"Standard", Merriam-Webster: "4 : something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality".
No, I'd not say that Windows is by any measure a "standard". It may be commonly used, perhaps, but it is NOT a standard. Not by any authority I recognize, anyway.
80+% market share kind of means that it is the de facto standard. Whine all you like, but it is the standard OS on desktop computers.
The Mac OS is not an aberration, either. It is used daily by many people, and companies, and is a very commonly used OS in graphics arts, the sciences, and education. It's use is increasing, as evidenced by a steady increase in sales and marketing figures.
And it's hideous and impossible to use compared to my preferred OS, and isn't exactly a good citizen to the developers of my second most-used operating system from which they use a good body of code.
Linux is also seeing an increase in use, and interest, especially overseas. Wasn't it Munich, Germany that just "standardized" on Linux? By dumping Windows?
OK, that's great for Linux. Me, I don't care whether Linux gets adopted by anyone else or not; I'll still use it. But I don't delude myself.
Go ahead and give your own personal reasons for using Windows, that's fine, I cannot argue with your reasoning - your reasons are your own and you are entitled to them. But leave off the argumentative and insulting pejoratives, they do not add to your credibility. Instead, they diminish it by exposing your bias.
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I have one machine with Windows on it for games.
Especially when you offer no evidence as to why you call the Mac OS an aberration.
Oh, that's quite definitely a personal opinion. I hate Apple considerably more than I hate Microsoft; "We're a small "different" company for all you artists and creatives! Just ignore the whole '$13.9 billion of sales per year' thing!" If anything, I would be biased against Microsoft, and I've never been a fan of them (except for their development tools, which nobody, in my experience, can touch; dreck like Eclipse doesn't cut it). But I don't like pretentious horseshit from anyone--you or Apple themselves.
What a coincidence. I'm a computer science major right now (should be studying for finals instead of posting to Slashdot!), and I consider most of the "standards" of computer science to be crap.
He says an operating system is "supposed" to do [X]. Sure, great, whatever. The fact remains that the operating system with God knows how much market share does not, and that is the Standard Goddamn OS for people, whether we personally like it or not (and I'll confess I'm not a fan). So whatever "standard" an academic thinks exists means exactly zilch.
Of course, MS also doesn't include all sorts of other pieces of standard OSes, like CD and floppy imagers and image writers and image mounters, or network sniffing utilities.
"Standard OSes"? Come on now. I use Linux and BSD, but I'm not going to call them, nor the aberration that is OS X, "standard." Windows is the standard, not my/our hobbyist your artsy-fartsy OSes.
You know, actual hardware tools that OSes should come with. Even their text editor sucks.
And yet their (free) development tools absolutely blow away anything open-source has ever come up with. I actually do my development in VC++2005 and transfer it over to Linux to compile; the quality of the IDE is infinitely better. l33t h4xx0rz might think that doing it in their HOMGZ-GREAT text editors, like vi or emacs, is cool, but I like actually getting work done.
"Standard OSes"? Come on now. I use Linux and BSD, but I'm not going to call them, nor the aberration that is OS X, "standard." Windows is the standard, not my/our hobbyist your artsy-fartsy OSes.
You know, actual hardware tools that OSes should come with. Even their text editor sucks.
And yet their (free) development tools absolutely blow away anything open-source has ever come up with. I actually do my development in VC++2005 and transfer it over to Linux to compile; the quality of the IDE is infinitely better. l33t h4xx0rz might think that doing it in their HOMGZ-GREAT text editors, like vi or emacs, is cool, but I like actually getting work done.
Perhaps "configurable" is a better term, as "intuitive" means different things to different people.
I can make my KDE machine look like some Cupertino dogshit if I choose (why I would is beyond me, but the possibility is there). You cannot make your machine function like a real OS.
Give me a desktop that actually works, and not one that looks like something out of the Land of Drooling Morons (you know, the same place Vista's Aero Glass and, to a lesser extent, the Fisher-Price motif of XP), and I'm happy. OS X has a terribly unintuitive GUI for anyone who's grown up using a real OS, even if under the hood it actually is a real OS, too.
OS 9 didn't waste time trying to be pretty. It was a utilitarian, usable GUI on top of a pretty shallow OS. Windows' old-style GUI was similarly utilitarian. And while KDE can look pretty, it comes out-of-the-box clean and clear.
The only way I'd ever buy a Mac is if I could turn off that bubble-button, whooshing-all-over-the-place nonsense. Steve Jobs is selling a style, and it's about as "deep" as anything coming out of the popular entertainment industry.
If Linus doesn't buy the idea, it's not going to fly. I am well aware of what you allege it to be; the GPLv3 is, in my view, simply an attempt by rms and the FSF to restrict freedoms as a developer.
See...I prefer the BSD license. I don't care what other people do with the code. If I choose to release it as truly Free code (and not GPL-encumbered), I acknowledge that some people might not use it in a way I like--but that's their right.
That's all well and good. But I for one won't write code under GPLv3, ever. It's not a license that does what I want. DRM restrictions should not be in a software license. I specifically do NOT care about the DRMing of other people's stuff--it's theirs to DRM, I won't buy it if they do but it's still their right to do it--and I don't DRM my own. Linus's objections to the GPLv3 drafts are largely similar to my own.
And there are a lot of people who feel the same way. "Consensus" for GPLv3 is a long time off, if ever.
That doesn't change much with me. I don't consider the freedoms of the user to be of any more worth than the freedoms of the developer. Thus, I prefer BSD. I can release code under BSD, and people can use it however they might want to--I don't care how they use it. Make money off it? Great, just make sure that I'm credited (I use a modified version of the four-paragraph license, not the MIT-alike one; I want recognition, not the money!).
rms's entire stance hinges on the freedom of the user. That's a respectable viewpoint; it's just one I don't share. I know that rms makes plenty of hay about his Four Freedoms and the "freedom to study the code"--it's a pretty poor defense. His essays clearly state that he doesn't think much of programmers who dare to program for a living (he suggests that they live off donations, for God's sake) and is a bleeding academic of the highest degree. Such people are interesting to talk to and are often useful, but dangerous when followed too closely.
And finally you Slashdot editors; do show some signs that you have some brain by not ranking absolute trash as insightful just because Indians have stolen some American jobs.
"Have some brain" yourself - moderators, not editors, called it "insightful."
The FSF doesn't need to be taken over by aliens. rms is already in charge, and I don't trust him. Or any zealot, for that matter. I frankly dislike GPLv3 entirely, but that's just me. I do not consider the "exploits" in GPLv2 to be so terribly bad that GPLv3 is necessary, or even a good idea.
That (unintentionally hilarious--even I laughed once I saw it) line aside, I should have said "obviously doing what's best for the customer isn't good for their business.
Actually, I run a software/hardware business on the side; we're selling point-of-sale and restaurant management network solutions.. As for mine--doing what's best for customers also happens to be what's best for my business, because my customers recognize quality (or at least bells and whistles and gongs). When they see our point-of-sale systems and our restaurant management systems in action, they recognize that the software makes things easier for them, and they reward our work in those areas with orders. (The software's also very likely going to be GPLed in the future.)
Microsoft, OTOH, would not benefit from "doing what's best for the customer," as that would mean putting out a relatively future-proof, bug-free OS. When people have future-proof, bug-free OSes, they're very unlikely to upgrade--why would they? It's much like cars, IMO--a company could easily make cars that would last thirty years, and they'd box their market into a corner.
And you haven't much room to castigate Microsoft for OpenXML documents, either--plugins exist all the way back to Office 2000 for interoperability. I'm no fan of Microsoft (sayeth the guy running Debian), but I acknowledge that their business practices can't do what's best for the consumer, because they'd run themselves into the ground.
The only good solution, therefore, is precisely that--Microsoft needs to crash hard. Everyone wins! Except MSFT shareholders.:-P
Agreed. rms might have done a lot for open source (I will never call it "free software"), but Linus is where most folks seem to look when they think about OSS.
And customers are stupid. What's best for them isn't what makes money. If customers rewarded that kind of practice with more sales, maybe you'd get somewhere. But they don't, so you won't.
What Microsoft does does make money. Sun does not (alright, yes, it does--but not in Microsoft's league). Obviously doing what's best for the customer isn't good for the business. And why should a business take the less profitable of two paths when it's under no obligation to do so? Should it try to go under?
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Your irrelevant comment about "pro-lifers" aside (I'm firmly in the pro-choice camp, thanks)--that's where "backup plans" come in, yes?
If you can't afford children, don't have children.
But McDonald's still wraps the burger in the paper, even if you don't get a bag.
Hmmm,
"Standard", Merriam-Webster: "4 : something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality".
No, I'd not say that Windows is by any measure a "standard". It may be commonly used, perhaps, but it is NOT a standard. Not by any authority I recognize, anyway.
80+% market share kind of means that it is the de facto standard. Whine all you like, but it is the standard OS on desktop computers.
The Mac OS is not an aberration, either. It is used daily by many people, and companies, and is a very commonly used OS in graphics arts, the sciences, and education. It's use is increasing, as evidenced by a steady increase in sales and marketing figures.
And it's hideous and impossible to use compared to my preferred OS, and isn't exactly a good citizen to the developers of my second most-used operating system from which they use a good body of code.
Linux is also seeing an increase in use, and interest, especially overseas. Wasn't it Munich, Germany that just "standardized" on Linux? By dumping Windows?
OK, that's great for Linux. Me, I don't care whether Linux gets adopted by anyone else or not; I'll still use it. But I don't delude myself.
Go ahead and give your own personal reasons for using Windows, that's fine, I cannot argue with your reasoning - your reasons are your own and you are entitled to them. But leave off the argumentative and insulting pejoratives, they do not add to your credibility. Instead, they diminish it by exposing your bias.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)
I have one machine with Windows on it for games.
Especially when you offer no evidence as to why you call the Mac OS an aberration.
Oh, that's quite definitely a personal opinion. I hate Apple considerably more than I hate Microsoft; "We're a small "different" company for all you artists and creatives! Just ignore the whole '$13.9 billion of sales per year' thing!" If anything, I would be biased against Microsoft, and I've never been a fan of them (except for their development tools, which nobody, in my experience, can touch; dreck like Eclipse doesn't cut it). But I don't like pretentious horseshit from anyone--you or Apple themselves.
What a coincidence. I'm a computer science major right now (should be studying for finals instead of posting to Slashdot!), and I consider most of the "standards" of computer science to be crap.
He says an operating system is "supposed" to do [X]. Sure, great, whatever. The fact remains that the operating system with God knows how much market share does not, and that is the Standard Goddamn OS for people, whether we personally like it or not (and I'll confess I'm not a fan). So whatever "standard" an academic thinks exists means exactly zilch.
Of course, MS also doesn't include all sorts of other pieces of standard OSes, like CD and floppy imagers and image writers and image mounters, or network sniffing utilities.
"Standard OSes"? Come on now. I use Linux and BSD, but I'm not going to call them, nor the aberration that is OS X, "standard." Windows is the standard, not my/our hobbyist your artsy-fartsy OSes.
You know, actual hardware tools that OSes should come with. Even their text editor sucks.
And yet their (free) development tools absolutely blow away anything open-source has ever come up with. I actually do my development in VC++2005 and transfer it over to Linux to compile; the quality of the IDE is infinitely better. l33t h4xx0rz might think that doing it in their HOMGZ-GREAT text editors, like vi or emacs, is cool, but I like actually getting work done.
"Standard OSes"? Come on now. I use Linux and BSD, but I'm not going to call them, nor the aberration that is OS X, "standard." Windows is the standard, not my/our hobbyist your artsy-fartsy OSes.
You know, actual hardware tools that OSes should come with. Even their text editor sucks.
And yet their (free) development tools absolutely blow away anything open-source has ever come up with. I actually do my development in VC++2005 and transfer it over to Linux to compile; the quality of the IDE is infinitely better. l33t h4xx0rz might think that doing it in their HOMGZ-GREAT text editors, like vi or emacs, is cool, but I like actually getting work done.
...as Stalin was a closet Orthodox for much of, if not his entire, life.
Perhaps "configurable" is a better term, as "intuitive" means different things to different people.
I can make my KDE machine look like some Cupertino dogshit if I choose (why I would is beyond me, but the possibility is there). You cannot make your machine function like a real OS.
It does?
Poor ol' Apple. Years late, as always.
Give me a desktop that actually works, and not one that looks like something out of the Land of Drooling Morons (you know, the same place Vista's Aero Glass and, to a lesser extent, the Fisher-Price motif of XP), and I'm happy. OS X has a terribly unintuitive GUI for anyone who's grown up using a real OS, even if under the hood it actually is a real OS, too.
OS 9 didn't waste time trying to be pretty. It was a utilitarian, usable GUI on top of a pretty shallow OS. Windows' old-style GUI was similarly utilitarian. And while KDE can look pretty, it comes out-of-the-box clean and clear.
The only way I'd ever buy a Mac is if I could turn off that bubble-button, whooshing-all-over-the-place nonsense. Steve Jobs is selling a style, and it's about as "deep" as anything coming out of the popular entertainment industry.
If Linus doesn't buy the idea, it's not going to fly. I am well aware of what you allege it to be; the GPLv3 is, in my view, simply an attempt by rms and the FSF to restrict freedoms as a developer.
See...I prefer the BSD license. I don't care what other people do with the code. If I choose to release it as truly Free code (and not GPL-encumbered), I acknowledge that some people might not use it in a way I like--but that's their right.
That's all well and good. But I for one won't write code under GPLv3, ever. It's not a license that does what I want. DRM restrictions should not be in a software license. I specifically do NOT care about the DRMing of other people's stuff--it's theirs to DRM, I won't buy it if they do but it's still their right to do it--and I don't DRM my own. Linus's objections to the GPLv3 drafts are largely similar to my own.
And there are a lot of people who feel the same way. "Consensus" for GPLv3 is a long time off, if ever.
The "WTF?" part is that they licensed Java *only* under GPLv2, not with the "or any later version" clause.
That doesn't change much with me. I don't consider the freedoms of the user to be of any more worth than the freedoms of the developer. Thus, I prefer BSD. I can release code under BSD, and people can use it however they might want to--I don't care how they use it. Make money off it? Great, just make sure that I'm credited (I use a modified version of the four-paragraph license, not the MIT-alike one; I want recognition, not the money!).
rms's entire stance hinges on the freedom of the user. That's a respectable viewpoint; it's just one I don't share. I know that rms makes plenty of hay about his Four Freedoms and the "freedom to study the code"--it's a pretty poor defense. His essays clearly state that he doesn't think much of programmers who dare to program for a living (he suggests that they live off donations, for God's sake) and is a bleeding academic of the highest degree. Such people are interesting to talk to and are often useful, but dangerous when followed too closely.
And finally you Slashdot editors; do show some signs that you have some brain by not ranking absolute trash as insightful just because Indians have stolen some American jobs.
"Have some brain" yourself - moderators, not editors, called it "insightful."
According to his definition of freedom, rms has been right in his predictions.
But my definition of freedom doesn't align with his. I'm a BSD fan.
The FSF doesn't need to be taken over by aliens. rms is already in charge, and I don't trust him. Or any zealot, for that matter. I frankly dislike GPLv3 entirely, but that's just me. I do not consider the "exploits" in GPLv2 to be so terribly bad that GPLv3 is necessary, or even a good idea.
That (unintentionally hilarious--even I laughed once I saw it) line aside, I should have said "obviously doing what's best for the customer isn't good for their business.
:-P
Actually, I run a software/hardware business on the side; we're selling point-of-sale and restaurant management network solutions.. As for mine--doing what's best for customers also happens to be what's best for my business, because my customers recognize quality (or at least bells and whistles and gongs). When they see our point-of-sale systems and our restaurant management systems in action, they recognize that the software makes things easier for them, and they reward our work in those areas with orders. (The software's also very likely going to be GPLed in the future.)
Microsoft, OTOH, would not benefit from "doing what's best for the customer," as that would mean putting out a relatively future-proof, bug-free OS. When people have future-proof, bug-free OSes, they're very unlikely to upgrade--why would they? It's much like cars, IMO--a company could easily make cars that would last thirty years, and they'd box their market into a corner.
And you haven't much room to castigate Microsoft for OpenXML documents, either--plugins exist all the way back to Office 2000 for interoperability. I'm no fan of Microsoft (sayeth the guy running Debian), but I acknowledge that their business practices can't do what's best for the consumer, because they'd run themselves into the ground.
The only good solution, therefore, is precisely that--Microsoft needs to crash hard. Everyone wins! Except MSFT shareholders.
Agreed. rms might have done a lot for open source (I will never call it "free software"), but Linus is where most folks seem to look when they think about OSS.
Shouldn't be done, though. "Or later" is a dangerous clause.
And customers are stupid. What's best for them isn't what makes money. If customers rewarded that kind of practice with more sales, maybe you'd get somewhere. But they don't, so you won't.
What Microsoft does does make money. Sun does not (alright, yes, it does--but not in Microsoft's league). Obviously doing what's best for the customer isn't good for the business. And why should a business take the less profitable of two paths when it's under no obligation to do so? Should it try to go under?
The only software I haven't been able to run under WinFLP is Office 2003 and newer.
Even my development tools (Visual Studio 2005) run in it great. It's so much snappier than a straight install of XP.
Because not enough people have home-theater PC rigs.
Only the best. :)