You say you've been using Vista "since beta 1". But which are you using now, still one of the beta versions, or the final (which isn't available to run-of-the-mill consumers yet)? TFA says:
Throughout the beta, Deep Sleep in Windows Vista went great. [...] But in the final version of Windows Vista, something is very, very majorly wrong.
The problem is in the final version only, not a beta. This wasn't mentioned in the Slashdot summary, though, which could have saved confusion for those that don't RTFA.
Just think one day the artists and the fans might connect directly on the internet with no middle man in between to screw the artists and sue the fans.
That day has already arrived, and it has brought little change. We already have lots of artists, mainly the kind who can't get signed up by a record label, who publish their work online. It is only the tiny minority that get signed up by a major record label that we hear about though, and they are precisely the ones who will not 'cut out the middleman', because for them, the RIAA actually do provide a service: they advertise and brainwash the public into liking those choice few artists who are blessed with RIAA's stamp, leading to a tiny minority of artists making virtually all of the income in the music industry. How many artists are played on MTV? Not many.
[The RIAA's] greed will be their undoing. I wonder why it hasn't been their undoing in the past though?
The problem is that the public is very easily controlled by advertising and the media. So long as that is true, the RIAA will be able to create a few 'big acts', and to get the public to listen only to them. A few 'big acts' are easily controlled by the RIAA, especially since those acts will only make money as long as the public is convinced that they like them - which is the only thing the RIAA is good at.
In this media-driven age, I don't expect things to change anytime soon. But yes, cheap recording and publishing technology is helpful, even if only in a small way.
> I was NEVER taught that; just the opposite. Fires tend to burn up FASTER than they burn down, but geez, anyone who has ever actually WATCHED a fire burn knows this statement is nonsense.
Or anyone who watches TV, since they explained that on CSI a few years ago. Perhaps firemen should watch more TV; I know I get all my useful information from there. (Well, sometimes Wikipedia, especially the fast-changing articles, those are the most reliable.)
The biggest military boondoggle that comes to mind was Hitler not allowing the Armor he had in Reserve to be applied to repelling the Normandy (D-Day) invasion as he didn't think it was real. Releasing the armor would likely have crushed the invasion and the war would have continued longer (don't think the Nazi's would have won though).
From what I read, there were two related issues on D-Day: (1) Hitler equivocated on what to do with his armor in preparation for a possible attack; his generals proposed a few options, and he didn't commit to any of them, he compromised, and (2) on D-Day itself, he couldn't be reached in a timely manner to deliver the command to send all of the armor to where it (perhaps) should be. This may be due to the Allies feinting an invasion elsewhere, so he may not have been sure the attack on Normandy was real, as you said above. However, overall, I am not sure this qualifies for the 'biggest military boondoggle'. The Russia strategy, as a whole, or specifics in it, probably qualifies more (if you want to focus on WWII at least).
Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format?
Sutor, IBM's dissenting voter says: "The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft."
This should make it clear that a spec is not necessarily enough for a 'standard'.
I suggest that standards committees (ISO, ECMA, etc.) require not just human-readable documentation for a new standard, but also BSD-licensed code that implements that standard, i.e., a 'reference implementation'. Otherwise, there is simply too much room for interpretation, and standardization is lost.
uTorrent phones home for the DHT network feature; it's pretty important if you care about speed.
Shut down the uTorrent central server, and you've effectively halved (or worse) everyone's download/upload speed.
Not quite. It uses router.utorrent.com to bootstrap into the DHT network. But if it already has known nodes (e.g. saved from the previous session) then it wouldn't 'phone home' as you call it. The whole purpose of the Kademlia DHT feature is to be decentralized, i.e. without the need for a central server. Granted, utorrent is closed-source, so we can't tell exactly how it uses router.utorrent.com, but that is how all the open-source clients that I know of do things.
Well, for one thing, Novell owns a company (now a division) called Ximian. The people behind Ximian are the people who originally developed GNOME. I believe that they are still active in the Gnome project. If I were you, I'd think about switching to Kubuntu.
Perhaps you are referring in part to Miguel de Icaza, who was among the founders of both GNOME (in 1997) and Ximian (in 1999), and is very positive about the Novell-Microsoft deal (which got him a lot of ill-will recently), but naturally other Ximian people would have been active in GNOME, since Ximian was in the business of GNOME-related things. Still, to leave GNOME because of this makes as much sense as leaving all other OSS projects that Novell employees contribute to, OpenOffice among them. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, mind you, just that if it does make sense, then you need to stop using a lot more than GNOME.
Personally, my approach to this is to see what GNOME does with the GPL3 license. As the official desktop of the GNU project, I would be surprised if GNOME doesn't move to the GPL3. Assuming it does, most of my worries will be alleviated. In particular, if one of GNOME/GTK+ and KDE/Qt move to the GPL3, and the other does not, I will in all likelihood move to the one that does, whichever it is.
In short, I just don't see it being anything more than an intellectual exercise.
Then why have Microsoft received OLPCs, and why are they taking the time and effort to run Windows on them? Surely not just for fun. (I'm not being sarcastic, I am really asking.)
And besides, even if Windows were secure, they would have to give away fully functional copies for FREE to make the budget. Even charging OLPC $1 for the license would hurt the budget ($1 * millions of laptops == no good)
I am sure Microsoft will agree to give away free copies of "Windows XP, OLPC edition" in exchange for entrenching their monopoly worldwide.
Or, have it cost 10 cents, just so there isn't a precedent of 'free Windows'.
If an enterprise already has a Windows environment, why would they be interested in upsetting everything and installing new Linux workstations?
Say you are fed up with 2000/XP security issues, and you want something better. You have heard that both Vista and Linux are more secure. Then a 2-year-old existing PC upgraded to Xandros Professional is $99; buying a new PC that can run Vista will cost an order of magnitude more.
Alternatively, for an older PC nearing the end of its life, buying a new one that can run Xandros should cost about half of what a PC that can run Vista will (seeing as you need half the RAM, have no need for a powerful graphics card - I assume you do want to run Aero Glass, and the actual software is also cheaper, etc.).
If Xandros can indeed be dropped into a Windows network and 'just work', with minor upgrade hassles, then that should be a compelling argument for corporations to consider it. Having never tried Xandros, I have no idea whether this is true. However, if I were running a corporation, I would download the 30-day free evaluation version and give it a spin.
A few large corporations making the switch [to OpenOffice.org] will produce case studies and some of those nifty ROI projections the suits always drool over.
Indeed, but hastily-planned attempts to do so that end in failure will produce enough negative publicity to stall the entire momentum. You are assuming that all such attempts will succeed, and succeed well. But this is not at all obvious, even though they SHOULD succeed. But, a switch to OO.org is still a switch, i.e. a change in how things are already being done - and any change has risks. Here's hoping that organizations planning to switch to OO.org will do so carefully and well.
there is the anti-Linux groupthink (no hardware support, no software support, crap GUIs, etc), the anti-GPL groupthink (it'll never stand up in court, it's viral, etc), the anti-IP groupthink, the pro-IP groupthink, etc.
You keep using that word.
'Groupthink', as generally understood, isn't just consensus or dogma (which is basically what you are giving examples of). It isn't just social pressure to conform. Also, it isn't a persistent set of memes.
As I heard it at least in my undergrad years, it is a tendency for a certain specific sort of dynamic to occur in groups: everyone wants to 'support the group', to conform, which causes decisions made by the group to be less wise than each group member would have done by themselves (decisions, because groupthink was originally used to describe the behavior of committees, i.e. groups that decide on actions). This is more or less what is given as the definition on wikipedia.
The (e.g.) "anti-IP groupthink", as you call it, is just a certain idea or set of ideas that is repeated, and (perhaps in part due to social pressures) others are convinced by them, perpetuating the cycle. However (a) I am not sure that individually the people would have arrived at 'wiser' positions, and (b) there is no decision-making process, this isn't a committee. It's just a set of people talking. Perhaps most importantly, there is debate, even on those issues that are 'consensus' on Slashdot, which goes completely against a diagnosis of 'groupthink'. Also, there are several idea clusters, as you mentioned, and the people subscribing to them don't overlap in any simple way - again, a type of complexity that goes against calling it all 'groupthink'.
Stallman didn't actually give us ANY new information about GPL v2/3 compatibility. He only said that some programs could be v2, and some v3, and exist on the same system. He didn't say they could work together (they can), and he CERTAINLY didn't say their code could be compiled together (this is the issue, and I say they can't).
Well, we can just read the GPL3 draft ourselves. Assuming no big changes in that area (and I doubt there will be any), it will not be possible to link GPL2 and GPL3 code together (except for cases of LGPL2 code or GPL3+a suitable exception).
What Stallman was quoted as saying is the simple fact that a system can have various licenses on it, GPL2, GPL3, Apache, BSD, Python, etc. etc. Which is of course true. What we will see, in all likelihood, is a GPL2 kernel and GPL3 GNU tools (compiler, etc.), which virtually every Linux distro will use happily. Novell, on the other hand, will have some problems with the GNU tools.
Lets at least make the complaints current. I think Iowa should go after microsoft for the Novell Deal.
Your sentiment is easy to identify with, but in the American legal system, cases can take years before they get underway (look at the SCO cases, for example). So even if you try to make them 'current', the case will always end up being about something (at least) a few years in the past.
I prefer GNOME, and I'm really curious about what 'usability problems' they had with it (hopefully we'll find out somehow?).
Anyhow, ignoring the GNOME vs. KDE issue (which I hope won't flare up), there are other questions here: how did they come to initially decide on GNOME? Perhaps their decision-making process wasn't very thorough, if they later spent 3 months of work to arrive at a dead end. If they really didn't know the subject matter, then the decision to go GNOME may have been premature; they should have investigated KDE more before wasting those 3 months. But, I guess that's how you learn.
Also, it has to be said: sure, GNOME isn't perfect, KDE isn't either, but at least on Linux you have a choice. That's a good thing.
For example, Plone ships with its own version of Python and Zope to keep the host OS's versions of either from breaking the application, and lets you update the host OS independently of the application. This is a good thing.
Of course, overdoing this leads to wasted space and other issues. But done right it's very useful. Another example besides Plone is OpenOffice.org, which includes it's own Python version.
This has already been posted before. Please, slashdot devs, make some system to relate these articles of yours.
Interestingly, the Antikythera device had an 'anti-dupe' mechanism, preventing the town crier from proclaiming the same bit of news more than once. Those ancient Greeks are still ahead of us in so many ways.
[...]the red nano is one product. The black nano is another product. The black and white 30GB video iPod are two products. And so on.
Yes, but this isn't the main way in how the report was misleading. The main problem is that TFA mentions (according to one analysis) 2nd place for the Zune, with 9% of the market, which places it before SanDisk and after Apple. Yet no numbers are given for Sandisk or Apple. For all we know, the numbers are 70% Apple, 9% Zune, 8.99% SanDisk. According to the other analysis, Zune had 7%, putting it behind SanDisk, which supports the theory that their market shares are very close.
In addition, we don't know who the 7-9% was taken out of. If all of it came out of Apple's share, that is one thing, but if it came out of Microsoft's former PlaysForSure partners, mainly SanDisk, then it is another. TFA simply does not go into any detail here.
So, TFA has nothing to dispute the theory, mentioned many times in the past on Slashdot, that the Zune will indeed be a 'killer', but mainly a PlaysForSure-killer, not an iPod-killer. On the contrary, that theory seems to be partially borne out by TFA and the blanks it doesn't fill in.
IMO, in the short term the non-iPod market will be much simpler to encroach on than the iPod one. Yet, given time and Microsoft's endless pockets, we eventually see a change in the long run.
Distrowatch says this about Mandriva: "Cons: Some releases are buggy". Sadly this has been exactly my experience with them. Granted, I may have run into some obscure bugs by my own bad luck, but having Distrowatch say what I quoted seems to support that it wasn't just that (and I kicked myself for not listening to Distrowatch).
This was around a year and a half ago, so perhaps things have changed.
Everyone here knows what happens to people/companies that do a deal with MS... they very quickly become deceased or owned. This simply means the final end of Suse and Novell. MS will do this one distribution at a time... or have we not learned anything from their past behavior?
Mostly correct, but I disagree with the bit I emphasized. Microsoft are surely smart enough to know that they can't wipe out Linux one distribution at a time; for every distro they quash, a few others will rise up. This tactic may spread fear in the business world ("Linux is a risky business" and such), but it won't kill 'Linux'.
No, Microsoft are surely smart enough to know that they can't kill Linux like they killed their former victims. Instead, they'll have to destroy every possible Linux distribution in one fell swoop. How can this be attempted? By, say, patents - assert a few patents that any OS must implement, and every Linux distro is in jeopardy.
Thank you, Novell, for empowering Microsoft's long-term plan to do so.
If your development process involved coding generically (OpenGL is a good base) then porting is just a matter of recompiling.
OpenGL is a good option. There is another option, however, which may be of use to game vendors: porting with WINE. By developing for Windows, but making sure that it runs fine on WINE, they can get their products to run on other operating systems with less effort than switching to OpenGL. (Also this may ensure that they don't depend on obscure features of the Windows API, which may turn out to be useful in other ways.)
Sure, I'd prefer a native port myself, but having an official version that runs on WINE would be a reasonable compromise, since it should cost the game vendor very little to make.
"Companies back patents because it allows them to kill various small start-up. They are immune from each other for the most part because of patent portfolios they exchange (Mutual Assured Destruction)" (emphasis mine)
While somewhat similar, software patents aren't quite 'Mutual Assured Destruction'. Unlike classic MAD, where no shots are actually fired (til Armageddon day), with patents there are always lots of minor 'conflicts' taking place. Most don't reach the papers, because a licensing deal is done behind closed doors. When we do hear about a patent lawsuit, that means that discreet negotiations failed, which is probably fairly rare.
We can't be certain, since 'secret' patent deals are, well, secret. But it is entirely possible that right now e.g. Microsoft are paying IBM to license some of their patents, and vice versa, etc. I suspect that some patents are held in reserve, so that when/if the rules are broken, the Assured Destruction phase of MAD can commence (since patents that are 'secretly' licensed are, well, licensed, and can't be used at that point). OIN patents are probably among those.
For all we know IBM, Novell, HP, etc. have patents relating to things in Linux (or that originally appeared in *NIX), and Microsoft is paying them as we speak for their use in Windows. Microsoft is actually the more vulnerable party because they are the more successful one, with more deployed software (and hence more legal risk). So really, the FUD can be spun in quite the opposite way, i.e. that Microsoft clients are at risk for using 'Linux patents' in Windows.
All of this patent business is conducted between large megacorporations, and behind closed doors. Generally they have the good taste to leave things at that; some money changes hands, and the public remains blissfully unaware. The fact that Microsoft have stooped to taking cheap shots about 'Linux using our IP' just means that they, in desperation, have lost their cool.
Slashdot Mirror
You say you've been using Vista "since beta 1". But which are you using now, still one of the beta versions, or the final (which isn't available to run-of-the-mill consumers yet)? TFA says:
Throughout the beta, Deep Sleep in Windows Vista went great. [...] But in the final version of Windows Vista, something is very, very majorly wrong.
The problem is in the final version only, not a beta. This wasn't mentioned in the Slashdot summary, though, which could have saved confusion for those that don't RTFA.
Just think one day the artists and the fans might connect directly on the internet with no middle man in between to screw the artists and sue the fans.
That day has already arrived, and it has brought little change. We already have lots of artists, mainly the kind who can't get signed up by a record label, who publish their work online. It is only the tiny minority that get signed up by a major record label that we hear about though, and they are precisely the ones who will not 'cut out the middleman', because for them, the RIAA actually do provide a service: they advertise and brainwash the public into liking those choice few artists who are blessed with RIAA's stamp, leading to a tiny minority of artists making virtually all of the income in the music industry. How many artists are played on MTV? Not many.
[The RIAA's] greed will be their undoing. I wonder why it hasn't been their undoing in the past though?
The problem is that the public is very easily controlled by advertising and the media. So long as that is true, the RIAA will be able to create a few 'big acts', and to get the public to listen only to them. A few 'big acts' are easily controlled by the RIAA, especially since those acts will only make money as long as the public is convinced that they like them - which is the only thing the RIAA is good at.
In this media-driven age, I don't expect things to change anytime soon. But yes, cheap recording and publishing technology is helpful, even if only in a small way.
>> Fires always burn up, not down.
> I was NEVER taught that; just the opposite. Fires tend to burn up FASTER than they burn down, but geez, anyone who has ever actually WATCHED a fire burn knows this statement is nonsense.
Or anyone who watches TV, since they explained that on CSI a few years ago. Perhaps firemen should watch more TV; I know I get all my useful information from there. (Well, sometimes Wikipedia, especially the fast-changing articles, those are the most reliable.)
The biggest military boondoggle that comes to mind was Hitler not allowing the Armor he had in Reserve to be applied to repelling the Normandy (D-Day) invasion as he didn't think it was real. Releasing the armor would likely have crushed the invasion and the war would have continued longer (don't think the Nazi's would have won though).
From what I read, there were two related issues on D-Day: (1) Hitler equivocated on what to do with his armor in preparation for a possible attack; his generals proposed a few options, and he didn't commit to any of them, he compromised, and (2) on D-Day itself, he couldn't be reached in a timely manner to deliver the command to send all of the armor to where it (perhaps) should be. This may be due to the Allies feinting an invasion elsewhere, so he may not have been sure the attack on Normandy was real, as you said above. However, overall, I am not sure this qualifies for the 'biggest military boondoggle'. The Russia strategy, as a whole, or specifics in it, probably qualifies more (if you want to focus on WWII at least).
Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format?
Sutor, IBM's dissenting voter says: "The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft."
This should make it clear that a spec is not necessarily enough for a 'standard'.
I suggest that standards committees (ISO, ECMA, etc.) require not just human-readable documentation for a new standard, but also BSD-licensed code that implements that standard, i.e., a 'reference implementation'. Otherwise, there is simply too much room for interpretation, and standardization is lost.
don't want my company data on someone else's servers.
That is easily solved by suitable encryption.
uTorrent phones home for the DHT network feature; it's pretty important if you care about speed.
Shut down the uTorrent central server, and you've effectively halved (or worse) everyone's download/upload speed.
Not quite. It uses router.utorrent.com to bootstrap into the DHT network. But if it already has known nodes (e.g. saved from the previous session) then it wouldn't 'phone home' as you call it. The whole purpose of the Kademlia DHT feature is to be decentralized, i.e. without the need for a central server. Granted, utorrent is closed-source, so we can't tell exactly how it uses router.utorrent.com, but that is how all the open-source clients that I know of do things.
Well, for one thing, Novell owns a company (now a division) called Ximian. The people behind Ximian are the people who originally developed GNOME. I believe that they are still active in the Gnome project. If I were you, I'd think about switching to Kubuntu.
Perhaps you are referring in part to Miguel de Icaza, who was among the founders of both GNOME (in 1997) and Ximian (in 1999), and is very positive about the Novell-Microsoft deal (which got him a lot of ill-will recently), but naturally other Ximian people would have been active in GNOME, since Ximian was in the business of GNOME-related things. Still, to leave GNOME because of this makes as much sense as leaving all other OSS projects that Novell employees contribute to, OpenOffice among them. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, mind you, just that if it does make sense, then you need to stop using a lot more than GNOME.
Personally, my approach to this is to see what GNOME does with the GPL3 license. As the official desktop of the GNU project, I would be surprised if GNOME doesn't move to the GPL3. Assuming it does, most of my worries will be alleviated. In particular, if one of GNOME/GTK+ and KDE/Qt move to the GPL3, and the other does not, I will in all likelihood move to the one that does, whichever it is.
Well, that might be true. I hope you're right.
In short, I just don't see it being anything more than an intellectual exercise.
Then why have Microsoft received OLPCs, and why are they taking the time and effort to run Windows on them? Surely not just for fun. (I'm not being sarcastic, I am really asking.)
And besides, even if Windows were secure, they would have to give away fully functional copies for FREE to make the budget. Even charging OLPC $1 for the license would hurt the budget ($1 * millions of laptops == no good)
I am sure Microsoft will agree to give away free copies of "Windows XP, OLPC edition" in exchange for entrenching their monopoly worldwide.
Or, have it cost 10 cents, just so there isn't a precedent of 'free Windows'.
If an enterprise already has a Windows environment, why would they be interested in upsetting everything and installing new Linux workstations?
Say you are fed up with 2000/XP security issues, and you want something better. You have heard that both Vista and Linux are more secure. Then a 2-year-old existing PC upgraded to Xandros Professional is $99; buying a new PC that can run Vista will cost an order of magnitude more.
Alternatively, for an older PC nearing the end of its life, buying a new one that can run Xandros should cost about half of what a PC that can run Vista will (seeing as you need half the RAM, have no need for a powerful graphics card - I assume you do want to run Aero Glass, and the actual software is also cheaper, etc.).
If Xandros can indeed be dropped into a Windows network and 'just work', with minor upgrade hassles, then that should be a compelling argument for corporations to consider it. Having never tried Xandros, I have no idea whether this is true. However, if I were running a corporation, I would download the 30-day free evaluation version and give it a spin.
A few large corporations making the switch [to OpenOffice.org] will produce case studies and some of those nifty ROI projections the suits always drool over.
Indeed, but hastily-planned attempts to do so that end in failure will produce enough negative publicity to stall the entire momentum. You are assuming that all such attempts will succeed, and succeed well. But this is not at all obvious, even though they SHOULD succeed. But, a switch to OO.org is still a switch, i.e. a change in how things are already being done - and any change has risks. Here's hoping that organizations planning to switch to OO.org will do so carefully and well.
there is the anti-Linux groupthink (no hardware support, no software support, crap GUIs, etc), the anti-GPL groupthink (it'll never stand up in court, it's viral, etc), the anti-IP groupthink, the pro-IP groupthink, etc.
You keep using that word.
'Groupthink', as generally understood, isn't just consensus or dogma (which is basically what you are giving examples of). It isn't just social pressure to conform. Also, it isn't a persistent set of memes.
As I heard it at least in my undergrad years, it is a tendency for a certain specific sort of dynamic to occur in groups: everyone wants to 'support the group', to conform, which causes decisions made by the group to be less wise than each group member would have done by themselves (decisions, because groupthink was originally used to describe the behavior of committees, i.e. groups that decide on actions). This is more or less what is given as the definition on wikipedia.
The (e.g.) "anti-IP groupthink", as you call it, is just a certain idea or set of ideas that is repeated, and (perhaps in part due to social pressures) others are convinced by them, perpetuating the cycle. However (a) I am not sure that individually the people would have arrived at 'wiser' positions, and (b) there is no decision-making process, this isn't a committee. It's just a set of people talking. Perhaps most importantly, there is debate, even on those issues that are 'consensus' on Slashdot, which goes completely against a diagnosis of 'groupthink'. Also, there are several idea clusters, as you mentioned, and the people subscribing to them don't overlap in any simple way - again, a type of complexity that goes against calling it all 'groupthink'.
Stallman didn't actually give us ANY new information about GPL v2/3 compatibility. He only said that some programs could be v2, and some v3, and exist on the same system. He didn't say they could work together (they can), and he CERTAINLY didn't say their code could be compiled together (this is the issue, and I say they can't).
Well, we can just read the GPL3 draft ourselves. Assuming no big changes in that area (and I doubt there will be any), it will not be possible to link GPL2 and GPL3 code together (except for cases of LGPL2 code or GPL3+a suitable exception).
What Stallman was quoted as saying is the simple fact that a system can have various licenses on it, GPL2, GPL3, Apache, BSD, Python, etc. etc. Which is of course true. What we will see, in all likelihood, is a GPL2 kernel and GPL3 GNU tools (compiler, etc.), which virtually every Linux distro will use happily. Novell, on the other hand, will have some problems with the GNU tools.
Lets at least make the complaints current. I think Iowa should go after microsoft for the Novell Deal.
Your sentiment is easy to identify with, but in the American legal system, cases can take years before they get underway (look at the SCO cases, for example). So even if you try to make them 'current', the case will always end up being about something (at least) a few years in the past.
What is he going to do, round up all the Mac users?
"Did I say death camps? I meant happy camps."
I prefer GNOME, and I'm really curious about what 'usability problems' they had with it (hopefully we'll find out somehow?).
Anyhow, ignoring the GNOME vs. KDE issue (which I hope won't flare up), there are other questions here: how did they come to initially decide on GNOME? Perhaps their decision-making process wasn't very thorough, if they later spent 3 months of work to arrive at a dead end. If they really didn't know the subject matter, then the decision to go GNOME may have been premature; they should have investigated KDE more before wasting those 3 months. But, I guess that's how you learn.
Also, it has to be said: sure, GNOME isn't perfect, KDE isn't either, but at least on Linux you have a choice. That's a good thing.
For example, Plone ships with its own version of Python and Zope to keep the host OS's versions of either from breaking the application, and lets you update the host OS independently of the application. This is a good thing.
Of course, overdoing this leads to wasted space and other issues. But done right it's very useful. Another example besides Plone is OpenOffice.org, which includes it's own Python version.
This has already been posted before. Please, slashdot devs, make some system to relate these articles of yours.
Interestingly, the Antikythera device had an 'anti-dupe' mechanism, preventing the town crier from proclaiming the same bit of news more than once. Those ancient Greeks are still ahead of us in so many ways.
[...]the red nano is one product. The black nano is another product. The black and white 30GB video iPod are two products. And so on.
Yes, but this isn't the main way in how the report was misleading. The main problem is that TFA mentions (according to one analysis) 2nd place for the Zune, with 9% of the market, which places it before SanDisk and after Apple. Yet no numbers are given for Sandisk or Apple. For all we know, the numbers are 70% Apple, 9% Zune, 8.99% SanDisk. According to the other analysis, Zune had 7%, putting it behind SanDisk, which supports the theory that their market shares are very close.
In addition, we don't know who the 7-9% was taken out of. If all of it came out of Apple's share, that is one thing, but if it came out of Microsoft's former PlaysForSure partners, mainly SanDisk, then it is another. TFA simply does not go into any detail here.
So, TFA has nothing to dispute the theory, mentioned many times in the past on Slashdot, that the Zune will indeed be a 'killer', but mainly a PlaysForSure-killer, not an iPod-killer. On the contrary, that theory seems to be partially borne out by TFA and the blanks it doesn't fill in.
IMO, in the short term the non-iPod market will be much simpler to encroach on than the iPod one. Yet, given time and Microsoft's endless pockets, we eventually see a change in the long run.
Distrowatch says this about Mandriva: "Cons: Some releases are buggy". Sadly this has been exactly my experience with them. Granted, I may have run into some obscure bugs by my own bad luck, but having Distrowatch say what I quoted seems to support that it wasn't just that (and I kicked myself for not listening to Distrowatch).
This was around a year and a half ago, so perhaps things have changed.
Everyone here knows what happens to people/companies that do a deal with MS... they very quickly become deceased or owned. This simply means the final end of Suse and Novell. MS will do this one distribution at a time... or have we not learned anything from their past behavior?
Mostly correct, but I disagree with the bit I emphasized. Microsoft are surely smart enough to know that they can't wipe out Linux one distribution at a time; for every distro they quash, a few others will rise up. This tactic may spread fear in the business world ("Linux is a risky business" and such), but it won't kill 'Linux'.
No, Microsoft are surely smart enough to know that they can't kill Linux like they killed their former victims. Instead, they'll have to destroy every possible Linux distribution in one fell swoop. How can this be attempted? By, say, patents - assert a few patents that any OS must implement, and every Linux distro is in jeopardy.
Thank you, Novell, for empowering Microsoft's long-term plan to do so.
If your development process involved coding generically (OpenGL is a good base) then porting is just a matter of recompiling.
OpenGL is a good option. There is another option, however, which may be of use to game vendors: porting with WINE. By developing for Windows, but making sure that it runs fine on WINE, they can get their products to run on other operating systems with less effort than switching to OpenGL. (Also this may ensure that they don't depend on obscure features of the Windows API, which may turn out to be useful in other ways.)
Sure, I'd prefer a native port myself, but having an official version that runs on WINE would be a reasonable compromise, since it should cost the game vendor very little to make.
"Companies back patents because it allows them to kill various small start-up. They are immune from each other for the most part because of patent portfolios they exchange (Mutual Assured Destruction)" (emphasis mine)
While somewhat similar, software patents aren't quite 'Mutual Assured Destruction'. Unlike classic MAD, where no shots are actually fired (til Armageddon day), with patents there are always lots of minor 'conflicts' taking place. Most don't reach the papers, because a licensing deal is done behind closed doors. When we do hear about a patent lawsuit, that means that discreet negotiations failed, which is probably fairly rare.
We can't be certain, since 'secret' patent deals are, well, secret. But it is entirely possible that right now e.g. Microsoft are paying IBM to license some of their patents, and vice versa, etc. I suspect that some patents are held in reserve, so that when/if the rules are broken, the Assured Destruction phase of MAD can commence (since patents that are 'secretly' licensed are, well, licensed, and can't be used at that point). OIN patents are probably among those.
For all we know IBM, Novell, HP, etc. have patents relating to things in Linux (or that originally appeared in *NIX), and Microsoft is paying them as we speak for their use in Windows. Microsoft is actually the more vulnerable party because they are the more successful one, with more deployed software (and hence more legal risk). So really, the FUD can be spun in quite the opposite way, i.e. that Microsoft clients are at risk for using 'Linux patents' in Windows.
All of this patent business is conducted between large megacorporations, and behind closed doors. Generally they have the good taste to leave things at that; some money changes hands, and the public remains blissfully unaware. The fact that Microsoft have stooped to taking cheap shots about 'Linux using our IP' just means that they, in desperation, have lost their cool.