so? Windows, and DOS before it, always have been far behind Linux and *BSD in UNIX compatibility, yet that didn't prevent it from eventually dominating the marketplace.
"compatibility with the previous de-facto standard" is only needed to convert the followers, not the leaders, and once the leaders switch, the followers shall, well, follow either way.
Not necessarily true. We had tickets to some random movie preview 10 months ago. As always, I had my phone with me as required for work (if the servers go down...). The goon at the door saw that my phone had camera capability and denied me entrance. After an extended, polite, kafkaesque conversation, my wife watched the movie while I drank coffee and read a book next door.
kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I mean, you *can* umm, "steal" a book using a cellphone too, and using OCR the results will be far closer to "the real deal" than some crappy recording of this month's blockbuster off a theater, yet libraries and bookstores don't deny entrance to anyone that carries one...
if the most important thing for you in a woman is for her to be a teenager with "everything tight", you've got far bigger problems than growing old, believe me...
a far better argument would've been to gain experience in order to improve one's skills, though learning stuff along with your partner has it's charm too, but still, seriously, your post is just sad.
So, your job's pay was dependent on you knowing how to use pagemaker, even though you don't use it in your day-to-day job? How is that merit pay?
no, his job's pay was dependant on he knowing how to use a word processor, not a specific version of a specific software belonging to such category.
besides, measuring knowledge of Office's menus and keyboard shortcuts would be useless, given that it was a test of *computer* literacy, not Microsoft Office literacy, and a literate computer user ought to be able to do basic tasks (and/or find out how to) in *any* piece of software, not just the Microsoft-made product for the respective market.
sorry, but how you got modded Insightful is, frankly, beyond me...
given that we're talking about high school here, I think English teachers (and those of every other subject) are more than used to reading poorly-formatted documents already.
seriously, every time a friend of mine asked me for help with our homework, I'd spend two hours reformatting the thing so that it looked decently, before actually "Getting Work Done"(tm), and many of them were usually the more computer-savvy ones of the class, so I dread to think about the huge mess that the teacher had to read...
besides, if they really wanted to be sure they got the format perfectly they'd accept only PDFs, which best of all are easily made with Office 2007, OpenOffice.org, fav-HTML-editor plus Firefox, or even LaTeX, so you can still have all the "Ease of Use" or whatever of MS Office, while still allowing the children of money-starved, law-abiding parents (or Linux-using geeks) to "Get Work Done" (tm).
sorry, but that's capitalism for you. It promotes innovation by rewarding the first ones to market, and then as manufacturing processes become more efficient and economies of scale kick in, commoditize the technology so that others may be able to innovate upon them and the cycle starts again.
Linux is simply the natural succesor of MS-DOS, which got so popular because it was a cheap OS to put into cheap PCs at a time where licensing UNIX would've costed you more than the hardware itself. And just like we went from UNIX to MS-DOS and Windows, we shall go from them to Linux, for precisely the same reasons. Sure, some companies may die along the way, but others are already profiting from the new, service-oriented market that's growing with the commodization of the Operating System.
don't like it? tough luck. It began, in fact, with the worldwide, widespread piracy of Windows (and Office, Photoshop et al), it's just that now it's being replaced by a legal alternative, and I doubt that there have been more Linux companies dying due to "cheapskates" than Windows-related ones dying due to piracy of their products. Even better, since the source is completely open, people who can't afford it are free, even encouraged, to help in other ways such as coding new features or making translations, whereas in the Windows world, if you don't have a wallet you're practically useless to the ecosystem at large.
Although I'm sure if Microsoft started handing out free chocolates and flowers, before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well.
chocolates cause obesity, flowers can be bad for those allergic to pollen, *selling* Linux distributions isn't as good as giving them away, Windows' source-code is probably a huge pile of unreadable hacks, and we all know the GPL is better than BSD.
so yeah, Microsoft would have to do much better than that to avoid *my* criticism;)
I don't have any numbers, but I doubt that it is installed on more than 5% of all PCs. That's still a large number of installations (and worth a lot of money), but I call 5% a niche. If you have any concrete numbers that show me to be wrong, I will gladly withdraw my comment.
I'd say the actual number is bigger, but the percentage of people who actually *need* it would be even smaller than 5%... if I had a penny for every 17-years-old anime-artist-wannabe that I've seen having problems with Photoshop, I'd be rich enough to actually buy the overpriced POS. While TheGIMP, Inkscape et al are making huge inroads in that area, Photoshop is still king among the less computer-savvy teenagers of today, that pirate a piece of software worth more than their computers just to fix grandma's redeye.
And regarding Word vs Writer, I know it may be elitist or whatever but I'll take LaTeX over both any day of the week... yeah, it's not suited for your average secretary or high-schooler, but if you're advanced enough to know and care about the differences between Word and Writer, you're probably advanced enough to appreciate LaTeX's advantages and superior output.
The good thing is that Linux, GNU, and Open Source development are moving along at a faster pace than Windows is and sooner or later it will begin to surpass other OSes and GUIs in features, stability, flexibility, future potential, etc (if it already hasn't). There are weak spots as all products have them. I think Open Source will respond better to enhancing those features faster than a monolithic monopoly ever could
but an OSS microkernel ought to be even faster than a monolithic one ever could, so that's why I say, GNU/Hurd on the desktop! mark my words, 2107 shall finally be the Year of GNU/Hurd on the Desktop!
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
I think that quote applies quite well to Stallman. He may be unreasonable when it comes to his ideology of Free Software, but it seems like he *is* changing the world with it, little by little, judging by how many followers it has gathered, and how much software has now been released with licenses preserving the four freedoms.
or if you prefer, another quote that may be a better fit: "If it works, it's not ridiculous" =D
that's what you get for living in a country with a completely fucked-up legal system. Ohh yeah, and even if you don't use those codecs you may still be liable for infringing on Microsoft's patents, though if you use Windows you're probably infringing on some of Apple's and on OSX some of IBM's too, so you're not "without any legal risk" regardless of your choice, I'm afraid.
Me, I'm using Xubuntu right now, I can play mp3s and DVDs just fine, and guess what, completely free, Free and legal too, all thanks to the fact I'm living far, *far* away from the Corporate States of America. Feels nice not to have software patents or DMCA-style laws over here, doesn't it?
Stallman hasn't, but the Debian guys have. Though it could be argued that the *BSDs themselves are a way of replacing the underlying philosophy, too, but at least Linux the kernel is, in fact, replaceable.
but it's as monopolist as Microsoft, also integrates seemingly-unrelated products to maintain it's dominating position in the market, and also does it in the name of "integration".
the GPL3 doesn't require the hardware specs to be open, all it requires is for the end-user to be able to modify and run the GPLed software. So if you made a GPL3'd Linux toaster, you don't need to give out the specs for the toaster, but if you sell it to someone, you do have to give him the ability to run NetBSD on the thing if that's what he wants.
basically, it does for hardware what the LGPL does for closed-source software: you can do whatever you want with it, but if we want to replace our software, we must be free to do so. And that's hardly unreasonable, in my opinion.
and how, please tell, do these "CUSTOMERS" help the project? they don't contribute money (it's free), and they don't contribute source-code (they're not programmers), so besides the ego-stroking that follows having a larger market-share than $PROPIETARY_COMPANY_X, why would a non-commercial open-source project try to please *them* instead of, y'know, people who do give something back to it?
and that's without counting your oh-so-fanboyish remark about Windows users being used to nice, friendly user interfaces of course, that anyone who has ever used said OS would find laughable.
agreed. My personal pet peeves with TheGIMP are all of a technical nature, and almost all solved by GEGL. And I seriously can't understand the "it must feel like Photoshop!" crowd, I've used PSP from 6 to X, Krita, TheGIMP ever since v1.2, Photoshop since v5.5 and many other special-purpose graphic programs such as openCanvas, Corel Painter, LightZone and such. And out of them, Photoshop's UI is the only one I truly, truly despise. You know something is very wrong with an app, when it tries to be the end-all-be-all for graphic designers, web designers, painters, vector artists *and* photographers...
exactly, hence my point: in theory, giving stronger and stronger protections to current works can push the industry towards innovation to stay alive, but in practice the definition of "work" gets broader and broader, to the point where you can barely create a new work, innovative or not, that doesn't infringe on someone else's protected works. That, and it obviously damages the whole "standing on the shoulders of giants" thing, which at least with patents only lasts for ~20 years IIRC, not life + 70 as with copyright.
well, they have a right to assume that a modern, newer product won't be a stepback over their actual ones, specially in a feature that has been present in almost every product on the field for more than a decade, right?
I mean, it's as if Microsoft had removed TCP/IP from Vista, and then you said "well, you should've done your homework" to all the people who bought it and then complained about not being able to connect to the internet.
not that I have much respect for people who bought a $600 cellphone, but Apple definitely *is* at fault here.
That seems pretty counter-intuitive. Firstly, in the mass market arena, most applications are quite cheap, and there's not very strong lock-in. There are often hundreds of alternative products.
two words: Microsoft Office.
The mass market doesn't like the lack of polish of FOSSy software, and doesn't really care much about finding "alternatives". They feel much safer with the box from a company bought from the shelves or an online store. And heck, it's only like $50 to $100 - what's the big deal?
the mass market seldom cares about the lack of polish of commercial software, so I doubt they'd complain much about something that's free (as in beer). As for the rest of your point, you're correct except that MS Office and Windows itself cost quite a bit more than $100, though if we consider piracy you may still be right, in a weird variant of "if it costs money, it must be worth it right?".
No, it's the niche professional applications where FOSS has the most potential, and it's also an area they aren't doing very well in. Freeing a company from hundreds of thousands of dollars in software investment, license management (which is often a byzantine minefield for niche titles) and proprietary format lock-in - freeing a company from that would make FOSS developers heroes. The companies who do this kind of work would LOVE to escape the proprietary world, far more than any mainstream consumer. The reason they can't is that FOSS is miles behind when it comes to making serious productivity software.
And the reason for that is that the niche professionals aren't doing a good job in the "develop applications and release their source-code Free (as in speech)" department, and they're the only ones who understand the niche enough to be able to design a professional-level application for it. Mass market apps get developed faster because more people want them, and more people understand how they (should?) work, so there are more people willing, and able, to work on them.
If I want to run a server, or want some geeky widget to entertain myself, that's a different story. But linux doesn't really do professional+productivity.
depends on how you define "professional+productivity". It's certainly true for some fields (CAD being the prime example), but not so much for others (like photography, software/web development, and some types of multimedia editing). Nit-picking, I know, but I felt it should be mentioned.
if you *must* cheat to enjoy a game, do so in single-player where you won't annoy honest people. Cheaters in multi-player games are assholes, pure and simple, no excuses about it.
but personally, even in SP I'd rather improve my skills with each failed attempt rather than cheating my way out of it... as a matter of fact I'm playing through Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear right now, and even though it took me more than a day to finish the first mission alone with all my team members alive, I felt accomplished when I finally did it, whereas if I had just typed 'godmode' or whatever, and just ran through it I would've been just dissapointed and bored as heck. And if I had seen a floating "Invincibility" power-up in the middle of the map, I would've gone and uninstalled the game right there, and ask the store for a refund.
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so? Windows, and DOS before it, always have been far behind Linux and *BSD in UNIX compatibility, yet that didn't prevent it from eventually dominating the marketplace.
"compatibility with the previous de-facto standard" is only needed to convert the followers, not the leaders, and once the leaders switch, the followers shall, well, follow either way.
"innocent until proven guilty" is a good policy outside of the courts too, you know.
kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I mean, you *can* umm, "steal" a book using a cellphone too, and using OCR the results will be far closer to "the real deal" than some crappy recording of this month's blockbuster off a theater, yet libraries and bookstores don't deny entrance to anyone that carries one...
if the most important thing for you in a woman is for her to be a teenager with "everything tight", you've got far bigger problems than growing old, believe me...
a far better argument would've been to gain experience in order to improve one's skills, though learning stuff along with your partner has it's charm too, but still, seriously, your post is just sad.
no, his job's pay was dependant on he knowing how to use a word processor, not a specific version of a specific software belonging to such category.
besides, measuring knowledge of Office's menus and keyboard shortcuts would be useless, given that it was a test of *computer* literacy, not Microsoft Office literacy, and a literate computer user ought to be able to do basic tasks (and/or find out how to) in *any* piece of software, not just the Microsoft-made product for the respective market.
sorry, but how you got modded Insightful is, frankly, beyond me...
and because using straight TeX is a PITA, God (actually Leslie Lamport) invented LaTeX =)
given that we're talking about high school here, I think English teachers (and those of every other subject) are more than used to reading poorly-formatted documents already.
seriously, every time a friend of mine asked me for help with our homework, I'd spend two hours reformatting the thing so that it looked decently, before actually "Getting Work Done"(tm), and many of them were usually the more computer-savvy ones of the class, so I dread to think about the huge mess that the teacher had to read...
besides, if they really wanted to be sure they got the format perfectly they'd accept only PDFs, which best of all are easily made with Office 2007, OpenOffice.org, fav-HTML-editor plus Firefox, or even LaTeX, so you can still have all the "Ease of Use" or whatever of MS Office, while still allowing the children of money-starved, law-abiding parents (or Linux-using geeks) to "Get Work Done" (tm).
sorry, but that's capitalism for you. It promotes innovation by rewarding the first ones to market, and then as manufacturing processes become more efficient and economies of scale kick in, commoditize the technology so that others may be able to innovate upon them and the cycle starts again.
Linux is simply the natural succesor of MS-DOS, which got so popular because it was a cheap OS to put into cheap PCs at a time where licensing UNIX would've costed you more than the hardware itself. And just like we went from UNIX to MS-DOS and Windows, we shall go from them to Linux, for precisely the same reasons. Sure, some companies may die along the way, but others are already profiting from the new, service-oriented market that's growing with the commodization of the Operating System.
don't like it? tough luck. It began, in fact, with the worldwide, widespread piracy of Windows (and Office, Photoshop et al), it's just that now it's being replaced by a legal alternative, and I doubt that there have been more Linux companies dying due to "cheapskates" than Windows-related ones dying due to piracy of their products. Even better, since the source is completely open, people who can't afford it are free, even encouraged, to help in other ways such as coding new features or making translations, whereas in the Windows world, if you don't have a wallet you're practically useless to the ecosystem at large.
chocolates cause obesity, flowers can be bad for those allergic to pollen, *selling* Linux distributions isn't as good as giving them away, Windows' source-code is probably a huge pile of unreadable hacks, and we all know the GPL is better than BSD.
so yeah, Microsoft would have to do much better than that to avoid *my* criticism ;)
yeah, but software sucked big time during the '50s.
I'd say the actual number is bigger, but the percentage of people who actually *need* it would be even smaller than 5%... if I had a penny for every 17-years-old anime-artist-wannabe that I've seen having problems with Photoshop, I'd be rich enough to actually buy the overpriced POS. While TheGIMP, Inkscape et al are making huge inroads in that area, Photoshop is still king among the less computer-savvy teenagers of today, that pirate a piece of software worth more than their computers just to fix grandma's redeye.
And regarding Word vs Writer, I know it may be elitist or whatever but I'll take LaTeX over both any day of the week... yeah, it's not suited for your average secretary or high-schooler, but if you're advanced enough to know and care about the differences between Word and Writer, you're probably advanced enough to appreciate LaTeX's advantages and superior output.
but an OSS microkernel ought to be even faster than a monolithic one ever could, so that's why I say, GNU/Hurd on the desktop! mark my words, 2107 shall finally be the Year of GNU/Hurd on the Desktop!
I think that quote applies quite well to Stallman. He may be unreasonable when it comes to his ideology of Free Software, but it seems like he *is* changing the world with it, little by little, judging by how many followers it has gathered, and how much software has now been released with licenses preserving the four freedoms.
or if you prefer, another quote that may be a better fit: "If it works, it's not ridiculous" =D
that's what you get for living in a country with a completely fucked-up legal system. Ohh yeah, and even if you don't use those codecs you may still be liable for infringing on Microsoft's patents, though if you use Windows you're probably infringing on some of Apple's and on OSX some of IBM's too, so you're not "without any legal risk" regardless of your choice, I'm afraid.
Me, I'm using Xubuntu right now, I can play mp3s and DVDs just fine, and guess what, completely free, Free and legal too, all thanks to the fact I'm living far, *far* away from the Corporate States of America. Feels nice not to have software patents or DMCA-style laws over here, doesn't it?
Stallman hasn't, but the Debian guys have. Though it could be argued that the *BSDs themselves are a way of replacing the underlying philosophy, too, but at least Linux the kernel is, in fact, replaceable.
but it's as monopolist as Microsoft, also integrates seemingly-unrelated products to maintain it's dominating position in the market, and also does it in the name of "integration".
the GPL3 doesn't require the hardware specs to be open, all it requires is for the end-user to be able to modify and run the GPLed software. So if you made a GPL3'd Linux toaster, you don't need to give out the specs for the toaster, but if you sell it to someone, you do have to give him the ability to run NetBSD on the thing if that's what he wants.
basically, it does for hardware what the LGPL does for closed-source software: you can do whatever you want with it, but if we want to replace our software, we must be free to do so. And that's hardly unreasonable, in my opinion.
and how, please tell, do these "CUSTOMERS" help the project? they don't contribute money (it's free), and they don't contribute source-code (they're not programmers), so besides the ego-stroking that follows having a larger market-share than $PROPIETARY_COMPANY_X, why would a non-commercial open-source project try to please *them* instead of, y'know, people who do give something back to it?
and that's without counting your oh-so-fanboyish remark about Windows users being used to nice, friendly user interfaces of course, that anyone who has ever used said OS would find laughable.
agreed. My personal pet peeves with TheGIMP are all of a technical nature, and almost all solved by GEGL. And I seriously can't understand the "it must feel like Photoshop!" crowd, I've used PSP from 6 to X, Krita, TheGIMP ever since v1.2, Photoshop since v5.5 and many other special-purpose graphic programs such as openCanvas, Corel Painter, LightZone and such. And out of them, Photoshop's UI is the only one I truly, truly despise. You know something is very wrong with an app, when it tries to be the end-all-be-all for graphic designers, web designers, painters, vector artists *and* photographers...
exactly, hence my point: in theory, giving stronger and stronger protections to current works can push the industry towards innovation to stay alive, but in practice the definition of "work" gets broader and broader, to the point where you can barely create a new work, innovative or not, that doesn't infringe on someone else's protected works. That, and it obviously damages the whole "standing on the shoulders of giants" thing, which at least with patents only lasts for ~20 years IIRC, not life + 70 as with copyright.
Actually, it does! In fact, it does so in two distinct ways.
First, it encourages people to create so that they'll be paid. Second, it encourages people to create so that they don't have to pay other people.
Honestly, it seems win/win to me.
yeah, just like it happens with software patents *cough*. And with a government-sanctioned patent troll, to make it worse.
well, they have a right to assume that a modern, newer product won't be a stepback over their actual ones, specially in a feature that has been present in almost every product on the field for more than a decade, right?
I mean, it's as if Microsoft had removed TCP/IP from Vista, and then you said "well, you should've done your homework" to all the people who bought it and then complained about not being able to connect to the internet.
not that I have much respect for people who bought a $600 cellphone, but Apple definitely *is* at fault here.
two words: Microsoft Office.
The mass market doesn't like the lack of polish of FOSSy software, and doesn't really care much about finding "alternatives". They feel much safer with the box from a company bought from the shelves or an online store. And heck, it's only like $50 to $100 - what's the big deal?the mass market seldom cares about the lack of polish of commercial software, so I doubt they'd complain much about something that's free (as in beer). As for the rest of your point, you're correct except that MS Office and Windows itself cost quite a bit more than $100, though if we consider piracy you may still be right, in a weird variant of "if it costs money, it must be worth it right?".
No, it's the niche professional applications where FOSS has the most potential, and it's also an area they aren't doing very well in. Freeing a company from hundreds of thousands of dollars in software investment, license management (which is often a byzantine minefield for niche titles) and proprietary format lock-in - freeing a company from that would make FOSS developers heroes. The companies who do this kind of work would LOVE to escape the proprietary world, far more than any mainstream consumer. The reason they can't is that FOSS is miles behind when it comes to making serious productivity software.And the reason for that is that the niche professionals aren't doing a good job in the "develop applications and release their source-code Free (as in speech)" department, and they're the only ones who understand the niche enough to be able to design a professional-level application for it. Mass market apps get developed faster because more people want them, and more people understand how they (should?) work, so there are more people willing, and able, to work on them.
If I want to run a server, or want some geeky widget to entertain myself, that's a different story. But linux doesn't really do professional+productivity.depends on how you define "professional+productivity". It's certainly true for some fields (CAD being the prime example), but not so much for others (like photography, software/web development, and some types of multimedia editing). Nit-picking, I know, but I felt it should be mentioned.
if you *must* cheat to enjoy a game, do so in single-player where you won't annoy honest people. Cheaters in multi-player games are assholes, pure and simple, no excuses about it.
but personally, even in SP I'd rather improve my skills with each failed attempt rather than cheating my way out of it... as a matter of fact I'm playing through Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear right now, and even though it took me more than a day to finish the first mission alone with all my team members alive, I felt accomplished when I finally did it, whereas if I had just typed 'godmode' or whatever, and just ran through it I would've been just dissapointed and bored as heck. And if I had seen a floating "Invincibility" power-up in the middle of the map, I would've gone and uninstalled the game right there, and ask the store for a refund.