What the hell is a "flip flopper" anyway? It's used as a derogatory term in politics, but the simple fact is that a politician who can change their mind or stance based on new evidence or being better informed is a LOT better than a politician (or anyone else) who blindly stands by their view just to save face.
Why should a customer be scared that a company they bought software from is infringing on one or more patents?
The customer didn't do any wrong, they licensed the software in good faith. Worst case scenario would be that the software becomes obsolete and the customer has to licence something else. The customer didn't infringe on the patent, the software company does. There may even be ways to recoup these costs given that the software company didn't have the rights to make the sales in the first place.
Now in the case of Microsoft, that is a given after X years anyway. MS rolls out a new version and ends the life and support for that product. It's a certainty that unless you keep up with the latest product line you'll be left high and dry without the systems you originally purchased. Any Microsoft product with activation has this potential.
It's bizarre to consider that if Microsoft were found to be infringing on a patent in Windows 2000/XP that most of the planets businesses and individuals would some how be liable for damages and compensation to the patent owning company.
A true definition of FUD, scare customers with information which has no bearing on them whatsoever.
Why did they even let the BSA auditors into their company in the first place?
AFAIK in the UK, the BSA doesn't have any legal powers to enforce such an audit to take place. Microsoft/Adobe/Foo are all businesses and so is the organisation I work for. What gives software companies special privileges to demand an inspection of someone else's business?
If I sell chairs, am I allowed to go to Microsoft HQ and make sure that Ballmer isn't throwing them around, breaking the licence agreement printed on the underside? If a finger can agree to a supposedly legally binding contract, why can't the derrière?
"No, those DRM features are not applied to any of the media you are using today"
Well thats the key part of your statement isn't it? Today, Microsoft chooses not to impose restrictions on your machine. Tomorrow they might change their minds.
The question is - does Vista have the capability to impose nasty restrictions in the form of DRM/security/anti-terrorism? Could these restrictions be implemented via a Windows Update? Do you have a choice if you want them on your machine?
I believe the answer is yes - and why I wouldn't ever touch Vista with a barge pole.
Hrm, no. I think the original poster has a point. It makes sense for the OS to be streamed/deployed/whatever over the Internet to the end user.
Companies can still do this if they run their own infrastructure to power desktops over their private network intranet, rather than a public network such as the internet. If its feasible or possible to do this in the future - well that remains to be seen.
But you can't disprove an entire concept because of where data retention is now. Thats one of things which could possibly evolve. Most companies wouldn't use e-mail either if the only choices were hotmail and google mail for example. But they run their own internal systems to meet the requirements they need.
Including managing their own data.
But this is mainly about Schools, and my only antidote is that I have friends who are IT techs for a school in the UK. They are mainly career driven, interested in achieving MCSE/ccna certification so they can move on up the career food chain. It's an academic world where it's more important to be able to justify your abilities on paper rather trying to actually demonstrate them over time by making good technical decisions and keeping things up and running.
The only people who may care about using an OS such as Linux would be the Head Master, who would be most interested in how much could be saved from a financial point of view. However when he looks at the discounts from Microsoft to anyone involved in education, the difference between FOSS and Microsoft is lessened. It feels like a victory because he got a discount, the IT techs are shouting for the latest MS products so they can get certified, and changing OS would involve a complete re-write of the curriculum - since all the courses are written to be "In Microsoft Word, click the File and Save to HTML menu" rather than "using your generic office product, open the application which lets you write letters and look for an option to export your (non)RTF standard document to (non)standard HTML. ".
It's just not going to happen, and I don't see how it could without a massive backlash from everyone involved in education who doesn't like change - they just want to go in and teach kids, or do their 8 hours work and go home. (And mark homework).
And then the kids grow up - Being Computer Literate == Using Microsoft Products.
Thats all very well, but Microsoft give you that option.
The problem is - Microsoft have the ability with Vista to define what options and freedoms you have with your own PC, and can change this at some point in the future. Its dynamic and likely to change once it's been accepted by the masses.
and how many have access to adequate water and sanitation??
That would be an amazing technology for 2.6 billion people in the world. Thats 40% of the worlds population who do not have access to adequate sanitation.
Interestingly, 16% (1.1 billion people, 1/6th) of the worlds population, don't even have access to safe sanitation.
You really think they care they're not on the Internet or own a VHS/DVD player?
I'd disagree and say its pretty much the same, it's not about creating a product first, marketing it and trying to sell it. It's about being approached by a business to provide a solution. Forget the old method of doing it the old and backwards way - creating something, then finding a market. Instead, find the client and find out what they want to do - find the solution either in FOSS or proprietary software.
Most businesses wouldn't care if its free and/or open source software or otherwise. They usually just need to do one of a few things within a defined budget (i.e. as cheap as possible). In my experience they want to either:
1) Change a manual system into a computerised system
2) Automate an existing computerised system which has become repetative or tedious
3) Implement a new system/department/product/revenue earner.
If you can correctly capture the clients vision of what they want, I look for a FOSS solution which will do what they need. I then look at "off the shelf/internet" applications which are proprietary and will do the job. Otherwise, it's a custom written application or system that they need.
If you're in the business of providing software solutions to small-medium sized businesses, you can leverage all of the available tools at your fingertips.
Revenue is generated just the same as proprietary software solutions. A third party company would usually manage the project from the initial requirements to implementation. The third party might usually make a small margin of profit in actually reselling this software from the software company that created it. However, the main bulk of the income will be on the implementation and then (hopefully) the annual support contracts which are just as lucrative. New installs are draining and demand a lot of time, after that a lot more profit can be extracted from the client by providing support and extensions. They are still earners, but its the long term potential.
There are so many benefits to working with and providing open source software, it's the area where I hope to be full time within the next 12 months.
My bad. They have given their changes back to the FOSS community though, this is referenced in the Google File System white paper. So they've gone beyond the scope of the licence agreement, which is quite commendable imo.
1) Thats because everything else is either written in house, or bought off the shelf. They are looking for value from software, whatever its licence. Read other posts about the order in which they will pick this software - and FOSS comes first where possible. It's all about value.
2) The API only lets you change the software within the boundaries set by Microsoft. Also, the API doesn't allow you to roll out that MS application to hundreds of thousands of nodes without an increase in licencing. The more your business grows, the more it costs your business.
3) True - their own applications do not seem to get released under the public domain - but thats irrelevant. Changes made to the linux kernel to squeeze out every last drop of performance HAVE been given back to the open source community - as per the licence requirements.
Go and re-read the article and other peoples posts, and you might realise that you are misinformed.
CMSMS (CMS Made Simple) http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/... is the only CMS I've found which does exactly what I want, without overcluttering the entire admin cp or that requires a year of learning.
Great, simple and flexible. CMS + Smarty + CSS == a win for me!
Re:Can you say more Non-Free than cheap beer?
on
Things To Download
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· Score: 1
Um... and open source software can't be supported by the company that wrote it? Or a third party support company?
If anything, open source support should be cheaper for the customer due to FOSS support companies competing to support a variety of open products, rather than the customer getting stuck with a single vendor for each piece of proprietary software they buy.
You seem to be under the illusion that all FOSS software is only suitable for hobbyists and won't work in a business because nobody will support it. You couldn't be more wrong to be honest.
Paying a few hundred dollars per month may leave your business data in the hands of a software company who can completely control you, restrict your business potential and waste all of your time and money chasing them trying to resolve a problem.
At least with FOSS you can switch support providers if they start to take the piss.
I don't think many people will deny that the majority of us are all going to die some day.*
However - I think what scientists are letting us know is that if we act now, there is a chance we can make sure our grand children and their families don't die prematurely and unnesessarily because we didn't understand our planet.
I see you're point and agree that encrypting your own traffic makes sense.
However...
If the NSA wastes a few weeks of processor time just to find out what my lunch plans were last Friday, serves 'em right.
This is your own money which is being wasted, tax dollars which could be put to much better use in many other ways. They, the NSA, won't feel bad that they've wasted you're money. They'll just apply for a bigger budget next year since the amount of encrypted traffic they have to monitor is constantly increasing due to people protecting their privacy.
The only solution is to revoke these powers from the goverment and to make sure that a realistic and proportionate amount of money and control is available to those who are fighting terrorism. A higher ratio of $:life could be saved if terrorism wasn't everyones primary emotional worry - due to it being over-emphasised by the goverment to distract from the real important issues in the USA at the moment.(Homelessness, HIV, medical care, and serious crimes like murder/rape/shootings/assaults just to name a few)
Technology isn't the answer here in the long term, its stopping the errosion of your rights and privacy via a goverment which is funded by citizens. And that is purely political.
Right.. because kidie porn web sites use the "pedophilia" and other related meta tags to draw visitors in? I don't think so.
If it was this easy, surely the law enforcement and child-protection agencies around the world would find the sites, take them down and prosecute the people running and visiting them.
For a keyword like pedophilia or similar, its as dangerous to block the genuine search results as it is bad ones.
If all of the search engines were like this, and if software products that "protect children on-line, on behalf of the parent" stop returning genuine search results, it might be very difficult for an abused child to get real help. Or find information about what to do if they've had unprotected sex, are being neglected etc.
An extreme example perhaps. "But won't someone think of the children!"
It almost seems like the constitution has become the goverments equivalent of a MegaCorps press release.
It states a load of stuff which all sounds very reasonable, but it's not until you actually buy [into] it that you realise the reality is a whole lot different than the spin.
What was David Blunkett thinking more like? He was the Home Secretary at the time, and signed the UK Extradition Treaty (Google Cache HTML)(PDF). I've tried reading through it, there are many references but IANAL so I can't interpert it properly.
A BBC News article in Feb 2006 stated that: "Since the 2003 Act came into force, 11 UK citizens have been extradited to the US." and "Of the 11, none was a terrorism case." which already shows how much this policy has been abused. With enough pressure, The US can extradite anyone it wants from the UK - meaning for Brits like me, I should be even more concerned about the news, events and laws in the States.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell is a "flip flopper" anyway? It's used as a derogatory term in politics, but the simple fact is that a politician who can change their mind or stance based on new evidence or being better informed is a LOT better than a politician (or anyone else) who blindly stands by their view just to save face.
Why should a customer be scared that a company they bought software from is infringing on one or more patents?
The customer didn't do any wrong, they licensed the software in good faith. Worst case scenario would be that the software becomes obsolete and the customer has to licence something else. The customer didn't infringe on the patent, the software company does. There may even be ways to recoup these costs given that the software company didn't have the rights to make the sales in the first place.
Now in the case of Microsoft, that is a given after X years anyway. MS rolls out a new version and ends the life and support for that product. It's a certainty that unless you keep up with the latest product line you'll be left high and dry without the systems you originally purchased. Any Microsoft product with activation has this potential.
It's bizarre to consider that if Microsoft were found to be infringing on a patent in Windows 2000/XP that most of the planets businesses and individuals would some how be liable for damages and compensation to the patent owning company.
A true definition of FUD, scare customers with information which has no bearing on them whatsoever.
Faith is belief without evidence - either because no evidence exists, or contradicting evidence is blindly ignored.
Why did they even let the BSA auditors into their company in the first place?
AFAIK in the UK, the BSA doesn't have any legal powers to enforce such an audit to take place. Microsoft/Adobe/Foo are all businesses and so is the organisation I work for. What gives software companies special privileges to demand an inspection of someone else's business?
If I sell chairs, am I allowed to go to Microsoft HQ and make sure that Ballmer isn't throwing them around, breaking the licence agreement printed on the underside? If a finger can agree to a supposedly legally binding contract, why can't the derrière?
Instead the burning of coal slowly kills thousands of people a year through air pollution.
And as we all know, that's not news because it isn't sensational enough.
One study I found when searching indicates that 25 reactor meltdowns per year would be required to being it inline with coal pollution deaths.
"No, those DRM features are not applied to any of the media you are using today"
Well thats the key part of your statement isn't it? Today, Microsoft chooses not to impose restrictions on your machine. Tomorrow they might change their minds.
The question is - does Vista have the capability to impose nasty restrictions in the form of DRM/security/anti-terrorism? Could these restrictions be implemented via a Windows Update? Do you have a choice if you want them on your machine?
I believe the answer is yes - and why I wouldn't ever touch Vista with a barge pole.
No, you were right the first time.
It's just that Microsoft had another 100 patents approved since this story broke.
I haven't tested it, but I was looking into something similar. Open Source at least.
2 1
http://www.orangehrm.com/home/
VMWare Appliance for quick testing: http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/7
Hrm, no. I think the original poster has a point. It makes sense for the OS to be streamed/deployed/whatever over the Internet to the end user.
Companies can still do this if they run their own infrastructure to power desktops over their private network intranet, rather than a public network such as the internet. If its feasible or possible to do this in the future - well that remains to be seen.
But you can't disprove an entire concept because of where data retention is now. Thats one of things which could possibly evolve. Most companies wouldn't use e-mail either if the only choices were hotmail and google mail for example. But they run their own internal systems to meet the requirements they need.
Including managing their own data.
But this is mainly about Schools, and my only antidote is that I have friends who are IT techs for a school in the UK. They are mainly career driven, interested in achieving MCSE/ccna certification so they can move on up the career food chain. It's an academic world where it's more important to be able to justify your abilities on paper rather trying to actually demonstrate them over time by making good technical decisions and keeping things up and running.
The only people who may care about using an OS such as Linux would be the Head Master, who would be most interested in how much could be saved from a financial point of view. However when he looks at the discounts from Microsoft to anyone involved in education, the difference between FOSS and Microsoft is lessened. It feels like a victory because he got a discount, the IT techs are shouting for the latest MS products so they can get certified, and changing OS would involve a complete re-write of the curriculum - since all the courses are written to be "In Microsoft Word, click the File and Save to HTML menu" rather than "using your generic office product, open the application which lets you write letters and look for an option to export your (non)RTF standard document to (non)standard HTML. ".
It's just not going to happen, and I don't see how it could without a massive backlash from everyone involved in education who doesn't like change - they just want to go in and teach kids, or do their 8 hours work and go home. (And mark homework).
And then the kids grow up - Being Computer Literate == Using Microsoft Products.
Thats all very well, but Microsoft give you that option.
The problem is - Microsoft have the ability with Vista to define what options and freedoms you have with your own PC, and can change this at some point in the future. Its dynamic and likely to change once it's been accepted by the masses.
Just give him a tinfoil hat and a slashdot subscription.
Problem solved.
and how many have access to adequate water and sanitation??
s tatistics/default.asp
That would be an amazing technology for 2.6 billion people in the world. Thats 40% of the worlds population who do not have access to adequate sanitation.
Interestingly, 16% (1.1 billion people, 1/6th) of the worlds population, don't even have access to safe sanitation.
You really think they care they're not on the Internet or own a VHS/DVD player?
http://www.wateraid.org/international/what_we_do/
OMG you made me crash calc.exe!
Try the Fade Anything Technique (FAT)!
http://www.axentric.com/aside/fat/
I'd disagree and say its pretty much the same, it's not about creating a product first, marketing it and trying to sell it. It's about being approached by a business to provide a solution. Forget the old method of doing it the old and backwards way - creating something, then finding a market. Instead, find the client and find out what they want to do - find the solution either in FOSS or proprietary software.
Most businesses wouldn't care if its free and/or open source software or otherwise. They usually just need to do one of a few things within a defined budget (i.e. as cheap as possible). In my experience they want to either:
1) Change a manual system into a computerised system
2) Automate an existing computerised system which has become repetative or tedious
3) Implement a new system/department/product/revenue earner.
If you can correctly capture the clients vision of what they want, I look for a FOSS solution which will do what they need. I then look at "off the shelf/internet" applications which are proprietary and will do the job. Otherwise, it's a custom written application or system that they need.
If you're in the business of providing software solutions to small-medium sized businesses, you can leverage all of the available tools at your fingertips.
Revenue is generated just the same as proprietary software solutions. A third party company would usually manage the project from the initial requirements to implementation. The third party might usually make a small margin of profit in actually reselling this software from the software company that created it. However, the main bulk of the income will be on the implementation and then (hopefully) the annual support contracts which are just as lucrative. New installs are draining and demand a lot of time, after that a lot more profit can be extracted from the client by providing support and extensions. They are still earners, but its the long term potential.
There are so many benefits to working with and providing open source software, it's the area where I hope to be full time within the next 12 months.
Guess which one will have the biggest market share?
Market share only matters to Microsoft who aim for markets they think they can sell their product in.
My bad. They have given their changes back to the FOSS community though, this is referenced in the Google File System white paper. So they've gone beyond the scope of the licence agreement, which is quite commendable imo.
1) Thats because everything else is either written in house, or bought off the shelf. They are looking for value from software, whatever its licence. Read other posts about the order in which they will pick this software - and FOSS comes first where possible. It's all about value.
2) The API only lets you change the software within the boundaries set by Microsoft. Also, the API doesn't allow you to roll out that MS application to hundreds of thousands of nodes without an increase in licencing. The more your business grows, the more it costs your business.
3) True - their own applications do not seem to get released under the public domain - but thats irrelevant. Changes made to the linux kernel to squeeze out every last drop of performance HAVE been given back to the open source community - as per the licence requirements.
Go and re-read the article and other peoples posts, and you might realise that you are misinformed.
CMSMS (CMS Made Simple) http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ ... is the only CMS I've found which does exactly what I want, without overcluttering the entire admin cp or that requires a year of learning.
Great, simple and flexible. CMS + Smarty + CSS == a win for me!
Um... and open source software can't be supported by the company that wrote it? Or a third party support company?
If anything, open source support should be cheaper for the customer due to FOSS support companies competing to support a variety of open products, rather than the customer getting stuck with a single vendor for each piece of proprietary software they buy.
You seem to be under the illusion that all FOSS software is only suitable for hobbyists and won't work in a business because nobody will support it. You couldn't be more wrong to be honest.
Paying a few hundred dollars per month may leave your business data in the hands of a software company who can completely control you, restrict your business potential and waste all of your time and money chasing them trying to resolve a problem.
At least with FOSS you can switch support providers if they start to take the piss.
I don't think many people will deny that the majority of us are all going to die some day.*
However - I think what scientists are letting us know is that if we act now, there is a chance we can make sure our grand children and their families don't die prematurely and unnesessarily because we didn't understand our planet.
* Not me, I'm immortal.
I see you're point and agree that encrypting your own traffic makes sense.
However...
This is your own money which is being wasted, tax dollars which could be put to much better use in many other ways. They, the NSA, won't feel bad that they've wasted you're money. They'll just apply for a bigger budget next year since the amount of encrypted traffic they have to monitor is constantly increasing due to people protecting their privacy.
The only solution is to revoke these powers from the goverment and to make sure that a realistic and proportionate amount of money and control is available to those who are fighting terrorism. A higher ratio of $:life could be saved if terrorism wasn't everyones primary emotional worry - due to it being over-emphasised by the goverment to distract from the real important issues in the USA at the moment.(Homelessness, HIV, medical care, and serious crimes like murder/rape/shootings/assaults just to name a few)
Technology isn't the answer here in the long term, its stopping the errosion of your rights and privacy via a goverment which is funded by citizens. And that is purely political.
Right.. because kidie porn web sites use the "pedophilia" and other related meta tags to draw visitors in? I don't think so.
If it was this easy, surely the law enforcement and child-protection agencies around the world would find the sites, take them down and prosecute the people running and visiting them.
For a keyword like pedophilia or similar, its as dangerous to block the genuine search results as it is bad ones.
If all of the search engines were like this, and if software products that "protect children on-line, on behalf of the parent" stop returning genuine search results, it might be very difficult for an abused child to get real help. Or find information about what to do if they've had unprotected sex, are being neglected etc.
An extreme example perhaps. "But won't someone think of the children!"
It almost seems like the constitution has become the goverments equivalent of a MegaCorps press release.
It states a load of stuff which all sounds very reasonable, but it's not until you actually buy [into] it that you realise the reality is a whole lot different than the spin.
What was David Blunkett thinking more like? He was the Home Secretary at the time, and signed the UK Extradition Treaty (Google Cache HTML) (PDF). I've tried reading through it, there are many references but IANAL so I can't interpert it properly.
A BBC News article in Feb 2006 stated that:
"Since the 2003 Act came into force, 11 UK citizens have been extradited to the US."
and
"Of the 11, none was a terrorism case." which already shows how much this policy has been abused. With enough pressure, The US can extradite anyone it wants from the UK - meaning for Brits like me, I should be even more concerned about the news, events and laws in the States.