Most business people know instinctively that the more dirty tricks a vendor pulls, the more likely their own product is to suck. MS's antics are getting large enough and frequent enough that people outside of IT who don't read/. or groklaw are starting to notice.
I do hope you're right.
From where I stand, it doesn't seem that many people are starting to notice anything, and even if they did, somehow I doubt many would be prepared for the cost of migrating to a different platform.
To anticipate the "Linux is free" response by a random AC: yes, it is. The software people use to run their various businesses usually isn't.
Besides, a running business can't easily afford to re-train its employees on a completely new environment.
That's what lock-in really is all about.
As it stands, when someone sends me a.docx, I need MS Word to read it. If my colleagues use Word (a good bet) then I am pressured to get Office to interact more smoothly with them.
Recently, I have upped my asshole quotient and started sending.docx documents back, politely asking for them to be re-sent in a readable format.
I plan never to have to open a.docx document in the next few years at the very least.
From a business point of view anything which maintains the lock in to Microsofts Office products is good for Microsoft and anything which is truly open benefits IBM and as I said above I think what the customer wants in this case is also the same thing IBM want which means IBM are going to be getting a lot of goodwill for pushing their point of view.
Anything which maintains the lock-in to MS Office &c. is good for Microsoft and Microsoft alone.
Anything which is truly open benefits IBM as well as the rest of the world.
With two sides such as these, there is really no question as to which side I'm on.
Of course, should IBM become too greedy, nothing would stop me from loathing them as much as I loathe Microsoft nowadays.
I'm not sure. If Windows cost them $10 before and now costs the full $150 or so, they won't just run to buy legitimate copies. I'm not saying they'll go off and run Linux - they might look until they find another pirated version, or get someone to help them download and burn one. Perhaps only a small minority might be motivated to seek alternate OSes, that is why I left this at the end of the list of options. But I seriously doubt the majority will just happily start paying full price.
Then again, not everywhere in the world does Windows cost the same. IIRC, in Taiwan the price is nearer to $10 anyway...
However, if the price of the pirated product was lower, then yes, your original question stands. But somehow I think that majority of those users will still buy legitimate copies -- if they had intended to pirate software, they would've helped themselves to a free copy.
I'd wager many of them just thought they were getting a bargain.
I do, however, hope that this will drive at least some of them to an anlternative.
After seeing several editions of 20/20 where they set up sting after sting, typically using an undercover female cop to pose as a much younger girl, I'm not so sure it's all that uncommon. Further, we have what seems to be an epidemic of female adults in trusted positions going after young males (13-17). I have to wonder how much of this is willing participation on the part of the "victim". It's definitely not my intent to suggest that adults should be going after kids, but kids need to wise up to the potential dangers, and parents especially need to get a damn clue about what their kids are really up to.
In my country, the age of consent is 14, excluding sexual intercourse with a person in a superior position (i.e. with a teacher, priest, policeman etc.). I find it a much more reasonable approach than all the "statutory rape before 18th birthday" crap.
Puberty is when people start to want to have sex and when they should begin to experiment.
And BTW: there was a case a year or two back, when a 14-year-old boy and his teacher had sex. Quite a lot, by some accounts.
Then he bragged about that to his friends, which started gossip and rumour. When the relationship got into newspapers and, perforce, court, he suddenly started claiming he had been used.
He hadn't inded it a bit until then, but when everybody started telling him how he should feel, he started saying it.
When he whole thing hit the forums, every single guy considered him a lucky bastard for screwing his teacher.
However, the more interesting question is what will happen now: if suddenly 90% of these forgeries vanish off the market, what will the people buying them do? Will other suppliers fill the gap, or will the buyers turn to casual piracy, or to alternate OSes?
It's not that interesting a question, methinks.
As these pirated copies were sold off as genuine, I'd guess that most of the users actually believed they were buying legitimate copies.
Therefore, most of those people will be off buying legitimate copies, directly increasing Microsoft's revenue (as opposed to casual pirates, who indirectly increase Microsoft's revenue by giving them free mindshare).
People will turn to alternate OSes when two conditions are met:
Equivalent apps become available on the alternate platforms.
Enough other people convert to a different platform.
Yeah, it's a bit of a Catch-22. People use Windows because everybody else uses Windows, just as people still use Internet Explorer because web designers do not wish to lose page views by not catering to IE's broken CSS implementation.
However, contrary to the geek's instinct, some of the killer apps are already on alternate platforms — e.g. Compiz Fusion and AisleRiot on Linux, capturing the attention of two distinct groups of users.
Now, if we could hope for better-educated users, the hop would be swifter. Alas, we have to operate in the world where a casual user is a moron. C'est la vie...
You liars, high-quality. The quality IS THE SAME, don't blame pirates for your quality of development.
Actually, no, it is not.
I surmise pirates really do offer better quality, as they conveniently remove the WGA and similar "protection measures", thus ensuring the user's copy of Windows will never ever get blocked by Microsoft. For instance.
Though I suspect that "high-quality copy" means "CD and packaging virtually indistinguishable from the original retail copy", not "a better product". Nevertheless, sometimes pirate copies are of quite higher quality than the original.
Software, on the other hand, has the problem of dealing (or not dealing) with unknown circumstances.
... and that is the other end of the issue: the users.
As we all know, the user is the greatest unknown — the things an uneducated user could think of...
On one hand, I see the problem with "software engineers" designing crap software; on the other hand, I see the uneducated users as just as dangerous as 14-year-olds behind the wheels. Of sportscars.
Maybe you should get work done instead of masturbating with your desktop environment. Other than changing the background image and window color scheme, how much more diddling do you need?
Why, have I just been honoured by a reply by Miguel de Icaza himself? Looking at your profile, I'd guess not, but a nice troll anyway.
FWIW, if backgrounds and colour schemes were all there is to desktop environments, we'd all still be using fvwm, which I recall as being way better than Metacity.
And while I haven't used Gnome in quite a while, I don't recall being able to put different background images on different viewports, which is a very quick and convenient way of telling them apart visually. Not since 2.0, anyway.
Thanks for reminding me.
That's the key right there. Features missing in KDE 4.0 aren't there because although the devs tried their best, they just didn't have time to add everything. Most of these features will be added back in due course.
... which is why many people here bitch about them releasing the 4.0 version.
While I do understand the sentiment, I feel this release was kind of jumping in the cold water — not very pleasant, but now it's done, it had to be done either way, and let's please move on. The product is here, bugs are being taken care of, features are being added, just keep swimming... You had been warned anyway.
Does GNOME's reputation suffer because of the 2.0 release?
Yes. It does.
I loved Gnome back in the days of 1.4, which was the last good version in my book.
Ever since 2.0, Gnome has started turning into a confining environment, restricting more choices with every release.
First they made a new window manager; I'm sorry, but until this day I don't see what Metacity has that Sawfish did not. But I immediately noticed all the options it did not have.
Then they started dropping options from various configuration dialogs, basically turning applications from tweakable tools to one-size-fits-no-one crap.
I know I'm not the only one who hates what Gnome is turning into, and while I do keep trying out different UIs (and I'm very partial to E17, BTW), KDE 4 may prove to be interesting and comfortable enough for me to convert.
Then again, I'm less likely to mind the "yeah, sorry, we haven't had the time to implemet $OPTION properly, but we'll have it in the next version" attitude than the "it was confusing some users, so we removed it" one.
So, consequently, if there's an "body extension" that became your second nature, it hurts if it's taken away.
Oh, I can see now why gunfighters in Old West refused to hand over their six-shooters in Saloons and Samurai chose death over capture (having their sword taken away).
Maybe you're joking, but I used to carry a watch on my left wrist as a kid. All the time. In the shower, while I slept, when I bathed in the sea... I'd never ever take it off, for when I did, my whole arm felt... odd. I missed something on my wrist.
It didn't exactly hurt, but it was odd enough for me to never even consider removing it unless absolutely necessary.
But it's not just things that can grow on you like that; actions can, too. For instance, if I have to do something in the bathroom, I feel weird if I don't wash my hands on my way out. My hands literally tingle, and sometimes I just return and wash them before I realize I'm being silly.
I do wonder whether something like that can lead to OCD...
If the true goal of a computer program for a school is to ready its students for the workplace, then is linux really the best method of doing so? Isn't the school in some way doing its students a dis-service my training them on a computing method that they will very likely never use again?
As a (future) educator, I think that this attitude is actually the greatest disservice both to students and to schools.
No, the computer program is not supposed to prepare the students for their workplace. Especially not in the sense of teaching them to use a certain bunch of programs that they are going to use once they get a job, and even more especially not in primary school.
Computer classes, just like physics or chemistry or maths or language classes, are not there to prepare kids for any kind of workplace — they are there to teach them some more-or-less basic facts. Of course businesses would like to dump the workforce training costs off to schools or anyone else, but different jobs require different skills; no business can expect that any school's students will be trained exactly to cater to their needs. You don't learn a job before you start doing it anyway.
Computer classes are there to teach kids not to fear computers, not to fear programming (as programming is the only way of truly utilizing the computer and understanding its capabilities) and to teach them some basic paradigms. Not to teach them a certain version of a certain OS, which they will never ever see again after leaving school, as it will have been surpassed.
Do you think I ever saw MS-DOS 3.30 after leaving high school?
Lawyers like to compare themselves to professionals like doctors or nurses - in polls, the public rates lawyers ethics and honesty closer to used-car salesmen, and lawyers have only themselves to blame.
Funny, that. I was thinking of some other kind of professionals.
You know, the ones that would do just about anything for money, and if you feel dirty afterwards, well, that's your problem.
What are they called... prot... prost... ah, yes: politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, everyone repeat after me: Please re-send the file in a readable format, such as PDF, ODF or even Word 97/2000. Thank you.
Whenever you receive a .docx file, just reply with the above line.
I do hope you're right.
From where I stand, it doesn't seem that many people are starting to notice anything, and even if they did, somehow I doubt many would be prepared for the cost of migrating to a different platform.
To anticipate the "Linux is free" response by a random AC: yes, it is. The software people use to run their various businesses usually isn't.
Besides, a running business can't easily afford to re-train its employees on a completely new environment.
That's what lock-in really is all about.
Recently, I have upped my asshole quotient and started sending .docx documents back, politely asking for them to be re-sent in a readable format.
I plan never to have to open a .docx document in the next few years at the very least.
Anything which maintains the lock-in to MS Office &c. is good for Microsoft and Microsoft alone.
Anything which is truly open benefits IBM as well as the rest of the world.
With two sides such as these, there is really no question as to which side I'm on.
Of course, should IBM become too greedy, nothing would stop me from loathing them as much as I loathe Microsoft nowadays.
Then again, not everywhere in the world does Windows cost the same. IIRC, in Taiwan the price is nearer to $10 anyway...
However, if the price of the pirated product was lower, then yes, your original question stands. But somehow I think that majority of those users will still buy legitimate copies -- if they had intended to pirate software, they would've helped themselves to a free copy.
I'd wager many of them just thought they were getting a bargain.
I do, however, hope that this will drive at least some of them to an anlternative.
In my country, the age of consent is 14, excluding sexual intercourse with a person in a superior position (i.e. with a teacher, priest, policeman etc.). I find it a much more reasonable approach than all the "statutory rape before 18th birthday" crap.
Puberty is when people start to want to have sex and when they should begin to experiment.
And BTW: there was a case a year or two back, when a 14-year-old boy and his teacher had sex. Quite a lot, by some accounts.
Then he bragged about that to his friends, which started gossip and rumour. When the relationship got into newspapers and, perforce, court, he suddenly started claiming he had been used.
He hadn't inded it a bit until then, but when everybody started telling him how he should feel, he started saying it.
When he whole thing hit the forums, every single guy considered him a lucky bastard for screwing his teacher.
It's not that interesting a question, methinks.
As these pirated copies were sold off as genuine, I'd guess that most of the users actually believed they were buying legitimate copies.
Therefore, most of those people will be off buying legitimate copies, directly increasing Microsoft's revenue (as opposed to casual pirates, who indirectly increase Microsoft's revenue by giving them free mindshare).
People will turn to alternate OSes when two conditions are met:
Yeah, it's a bit of a Catch-22. People use Windows because everybody else uses Windows, just as people still use Internet Explorer because web designers do not wish to lose page views by not catering to IE's broken CSS implementation.
However, contrary to the geek's instinct, some of the killer apps are already on alternate platforms — e.g. Compiz Fusion and AisleRiot on Linux, capturing the attention of two distinct groups of users.
Now, if we could hope for better-educated users, the hop would be swifter. Alas, we have to operate in the world where a casual user is a moron. C'est la vie...
Actually, no, it is not.
I surmise pirates really do offer better quality, as they conveniently remove the WGA and similar "protection measures", thus ensuring the user's copy of Windows will never ever get blocked by Microsoft. For instance.
Though I suspect that "high-quality copy" means "CD and packaging virtually indistinguishable from the original retail copy", not "a better product". Nevertheless, sometimes pirate copies are of quite higher quality than the original.
... and that is the other end of the issue: the users.
As we all know, the user is the greatest unknown — the things an uneducated user could think of...
On one hand, I see the problem with "software engineers" designing crap software; on the other hand, I see the uneducated users as just as dangerous as 14-year-olds behind the wheels. Of sportscars.
Why, have I just been honoured by a reply by Miguel de Icaza himself? Looking at your profile, I'd guess not, but a nice troll anyway.
FWIW, if backgrounds and colour schemes were all there is to desktop environments, we'd all still be using fvwm, which I recall as being way better than Metacity.
And while I haven't used Gnome in quite a while, I don't recall being able to put different background images on different viewports, which is a very quick and convenient way of telling them apart visually. Not since 2.0, anyway.
Thanks for reminding me.
... which is why many people here bitch about them releasing the 4.0 version.
While I do understand the sentiment, I feel this release was kind of jumping in the cold water — not very pleasant, but now it's done, it had to be done either way, and let's please move on. The product is here, bugs are being taken care of, features are being added, just keep swimming... You had been warned anyway.
Yes. It does.
I loved Gnome back in the days of 1.4, which was the last good version in my book.
Ever since 2.0, Gnome has started turning into a confining environment, restricting more choices with every release.
First they made a new window manager; I'm sorry, but until this day I don't see what Metacity has that Sawfish did not. But I immediately noticed all the options it did not have.
Then they started dropping options from various configuration dialogs, basically turning applications from tweakable tools to one-size-fits-no-one crap.
I know I'm not the only one who hates what Gnome is turning into, and while I do keep trying out different UIs (and I'm very partial to E17, BTW), KDE 4 may prove to be interesting and comfortable enough for me to convert.
Then again, I'm less likely to mind the "yeah, sorry, we haven't had the time to implemet $OPTION properly, but we'll have it in the next version" attitude than the "it was confusing some users, so we removed it" one.
Escape + Meta + Alt + Control + Shift + Tab = Flip3D
And creationists keep telling me that a functional sixth finger would present no evolutionary advantage.
Shows how much they know.
...if only it came with a decent editor....Wait, I got lost... are we discussing Vista or Emacs here?
Oh, I can see now why gunfighters in Old West refused to hand over their six-shooters in Saloons and Samurai chose death over capture (having their sword taken away).
Maybe you're joking, but I used to carry a watch on my left wrist as a kid. All the time. In the shower, while I slept, when I bathed in the sea... I'd never ever take it off, for when I did, my whole arm felt... odd. I missed something on my wrist.
It didn't exactly hurt, but it was odd enough for me to never even consider removing it unless absolutely necessary.
But it's not just things that can grow on you like that; actions can, too. For instance, if I have to do something in the bathroom, I feel weird if I don't wash my hands on my way out. My hands literally tingle, and sometimes I just return and wash them before I realize I'm being silly.
I do wonder whether something like that can lead to OCD...
As a (future) educator, I think that this attitude is actually the greatest disservice both to students and to schools.
No, the computer program is not supposed to prepare the students for their workplace. Especially not in the sense of teaching them to use a certain bunch of programs that they are going to use once they get a job, and even more especially not in primary school.
Computer classes, just like physics or chemistry or maths or language classes, are not there to prepare kids for any kind of workplace — they are there to teach them some more-or-less basic facts. Of course businesses would like to dump the workforce training costs off to schools or anyone else, but different jobs require different skills; no business can expect that any school's students will be trained exactly to cater to their needs. You don't learn a job before you start doing it anyway.
Computer classes are there to teach kids not to fear computers, not to fear programming (as programming is the only way of truly utilizing the computer and understanding its capabilities) and to teach them some basic paradigms. Not to teach them a certain version of a certain OS, which they will never ever see again after leaving school, as it will have been surpassed.
Do you think I ever saw MS-DOS 3.30 after leaving high school?
<troll_fodder>Nah. That's just genetic code optimization.</troll_fodder>
Whoosh.
Young man, we do not tolerate this kind of language on this forum! Now go wash your mouth with soap!
Funny, that. I was thinking of some other kind of professionals.
You know, the ones that would do just about anything for money, and if you feel dirty afterwards, well, that's your problem.
What are they called... prot... prost... ah, yes: politicians.
Except the compiler, of course.
I think their class restricts them to Lawful Evil; should they change alignment, they et disbarred. So, none, at a guess.
Surely you mean Kreasy Kear...
I'm sorry, but I'm quite certain that a full Debian install would include Emacs.
How many of those were kernel patches, and how many were related to other applications?