is still not great, but that should be expected with debugging code and all.
Trolltech is doing great work.
I never knew what it was till now. I always thought they missplled Sam. Thanks to the FTC I now know it is a type of food!
I guess we can't give it the "slowest toolkit on Linux" award. Now to come up with a new award will be challenging, but I'm sure the GTK+ team hasn't forgotten the Slashdot whiners,
I for one am very pleased with the name change and I strongly feel that it made business sense for Lindows.
The transition will be easy for customers because Lindows's flagship product is already using the new name. Mostly everyone in the Linux community and afar knows that Linspire is just a replacement name for Lindows. The web site designers did a good job of introducing visitors to the new name with animated graphics showing the "dows" being pushed away and many redirects from previous web site names such as lindows.com to linspire.com. I doubt that anybody which would have given Linspire a shot remains confused.
This settlement is also fantastic news for Lindows and it proves to us all that even Microsoft lost faith in their trademark and case. By paying Lindows $20,000,000 dollars and providing them with royalty free licensing for Windows Media, the suit that Microsoft initiated backfired horribly. Some of you may think that $20 million dollars is not that much for Microsoft and losing the trademark in the United States would have cost Microsoft more and you might be right. While it may not be a lot for the richest company in the world, it is a huge sum of money for a company which has yet to become five years old and which was probably not worth more than $20 million previously. That leads to question whether a name which sounds hauntingly like Windows is worth more than the company which sports it and especially at a time when the company has a new name which customers are familiar with.
If your sole goal is to hurt Microsoft quickly, you will be disappointed with this settlement. It would take much more than $20 million to put a dent in Microsoft's profit machine, even two BILLION would not be a world of hurt for Microsoft. You cannot stop Microsoft by giving them meaningless fees, or going after their name because they are the richest company in the world and they will recover from billions in fees in less than a year and with their resources a name change is not as difficult as one might think. Lindows could not drag this on forever, especially since with every day of compounded legal fees they were hurt more than Microsoft was by the lawsuits and even if they won some, there are always so many more countries which Microsoft can challenge them in. Attacking Microsoft in the way mentioned above is like stepping on individual ants in an anthill rather than cutting of their food supply or poisoning their queen. The key is to cut Microsoft's food supply, make a better product than Windows and Office and eventually you will see their margins drop and even if you do not intend to hurt Microsoft it will be an inevitable consequence.
If your goal is to give consumers a better alternative at a better price than Microsoft should really be afraid because the side effect of this will hurt Microsoft more than any fee or name change can. It will put an end to their ridiculous pricing and put them on alert, they will serve their customers with the dilligence they deserve. Microsoft's unhealthy dominance will not last!
With this settlement Lindows can finally compete without being hassled and attacked daily by Microsoft's enormous team of lawyers. In addition to this, Lindows is getting a big cash injection, for a company like Lindows 20 million is definitely not pocket change. This money will only help Lindows grow at an ever faster rate and provide products of much higher quality than Microsoft's all at a lower price. This is Microsoft's real fear and their unwittingly making it come to life. Microsoft will be in a world of hurt when their core business becomes seriously challenged by open source, Linux and brave companies like Lindows.
I can only judge Lindows from the limited information I have, but from what I know I'm certain that Lindows made the right choice and do not see other viable alternatives. Regardless of the situation in the United States courts Lindows would have been at risk from attacks in the rest of the 190+ countries and as we all know Microsoft was busy
I currently think that the Rio player is a much ebtter bang for the buck than the iPod. * It's smaller and just as stylish * It's much cheaper * It supports more formats * It doesn't lock you down like Apple does and works on mroe platforms well * It has a longer battery life * etc. What exactly is the reason to buy an iPod if you are not into the whole "online music store" thing?
Maybe Japanese people are less obsessed with blowing things up pointlessly and hence prefer better quality entertainment with a solid story and more things to do. They consider video gaming much more of an art, an investment, almost a career. Extremely talented video gamers are close to worshipped, especially in strategy games such as StarCraft. Maybe they also like and want to support their own video game industry.
o n/5505p1.html]
In addition, "Enter the Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" were abysmal games developed quickly to take advantage of the sucess of the movies their based upon. Of course, these movies are exceptionally popular in the US, and it is sure that rabid fans will buy them because they feature their favourite charachters. However, in Japan these movies are not so popular and without playing on the success of the movies, they really do not appeal to many.
Even American game networks such as GameSpy, GameSpot and many others rated these games poorly. As usual, most games that are spin offs of movies suck, god I still get nightmares about the Survivor game. [http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/survivor-ultimate-editi
Don't be suprised that games which base their success on culturally dependent factors such as how well a movie is received, rather than how good the gameplay is don't do well in other places than where the movie is popular.
No, his last point is a nonissue since release 4.
Linspire always tells the suer on install that it is best to create a separate account with a password and not run as root. They also offer a user managing dialog on install.
It is your choice to run as root or not and Linspire advises you to do the right thing and make a user.
I really wish Slashdot mistrolls that have heard a lie often would do so much as to check on it before they stupidly repeat it.
If the author submitted it to KDE-Look it is expected that he releaes it under a free license. Just as one would expect that screenshots found on KDE-LOOK and legally be used in a product if no specific license is mentioned. Unfortuantely, he did not make not fo the license and so Lindows just used it. This news item is jsut flamebaid and does not deserve a news item.
What worries me is the future problem for Linux that SUN may light up. SUN and Microsoft now share their IP portfolios and you can bet hefty amount that as Scwartz hinted, they will incorporate Micrrosoft technologies into JDS in order to be as interoperable as possible. This will probably include DRM, Windows Media, and much more. This added edge of being able to cooperate better than anyone with 90% of the world's x86 desktop computers might make SUN the king of desktop Linux. Other companies will realize that liek SUN, they need a real edge which cannot be easily destroyed and so they will follow SUN's lead and add many proprietary technologies to their distributions. Many of these proprietary extensions will become standard to many people and distributions that do not have them will either need to make up for it in a big way, specialize for a niche or die out. Linux will grow in marketshare, perhaps to about 15% in just a few short years, but the growth will really be just for Novell, SUN and IBM. The other distributions which remain free will only remain popular within the geek and hardcore userbase because these distributions will not have the money to license expensive technology from Microsoft and other companies in order to comepete on the same level. They will also not have the marketing or credibility to further their product. I'm worried because in the end it seems clear that Linux distros will be partly open for the core things but much of the rest will be closed. What do you guys think? BTW: I think SUN may be tredging legal waters by not mentioning that most of JDS is GPL. I also thinkt hat they are hurting the potential of Linux by detaching themselves from it. Linux will grow much faster if it is marketed than if each distro markets itself only. You have to establish that Linux is sexy before you establish that your Linux distribution is. If people will be ignorant enough to follow these leads and actually think that JDS and SUSE are totally separate operating systems, there will be a lot of confusion and much more bashing than necessary. It is critical that it be established that Linux is the paltform that JDS, SUSE, Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros etc. is built upon and that this platform is one and the same. Market Linux before your product. As in car commercials, make cars themselves important and sexy, your brand is pretty much irrelevant in that way. People will think, cars are cool, I should get one, hmm... Also,
Qt 4 sounds amazing, I just hope that they will be able to deliver, that's a hume amount of stuff their promising and none of it is trivial. I'm very happy with the direction Trolltech is taking with Qt 4 and I wish them the best of luck! I'm also looking forward to Mark Summerfield and Jasmin Blachette's book on Qt 4.0. I've already got their book on 3.2.x and I found it to be pretty good, though still a bit too advanced for me (I don't know C++ well).