Certainly, and that's why education is such a huge target for these corporations, they want teachers teaching students to use the most expensive pieces of software in the industry, which IMO should piss the parents and students off to no end. "Mom, you need to buy me Adobe Creative Suite 3, I need it for class, it's only $500." and "I just got hired on, and you aren't using Windows Vista yet? Your company should upgrade, I was trained on Vista.":P
Many average computer users haven't even heard of Linux even though they use it every day whether they know it or not. That is slowly changing, but M$ is sure doing everything they can to slow its spread. Thus, every little bit done to spread knowledge of it and improve it as a platform, helps.
It's simple, Linux = free. Windows = cost. They want money, they're a business, that's why they push their product. Even if they sold it to them for free, M$ would still benefit from them using it.
So, I don't need to see a cost analysis, and I definitely don't need to see one from M$ to try to justify their existence to me. Money should go into FOSS through paid development, bounties, and support. That should be what all institutions are geared towards, but instead they are stuck in the past.
"Here's a government contract to make the FOSS equivalent of Reader Rabbit for students for our schools. We are now taking bids."
That's the kind of stuff everyone should be seeing from their governments. The amount of money that every single school district spends on individual purchases for close source software, oftentimes it being the same software over and over and over again for all the licenses, would be enough money to pay developers to program every single piece of open source software schools would ever need all over the entire world a hundred times over, and what's more it would be a long-term investment instead of a flash in the pan. When governments wake up to this, the world will be a better place, but they won't wake up until citizens start waking them.
P.S., of course you can apply it to all other branches of governments, to businesses, and everyone else. The amount of money thrown away for temporary software orgasms is astronomical. More cooperation is needed for the new age of software development.
Well I don't think the suits that are usually running these IT circuses understand "lock-in" and simple concepts like that so for them it's new. They don't look at long term costs, in every way that term can be applied, they just look at the dollar figure presented, watch the shiny PR video that's shown to them, and then sign the deal. I think many out there in the IT industry have witnessed that. I wouldn't be surprised whatsoever that if they did reject the figure because Linux is free, M$ would probably also give it to them for free.
If they were to put Linux on though, they'd need to standardize on one "distro" until Linux can get it's act together and push some cross-distro software packaging standards, otherwise teachers would not be able to distribute software to them. Even if they did standardize on one distro, of course it's still a needed feature.
Even if Windows was given to them for free, which it very well could be, Microsoft would still get a lot from it and the school district, parents, and students would still lose in various ways.
If it came down to it, M$ would give it to them for free rather than see Linux being used of course. That's why it's up to intelligent employees to realize what the long term costs are, and what they are doing by "selling" the Windows platform to students, so free for them would still be an excellent deal for Microsoft in numerous ways.
...when there isn't at least one cross-distro package standard? How could the teachers release, say, a particular program for the students to use? Good luck teaching them how to compile.... The students would all have to switch to the same locked-in distro. Yes yes, it's true that most of them wouldn't have Linux to begin with and would take whatever distro the school decided upon, but Linux shouldn't have that barrier. All Linux users should be able to choose any "distro" as long as it has a package manager which uses an open standard package format for software accessibility. While this may not be as huge of a problem now for students, it will be more and more as Linux gets bigger. Best to solve the problem now though...
That's good that it works for you, though neither one worked for us. That's why we'll stick with the electronics which actually lets us do what we want to do, including playing the files we want to play. Shouldn't have to give another computer a big workout just because another piece of electronics is too limited.
Or at least that's the Libertarian theory any way. While I do agree with you that there were/are definitely some bad laws that gave/give advantages to monopolies, and those should definitely be done away with, I think a total lack of government regulation will lead to monopolies. Trickle down economics doesn't work. Those companies, groups, and individuals will be the only ones who can afford to implement certain things and they will stay in power. I think government regulation may be needed in some cases to help ensure that competition won't be destroyed by monopolies. I have several reasons for thinking this, one of which is the fact that many monopolies can't wait for deregulation to occur, they want it, and push for it, because they know that without it, they can have more control.
Either way, we both agree, this is what needs to happen: any laws preventing competition need to be removed, any laws that are really needed in order to make sure the competition field is fair and level may be needed.
"...is a socialist institution" is what I meant to say, sorry. While I do realize that Socialism is a type of government that the US and UK governments, for example, wouldn't officially qualify as, my point is that it is still a part of those governments.
Socialism So"cial*ism, n. [Cf. F. socialisme.]
A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a
complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and
equitable distribution of property and labor.
In other words, any system which distributes wealth via the government is Socialism. The police, fire, and other tax-money-provided services are examples of that. So, most countries are Socialistic to a greater or lesser degree.
Wow. Homosexual socialists? I've got an axe to grind? I'm stupid because I haven't taken Proper Libertarianism 101? Not going to even bother responding to all that. I don't give a fuck about which libertarians think what, or which ideas are "proper", because all I'm trying to say is the following:
Some laws are needed, some socialism is needed, that's what the government is is a socialist because it taxes citizens and then distributes that tax to provide services. All I'm saying is that most likely a balance is needed between a total lack of laws and government, and having everything run by the government. Both systems can fail, both have their problems.
Whether or not jobs are being done by businesses or by government boards, the job can either get done or not get done in either case, and there are good and bad things about either case. I would not trust a government to do everything, nor would I trust a corporation to do everything.
P.S., if you didn't get that, no, I don't care to learn about libertarianism, don't care, because the above is what I think, so call that whatever you want, and try to make some sane arguments in return if you care to.
There do need to be more standards/APIs, more mechanisms that allow program intercommunication, in Linux, and that's essentially what they are saying is needed. Everyone agrees on that point. I want my KDE apps to install and function correctly and in harmony with Gnome, and I want my Gnome apps to do the same in KDE. Linux needs to think about it's "framework" and how to improve it, to make it easier for developers to write software for Linux, so that they get a much more "instant integration" experience as opposed to having to write two zillion lines of code just to ensure that their program functions correctly with other programs. Two things are really needed for Linux:
I mean seriously, what idiot would tell their developers to push ipv6 as early as 2000 when there was utterly no reason to do so other than a threat from DoD about compliance or something.
But yeah, here come the history I-did-it-before-you wars, look in the thread below you, someone already said BSD did it first before MS.
Not that I care about such things, especially that aren't requirements for computer users quite yet but...
A) So since Linux had it stabilized but not DoD-approved in 2005, you're saying MS and Apple had it...stabilized?...in 2000? Were theirs DoD approved back then? Or maybe you're saying in 2005 theirs were DoD approved but Linux's wasn't? B) Linux is open source and driven only by developers who code when there is a need, and there still isn't a need for it so I still don't care about it unlike software which is a bigger target for government administrations like the DoD so those companies might care about implementing it a little more, C) I'm sure Linux had the beginnings of support way before 2005, D) are you claiming the MS or Apple stacks were stable in 2000? I wouldn't be surprised if there were the beginnings of development for it back then in all OSes but I wouldn't think it would have been anywhere near stable back then, but did anyone care enough to actually try it out? Probably not, because again, don't care. E) don't care, F) my epenis is bigger than yours.:D
As typical of Slashdotters, I didn't actually RTFA, so I didn't even know it was about open source. The only part I read about was they were trying to keep prices secret, and that their prices were fake any way because they'd never actually sell at those prices, or rarely, and would sell for like 50% cheaper or something. Those were the points I was commenting on and nothing more, I don't care what kind of software they sell, I think it's good that their fake prices were attacked because it sounds like it was basically a pricing scam. Plus consumers need to be aware of pricing so that pricing competition can occur. So, I think it's good they were called out on that for the scam and any company doing that should be scorned. I don't care what company it is though, that's not right, I like HP sorta OK-ish though in some ways since they do support Linux, the platform I use, but I certainly don't agree with some of their business practices (like selling ink cartridges 1/3 full). I'm actually a bigger fan of Konica Minolta now for just that reason. They have refillable cartridges, and Linux support to some degree.:)
Do I think there's a difference between fair, upfront pricing, and what is basically a pricing scam here? Yes.
If HP wants to pretend their software is normally sold at 200% the actual cost it normally gets sold for, other companies should call them out on that. Those fake prices should be condemned along with the company behind them for doing it. Not to mention competition can't function without the ability for consumers to compare pricing.
GroundWork is doing a very good job of spinning this so people report "HP don't want everyone to know they're expensive".
But that may very well be the truth, nothing you've said is a lie. HP may very well have a much higher "list price" even if they don't usually end up selling at that price, though some businesses with lots of money I'm sure do buy it at that price allowing HP to rip them off. It's information that should be known any way and you shouldn't be able to violate the freedom of speech with NDAs.
It's corporate BS like this that makes life suck for everyone else. Competitive pricing is one thing businesses try to hide as much as possible so that they can backstab others. I'm glad it's being publicized, and I hope it gets HP to lower their list price so they won't be able to fuck over so many consumers and will have to start actually competing fairly. How could you stand up for fuck-you-over corporate tactics when this information should be free and they shouldn't be able to do that?
Well Theora, Vorbis, and the OGG container are of course totally open and even support for them is being shipped in Firefox 3.1. There are those in the chip industry saying that GPU-based acceleration is going to be a thing of the past though, and GPUs/CPUs will be consolidated into one chip, so I don't think this is going to be a problem anymore and I think the codecs that are royalty-free will be the ones that will get adopted eventually provided they keep up with features. See Larrabee.
And yes, I know Theora video isn't as good as others like H264 and such (though Vorbis is awesome), but that's why Dirac and Snow are coming.
Yes, and that's an option, or you can not go to the bother of setting up a silly server and just use a device which can connect to your file server. The fact that the 360 only wants "safe" media given to it over a "safe" channel is retarded, and that you have to transcode everything into the few formats it will actually play. The only problem is video playback acceleration. Fortunately, both Nvidia and AMD are finally cranking that out as far as Linux support is concerned whereas of course it's been on Windows for ages.
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It's just much easier and faster to call them dumb. ^^
Certainly, and that's why education is such a huge target for these corporations, they want teachers teaching students to use the most expensive pieces of software in the industry, which IMO should piss the parents and students off to no end. "Mom, you need to buy me Adobe Creative Suite 3, I need it for class, it's only $500." and "I just got hired on, and you aren't using Windows Vista yet? Your company should upgrade, I was trained on Vista." :P
Many average computer users haven't even heard of Linux even though they use it every day whether they know it or not. That is slowly changing, but M$ is sure doing everything they can to slow its spread. Thus, every little bit done to spread knowledge of it and improve it as a platform, helps.
It's simple, Linux = free. Windows = cost. They want money, they're a business, that's why they push their product. Even if they sold it to them for free, M$ would still benefit from them using it.
So, I don't need to see a cost analysis, and I definitely don't need to see one from M$ to try to justify their existence to me. Money should go into FOSS through paid development, bounties, and support. That should be what all institutions are geared towards, but instead they are stuck in the past.
"Here's a government contract to make the FOSS equivalent of Reader Rabbit for students for our schools. We are now taking bids."
That's the kind of stuff everyone should be seeing from their governments. The amount of money that every single school district spends on individual purchases for close source software, oftentimes it being the same software over and over and over again for all the licenses, would be enough money to pay developers to program every single piece of open source software schools would ever need all over the entire world a hundred times over, and what's more it would be a long-term investment instead of a flash in the pan. When governments wake up to this, the world will be a better place, but they won't wake up until citizens start waking them.
P.S., of course you can apply it to all other branches of governments, to businesses, and everyone else. The amount of money thrown away for temporary software orgasms is astronomical. More cooperation is needed for the new age of software development.
Well I don't think the suits that are usually running these IT circuses understand "lock-in" and simple concepts like that so for them it's new. They don't look at long term costs, in every way that term can be applied, they just look at the dollar figure presented, watch the shiny PR video that's shown to them, and then sign the deal. I think many out there in the IT industry have witnessed that. I wouldn't be surprised whatsoever that if they did reject the figure because Linux is free, M$ would probably also give it to them for free.
If they were to put Linux on though, they'd need to standardize on one "distro" until Linux can get it's act together and push some cross-distro software packaging standards, otherwise teachers would not be able to distribute software to them. Even if they did standardize on one distro, of course it's still a needed feature.
Even if Windows was given to them for free, which it very well could be, Microsoft would still get a lot from it and the school district, parents, and students would still lose in various ways.
If it came down to it, M$ would give it to them for free rather than see Linux being used of course. That's why it's up to intelligent employees to realize what the long term costs are, and what they are doing by "selling" the Windows platform to students, so free for them would still be an excellent deal for Microsoft in numerous ways.
Especially with education. If it came down to it, I think they'd offer it for free to the schools in this situation rather than let Linux be used.
...when there isn't at least one cross-distro package standard? How could the teachers release, say, a particular program for the students to use? Good luck teaching them how to compile.... The students would all have to switch to the same locked-in distro. Yes yes, it's true that most of them wouldn't have Linux to begin with and would take whatever distro the school decided upon, but Linux shouldn't have that barrier. All Linux users should be able to choose any "distro" as long as it has a package manager which uses an open standard package format for software accessibility. While this may not be as huge of a problem now for students, it will be more and more as Linux gets bigger. Best to solve the problem now though...
I read the headline too quickly and read "Microsoft launches a free Linux desktop".
I'm just saying I don't think it's stupid to follow others through a doorway, as far as you know there are greener meadows on the other side.
Sorry, I wasn't completely sure what you meant the first time, and yeah that's true. ^^
That's good that it works for you, though neither one worked for us. That's why we'll stick with the electronics which actually lets us do what we want to do, including playing the files we want to play. Shouldn't have to give another computer a big workout just because another piece of electronics is too limited.
Or at least that's the Libertarian theory any way. While I do agree with you that there were/are definitely some bad laws that gave/give advantages to monopolies, and those should definitely be done away with, I think a total lack of government regulation will lead to monopolies. Trickle down economics doesn't work. Those companies, groups, and individuals will be the only ones who can afford to implement certain things and they will stay in power. I think government regulation may be needed in some cases to help ensure that competition won't be destroyed by monopolies. I have several reasons for thinking this, one of which is the fact that many monopolies can't wait for deregulation to occur, they want it, and push for it, because they know that without it, they can have more control.
Either way, we both agree, this is what needs to happen: any laws preventing competition need to be removed, any laws that are really needed in order to make sure the competition field is fair and level may be needed.
"...is a socialist institution" is what I meant to say, sorry. While I do realize that Socialism is a type of government that the US and UK governments, for example, wouldn't officially qualify as, my point is that it is still a part of those governments.
Socialism So"cial*ism, n. [Cf. F. socialisme.] A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor.
In other words, any system which distributes wealth via the government is Socialism. The police, fire, and other tax-money-provided services are examples of that. So, most countries are Socialistic to a greater or lesser degree.
Wow. Homosexual socialists? I've got an axe to grind? I'm stupid because I haven't taken Proper Libertarianism 101? Not going to even bother responding to all that. I don't give a fuck about which libertarians think what, or which ideas are "proper", because all I'm trying to say is the following:
Some laws are needed, some socialism is needed, that's what the government is is a socialist because it taxes citizens and then distributes that tax to provide services. All I'm saying is that most likely a balance is needed between a total lack of laws and government, and having everything run by the government. Both systems can fail, both have their problems.
Whether or not jobs are being done by businesses or by government boards, the job can either get done or not get done in either case, and there are good and bad things about either case. I would not trust a government to do everything, nor would I trust a corporation to do everything.
P.S., if you didn't get that, no, I don't care to learn about libertarianism, don't care, because the above is what I think, so call that whatever you want, and try to make some sane arguments in return if you care to.
There do need to be more standards/APIs, more mechanisms that allow program intercommunication, in Linux, and that's essentially what they are saying is needed. Everyone agrees on that point. I want my KDE apps to install and function correctly and in harmony with Gnome, and I want my Gnome apps to do the same in KDE. Linux needs to think about it's "framework" and how to improve it, to make it easier for developers to write software for Linux, so that they get a much more "instant integration" experience as opposed to having to write two zillion lines of code just to ensure that their program functions correctly with other programs. Two things are really needed for Linux:
1) More Linux programs (and games!) and drivers.
2) More Linux APIs so that #1 will be easier.
What about the inaccuracies of the cattle metaphor you used? =D
If you were in a large group, many of whom are your relatives, and everyone went walking through a door, you'd probably walk through too.
I mean seriously, what idiot would tell their developers to push ipv6 as early as 2000 when there was utterly no reason to do so other than a threat from DoD about compliance or something.
:D
But yeah, here come the history I-did-it-before-you wars, look in the thread below you, someone already said BSD did it first before MS.
Oh snap.
Not that I care about such things, especially that aren't requirements for computer users quite yet but...
:D
A) So since Linux had it stabilized but not DoD-approved in 2005, you're saying MS and Apple had it...stabilized?...in 2000? Were theirs DoD approved back then? Or maybe you're saying in 2005 theirs were DoD approved but Linux's wasn't? B) Linux is open source and driven only by developers who code when there is a need, and there still isn't a need for it so I still don't care about it unlike software which is a bigger target for government administrations like the DoD so those companies might care about implementing it a little more, C) I'm sure Linux had the beginnings of support way before 2005, D) are you claiming the MS or Apple stacks were stable in 2000? I wouldn't be surprised if there were the beginnings of development for it back then in all OSes but I wouldn't think it would have been anywhere near stable back then, but did anyone care enough to actually try it out? Probably not, because again, don't care. E) don't care, F) my epenis is bigger than yours.
As typical of Slashdotters, I didn't actually RTFA, so I didn't even know it was about open source. The only part I read about was they were trying to keep prices secret, and that their prices were fake any way because they'd never actually sell at those prices, or rarely, and would sell for like 50% cheaper or something. Those were the points I was commenting on and nothing more, I don't care what kind of software they sell, I think it's good that their fake prices were attacked because it sounds like it was basically a pricing scam. Plus consumers need to be aware of pricing so that pricing competition can occur. So, I think it's good they were called out on that for the scam and any company doing that should be scorned. I don't care what company it is though, that's not right, I like HP sorta OK-ish though in some ways since they do support Linux, the platform I use, but I certainly don't agree with some of their business practices (like selling ink cartridges 1/3 full). I'm actually a bigger fan of Konica Minolta now for just that reason. They have refillable cartridges, and Linux support to some degree. :)
Do I think there's a difference between fair, upfront pricing, and what is basically a pricing scam here? Yes.
If HP wants to pretend their software is normally sold at 200% the actual cost it normally gets sold for, other companies should call them out on that. Those fake prices should be condemned along with the company behind them for doing it. Not to mention competition can't function without the ability for consumers to compare pricing.
GroundWork is doing a very good job of spinning this so people report "HP don't want everyone to know they're expensive".
But that may very well be the truth, nothing you've said is a lie. HP may very well have a much higher "list price" even if they don't usually end up selling at that price, though some businesses with lots of money I'm sure do buy it at that price allowing HP to rip them off. It's information that should be known any way and you shouldn't be able to violate the freedom of speech with NDAs.
It's corporate BS like this that makes life suck for everyone else. Competitive pricing is one thing businesses try to hide as much as possible so that they can backstab others. I'm glad it's being publicized, and I hope it gets HP to lower their list price so they won't be able to fuck over so many consumers and will have to start actually competing fairly. How could you stand up for fuck-you-over corporate tactics when this information should be free and they shouldn't be able to do that?
Well Theora, Vorbis, and the OGG container are of course totally open and even support for them is being shipped in Firefox 3.1. There are those in the chip industry saying that GPU-based acceleration is going to be a thing of the past though, and GPUs/CPUs will be consolidated into one chip, so I don't think this is going to be a problem anymore and I think the codecs that are royalty-free will be the ones that will get adopted eventually provided they keep up with features. See Larrabee.
And yes, I know Theora video isn't as good as others like H264 and such (though Vorbis is awesome), but that's why Dirac and Snow are coming.
MP3 is horribly outdated and they charge for licenses. OGG is the only way to go, much better quality.
Yes, and that's an option, or you can not go to the bother of setting up a silly server and just use a device which can connect to your file server. The fact that the 360 only wants "safe" media given to it over a "safe" channel is retarded, and that you have to transcode everything into the few formats it will actually play. The only problem is video playback acceleration. Fortunately, both Nvidia and AMD are finally cranking that out as far as Linux support is concerned whereas of course it's been on Windows for ages.