They may not be the absolute majority but they're still a significant player in the area, unlike Apple. Paraphrasing your comment, this is Linux vs Apple, not Linux vs everything else.
Put in Apple and the economic downturn, among the causes. Linux? You kidding? Have you seen the desktop market share of it?
Have you seen the server and embedded market share of Linux? both markets where Apple is barely a blimp on the radar, and which also provide(d) lots of money for good ol' MS.
Well, if as few as 10% of the pirated software has viruses, then anyone who downloads and installs 10 software apps has roughly a 66% chance of getting something.
All other things being equal, which they aren't. And just like that little something between your brains can help distinguish a valid attachement with an infected one on an email, so can you for most infected, "pirated" software.
Uh huh. And the ""piracy has viruses" is a myth" myth is advocated by people who want to believe piracy is totally safe.
Strawman. Who here has claimed that "piracy" is "totally safe"? in fact most posts of this story have said what anyone with even a moderate knowledge about computing would say: *nothing* is completely safe.
Well, pirated software has the "malware" created by the genuine software manufacturers plus the malware added to it by anyone who wants to add a trojan.
Actually, a very popular reason to use "pirated" software is the fact that cracking groups usually remove the manufacturer-provided malware. So that only leaves the ones added post-cracking, which as I said it's not hard to do (or at least, not significantly harder than avoiding infected email attachements).
If an application has one comment saying it's clean and another one saying it's infected, most people will avoid it. Therefore, the only thing a dishonest user gets is making people avoid a clean application, he can't get anyone else infected.
And next time, try not to show your bias so much, 'kay?
Actually, Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 for $427 million.
Actually, NeXT purchased Apple in 1997 for -$427 million. Say what you want about the name or whatever but at the end of the day, which company's CEO ended up running the combined company? and their main product today is based on which company's products?
While it's true that many proprietary projects die on the vine, no one is trying to make statements about language popularity by surveying them.
In this study no, since it's solely about F/OSS apps but for pretty much all popularity-contest language studies, they analyze projects being *currently* written at businesses, not ones already finished and shipped and a large percentage of those won't ever be finished so the situation is the same.
One person's "bastardize" is another one's "improvement", and one person's "improvement" is another one's "radically different from anything else before it".
I'd give specific examples, but I'd be modded down to oblivion for each and every one of them.
Yes. Vanguard is a MMORPG, and playing MMOs is a typical nerd pasttime, and with Slashdot being "news for nerds"...
Yeah, you could argue that only the most popular one deserves to hit the news, but if so, then Slashdot shouldn't post stories about things other than WoW, Windows, Java, and politics in China.
Maybe improve PowerPoint compatibility, ensure Excel docs work flawlessly, etc.?
Why would that attract developers? answer: it doesn't. For devs, what you want is a clear set of goals(1) and a nice, polite request for help in attaining those goals. Like the Google Summer of Code, except without the money. Well, also a code clean-up would help, the stories I've heard about OOo's codebase do *not* entice me to contribute, at all.
(1) "Allow users to write Calc macros on Ruby" is a clear goal, "Improve the interface" isn't, and "Fix the goddamned sluggish performance ASAP!" is not even polite, let alone a clear one.
Plus it'll actually match your pocket calculator. Excel's lack of mathematical accuracy is so well known it has even been the subject of scientific papers, so it amazes me that people doing financing et al still insist on using it.
Sadly, you're right. That kind of bullshit, of being told to do one thing and be expected to do another is precisely why I refuse to this day to get in that market.
But you know what disgusts me the most? people that hire others just to make themselves feel better. I mean, you go to a doctor, and he prescribes you medicine A. Do you go and take medicine B, because that's what you took last time? No you don't, because you didn't go to med school for oh-so-many years to know that kind of thing.
So why do you do it with your local IT guy? if he tells you that doing that app on Excel's macros is a horrible idea, it's not because he's "one of those arrogant techies", it's because he has the *knowledge* and the *experience* to know. And no amount of feely-goody "we all have to respect each other" crap is gonna change that.
I know my comment will be burried for saying this, but this kind of crap is what we all know is wrong with open source software. The front end delivery is done by geeks and bean counters who don't actually use the products as end users.
You may notice the fact that QT was originally developed by a commercial company, Trolltech. You may also notice the fact that since, until lately, they sold commercial licenses for the same software they licensed as GPL, practically all contributions to the 'main' branch of QT were done by Trolltech (and now Nokia) employees. Therefore, if anything, this proves the failings of cathedral-style development, of which closed-source is the biggest exponent.
Ohh and also, being a person unwilling to use pre-compiled packages to be able to use a library you do *not* plan to use as a developer puts you amongst the minority of a minority of a minority of users, therefore do not be surprised if Trolltech/Nokia doesn't care about you at all.
If that were true, and everything were priced correctly, I would own everything, since I would have bought it all at the correct price.
Only if you had infinite money, which I'm betting you don't. Alas, that is also a part of what constitutes "correct pricing", in the case of music you not only have to look at what people are prepared to pay for it and what they're paying for your competitors', but also what they're paying for *all* forms of entertainment since people are perfectly capable of living with two less music albums per month if it means three extra movies.
/. people who attempt to provide an intellectual basis for copyright violation piss me off.
Why? it's an excercise in rational thinking, I believe that's something to be applauded. Plus, many of those who debate the ethical implications of copyright infringement don't commit it ourselves (in my case because I haven't heard a RIAA-sponsored artist I like during the past five years).
I'd strip you bare in a heartbeat if I wanted your stuff and could do so with no risk.
Fortunately not all of us think like you do, as any Ethics course would tell you.
Funny? should be Insightful. Women aren't attracted to nice guys, but they don't want jerks either. What they're looking for is the "thief with the heart of gold", the kind that's a jerk to everyone *but* her, 'cause she's so special he can't help but reform his evil ways just to be with her.
That's exactly why so many women go out with cheating men, then act all surprised when he sleeps with their best friend: "but, but I thought with me it would be *different*!".
And yes, this comes from actual, personal experience, and no, not as the "nice guy who got rejected".
So you think that pushing one OS above the others is worse than putting an innocent man on jail for interfering with their business model?
Microsoft has done a *lot* of despicable things throughout their relatively young age (IE's 'purchase' comes to mind), but they still have a long way to go 'til they reach the level of scum of Adobe.
My point was, IF it was a PHP app, why was a PHP app on account A allowed to infect php files on account B? The server is setup so that account A isn't allowed to affect files on account B. There WAS an exploit somewhere. If it was in PHP, then so be it.
Are you sure it was account A that infected files on account B? If I were you I'd also suspect a vulnerability in PHP that allowed the virus to infect the rest of the files the PHP binary had access to, but it could also be the case that they were all infected separately by someone looking through webpages under your entire domain. Still, buggy apps will be written for any OS, and if PHP had a remotely exploitable bug that doesn't say anything about Linux itself.
All I'm saying is that Linux CAN get exploited, as can Windows, as can OS X, as can every OS out there. Apparently, that seems hard to believe.
It isn't, and anyone who's ever worked with computers will tell you such. The problem is that the basis for your deductions is faulty. You're basically arguing "app A runs on Linux, app A can be exploited, therefore Linux can be exploited", without explaining why the fact that Linux is to blame on this whole mess.
Yeah, early computing tech was slow, but at least the programmers were on average more careful with resource use.
And by "careful" you mean "used every dirty hack they could think of to get the program to run a bit faster, even if it meant having a list of 'undocumented features' longer than the Bible", yes they were. Fortunately, those days are long behind us, and coders can now write proper, maintainable code that doesn't require a full rewrite to run in a different architecture than was originally intended.
Yes, much of today's software spends resources on useless stuff like shinier GUIs (like Vista), stupid DRM (like Vista) or attempting to guess what the user will do before he does it to try to appear less slow (like Vista). But many other changes have been to streamline the process of writing software, which benefit everyone involved.
But you'd rather have Adobe dominate the market instead?
Say what you will about Microsoft, but to me they're clearly the superior choice both from a technological as well as ethical standpoint in this thing.
this proprietary format, which is mainly designed to kill JavaScript and launch Microsoft's conquest of the free and open Internet.
No, it is mainly designed to kill the attrocity inflicted upon mankind popularly known as Flash, and launch Microsoft's conquest of the portion of the free and open Internet which caters to the "oohhhh, shiny" crowd. Big difference.
However, is this really exclusive? Will the inauguration be streamed in other formats from other sources? Presumably. In which case, this is really not a problem. It's MSFT getting some marketing.
No, it's not exclusive, yes it'll be available in other formats from other sources (most notably the aforementioned attrocity known as Flash), so I agree, there is no problem here other than this flamebait of a story meant to attract the "OMG, M$ must die!!!" crowd, and succeeding at it.
Ad a clause to the agreement barring disclosure, and they'll get free money.
No. ISPs have to hire them to spy on their customers, and then they'll allegedly share a fraction of the profits with them. Except that this is coming from the very namesake of "Hollywood Accounting", so the most likely scenario is that they'll get a percentage of zero, which is still zero.
And then this "anti-piracy" firm sells the data gathered from the ISP's customers to online marketing firms (it's in their About page), making yet another profit and letting the ISP take the blame for the privacy breach.
So no need to appeal to their ethical values, it simply makes no sense from a financial standpoint to accept this firm's offer, too much of a cost and risk for too little (or no) reward.
Further, if you illegally download a given song then decide to purchase the album to which it belongs, is it still considered an illegal download? and if you bought the album *before* downloading it, is it still counted among the illegal?
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They may not be the absolute majority but they're still a significant player in the area, unlike Apple. Paraphrasing your comment, this is Linux vs Apple, not Linux vs everything else.
But taken as a whole, the mac was really a pioneering achievement,
And the IBM PC with MS-DOS settled it ;)
You do realize that the iPod and iPhone are only a minuscule fraction of all the embedded devices on this planet, right?
Put in Apple and the economic downturn, among the causes. Linux? You kidding? Have you seen the desktop market share of it?
Have you seen the server and embedded market share of Linux? both markets where Apple is barely a blimp on the radar, and which also provide(d) lots of money for good ol' MS.
Well, if as few as 10% of the pirated software has viruses, then anyone who downloads and installs 10 software apps has roughly a 66% chance of getting something.
All other things being equal, which they aren't. And just like that little something between your brains can help distinguish a valid attachement with an infected one on an email, so can you for most infected, "pirated" software.
Uh huh. And the ""piracy has viruses" is a myth" myth is advocated by people who want to believe piracy is totally safe.
Strawman. Who here has claimed that "piracy" is "totally safe"? in fact most posts of this story have said what anyone with even a moderate knowledge about computing would say: *nothing* is completely safe.
Well, pirated software has the "malware" created by the genuine software manufacturers plus the malware added to it by anyone who wants to add a trojan.
Actually, a very popular reason to use "pirated" software is the fact that cracking groups usually remove the manufacturer-provided malware. So that only leaves the ones added post-cracking, which as I said it's not hard to do (or at least, not significantly harder than avoiding infected email attachements).
If an application has one comment saying it's clean and another one saying it's infected, most people will avoid it. Therefore, the only thing a dishonest user gets is making people avoid a clean application, he can't get anyone else infected.
And next time, try not to show your bias so much, 'kay?
Actually, Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 for $427 million.
Actually, NeXT purchased Apple in 1997 for -$427 million. Say what you want about the name or whatever but at the end of the day, which company's CEO ended up running the combined company? and their main product today is based on which company's products?
While it's true that many proprietary projects die on the vine, no one is trying to make statements about language popularity by surveying them.
In this study no, since it's solely about F/OSS apps but for pretty much all popularity-contest language studies, they analyze projects being *currently* written at businesses, not ones already finished and shipped and a large percentage of those won't ever be finished so the situation is the same.
Let's define terms before we argue this back and forth:
What, exactly, is "suitable"?
One person's "bastardize" is another one's "improvement", and one person's "improvement" is another one's "radically different from anything else before it".
I'd give specific examples, but I'd be modded down to oblivion for each and every one of them.
Yes. Vanguard is a MMORPG, and playing MMOs is a typical nerd pasttime, and with Slashdot being "news for nerds"...
Yeah, you could argue that only the most popular one deserves to hit the news, but if so, then Slashdot shouldn't post stories about things other than WoW, Windows, Java, and politics in China.
Maybe improve PowerPoint compatibility, ensure Excel docs work flawlessly, etc.?
Why would that attract developers? answer: it doesn't. For devs, what you want is a clear set of goals(1) and a nice, polite request for help in attaining those goals. Like the Google Summer of Code, except without the money. Well, also a code clean-up would help, the stories I've heard about OOo's codebase do *not* entice me to contribute, at all.
(1) "Allow users to write Calc macros on Ruby" is a clear goal, "Improve the interface" isn't, and "Fix the goddamned sluggish performance ASAP!" is not even polite, let alone a clear one.
Plus it'll actually match your pocket calculator. Excel's lack of mathematical accuracy is so well known it has even been the subject of scientific papers, so it amazes me that people doing financing et al still insist on using it.
Sadly, you're right. That kind of bullshit, of being told to do one thing and be expected to do another is precisely why I refuse to this day to get in that market.
But you know what disgusts me the most? people that hire others just to make themselves feel better. I mean, you go to a doctor, and he prescribes you medicine A. Do you go and take medicine B, because that's what you took last time? No you don't, because you didn't go to med school for oh-so-many years to know that kind of thing.
So why do you do it with your local IT guy? if he tells you that doing that app on Excel's macros is a horrible idea, it's not because he's "one of those arrogant techies", it's because he has the *knowledge* and the *experience* to know. And no amount of feely-goody "we all have to respect each other" crap is gonna change that.
I know my comment will be burried for saying this, but this kind of crap is what we all know is wrong with open source software. The front end delivery is done by geeks and bean counters who don't actually use the products as end users.
You may notice the fact that QT was originally developed by a commercial company, Trolltech. You may also notice the fact that since, until lately, they sold commercial licenses for the same software they licensed as GPL, practically all contributions to the 'main' branch of QT were done by Trolltech (and now Nokia) employees. Therefore, if anything, this proves the failings of cathedral-style development, of which closed-source is the biggest exponent.
Ohh and also, being a person unwilling to use pre-compiled packages to be able to use a library you do *not* plan to use as a developer puts you amongst the minority of a minority of a minority of users, therefore do not be surprised if Trolltech/Nokia doesn't care about you at all.
If that were true, and everything were priced correctly, I would own everything, since I would have bought it all at the correct price.
Only if you had infinite money, which I'm betting you don't. Alas, that is also a part of what constitutes "correct pricing", in the case of music you not only have to look at what people are prepared to pay for it and what they're paying for your competitors', but also what they're paying for *all* forms of entertainment since people are perfectly capable of living with two less music albums per month if it means three extra movies.
/. people who attempt to provide an intellectual basis for copyright violation piss me off.
Why? it's an excercise in rational thinking, I believe that's something to be applauded. Plus, many of those who debate the ethical implications of copyright infringement don't commit it ourselves (in my case because I haven't heard a RIAA-sponsored artist I like during the past five years).
I'd strip you bare in a heartbeat if I wanted your stuff and could do so with no risk.
Fortunately not all of us think like you do, as any Ethics course would tell you.
Funny? should be Insightful. Women aren't attracted to nice guys, but they don't want jerks either. What they're looking for is the "thief with the heart of gold", the kind that's a jerk to everyone *but* her, 'cause she's so special he can't help but reform his evil ways just to be with her.
That's exactly why so many women go out with cheating men, then act all surprised when he sleeps with their best friend: "but, but I thought with me it would be *different*!".
And yes, this comes from actual, personal experience, and no, not as the "nice guy who got rejected".
Your question is basically a reformulation of the Broken window fallacy, so read the Wikipedia article for why it isn't so for physical items.
So you think that pushing one OS above the others is worse than putting an innocent man on jail for interfering with their business model?
Microsoft has done a *lot* of despicable things throughout their relatively young age (IE's 'purchase' comes to mind), but they still have a long way to go 'til they reach the level of scum of Adobe.
My point was, IF it was a PHP app, why was a PHP app on account A allowed to infect php files on account B? The server is setup so that account A isn't allowed to affect files on account B. There WAS an exploit somewhere. If it was in PHP, then so be it.
Are you sure it was account A that infected files on account B? If I were you I'd also suspect a vulnerability in PHP that allowed the virus to infect the rest of the files the PHP binary had access to, but it could also be the case that they were all infected separately by someone looking through webpages under your entire domain. Still, buggy apps will be written for any OS, and if PHP had a remotely exploitable bug that doesn't say anything about Linux itself.
All I'm saying is that Linux CAN get exploited, as can Windows, as can OS X, as can every OS out there. Apparently, that seems hard to believe.
It isn't, and anyone who's ever worked with computers will tell you such. The problem is that the basis for your deductions is faulty. You're basically arguing "app A runs on Linux, app A can be exploited, therefore Linux can be exploited", without explaining why the fact that Linux is to blame on this whole mess.
Yeah, early computing tech was slow, but at least the programmers were on average more careful with resource use.
And by "careful" you mean "used every dirty hack they could think of to get the program to run a bit faster, even if it meant having a list of 'undocumented features' longer than the Bible", yes they were. Fortunately, those days are long behind us, and coders can now write proper, maintainable code that doesn't require a full rewrite to run in a different architecture than was originally intended.
Yes, much of today's software spends resources on useless stuff like shinier GUIs (like Vista), stupid DRM (like Vista) or attempting to guess what the user will do before he does it to try to appear less slow (like Vista). But many other changes have been to streamline the process of writing software, which benefit everyone involved.
Plus, there's always Debian + IceWM if you want.
But you'd rather have Adobe dominate the market instead?
Say what you will about Microsoft, but to me they're clearly the superior choice both from a technological as well as ethical standpoint in this thing.
this proprietary format, which is mainly designed to kill JavaScript and launch Microsoft's conquest of the free and open Internet.
No, it is mainly designed to kill the attrocity inflicted upon mankind popularly known as Flash, and launch Microsoft's conquest of the portion of the free and open Internet which caters to the "oohhhh, shiny" crowd. Big difference.
However, is this really exclusive? Will the inauguration be streamed in other formats from other sources? Presumably. In which case, this is really not a problem. It's MSFT getting some marketing.
No, it's not exclusive, yes it'll be available in other formats from other sources (most notably the aforementioned attrocity known as Flash), so I agree, there is no problem here other than this flamebait of a story meant to attract the "OMG, M$ must die!!!" crowd, and succeeding at it.
Ad a clause to the agreement barring disclosure, and they'll get free money.
No. ISPs have to hire them to spy on their customers, and then they'll allegedly share a fraction of the profits with them. Except that this is coming from the very namesake of "Hollywood Accounting", so the most likely scenario is that they'll get a percentage of zero, which is still zero.
And then this "anti-piracy" firm sells the data gathered from the ISP's customers to online marketing firms (it's in their About page), making yet another profit and letting the ISP take the blame for the privacy breach.
So no need to appeal to their ethical values, it simply makes no sense from a financial standpoint to accept this firm's offer, too much of a cost and risk for too little (or no) reward.
Further, if you illegally download a given song then decide to purchase the album to which it belongs, is it still considered an illegal download? and if you bought the album *before* downloading it, is it still counted among the illegal?