If you're going to post a story about a project like this, something not as well known as say, Mozilla, or Apache, or Linux, it might help increase interest (or maybe decrease it, depending), if people would actually mention what these things are. I have no idea what Geronimo is. Yes, I could click on the story, but 99% of the time, I skip them when they don't say and I don't know.
I find this very annoying because it's as if people expect all of us to know what all these projects are. You may actually generate some additional interest by people that might otherwise pass it by if you say, "Geronimo is the open source answer to shaving nostril hair" or whatever it is. At least we'll have some clue.
What's the deal? This same article with a slightly different look shows up every 6 months, it seems.
Besides the fact that CDs DON'T have a 100 year shelf life, we've also discussed the CD eating fungus several times here, which for people in hot and humid environments (particularly, it seems, Mexico, Central, and South America) can reduce a CDs lifespan to months or a couple of years.
And then you have the fact that rewriteables have an even shorter lifespan.
One thing that's rarely mentioned is the fact that most CDs are defectively manufactured. I say this because the metalic layer between the plastic is supposed to be sealed. But the fact that the aforementioned CD eating fungus enters through the two layers of plastic says to me that CDs are generally defective in that they fail to properly seal this layer.
I personally lost about 25% of my CD collection to this fungus over a 2 year period in Mexico, so I speak with some experience. These CDs were not abused. Most were in plastic cases, some were in sleeved carriers.
I don't get it? What do you guys have against chocolate? I thought it was an exceptional deal. Still trying to figure out where all the money in my bank account went, incidentally. Anyone have any ideas?
His gripe is legitimate. I mean he's got modern hardware and he expects it to work with the OS he's chosen. People would and do bitch just as much when Windows does the same thing.
Unfortunately, Linux is at a huge disadvantage until it does pick up more of the desktop market. Some hardware vendors aren't going to invest the time and money in writing Linux drivers unless there's a market for it. And there must not be a big enough one for this sound card maker to make it worth their time.
I know enough that if I'm going to run Linux on a machine, I usually buy the hardware with that in mind. Meaning, I wouldn't get the latest tweaked out sound card unless it came with Linux drivers. But most people who haven't run Linux wouldn't think of those kinds of issues.
So he has a legitimate beef in some respects, but at the same time, he has to factor in the unfortunate situation that not all hardware vendors will supply Linux drivers and Linux developers aren't necessarily going to hack one together either.
But mostly, it's not that important. I mean, I doubt this one guy's opinion is going to have much impact on how Linux does in the market. Hardly qualifies as news, really.
Look, you go to cnn.com or New York Times web site, you expect accuracy and journalistic ethics. But if you go to any site that isn't part of mainstream journalism you need to take what's said with a grain of salt. I think anyone who has been on the net for more than a year and hasn't figured that out, isn't going to figure it out.
I honestly don't care if blogs or sites like Slashdot or even Groklaw or whatever, doesn't follow the same ethical standards that mainstream journalism should. Sometimes I want the formality and other times I don't. It's sometimes fun to get humorous takes on the news, even if it's not as accurate.
They all serve their own purposes and as long as people can figure that out, I don't see a problem with it at all.
Ever hear of "Make" and "Makefiles"? You don't need to keep recompiling things than havn't changed.
Not true. Make a small change to a header used by all files in your project, and everything gets recompiled. That's why C/C++ can be so slow to build. By getting rid of header files altogether, this issue goes away, and boy, does it ever make a difference.
Maybe something that ought to come out of this is some style guidelines for developers. Not coding style so much as UI style guidelines.
The first post on Groklaw has to do with squirrelmail and how the buttons for flagging messages as read, unread, and important confuse the users because they simply set a flag for the message but don't really perform any action otherwise. This is a bad use for buttons and really should be a checkbox or a checked menu item kind of thing.
Linux could really use more consistency with this sort of thing. One of the things Windows has always had going for it is that MS has always pushed for a consistent style in applications. To the point where a basic MFC app would begin with menu items for basic window functions and the basic copy, cut, and paste menu items. Small things, but I bet a hell of a lot more MFC apps have copy, cut, and paste because of it, and most users know where to find it because of that.
Something like this would really benefit Linux if developers would follow it. The problem is that there's nobody pushing these kinds of standards. It would require a group that's already respected in the Linux community to push something like this. It would help if applications were then rated by how well they stick to the style guidelines. Users could then use this as part of their basis for evaluating which applications to use. By knowing that an application follows the style guidelines, they will know that an application is going to generally be easier for their users to learn because it should then be like other applications in its style.
I liked this quote: "Now that the Internet is very large, it makes for some well-developed memory. I would suppose that the amount of information stored on the Internet is around the level of the adult human brain. Now we just need some higher-order functionality to really take advantage of it. At one point we may even discover the protocol used in the brain and extend it with an interface to an Internet search engine."
The protocol used in the brain? That can't be a good direction to go. I mean, if it's anything like my memory and honestly, the memory of most people I know, it's definitely going to be a step backwards. Human brains can hold a lot of information, but retreival is definitely not its specialty. I can see it now. Type in my search terms and the engine comes back with, "ummm, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Okay, I don't have a tongue, but I just about remember it. Give me just a minute to think about it. umm... umm... Nope, it's gone. Nevermind."
For those of you who would rather do something before it's too late, iron seems to work, but the long-term ecological implications are still unknown.
Yeah, there's a good idea. I read that article and while on the surface it seems like a grand idea, it's the second part of your statement that concerns me. We don't know the long-term ecological implications and frankly, I think we'd be more likely to do long-term damage than long-term good. I just don't trust our knowledge of global warming and cooling
I think for now we're much better off sticking with reduction of greenhouse gas creation until we better understand our environment.
Here's the problem. Scientists say, "we've got global warming," and hey, maybe we do, but the Earth also goes through cycles of warming and cooling that are natural, and we don't entirely understand these yet. So now scientists aren't sure if we've got global warming or if we're simply in a natural warming stage. Yes, we do have manmade greenhouse gases. There's no question, but how much this is actually affecting global warming is up for debate.
There are many unknowns. And as we like to quote from the White House, some of those unknowns are known. Some of them are unknown. Until we really understand how global climate operates (maybe in 50 years, maybe longer), I don't think we should do anything to cause any intentional major changes because the damage we could wreak may be well beyond our ability to control, before it's too late.
I read the German article referenced in the groklaw article and frankly, I found it quite enlightening. First of all, let me state, I don't actually speak, read, or write German, but I do a pretty funny imitation of each, and let me tell you, that's where the really juicy stuff is. It's a good read for anyone who doesn't know German.
I've been living in Southern Mexico for the last 9 months with a TV and DVD player, but no satellite or cable (effectively, nothing but DVDs since there are no broadcast stations where I live). I'm moving back to the U.S. next week and high on my list of things to do is veg in front of a TV for a few days. Sorry, but I'm going to pass on participation in this ridiculous exercise.
TV is what you make of it. There's tons of crap and if you watch a lot of crap, that's what you're filling your brains with. I watch a pretty good mix, including a great deal of time on news only channels and science and nature programming. Sorry, but I like that stuff and there's some education to be taken from them.
How about a "Don't watch crap on TV week," particuarly geared towards what kids are consuming. Or how about this? Take MTV off the air for 6 months out of the year. That would go a long way to improving the situation.
Just ask me. They stole code from my book to use in VTune. The code was copyright by someone else and I used it with permission, but it was clearly stated that that particular piece of code could not be used in a commercial app. Intel stole it line-for-line.
I never would have figured it out, but the guy who wrote the code disassembled VTune to find that the routines produced exactly the same binary code as his code (using Intel's compiler, I believe).
So, I wouldn't put it past them to reverse-engineer, legal or not, to acheive their means. Just my $0.02.
In every one of these cases they caught up before the rest of the market could do anything about them.
In these cases, other people HAD the market. Nobody had to catch up except MS, and they did, and then used their OS monopoly to turn these products into defacto standards by including them for free with the OS while the competition was still selling their products with no OS to package it with.
Linux really needs to take advantage of the delay in Longhorn and use that to really do their best to produce something better and easier to use. And it's going to have to be better enough to provide people with a really compelling reason to change their desktops.
Honestly, here's one idea. And it's not an easy one, but someone ought to come up with the next "killer app" and do it for Linux. Do it non-open source so it can't be easily ported to Windows. It should be released free, but a Windows version shouldn't exist, at least not soon. Maybe the "killer app," whatever it is, could be compelling enough to get people to switch to Linux.
And what, I'll never need more than 640K RAM? I'm also thinking of going with a gigabit network when I return to the states in a Month or so. Do I need it right now? No, but I may very well need it down the road and I do a lot of sharing between machines and the extra speed for transferring files will be nice in the meantime. Nothing wrong with looking ahead and spending a little extra on equipment you might need than to spend a little less on stuff you may outgrow in the next year or two. Just my $0.02.
Oops, I meant by "running these stories you're only helping SCO" not Red Hat. Hey, maybe it's helping Red Hat. If it is, hurry. Sorry for the booboo. Shoulda previewed....
1: Is there anyone on Slashdot that honestly feels there's even the slightest probability that SCO will win?
2: If we all know they're going to lose, why do people keep posting stories about it?
I don't want to troll, but I really don't think anyone here things SCO has a chance in hell. We also know that when they lose this lawsuit, they're going to go out of business and a year or two afterwards, nobody will be thinking about them. So why are we paying so much attention to this. I mean, the whole thing is really a non-event and by constantly running stories about it, you're only helping Red Hat. Any publicity they get just makes them seem more legitimate. They're not legitimate at all.
I really can't wait for them to just lose their case, go out of business, and be out of everyone's mind.
My father sent this to me first thing this morning. I told him that I didn't think that rigorous mathematical proofs should be based on software either in whole or in part. All software of any complexity is inherently buggy. That doesn't mean that rigorous mathematical proofs are flawless by nature. That's why they have peer review. But peer review on software still isn't always sufficient.
Another issue is that you're then excluding any mathematicians who aren't also fairly adept programmers, from really understanding your proof.
All of this said, computers are necessary to do math these days and I think mathematicians should make use of them. I just don't believe we've reached a level of maturity in software development that meets the stringent requirements of mathematical proofs.
Come on, this isn't news. Anything SCO isn't news. They're going to lose and then they'll disappear and 2 or 3 years from now, nobody will remember them, so please, can we just turn all the noise off. Contractors in New Zealand are gonna be just fine.
I think you'll probably find that most people really don't want to be thought of as geeks. Sure, we've taken on the label with a kind of pride, but we're not most people.
No kidding. There have been a number of times when I've called myself a geek and someone says, "oh no you're not," as if I've just insulted myself. I say, "Yes, I am, and that's not a bad thing." Oh well.
With the exception of one or two things on the list, this stuff has been true about Linux for a long time. So why does it suddenly mean Linux is going to boom?
Two things will make or break Linux: a> Ease of use and b> Applications
The first, ease of use, has been a problem for Linux for a long time and only in the last year or two have people really started to address this. I think with time, Linux will boom, but there's still a lot of work to do.
I don't think the key to Linux will be a games based distro. The key will be my mom being able to plug in her digital camera and having all the picutres show up in a window.
I couldn't agree more. Linux needs to be MUCH more user friendly. It needs to be much more intuitive. And I don't just mean the OS. I mean all the apps you get as well. Fortunately, there's been a good deal of progress in this area and over the last few years, Linux has improved dramatically, but it's still way behind Windows and Macs in terms of ease of use for your average technophobe.
Games? Why? If games are what draws people to a system, then people are going to buy game consoles. That's why game consoles sell so well. If people want a computer, then make them want Linux by doing the above.
The author's idea is that we should get people using Linux so that people are using Linux. So let's come up with whatever cheesy plan it takesto get them to use it. At least that's the idea I get from it. I think that's stupid. Make people want to use Linux by making Linux the best alternative to Windows for more people. Then you're on to something.
Your father and friends are smart. Listen to them. Yes, sometimes it works out, but it often doesn't and when it involves family or close friends, the results can be devastating to relationships.
This is made worse if you're considering partnering with any of them. I generally try to avoid partnerships, but I'm not particularly good at the business side, so for me, if I do partner up, it's with someone who has better business sense than I do. Otherwise I wouldn't partner under any circumstances.
Here's an example of the kinds of things that can go wrong. In this case, it was a 3-way partnership. My step-mother was partnered with a couple in a chain of stores. They each owned 1/3. Everything was going great for about 15 years. Then one of the partners went full-blown alcoholic and paranoid and decided my step mother was out to get him or something. So, because it was my step-mother vs. a couple and she was the minority shareholder, the couple basically pushed her out of the business. She went to court and won, but in the end, after legal expenses, she didn't walk away with nearly what her share of the business was worth.
Now, to back-fill a bit, this couple was like family to me. I had grown up with them around for 15 years. And in a matter of months, my step mother was completely screwed out of a business she had worked hard to build.
The lesson: Business can be, and usually is, brutal. Bringing family and friends into it can get them in the middle, and that's bad for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to post a story about a project like this, something not as well known as say, Mozilla, or Apache, or Linux, it might help increase interest (or maybe decrease it, depending), if people would actually mention what these things are. I have no idea what Geronimo is. Yes, I could click on the story, but 99% of the time, I skip them when they don't say and I don't know.
I find this very annoying because it's as if people expect all of us to know what all these projects are. You may actually generate some additional interest by people that might otherwise pass it by if you say, "Geronimo is the open source answer to shaving nostril hair" or whatever it is. At least we'll have some clue.
What's the deal? This same article with a slightly different look shows up every 6 months, it seems.
Besides the fact that CDs DON'T have a 100 year shelf life, we've also discussed the CD eating fungus several times here, which for people in hot and humid environments (particularly, it seems, Mexico, Central, and South America) can reduce a CDs lifespan to months or a couple of years.
And then you have the fact that rewriteables have an even shorter lifespan.
One thing that's rarely mentioned is the fact that most CDs are defectively manufactured. I say this because the metalic layer between the plastic is supposed to be sealed. But the fact that the aforementioned CD eating fungus enters through the two layers of plastic says to me that CDs are generally defective in that they fail to properly seal this layer.
I personally lost about 25% of my CD collection to this fungus over a 2 year period in Mexico, so I speak with some experience. These CDs were not abused. Most were in plastic cases, some were in sleeved carriers.
We were embargoed by DHS to not release the information until tomorrow.
I'm no lawyer, but... Are you sure you should be telling us today???
I don't get it? What do you guys have against chocolate? I thought it was an exceptional deal. Still trying to figure out where all the money in my bank account went, incidentally. Anyone have any ideas?
His gripe is legitimate. I mean he's got modern hardware and he expects it to work with the OS he's chosen. People would and do bitch just as much when Windows does the same thing.
Unfortunately, Linux is at a huge disadvantage until it does pick up more of the desktop market. Some hardware vendors aren't going to invest the time and money in writing Linux drivers unless there's a market for it. And there must not be a big enough one for this sound card maker to make it worth their time.
I know enough that if I'm going to run Linux on a machine, I usually buy the hardware with that in mind. Meaning, I wouldn't get the latest tweaked out sound card unless it came with Linux drivers. But most people who haven't run Linux wouldn't think of those kinds of issues.
So he has a legitimate beef in some respects, but at the same time, he has to factor in the unfortunate situation that not all hardware vendors will supply Linux drivers and Linux developers aren't necessarily going to hack one together either.
But mostly, it's not that important. I mean, I doubt this one guy's opinion is going to have much impact on how Linux does in the market. Hardly qualifies as news, really.
Look, you go to cnn.com or New York Times web site, you expect accuracy and journalistic ethics. But if you go to any site that isn't part of mainstream journalism you need to take what's said with a grain of salt. I think anyone who has been on the net for more than a year and hasn't figured that out, isn't going to figure it out.
I honestly don't care if blogs or sites like Slashdot or even Groklaw or whatever, doesn't follow the same ethical standards that mainstream journalism should. Sometimes I want the formality and other times I don't. It's sometimes fun to get humorous takes on the news, even if it's not as accurate.
They all serve their own purposes and as long as people can figure that out, I don't see a problem with it at all.
Ever hear of "Make" and "Makefiles"? You don't need to keep recompiling things than havn't changed.
Not true. Make a small change to a header used by all files in your project, and everything gets recompiled. That's why C/C++ can be so slow to build. By getting rid of header files altogether, this issue goes away, and boy, does it ever make a difference.
Maybe something that ought to come out of this is some style guidelines for developers. Not coding style so much as UI style guidelines.
The first post on Groklaw has to do with squirrelmail and how the buttons for flagging messages as read, unread, and important confuse the users because they simply set a flag for the message but don't really perform any action otherwise. This is a bad use for buttons and really should be a checkbox or a checked menu item kind of thing.
Linux could really use more consistency with this sort of thing. One of the things Windows has always had going for it is that MS has always pushed for a consistent style in applications. To the point where a basic MFC app would begin with menu items for basic window functions and the basic copy, cut, and paste menu items. Small things, but I bet a hell of a lot more MFC apps have copy, cut, and paste because of it, and most users know where to find it because of that.
Something like this would really benefit Linux if developers would follow it. The problem is that there's nobody pushing these kinds of standards. It would require a group that's already respected in the Linux community to push something like this. It would help if applications were then rated by how well they stick to the style guidelines. Users could then use this as part of their basis for evaluating which applications to use. By knowing that an application follows the style guidelines, they will know that an application is going to generally be easier for their users to learn because it should then be like other applications in its style.
Oh well, just my thoughts.
I liked this quote: "Now that the Internet is very large, it makes for some well-developed memory. I would suppose that the amount of information stored on the Internet is around the level of the adult human brain. Now we just need some higher-order functionality to really take advantage of it. At one point we may even discover the protocol used in the brain and extend it with an interface to an Internet search engine."
The protocol used in the brain? That can't be a good direction to go. I mean, if it's anything like my memory and honestly, the memory of most people I know, it's definitely going to be a step backwards. Human brains can hold a lot of information, but retreival is definitely not its specialty. I can see it now. Type in my search terms and the engine comes back with, "ummm, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Okay, I don't have a tongue, but I just about remember it. Give me just a minute to think about it. umm... umm... Nope, it's gone. Nevermind."
For those of you who would rather do something before it's too late, iron seems to work, but the long-term ecological implications are still unknown.
Yeah, there's a good idea. I read that article and while on the surface it seems like a grand idea, it's the second part of your statement that concerns me. We don't know the long-term ecological implications and frankly, I think we'd be more likely to do long-term damage than long-term good. I just don't trust our knowledge of global warming and cooling
I think for now we're much better off sticking with reduction of greenhouse gas creation until we better understand our environment.
Here's the problem. Scientists say, "we've got global warming," and hey, maybe we do, but the Earth also goes through cycles of warming and cooling that are natural, and we don't entirely understand these yet. So now scientists aren't sure if we've got global warming or if we're simply in a natural warming stage. Yes, we do have manmade greenhouse gases. There's no question, but how much this is actually affecting global warming is up for debate.
There are many unknowns. And as we like to quote from the White House, some of those unknowns are known. Some of them are unknown. Until we really understand how global climate operates (maybe in 50 years, maybe longer), I don't think we should do anything to cause any intentional major changes because the damage we could wreak may be well beyond our ability to control, before it's too late.
But that's just my opinion.
I read the German article referenced in the groklaw article and frankly, I found it quite enlightening. First of all, let me state, I don't actually speak, read, or write German, but I do a pretty funny imitation of each, and let me tell you, that's where the really juicy stuff is. It's a good read for anyone who doesn't know German.
You always get good songs until you try it in Vegas.
I've been living in Southern Mexico for the last 9 months with a TV and DVD player, but no satellite or cable (effectively, nothing but DVDs since there are no broadcast stations where I live). I'm moving back to the U.S. next week and high on my list of things to do is veg in front of a TV for a few days. Sorry, but I'm going to pass on participation in this ridiculous exercise.
TV is what you make of it. There's tons of crap and if you watch a lot of crap, that's what you're filling your brains with. I watch a pretty good mix, including a great deal of time on news only channels and science and nature programming. Sorry, but I like that stuff and there's some education to be taken from them.
How about a "Don't watch crap on TV week," particuarly geared towards what kids are consuming. Or how about this? Take MTV off the air for 6 months out of the year. That would go a long way to improving the situation.
Just ask me. They stole code from my book to use in VTune. The code was copyright by someone else and I used it with permission, but it was clearly stated that that particular piece of code could not be used in a commercial app. Intel stole it line-for-line.
I never would have figured it out, but the guy who wrote the code disassembled VTune to find that the routines produced exactly the same binary code as his code (using Intel's compiler, I believe).
So, I wouldn't put it past them to reverse-engineer, legal or not, to acheive their means. Just my $0.02.
Sorry, but I SO disagree. You said:
In every one of these cases they caught up before the rest of the market could do anything about them.
In these cases, other people HAD the market. Nobody had to catch up except MS, and they did, and then used their OS monopoly to turn these products into defacto standards by including them for free with the OS while the competition was still selling their products with no OS to package it with.
Linux really needs to take advantage of the delay in Longhorn and use that to really do their best to produce something better and easier to use. And it's going to have to be better enough to provide people with a really compelling reason to change their desktops.
Honestly, here's one idea. And it's not an easy one, but someone ought to come up with the next "killer app" and do it for Linux. Do it non-open source so it can't be easily ported to Windows. It should be released free, but a Windows version shouldn't exist, at least not soon. Maybe the "killer app," whatever it is, could be compelling enough to get people to switch to Linux.
Like I said, not an easy one, but it's an idea.
And what, I'll never need more than 640K RAM? I'm also thinking of going with a gigabit network when I return to the states in a Month or so. Do I need it right now? No, but I may very well need it down the road and I do a lot of sharing between machines and the extra speed for transferring files will be nice in the meantime. Nothing wrong with looking ahead and spending a little extra on equipment you might need than to spend a little less on stuff you may outgrow in the next year or two. Just my $0.02.
Oops, I meant by "running these stories you're only helping SCO" not Red Hat. Hey, maybe it's helping Red Hat. If it is, hurry. Sorry for the booboo. Shoulda previewed....
1: Is there anyone on Slashdot that honestly feels there's even the slightest probability that SCO will win?
2: If we all know they're going to lose, why do people keep posting stories about it?
I don't want to troll, but I really don't think anyone here things SCO has a chance in hell. We also know that when they lose this lawsuit, they're going to go out of business and a year or two afterwards, nobody will be thinking about them. So why are we paying so much attention to this. I mean, the whole thing is really a non-event and by constantly running stories about it, you're only helping Red Hat. Any publicity they get just makes them seem more legitimate. They're not legitimate at all.
I really can't wait for them to just lose their case, go out of business, and be out of everyone's mind.
My father sent this to me first thing this morning. I told him that I didn't think that rigorous mathematical proofs should be based on software either in whole or in part. All software of any complexity is inherently buggy. That doesn't mean that rigorous mathematical proofs are flawless by nature. That's why they have peer review. But peer review on software still isn't always sufficient.
Another issue is that you're then excluding any mathematicians who aren't also fairly adept programmers, from really understanding your proof.
All of this said, computers are necessary to do math these days and I think mathematicians should make use of them. I just don't believe we've reached a level of maturity in software development that meets the stringent requirements of mathematical proofs.
Come on, this isn't news. Anything SCO isn't news. They're going to lose and then they'll disappear and 2 or 3 years from now, nobody will remember them, so please, can we just turn all the noise off. Contractors in New Zealand are gonna be just fine.
I think you'll probably find that most people really don't want to be thought of as geeks. Sure, we've taken on the label with a kind of pride, but we're not most people.
No kidding. There have been a number of times when I've called myself a geek and someone says, "oh no you're not," as if I've just insulted myself. I say, "Yes, I am, and that's not a bad thing." Oh well.
With the exception of one or two things on the list, this stuff has been true about Linux for a long time. So why does it suddenly mean Linux is going to boom?
Two things will make or break Linux: a> Ease of use and b> Applications
The first, ease of use, has been a problem for Linux for a long time and only in the last year or two have people really started to address this. I think with time, Linux will boom, but there's still a lot of work to do.
KMOS, Inc is filing suit against SCO for patent infringement, claiming that its Unix and Unixware products are based on Amiga source code.
I don't think the key to Linux will be a games based distro. The key will be my mom being able to plug in her digital camera and having all the picutres show up in a window.
I couldn't agree more. Linux needs to be MUCH more user friendly. It needs to be much more intuitive. And I don't just mean the OS. I mean all the apps you get as well. Fortunately, there's been a good deal of progress in this area and over the last few years, Linux has improved dramatically, but it's still way behind Windows and Macs in terms of ease of use for your average technophobe.
Games? Why? If games are what draws people to a system, then people are going to buy game consoles. That's why game consoles sell so well. If people want a computer, then make them want Linux by doing the above.
The author's idea is that we should get people using Linux so that people are using Linux. So let's come up with whatever cheesy plan it takesto get them to use it. At least that's the idea I get from it. I think that's stupid. Make people want to use Linux by making Linux the best alternative to Windows for more people. Then you're on to something.
Your father and friends are smart. Listen to them. Yes, sometimes it works out, but it often doesn't and when it involves family or close friends, the results can be devastating to relationships.
This is made worse if you're considering partnering with any of them. I generally try to avoid partnerships, but I'm not particularly good at the business side, so for me, if I do partner up, it's with someone who has better business sense than I do. Otherwise I wouldn't partner under any circumstances.
Here's an example of the kinds of things that can go wrong. In this case, it was a 3-way partnership. My step-mother was partnered with a couple in a chain of stores. They each owned 1/3. Everything was going great for about 15 years. Then one of the partners went full-blown alcoholic and paranoid and decided my step mother was out to get him or something. So, because it was my step-mother vs. a couple and she was the minority shareholder, the couple basically pushed her out of the business. She went to court and won, but in the end, after legal expenses, she didn't walk away with nearly what her share of the business was worth.
Now, to back-fill a bit, this couple was like family to me. I had grown up with them around for 15 years. And in a matter of months, my step mother was completely screwed out of a business she had worked hard to build.
The lesson: Business can be, and usually is, brutal. Bringing family and friends into it can get them in the middle, and that's bad for everyone.