if they gave a shit at first run they'd ask "here is the choice, do you want tracking or no tracking?" and that would be the end of that but THEY DON'T and instead hide it somewhere in the options where the average user will be afraid to go for fear of "messing something up" so...yeah its bullshit, they cashed the checked so their ass is owned.
"All go to hell except cave 76! Rah!". Frankly this corporate cheerleading is getting a little old and one begins to wonder if there isn't something to the rumor that Google pays posters to hang around at geek sites to protect their branding. Lets break this down, shall we?
The way to understand a thing is to know its function I've always said, so lets look at Google, what is its function? Where does their revenue come from? Well according to their filing with the SEC more than 96% of their revenue last year came from advertising so its pretty obvious they are an ad company. The products like Chrome and GMail are simply used to get to the real product, which is eyeballs which they sell to advertisers (and make billions doing so I might add) so one can say their goal is ads. Now what makes Google's ads valuable? Is it merely the number of eyeballs? No its the data mining which is why MSFT was willing to spend stupid money for Yahoo and was able to distract folks with the thought they wanted the whole thing when all they wanted was access to search. The more information you can obtain on a person the more targeted the ads can become and when you are spending the money these advertisers are you want that target focused like a laser.
So you can see why Google is gonna do the bare minimum to look like they are going along and are gonna fuck with the other browsers whenever they can, its just good business for them. the more people opt out the harder its gonna be to get the data they require to make the profits they are used to and Google is a publicly traded company. they know there is ZERO loyalty in their business, just ask Altavista and Yahoo about search loyalty, so if they can't get that data and get those targeted ads its gonna seriously hurt them. Sadly some have bought into marketing speak and actually believes that Google "Does no evil" but then again i suppose those same people thinks Apple "Thinks different" but in the end all fortune 50 companies are pretty much the same, if they weren't they wouldn't have become a fortune 50 company. so look to see google do their damnedest to skirt the very edge of the wording of "do not track" and to have a shitload of "oopsies" which while they will publicly proclaim as an accident the guy that produced the oopsie will most likely be rewarded. its just business folks.
Oh I know this, I just use the opportunity as a public service to point out what a giant fail his precious really is. You see its in a way like the failure of communism. You see the communists never could figure out how to fix the "busted shitter" problem and neither can Linux. Everyone wants to be the artist, nobody wants to be the guy that cleans toilets so they don't get cleaned. The communists had to actually order soldiers to do "potato duty" just to get someone to do the shit jobs nobody wanted but Linux don't have that luxury so what you get is a facade that covers a tarpaper shack with a busted outhouse attached. Sure it looks good on the outside but actually try living in it and its a stinking drafty about to fall over mess, and that is exactly what Linux is.
Look at the links, more vulnerabilities rated severe than Win 2K8, Dell is losing money on every Ubuntu sale (Alex thinks they can make it up with volume, funny huh?) and even they can't get enough QA to get a lousy dozen devices to have their drivers checked before the next release makes a big old stinky all over them, so they have to run their own repos. Linux is Windows 98, nothing more. Its a CLO OS with a GUI bolted on that doesn't really work well, has shitty drivers, and if anything goes wrong you have to go CLI just to work on the POS.
Has anyone else noticed that the word "quality" has become almost a dirty word, a word one never utters unless its with nostalgia for when people and companies actually gave a shit? Now some of it you can blame on the government because getting rid of lead solder was just fucking stupid because the amount of waste being made from devices failing earlier is causing more pollution than the lead was, but as we see in TFA even universities are getting into the "We don't give a shit about quality, just crank that shit out" business.
Personally i think its sad how everything is becoming cheap and plastic and worthless, that's what it really is. Hell you can't even spend more and get quality as all you'll get is the same crap and if the company has a problem with the crap they'll just rig it so it'll last one day past the warranty and fuck you over, HP Nvidia laptop anyone? Maybe its just me but it seemed that people used to take pride in things, take pride in doing a good job, but not anymore. Now its get in, get out, get paid, fuck everything else. Now we are gonna see science and learning become yet more crap factories, just churning out endless piles of stupid useless shit to meet some stupid quota. Damned shame is what it is, just a damned shame.
Just don't let anybody light a match near that harmonica while you are blowing or you may end up with the most fucked up looking flamethrower you have ever seen. To be fair it does have some really nice overtones as the metal heats up, with the bluer flames giving it almost an octave overtone, well until your hair catches on fire or the harmonica gets too hot and you pass out only to find your friends have put it on YouTube the next day under "Dumbass with a harmonica" that is.
Actually I've seen this in action and all that happens in reality is the ISPs use this as an excuse to toss any customers that actually use the bandwidth they paid for. Both the local DSL and WISP providers will just say "You must have a virus" and turn off your connection if they decide they don't like what you are running or how much you are using, the WISP going so far as to say "You can't run our scanner so you must be infected" when i was running PCLOS on my laptop.
Remember folks the ONLY customers these ISPs really want is what they call the "granny" customers, where all they do is check email and then log off like its 1994. This is because none of the major ISPs are rolling out shit for bandwidth upgrades, instead just sticking those profits in their pocket. Any excuse that lets them toss more people that actually use resources is quickly jumped on and this way they can say "We are protecting the network" instead of "he actually used HALF the bandwidth that is in his contract, can you fucking believe it?" and gives them a nice legally sound out even when the customer isn't hitting the caps, just using close to it.
Nooo..the TEABAGGERS wanted them to go under, because honestly they are what we used to call back in the day a "Barry Goldwater conservative" that actually believes in smaller government and personal responsibility. If you look at the votes the majority of the reps voted for the money, same as they have voted for big money pretty much since the 70s. same as the Dems vote for all the jackbooted shit right along with the reps because they like the big checks being written by the megacorps and big government money they can siphon. As the late great often stolen from Bill hicks said "Well I believe the puppet on the left shares my beliefs, well i believe the puppet on the right shares my interests...hey wait a minute there's one guy controlling BOTH puppets" and that guy ain't you and me friend, it ain't you and me.
Actually you just tripped over the catch 22 I was talking about. See those corporate desktops are run by admins that are usually really fucking smart, hence they don't need a hand holding dumbed down GUI OS which is what Canonical's ONLY real claim to fame was. i mean how many times have YOU said to yourself "What i need is a really stupid interface here, something with lots of hand holding and clicky clicky" Barbara? I bet that thought hasn't crossed your mind in a looooong time has it?
As for XP I think MSFT has a plan and frankly its gonna be fucking brilliant in its simplicity. Remember how Sega got its ass kicked with the Saturn because after announcing a $399 price point Sony just walked up to the mike and said "$299 MSRP" and walked away? And you know how badly ballmer wants Win 8 to NOT be a flop, because frankly he's not only betting desktops but tablets AND cell phones on it? I have a feeling a month before the Win 8 release if not sooner MSFT will call a press conference and say these simple words..."Windows 8 Home is $50" and will just walk away while people crap their pants. hell at $50 you can keep that old XP dual core and just slap Win 8 on it, and since the new Windows is made for tablets and cell phones the resource usage will be adaptable like Win 7 only more so. you ever try running Win 7 on a P4 with 512Mb of RAM? I have and it uses less than 200Mb. the OS detects its being run on an older machine and drops or delays any extra crap, its already been announced that after we admins had been screaming about it for a decade FINALLY Windows will have services that launch on use and shutdown after instead of running all the time.
And finally your analogy is flawed because it forgets one little thing...greed Even Google refuses to give out its best stuff like GoogleFS because it might give the competition an advantage so why would I invest something that my competitor can then take for free? this hurts me NOT helps me. this only works in servers because the OS isn't being used in any way as the product, its the hardware, or the services, or the bandwidth,to these companies the server is just a tool but on the desktop it costs them more money with ZERO gain. I mean why should i pay a $100K a year Linux guru when I can slap an AD server behind the firewall and with it controlling the WinDesktops via GPOs frankly my 18 year old could learn how to run the whole thing in like a month? MCSEs are a dime a dozen, and when you are buying 100,000 desktops the cost of the OS doesn't even make it into the top 15, its just not something to care about.
So you see my friend ultimately linux desktops are ALL caught in a catch 22, as those that could actually USE Linux security simply won't pay support contracts and can't do it on their own with the current state of Linux and the guys that CAN do it themselves? Well we just don't see any bugs so why should we switch to an OS with less applications and more work for what applications it DOES have? Frankly other than religious zealotry or a few niche software areas where it makes sense frankly Linux on the desktop is currently pointless. I mean do you have ANY doubt you could secure a Windows box and use it without getting infected? of course not even basic common sense security practices like not clicking on links in PMs or running funny email attachments will protect you.
In the end my neighbor below me is a perfect example, to this very day he still can't tell the difference between RAM and hard drive or why one machine can run an app but another can't, hell he doesn't even get the difference between desktop and documents yet and libraries and breadcrumbs are right out. In Windows there is enough hand holding and wizards that a guy like him can actually use a PC, even though this is only his second year of even having a system, yet while a power user like myself can blow through our jobs with Windows guys like him can STILL get their work done. THESE are the kinds of users Linux needs, they already have the ones i call "freetards", you know, the
Not to mention no matter how many here say "Fight teh power" we ALL know how this is gonna end, it'll end the same way it always ends...the big guys cross license which makes sure the little guys can't get in. Try making a new X86 chip and see how far you get, or hell any new thing where the big dogs are playing and you'll find they cross license up the ass so good luck getting in there. personally i think both patents and copyrights should return to the original numbers set by the founding fathers if not having even shorter terms but acting like this is one bad guy against a good guy is bullshit because when it comes to patents they are ALL bad all the way down.
We agree on a lot of things again except one thing which is in this case #1. Frankly i don't think Canonical can be saved by support and here is why: The desktop is a catch-22 where those that could actually benefit from the support won't pay for it and those that have the ability and lack of aversion to paying for it simply won't benefit from it!
As a retailer I can tell you consumers HATE paying for extended support, just ask any of the BB guys what the reaction the majority give them when they have to push extended support. as a friend who took a shift there one Xmas season to get his GF a really killer Xmas said "You might as well be saying 'hey would you like a free dose of anal cancer with this laptop?' for how much they do NOT want this service" so if the cost isn't already written into the device where the actual cost is hidden from the user you can give it up. that is why MSFT retail copies are so high you know, they can't palm off support onto the OEM so what you are seeing is the cost of paying someone to answer all the stupid questions. I can tell you tech support is a thankless job where you are constantly asked REALLY fucking stupid questions, questions so damned dumb you think "How can someone this retarded even operate a computer?" so they'll have to have tiers to separate the "Update foo broke my drivers" questions from the "How do I change my wallpaper?" dumbshit ones, and all that is gonna cost a pretty penny.
This is why i think FOSS is doomed to forever be the last place lousy choice for the desktop, because how can you make money to improve the product? in every place FOSS has carved out a niche, every single one, there has been an easy and clear cut way to monetize it. With servers you have support contracts, with embedded you have developers being paid to write custom version or custom interfaces, with Android Google is datamining the hell out of anyone that touched it, but where does that leave desktops? How can they monetize and differentiate themselves from everybody else? Answer is they don't which is why all the flip flopping from one lame idea to another, we have a classic underpants gnomes dilemma. They are now on step three and as everyone knows there is NO step three hence the throwing crap at a wall and just praying something, hell anything, will just stick.
But you and I know that nothing will stick and in 3 years Canonical will be another Mandriva, or Xandros, or Linspire, or gOS, gee, notice a pattern here? Why it almost like there isn't a way to monetize a FOSS desktop! Android and iOS will lock in the phones, one making money off of datamining while the other hardware, and before anyone accuses Android of being Linux I'd point out its as much linux as OSX lion is actually BSD which is to say very damned little of it has anything to do with the other. The desktop market will remain MSFT's simply because the support costs (which they can't add into the cost of the product because every FOSSie zealot screams "It costs more than Windows so it must be a MSFT conspiracy!" so the OEMs simply can't make any money there, and finally after Canonical tries to jam itself into every have assed device with a chip they will shutter their doors in less than 3 years, you just watch. hell they haven't had a single profitable quarter since the whole thing started! Because just as you pointed out with Mint there is nothing stopping someone from taking all the work you put in and giving it away in their own wrapper. There simply isn't a way to generate the kind of capital required to spend the massive amounts on R&D and support to make FOSS a functional model when it comes to desktops and as soon as Canonical gets that it'll be going on the pile of failed distros, just you watch.
So in other words 'I don't care how badly i get fucked as long as they bring lube" is that RTEALLY your answer? you have such an impotent rage against MSFT you don't mind having every single thing you do tracked up the ass as long as its "all go to hell but cave 76!"? is that it? And i noticed you couldn't say a damned thing about the GPL, I mean how could you? its all there in black and white, since GPL V3 its been going straight down the toilet, with its numbers falling by the month.
And yet again ALL you can do is hide in that refuge of small minds. i give you links, all you can do is throw a blankie on your head and call me a bad man, how sad is that?
While it has some similarities to Jamaican migrant workers its a LOT more slang heavy. in fact what really makes it a bitch is depending on the region you may have as many as FOUR different kinds of slang mixed in! You'll have black slang, poor white trash slang, and in MS you'll often get Creole slang mixed in there as well. I'd give you a sample but i'm afraid i wasn't joking, I actually DO have to have a translator if I stop around Yazoo, its too slang heavy. At least with the migrant workers its usually English they are mangling, with bottoms talk they are mangling Mexican slang, Creole slang, as well as white and black English. hell if you go down by chemical row they even have some African slang from the Gambian workers they have down there, its so mangled it IMHO is more of a mess than a language.
Awww...did the poor little FOSSie have his perception bubble busted again? i do find that so delightful. I don't know whether to laugh at you or feel pity at your being so fucking pathetic, I mean I have wrote article on how to make Linux more accessible to small business, what have you done besides wave your tiny penis and scream shill at anybody that won't kiss RMS' sweaty ass? But don't worry i have some nice facts that will make your day, a place where linux is winning? Its vulnerabilities..
Not only does Linux have 4x++ the amount of unpatched security vulnerabilities its competitor Windows Server 2008 does, but it bears 3 remotely exploitable unpatched security vulnerabilities (THE WORST KIND!): one and a two and a three. But hey, what can you expect from an OS that actually has less users than JavaME which is a shitty sub basement OS they put on Tracphones. Of course when you were given an equal chance to compete a decade old Windows beat the shit out of your Linux on netbooks and even ASUS, which invented the whole netbook for the masses with a Linux unit even ASUS has given up on your bullshit How about how you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share ?
But you stick your head under your little blankie and start crying about how "Only a shill wouldn't love our perfect OS!" while ignoring all the bugs, the vulnerabilities, failures, hell even Dell has to run their own repos just to keep your "precious" from crapping itself. How much money you think that costs Alex? wanna bet dell is LOSING money on every sale? I bet you think they can make it up on volume though huh? You just keep telling yourself I'm a bad man, I must be a "M$ Ninja" when in reality I'm your worst fucking nightmare...a retailer that has tried your shit and seen what a turd it is. hell its not even up to WinXP standards, much less OSX Lion or Win 7. Hell Vista was the biggest POS on the planet and even with MSFT not even having a horse in the race they fricking STOMPED you with a decade old creaking POS, how fucking sad and pathetic do you have to be to get beat by an OS that is so damned old it came out before SATA or even dual cores and it STILL kicks your ass?
Maybe instead of calling names you should volunteer to fix some of the mess huh? i'm sure you think of yourself as some kind of programming genius because you can copypasta into a CLI. Of course in Windows we would call that a script kiddie, but I guess that means genius in your world. Oh a final bit of info, just FYI...Kernel.org pwnage , Linux.com pwned too oh and MYSQL.com throwing malware worse than a "look at teh titties" toipsite in case you missed it. Man gotta be impressed by that kick ass Linux security, them eyes that make bugs shallow must have cataracts huh?
You're right because we got so many jobs and made so much of our tax money back on solyndra!...Oh wait... You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, run amok, and they wave a green flag while they pick your pocket. do you know old Rev Al Gore has the giant brass balls to say farting on a lear jet is carbon NEUTRAL because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits from his own fucking company? This would be like me taking money from my left pocket and putting it in my right, calling it "wealth redistribution" and demanding a tax break for it...and fucking getting it!
Maybe you should watch this video to see just how trivial it is to scam with crap and trade. hell rev Al is doing it right in front of your face! you don't help global warming by farting in Lear jets, taking SUV motorcades bigger than when he was VP, or having a fucking house so damned huge it has an indoor basketball court and blows through more AC than 2 dozen family dwellings! yet you buy his bullshit, seriously man think! What does he have to do, grow a Snidley Whiplash mustache and cackle about how badly he is gonna rape your wallet? because he is being pretty damned blatant about the whole thing, not trying to hide it.
What I don't get is the total cluelessness on display here. let me get this straight, you are FOR software freedom and FOSS, yes? So you boo the software that actually lets you install it royalty free, and even lets you make your own free clone called gnash, and in return you fricking CHEER having the web taken over by a "standard" that is run by a company that might as well have "Pay your $699 license fee you cock smoking teabaggers" as its motto? Did I miss a meeting? Was there an episode in the series i skipped?
HTML V5 is gonna be locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and is controlled by one of the most aggressive patent trolls there has ever been and THAT is good? Has everyone kinda had a senior moment and forgot that H.264 is patented up the ass and is controlled by a conglomeration that will happily sue your ass if you look at them funny? If anything everyone should be having a royal shitfit and refuse to have a damned thing to do with HTML V5 until it takes either WebM or Theora as the lowest common denominator. because as it is now frankly you're all about to get severely buttraped and you don't even see that train sized penis headed right at you. With Flash Adobe has never bitched, you want flash, gnash, whatever its cool. With H.264 if you don't break out the checkbook you ain't distributing shit, and what do you think will happen when the DRM hits? you DO know its coming yes? you don't think they are gonna let netflix show movies without it do you? What do you think happens then? I'll tell ya what then if you don't pay your license fee and set up some kind of secure path you'll be breaking DMCA if you have H.264 in your distro that's what.
So please think people, yes I use Windows but I sure as hell don't want Apple and MSFT and Google controlling the web between them, we've seen what corporate crap ends up with real player and WMV, lets not go back to that alright? The FOSS guys are the ones that run the web, yes? After all that's what you brag all the time, so do something! Refuse to support HTML V5 until a standard that anybody can use is the lowest common denominator. Because if you don't Apple and Google and MSFT will pay their $699 license fees and the rest of you will get to be locked out. Think folks, you are so blinded by hatred of flash you are laughing about beating the old dog down while a pack of lions are about to have you for dinner.
I agree with everything you said EXCEPT that netbooks are dead. I think netbooks have a great future only it won't be "ultrabooks" or some other "maximize profit potential" idea but what it was originally, a cheap mobile device that still lets you do basic work. Take the AMD C and E series for example, here you have a chip that lets them sell for equal or even sometimes less than Atom while still doing 720P on a 12 inch screen while getting 6+ hours, all for around $300 before the flood and by summer will probably be back down below $350. Its cheap, its more portable than a laptop, its easy to carry, yet you can still watch movies without killing your eyes or type without getting a headache from the strain of reading a teeny tiny phone screen. This is a good thing and people see the value of this, its Intel trying to upmarket it into some lame Mac ripoff ultrabook that will be toast, because if its the same price as an Air then WTF? Why wouldn't I buy the Air that has better resale and is cooler?
But while you and I were both modded down by those with perception bubbles i truly believe time will vindicate what we have said...Canonical is DOA, its getting on the cart no matter how "happy" it feels. Why does everyone think they keep going for wilder and stupider ideas? its because they are bleeding money and as the coffers get lean they get desperate to find a niche. Shuttleworth has already made it clear he won't give another dime, so they have to get into the black or die. remember how they originally said they'd never get into servers, that they were gonna focus on making "The best Linux desktop in the world"? What happened? Its obvious to anyone with eyes, the same thing that happened to Mandriva and Xandros and Linspire and gOS, they found that if anyone can take their code for free they simply have nothing to sell the OEMs or customers.
Xandros tried bundling non free software like crossover, Linspire tried selling click n' run, Mandriva a "pro" version and gOS tried cheap hardware tied to Google services. and now Ubuntu tries first netbooks, then a lame tablet UI they shove onto non touchscreen desktops, and now smartphones. Mark my words in 3 years there will be NO Ubuntu desktop except some "community" version which Canonical abandons to the volunteers which gets further and further behind. A couple of years after that they will shutter their doors because server admins don't need pretty simple GUIs and that's all Canonical really has to sell. Its sad but the model simply doesn't work on the desktop.
Noticed i got modded a troll for daring to point out what should be quite obvious by now? I mean seriously, how many companies have to completely FAIL trying to bring a FOSS desktop up to snuff before everyone realizes the FOSS model simply doesn't supply the needed funds to turn a server OS (which is what Linux is, more than 90% of its R&D is spent on server issues and features and all its brightest programmers are working for server companies) into a desktop OS? I made it quite clear i don't think FOSS is bad, simply that it doesn't fit into every model.
Lets take Ubuntu and what I call the "busted shitter problem", now go look how many bugs in their bug tracker are over 2 years old, how about 3? 4? last i checked they had several that were 6! And remember for every ONE person you have reporting a bug you have SEVERAL HUNDRED that have simply given up and moved on. That is business 101 folks, for every one complainer you have probably 200 minimum that just walk away and quit, vowing just to never touch your product or darken your door again, and THIS is progress? This is why communism don't work, everybody wants to be the artist and NOBODY wants to be "Hi I'm Cleetus, I fix the busted shitters". Does anyone think apple and MSFT pay millions upon millions to programmers because they LIKE spending all that money? of course not, but you simply can't motivate anyone to take really shitty work without pay, its just human nature. Would YOU go clean your neighbor's nasty overflowing shitter for free?
In the end we are talking probably a good 100 million dollar minimum will need to be spent to get ubuntu or any other Linux up to the same level as Lion and Win 7. Now you may think I'm exaggerating but look at what needs to be done logically. you have a good 1600 page novel's worth of help files that need to be written, because frankly probably 35% are placeholders and the ones that aren't are so poorly written if you don't know the lingo you're fucked which kinda kills the whole damned point of a HELP file. then you got on average around 10,000 devices being released each month, so realistically you would have to have a hardware ABI to get the device manufacturers to build drivers so you're gonna have to do like Google and fork your own kernel. Now the ONLY argument you'll ever see against a hardware ABI, which just FYI but not only MSFT but Apple, Solaris, BSD, and even OS/2 Warp have, is frankly religious. It's "ZOMFG they might write a non free driver ZOMFG!" which ignores the quite obvious fact that the majority of Linux users use Nvidia which is a non free driver so it makes no fucking sense, but if you want to have to rewrite thousands of drivers because Linus changed a pointer that's cool, just quadruple the cost so now you're looking at 400 million.
But lets say you can magically get all those drivers to never fail, which FYI now Linux forums tell you with a straight face that "You have to install clean" which they USED to make fun of Windows for, but the users have frankly just given up on the drivers getting any better sadly. But lets say you fix the driver problem with some magic, then you still got QA and regression testing to make sure the new packages don't crap themselves on AMD, or Atom, or if they have a wireless plugged in. Then you have to pay for marketing because if nobody knows about it, how they gonna use it? You need promotions, deals with OEMs, a bank of techs for support, not to mention the guys working on fixing the bugs users find AND the guys working on new features.
Now you tell me laurelraven, where is that 100 million plus gonna come from when anybody can just take what you made and undercut you because they didn't have to pay ANY of the R&D costs hmm? Can't say the community will provide it out the goodness of their hearts, if that were true then 2/3rds of the web would be running on RHEL who donates more to the community than the next 4 providers combined. Heck AMD not only gave away their code they even hired developers to help the free guys
And I'd like to add that as someone that lives in a rural state its simply a fact that animal hunting HAS TO be allowed, well that is unless you are willing to have a massive program to bring back wolves, panthers, and bears, and then are willing to look the other way when that panther has little Suzy for supper. In my state the treehuggers stopped the local deer hunts for 2 years, you know what happened? Lots of dead people from starving deer shooting across major highways trying to find some food. Without predators most animals will outbreed their environment and you end up with sickly diseased herds that are bad for the animals AND the environment.
As someone who is a member of a multigenerational family of hunters I can tell you responsible hunting is absolutely required for the health of the herds. I can also tell you it helps to breed smarter animals as my mother doesn't allow hunting on her land and guess where the biggest, most beautiful deer are every hunting season? Right next to her cats in the back yard, they even bed down in her field and sometimes help themselves to the catfood. Needless to say the rest of my family is none to happy about it but my GF loves to spend the holidays up at my mom's, she can get up at dawn and walk among the deer, even get within 5 feet of the big buck and just enjoy the view, which i have to admit he is a pretty impressive 14 pointer.
You mean they too was paid by the CIA to develop a method of inflicting horrible pain without leaving a mark on the victim? Those bastards! At least Sandler had an excuse as they threatened him with being forced to work on the new SNL and having to have Tom Green write all his material, but what's Canonical's excuse? Maybe a lucrative contract to supply all of Iraq and Afghanistan with non touch enabled desktops to teach the children the futility of trying to fight the system? the mind boggles.
Because with this and the killing of kubuntu its as I said and canonical is slowly bleeding to death? i'll get hate for saying this but truth is truth and the FOSS model simply doesn't work on the desktop. On servers companies buy support contracts, on embedded companies pay developers to customize it but on the desktop if you don't get MSFT's economies of scale (Windows 1.0 was $99, Win 7 HP is $89) you simply can't come up with the millions, and it WILL require millions to get an OS with 99% of the money being spent on server usage like Linux up to snuff for desktops, so the companies die. See Mandriva as just the latest line of a long line of examples, along with Xandros, Linspire, gOS, etc.
To make money on a desktop you not only have to have OEMs that are willing to sell your product (Canonical doesn't as Dell is most likely losing money on every sale of Ubuntu) but everyone has gotten spoiled to "clicky clicky plug and play everything just works" so you have to do slick and seamless BETTER than MSFT and Apple which simply isn't possible with free labor. its what i call the "busted shitter problem" in that there is a TON of work that is lousy, thankless, long, boring work that HAS TO be done, all the docs and QA and bug fixing, I mean how many bugs are listed in the Ubuntu bug tracker that are over 2 years old? How many "Update foo broke my drivers" posts do you see in Ubuntu forums with every release? if anything the FOSS model is worse because the developers are all coming from server backgrounds and have a "Meh just use CLI" attitude that uses CLI as a crutch and that simply won't fly on the desktop where you have to be BETTER than the other guy, not just cheaper. this attitude works on servers because Apple doesn't even care about that market and MSFT has assraping pricing for server OSes so admins will put up with a lot of shit to save tens of thousands of dollars. When an OEM copy of Win 7 HP is only $50 to the big boys it really don't take too many service calls from consumers before Windows is the cheaper alternative, not when HP makes on average $8 a sale on the low end.
So you mark my words in less than 5 years, I'd say less than 3, Canonical will join that long line of companies that tried to make a go with a FOSS desktop and found it simply unworkable. that isn't to say the FOSS model is bad, just that it simply doesn't work in all cases and this is one. What we need is a new license that will allow someone like canonical to concentrate on all the "buster shitter" work while still making enough profits to keep the lights on, maybe a "free to look at the code but if you distribute you have to pay" clause? because as a retailer believe me I WANT there to be choices, I WANT to see real competition but when I try to upgrade a system and the drivers break and I click a help file and get a "to be done" placeholder? Well my time costs and just like the OEMs it really don't take long before that copy of Win 7 HP is the cheaper deal, about 2 hours in my case.
Funny I'm just the opposite, that evil daystar makes me feel all crappy and run down, but give me those nice warm summer nights with big sky with stars aplenty and a big fat moon and...ahhh, its like paradise. Even with ultra dark shades on more than an hour or two under that evil daystar gives me a serious skullthumper and just ruins my mood. Lucky for me that even though my GF is an "up with the roosters" happy morning person she has done accepted its pointless to change me, she just leaves me in the bed cave until noon for "breakfast" of home made pizza or burger and fries..damn now I'm hungry, y'all have a nice discussion i'm gonna go get a pizza.
Don't you just love how they use the word socialism like kiddie fiddler yet socialism for the rich is EXACTLY what we have in the USA? What else would you call it when you privatize all the profits while making the losses public but classic Soviet style socialism?
As for TFA frankly i would trust EITHER side of the debate to tell me its raining. on the right you have Shell and BP, neither one very nice, on the left you have the Rev Al Gore and his supporters who fart around in lear jets and motorcades while living like pigs in houses with indoor basketball courts while saying YOU dirty peasants need to pay to "save the planet". Well i say fuck them both, hell the ONLY one I would listen to for more than the time it takes to tell them to kiss my ass would be Ed begley Jr and that's because he isn't a hypocritical bastard like most of the "greenies" like Gore. he lives in a VERY modest house, recycles everything, drive a little electric car only when he can't ride his bicycle, the man walks the walk. But both Gore and BP are scammers of the highest order and anybody who listens to them is just being fleeced.
Hell they have the one who cooked up credit default swaps aka housing market killers, working on their crap & trade scam! if THAT doesn't tell you its gonna be more rigged than a game of three card Monty I don't know what does! We should tell BOTH sides to DIAF, after all it'll be good for the environment wouldn't it?
Actually I have an even better idea, have either several tiers or allow buying of features ala cart. While i might not need say green screen support I would like null transform, so just sell me that instead of making me buy a much more expensive version or in reality me just passing your product by. Think DLC, where you can just buy the pieces you want. if you are using a modular approach (which is the smart way to do it anyway, as you don't want to keep from shipping because one piece isn't up to snuff) then you should be able to simply sell me individual modules.
But this has to be one of the dumbest "Ask Slashdot" questions I've seen here. You HONESTLY expect THIS crowd to talk about DRM without it being followed by DIAF? You haven't actually read Slashdot before, have you? Oh and $10k software? GTFO of here, in a dead economy you are just begging for piracy with a price like that. Use the Valve model instead, make it easy, make it cheap, make it simple. Then you can sell tons of copies instead of worrying about a few stragglers. Hell even Sony don't charge anywhere near that for Vegas and i bet my last dollar Vegas is nicer and more feature rich than what you are offering.
Well if those emails that Oracle got a hold of are allowed in court (sorry i can't find the link, it was on/. awhile back so maybe someone can find it?) where one of the employees basically said "We'll see how much they want for Java and if the price is to high we'll just make our own version" then they are sunk, the only question is how much they are gonna have to pay. How long before corps learn that email is a BAD idea with a capital B? Call 'em on the damned phone already, quit leaving a paper trail the size of Kansas that can be used against you in court! Hell even Cheney was smart enough to have the White house emails sent through the RNC who just "oopsie" made them all go away on a regular basis.
Personally I don't see why everyone is cheering Google in this except for "All go to hell except cave 76!" perception bubbles. I mean for the love of Pete its MSJava all over again! BOTH companies made their own version of Java which was incompatible with Java proper and BOTH companies have aggressively pushed their incompatible Java, so what's the diff? Because Google has some lame ass 'Do no evil" motto that means that doing the exact same shit MSFT did is okay now? it wasn't okay when MSFT did it and its not okay now. If Google wanted to use Java (which the emails said clearly they did) then they should have licensed it and then stuck to the standards. hell if anything I'd argue in this case they are worse than MSFT because at least MSFT bought a license before they tried to fuck Java. Either stick to the standards, pay your licenses, or roll your own. Its not like Google can't afford to roll their own language or buy one right?
Its VERY simple, try to keep up...if the standards ONLY allow FOSS then we can give up getting anything but 30 year old tech, lets see MP3 will be free in 2017 and MPG 2 will be out in 2014 so to allow FOSS to be "free as in beer" you'll have to switch to MPG 1 and MP1 until then. BTW both Theora AND WebM would most likely not stand up to a court challenge which is why Google refuses to back WebM even though they own it. i'm sure their lawyers told them they wouldn't have a prayer in court as it walks all over the h.264 patents.
BTW if you are gonna bullshit at least bullshit correctly. Win NT 3 had a BSD TCP stack, they wrote their own for NT 4, since i kinda doubt anybody is using NT 3 anywhere nobody cares, as for Apple? they could replace what little is left of the BSD underpinnings in probably a year, maybe less. Not that it matters because BSD allows them to do what they want so who cares.
In the end if you refuse to allow the work that was PAID FOR and is now patented just to please the FOSSies you've just sent the entire tech sector back 30 years. Riddle me this: If the FOSS model actually works why are there dozens upon dozens of bugs more than 4 years old in every bugtracker out there? I'll tell you why, because FOSS is a pretty house with busted plumbing and smoking wires that's why. Nobody does the crappy jobs in FOSS because there is no monetary gain in doing so, so its itch scratching all the way down. In video for instance you would have NOTHING if it weren't for proprietary, nothing at all. Theora? VP3 given away AFTER they paid for the work by On2, who was bought out by Google who then AFTER they had paid for the work gave away WebM. The ONLY places FOSS works is embedded and servers because SOMEBODY PAYS for developers to work on the code for their companies, NOTHING in FOSS worth having has been 100% volunteers, nothing. I'm sure you will then probably name some little 300Kb tool that someone built in a month like Busybox, nobody cares. Anything modern and feature rich simply isn't built for free. LO? Paid for by Sun, Mozilla? Paid for by netscape and then by Google. TINSTAAFL and the companies that paid MILLIONS to develop these technologies deserve to get paid. If FOSS doesn't like it tough, don't use it. you can enjoy being 30 years behind everybody else.
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if they gave a shit at first run they'd ask "here is the choice, do you want tracking or no tracking?" and that would be the end of that but THEY DON'T and instead hide it somewhere in the options where the average user will be afraid to go for fear of "messing something up" so...yeah its bullshit, they cashed the checked so their ass is owned.
"All go to hell except cave 76! Rah!". Frankly this corporate cheerleading is getting a little old and one begins to wonder if there isn't something to the rumor that Google pays posters to hang around at geek sites to protect their branding. Lets break this down, shall we?
The way to understand a thing is to know its function I've always said, so lets look at Google, what is its function? Where does their revenue come from? Well according to their filing with the SEC more than 96% of their revenue last year came from advertising so its pretty obvious they are an ad company. The products like Chrome and GMail are simply used to get to the real product, which is eyeballs which they sell to advertisers (and make billions doing so I might add) so one can say their goal is ads. Now what makes Google's ads valuable? Is it merely the number of eyeballs? No its the data mining which is why MSFT was willing to spend stupid money for Yahoo and was able to distract folks with the thought they wanted the whole thing when all they wanted was access to search. The more information you can obtain on a person the more targeted the ads can become and when you are spending the money these advertisers are you want that target focused like a laser.
So you can see why Google is gonna do the bare minimum to look like they are going along and are gonna fuck with the other browsers whenever they can, its just good business for them. the more people opt out the harder its gonna be to get the data they require to make the profits they are used to and Google is a publicly traded company. they know there is ZERO loyalty in their business, just ask Altavista and Yahoo about search loyalty, so if they can't get that data and get those targeted ads its gonna seriously hurt them. Sadly some have bought into marketing speak and actually believes that Google "Does no evil" but then again i suppose those same people thinks Apple "Thinks different" but in the end all fortune 50 companies are pretty much the same, if they weren't they wouldn't have become a fortune 50 company. so look to see google do their damnedest to skirt the very edge of the wording of "do not track" and to have a shitload of "oopsies" which while they will publicly proclaim as an accident the guy that produced the oopsie will most likely be rewarded. its just business folks.
Oh I know this, I just use the opportunity as a public service to point out what a giant fail his precious really is. You see its in a way like the failure of communism. You see the communists never could figure out how to fix the "busted shitter" problem and neither can Linux. Everyone wants to be the artist, nobody wants to be the guy that cleans toilets so they don't get cleaned. The communists had to actually order soldiers to do "potato duty" just to get someone to do the shit jobs nobody wanted but Linux don't have that luxury so what you get is a facade that covers a tarpaper shack with a busted outhouse attached. Sure it looks good on the outside but actually try living in it and its a stinking drafty about to fall over mess, and that is exactly what Linux is.
Look at the links, more vulnerabilities rated severe than Win 2K8, Dell is losing money on every Ubuntu sale (Alex thinks they can make it up with volume, funny huh?) and even they can't get enough QA to get a lousy dozen devices to have their drivers checked before the next release makes a big old stinky all over them, so they have to run their own repos. Linux is Windows 98, nothing more. Its a CLO OS with a GUI bolted on that doesn't really work well, has shitty drivers, and if anything goes wrong you have to go CLI just to work on the POS.
Has anyone else noticed that the word "quality" has become almost a dirty word, a word one never utters unless its with nostalgia for when people and companies actually gave a shit? Now some of it you can blame on the government because getting rid of lead solder was just fucking stupid because the amount of waste being made from devices failing earlier is causing more pollution than the lead was, but as we see in TFA even universities are getting into the "We don't give a shit about quality, just crank that shit out" business.
Personally i think its sad how everything is becoming cheap and plastic and worthless, that's what it really is. Hell you can't even spend more and get quality as all you'll get is the same crap and if the company has a problem with the crap they'll just rig it so it'll last one day past the warranty and fuck you over, HP Nvidia laptop anyone? Maybe its just me but it seemed that people used to take pride in things, take pride in doing a good job, but not anymore. Now its get in, get out, get paid, fuck everything else. Now we are gonna see science and learning become yet more crap factories, just churning out endless piles of stupid useless shit to meet some stupid quota. Damned shame is what it is, just a damned shame.
Just don't let anybody light a match near that harmonica while you are blowing or you may end up with the most fucked up looking flamethrower you have ever seen. To be fair it does have some really nice overtones as the metal heats up, with the bluer flames giving it almost an octave overtone, well until your hair catches on fire or the harmonica gets too hot and you pass out only to find your friends have put it on YouTube the next day under "Dumbass with a harmonica" that is.
Actually I've seen this in action and all that happens in reality is the ISPs use this as an excuse to toss any customers that actually use the bandwidth they paid for. Both the local DSL and WISP providers will just say "You must have a virus" and turn off your connection if they decide they don't like what you are running or how much you are using, the WISP going so far as to say "You can't run our scanner so you must be infected" when i was running PCLOS on my laptop.
Remember folks the ONLY customers these ISPs really want is what they call the "granny" customers, where all they do is check email and then log off like its 1994. This is because none of the major ISPs are rolling out shit for bandwidth upgrades, instead just sticking those profits in their pocket. Any excuse that lets them toss more people that actually use resources is quickly jumped on and this way they can say "We are protecting the network" instead of "he actually used HALF the bandwidth that is in his contract, can you fucking believe it?" and gives them a nice legally sound out even when the customer isn't hitting the caps, just using close to it.
Nooo..the TEABAGGERS wanted them to go under, because honestly they are what we used to call back in the day a "Barry Goldwater conservative" that actually believes in smaller government and personal responsibility. If you look at the votes the majority of the reps voted for the money, same as they have voted for big money pretty much since the 70s. same as the Dems vote for all the jackbooted shit right along with the reps because they like the big checks being written by the megacorps and big government money they can siphon. As the late great often stolen from Bill hicks said "Well I believe the puppet on the left shares my beliefs, well i believe the puppet on the right shares my interests...hey wait a minute there's one guy controlling BOTH puppets" and that guy ain't you and me friend, it ain't you and me.
Actually you just tripped over the catch 22 I was talking about. See those corporate desktops are run by admins that are usually really fucking smart, hence they don't need a hand holding dumbed down GUI OS which is what Canonical's ONLY real claim to fame was. i mean how many times have YOU said to yourself "What i need is a really stupid interface here, something with lots of hand holding and clicky clicky" Barbara? I bet that thought hasn't crossed your mind in a looooong time has it?
As for XP I think MSFT has a plan and frankly its gonna be fucking brilliant in its simplicity. Remember how Sega got its ass kicked with the Saturn because after announcing a $399 price point Sony just walked up to the mike and said "$299 MSRP" and walked away? And you know how badly ballmer wants Win 8 to NOT be a flop, because frankly he's not only betting desktops but tablets AND cell phones on it? I have a feeling a month before the Win 8 release if not sooner MSFT will call a press conference and say these simple words..."Windows 8 Home is $50" and will just walk away while people crap their pants. hell at $50 you can keep that old XP dual core and just slap Win 8 on it, and since the new Windows is made for tablets and cell phones the resource usage will be adaptable like Win 7 only more so. you ever try running Win 7 on a P4 with 512Mb of RAM? I have and it uses less than 200Mb. the OS detects its being run on an older machine and drops or delays any extra crap, its already been announced that after we admins had been screaming about it for a decade FINALLY Windows will have services that launch on use and shutdown after instead of running all the time.
And finally your analogy is flawed because it forgets one little thing...greed Even Google refuses to give out its best stuff like GoogleFS because it might give the competition an advantage so why would I invest something that my competitor can then take for free? this hurts me NOT helps me. this only works in servers because the OS isn't being used in any way as the product, its the hardware, or the services, or the bandwidth,to these companies the server is just a tool but on the desktop it costs them more money with ZERO gain. I mean why should i pay a $100K a year Linux guru when I can slap an AD server behind the firewall and with it controlling the WinDesktops via GPOs frankly my 18 year old could learn how to run the whole thing in like a month? MCSEs are a dime a dozen, and when you are buying 100,000 desktops the cost of the OS doesn't even make it into the top 15, its just not something to care about.
So you see my friend ultimately linux desktops are ALL caught in a catch 22, as those that could actually USE Linux security simply won't pay support contracts and can't do it on their own with the current state of Linux and the guys that CAN do it themselves? Well we just don't see any bugs so why should we switch to an OS with less applications and more work for what applications it DOES have? Frankly other than religious zealotry or a few niche software areas where it makes sense frankly Linux on the desktop is currently pointless. I mean do you have ANY doubt you could secure a Windows box and use it without getting infected? of course not even basic common sense security practices like not clicking on links in PMs or running funny email attachments will protect you.
In the end my neighbor below me is a perfect example, to this very day he still can't tell the difference between RAM and hard drive or why one machine can run an app but another can't, hell he doesn't even get the difference between desktop and documents yet and libraries and breadcrumbs are right out. In Windows there is enough hand holding and wizards that a guy like him can actually use a PC, even though this is only his second year of even having a system, yet while a power user like myself can blow through our jobs with Windows guys like him can STILL get their work done. THESE are the kinds of users Linux needs, they already have the ones i call "freetards", you know, the
Not to mention no matter how many here say "Fight teh power" we ALL know how this is gonna end, it'll end the same way it always ends...the big guys cross license which makes sure the little guys can't get in. Try making a new X86 chip and see how far you get, or hell any new thing where the big dogs are playing and you'll find they cross license up the ass so good luck getting in there. personally i think both patents and copyrights should return to the original numbers set by the founding fathers if not having even shorter terms but acting like this is one bad guy against a good guy is bullshit because when it comes to patents they are ALL bad all the way down.
We agree on a lot of things again except one thing which is in this case #1. Frankly i don't think Canonical can be saved by support and here is why: The desktop is a catch-22 where those that could actually benefit from the support won't pay for it and those that have the ability and lack of aversion to paying for it simply won't benefit from it!
As a retailer I can tell you consumers HATE paying for extended support, just ask any of the BB guys what the reaction the majority give them when they have to push extended support. as a friend who took a shift there one Xmas season to get his GF a really killer Xmas said "You might as well be saying 'hey would you like a free dose of anal cancer with this laptop?' for how much they do NOT want this service" so if the cost isn't already written into the device where the actual cost is hidden from the user you can give it up. that is why MSFT retail copies are so high you know, they can't palm off support onto the OEM so what you are seeing is the cost of paying someone to answer all the stupid questions. I can tell you tech support is a thankless job where you are constantly asked REALLY fucking stupid questions, questions so damned dumb you think "How can someone this retarded even operate a computer?" so they'll have to have tiers to separate the "Update foo broke my drivers" questions from the "How do I change my wallpaper?" dumbshit ones, and all that is gonna cost a pretty penny.
This is why i think FOSS is doomed to forever be the last place lousy choice for the desktop, because how can you make money to improve the product? in every place FOSS has carved out a niche, every single one, there has been an easy and clear cut way to monetize it. With servers you have support contracts, with embedded you have developers being paid to write custom version or custom interfaces, with Android Google is datamining the hell out of anyone that touched it, but where does that leave desktops? How can they monetize and differentiate themselves from everybody else? Answer is they don't which is why all the flip flopping from one lame idea to another, we have a classic underpants gnomes dilemma. They are now on step three and as everyone knows there is NO step three hence the throwing crap at a wall and just praying something, hell anything, will just stick.
But you and I know that nothing will stick and in 3 years Canonical will be another Mandriva, or Xandros, or Linspire, or gOS, gee, notice a pattern here? Why it almost like there isn't a way to monetize a FOSS desktop! Android and iOS will lock in the phones, one making money off of datamining while the other hardware, and before anyone accuses Android of being Linux I'd point out its as much linux as OSX lion is actually BSD which is to say very damned little of it has anything to do with the other. The desktop market will remain MSFT's simply because the support costs (which they can't add into the cost of the product because every FOSSie zealot screams "It costs more than Windows so it must be a MSFT conspiracy!" so the OEMs simply can't make any money there, and finally after Canonical tries to jam itself into every have assed device with a chip they will shutter their doors in less than 3 years, you just watch. hell they haven't had a single profitable quarter since the whole thing started! Because just as you pointed out with Mint there is nothing stopping someone from taking all the work you put in and giving it away in their own wrapper. There simply isn't a way to generate the kind of capital required to spend the massive amounts on R&D and support to make FOSS a functional model when it comes to desktops and as soon as Canonical gets that it'll be going on the pile of failed distros, just you watch.
So in other words 'I don't care how badly i get fucked as long as they bring lube" is that RTEALLY your answer? you have such an impotent rage against MSFT you don't mind having every single thing you do tracked up the ass as long as its "all go to hell but cave 76!"? is that it? And i noticed you couldn't say a damned thing about the GPL, I mean how could you? its all there in black and white, since GPL V3 its been going straight down the toilet, with its numbers falling by the month.
And yet again ALL you can do is hide in that refuge of small minds. i give you links, all you can do is throw a blankie on your head and call me a bad man, how sad is that?
While it has some similarities to Jamaican migrant workers its a LOT more slang heavy. in fact what really makes it a bitch is depending on the region you may have as many as FOUR different kinds of slang mixed in! You'll have black slang, poor white trash slang, and in MS you'll often get Creole slang mixed in there as well. I'd give you a sample but i'm afraid i wasn't joking, I actually DO have to have a translator if I stop around Yazoo, its too slang heavy. At least with the migrant workers its usually English they are mangling, with bottoms talk they are mangling Mexican slang, Creole slang, as well as white and black English. hell if you go down by chemical row they even have some African slang from the Gambian workers they have down there, its so mangled it IMHO is more of a mess than a language.
Awww...did the poor little FOSSie have his perception bubble busted again? i do find that so delightful. I don't know whether to laugh at you or feel pity at your being so fucking pathetic, I mean I have wrote article on how to make Linux more accessible to small business, what have you done besides wave your tiny penis and scream shill at anybody that won't kiss RMS' sweaty ass? But don't worry i have some nice facts that will make your day, a place where linux is winning? Its vulnerabilities..
Not only does Linux have 4x++ the amount of unpatched security vulnerabilities its competitor Windows Server 2008 does, but it bears 3 remotely exploitable unpatched security vulnerabilities (THE WORST KIND!): one and a two and a three. But hey, what can you expect from an OS that actually has less users than JavaME which is a shitty sub basement OS they put on Tracphones. Of course when you were given an equal chance to compete a decade old Windows beat the shit out of your Linux on netbooks and even ASUS, which invented the whole netbook for the masses with a Linux unit even ASUS has given up on your bullshit How about how you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share ?
But you stick your head under your little blankie and start crying about how "Only a shill wouldn't love our perfect OS!" while ignoring all the bugs, the vulnerabilities, failures, hell even Dell has to run their own repos just to keep your "precious" from crapping itself. How much money you think that costs Alex? wanna bet dell is LOSING money on every sale? I bet you think they can make it up on volume though huh? You just keep telling yourself I'm a bad man, I must be a "M$ Ninja" when in reality I'm your worst fucking nightmare...a retailer that has tried your shit and seen what a turd it is. hell its not even up to WinXP standards, much less OSX Lion or Win 7. Hell Vista was the biggest POS on the planet and even with MSFT not even having a horse in the race they fricking STOMPED you with a decade old creaking POS, how fucking sad and pathetic do you have to be to get beat by an OS that is so damned old it came out before SATA or even dual cores and it STILL kicks your ass?
Maybe instead of calling names you should volunteer to fix some of the mess huh? i'm sure you think of yourself as some kind of programming genius because you can copypasta into a CLI. Of course in Windows we would call that a script kiddie, but I guess that means genius in your world. Oh a final bit of info, just FYI...Kernel.org pwnage , Linux.com pwned too oh and MYSQL.com throwing malware worse than a "look at teh titties" toipsite in case you missed it. Man gotta be impressed by that kick ass Linux security, them eyes that make bugs shallow must have cataracts huh?
You're right because we got so many jobs and made so much of our tax money back on solyndra!...Oh wait... You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, run amok, and they wave a green flag while they pick your pocket. do you know old Rev Al Gore has the giant brass balls to say farting on a lear jet is carbon NEUTRAL because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits from his own fucking company? This would be like me taking money from my left pocket and putting it in my right, calling it "wealth redistribution" and demanding a tax break for it...and fucking getting it!
Maybe you should watch this video to see just how trivial it is to scam with crap and trade. hell rev Al is doing it right in front of your face! you don't help global warming by farting in Lear jets, taking SUV motorcades bigger than when he was VP, or having a fucking house so damned huge it has an indoor basketball court and blows through more AC than 2 dozen family dwellings! yet you buy his bullshit, seriously man think! What does he have to do, grow a Snidley Whiplash mustache and cackle about how badly he is gonna rape your wallet? because he is being pretty damned blatant about the whole thing, not trying to hide it.
What I don't get is the total cluelessness on display here. let me get this straight, you are FOR software freedom and FOSS, yes? So you boo the software that actually lets you install it royalty free, and even lets you make your own free clone called gnash, and in return you fricking CHEER having the web taken over by a "standard" that is run by a company that might as well have "Pay your $699 license fee you cock smoking teabaggers" as its motto? Did I miss a meeting? Was there an episode in the series i skipped?
HTML V5 is gonna be locked down tighter than a nun's thighs and is controlled by one of the most aggressive patent trolls there has ever been and THAT is good? Has everyone kinda had a senior moment and forgot that H.264 is patented up the ass and is controlled by a conglomeration that will happily sue your ass if you look at them funny? If anything everyone should be having a royal shitfit and refuse to have a damned thing to do with HTML V5 until it takes either WebM or Theora as the lowest common denominator. because as it is now frankly you're all about to get severely buttraped and you don't even see that train sized penis headed right at you. With Flash Adobe has never bitched, you want flash, gnash, whatever its cool. With H.264 if you don't break out the checkbook you ain't distributing shit, and what do you think will happen when the DRM hits? you DO know its coming yes? you don't think they are gonna let netflix show movies without it do you? What do you think happens then? I'll tell ya what then if you don't pay your license fee and set up some kind of secure path you'll be breaking DMCA if you have H.264 in your distro that's what.
So please think people, yes I use Windows but I sure as hell don't want Apple and MSFT and Google controlling the web between them, we've seen what corporate crap ends up with real player and WMV, lets not go back to that alright? The FOSS guys are the ones that run the web, yes? After all that's what you brag all the time, so do something! Refuse to support HTML V5 until a standard that anybody can use is the lowest common denominator. Because if you don't Apple and Google and MSFT will pay their $699 license fees and the rest of you will get to be locked out. Think folks, you are so blinded by hatred of flash you are laughing about beating the old dog down while a pack of lions are about to have you for dinner.
I agree with everything you said EXCEPT that netbooks are dead. I think netbooks have a great future only it won't be "ultrabooks" or some other "maximize profit potential" idea but what it was originally, a cheap mobile device that still lets you do basic work. Take the AMD C and E series for example, here you have a chip that lets them sell for equal or even sometimes less than Atom while still doing 720P on a 12 inch screen while getting 6+ hours, all for around $300 before the flood and by summer will probably be back down below $350. Its cheap, its more portable than a laptop, its easy to carry, yet you can still watch movies without killing your eyes or type without getting a headache from the strain of reading a teeny tiny phone screen. This is a good thing and people see the value of this, its Intel trying to upmarket it into some lame Mac ripoff ultrabook that will be toast, because if its the same price as an Air then WTF? Why wouldn't I buy the Air that has better resale and is cooler?
But while you and I were both modded down by those with perception bubbles i truly believe time will vindicate what we have said...Canonical is DOA, its getting on the cart no matter how "happy" it feels. Why does everyone think they keep going for wilder and stupider ideas? its because they are bleeding money and as the coffers get lean they get desperate to find a niche. Shuttleworth has already made it clear he won't give another dime, so they have to get into the black or die. remember how they originally said they'd never get into servers, that they were gonna focus on making "The best Linux desktop in the world"? What happened? Its obvious to anyone with eyes, the same thing that happened to Mandriva and Xandros and Linspire and gOS, they found that if anyone can take their code for free they simply have nothing to sell the OEMs or customers.
Xandros tried bundling non free software like crossover, Linspire tried selling click n' run, Mandriva a "pro" version and gOS tried cheap hardware tied to Google services. and now Ubuntu tries first netbooks, then a lame tablet UI they shove onto non touchscreen desktops, and now smartphones. Mark my words in 3 years there will be NO Ubuntu desktop except some "community" version which Canonical abandons to the volunteers which gets further and further behind. A couple of years after that they will shutter their doors because server admins don't need pretty simple GUIs and that's all Canonical really has to sell. Its sad but the model simply doesn't work on the desktop.
Noticed i got modded a troll for daring to point out what should be quite obvious by now? I mean seriously, how many companies have to completely FAIL trying to bring a FOSS desktop up to snuff before everyone realizes the FOSS model simply doesn't supply the needed funds to turn a server OS (which is what Linux is, more than 90% of its R&D is spent on server issues and features and all its brightest programmers are working for server companies) into a desktop OS? I made it quite clear i don't think FOSS is bad, simply that it doesn't fit into every model.
Lets take Ubuntu and what I call the "busted shitter problem", now go look how many bugs in their bug tracker are over 2 years old, how about 3? 4? last i checked they had several that were 6! And remember for every ONE person you have reporting a bug you have SEVERAL HUNDRED that have simply given up and moved on. That is business 101 folks, for every one complainer you have probably 200 minimum that just walk away and quit, vowing just to never touch your product or darken your door again, and THIS is progress? This is why communism don't work, everybody wants to be the artist and NOBODY wants to be "Hi I'm Cleetus, I fix the busted shitters". Does anyone think apple and MSFT pay millions upon millions to programmers because they LIKE spending all that money? of course not, but you simply can't motivate anyone to take really shitty work without pay, its just human nature. Would YOU go clean your neighbor's nasty overflowing shitter for free?
In the end we are talking probably a good 100 million dollar minimum will need to be spent to get ubuntu or any other Linux up to the same level as Lion and Win 7. Now you may think I'm exaggerating but look at what needs to be done logically. you have a good 1600 page novel's worth of help files that need to be written, because frankly probably 35% are placeholders and the ones that aren't are so poorly written if you don't know the lingo you're fucked which kinda kills the whole damned point of a HELP file. then you got on average around 10,000 devices being released each month, so realistically you would have to have a hardware ABI to get the device manufacturers to build drivers so you're gonna have to do like Google and fork your own kernel. Now the ONLY argument you'll ever see against a hardware ABI, which just FYI but not only MSFT but Apple, Solaris, BSD, and even OS/2 Warp have, is frankly religious. It's "ZOMFG they might write a non free driver ZOMFG!" which ignores the quite obvious fact that the majority of Linux users use Nvidia which is a non free driver so it makes no fucking sense, but if you want to have to rewrite thousands of drivers because Linus changed a pointer that's cool, just quadruple the cost so now you're looking at 400 million.
But lets say you can magically get all those drivers to never fail, which FYI now Linux forums tell you with a straight face that "You have to install clean" which they USED to make fun of Windows for, but the users have frankly just given up on the drivers getting any better sadly. But lets say you fix the driver problem with some magic, then you still got QA and regression testing to make sure the new packages don't crap themselves on AMD, or Atom, or if they have a wireless plugged in. Then you have to pay for marketing because if nobody knows about it, how they gonna use it? You need promotions, deals with OEMs, a bank of techs for support, not to mention the guys working on fixing the bugs users find AND the guys working on new features.
Now you tell me laurelraven, where is that 100 million plus gonna come from when anybody can just take what you made and undercut you because they didn't have to pay ANY of the R&D costs hmm? Can't say the community will provide it out the goodness of their hearts, if that were true then 2/3rds of the web would be running on RHEL who donates more to the community than the next 4 providers combined. Heck AMD not only gave away their code they even hired developers to help the free guys
And I'd like to add that as someone that lives in a rural state its simply a fact that animal hunting HAS TO be allowed, well that is unless you are willing to have a massive program to bring back wolves, panthers, and bears, and then are willing to look the other way when that panther has little Suzy for supper. In my state the treehuggers stopped the local deer hunts for 2 years, you know what happened? Lots of dead people from starving deer shooting across major highways trying to find some food. Without predators most animals will outbreed their environment and you end up with sickly diseased herds that are bad for the animals AND the environment.
As someone who is a member of a multigenerational family of hunters I can tell you responsible hunting is absolutely required for the health of the herds. I can also tell you it helps to breed smarter animals as my mother doesn't allow hunting on her land and guess where the biggest, most beautiful deer are every hunting season? Right next to her cats in the back yard, they even bed down in her field and sometimes help themselves to the catfood. Needless to say the rest of my family is none to happy about it but my GF loves to spend the holidays up at my mom's, she can get up at dawn and walk among the deer, even get within 5 feet of the big buck and just enjoy the view, which i have to admit he is a pretty impressive 14 pointer.
You mean they too was paid by the CIA to develop a method of inflicting horrible pain without leaving a mark on the victim? Those bastards! At least Sandler had an excuse as they threatened him with being forced to work on the new SNL and having to have Tom Green write all his material, but what's Canonical's excuse? Maybe a lucrative contract to supply all of Iraq and Afghanistan with non touch enabled desktops to teach the children the futility of trying to fight the system? the mind boggles.
Because with this and the killing of kubuntu its as I said and canonical is slowly bleeding to death? i'll get hate for saying this but truth is truth and the FOSS model simply doesn't work on the desktop. On servers companies buy support contracts, on embedded companies pay developers to customize it but on the desktop if you don't get MSFT's economies of scale (Windows 1.0 was $99, Win 7 HP is $89) you simply can't come up with the millions, and it WILL require millions to get an OS with 99% of the money being spent on server usage like Linux up to snuff for desktops, so the companies die. See Mandriva as just the latest line of a long line of examples, along with Xandros, Linspire, gOS, etc.
To make money on a desktop you not only have to have OEMs that are willing to sell your product (Canonical doesn't as Dell is most likely losing money on every sale of Ubuntu) but everyone has gotten spoiled to "clicky clicky plug and play everything just works" so you have to do slick and seamless BETTER than MSFT and Apple which simply isn't possible with free labor. its what i call the "busted shitter problem" in that there is a TON of work that is lousy, thankless, long, boring work that HAS TO be done, all the docs and QA and bug fixing, I mean how many bugs are listed in the Ubuntu bug tracker that are over 2 years old? How many "Update foo broke my drivers" posts do you see in Ubuntu forums with every release? if anything the FOSS model is worse because the developers are all coming from server backgrounds and have a "Meh just use CLI" attitude that uses CLI as a crutch and that simply won't fly on the desktop where you have to be BETTER than the other guy, not just cheaper. this attitude works on servers because Apple doesn't even care about that market and MSFT has assraping pricing for server OSes so admins will put up with a lot of shit to save tens of thousands of dollars. When an OEM copy of Win 7 HP is only $50 to the big boys it really don't take too many service calls from consumers before Windows is the cheaper alternative, not when HP makes on average $8 a sale on the low end.
So you mark my words in less than 5 years, I'd say less than 3, Canonical will join that long line of companies that tried to make a go with a FOSS desktop and found it simply unworkable. that isn't to say the FOSS model is bad, just that it simply doesn't work in all cases and this is one. What we need is a new license that will allow someone like canonical to concentrate on all the "buster shitter" work while still making enough profits to keep the lights on, maybe a "free to look at the code but if you distribute you have to pay" clause? because as a retailer believe me I WANT there to be choices, I WANT to see real competition but when I try to upgrade a system and the drivers break and I click a help file and get a "to be done" placeholder? Well my time costs and just like the OEMs it really don't take long before that copy of Win 7 HP is the cheaper deal, about 2 hours in my case.
Funny I'm just the opposite, that evil daystar makes me feel all crappy and run down, but give me those nice warm summer nights with big sky with stars aplenty and a big fat moon and ...ahhh, its like paradise. Even with ultra dark shades on more than an hour or two under that evil daystar gives me a serious skullthumper and just ruins my mood. Lucky for me that even though my GF is an "up with the roosters" happy morning person she has done accepted its pointless to change me, she just leaves me in the bed cave until noon for "breakfast" of home made pizza or burger and fries..damn now I'm hungry, y'all have a nice discussion i'm gonna go get a pizza.
Don't you just love how they use the word socialism like kiddie fiddler yet socialism for the rich is EXACTLY what we have in the USA? What else would you call it when you privatize all the profits while making the losses public but classic Soviet style socialism?
As for TFA frankly i would trust EITHER side of the debate to tell me its raining. on the right you have Shell and BP, neither one very nice, on the left you have the Rev Al Gore and his supporters who fart around in lear jets and motorcades while living like pigs in houses with indoor basketball courts while saying YOU dirty peasants need to pay to "save the planet". Well i say fuck them both, hell the ONLY one I would listen to for more than the time it takes to tell them to kiss my ass would be Ed begley Jr and that's because he isn't a hypocritical bastard like most of the "greenies" like Gore. he lives in a VERY modest house, recycles everything, drive a little electric car only when he can't ride his bicycle, the man walks the walk. But both Gore and BP are scammers of the highest order and anybody who listens to them is just being fleeced.
Hell they have the one who cooked up credit default swaps aka housing market killers, working on their crap & trade scam! if THAT doesn't tell you its gonna be more rigged than a game of three card Monty I don't know what does! We should tell BOTH sides to DIAF, after all it'll be good for the environment wouldn't it?
Actually I have an even better idea, have either several tiers or allow buying of features ala cart. While i might not need say green screen support I would like null transform, so just sell me that instead of making me buy a much more expensive version or in reality me just passing your product by. Think DLC, where you can just buy the pieces you want. if you are using a modular approach (which is the smart way to do it anyway, as you don't want to keep from shipping because one piece isn't up to snuff) then you should be able to simply sell me individual modules.
But this has to be one of the dumbest "Ask Slashdot" questions I've seen here. You HONESTLY expect THIS crowd to talk about DRM without it being followed by DIAF? You haven't actually read Slashdot before, have you? Oh and $10k software? GTFO of here, in a dead economy you are just begging for piracy with a price like that. Use the Valve model instead, make it easy, make it cheap, make it simple. Then you can sell tons of copies instead of worrying about a few stragglers. Hell even Sony don't charge anywhere near that for Vegas and i bet my last dollar Vegas is nicer and more feature rich than what you are offering.
Well if those emails that Oracle got a hold of are allowed in court (sorry i can't find the link, it was on /. awhile back so maybe someone can find it?) where one of the employees basically said "We'll see how much they want for Java and if the price is to high we'll just make our own version" then they are sunk, the only question is how much they are gonna have to pay. How long before corps learn that email is a BAD idea with a capital B? Call 'em on the damned phone already, quit leaving a paper trail the size of Kansas that can be used against you in court! Hell even Cheney was smart enough to have the White house emails sent through the RNC who just "oopsie" made them all go away on a regular basis.
Personally I don't see why everyone is cheering Google in this except for "All go to hell except cave 76!" perception bubbles. I mean for the love of Pete its MSJava all over again! BOTH companies made their own version of Java which was incompatible with Java proper and BOTH companies have aggressively pushed their incompatible Java, so what's the diff? Because Google has some lame ass 'Do no evil" motto that means that doing the exact same shit MSFT did is okay now? it wasn't okay when MSFT did it and its not okay now. If Google wanted to use Java (which the emails said clearly they did) then they should have licensed it and then stuck to the standards. hell if anything I'd argue in this case they are worse than MSFT because at least MSFT bought a license before they tried to fuck Java. Either stick to the standards, pay your licenses, or roll your own. Its not like Google can't afford to roll their own language or buy one right?
Its VERY simple, try to keep up...if the standards ONLY allow FOSS then we can give up getting anything but 30 year old tech, lets see MP3 will be free in 2017 and MPG 2 will be out in 2014 so to allow FOSS to be "free as in beer" you'll have to switch to MPG 1 and MP1 until then. BTW both Theora AND WebM would most likely not stand up to a court challenge which is why Google refuses to back WebM even though they own it. i'm sure their lawyers told them they wouldn't have a prayer in court as it walks all over the h.264 patents.
BTW if you are gonna bullshit at least bullshit correctly. Win NT 3 had a BSD TCP stack, they wrote their own for NT 4, since i kinda doubt anybody is using NT 3 anywhere nobody cares, as for Apple? they could replace what little is left of the BSD underpinnings in probably a year, maybe less. Not that it matters because BSD allows them to do what they want so who cares.
In the end if you refuse to allow the work that was PAID FOR and is now patented just to please the FOSSies you've just sent the entire tech sector back 30 years. Riddle me this: If the FOSS model actually works why are there dozens upon dozens of bugs more than 4 years old in every bugtracker out there? I'll tell you why, because FOSS is a pretty house with busted plumbing and smoking wires that's why. Nobody does the crappy jobs in FOSS because there is no monetary gain in doing so, so its itch scratching all the way down. In video for instance you would have NOTHING if it weren't for proprietary, nothing at all. Theora? VP3 given away AFTER they paid for the work by On2, who was bought out by Google who then AFTER they had paid for the work gave away WebM. The ONLY places FOSS works is embedded and servers because SOMEBODY PAYS for developers to work on the code for their companies, NOTHING in FOSS worth having has been 100% volunteers, nothing. I'm sure you will then probably name some little 300Kb tool that someone built in a month like Busybox, nobody cares. Anything modern and feature rich simply isn't built for free. LO? Paid for by Sun, Mozilla? Paid for by netscape and then by Google. TINSTAAFL and the companies that paid MILLIONS to develop these technologies deserve to get paid. If FOSS doesn't like it tough, don't use it. you can enjoy being 30 years behind everybody else.