They don't really have a foot in the door, because any time Microsoft even tries to do anything even reasonably associated with open source, the OSS community shits itself and starts with all the Admiral Ackbar "it's a trap" crap. They don't even get a chance.
Last time I called Sky (UK TV service), I got sent to an Indian call centre. My question was quite reasonable: I applied a £20 credit to my account, why hadn't my subscription been deducted yet? The response I got was a quizzical "...you are not receiving the signals?".
I have...NO idea where she got that one.
Luckily I also had to call their sales department, and got a nice Scottish person who efficiently answered my question and didn't talk bollocks.
Many people in the Open Source community believe that open source is the natural and correct state of software -- indeed, that it is equivalent to free speech -- and that closing it is comparable to throwing political dissidents in jail.
I really, really hope that nobody has such a gross lack of proportion.
While I agree with the general sentiment, I did get an odd image from your post of Bluto ranting semi-coherently in National Lampoon's Animal House (e.g. "What's all this lying around shit?!" etc etc).
joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:18) http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/05/13 11216 joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:25) I am now going to disprove this article joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:27) *ahem* joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:52) Microsoft suck massive donkey cocks. I really, really hope someone kicks Steve Ballmer right in the fucking head, preferably with a steel toed boot joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:58:23) Really, I hope someone burns their shitty excuse for a building to the ground. Fucking cunts.
Messages got through OK. Dunno what the problem is, personally.
It's accomplishing a fair amount by blocking some of the main MSN worms. If the messages of existing worms which contain specific phrases are blocked, then that stops in one move those existing worms from spreading in their current form. This is a good thing, if annoying if you have to send a legit URL...
By your reasoning, the web should be filled with people complaining about gnu/linux, Apple and every OS. That's clearly not the case, as not even M$'s mighty astroturf engine can fill the web. People who use gnu/linux, OSX and other alternatives mostly love it. People who make the Vista mistake tend to hate it and there's lots of "give me back my XP" business going on in local shops.
People DO complain about those OSes! A lot of people! It's a little rich to go on like your shit doesn't stink yet claim that all criticism of anything not carrying the name Microsoft is just "astroturfing".
Don't take this as criticism of Linux, by the way; my personal problems with it are my own, they might even be fixed (haven't tried a recent release). Just noting that your arguments SUCK FUCKING SHIT because they're FULL OF LIES and are almost entirely MADE THE FUCK UP.
Ahem. Sorry.
People who want a real upgrade and vendors who want to survive are going to look to gnu/linux, OSX or any other place that works
Kinda funny how they aren't, though. Ubuntu et al have made great strides, but they're still a tiny blip compared even to Vista.
That goes double when there are people like me out there who will tell you that it does not take much to do better
People like you? I'm sure there are many, but just like you they probably haven't got any credibility whatsoever. Look, face it; you're on Slashdot, preaching to the converted about how wonderful Linux is, and EVEN THE CONVERTED THINK YOU'RE A TOOL. You have precisely zero influence on anyone, besides perhaps your wife and kids and the people at your local LUG, much less the open source community at large. Perhaps if you spent more time developing software for the OSS community (which, shock horror, I have done; it's not much, but it's more than you've done) rather than just flinging shit around on Slashdot you'd have a tad more credibility.
I just LOVE how you seem to think you're some kind of free software celebrity. Oh you're well known, sure, but for all the wrong reasons.
XP's expensive, horribly annoying and unstable, single screen UI.
"Single screen UI"? What are you wittering on about? "Unstable"? Have you even used XP? For fucks sake, Mac OS X has been flakier for me than XP.
From what I can tell from your many, many anti-Vista/Microsoft/everything posts, you've never used Vista and you've barely used XP. It's software for christ's sake, you're not really in a position to make a judgement unless you've actually used it. If you'd like me to rattle off a list of all the distros/OSes I've tried for the sake of giving a fair shake, just say the word...
(FWIW, I've used Vista briefly and wasn't too enthralled, but then I didn't really sit down and use it properly. Felt the same way about my Mac to begin with, so hey...could be a grower.)...all the programs and hardware that won't work on Vista and that it's easier to move to gnu/linux...
All the programs and hardware that don't work on Vista...but will also not work under Linux. Well done. *golf clap*
Vista's dead in the water.
Yeah, it's so dead in the water; even by the extremely optimistic IDC survey result that 2.75% of desktops run Linux, Vista is past it in market share. And most likely climbing much faster.
If OSX is so "beloved" to you, why on earth would you want to commit to using Linux instead? Honestly, at least on beige box PCs you have the excuse that your choices are limited to Windows and Linux, but you have a tightly integrated, beautiful looking and perfectly working operating system which you want to chuck for...some reason. What can't you do on OSX than you can on Linux? If you want to tinker, why not grab Bochs, QEMU or even better Parallels Desktop and run Linux in that?
I understand the appeal of tinkering, that's fine, but this just seems silly. I've flirted with Linux a few times on my old PC, but anyone who came anywhere near my 20" iMac with it would get a swift left hook;)
Considering that TPB etc can probably make up for their bandwidth continuously via advertising revenue, whereas Microsoft has to continue paying for bandwidth for you long after you plonked down $200 for Windows XP and no more, isn't that point a little bit moot?
You can be sure it will do what M$ does, not what the user wants and that M$ crank up their message about dirty bad pirates and bittorrent.
Of course it does what Microsoft wants, it's intended for large downloads of their stuff (e.g. updates). Not that I've ever heard Microsoft complain about BitTorrent, or that this has anything whatsoever to do with piracy.
Remember the third E, Extinguish. M$ has not even bothered to embrace and extend this time, they have simply reinvented.
Um...yeah, they have their own swarming P2P implementation. You might as well claim that every single piece of software that fulfils any role previously filled by any other piece of software is simply another "embrace, extend and extinguish".
And again, how could this "extinguish" anything, considering it's intended purely for Microsoft's own downloads, not for the latest camrip of The Simpsons Movie off The Pirate Bay?
When they switch over their "upgrading" software to this they will be shifting the vast cost to ISPs and you and other people who's choice will be Bill's way or the Highway.
Um, yeah, like Debian shifts its vast costs for hosting APT caches and ISO images to mirror sites and ISPs (via BitTorrent).
You've just proved my point about double standards. Well done.
(By the way, "you"? "Bills way or the highway"? I chose the highway, idiot, I'm a Mac user.)
Now that would be hilarious. Watching some Linux fanboys, who previously claimed that Windows' code was insecure and buggy, pissing and moaning about not being able to use Windows' insecure and buggy code in Linux.
How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?
The same way I feel about Canonical's. Or Fedora's. Or Gentoo's. Or Blizzard's. Or Demonoid's. Or iPodNova's. Or the eDonkey network's. Or ThePirateBay's.
It's P2P, remember, the thing everyone here loves? And now there's more of it! Must be a good thing. Although I'm sure if Microsoft started handing out free chocolates and flowers, before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well.
Copyright should not make value judgements about a work's quality or viability, as you seem to be doing. Nor should it only exist for as long as something is popular.
Not saying 50 years isn't too long (it is, 25 years minimum is at least reasonable) but come on.
The underlying technical details simply do not matter.
A "collection of handy links" hides the filesystem being a mess? Wonderful! A typical user doesn't care about a messy filesystem, but WANTS a collection of handy links. What's intuitive about labeling every device with a semi random letter? Simple: "Drive C" is simpler to say and far more efficient than its equivalent under Linux or even Mac. It can be used as a common point of reference whether you're dealing with hardware or software. If you want to guide someone to the Windows folder, it's not in "the root of the filesystem", it's on "drive C". If you want to tinker with CD-ROM drive settings, it isn't "/dev/hdb", it's "D:".
A "layer of abstraction"? Great! The key phrase in your post was "Open a terminal". If a user is confident enough to hunt down the Mac OS X terminal emulator, open it and browse the file system, then sure, the abstraction isn't needed, but for a user who couldn't give a pliant duck about terminals or file systems then that layer of abstraction serves to make things easier. (I'm not sure what you mean by the "Knowing where a file is..." thing, because pretty much all OSX programs use the same file open dialogs which all use the sanitised file system.
And yes, Linux file systems are well documented and structured, but something being documented and structured does not make it good, intuitive or anywhere near newbie-friendly, simply because to a newbie it makes no sense whatsoever. And, even on Ubuntu or other similarly newbie-friendlyish distros, they will at some point have to drop to a command line for some reason and find themselves utterly, totally confused.
What you suggested is precisely what Mac OS X does. There is a distro called Gobo Linux which does that, but it hasn't seen much uptake; Ubuntu would do well to emulate it. Hell, even have an Applications folder as an odd interface to apt, which you can drag and drop applications into from a repository, which is also represented as a folder! Talk about the best of both worlds:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes because as everybody knows, if there's one thing that can stop a multi-billion-dollar corporation in it's tracks, it's a bunch of whiny geeks!
Considering that the OSS community, almost by definition, actually is just a bunch of whiny geeks...
They don't really have a foot in the door, because any time Microsoft even tries to do anything even reasonably associated with open source, the OSS community shits itself and starts with all the Admiral Ackbar "it's a trap" crap. They don't even get a chance.
Last time I called Sky (UK TV service), I got sent to an Indian call centre. My question was quite reasonable: I applied a £20 credit to my account, why hadn't my subscription been deducted yet? The response I got was a quizzical "...you are not receiving the signals?".
I have...NO idea where she got that one.
Luckily I also had to call their sales department, and got a nice Scottish person who efficiently answered my question and didn't talk bollocks.
Many people in the Open Source community believe that open source is the natural and correct state of software -- indeed, that it is equivalent to free speech -- and that closing it is comparable to throwing political dissidents in jail.
I really, really hope that nobody has such a gross lack of proportion.
Remove "market" and you've just summed up the ethos of a pimp.
Somehow, in the event of global thermonuclear war, I don't think anybody'll be wishing there was more fire.
Google includes more featureful equivalent of software package in download pack.
Well I, for one, have just pissed myself in fear.
I thought I was your sockpuppet.
My head hurts. Brain splode now.
While I agree with the general sentiment, I did get an odd image from your post of Bluto ranting semi-coherently in National Lampoon's Animal House (e.g. "What's all this lying around shit?!" etc etc).
Sorry, it just sprang to mind.
maybe you know linux user may be more grateful than you're average Joe Windows Gamers, and will _actually_ pay for the game.
Yeah, that's why Loki went bust.
Me, my Windows 2000 running laptop with a TV-out and my television all disagree with you.
joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:18)3 11216
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/05/1
joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:25)
I am now going to disprove this article
joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:27)
*ahem*
joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:57:52)
Microsoft suck massive donkey cocks. I really, really hope someone kicks Steve Ballmer right in the fucking head, preferably with a steel toed boot
joe | optimism is just another word for false hope says: (18:58:23)
Really, I hope someone burns their shitty excuse for a building to the ground. Fucking cunts.
Messages got through OK. Dunno what the problem is, personally.
It's accomplishing a fair amount by blocking some of the main MSN worms. If the messages of existing worms which contain specific phrases are blocked, then that stops in one move those existing worms from spreading in their current form. This is a good thing, if annoying if you have to send a legit URL...
Sorry guys, you're all wrong. Management buyout by Whiney Mac Fanboy. :P
What, all seven of them?
...all the programs and hardware that won't work on Vista and that it's easier to move to gnu/linux...
Oho, my sides.
By your reasoning, the web should be filled with people complaining about gnu/linux, Apple and every OS. That's clearly not the case, as not even M$'s mighty astroturf engine can fill the web. People who use gnu/linux, OSX and other alternatives mostly love it. People who make the Vista mistake tend to hate it and there's lots of "give me back my XP" business going on in local shops.
People DO complain about those OSes! A lot of people! It's a little rich to go on like your shit doesn't stink yet claim that all criticism of anything not carrying the name Microsoft is just "astroturfing".
You've just said that people who use Vista tend to hate it and here is this thread with some praise for it, which you ever so readily dismiss. Even at this early stage, Windows Vista has around four times the market share of Linux. The non-techie people I've spoken to seem impressed by Vista, and say they want to get it. Not heard much Ubuntu buzz, I must say.
Don't take this as criticism of Linux, by the way; my personal problems with it are my own, they might even be fixed (haven't tried a recent release). Just noting that your arguments SUCK FUCKING SHIT because they're FULL OF LIES and are almost entirely MADE THE FUCK UP.
Ahem. Sorry.
People who want a real upgrade and vendors who want to survive are going to look to gnu/linux, OSX or any other place that works
Kinda funny how they aren't, though. Ubuntu et al have made great strides, but they're still a tiny blip compared even to Vista.
That goes double when there are people like me out there who will tell you that it does not take much to do better
People like you? I'm sure there are many, but just like you they probably haven't got any credibility whatsoever. Look, face it; you're on Slashdot, preaching to the converted about how wonderful Linux is, and EVEN THE CONVERTED THINK YOU'RE A TOOL. You have precisely zero influence on anyone, besides perhaps your wife and kids and the people at your local LUG, much less the open source community at large. Perhaps if you spent more time developing software for the OSS community (which, shock horror, I have done; it's not much, but it's more than you've done) rather than just flinging shit around on Slashdot you'd have a tad more credibility.
I just LOVE how you seem to think you're some kind of free software celebrity. Oh you're well known, sure, but for all the wrong reasons.
XP's expensive, horribly annoying and unstable, single screen UI.
"Single screen UI"? What are you wittering on about? "Unstable"? Have you even used XP? For fucks sake, Mac OS X has been flakier for me than XP.
From what I can tell from your many, many anti-Vista/Microsoft/everything posts, you've never used Vista and you've barely used XP. It's software for christ's sake, you're not really in a position to make a judgement unless you've actually used it. If you'd like me to rattle off a list of all the distros/OSes I've tried for the sake of giving a fair shake, just say the word...
(FWIW, I've used Vista briefly and wasn't too enthralled, but then I didn't really sit down and use it properly. Felt the same way about my Mac to begin with, so hey...could be a grower.)
All the programs and hardware that don't work on Vista...but will also not work under Linux. Well done. *golf clap*
Vista's dead in the water.
Yeah, it's so dead in the water; even by the extremely optimistic IDC survey result that 2.75% of desktops run Linux, Vista is past it in market share. And most likely climbing much faster.
If OSX is so "beloved" to you, why on earth would you want to commit to using Linux instead? Honestly, at least on beige box PCs you have the excuse that your choices are limited to Windows and Linux, but you have a tightly integrated, beautiful looking and perfectly working operating system which you want to chuck for...some reason. What can't you do on OSX than you can on Linux? If you want to tinker, why not grab Bochs, QEMU or even better Parallels Desktop and run Linux in that?
;)
I understand the appeal of tinkering, that's fine, but this just seems silly. I've flirted with Linux a few times on my old PC, but anyone who came anywhere near my 20" iMac with it would get a swift left hook
Considering that TPB etc can probably make up for their bandwidth continuously via advertising revenue, whereas Microsoft has to continue paying for bandwidth for you long after you plonked down $200 for Windows XP and no more, isn't that point a little bit moot?
I was waiting for you to show up, twithead...
You can be sure it will do what M$ does, not what the user wants and that M$ crank up their message about dirty bad pirates and bittorrent.
Of course it does what Microsoft wants, it's intended for large downloads of their stuff (e.g. updates). Not that I've ever heard Microsoft complain about BitTorrent, or that this has anything whatsoever to do with piracy.
Remember the third E, Extinguish. M$ has not even bothered to embrace and extend this time, they have simply reinvented.
Um...yeah, they have their own swarming P2P implementation. You might as well claim that every single piece of software that fulfils any role previously filled by any other piece of software is simply another "embrace, extend and extinguish".
And again, how could this "extinguish" anything, considering it's intended purely for Microsoft's own downloads, not for the latest camrip of The Simpsons Movie off The Pirate Bay?
When they switch over their "upgrading" software to this they will be shifting the vast cost to ISPs and you and other people who's choice will be Bill's way or the Highway.
Um, yeah, like Debian shifts its vast costs for hosting APT caches and ISO images to mirror sites and ISPs (via BitTorrent).
You've just proved my point about double standards. Well done.
(By the way, "you"? "Bills way or the highway"? I chose the highway, idiot, I'm a Mac user.)
Now that would be hilarious. Watching some Linux fanboys, who previously claimed that Windows' code was insecure and buggy, pissing and moaning about not being able to use Windows' insecure and buggy code in Linux.
Cmon, you KNOW that'd be priceless.
How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?
The same way I feel about Canonical's. Or Fedora's. Or Gentoo's. Or Blizzard's. Or Demonoid's. Or iPodNova's. Or the eDonkey network's. Or ThePirateBay's.
It's P2P, remember, the thing everyone here loves? And now there's more of it! Must be a good thing. Although I'm sure if Microsoft started handing out free chocolates and flowers, before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well.
Copyright should not make value judgements about a work's quality or viability, as you seem to be doing. Nor should it only exist for as long as something is popular.
Not saying 50 years isn't too long (it is, 25 years minimum is at least reasonable) but come on.
The underlying technical details simply do not matter.
A "collection of handy links" hides the filesystem being a mess? Wonderful! A typical user doesn't care about a messy filesystem, but WANTS a collection of handy links. What's intuitive about labeling every device with a semi random letter? Simple: "Drive C" is simpler to say and far more efficient than its equivalent under Linux or even Mac. It can be used as a common point of reference whether you're dealing with hardware or software. If you want to guide someone to the Windows folder, it's not in "the root of the filesystem", it's on "drive C". If you want to tinker with CD-ROM drive settings, it isn't "/dev/hdb", it's "D:".
A "layer of abstraction"? Great! The key phrase in your post was "Open a terminal". If a user is confident enough to hunt down the Mac OS X terminal emulator, open it and browse the file system, then sure, the abstraction isn't needed, but for a user who couldn't give a pliant duck about terminals or file systems then that layer of abstraction serves to make things easier. (I'm not sure what you mean by the "Knowing where a file is..." thing, because pretty much all OSX programs use the same file open dialogs which all use the sanitised file system.
And yes, Linux file systems are well documented and structured, but something being documented and structured does not make it good, intuitive or anywhere near newbie-friendly, simply because to a newbie it makes no sense whatsoever. And, even on Ubuntu or other similarly newbie-friendlyish distros, they will at some point have to drop to a command line for some reason and find themselves utterly, totally confused.
What you suggested is precisely what Mac OS X does. There is a distro called Gobo Linux which does that, but it hasn't seen much uptake; Ubuntu would do well to emulate it. Hell, even have an Applications folder as an odd interface to apt, which you can drag and drop applications into from a repository, which is also represented as a folder! Talk about the best of both worlds :)
So grandmama's computer is, in fact, locked down so grandmama cannot touch its configuration, ever.
Lovely.
Haha, it's Twitter, MD. I can't believe you actually just linked Microsoft and weight gain. Honestly...