You seem to go from the assumption that habits are unbreakable.
Let me assure you they are not.
There are two ways to gently force (ignorant) users to Linux from windows. One is to change windows by using open source or cross platform applications that live on both Windows and Linux so they can start to get used to it before actually giving them a Linux workstation.
The second is creating a desktop setup under Linux that mimics a windows setup so closely that they hardly see the difference. Change the window border, the background, the theme on firefox, the way the system reacts to dblclicks on windowbars etc... etc... Make it do what Windows does. (Without all the blue screens and security risks)
I prefer the second method, and have had good success with is with family and friends (who are my sandbox)
About your remarks regarding formatting issues in firefox I have the following to say.
If a user of mine complains about a website that doesn't show the way it's supposed to I recommend he contacts the webmaster to report the problem. If a website only shows under IE it has a serious problem.
"The issue with really fast systems is really bad and bloated software is allowed."
To really get performance, run 20th century software on 21st century hardware. Now that's a performant system.
"Should I go fucking die just because I want some credit for doing something better than my opposition?"
No, but the man who patented the idea first is not always the best man for the job to actually develop the product.
And should open source "go fucking die" because they are trying to improve their products?
By the way... Any idea if Jules Verne has a patent on the idea of going to the moon?
I wonder how many programmers have been inspired by star trek episodes... Should speech recognition software pay license fees to the StarTrek franchise because they thought of it first?
I'm really curious what you might think of that...
P.S. I make a living selling ideas too. I call it consulting and I get paid by the hour, not per idea.
"Or maybe you didn't realize that every published patent includes detailed information on how to reproduce the invention"
Have you ever actually READ one of these pattents? Most of them don't explain ANYTHING about how the idee is acheived, it only explains the idea itself.
Apparently, MS successfully patented the idea of developing an application that sort pictures by date!! I don't know about you, but I have been sorting my pictures by date for 15 years now.
Sure, nowadays you can get the actual date of a picture by reading file attributes or a variate of tags, but is that worth a patent? Scanning a picture for textual info to then recognize with OCR is a trivial and obvious idea. It's not worth a patent!
Sure, if you actually would develop the program you'd be entitled to a copyright... But not a patent.
When you say "LZW patent didn't stop a hundred variant dictionary compression utilities" I wonder if you realize the difference between patents and copyright. If Unisys would have held a patent on 'compressing a file trough compression algorithms that still need to be developed' RAR, ZIP, ARC would not have been developed. It is those type of general patents that scare the hell out of me.
An IT security emloyee should have a mandate to uninstall/monitor unsupported or pirated software from any PC under his responsibility. I don't know about ALDOT but in every company I worked for sol.exe is unsupported and removed on sight.
Whether or not the PC is his boss' or not is beside the point.
It is unfortunate that this would be considered spying. I'd call it auditing or meetering.
More than one company has installed MS-SMS-2003 just for this purpose alone.
The only question to be answered here is did the employee focus his "audit" on one person only? or is it part of a continuing audit of software use in the company.
The later is NOT spying though the first one could be considered an invasion of privacy.
Though I understand your objections, I would like to point out that satire through song is pretty much run of the mill.
I don't see Offspring sueing Wierd Al for "Pretty fly (For a Rabbi)" Or any other of the many Wierd Al songs that are not parody according to you affore mentioned defenition.
If only parody is protected and satire is not, I guess that in itself is a problem.
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You seem to go from the assumption that habits are unbreakable.
Let me assure you they are not.
There are two ways to gently force (ignorant) users to Linux from windows. One is to change windows by using open source or cross platform applications that live on both Windows and Linux so they can start to get used to it before actually giving them a Linux workstation.
The second is creating a desktop setup under Linux that mimics a windows setup so closely that they hardly see the difference. Change the window border, the background, the theme on firefox, the way the system reacts to dblclicks on windowbars etc... etc... Make it do what Windows does. (Without all the blue screens and security risks)
I prefer the second method, and have had good success with is with family and friends (who are my sandbox)
About your remarks regarding formatting issues in firefox I have the following to say.
If a user of mine complains about a website that doesn't show the way it's supposed to I recommend he contacts the webmaster to report the problem. If a website only shows under IE it has a serious problem.
If only MS would start to realize that they owe their existance to the absence of patents.
If Apple had patented the "point and click" and "opening and closing windows" look and feel, there woudn't be a windows.
And if xerox had patented it's "mouse" there woudn't have been a mac...
And soforth, until the highly contreversial beginning of the universe.
Then maybe I could finally see a football game in europe. Not that I'm so into football, but nostalgia get's the better of me sometimes.
Isn't it weird that I can find "Shrek2" on P2P before it releases, but I can not find even 1 NFL game anywhere.
"The issue with really fast systems is really bad and bloated software is allowed." To really get performance, run 20th century software on 21st century hardware. Now that's a performant system.
"Should I go fucking die just because I want some credit for doing something better than my opposition?"
No, but the man who patented the idea first is not always the best man for the job to actually develop the product.
And should open source "go fucking die" because they are trying to improve their products?
By the way... Any idea if Jules Verne has a patent on the idea of going to the moon?
I wonder how many programmers have been inspired by star trek episodes... Should speech recognition software pay license fees to the StarTrek franchise because they thought of it first?
I'm really curious what you might think of that...
P.S. I make a living selling ideas too. I call it consulting and I get paid by the hour, not per idea.
"Or maybe you didn't realize that every published patent includes detailed information on how to reproduce the invention"
Have you ever actually READ one of these pattents? Most of them don't explain ANYTHING about how the idee is acheived, it only explains the idea itself.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
Apparently, MS successfully patented the idea of developing an application that sort pictures by date!! I don't know about you, but I have been sorting my pictures by date for 15 years now.
Sure, nowadays you can get the actual date of a picture by reading file attributes or a variate of tags, but is that worth a patent? Scanning a picture for textual info to then recognize with OCR is a trivial and obvious idea. It's not worth a patent!
Sure, if you actually would develop the program you'd be entitled to a copyright... But not a patent.
When you say "LZW patent didn't stop a hundred variant dictionary compression utilities" I wonder if you realize the difference between patents and copyright. If Unisys would have held a patent on 'compressing a file trough compression algorithms that still need to be developed' RAR, ZIP, ARC would not have been developed. It is those type of general patents that scare the hell out of me.
An IT security emloyee should have a mandate to uninstall/monitor unsupported or pirated software from any PC under his responsibility. I don't know about ALDOT but in every company I worked for sol.exe is unsupported and removed on sight. Whether or not the PC is his boss' or not is beside the point. It is unfortunate that this would be considered spying. I'd call it auditing or meetering. More than one company has installed MS-SMS-2003 just for this purpose alone. The only question to be answered here is did the employee focus his "audit" on one person only? or is it part of a continuing audit of software use in the company. The later is NOT spying though the first one could be considered an invasion of privacy.
Though I understand your objections, I would like to point out that satire through song is pretty much run of the mill. I don't see Offspring sueing Wierd Al for "Pretty fly (For a Rabbi)" Or any other of the many Wierd Al songs that are not parody according to you affore mentioned defenition. If only parody is protected and satire is not, I guess that in itself is a problem.