Intelligent musicians are now turning the labels and their thieving contracts down. This is true to some extent. Due to all the wonderful technologies we have the music industry is going through massive change. Minor and Indie labels are popping up all over the place.
My band (shameless plug) just recently had a discussion about this and where we want to go with out music and (hopefully) our careers as musicians. The end result was that we'd be looking to get signed to a minor label. Why? Indies don't have much clout as they're young and small. Majors will make you sell your soul and give up creative control of your music, not to mention rape you three ways 'till morning via contracts.
Minors are typically willing to work with musicians and try to achieve the band's vision. They also have some bankroll to promote the artists so both the label and the band make money.
The reality of the situation is that without a label bands don't make it anywhere. Have you ever heard of my band? Almost definitely not, because we don't have $25k or even $5k to throw into promotion. A minor label does and they don't try to "control" the band (typically).
And here's an interesting little tid-bit from the blog to chew on:
While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
I found this pretty interesting from the FAQ:
Where does the money go? The penalty payment is paid into the EU Budget. It does not increase the budget, but reduces the contribution from Member States and so from taxpayers. Which means MicroSoft is literally paying people's taxes in the E.U.
In the U.S. the answer would be: "In the pockets of elected officials"
Perhaps it's my 20 some-odd years using their technologies and watching their company, or my 10 or so years working professionally with technology and being personally (usually negatively) affected by the companies actions but, does anyone actually believe them?
Doesn't this just seem more smoke and mirrors than anything else? It seems to me that they're just giving lip service to get everyone's guard down and get the EU off their backs.
"We're all fuzzy warm now!" "Oh good. [sigh of relief]" "HAHA Just kidding! We're suing everyone using OSS now that all that anti-trust stuff is gone!"
Besides, how many times has this company spun things around or just blatantly lied to our faces? I for one, am not convinced of their sincerity.
This is absolutely not meant as a troll but a genuine question:
If 99% of codeweavers updates go directly to wine, what is the incentive to purchase their product instead of just using wine? Is there a benefit to using Cadega?
... look what got Bush elected. Not his wit, or astute knowledge of foreign affairs, but his "folksy" ways of expression. Yeah it could have been that. Or it could have been corruption and voter fraud. Twice.
Reread my post - where exactly did I say that powder and crack cocaine are the same? Huh? That was the point of your entire post!
It's funy how you are distinguishing between cocaine and crack - even the government that you are railing against has recognized that there is no real distinction. Crack is no more dangerous than powder cocaine See? To me, it's funny[read: scary] how you DON'T distinguish between the two.
Apparently, crack is NOT "instantly addicting" or so much more damaging, at least on large scale, and those were the reasons that the Feds gave when they increased the sentencing minimums on crack well above powder. Wait, so you're saying the feds thought there was no (or little) difference in damage or addiction, that both were equal, and that was the reason why they made minimums on crack higher? Do you even read what you write?
The hidden reasoning was the paternalistic urge to "protect" theose poor black folks who just don't know any better. That's just naive. The government doesn't do anything to protect people, the politicians couldn't give two shits and a giggle about you or I. They do it to keep crazed crackheads in jail and to keep crack in the poor parts of inner-cities and out of the hands of middle-class kids. It's not so much about race as it is economics and class-systems. Keep the poor out of our nice suburban streets and all that...
Cocaine is a middle/upperclass party drug. Crack is more of a poor-man's street drug.", you are agreeing with a racist policy hidden in paternalism. No dude. For the 15th time. It's economics and class systems, not race. Race is how it started and obviously it's still a factor, but I don't care if the strung out crackhead trying to break into my car is mexican asian or white, and neither do the politicians. Nothing in the above quote that I said has ANYTHING to do with race, although I have to admit I find it telling that you seem to think poor is synonymous with race. Do you hear the word "poor" and think "black" or "puertorican"?
And I said nothing about the addictive nature of either drug - I only pointed out that research has shown that they are of equivalent danger. What research? Where? I tell you what, it's wrong. Crack is way more damaging and dangerous than coke, and I was pointing that out to you. You can give me as many links as you want to "paper X" and "research analysis Y" but until you go to a ghetto and actually experience it for yourself, than how could you possibly know?
So why do you have such a big chip on your shoulder? Because of people like you who get modded "insightful" for spouting total garbage. I find it beyond pretentious and annoying when people open their mouths and start spouting drivel as if it's gospel when they obviously have no idea what they're talking about.
By that token IIS6 core is secure. Oh please. Take your MS shill BS to some other forum. A simple google search will prove how idiotic what you're saying is: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=IIS6+exploit&btnG=Google+Search Results 1 - 10 of about 16,700 for IIS6 exploit. (0.43 seconds)
Like this little ditty... example code all over the net for a freaking REMOTE BUFFER OVERFLOW. Again, that's REMOTE, not "well first you need access to the machine" buffer overflow.
Seriously, go try cocaine. Then try crack. Then try telling me they're the exact same thing with a straight face... I dare you.
The two are WORLDS apart, both in effect, and in the type of people who tend to use them. Cocaine is a middle/upperclass party drug. Crack is more of a poor-man's street drug.
You can "enjoy" cocaine while doing things, like clubbing and drinking and carrying on, as the effects are fairly mild compared to crack (or other intense drugs like MDMA or LSD). With Crack, if you're doing crack, that's ALL you're doing. You don't want to see people or do anything in public. You barricade yourself in your house/car/whatever and do the crack. Then, 5 seconds after you've done it all, you consider all your options in the way of getting MORE!
The two are worlds apart.
And while I'm at it, I absolutely refuse to accept the cocaine is a hugely addictive drug. Stop reading your D.A.R.E. program pamphlets for 5 seconds and go do some research people! Jesus. Is it addictive? Yeah, mildly. I'd say slightly less addictive than alcohol.
You make some interesting points. However, I couldn't help respond to:
... people who take commercially produced content for free and give NOTHING back Ah, but they do give back, my friend! They promote the music by listening to it, passing it around and going to shows and buying merchandise. Word-of-mouth is the most priceless and effective form of promotion available.
I, as a musician myself (shameless plug), would love people to hand out my band's copyrighted music like hotcakes. People showing up at shows and buying our wares is vastly more important than paying us $1/download or what have you for the music.
And as an afterthought: if a few people break the rules/laws, then they are in the wrong. If a LOT of people are breaking the rules/laws then perhaps the rules/laws are wrong.
You completely misunderstood what I meant by having the ->MENTALITY- of 10-15 years ago. Mentality has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with how you USE the technology.
Of course I wouldn't want to go backwards in technological advances, that's simply ludicrous, and frankly, I have no idea how you even got that from my post. You're either argumentative, trolling, or perhaps you simply misunderstood.
In any event, if people these days would use technology including shell scripting, perl, python, and all the wonderful tools we now have at our disposal in a sane and responsible manor instead of just throwing it together like the author of the post I originally responded to suggested, it would be a better world.
That was what I was saying, not, "Hey, let's go back to the dinosaur times of pure assembly".
You also seemed to miss another important facet of what I was saying; writing clear and maintainable code is obviously a goal of any good programmer, but you must also be responsible with the resources you are utilizing in your programs. People these days don't seem to give a hoot about that anymore.
Insightful? Interesting maybe; as in "looking into the brain of a mental patient" type of interesting.
The problem with what the parent says is that it perfectly illuminates the growing problem with IT that I've personally faced all of my life in this industry. To many people are here solely for the purposes of making money. They have no reverence for the craft.
Making software is an art form.
The question at hand is: "Why should I care if the software is a bloated piece of crap if the customer only has to spend a quarter/$50/whatever extra to run it?" The answer is this: Because it's the "right thing to do". Engineers, for a decade at least, have been using the exploding CPU speeds to allow themselves to be more and more lazy. People used to be able to do amazing things with incredibly low resources. Kids these days just say "fuck it, it works... sort of" and ships the crap off to their bosses.
Just imagine how much better technology/software in general would be if everyone still had the mentality we used to have 10-15 years ago when we only had a few hundred k RAM and a processor without a marketing logo attached to it's name.
I offer a plea. This goes out to anyone who, when deciding what major to pick in college thought; "Hmm. Business seems interesting, but I could make a boat load of money in IT", or anyone who spends 8-10 hours a day on a computer at work and does not go home to fiddle with your latest library/app or mess with your samba server: Please Leave The IT Industry. If you want to make money, go into marketing or sales or some other soulless, purely greed-driven industry and leave my industry alone.
Frankly, aforementioned people, I'm sick and tired of cleaning up your crap. Nearly every job I've ever had has started with "cleaning up my predecessor's bad code". Love IT or Leave IT!
You sir (Parent Post), should be ashamed of yourself.
This is "Neo-Conservatism" named for the character in the film "The Matrix." What? Neo pref.
1. New; recent: neonatal.
2. New and different: Neo-Freudian.
3. New and abnormal: neoplasm.
Neo-(word) has NOTHING to do with "The Matrix" and frankly the fact that you made that statement and it wasn't in jest scares the shit out of me.
The dictionary says, among other things, that a "sport" is a: 3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime.. Uh, way to mis-use the dictionary definition there sport. That's #3 in the definition. #4 and #5 define what they mean by your definition: 4. jest; fun; mirth; pleasantry: What he said in sport was taken seriously. 5. mockery; ridicule; derision: They made sport of him.
#3 is an old definition that's more loosely used to describe things besides athletic competitions, as in, "killing for sport" or "hunting for sport" or "shagging women for sport". The actual definition you want is #1: 1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
Now, dictionary.com puts golf right in the list, and I happen to completely disagree with them that golf is a sport (after all, they listed FISHING TOO!). Golf is a GAME. game: 1. an amusement or pastime: children's games.
By your definition, slapping hoe's and drinking beer is a "sport". Really, good job trying to spin things to support your argument.
The ONLY thing I can't do in linux is... use some "Internet Explorer only" websites. FYI: Yes you can; IE works perfectly well in wine (I'm not sure about 7). There's even an incredibly easy way to install it: ies4linux.
As I am upgrading to 7.10 now and took the time to look at the upgrade "details", I feel qualified to answer this:)
compiz packages are completely removed and compiz-fusion packages are installed. As for Beryl packages, I would presume they are removed as well, yet they might not be removed at all and wouldn't cause I problem if they remain. I had compiz and beryl installed from the repositories at the same time at one point.
I spent some time yesterday reading up on ideastorm and the linux blogs of the dell linux people. What you're suggesting will happen in the future. Here's where they are now:
Dell specifically states that they still consider linux for the "advanced user/hobbyist" and *not* for the average person yet. They believe that if you are savvy enough to use linux, you will have no problems finding it on their site. For that matter, Mr. Shuttleworth actually says something pretty similar; he said that Ubuntu is not quite ready for mainstream.
Dell *is* working on getting linux on *all* their offerings, but they have to do a ton of work for each offering; work with vendors for driver/hardware support, test & fix issues with software, set up/prepare tech support, etc. They're banging them out but it takes time.
I applaud our new pro-linux dell (they've actually been pro-linux for around 8+ years now). From what I read, they are doing a ton of work in pushing linux and they're doing it the right way. For instance, the linux crew at dell have made quite a few patches to the kernel, but if you were to get a pre-installed ubuntu machine from them, it would appear to be a vanilla installation. This is true because they don't patch the system on their end and roll it out like that, they actually send the patches to kernel.org and try to get them integrated into the kernel./clap!
They, according to their blogs and this interview, have and continue to do a ton of work with their vendor partners in getting them to contribute specs and/or create open-source drivers for hardware, which helps us all.
From what I see on ideastorm and what the linux dev people are saying on their blogs and in interviews, they are doing the linux thing the only practical way it can be done; offer linux as-is with a big warning ("For Advanced Users!"), and actively work on making it better, so when it is ready for the average joe, they can sell it side-by-side with windows.
Let's see you tell upper management that they need to pay to retrain the entire user base so that they can use *your* desktop operating system of choice rather than the desktop OS that both the company and everyone else in their business space has been using successfully for over a decade Done. I work for a phone company in Springfield, MA. They've been using Windows on their desktop for quite a while now, mostly due to both my predecessors being totally incompetent and windows being the status-quo.
It took very little convincing on my part to get the management to see the benefits of Ubuntu on the normal users desktops and we'll be doing a nearly-full rollout (some manager computers will remain windows) in a couple months.
The 'retraining' argument is mostly FUD as most computer users are familar enough with the desktop (any desktop) to use a "start" or "applications" menu. There's practically no difference from a user stand point between IE and Firefox and Word (pre-tabbed interface) is close enough to OpenOffice to not make much difference. Oh, and did I mention it makes my job and the manager's jobs easier by leaps and bounds due to the enormous configurability of linux? I can put exactly what the users need in the menus and lock down the machines so they can do only what they're supposed to do for their jobs.
Sounds like someone is still in school and has never had a real job. Trust me, kid, when you get out into the real world your thinking is going to get much more realistic. Huh. Condescending and incorrect at the same time! Just because you don't have the sack to anti-up and try to improve the technological world around us, doesn't mean you should FUD-storm those of us with the will and determination to try.
Looks like you're the one that needs to 'grow up'.
Microsoft has a MONOPOLY. No, no it doesn't If it did, no one would be running anything else, yet guess what? Many are! Wow. Just... wow.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the level of idiocy people display astounds me. And the modders are no better; +1 insightful? Who let Microsoft employees moderate/.?
in three years the miserable performance of Vista will be defined to be industry standard fast tracked and approved by ISO and users will use 4GB of RAM to browse the internet. Not if my ubuntu CD has anything to say about it:)
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately this is no joke.
OOXML really does look like it's going to be approved.
It is a sad day for technology advocates everywhere.
not is corrupt. Has been corrupted.
Microsoft, like the American Government is completely out of control. Unfortunately, there's no 4/8 year fail safe for corporations.
I know and I was agreeing with you.
My band (shameless plug) just recently had a discussion about this and where we want to go with out music and (hopefully) our careers as musicians. The end result was that we'd be looking to get signed to a minor label. Why? Indies don't have much clout as they're young and small. Majors will make you sell your soul and give up creative control of your music, not to mention rape you three ways 'till morning via contracts.
Minors are typically willing to work with musicians and try to achieve the band's vision. They also have some bankroll to promote the artists so both the label and the band make money.
The reality of the situation is that without a label bands don't make it anywhere. Have you ever heard of my band? Almost definitely not, because we don't have $25k or even $5k to throw into promotion. A minor label does and they don't try to "control" the band (typically).
The penalty payment is paid into the EU Budget. It does not increase the budget, but reduces the contribution from Member States and so from taxpayers. Which means MicroSoft is literally paying people's taxes in the E.U.
In the U.S. the answer would be:
"In the pockets of elected officials"
Thank you, that was very informative!
Perhaps it's my 20 some-odd years using their technologies and watching their company, or my 10 or so years working professionally with technology and being personally (usually negatively) affected by the companies actions but, does anyone actually believe them?
Doesn't this just seem more smoke and mirrors than anything else?
It seems to me that they're just giving lip service to get everyone's guard down and get the EU off their backs.
"We're all fuzzy warm now!"
"Oh good. [sigh of relief]"
"HAHA Just kidding! We're suing everyone using OSS now that all that anti-trust stuff is gone!"
Besides, how many times has this company spun things around or just blatantly lied to our faces?
I for one, am not convinced of their sincerity.
This is absolutely not meant as a troll but a genuine question:
If 99% of codeweavers updates go directly to wine, what is the incentive to purchase their product instead of just using wine?
Is there a benefit to using Cadega?
... look what got Bush elected. Not his wit, or astute knowledge of foreign affairs, but his "folksy" ways of expression. Yeah it could have been that. Or it could have been corruption and voter fraud. Twice.To me, it's funny[read: scary] how you DON'T distinguish between the two. Apparently, crack is NOT "instantly addicting" or so much more damaging, at least on large scale, and those were the reasons that the Feds gave when they increased the sentencing minimums on crack well above powder. Wait, so you're saying the feds thought there was no (or little) difference in damage or addiction, that both were equal, and that was the reason why they made minimums on crack higher? Do you even read what you write? The hidden reasoning was the paternalistic urge to "protect" theose poor black folks who just don't know any better. That's just naive. The government doesn't do anything to protect people, the politicians couldn't give two shits and a giggle about you or I. They do it to keep crazed crackheads in jail and to keep crack in the poor parts of inner-cities and out of the hands of middle-class kids. It's not so much about race as it is economics and class-systems. Keep the poor out of our nice suburban streets and all that... Cocaine is a middle/upperclass party drug. Crack is more of a poor-man's street drug.", you are agreeing with a racist policy hidden in paternalism. No dude. For the 15th time. It's economics and class systems, not race. Race is how it started and obviously it's still a factor, but I don't care if the strung out crackhead trying to break into my car is mexican asian or white, and neither do the politicians. Nothing in the above quote that I said has ANYTHING to do with race, although I have to admit I find it telling that you seem to think poor is synonymous with race. Do you hear the word "poor" and think "black" or "puertorican"? And I said nothing about the addictive nature of either drug - I only pointed out that research has shown that they are of equivalent danger. What research? Where?
I tell you what, it's wrong. Crack is way more damaging and dangerous than coke, and I was pointing that out to you. You can give me as many links as you want to "paper X" and "research analysis Y" but until you go to a ghetto and actually experience it for yourself, than how could you possibly know? So why do you have such a big chip on your shoulder? Because of people like you who get modded "insightful" for spouting total garbage. I find it beyond pretentious and annoying when people open their mouths and start spouting drivel as if it's gospel when they obviously have no idea what they're talking about.
A simple google search will prove how idiotic what you're saying is:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=IIS6+exploit&btnG=Google+Search
Results 1 - 10 of about 16,700 for IIS6 exploit. (0.43 seconds)
Like this little ditty... example code all over the net for a freaking REMOTE BUFFER OVERFLOW. Again, that's REMOTE, not "well first you need access to the machine" buffer overflow.
Now get off my lawn!
Spoken like a man who has never tried either.
Seriously, go try cocaine. Then try crack. Then try telling me they're the exact same thing with a straight face... I dare you.
The two are WORLDS apart, both in effect, and in the type of people who tend to use them. Cocaine is a middle/upperclass party drug. Crack is more of a poor-man's street drug.
You can "enjoy" cocaine while doing things, like clubbing and drinking and carrying on, as the effects are fairly mild compared to crack (or other intense drugs like MDMA or LSD). With Crack, if you're doing crack, that's ALL you're doing. You don't want to see people or do anything in public. You barricade yourself in your house/car/whatever and do the crack. Then, 5 seconds after you've done it all, you consider all your options in the way of getting MORE!
The two are worlds apart.
And while I'm at it, I absolutely refuse to accept the cocaine is a hugely addictive drug. Stop reading your D.A.R.E. program pamphlets for 5 seconds and go do some research people! Jesus.
Is it addictive? Yeah, mildly. I'd say slightly less addictive than alcohol.
And why exactly would you postulate that the GP's urge to follow logic is emotional rather than rational?
The contrary seems more likely to me.
-- Yet another Fellow Atheist
... people who take commercially produced content for free and give NOTHING back Ah, but they do give back, my friend! They promote the music by listening to it, passing it around and going to shows and buying merchandise. Word-of-mouth is the most priceless and effective form of promotion available.I, as a musician myself (shameless plug), would love people to hand out my band's copyrighted music like hotcakes. People showing up at shows and buying our wares is vastly more important than paying us $1/download or what have you for the music.
And as an afterthought: if a few people break the rules/laws, then they are in the wrong. If a LOT of people are breaking the rules/laws then perhaps the rules/laws are wrong.
You completely misunderstood what I meant by having the ->MENTALITY- of 10-15 years ago. Mentality has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with how you USE the technology.
Of course I wouldn't want to go backwards in technological advances, that's simply ludicrous, and frankly, I have no idea how you even got that from my post. You're either argumentative, trolling, or perhaps you simply misunderstood.
In any event, if people these days would use technology including shell scripting, perl, python, and all the wonderful tools we now have at our disposal in a sane and responsible manor instead of just throwing it together like the author of the post I originally responded to suggested, it would be a better world.
That was what I was saying, not, "Hey, let's go back to the dinosaur times of pure assembly".
You also seemed to miss another important facet of what I was saying; writing clear and maintainable code is obviously a goal of any good programmer, but you must also be responsible with the resources you are utilizing in your programs. People these days don't seem to give a hoot about that anymore.
Insightful? Interesting maybe; as in "looking into the brain of a mental patient" type of interesting.
The problem with what the parent says is that it perfectly illuminates the growing problem with IT that I've personally faced all of my life in this industry. To many people are here solely for the purposes of making money. They have no reverence for the craft.
Making software is an art form.
The question at hand is: "Why should I care if the software is a bloated piece of crap if the customer only has to spend a quarter/$50/whatever extra to run it?"
The answer is this: Because it's the "right thing to do". Engineers, for a decade at least, have been using the exploding CPU speeds to allow themselves to be more and more lazy. People used to be able to do amazing things with incredibly low resources. Kids these days just say "fuck it, it works... sort of" and ships the crap off to their bosses.
Just imagine how much better technology/software in general would be if everyone still had the mentality we used to have 10-15 years ago when we only had a few hundred k RAM and a processor without a marketing logo attached to it's name.
I offer a plea. This goes out to anyone who, when deciding what major to pick in college thought; "Hmm. Business seems interesting, but I could make a boat load of money in IT", or anyone who spends 8-10 hours a day on a computer at work and does not go home to fiddle with your latest library/app or mess with your samba server: Please Leave The IT Industry. If you want to make money, go into marketing or sales or some other soulless, purely greed-driven industry and leave my industry alone.
Frankly, aforementioned people, I'm sick and tired of cleaning up your crap .
Nearly every job I've ever had has started with "cleaning up my predecessor's bad code". Love IT or Leave IT!
You sir (Parent Post), should be ashamed of yourself.
Neo
pref.
1. New; recent: neonatal.
2. New and different: Neo-Freudian.
3. New and abnormal: neoplasm.
Neo-(word) has NOTHING to do with "The Matrix" and frankly the fact that you made that statement and it wasn't in jest scares the shit out of me.
Do me a favor: Don't Vote.
That's #3 in the definition. #4 and #5 define what they mean by your definition:
4. jest; fun; mirth; pleasantry: What he said in sport was taken seriously.
5. mockery; ridicule; derision: They made sport of him.
#3 is an old definition that's more loosely used to describe things besides athletic competitions, as in, "killing for sport" or "hunting for sport" or "shagging women for sport". The actual definition you want is #1:
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
Now, dictionary.com puts golf right in the list, and I happen to completely disagree with them that golf is a sport (after all, they listed FISHING TOO!). Golf is a GAME.
game: 1. an amusement or pastime: children's games.
By your definition, slapping hoe's and drinking beer is a "sport". Really, good job trying to spin things to support your argument.
Just an FYI.
As I am upgrading to 7.10 now and took the time to look at the upgrade "details", I feel qualified to answer this :)
compiz packages are completely removed and compiz-fusion packages are installed.
As for Beryl packages, I would presume they are removed as well, yet they might not be removed at all and wouldn't cause I problem if they remain. I had compiz and beryl installed from the repositories at the same time at one point.
I spent some time yesterday reading up on ideastorm and the linux blogs of the dell linux people. What you're suggesting will happen in the future. Here's where they are now:
/clap!
Dell specifically states that they still consider linux for the "advanced user/hobbyist" and *not* for the average person yet. They believe that if you are savvy enough to use linux, you will have no problems finding it on their site. For that matter, Mr. Shuttleworth actually says something pretty similar; he said that Ubuntu is not quite ready for mainstream.
Dell *is* working on getting linux on *all* their offerings, but they have to do a ton of work for each offering; work with vendors for driver/hardware support, test & fix issues with software, set up/prepare tech support, etc. They're banging them out but it takes time.
I applaud our new pro-linux dell (they've actually been pro-linux for around 8+ years now). From what I read, they are doing a ton of work in pushing linux and they're doing it the right way. For instance, the linux crew at dell have made quite a few patches to the kernel, but if you were to get a pre-installed ubuntu machine from them, it would appear to be a vanilla installation. This is true because they don't patch the system on their end and roll it out like that, they actually send the patches to kernel.org and try to get them integrated into the kernel.
They, according to their blogs and this interview, have and continue to do a ton of work with their vendor partners in getting them to contribute specs and/or create open-source drivers for hardware, which helps us all.
From what I see on ideastorm and what the linux dev people are saying on their blogs and in interviews, they are doing the linux thing the only practical way it can be done; offer linux as-is with a big warning ("For Advanced Users!"), and actively work on making it better, so when it is ready for the average joe, they can sell it side-by-side with windows.
It took very little convincing on my part to get the management to see the benefits of Ubuntu on the normal users desktops and we'll be doing a nearly-full rollout (some manager computers will remain windows) in a couple months.
The 'retraining' argument is mostly FUD as most computer users are familar enough with the desktop (any desktop) to use a "start" or "applications" menu. There's practically no difference from a user stand point between IE and Firefox and Word (pre-tabbed interface) is close enough to OpenOffice to not make much difference. Oh, and did I mention it makes my job and the manager's jobs easier by leaps and bounds due to the enormous configurability of linux? I can put exactly what the users need in the menus and lock down the machines so they can do only what they're supposed to do for their jobs. Sounds like someone is still in school and has never had a real job. Trust me, kid, when you get out into the real world your thinking is going to get much more realistic. Huh. Condescending and incorrect at the same time! Just because you don't have the sack to anti-up and try to improve the technological world around us, doesn't mean you should FUD-storm those of us with the will and determination to try.
Looks like you're the one that needs to 'grow up'.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the level of idiocy people display astounds me. And the modders are no better; +1 insightful? Who let Microsoft employees moderate