What you've said is basically in line with what I was saying. However, it's not an issue of ideals vs. reality. It's an issue of using a term for what it means vs. using it improperly. Here's a simple test: ask a developer of a particular build of his software, "If no huge, previously unknown bugs are found in this software, does this build go gold?" If the answer is no, then it's not a release candidate. It's just not.
Vista will not flop. It'll be pre-installed of every new machine come February 2007; the Microsoft Tax ensures a healthy install base. As for business, I think they'll transition mid-2007, at the latest, when we see the first service pack.
Many businesses will not be moving to Vista for a while still. Pre-installation means nothing for businesses. Businesses will keep requestiong XP (or in many cases, Win2000) from their vendor. It's not a big deal to do that, because most hardware vendors expect that businesses don't always like to upgrade right away. But... yeah, an awful lot of businesses are still on Windows 2000, because XP doesn't offer them anything they need, and Vista won't offer them anything either.
Of course, I'm not sure it matters to Microsoft. Whether people buy a copy of Windows XP, Vista, or 2000 with their machine, they still get paid.
Well, you could have lots of changes and fixes after RC1, but if you shouldn't have any changes and bug fixes *planned* for after RC1. When you label a build as a "release candidate", you're saying it's a candidate for release. If there's no possibility that you'll release that version as "final", then it's not a release candidate.
You might expect that you'll find some bugs in the release candidate, and that, if none of them are show-stoppers, you'll patch them after release. However, if there are known bug fixes or changes that must be completed before release, then there is no chance you'll actually release that build. therefore, it isn't a candidate for release, and hence it isn't a "release candidate".
I don't know why people don't understand what the term means. It seems self-explanatory to me. I guess Microsoft just doesn't want to admit that they're still in the beta stage.
I was just pointing out that it's not the same thing. When you steal things or destroy things in the physical world, you're doing a sort of damage that isn't present when you copy software.
That doesn't mean that copying software is necessarily right, but it means that your analogy of tearing up a floor isn't apt.
...but then there are a lot of people like me who have invested heavily in PC hardware (built from commodity/specialized PC parts) who wouldn't dream of scrapping the whole system to change the operating system.
I guess they'll just have to wait for you to be ready to buy a new system, then, huh? The fact is, Apple doesn't really want you to change just the operating system, they want you to buy one of their computers.
Is it just me or does that make it look like Micrsoft is really doing *me* a favor, namely by continuing to update and support their software platform until its end of life?
Really, you get free Windows updates for the life of Windows? Like 95->98->2000->XP->Vista.... All free?
Because you can't just do one, one there, thats where the compatibility issues come in.
Well, I guess it depends on the exact situation, but for most business, you sure can do one here, one there. OSX can mount SMB shares. OSX can authenticate to a AD server. OSX can act as an AD server or a Windows file server. Microsoft Office for Mac is as compatible with Windows Office as different versions of Windows Office are with each other. Lots of companies deal with mixed environments. I've managed a few myself.
I don't think so. I think the key to beating Microsoft is replicating the functions of Windows/Office. Either you get open-source projects that can do things the Microsoft way, or you'll end up holding out for everyone to dump all their Microsoft stuff at the same time, which is a harder sell.
Projects like Wine, Samba, and OpenOffice go a long way, because they open the option of using an alternative. If you can run your Windows apps, read your Office documents, and connect to your Windows servers without actually using Windows, then the only reason you would use Windows is if it's actually a better OS. The only reason to use Office is if it helps you be more productive.
And I guess at that point you don't need to beat Microsoft anymore, because they become just another software vendor. You can choose to use their products or not, depending on their value, but you won't be forced to use them because Microsoft as trapped you.
Unfortunately, Wine doesn't work for every program and OpenOffice doesn't read every document properly. Yet. No offense to the developers in those projects is intended. I believe they're doing a hell of a job considering how difficult MS makes it to interoperate with Windows/Office.
Really? Huh. So when I drag the photocopier out from the school, students can no longer use it. When I pull up a few boards from the gym, I've damaged the floor there, and people can't play basketball anymore. When I use a copy of Windows.... where's the damage to the school again?
AFAIK, the GPL specifies that *if* they distribute a modified Linux kernel, then they must legally distribute the source of the modified kernel under the GPL as well. However, using or modifying the kernel does not require them to distribute the kernel.
I thought they also paid Andrew Morton to be full-time on the linux kernel, and that one of the head Firefox developers also worked at Google. Not that I really know anything about it, but my general impression was that the FOSS community did benefit quite a bit from Google.
I don't know the structure of Google's "contributions" Maybe you never see code submitted by "Google". But aren't there Google employees who are paid to be full-time open-source developers, some of them contributing regularly on major projects?
... or they could just save the money they would have spent on a halfway decent network admin, content filtering, a firewall, a helpdesk staff, and all those notebooks, and instead pay the teachers a decent salary.
I didn't RTFA, partially because it seems to be down. A few sparks and smell of burnt plastic isn't much to worry about, though. It's not like a battery exploding into a firey mess of dangerous chemicals. I once had a cd blow up on me, and that was pretty scary too. I guess there was some flaw in the plastic, because when it spun up, it broke apart into a bunch of pieces and flew apart-- including a fragment that cut through the plastic of the drive casing and hit me in the head. Seriously, it was some wicked stuff.
But it's not the sort of danger to have people panic about.
Well, the point is that the gross majority of consumers' backup needs are exactly the same. They just need a backup system that will allow them to do a bare metal restore of their computer, to completely new hardware if need be, and also allow them to select individual files to restore at a moment's notice. The reason they're "so complicated" is because nobody is selling decent consumer-grade software to do this. And the reason no one is selling software like that is because most consumers don't understand that they need to backup their data at all, which means that they're not willing to spend money on it, which means no businesses are willing to develop it.
Plus, Windows just makes backups too hard. Flat out. It's not abstracted enough from hardware, which means that dumping the same copy of the OS on a new machine won't work. Even if it did work, product activation would keep it from working. And you can't really "restore" programs without restoring the entire OS and all other programs. There are too many different things stored in too many different places.
I would not recommend the article writers idea of using a series of DVDs, since it is more time consuming, requires manual changing of DVDs, and the DVDs have a far shorter shelf life than hard drives. Hard drives are pretty cheap these days and it will quickly become cheaper than buying loads of DVD-Rs anyway.
This is my blanket recommendation for home users is to have a 2 stage backup system. Once a week, backup to an external hard drive. Once every few months (once a year, or whatever), write the contents of that backup to DVD. Store those DVDs someplace safe, preferably not in the same building as the computer you're backing up.
This provides some security against the rare (not so rare as you'd think) possibility of going to restore from your external drive and finding that your backup copy is also corrupt. Also, it gives you an archive of snapshots, so if you want to find the copy of some word document that you had 2 years ago, you have it somewhere.
If the NetBSD project dies, it will be an interesting to watch from a mad scientists/vivisectionist viewpoint.
One of the important things about free/open source software is that it's not tied to an organization. This is very important in the survival of software.
Can open source software really die? Worst case scenario, doesn't it just cease development, and cease to be used? In that case, it's nothing to be sad about, because anyone who wants it can still use it, so if it ceases to be used, that must mean that its users have found something which suites their purposes better?
I know, this was largely my point. I'm just not sure it makes sense to use the language of "death" connected to an open source project. Maybe it just goes into hibernation until someone else finds a use. I doubt that the source code will disappear, even if there ceases to be a single user or developer. Someone will keep a copy around.
Especially because-- tell me if I'm not making sense here... but can't you set most browsers to use a cache of 0MB, keep a history of 0 days, and to not-accept cookies? What's the big deal?
.... and then we have meta-moderation, and maybe we should have moderation of the meta-moderators. Then who polices the meta-meta-moderators?
Now, I agree that it might be useful to have some sort of Karma system in the Wiki that allows you to have some editors be more "trusted" than others. However, karma is more likely to benefit those who write the most popular things, and not necessarily those who write the most true things. In Slashdot, it's about entertainment as much as information, so it's not so much of a problem. However, Wikipedia is supposedly aiming higher than that, and wants the info to be accurate.
I agree with this (and in fact have been advocating it for a while). However, I think the key thing is that you need to keep the Wikipedia pretty much as it is, and then build a new site that's pretty much the same thing, but the "stable" branch. You take each page, run it through some sort of editorial process, and dump it on the new site.
I know it's a bad call from a branding perspective, since the name "wikipedia" has become quite well known. However, it only makes sense because this "stable" branch would, in fact, be a very different project, and wouldn't really be wiki-ish.
DRM isn't any part of the service Apple is offering-- it's a restriction on the service. Calling DRM a "part of the service that Apple is offering" is like calling, "not delivering" part of the service that Pizza Hut offers.* Now, you might still eat at Pizza Hut in spite of the fact that they don't deliver, but if Pizza Hut starts delivering pizzas, nobody is going to complain that Pizza Hut stopped offering the "not delivery" service.
* yes, I know some Pizza Hut locations deliver, but it's the only big pizza chain i can think of that doesn't generally deliver.
The same applies to improtance. ohh yea, the importance flag in outlook is of no use whatsoever because an emergency on your part, doesnt' mean an emergency on mine, unless your a client in which case see above.
Agh! E-mail "priorities". In my experience, anything marked "!" important was absolutely not important at all. I used to work for a company where some people would set that on every single e-mail they sent, no matter the content. I ignored it for a while, and then I set a casual rule for myself that anything with a little red exclamation mark next to it got ignored for 10 minutes minimum. Still, it annoyed me, so I made inbox rules to reverse any priorities (setting e-mails marked "low" to "high" and vice versa).
That was all well and good until my boss walked by and noticed all his e-mails were marked low priority. "Oh... huh, you didn't set them low priority? I just thought you were being considerate to my schedule. Must be some kinda bug!"
Slashdot Mirror
Still, the 99.9% uptime SLA with a good business-level ISP is going to serve you better than a consumer-grade ISP with no SLA whatsoever.
What you've said is basically in line with what I was saying. However, it's not an issue of ideals vs. reality. It's an issue of using a term for what it means vs. using it improperly. Here's a simple test: ask a developer of a particular build of his software, "If no huge, previously unknown bugs are found in this software, does this build go gold?" If the answer is no, then it's not a release candidate. It's just not.
Vista will not flop. It'll be pre-installed of every new machine come February 2007; the Microsoft Tax ensures a healthy install base. As for business, I think they'll transition mid-2007, at the latest, when we see the first service pack.
Many businesses will not be moving to Vista for a while still. Pre-installation means nothing for businesses. Businesses will keep requestiong XP (or in many cases, Win2000) from their vendor. It's not a big deal to do that, because most hardware vendors expect that businesses don't always like to upgrade right away. But... yeah, an awful lot of businesses are still on Windows 2000, because XP doesn't offer them anything they need, and Vista won't offer them anything either.
Of course, I'm not sure it matters to Microsoft. Whether people buy a copy of Windows XP, Vista, or 2000 with their machine, they still get paid.
Well, you could have lots of changes and fixes after RC1, but if you shouldn't have any changes and bug fixes *planned* for after RC1. When you label a build as a "release candidate", you're saying it's a candidate for release. If there's no possibility that you'll release that version as "final", then it's not a release candidate.
You might expect that you'll find some bugs in the release candidate, and that, if none of them are show-stoppers, you'll patch them after release. However, if there are known bug fixes or changes that must be completed before release, then there is no chance you'll actually release that build. therefore, it isn't a candidate for release, and hence it isn't a "release candidate".
I don't know why people don't understand what the term means. It seems self-explanatory to me. I guess Microsoft just doesn't want to admit that they're still in the beta stage.
I was just pointing out that it's not the same thing. When you steal things or destroy things in the physical world, you're doing a sort of damage that isn't present when you copy software.
That doesn't mean that copying software is necessarily right, but it means that your analogy of tearing up a floor isn't apt.
I guess they'll just have to wait for you to be ready to buy a new system, then, huh? The fact is, Apple doesn't really want you to change just the operating system, they want you to buy one of their computers.
Is it just me or does that make it look like Micrsoft is really doing *me* a favor, namely by continuing to update and support their software platform until its end of life?
Really, you get free Windows updates for the life of Windows? Like 95->98->2000->XP->Vista.... All free?
Because you can't just do one, one there, thats where the compatibility issues come in.
Well, I guess it depends on the exact situation, but for most business, you sure can do one here, one there. OSX can mount SMB shares. OSX can authenticate to a AD server. OSX can act as an AD server or a Windows file server. Microsoft Office for Mac is as compatible with Windows Office as different versions of Windows Office are with each other. Lots of companies deal with mixed environments. I've managed a few myself.
The key to beating Microsoft is to unseat Windows
I don't think so. I think the key to beating Microsoft is replicating the functions of Windows/Office. Either you get open-source projects that can do things the Microsoft way, or you'll end up holding out for everyone to dump all their Microsoft stuff at the same time, which is a harder sell.
Projects like Wine, Samba, and OpenOffice go a long way, because they open the option of using an alternative. If you can run your Windows apps, read your Office documents, and connect to your Windows servers without actually using Windows, then the only reason you would use Windows is if it's actually a better OS. The only reason to use Office is if it helps you be more productive.
And I guess at that point you don't need to beat Microsoft anymore, because they become just another software vendor. You can choose to use their products or not, depending on their value, but you won't be forced to use them because Microsoft as trapped you.
Unfortunately, Wine doesn't work for every program and OpenOffice doesn't read every document properly. Yet. No offense to the developers in those projects is intended. I believe they're doing a hell of a job considering how difficult MS makes it to interoperate with Windows/Office.
Really? Huh. So when I drag the photocopier out from the school, students can no longer use it. When I pull up a few boards from the gym, I've damaged the floor there, and people can't play basketball anymore. When I use a copy of Windows.... where's the damage to the school again?
AFAIK, the GPL specifies that *if* they distribute a modified Linux kernel, then they must legally distribute the source of the modified kernel under the GPL as well. However, using or modifying the kernel does not require them to distribute the kernel.
I thought they also paid Andrew Morton to be full-time on the linux kernel, and that one of the head Firefox developers also worked at Google. Not that I really know anything about it, but my general impression was that the FOSS community did benefit quite a bit from Google.
Ah... so you googled it. Clever.
I don't know the structure of Google's "contributions" Maybe you never see code submitted by "Google". But aren't there Google employees who are paid to be full-time open-source developers, some of them contributing regularly on major projects?
How did you find that link?
... or they could just save the money they would have spent on a halfway decent network admin, content filtering, a firewall, a helpdesk staff, and all those notebooks, and instead pay the teachers a decent salary.
I didn't RTFA, partially because it seems to be down. A few sparks and smell of burnt plastic isn't much to worry about, though. It's not like a battery exploding into a firey mess of dangerous chemicals. I once had a cd blow up on me, and that was pretty scary too. I guess there was some flaw in the plastic, because when it spun up, it broke apart into a bunch of pieces and flew apart-- including a fragment that cut through the plastic of the drive casing and hit me in the head. Seriously, it was some wicked stuff.
But it's not the sort of danger to have people panic about.
Well, the point is that the gross majority of consumers' backup needs are exactly the same. They just need a backup system that will allow them to do a bare metal restore of their computer, to completely new hardware if need be, and also allow them to select individual files to restore at a moment's notice. The reason they're "so complicated" is because nobody is selling decent consumer-grade software to do this. And the reason no one is selling software like that is because most consumers don't understand that they need to backup their data at all, which means that they're not willing to spend money on it, which means no businesses are willing to develop it.
Plus, Windows just makes backups too hard. Flat out. It's not abstracted enough from hardware, which means that dumping the same copy of the OS on a new machine won't work. Even if it did work, product activation would keep it from working. And you can't really "restore" programs without restoring the entire OS and all other programs. There are too many different things stored in too many different places.
I would not recommend the article writers idea of using a series of DVDs, since it is more time consuming, requires manual changing of DVDs, and the DVDs have a far shorter shelf life than hard drives. Hard drives are pretty cheap these days and it will quickly become cheaper than buying loads of DVD-Rs anyway.
This is my blanket recommendation for home users is to have a 2 stage backup system. Once a week, backup to an external hard drive. Once every few months (once a year, or whatever), write the contents of that backup to DVD. Store those DVDs someplace safe, preferably not in the same building as the computer you're backing up.
This provides some security against the rare (not so rare as you'd think) possibility of going to restore from your external drive and finding that your backup copy is also corrupt. Also, it gives you an archive of snapshots, so if you want to find the copy of some word document that you had 2 years ago, you have it somewhere.
I couldn't agree more. In my mind, it's not a backup until you have a copy offsite. Even for home backups.
If the NetBSD project dies, it will be an interesting to watch from a mad scientists/vivisectionist viewpoint.
One of the important things about free/open source software is that it's not tied to an organization. This is very important in the survival of software.
Can open source software really die? Worst case scenario, doesn't it just cease development, and cease to be used? In that case, it's nothing to be sad about, because anyone who wants it can still use it, so if it ceases to be used, that must mean that its users have found something which suites their purposes better?
I know, this was largely my point. I'm just not sure it makes sense to use the language of "death" connected to an open source project. Maybe it just goes into hibernation until someone else finds a use. I doubt that the source code will disappear, even if there ceases to be a single user or developer. Someone will keep a copy around.
Especially because-- tell me if I'm not making sense here... but can't you set most browsers to use a cache of 0MB, keep a history of 0 days, and to not-accept cookies? What's the big deal?
.... and then we have meta-moderation, and maybe we should have moderation of the meta-moderators. Then who polices the meta-meta-moderators?
Now, I agree that it might be useful to have some sort of Karma system in the Wiki that allows you to have some editors be more "trusted" than others. However, karma is more likely to benefit those who write the most popular things, and not necessarily those who write the most true things. In Slashdot, it's about entertainment as much as information, so it's not so much of a problem. However, Wikipedia is supposedly aiming higher than that, and wants the info to be accurate.
I agree with this (and in fact have been advocating it for a while). However, I think the key thing is that you need to keep the Wikipedia pretty much as it is, and then build a new site that's pretty much the same thing, but the "stable" branch. You take each page, run it through some sort of editorial process, and dump it on the new site.
I know it's a bad call from a branding perspective, since the name "wikipedia" has become quite well known. However, it only makes sense because this "stable" branch would, in fact, be a very different project, and wouldn't really be wiki-ish.
Is it funnier if I explain that I was a helpdesk tech at the time?
DRM isn't any part of the service Apple is offering-- it's a restriction on the service. Calling DRM a "part of the service that Apple is offering" is like calling, "not delivering" part of the service that Pizza Hut offers.* Now, you might still eat at Pizza Hut in spite of the fact that they don't deliver, but if Pizza Hut starts delivering pizzas, nobody is going to complain that Pizza Hut stopped offering the "not delivery" service.
* yes, I know some Pizza Hut locations deliver, but it's the only big pizza chain i can think of that doesn't generally deliver.
The same applies to improtance. ohh yea, the importance flag in outlook is of no use whatsoever because an emergency on your part, doesnt' mean an emergency on mine, unless your a client in which case see above.
Agh! E-mail "priorities". In my experience, anything marked "!" important was absolutely not important at all. I used to work for a company where some people would set that on every single e-mail they sent, no matter the content. I ignored it for a while, and then I set a casual rule for myself that anything with a little red exclamation mark next to it got ignored for 10 minutes minimum. Still, it annoyed me, so I made inbox rules to reverse any priorities (setting e-mails marked "low" to "high" and vice versa).
That was all well and good until my boss walked by and noticed all his e-mails were marked low priority. "Oh... huh, you didn't set them low priority? I just thought you were being considerate to my schedule. Must be some kinda bug!"