Every time someone allows copyright monopolists to steal money from them because they are copying information on the Internet, it is supporting Internet surveillance and hindering information sharing.
Sharing cultural and educational material is essential to our society's survival. Is AT&T against that?
The simply fact is that society doesn't need blood-suckers who resell information for hideous prices. And film-makers can get their income from movie theatres and advertising, and musicians from concerts and sponsors.
So in USA you're debating exactly how the network companies should route their traffic so that your CIA-monitored dial-up lines becomes equally bad where ever you connect.
In Sweden we debate on how we should secure the right to share information privately and how to cheaply get something better than 100/10 Mbit Internet connection.
USA had a huge lead in Internet adoption, but it has turned to dust by network monitoring and pseudo debates like this. I have 50% of my customers in USA, so can you please stop babbling and get some real Internet to the people? You don't need a huge company to connect a village to a 100 Mbit network... Well, maybe in USA because of regulations?
One thing that has been tested successfully in various places is to RAID (RAID0) the SSD-disks. It makes them about as twice as fast, and it should be possible to RAID them in bigger arrays too. As there is so little risk of one disk breaking down, there is no excuse to not RAID-0 them.
These disks still have a problem with speed on random write though. It's nothing for read-write databases where NCQ (SATA2) disks are faster.
ramfs and tmpfs on Linux work so that they don't take any memory when not filled with something, but they also have a specified maximum size.
As a side-note I can tell that putting a database on tmpfs is a really bad idea because it gets very slow when it's swapped out (compared to being on a disk in the normal way) and it will get swapped out. ramfs worked like charm, but it makes it hard to shut down the server cleanly, of course.
But exactly what is the problem with piracy? That people can get Halo 3 and Lost for free? I guess it would be better if they only could get useful information for free, but people will not accept that just as they will not accept working all the time with no free time.
The usual argument is that piracy that it makes it harder for creators to get money from their work. But the argument "it wasn't intended" only works on people believing in authority as a God, so that just make me laugh.
I don't have any problem with piracy. Do you? I love to have almost all of the movies produced accessible from my computer without waiting for it to be broadcasted on some obscure TV-channel that I don't have access to. I also love being able to get all old computer-games which can't be bought anymore and that people can mix any music they want without having to pay for producing CDs and big spaces in shops to sell them.
If this leads to that Hollywood can only spend half as much money on every movie, I think that would just be positive for the quality of the crap they're doing. It would definitely bring us a more varied film-industry and people will continue to go to movie theatres even if the movies can be freely downloaded and watched at home. The big difference is that people will watch unknown movies and tell their friends if they are good, which will make it easier for "small" films.
I can accept that content producer for example get 50% of the ad income from a torrent site, but when they fight against people sharing information they can't and mustn't win as that would be the end of freedom and progress.
If Linux has 50% of the desktop market, is there any reason for a normal user to use Windows? I doubt that. If the Windows-share of the marked is that small, we'll surely see a Microsoft Linux and a change of Microsoft's business model. They will pay computer-builders to install their ad-paid Linux and make money from their net services. Or Mircosoft will sort of die.
Are you saying that as it isn't only Microsoft's fault that Vista sucks, we should embrace it and use it despite it being inferior to both Linux and XP?
OK, I'll try to work up some compassion for Microsoft... Damn, I failed! Sorry, but at least I tried.
After what I have read, the only thing I can do it to recommend anyone I know to not buy Vista. If they can get XP (seems to be available on ThePirateBay at least), then fine. Or they can use the modern updated OS Linux.
More information will be produced in a free to copy information world, because production of new information is based on old information. Most of Disney's movies are for example based on other stories and most discoveries are done when combining knowledges from different sources. But the best example here is that one can make much better teaching literature faster by combining and editing previous works. Then there is of course the issue about what rights you have if your book contains copied stuff, and I can accept that I'm not allowed to print it and sell it without permission.
As for Shrek: I don't mind that selling things with copyrighted material is illegal, and saying that you're a sponsor, when you aren't, is of course illegal for other reasons. It's sharing information that mustn't be illegal.
As for commercials: When there was no commercials on TV here in Sweden, people made sure to come in time to movies just to see the commercials there. And movie-audiences don't seem to mind watching good and relevant commercials like trailers. So if the one producing the movie doesn't have to pay for distribution, I think they can make some money out of commercials that generally aren't cut away when people copy the movie. I've seen some documentaries made to be bittorrent distributed with ads for the sponsors in the beginning. An Australian producer (I think) made a great speech about how content producers should make money in the future: www.elfpack.com/stuff/FutureOfBitTorrent.avi.torrent
But as I said: I realize that Hollywood will not get as much money as now. But I prefer Hollywood being wiped out over that my communication with others being strangled. And strangling our communication is the only way to uphold any respect for the current laws.
I know a lot of artists as I am running Elftown. As far as I know, none of them makes any money with help of copyright laws.
What they do make money of is taking requests. People pay for getting a special piece of art created for them. And no one could be happier than the artist if those pieces are copied as much as Mona Lisa as it's free marketing for their services (which is producing art, not revealing secret information that you're not allowed to copy). If you think about it, you realize that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a great example of art paid by product placement (where the product in this case is the religion) but it's not a bad piece of art even if you don't like the product in question.
I however have no problem with copyright (as long as it's limited in time) that makes it illegal to sell things like for example DVDs, t-shirts and books that are based on copyrighted material. What I have a problem with is government trying to restrict and control information charing between individuals.
The question we as the world population has to ask ourself is:
Is it better to have 10 times less information produced and get it all available for free, or to have the information production we have today but unavailable due to costs? I think the answers is clear: We want free information! 100 000 movies for free are better than 1 000 000 movies you have to pay way too much to see. Same goes for science and education material.
Worth noting is that it will probably not be 10 times less information produced. It will be easier to produce information when it can be shared and the once producing it can get revenue from other sources (for example product placements, advertising, real life events, sponsors and development on demand). So I think there will be more information produced, but way less of the high cost stuff like mastont movies.
Also worth noting is that the alternative to free sharing of information is a spying and controlling society way worse than 1984.
When that is noted one has to realize that not only is it OK to copy, but it's also wrong to buy anything from companies who are working towards a 1984-society, buying politicians and using the corrupted US legal system to destroy people's lives. If these evil companies have less money, they can buy fewer politicians (and ISP and media and...) and that gives us a better chance to battle them.
Downloading a movie is much faster and easier than going out and to buy a disk. Downloading is also free, so can people just stop pretending that there is no such a thing as freely available pirated movies all over the Internet. A few old fashioned people want some disks in their shelf, but people in general prefer to have their 1000 movies on their harddisk instead of filling up space at home.
I would say that's the number one reason above all others together. Today we have the opportunity to have all the world's data (music, video, art, science, programs and so on) right at everyone's desk. But it's stopped by bandits who bribe our politicians to protect their feudal-style property-laws that are just as absurd as if you own the people who are on your land and can forbid planes from flying over it. People are spied on and their personal communication and information is tracked so that they should be scared to not share files with their 10 000 closest friends.
RIAA and friends are going fast in the wrong direction, and the common people are going fast in the other direction by copying more than ever before. And it's more and more becoming right to copy from these bandits (Or even better: Avoid them totally and support people who are for free information instead), than sponsoring the terrorism and spying on the people by paying for copying.
Luckily encryption and the technology will win this battle. Hopefully without that we have to see starving mega-stars in riots on the street, but that is a cost I'm willing to take as the benefits are so huge.
I have some understanding of the USA taxation, but this only confirm that it's a total mess. I've seen things like that you have to pay sales taxes on stuff you buy on the Internet if you're not located in the state it's sold in. This seems like a strange thing like that and makes no sense to me.
In the EU it's quite simple: If you are a person who buy a service (any service), you pay the sales-tax in the country where you buy it. If you're a company you don't pay the tax if it's from another country and you get the money back if it's in your own country. The same goes for companies who buy goods. If you buy goods and are a person, you either pay the tax of your own country (if the company is selling enough there) or the tax of the selling country.
The sales-tax is 18-25% for both goods and services, but with a few perverted exceptions (like food or books). It's quite high for Americans, but of course this means that our other taxes are lower (well, unless you live in Sweden or Denmark or something like that...).
Someone should explain that NBC is BROADCASTING the content. A few minutes after it's aired it's sent on the bittorrent channel. So I guess we outside of USA just have to do with top quality easy to download TV-series without any ads until the TV-show producers figure out how to distribute their shows on their own.
Ehum... "drive" is a short form of "hard disk drive". An SSD can't really be a drive either because there is no disk in it. But it's an HD-replacement and so it the ioDrive, but the ioDrive has it's own controller included. My point is that if it barks like a fish, then we can call it a fish (at least as long as we're talking about barking). But we should be aware of the differences, of course.
I strongly think that the PCIe-approach is the right way to go. It's direct, simple and the fastest way.
That's exactly my experience of the applications too. As I see it, the only uses I have of Facebook is the tagging of photos and the events. I'm not so happy about getting my brain eaten by a zombie while I'm being bitten by a vampire (referring to two stupid apps)...
I've thought a lot about adding applications to my social networking sites Elfpack and Elftown, but so far it only seems to make the user experience worse.
In the future it will be that I fuck now, yesterday I feck and I'm fooken.
Interesting that the article never mentioning something about verbs going the other way. Guess that doesn't happen in English at the moment. But in Swedish there seems to be less uncommon with things like "simma, sam, summit" (swim, swam, swum), maybe due to English influence, or maybe because that word is getting more common again.
If no one pirated Microsoft's software, Windows would be something for the history books in a few years. Mircosoft got where it is today thanks to piracy and all the free marketing they got from people copying, learning and using Windows without paying for it.
According to Microsoft (unofficially, of course) there are good people how pay for and run their software, less good people paying for they software but don't use it, even a little less good people who are running the software without paying for it and then the really really horrible people who don't use Microsoft product at all. But the legal system fails miserably to order the people in this correct order, which is a big threat to software companies.
But you also have to remember that a lot of the professional software only works or only works well on Linux and/or Unix.
OK, one can run MySQL and Apache on Windows, but preferably not, so then the servers tend to run Linux.
I'm not sure about Gimp, Mplayer or Emacs, but I know many who use them on Windows, so I guess they on their own aren't enough reason to use some force to stay in or switch to Linux. I think the strongest reason is that many people know Unix and Linus better than they know Windows, so then they want it at their desktop too. And then their friends get no free support on Windows from them and they start to switch too.
You have missed one important piece of understanding of how the competitions works: Companies do mistakes and die or in other way become irrelevant.
We've seen Commodore, IBM and even Linux companies like VA Linux get out of a business because they fail. But you see the difference there: Amiga died with Commodore, IBM's OS/2 was dead when IBM failed to make profit from it and had to discontinue it. But when VA Linux stopped making Linux computers, the Linux presence couldn't care less.
So even if there is sense in that most people run Windows and MacOS now, some management errors, maybe Vista is one, will make people select something else. But Linux's will just keep growing, it will never get bankrupt, it will never stop be there because its company doesn't make money enough, it will never be priced out of the competition and it will be there forever.
And what we see on the server market where vendors release Linux-drivers first (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/28/176213), will happen to the desktop too. Then it will start to be hard to convince someone to run !Linux.
Well, now you assume that the Earth hasn't changed its speed. If it's true that the Earth and that distant place was not moving away from each other as fast some billion years ago, it might have happened six billion years ago according to the old Earth time-space.
(The thing is: What time it is somewhere far away is very much depending on the speed you (your reference system) have. Change your reference system and the time in distant places will "move" billions of years.)
>It's like making Mohammed put on a Jesus-Christ mask (and stigmatas on his wrists) and ask catholics to worship him...
No, it's more like if the pope would say something like "Everyone, even if they don't believe in God, can come to heaven even if they are good.", and thus expanding his domain, not only to ALL Christians, but also to ALL of humankind.
And of course he's done so. The history goes approximately like this: Year 400 - We're all a happy Christian family (the other are wrong, kill them!)! Even if we might have many popes. Year 800 - Let's suck up to Charlemagne and call the pope in the east and everyone who follow him for a fake! Continuing throwing away of Christian tradition and return to Roman paganism and tradition. Kill as many non-pope-worshipers are possible, especially the ones in Byzantium as they are closest! Year 1500 - Condemning all those pesky protestants to hell for reading the bible and denying that the pope is sent from God! Year 1600 - 1960: OK, we have lost 40-50% of "our" world... Let's say the other Christians are OK too. So that we can speak for them. And now: The pope can speak for everyone, as long as they are "good".
Expect Mircosoft to be speaking for "all computer users" in the future too. With the deal with Novel they have already said something like "It's OK if you run Linux, as long as you love Microsoft." so they are heading that way, and they may be as successful as the Roman emperors that despite having lost 99.99% of their empire and calls themselves "pope" nowadays, are speaking for all of humankind.
Might be that Microsoft stops doing anything except "blessing" hardware and software.
According to Google Analytics, Elftown has the following kind of visitors last month:
Windows: 93.75%
Mac: 4.93%
Linux: 0.71%
Unknown: 0.26%
Playstation: 0.26%
The rest: less than 0.10%
As Elftown is an artist community, there is a little bias towards Mac, but it's not big and these numbers are very close to the internationally average user. Elftown runs on Linux and is of course 100% Linux compatible. To be honest, I don't care much about (Safari or Firefox) on Mac though, but they seem to work fine except a few problems I've forgotten about now.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time someone allows copyright monopolists to steal money from them because they are copying information on the Internet, it is supporting Internet surveillance and hindering information sharing.
Sharing cultural and educational material is essential to our society's survival. Is AT&T against that?
The simply fact is that society doesn't need blood-suckers who resell information for hideous prices. And film-makers can get their income from movie theatres and advertising, and musicians from concerts and sponsors.
So in USA you're debating exactly how the network companies should route their traffic so that your CIA-monitored dial-up lines becomes equally bad where ever you connect.
In Sweden we debate on how we should secure the right to share information privately and how to cheaply get something better than 100/10 Mbit Internet connection.
USA had a huge lead in Internet adoption, but it has turned to dust by network monitoring and pseudo debates like this. I have 50% of my customers in USA, so can you please stop babbling and get some real Internet to the people? You don't need a huge company to connect a village to a 100 Mbit network... Well, maybe in USA because of regulations?
One thing that has been tested successfully in various places is to RAID (RAID0) the SSD-disks. It makes them about as twice as fast, and it should be possible to RAID them in bigger arrays too. As there is so little risk of one disk breaking down, there is no excuse to not RAID-0 them.
These disks still have a problem with speed on random write though. It's nothing for read-write databases where NCQ (SATA2) disks are faster.
ramfs and tmpfs on Linux work so that they don't take any memory when not filled with something, but they also have a specified maximum size.
As a side-note I can tell that putting a database on tmpfs is a really bad idea because it gets very slow when it's swapped out (compared to being on a disk in the normal way) and it will get swapped out. ramfs worked like charm, but it makes it hard to shut down the server cleanly, of course.
But exactly what is the problem with piracy? That people can get Halo 3 and Lost for free? I guess it would be better if they only could get useful information for free, but people will not accept that just as they will not accept working all the time with no free time.
The usual argument is that piracy that it makes it harder for creators to get money from their work. But the argument "it wasn't intended" only works on people believing in authority as a God, so that just make me laugh.
I don't have any problem with piracy. Do you? I love to have almost all of the movies produced accessible from my computer without waiting for it to be broadcasted on some obscure TV-channel that I don't have access to. I also love being able to get all old computer-games which can't be bought anymore and that people can mix any music they want without having to pay for producing CDs and big spaces in shops to sell them.
If this leads to that Hollywood can only spend half as much money on every movie, I think that would just be positive for the quality of the crap they're doing. It would definitely bring us a more varied film-industry and people will continue to go to movie theatres even if the movies can be freely downloaded and watched at home. The big difference is that people will watch unknown movies and tell their friends if they are good, which will make it easier for "small" films.
I can accept that content producer for example get 50% of the ad income from a torrent site, but when they fight against people sharing information they can't and mustn't win as that would be the end of freedom and progress.
Just a thought:
If Linux has 50% of the desktop market, is there any reason for a normal user to use Windows? I doubt that. If the Windows-share of the marked is that small, we'll surely see a Microsoft Linux and a change of Microsoft's business model. They will pay computer-builders to install their ad-paid Linux and make money from their net services. Or Mircosoft will sort of die.
Are you saying that as it isn't only Microsoft's fault that Vista sucks, we should embrace it and use it despite it being inferior to both Linux and XP?
OK, I'll try to work up some compassion for Microsoft... Damn, I failed! Sorry, but at least I tried.
After what I have read, the only thing I can do it to recommend anyone I know to not buy Vista. If they can get XP (seems to be available on ThePirateBay at least), then fine. Or they can use the modern updated OS Linux.
As for Shrek: I don't mind that selling things with copyrighted material is illegal, and saying that you're a sponsor, when you aren't, is of course illegal for other reasons. It's sharing information that mustn't be illegal.
As for commercials: When there was no commercials on TV here in Sweden, people made sure to come in time to movies just to see the commercials there. And movie-audiences don't seem to mind watching good and relevant commercials like trailers. So if the one producing the movie doesn't have to pay for distribution, I think they can make some money out of commercials that generally aren't cut away when people copy the movie. I've seen some documentaries made to be bittorrent distributed with ads for the sponsors in the beginning. An Australian producer (I think) made a great speech about how content producers should make money in the future: www.elfpack.com/stuff/FutureOfBitTorrent.avi.torrent
But as I said: I realize that Hollywood will not get as much money as now. But I prefer Hollywood being wiped out over that my communication with others being strangled. And strangling our communication is the only way to uphold any respect for the current laws.
What they do make money of is taking requests. People pay for getting a special piece of art created for them. And no one could be happier than the artist if those pieces are copied as much as Mona Lisa as it's free marketing for their services (which is producing art, not revealing secret information that you're not allowed to copy). If you think about it, you realize that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a great example of art paid by product placement (where the product in this case is the religion) but it's not a bad piece of art even if you don't like the product in question.
I however have no problem with copyright (as long as it's limited in time) that makes it illegal to sell things like for example DVDs, t-shirts and books that are based on copyrighted material. What I have a problem with is government trying to restrict and control information charing between individuals.
The question we as the world population has to ask ourself is:
Is it better to have 10 times less information produced and get it all available for free, or to have the information production we have today but unavailable due to costs? I think the answers is clear: We want free information! 100 000 movies for free are better than 1 000 000 movies you have to pay way too much to see. Same goes for science and education material.
Worth noting is that it will probably not be 10 times less information produced. It will be easier to produce information when it can be shared and the once producing it can get revenue from other sources (for example product placements, advertising, real life events, sponsors and development on demand). So I think there will be more information produced, but way less of the high cost stuff like mastont movies.
Also worth noting is that the alternative to free sharing of information is a spying and controlling society way worse than 1984.
When that is noted one has to realize that not only is it OK to copy, but it's also wrong to buy anything from companies who are working towards a 1984-society, buying politicians and using the corrupted US legal system to destroy people's lives. If these evil companies have less money, they can buy fewer politicians (and ISP and media and...) and that gives us a better chance to battle them.
Downloading a movie is much faster and easier than going out and to buy a disk. Downloading is also free, so can people just stop pretending that there is no such a thing as freely available pirated movies all over the Internet. A few old fashioned people want some disks in their shelf, but people in general prefer to have their 1000 movies on their harddisk instead of filling up space at home.
RIAA and friends are going fast in the wrong direction, and the common people are going fast in the other direction by copying more than ever before. And it's more and more becoming right to copy from these bandits (Or even better: Avoid them totally and support people who are for free information instead), than sponsoring the terrorism and spying on the people by paying for copying.
Luckily encryption and the technology will win this battle. Hopefully without that we have to see starving mega-stars in riots on the street, but that is a cost I'm willing to take as the benefits are so huge.
I have some understanding of the USA taxation, but this only confirm that it's a total mess. I've seen things like that you have to pay sales taxes on stuff you buy on the Internet if you're not located in the state it's sold in. This seems like a strange thing like that and makes no sense to me.
In the EU it's quite simple: If you are a person who buy a service (any service), you pay the sales-tax in the country where you buy it. If you're a company you don't pay the tax if it's from another country and you get the money back if it's in your own country. The same goes for companies who buy goods. If you buy goods and are a person, you either pay the tax of your own country (if the company is selling enough there) or the tax of the selling country.
The sales-tax is 18-25% for both goods and services, but with a few perverted exceptions (like food or books). It's quite high for Americans, but of course this means that our other taxes are lower (well, unless you live in Sweden or Denmark or something like that...).
Someone should explain that NBC is BROADCASTING the content. A few minutes after it's aired it's sent on the bittorrent channel. So I guess we outside of USA just have to do with top quality easy to download TV-series without any ads until the TV-show producers figure out how to distribute their shows on their own.
Ehum... "drive" is a short form of "hard disk drive". An SSD can't really be a drive either because there is no disk in it. But it's an HD-replacement and so it the ioDrive, but the ioDrive has it's own controller included. My point is that if it barks like a fish, then we can call it a fish (at least as long as we're talking about barking). But we should be aware of the differences, of course.
I strongly think that the PCIe-approach is the right way to go. It's direct, simple and the fastest way.
I've thought a lot about adding applications to my social networking sites Elfpack and Elftown, but so far it only seems to make the user experience worse.
0.86% of the Elftown users, use Linux, so 0.41% seems plausible.
;)
But we can all go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and bump that number to 50%
In the future it will be that I fuck now, yesterday I feck and I'm fooken.
Interesting that the article never mentioning something about verbs going the other way. Guess that doesn't happen in English at the moment. But in Swedish there seems to be less uncommon with things like "simma, sam, summit" (swim, swam, swum), maybe due to English influence, or maybe because that word is getting more common again.
If no one pirated Microsoft's software, Windows would be something for the history books in a few years. Mircosoft got where it is today thanks to piracy and all the free marketing they got from people copying, learning and using Windows without paying for it.
According to Microsoft (unofficially, of course) there are good people how pay for and run their software, less good people paying for they software but don't use it, even a little less good people who are running the software without paying for it and then the really really horrible people who don't use Microsoft product at all. But the legal system fails miserably to order the people in this correct order, which is a big threat to software companies.
But you also have to remember that a lot of the professional software only works or only works well on Linux and/or Unix.
OK, one can run MySQL and Apache on Windows, but preferably not, so then the servers tend to run Linux.
I'm not sure about Gimp, Mplayer or Emacs, but I know many who use them on Windows, so I guess they on their own aren't enough reason to use some force to stay in or switch to Linux. I think the strongest reason is that many people know Unix and Linus better than they know Windows, so then they want it at their desktop too. And then their friends get no free support on Windows from them and they start to switch too.
You have missed one important piece of understanding of how the competitions works: Companies do mistakes and die or in other way become irrelevant.
We've seen Commodore, IBM and even Linux companies like VA Linux get out of a business because they fail. But you see the difference there: Amiga died with Commodore, IBM's OS/2 was dead when IBM failed to make profit from it and had to discontinue it. But when VA Linux stopped making Linux computers, the Linux presence couldn't care less.
So even if there is sense in that most people run Windows and MacOS now, some management errors, maybe Vista is one, will make people select something else. But Linux's will just keep growing, it will never get bankrupt, it will never stop be there because its company doesn't make money enough, it will never be priced out of the competition and it will be there forever.
And what we see on the server market where vendors release Linux-drivers first (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/28/176213), will happen to the desktop too. Then it will start to be hard to convince someone to run !Linux.
Well, now you assume that the Earth hasn't changed its speed. If it's true that the Earth and that distant place was not moving away from each other as fast some billion years ago, it might have happened six billion years ago according to the old Earth time-space.
(The thing is: What time it is somewhere far away is very much depending on the speed you (your reference system) have. Change your reference system and the time in distant places will "move" billions of years.)
>It's like making Mohammed put on a Jesus-Christ mask (and stigmatas on his wrists) and ask catholics to worship him...
No, it's more like if the pope would say something like "Everyone, even if they don't believe in God, can come to heaven even if they are good.", and thus expanding his domain, not only to ALL Christians, but also to ALL of humankind.
And of course he's done so. The history goes approximately like this:
Year 400 - We're all a happy Christian family (the other are wrong, kill them!)! Even if we might have many popes.
Year 800 - Let's suck up to Charlemagne and call the pope in the east and everyone who follow him for a fake!
Continuing throwing away of Christian tradition and return to Roman paganism and tradition. Kill as many non-pope-worshipers are possible, especially the ones in Byzantium as they are closest!
Year 1500 - Condemning all those pesky protestants to hell for reading the bible and denying that the pope is sent from God!
Year 1600 - 1960: OK, we have lost 40-50% of "our" world... Let's say the other Christians are OK too. So that we can speak for them.
And now: The pope can speak for everyone, as long as they are "good".
Expect Mircosoft to be speaking for "all computer users" in the future too. With the deal with Novel they have already said something like "It's OK if you run Linux, as long as you love Microsoft." so they are heading that way, and they may be as successful as the Roman emperors that despite having lost 99.99% of their empire and calls themselves "pope" nowadays, are speaking for all of humankind.
Might be that Microsoft stops doing anything except "blessing" hardware and software.
Windows: 93.75%
Mac: 4.93%
Linux: 0.71%
Unknown: 0.26%
Playstation: 0.26%
The rest: less than 0.10%
As Elftown is an artist community, there is a little bias towards Mac, but it's not big and these numbers are very close to the internationally average user. Elftown runs on Linux and is of course 100% Linux compatible. To be honest, I don't care much about (Safari or Firefox) on Mac though, but they seem to work fine except a few problems I've forgotten about now.