A quick howto on dealing with such advances from Microsoft (or your favourite demonic corporate entity if that is different):
Say nothing in response until you've contacted a good lawyer.
Contact said good lawyer and explain that you've been approached by the world's richest corporation and want to fight them, but have no money. Point out to the lawyer that this will get him lots of publicity plus much cred from the community which hates the demonic corporation. Get him to agree to no-win-no-fee.
Publicise on/. and similar fora to build a legal defence fund.
Let battle commence...
Of course if the lawyer tells you that you don't have a leg to stand on, you might want to think about settling before just going to the press.
I do see the point in phone/camera combinations - it's a compromise and (almost) everyone agrees as such. Theres (almost) no argument here.
What I do not see the point in is comparative reviews between two phones on the strengths of their cameras. A camera on a phone (to my mind, and it is only a personal opinion) is a handy bonus, and the most important thing is how it works as a phone.
Feeping creaturism is no better in phones than elsewhere, but when it is taken to be the overriding plus point in which model to go for, something is wrong.
Seriously - if I want a decent camera, then that's what I will buy. If I want a camera on my phone, presumably I know that it's a phone and therefore I expect that camera to be pretty poor.
Right tool for the right job, etc.
The article doesn't quite say that, although the sentiment is similar. It says "It's the operating system used on nearly 95 percent of all the desktops and notebooks sold worldwide, relegating other OSs to niche players". Now, while this may relegate other OSs to that status (debatable) the very interesting part is that TFA does not even attempt to give a source for this figure. If it were true, 19 out of every 20 desktops or laptops would be running some Windows variant. Personal experience suggests otherwise. Does anybody have an authoritative source for the true percentage?
Purgery is a crime, though lieing to police is not.
In the UK, it is a criminal offence to attempt to pervert the course of justice. Lying to the police comes under that. It is also a (less serious) criminal offence to waste police time. Lying to the police comes under that too.
Assuming that this has been reported correctly (there is no link to Gartner's actual report), it shows just how far out of touch Gartner is when it comes to technical matters such as this.
I won't disect what they've said because probably everyone else reading this knows the flaws in both their arguments and facts, but if an organisation can make money producing unsubstantiated and just plain incorrect claims like this then I am clearly in the wrong job.
So, here's the plan: we set up our own global organisation, just like Gartner, and we issue our own PR, which by contrast will contain no factual errors and will not only contain details of the present situation but also predict how much better the situation is becoming (and how quickly). These reports can be distributed within the community who can then go to their customers/partners/PHBs and say "Hey, there's this great new report out which says that Linux is running on 10 million desktops worldwide and this market share is set to treble in the next 12 months". That way, coming from an authoritative source, they will naturally acknowledge that it is true.
Keeping this as an external script is definitely the way forward. As pointed out, having a kernel flag and especially having the possibility of it defaulting to YES is a step too far IMHO.
This is definitely a very useful system however, and I for one would very much like to see something similar for distributions (ie. not just the kernel, but the whole damn caboodle).
Actually, PostgreSQL is not partnering with SCO. Rather SCO has done a deal with EnterpriseDB who produce their own DB which is a modified version of PostgreSQL. So, while EnterpriseDB has done deals with both SCO and the PostgreSQL group, that one step removal is quite important.
I've tried to install Linux 3 times, each time I failed (either with the installation itself or setting up the network).
Installation takes very little time - even if you don't know what you're doing you can have Linux up and running in a couple of hours. So, do a couple of hours work installing Linux and then have a breeze for the next 12 months, or have a breeze installing Windows and then spend 12 months with the world of pain that is Windows use.
According to the original report, the sample only covers windows-based PCs. Therefore the headline really means that over half of the PCs which run Windows are running the Windows 2000 variant.
1. As a bazillion others have said, that's a very fine use of your homepage/site. Not only do you get to keep all of your links in one place, in a platform-and-provider-independent fashion, but others can see which sites you value too. Everybody wins and there's no need for a specific service.
The problem is that at the moment the cost is c. £120 per year, and the only extra you need to pay is a little electricity to power the TV set.
To watch on a computer, you would pay this new tax first, then a little electricity, then maybe £15 to £20 a month for home broadband, then some unknown amount for your proprietary OS and applications on a subscription licensing model. Furthermore the current uptime of ADSL broadband in the UK is nowhere near comparable with analogue TV broadcasting uptime.
And then there's contention ratios...
It just doesn't seem like a good deal for the consumer, but the one certain thing is that everything will be different in 12 years.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they wouldn't - but the Europeans and Asians definitely would. The spam level would drop off pretty dramatically for one. ;-)
A quick howto on dealing with such advances from Microsoft (or your favourite demonic corporate entity if that is different):
Of course if the lawyer tells you that you don't have a leg to stand on, you might want to think about settling before just going to the press.
No, it's not just you. In a superbly postmodern way, the page has a bug.
Turn javascript off or use another browser to get to the text.
You are assuming tight, correct specs - a genuine rarity.
That's not quite it, no.
I do see the point in phone/camera combinations - it's a compromise and (almost) everyone agrees as such. Theres (almost) no argument here.
What I do not see the point in is comparative reviews between two phones on the strengths of their cameras. A camera on a phone (to my mind, and it is only a personal opinion) is a handy bonus, and the most important thing is how it works as a phone.
Feeping creaturism is no better in phones than elsewhere, but when it is taken to be the overriding plus point in which model to go for, something is wrong.
Seriously - if I want a decent camera, then that's what I will buy. If I want a camera on my phone, presumably I know that it's a phone and therefore I expect that camera to be pretty poor. Right tool for the right job, etc.
A few years after that, we'll have peta-byte iPods, and you'll have to work really, really hard to fill them.
Of course you will, because 640k ought to be enough for anybody.
I remember how quickly windows 3.1 went down. :-(
The article doesn't quite say that, although the sentiment is similar. It says "It's the operating system used on nearly 95 percent of all the desktops and notebooks sold worldwide, relegating other OSs to niche players". Now, while this may relegate other OSs to that status (debatable) the very interesting part is that TFA does not even attempt to give a source for this figure. If it were true, 19 out of every 20 desktops or laptops would be running some Windows variant. Personal experience suggests otherwise. Does anybody have an authoritative source for the true percentage?
In the UK, it is a criminal offence to attempt to pervert the course of justice. Lying to the police comes under that. It is also a (less serious) criminal offence to waste police time. Lying to the police comes under that too.
You are Steve Ballmer and I claim my £5.
Assuming that this has been reported correctly (there is no link to Gartner's actual report), it shows just how far out of touch Gartner is when it comes to technical matters such as this.
I won't disect what they've said because probably everyone else reading this knows the flaws in both their arguments and facts, but if an organisation can make money producing unsubstantiated and just plain incorrect claims like this then I am clearly in the wrong job.
So, here's the plan: we set up our own global organisation, just like Gartner, and we issue our own PR, which by contrast will contain no factual errors and will not only contain details of the present situation but also predict how much better the situation is becoming (and how quickly). These reports can be distributed within the community who can then go to their customers/partners/PHBs and say "Hey, there's this great new report out which says that Linux is running on 10 million desktops worldwide and this market share is set to treble in the next 12 months". That way, coming from an authoritative source, they will naturally acknowledge that it is true.
I'm not entirely joking here - who's up for it?
Is that why 100% of web servers use HTML.
... and 1% of that HTML adheres to the standard. Sad, but true.
Keeping this as an external script is definitely the way forward. As pointed out, having a kernel flag and especially having the possibility of it defaulting to YES is a step too far IMHO.
This is definitely a very useful system however, and I for one would very much like to see something similar for distributions (ie. not just the kernel, but the whole damn caboodle).
Actually, PostgreSQL is not partnering with SCO. Rather SCO has done a deal with EnterpriseDB who produce their own DB which is a modified version of PostgreSQL. So, while EnterpriseDB has done deals with both SCO and the PostgreSQL group, that one step removal is quite important.
If it's this easy to thwart the authorities, maybe we should all turn to crime.
Installation takes very little time - even if you don't know what you're doing you can have Linux up and running in a couple of hours. So, do a couple of hours work installing Linux and then have a breeze for the next 12 months, or have a breeze installing Windows and then spend 12 months with the world of pain that is Windows use.
Choose whichever you want.
Yes, they certainly did. See the BBC archive for the grisly details.
Not very well though: Validate MSN.
v^2 = u^2 + 2gs
or, s = (v^2 - u^2) / 2g
So if v = 6.7, u = 0 and g = 9.8 (to 2 sig figs),
s = 6.7^2 / (2 * 9.8) = 2.3m
Not so high, really. NB. This is neglecting air resistance, but the drag at those velocities will not greatly affect the calculation.
They're putting Branston Pickle on their iPods? Oh wait, you meant ...
According to the original report, the sample only covers windows-based PCs. Therefore the headline really means that over half of the PCs which run Windows are running the Windows 2000 variant.
Yes, I actually think this. There will come a time when people say, "of course you could send a million unwanted emails, but who would be so stupid?"
There was - it was 1993.
1. As a bazillion others have said, that's a very fine use of your homepage/site. Not only do you get to keep all of your links in one place, in a platform-and-provider-independent fashion, but others can see which sites you value too. Everybody wins and there's no need for a specific service.
2. Dmoz.
The problem is that at the moment the cost is c. £120 per year, and the only extra you need to pay is a little electricity to power the TV set.
...
To watch on a computer, you would pay this new tax first, then a little electricity, then maybe £15 to £20 a month for home broadband, then some unknown amount for your proprietary OS and applications on a subscription licensing model. Furthermore the current uptime of ADSL broadband in the UK is nowhere near comparable with analogue TV broadcasting uptime.
And then there's contention ratios
It just doesn't seem like a good deal for the consumer, but the one certain thing is that everything will be different in 12 years.