Well, I was simply pointing out a double standard: domestically, people get hysterical about negligible amounts, but people have no qualms dumping huge quantities of it on foreign kids.
In any case, given that even exposed to massive amounts, we can't clearly attribute GWS to depleted uranium, it's a pretty safe bet that Johnny isn't going to get sick from the miniscule amount needed to see radiation in a cloud chamber. Vets and Iraqi children, on the other hand, probably are at some risk.
I don't think the home share is in single-digit percentages.
Retail market is about 6.6%. Entire market share is around 4.6%.
When it comes to those who are passionate about their machines, and actually choose their machines, it's a different story altogether.
None of that matters to my central point: Apple isn't going to stay around through creating more proprietary technologies--software developers and system administrators have little incentive in learning that stuff. Right now, the only thing that's saving Apple is that open source developers are covering for some of Apple's stupidity with compatibility tools, but that's not going to work forever. Apple should be moving even further towards open technologies, not away from them.
A cloud chamber and a small amount of radioactive isotopes are not dangerous, at least not any more than common household chemicals. And while they may have been "linked to Gulf war syndrome", the US military claims it's harmless and has not trouble using it around civilians in large amounts.
It's a disgrace that this science kit is found among a list of dangerous toys; the journalist should be ashamed of his ignorance.
WTF? The Mac is used extensively in professional markets. In some markets it dominates, and is a tool of choice.
Overall, professional usage of the Mac is negligible. Even if we look at specific market niches, I don't know of any where the Mac "dominates"; even in its traditional strongholds (graphics, video), users have moved overwhelmingly to PCs.
These days more people seem to be embracing the opposite attitude - use a PC at work, and a Mac at home.
More, yes. But it's still single digit percentages.
Look, I'm not saying that the Mac is bad or about to go out of business. I'm simply saying that many people will not bother learning Mac-specific stuff, in particular when it comes to programming or customizing the machine. The sooner Apple realizes that, the better the chance that they avert another MacOS-like meltdown.
Then why buy a mac? Serious question. If there's no benefit to you at all, why spend the money on a product you don't want?
Where did I say "no benefit at all"? The Mac has a reasonable UNIX command line, plus it runs a number of standard graphical applications reasonably well. But those areas where it differs from standards are, for the most part, a net minus. And the more customized and proprietary the Mac becomes in those areas, the worse it will do. Remember: this is the company that managed to run its own operating system into the ground and had to start over with a third party OS they bought.
Apple Computer: Proudly Going out of Business for Over 20 Years. Seems to me they're affording being different just fine.
Apple's corporate history is not a shining example of success; they have been close to disaster several times. If they keep going the way they are with OS X, they'll be up for another crisis in a few years.
They're patenting something that involves the association of emoticons with iconic images, also involving mechanisms like X-Face. It's still not new, it's still not their idea, it still shouldn't get granted, but if you're going to cite prior art, cite the right one.
Emoticons started in 1972, but emotiflags--replacing emoticons with graphical images--are more recent. I believe some of the chat clients started doing that first. By the time this patent was filed, many E-mail readers, chat clients, and wikis were doing it.
One more thing: because Microsoft actually becomes a distributor of SuSE Linux under this agreement, they automatically grant everybody a license to any patent that any GPL'ed part of SuSE Linux might contain. Well, strictly speaking, they only grant a license to the recipients of those copies, but because that license is transferable, they grant it to the world.
After signing this contract, Microsoft's entire claims of patent violations in Linux pretty much completely collapse.
MS can stop distributors from distributing until the court determines that they are no longer distributing infringing code.
Quite right: MS can stop distributors from distributing individual pieces of software that are infringing. They will remain infringing for, oh, probably about a day after Microsoft actually comes through saying what specifically is infringing. Give it another couple of days for the binary packages to be updated. Users won't even notice a hiccup in their update pipeline.
The Microsoft deal with Novell licenses MS patents to Novell, which of course protects Novell from lawsuits on those patents.
No, it doesn't. If RedHat has to stop distributing, then so does Novell. Microsoft may choose not to sue them, but the actual copyright holders of that software very much would, and they could and would get a court order against Novell to do so.
The strategy I, along with many others, have detailed is legally valid and powerful business.
No, the strategy you have detailed is naive and exactly what the GPL was intended to prevent. And it prevents it.
Stop spreading FUD about open source software and licenses.
I am talking about user experience. When something doesn't 'just work' it very much effects the user experience
So am I.
Example, a website doesn't work in Safari. The Apple apologetics just say, "The website doesn't conform to standards". The user doesn't care about standards, the only thing they know is that their user experience is very poor, cause they can't check their bank account.
There are plenty of web sites that fall miserably on their face with Microsoft software, simply because they are written for some other version of Windows/IE than you happen to be using. Ditto with MS Office documents. Ditto with PC hardware. There simply is no way to win even if you go completely with Microsoft. In my experience, Windows is just as much hassle as Mac or Linux in terms of compatibility problems.
It's the same thing with any compatibility. I would say compatibily effects user experience more then any single issue.
Yes, but you have failed to demonstrate that it's any better with Windows, you're merely assuming that it's better because everything claims to be "Windows compatible", even if it isn't.
No, what you are complaining about is simply that the Mac is not familiar to you.
rather than sylpheed or cronos or balsa or whatever. Evolution is the only one that looks right.
That's because those other apps are not official Gnome desktop apps, they are simply apps written using Gnome libraries.
By analogy, you can't always blame Apple for inconsistent third party applications, but you can blame them for inconsistencies in their own UIs, and there are lots of those.
So I don't understand, how microsoft can use those 70,000 copies without violating the GPL. Can anyone explain that to me?
Quite to the contrary: if they distribute even a single copy to a third party, then they are effectively giving everybody immunity from patent infringement claims by them because they may not restrict the rights of recipients of the software they distribute under the GPL, through patents or any other means.
Then MS attacks the herd, suing the rest of the Linux distributors for patent infringement, including infringement of the Novell patents MS licenses under their Novell deal.
MS won't sue anybody for patent infringement because they know it's pointless. I mean, who are they going to sue? You? Me? RedHat? Fedora? My cat? Even if they have a valid and enforceable patent, it will be worked around within a day of them filing any lawsuit.
Furthermore, the Microsoft/Novell deal doesn't protect Novell or its customers: if there actually were a patent infringement lawsuit, everybody would effectively have to stop using the software until the infringing code has been removed.
This entire "Microsoft patent" crap is pure FUD, and you are spreading it.
In the end, Microsoft ends up giving several hundred million dollars to Novell. All the taking is "virtual"--a small face saver for Microsoft that has no real significance.
Just use OpenOffice. It will exchange most documents just fine. The ones it has problems with are either poorly designed or malicious; they are rare enough that it's not a problem in real life, and they can be sent back to the sender to get fixed.
All of the things you list are just preferences based on what you know and based on Microsoft-compatibility; they have nothing to do with usability.
Anyone who has spent a little time with Blend and Vista will realized that Apple has just lost its UI advantage
Technologically, Apple hasn't had a UI advantage in many years. But Apple has had an advantage in overall user experience compared to Windows, and it is keeping that. Vista adds a lot of features, but that doesn't make Windows a better experience; in fact, quite the contrary: the problem with Windows is, and has always been, that it has had too much stuff in it.
But who gives a flying dog! The key is that the applications really are easy to use.
Indeed, who does? Well, Mac users apparently do because they keep complaining that Linux UIs are soooo inconsistent. That's ironic because Linux UIs actually are far more consistent than the Mac. This is kind of like Mac users were complaining that multitasking was such a bad and confusing idea, until MacOS actually ended up supporting it, at which point they started sounding like Apple invented it.
Why should I? The UNIX world has standards for how things work. OS X tramples all over them, often for no good reason. Given that OS X is much less widespread than UNIX/Linux and has no significance outside the home market, there is little reason to invest much time in it; any time invested in learning Mac-specific stuff is neither going to be useful professionally, nor is it going to help me down the road personally.
Microsoft can afford to do things their own way; they have enough market share. Apple can't. When Apple doesn't work like Windows or UNIX/Linux, it ends up counting against the platform.
That's what the green "optimize" button is for -- to resize the window automatically to the same size as its contents
Except in iTunes, it goes between whatever size iTunes was and a tiny player window. In other apps, it makes the app full screen. In yet other apps, it toggles between two different sizes, neither of which is right.
The list of offenders includes Camino and all those expensive turds Adobe sells (which break almost all the rules of OS X consistency).
Then, apparently, Apple's applications are "turds" as well, because they are just as inconsistent.
Furthermore, if programmers are frequently inconsistent about how they implement something, then there is something wrong with the API. It's perfectly possible to come up with an API that would ensure that the green button works consistently, it's just that OSX fails to use such an API. So, no matter which way you look at it, it's Apple's fault.
Personally, I think they should simply make the green button "maximize"; that's what most users want; I never have a use for "change size to be something the application thinks may be a good size".
What Gates is saying is not that "DRM is too complex [and therefore we should abolish it]", what he is saying is that "DRM is too complex [but Microsoft will fix that]".
He is being characteristically vague, but you can bet that he is either implying that Microsoft's DRM is already better than everybody else, or he is laying the groundwork for announcing some new Microsoft DRM scheme somewhere down the road.
If what you say is really true: that out-of-copyright classical editions are so freely available on the internet
I'm not saying that. I'm making two points. The first is that, whether you personally can get it or not, all of Mozart is free; it didn't take this foundation to make it so. The second is that there are several efforts for making this music freely available, and this foundation isn't part of that.
Think how this effects a musician from a _practical_ standpoint. Yesterday, I could not easily look at 90% of Mozart's works.
I didn't say that what they did was useless, I was saying that they were misrepresenting what they were doing. What you are getting is a freebie from a commercial publishing house, a publishing house whose policies are probably responsible for making it costly and difficult for you to get sheet music in the first place. And they are making such efforts because they know that by partially opening up what they have, they can keep the truly free and open efforts at bay for a little longer. If you want that situation to change, then contribute to those efforts that make sheet music available for free on the Internet.
Today I can browse it all in one place, download it with a click of the mouse, even see works I didn't even know existed and certainly wouldn't have known to look for on my library expedition.
From a musician or scholar, one should at least expect that they know how to use a library, and that they live where the environment supports their work.
Let's say that all the restaurants and supermarkets in your neighborhood are taken over by, not only fast food chains, but McDonalds. That's the only place where you can eat. To you, it tastes bad, it's bad for your health, there is little selection, but you don't have a choice: you gotta eat. But you have actually eaten good food in your life and know that better food exists. Wouldn't you be kind of annoyed? Wouldn't you start cooking for yourself and try to create alternatives?
Well, that, in a nutshell is why many people don't like Microsoft and why they are looking for alternatives. It's also why many other people don't mind Microsoft; they don't know anything else.
I agree. And I'd like as much as the next person to see the complete Mozart truly free, "as in speech". But that does not negate the fact that this is a very significant event. I agree that it isn't free as in "free speech", only as in "free beer". But before today, it was free in neither sense.
Oh, nonsense. Mozart's works are out of copyright and are free. And they are available free in many places, both on-line and off-line. Furthermore, there are many low-cost editions based on out-of-copyright originals.
What these people have made available free-as-in-beer is the commentaries and editorial work on Mozart's music; it's just that they linked it up so inextricably with Mozart's own work that they end up putting restrictions on Mozart's work in the process.
These people should have announced "renowned Mozart commentaries now available for personal use on the Internet", not "Complete Mozart Works now Free"; the latter is trying to take credit for something they don't have a right to take credit for.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I was simply pointing out a double standard: domestically, people get hysterical about negligible amounts, but people have no qualms dumping huge quantities of it on foreign kids.
In any case, given that even exposed to massive amounts, we can't clearly attribute GWS to depleted uranium, it's a pretty safe bet that Johnny isn't going to get sick from the miniscule amount needed to see radiation in a cloud chamber. Vets and Iraqi children, on the other hand, probably are at some risk.
I don't think the home share is in single-digit percentages.
Retail market is about 6.6%. Entire market share is around 4.6%.
When it comes to those who are passionate about their machines, and actually choose their machines, it's a different story altogether.
None of that matters to my central point: Apple isn't going to stay around through creating more proprietary technologies--software developers and system administrators have little incentive in learning that stuff. Right now, the only thing that's saving Apple is that open source developers are covering for some of Apple's stupidity with compatibility tools, but that's not going to work forever. Apple should be moving even further towards open technologies, not away from them.
A cloud chamber and a small amount of radioactive isotopes are not dangerous, at least not any more than common household chemicals. And while they may have been "linked to Gulf war syndrome", the US military claims it's harmless and has not trouble using it around civilians in large amounts.
It's a disgrace that this science kit is found among a list of dangerous toys; the journalist should be ashamed of his ignorance.
WTF? The Mac is used extensively in professional markets. In some markets it dominates, and is a tool of choice.
Overall, professional usage of the Mac is negligible. Even if we look at specific market niches, I don't know of any where the Mac "dominates"; even in its traditional strongholds (graphics, video), users have moved overwhelmingly to PCs.
These days more people seem to be embracing the opposite attitude - use a PC at work, and a Mac at home.
More, yes. But it's still single digit percentages.
Look, I'm not saying that the Mac is bad or about to go out of business. I'm simply saying that many people will not bother learning Mac-specific stuff, in particular when it comes to programming or customizing the machine. The sooner Apple realizes that, the better the chance that they avert another MacOS-like meltdown.
Then why buy a mac? Serious question. If there's no benefit to you at all, why spend the money on a product you don't want?
Where did I say "no benefit at all"? The Mac has a reasonable UNIX command line, plus it runs a number of standard graphical applications reasonably well. But those areas where it differs from standards are, for the most part, a net minus. And the more customized and proprietary the Mac becomes in those areas, the worse it will do. Remember: this is the company that managed to run its own operating system into the ground and had to start over with a third party OS they bought.
Apple Computer: Proudly Going out of Business for Over 20 Years. Seems to me they're affording being different just fine.
Apple's corporate history is not a shining example of success; they have been close to disaster several times. If they keep going the way they are with OS X, they'll be up for another crisis in a few years.
They're patenting something that involves the association of emoticons with iconic images, also involving mechanisms like X-Face. It's still not new, it's still not their idea, it still shouldn't get granted, but if you're going to cite prior art, cite the right one.
Emoticons started in 1972, but emotiflags--replacing emoticons with graphical images--are more recent. I believe some of the chat clients started doing that first. By the time this patent was filed, many E-mail readers, chat clients, and wikis were doing it.
One more thing: because Microsoft actually becomes a distributor of SuSE Linux under this agreement, they automatically grant everybody a license to any patent that any GPL'ed part of SuSE Linux might contain. Well, strictly speaking, they only grant a license to the recipients of those copies, but because that license is transferable, they grant it to the world.
After signing this contract, Microsoft's entire claims of patent violations in Linux pretty much completely collapse.
MS can stop distributors from distributing until the court determines that they are no longer distributing infringing code.
Quite right: MS can stop distributors from distributing individual pieces of software that are infringing. They will remain infringing for, oh, probably about a day after Microsoft actually comes through saying what specifically is infringing. Give it another couple of days for the binary packages to be updated. Users won't even notice a hiccup in their update pipeline.
The Microsoft deal with Novell licenses MS patents to Novell, which of course protects Novell from lawsuits on those patents.
No, it doesn't. If RedHat has to stop distributing, then so does Novell. Microsoft may choose not to sue them, but the actual copyright holders of that software very much would, and they could and would get a court order against Novell to do so.
The strategy I, along with many others, have detailed is legally valid and powerful business.
No, the strategy you have detailed is naive and exactly what the GPL was intended to prevent. And it prevents it.
Stop spreading FUD about open source software and licenses.
I am talking about user experience. When something doesn't 'just work' it very much effects the user experience
So am I.
Example, a website doesn't work in Safari. The Apple apologetics just say, "The website doesn't conform to standards". The user doesn't care about standards, the only thing they know is that their user experience is very poor, cause they can't check their bank account.
There are plenty of web sites that fall miserably on their face with Microsoft software, simply because they are written for some other version of Windows/IE than you happen to be using. Ditto with MS Office documents. Ditto with PC hardware. There simply is no way to win even if you go completely with Microsoft. In my experience, Windows is just as much hassle as Mac or Linux in terms of compatibility problems.
It's the same thing with any compatibility. I would say compatibily effects user experience more then any single issue.
Yes, but you have failed to demonstrate that it's any better with Windows, you're merely assuming that it's better because everything claims to be "Windows compatible", even if it isn't.
No, what you are complaining about is simply that the Mac is not familiar to you.
rather than sylpheed or cronos or balsa or whatever. Evolution is the only one that looks right.
That's because those other apps are not official Gnome desktop apps, they are simply apps written using Gnome libraries.
By analogy, you can't always blame Apple for inconsistent third party applications, but you can blame them for inconsistencies in their own UIs, and there are lots of those.
So I don't understand, how microsoft can use those 70,000 copies without violating the GPL. Can anyone explain that to me?
Quite to the contrary: if they distribute even a single copy to a third party, then they are effectively giving everybody immunity from patent infringement claims by them because they may not restrict the rights of recipients of the software they distribute under the GPL, through patents or any other means.
Then MS attacks the herd, suing the rest of the Linux distributors for patent infringement, including infringement of the Novell patents MS licenses under their Novell deal.
MS won't sue anybody for patent infringement because they know it's pointless. I mean, who are they going to sue? You? Me? RedHat? Fedora? My cat? Even if they have a valid and enforceable patent, it will be worked around within a day of them filing any lawsuit.
Furthermore, the Microsoft/Novell deal doesn't protect Novell or its customers: if there actually were a patent infringement lawsuit, everybody would effectively have to stop using the software until the infringing code has been removed.
This entire "Microsoft patent" crap is pure FUD, and you are spreading it.
In the end, Microsoft ends up giving several hundred million dollars to Novell. All the taking is "virtual"--a small face saver for Microsoft that has no real significance.
Why ever not? They received several hundred million dollars from Microsoft, without giving Microsoft anything or committing to anything.
Round-trip convert to OpenDoc. Not only will that strip evil macros, it will also make it easy to migrate to OpenOffice.
Just use OpenOffice. It will exchange most documents just fine. The ones it has problems with are either poorly designed or malicious; they are rare enough that it's not a problem in real life, and they can be sent back to the sender to get fixed.
All of the things you list are just preferences based on what you know and based on Microsoft-compatibility; they have nothing to do with usability.
Anyone who has spent a little time with Blend and Vista will realized that Apple has just lost its UI advantage
Technologically, Apple hasn't had a UI advantage in many years. But Apple has had an advantage in overall user experience compared to Windows, and it is keeping that. Vista adds a lot of features, but that doesn't make Windows a better experience; in fact, quite the contrary: the problem with Windows is, and has always been, that it has had too much stuff in it.
But who gives a flying dog! The key is that the applications really are easy to use.
Indeed, who does? Well, Mac users apparently do because they keep complaining that Linux UIs are soooo inconsistent. That's ironic because Linux UIs actually are far more consistent than the Mac. This is kind of like Mac users were complaining that multitasking was such a bad and confusing idea, until MacOS actually ended up supporting it, at which point they started sounding like Apple invented it.
Which files? Again, do some READING.
Why should I? The UNIX world has standards for how things work. OS X tramples all over them, often for no good reason. Given that OS X is much less widespread than UNIX/Linux and has no significance outside the home market, there is little reason to invest much time in it; any time invested in learning Mac-specific stuff is neither going to be useful professionally, nor is it going to help me down the road personally.
Microsoft can afford to do things their own way; they have enough market share. Apple can't. When Apple doesn't work like Windows or UNIX/Linux, it ends up counting against the platform.
That's what the green "optimize" button is for -- to resize the window automatically to the same size as its contents
Except in iTunes, it goes between whatever size iTunes was and a tiny player window. In other apps, it makes the app full screen. In yet other apps, it toggles between two different sizes, neither of which is right.
The list of offenders includes Camino and all those expensive turds Adobe sells (which break almost all the rules of OS X consistency).
Then, apparently, Apple's applications are "turds" as well, because they are just as inconsistent.
Furthermore, if programmers are frequently inconsistent about how they implement something, then there is something wrong with the API. It's perfectly possible to come up with an API that would ensure that the green button works consistently, it's just that OSX fails to use such an API. So, no matter which way you look at it, it's Apple's fault.
Personally, I think they should simply make the green button "maximize"; that's what most users want; I never have a use for "change size to be something the application thinks may be a good size".
What Gates is saying is not that "DRM is too complex [and therefore we should abolish it]", what he is saying is that "DRM is too complex [but Microsoft will fix that]".
He is being characteristically vague, but you can bet that he is either implying that Microsoft's DRM is already better than everybody else, or he is laying the groundwork for announcing some new Microsoft DRM scheme somewhere down the road.
If what you say is really true: that out-of-copyright classical editions are so freely available on the internet
I'm not saying that. I'm making two points. The first is that, whether you personally can get it or not, all of Mozart is free; it didn't take this foundation to make it so. The second is that there are several efforts for making this music freely available, and this foundation isn't part of that.
Think how this effects a musician from a _practical_ standpoint. Yesterday, I could not easily look at 90% of Mozart's works.
I didn't say that what they did was useless, I was saying that they were misrepresenting what they were doing. What you are getting is a freebie from a commercial publishing house, a publishing house whose policies are probably responsible for making it costly and difficult for you to get sheet music in the first place. And they are making such efforts because they know that by partially opening up what they have, they can keep the truly free and open efforts at bay for a little longer. If you want that situation to change, then contribute to those efforts that make sheet music available for free on the Internet.
Today I can browse it all in one place, download it with a click of the mouse, even see works I didn't even know existed and certainly wouldn't have known to look for on my library expedition.
From a musician or scholar, one should at least expect that they know how to use a library, and that they live where the environment supports their work.
Let's say that all the restaurants and supermarkets in your neighborhood are taken over by, not only fast food chains, but McDonalds. That's the only place where you can eat. To you, it tastes bad, it's bad for your health, there is little selection, but you don't have a choice: you gotta eat. But you have actually eaten good food in your life and know that better food exists. Wouldn't you be kind of annoyed? Wouldn't you start cooking for yourself and try to create alternatives?
Well, that, in a nutshell is why many people don't like Microsoft and why they are looking for alternatives. It's also why many other people don't mind Microsoft; they don't know anything else.
Oh, nonsense. Mozart's works are out of copyright and are free. And they are available free in many places, both on-line and off-line. Furthermore, there are many low-cost editions based on out-of-copyright originals.
What these people have made available free-as-in-beer is the commentaries and editorial work on Mozart's music; it's just that they linked it up so inextricably with Mozart's own work that they end up putting restrictions on Mozart's work in the process.
These people should have announced "renowned Mozart commentaries now available for personal use on the Internet", not "Complete Mozart Works now Free"; the latter is trying to take credit for something they don't have a right to take credit for.