Snark not required
$110 to rent your software from Microsoft and have all the rights of a London lease-less tenant.
Or pay $0 and get Ubuntu, which you actually get to own and control.
Oh how we in the community shake with fear. *roll eyes*
428 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2006
Is for a large number of website developers to ban people coming to their websites using IE 7 or lower. (Me I just ban all internet explorer, but I'm a jerk).
Give them a link to Firefox or some other browser and ask them kindly to use something better. Something easier to develop for.
"""Since when does a competition committee force a company to continue a product they want to discontinue"""
Since said company controls the market so effectively that there isn't a single competitor that anyone is trained on and comfortable using. Of course I'd just ban Microsoft from selling products at all and write my own god damn software, but I'm not practitioner,
Freedom is a funny old thing, even when your company strips it from the world, the world will just go a little loony and take it back in uninformed and randomly short sighted ways. *oh well*
Hey Microsoft, the Ubuntu LoCo Council called, they want their release party idea back.
Seriously, does Microsoft really think it can pull off the kind of grass-roots party we have for Ubuntu every 6 months in most cities and countries? We'll be happy to send Ubuntu Karmic CDs to any of these frat parties, full version software for all!
Although I am surprised at El Reg for not picking up on the Ubuntu LoCo teams comparison.
You might like the new versions of Xorg with kernel mode setting drivers. Of course if you have nvidia cards then your out of luck, but xrandr and the gui that slaps around it should be able to do everything your talking about without much of a problem.
Seriously, if you need to complain, either point us at the launchpad bug report your filed or the answers support ticket where you specifically listed your settings and hardware. Sometimes the reason it doesn't work is for outside complications like nvidia being rotten scallywags.
If there is one thing worse than proprietary software, it's proprietary transmission protocols followed closely by proprietary data file formats.
Not way on this earth would I buy a telephone with a proprietary protocol, why is this any different? The marketing droid even compared it to a telephone. The only problem is that it's _more_ dumb.
*yawn* Call me back when they can stop hiding everything and sell products on technical merits.
We refurbish a ton of old 1Ghz, 512MB ram machines into Ubuntu machines. I just want to know why the bleedin hell all these students are being led astray into buying slow, old, crippled windows netbooks and not fast, efficient, complete and competent Ubuntu netbooks.
tut, tut, netbook makers.
As for Apple? Irrelevant.
Support is great and it's a lovely business to be in while the majority of people are not trained and the technology is too hard to use.
But in the end, support services that encompass excludable products like training and call in support is only ever going to be a small pie slice compared to the bigger economic footprint of all those internal knowledgeable employees.
Better start coming up with a more direct funding model if we want to seriously push the software forwards. We won't always have Oracle and Microsoft overpricing their services to make it easy for Red Hat and Novell to undercut them and still have money left over to show at R&D style core programming.
@shock_wave: I've converted hundreds of people over the past few years as an Ubuntu community leader in the field. And it goes without saying that you do not get anywhere by making your explanation complex.
Linux? doesn't exist, it's a fairy tale parents tell their kids to scare them into becoming rock musicians.
Ubuntu, that's the new awesome upgrade for your computer that can't get viruses and has office for free. Caveat that it doesn't run windows software and on the advocate and to make sure all usages are met and hardware supported.
I've had a total of 3 people go back to windows, and those were people who missed Ubuntu later on. So shock_wave, what ever your doing, your not approaching it right, or the right people. No one wants to convert a banker or a musician, and I won't try. not all friends and family are a useful target and you should think further afield.
They could have made it act just like a _legal_ mac osx machine just by buying Ubuntu Mini 10vs from Dell.
Who-o-why do retail chains continue to have their fingers in their ears and their heads up their arses shouting la, la, la to their internal rectum I shall never know. The training is there, on the table, not that expensive, if they could be bothered to reply to the channel.
>> to make latest driver work like with WinModem.
Where do these people come up with such stuff?
1) Linux isn't an operating system, it's a kernel. OTOH Ubuntu, Fedora and Gentoo are all operating systems.
2) All work in the FOSS world is done based on demand, if you don't have winmodem support, or a working mouse (that made me laugh) then perhaps it's because there isn't the demand, or the people who demand the work fail to pay for it to be done.
3) What exists is Free, what is yet to exist costs to make. Make a note and learn it for next time. If you want something done, make sure you have your chequebook out.
Microsoft, not a company worth doing business with.
Well apart from the massive amounts of adv... I mean news stories surrounding Microsoft Windows 7 and comparing that to the number of news stories about Apple or Ubuntu... well I've gotta say I don't think the market's going to change until advertisers... I mean news organisations start being even handed.
Not El Reg of course, I'm talking about the BBC.
It's not just about giving back, there is much more to Free and Open Source community involvement that just that. And your company fails to take advantage of a whole host of shared commons resources if you don't go all in.
Someone ort to write something explaining that really, otherwise it'll take 20 years before people cotton on to what's going on.
I won't buy Apple because as a programmer what I really want is control.
Well also as an Ubuntu advocate I find myself converting Apple machines to Ubuntu, not just Windows machines. So OSX can't be that good at the end of the daym, it's still expensive for maintenance and expensive to supplement compared to a more standard computer with Free Software installed.
Offers a family pack, you pay $0 now, download or request a free CD and you can install it on as many devices as you can. Added bonus that you get the family pack versions of every useful productivity suite for the office, studio or home.
Fair's fair The Register, give prices to FOSS alternatives when you do these sorts of comparisons.
>> but none of it usable in a commercial proprietary product
As has been pointed out, GPL doesn't mean you can't sell things. I could burn off a couple of Openoffice.org CDs and start selling them £20 a pop if I was really desperate for a bit of lolly, although some people might question how easy it would be to a) sell something that people can download for free or b) commit to a legal sale where you are probably liable as the seller for the quality of the goods (despite what the legalese says)
I do have to wonder if AGPL, LGPL are counted as GPL or not. They are different licenses, but they are also derivied from the GPLv3.
I license all my works as GPLv3 or AGPL, that includes perl and python libraries since you don't really need LGPL for none compiled modules (as none of my works would have to be included to produce a dependant work)
While we all don't like Pystar and what they have done _is_ illegal, I have questions of the agreements that must be entered into in order to get a license of the software. The software agreement is by far the most consumer rights destroying document of modern times, and while it would have been better to side FOSS and kill Apple stone dead with alternatives, it doesn't mean that there aren't any questions to be mulled over with regards to the way one product as sold can be restricted through legal means to only work with other products of the same vendor.
Imagen if you were told you could only use your window screen wipers on ford cars and not to install them on your flying house? Even if you were making flying houses.
Ubuntu has been one of the better communities precisely because of things like the Code of Conduct. It does help to be made aware of the conditions of being a part of the community.
Although I know some people who would argue that the CoC does nothing, I say it does plenty, just not with batons and tazers.
>> They have to sort out the basics.
Do they now, who died and made you boss of volunteer land?
Damn pesky freetards, just because they think Freedom means charity they think they can order around people who they have absolutely no business relationship with. Get you wallets out and PAY for the fixes and improvements you want, or your just going to have to hope that someone else can save your arse (and watch as they do it their way).
What's wrong with people today? No social majesty in their souls.
I think the windows fanatics, who despite always claim to be fair and balanced, despite being completely disingenuous about their experience and the expectations of the market, have to always try and pick holes in the quality of Linux, Gnu and the Ubuntu distro in general.
Take that pillock above who claimed that Ubuntu "won't even support the most basic USB device", had he any clue about how usb works then he may have cottoned onto the fact that all standard USB URBs are supported. And several serial non-standard ones. The most basic usb device is the HID controllers from mice and keyboards, go on, put up or shut up.
I think we're going to see more of this kind of silly attack as time goes on and the tribe of Microsoft is devalued.
What is odd is that they count households like mine in Boston. Where we are unable to receive any digital or analogue TV signal, unwilling to fork over ridiculous subscription fees for cable and generally watch BBC shows online anyway (and maybe the odd be of comedy central).
But that's the thing, I bet that they can't believe ANY household would have NO TV.
>> When you get grown up version names, you'll get treated like grown ups.
The name is 'Ubuntu 9.04' how is that not grown up?
Jaunty Jackalope is the developer code name for this branch of software distribution. Users have no need to really know of it. But so many of them (including in the media) find it fun to use the code names.
Does anyone realise how HARD it is to buy an ubuntu machine from Dell, without actually search for it specifically and then wading through pages of "Are you sure you REALLY want ubuntu? Go here for windows, no really, windows is what you need and Dell Recommends Windows Vista, so go here and save yourself before it's too late!"
Next week, someone got a HP "too high class to be called Ubuntu" MI machine and complains because it broke when they tried to add the detergent and the couldn't see where to put the laundry anyway.
The one thing that always cracks me up is how easily we fool ourselves into thinking that we are whole, single, immutable beings, barely even look like animals, let alone could ever be related to them.
Wake up humans! Your brains are just a pile of globs that turn themselves on and off and different parts of the day. Obviously the frontal cortex was kipping while the lobes went wild.
Free and Open Source software? no? oh well better luck next time.
It's about time Microsoft joined the real computer science world, instead of this fancy looking alchemy.
To be honest I have no real problems with Windows technically, it's a typical proprietary release from a vendor that has lots of money to throw at a problem. Unfortunately the features a want are features they'll never want to give me, control over my own computer.
Yes but when am I going to see some Sci-Fi on the BBC? I know ones broadcaster likes to pretend the good Doctor is sci-fi, but melodrama in space does not sci-fi make. I've been looking forward to Mofatt for some time, perhaps he can get at least some good scripting in (if not some actual science fiction).
But to hear of this new actor and proposed companions really does speak volumes about the direction. "The BBC is in a constant flight away from science fiction"
The problem for Adobe is that they don't really grok FOSS in any meaningful way. From what I've seen of flex, it uses hardly any other FOSS tech, it's completely stand alone and is a total buy in which requires massive amounts of amnesia about your previous work on w3c standard websites.
Isn't FOSS supposed to be about scientific method? build upon each others ideas. Not invent some unwholely new stack. FAIL
I'm not sure, but this tax strikes me as being fairly similar to the patronage system that was rejected during the French revolution. You can't have the masses taxed blindly and some central organisation dishing it out to deserving artists. It's just too mechanically unsound an economic device.
Also see Macaulay's speeches around the same time on the subject.
>If you're a windows developer wondering if you should make the leap to linux, relax. Microsoft isn't going away any time soon. You are already using the best dev tools available, sad though that is to hear.
Much like windows being used by home users. Developers like to use what they know, when I moved from visual basic to perl way back 8 years ago, I didn't like the fact that I was editing code in a text editor and running it from a command line.
But now I have the choice of editor, IDE for my python programming. What do I do? I use and editor and a set of command line tabs. Because it's quick, responsive and I can do _anything_ from any of my tabs, including research and running a python shell session to try something out or bring up the help documentation.
I've become so used to using vim and konsole that any other IDE just seems slow, clunky and not very well in tune with how I want to do things. although we could probably club together the ¥200 it'll cost to make a decent linux IDE, I just can't see the point.
>> most of the GNU tools ...
Were made by The FSF with Richard Stallman leading the charge.
Man you drop the Gnu project from the name and it's suddenly missing from the history too. See if you don't give credit were credit is due, you start saying silly things like "Linus created the Linux operating system":False