In the spirit of the original article linked by our posting, trademarks are the least malicious sort of IP. I'm a law student, and I'm an avid member (as incompatible as those two seem, and as bad as that may sound). There may be much of IP that treads on the toes of innovation, but it's hard to fault a reputable and responsible business for trying to keep others from treading on their toes when by and large they contribute to the community.
A complete denial of any IP rights is like advocating anarchy--very attractive when you disagree with what a democracy decides (and we all know we've seen that recently), but ruinous in the long term. Accepting that there are some bounds of information usage necessary to promote "the progress of Science and useful Arts" isn't sacrilege to us, it's fundamental.
AstroDrabb has made the contention five or so different times in this forum (mostly below this one) that Linux maintains a 2.8% share of the desktop, thoughtfully providing a link to ITfacts, a IT news outlet of dubious reliability in some of its other assertions. Following the link given by IT Facts, the 2.8% figure is actually from a story in Telegraph.co.uk, which is itself citing a new study by the research and marketing firm IDC. A pretty convoluted chain of evidence, to say the least.
If you actually care to read the study on which the whole house of cards rests, which AstroDrabb evidently has not, you would find that it relied in its figures on a survey administered to a geographically isolated population in North America, and does not claim that the 2.8% figure is extensible to the global market; rather, it is provided to demonstrate Linux's proliferation over time in a very circumscribed market. Moreover, the survey relied on self-reports, and admits that its results are not empirically sound; they are intended to provide a "snapshot of Linux's market presence." Finally, the study does not discriminate between various implementations of Linux, nor does it even differentiate well between Linux and UNIX users in its questionaire. The authors concede that the sample "may include some UNIX platforms as well."
In short: The 2.8% figure AstroDrabb has posted over, and over, and over again in this forum is simply incorrect. It relies on a information collecting method that the surveyors conceded is unsound and certainly not globally extensible, and embraces not only mutually incompatible implementations of Linux, but some UNIX users as well.
Well-meaning Slashdotters should check their data more thoroughly before relying on it as naively as AstroDrabb has. Or perhaps he did so because it was simply what he wanted to hear.
There's a lot of contention among surveys. For example, while AstroDrabb's precious study found that 25% of the new servers bought ran Linux, The Register reports that the figure among servers actually in use is 8.6%. (The author of the piece is a NewsForge columnist and a Linux user herself.
My point is simply to remind everyone of Benjamin Disraeli's famous aphorism: "There are three kind of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." You can always find a percentage that makes you right and/or happier, but that doesn't make it true. Linux is a fine OS that is on the grow, but Apple is quite right not to consider it a direct rival to its core business at this stage. All of the percentages in the world aren't going to change that.
Funny that it's so susceptible to extreme cold, when I've seen iPods left in cars in the scorching desert heat of Southern California summers. The temperatures in those cars must get up to 140 F, if those ads warning you to leave the window open for your dog had any basis in fact.
And I still haven't seen any of those much-abused iPods fail to power up again when their owners returned and wanted some tunes for the ride back from the beach.
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In the spirit of the original article linked by our posting, trademarks are the least malicious sort of IP. I'm a law student, and I'm an avid member (as incompatible as those two seem, and as bad as that may sound). There may be much of IP that treads on the toes of innovation, but it's hard to fault a reputable and responsible business for trying to keep others from treading on their toes when by and large they contribute to the community.
A complete denial of any IP rights is like advocating anarchy--very attractive when you disagree with what a democracy decides (and we all know we've seen that recently), but ruinous in the long term. Accepting that there are some bounds of information usage necessary to promote "the progress of Science and useful Arts" isn't sacrilege to us, it's fundamental.
So which would be more desirable... Chicago's 312 or Los Angeles's 213? Is it a draw?
Also, 202 is Washington DC, the nation's fourth largest metropolis (back in the day, at least). You said that 0 was the worst, though--what gives?
AstroDrabb has made the contention five or so different times in this forum (mostly below this one) that Linux maintains a 2.8% share of the desktop, thoughtfully providing a link to ITfacts, a IT news outlet of dubious reliability in some of its other assertions. Following the link given by IT Facts, the 2.8% figure is actually from a story in Telegraph.co.uk, which is itself citing a new study by the research and marketing firm IDC. A pretty convoluted chain of evidence, to say the least.
If you actually care to read the study on which the whole house of cards rests, which AstroDrabb evidently has not, you would find that it relied in its figures on a survey administered to a geographically isolated population in North America, and does not claim that the 2.8% figure is extensible to the global market; rather, it is provided to demonstrate Linux's proliferation over time in a very circumscribed market. Moreover, the survey relied on self-reports, and admits that its results are not empirically sound; they are intended to provide a "snapshot of Linux's market presence." Finally, the study does not discriminate between various implementations of Linux, nor does it even differentiate well between Linux and UNIX users in its questionaire. The authors concede that the sample "may include some UNIX platforms as well."
In short: The 2.8% figure AstroDrabb has posted over, and over, and over again in this forum is simply incorrect. It relies on a information collecting method that the surveyors conceded is unsound and certainly not globally extensible, and embraces not only mutually incompatible implementations of Linux, but some UNIX users as well.
Well-meaning Slashdotters should check their data more thoroughly before relying on it as naively as AstroDrabb has. Or perhaps he did so because it was simply what he wanted to hear.
There's a lot of contention among surveys. For example, while AstroDrabb's precious study found that 25% of the new servers bought ran Linux, The Register reports that the figure among servers actually in use is 8.6%. (The author of the piece is a NewsForge columnist and a Linux user herself.
My point is simply to remind everyone of Benjamin Disraeli's famous aphorism: "There are three kind of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." You can always find a percentage that makes you right and/or happier, but that doesn't make it true. Linux is a fine OS that is on the grow, but Apple is quite right not to consider it a direct rival to its core business at this stage. All of the percentages in the world aren't going to change that.
Funny that it's so susceptible to extreme cold, when I've seen iPods left in cars in the scorching desert heat of Southern California summers. The temperatures in those cars must get up to 140 F, if those ads warning you to leave the window open for your dog had any basis in fact.
And I still haven't seen any of those much-abused iPods fail to power up again when their owners returned and wanted some tunes for the ride back from the beach.