Posts by Steve Mansfield 6 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Aug 2007
> The bit of magic in Ubuntu is that it takes the geeky stuff and gets
> it to the "just works" place where OSS needs to be to become
> usable by Joe Average.
And that, laydeez and gennellmen, is the sort of self-delusion which explains why linux is still bumping along at < 1% (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8).
If Ubuntu 'just works' my arse is the king of Prussia.
Paris, because her grasp on reality is just as strong ...
Actually I've read through this (I got it at a Visual Studio event a while back) and it's a good basic introduction to various ideas around secure coding.
If someone is new or inexperienced to the demands of coding securely and defensively for a corporate business-critical environment rather than hobby or self-taught coding, this is a good primer, and much of it is conceptual considerations rather than tied to Microsoft products.
I know this comment doesn't tie in with the knee-jerk anti-Microsoft sentiment this topic has predictably unleashed, and I would of course like to unreservedly apologise for being a M$ imperialist running dog fanb0i or whatever: but some of you, or someone you know, might actually find it a quite useful read.
I love FF, I'm using it right now.
Thunderbird, by contrast, is a clunky amateurish bug-ridden POS which I won't even consider reinstalling on a test machine until they sort out the myriad problems and fixes that would elevate it to the level of being a very badly implemented Outlook Express clone.
Spinning it off to an arms-length company won't make a blind bit of difference, they need to redevelop it from scratch and throw away every last line of code that came in from Netscape Communicator.
And please don't mention the 'Add-Ons' I can download to implement what should be core functionality - a pig with lipstick on is still a pig. I've got many many better things to do with my life than spend ages searching for a plug-in which will handle Usenet with any degree of basic intelligence for example.
The main stats quoted by http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_desktop_market_share_exceeds_Vista
are from April 2007.
Time since public Vista release: approx 3 or 4 months. Add in the OEM market and pre-release corporates / bulk-builders who got it in November 2006, and in a maximum of six months, Vista's market share (in terms of visits to the one site, sqlspace) is approximately one-third that of linux. Not exactly a brilliant return on all that advertising, it must be said, but there you go.
Where things get interesting is the bit of the sqlspace article which proudly proclaims 'W3 schools have confirmed our study' - sadly the W3Schools page linked to shows no such thing.
The W3 schools stats for April 2007 show Vista at 2.6%, linux at 3.4%.
The W3 stats for *July* 2007 show Vista 3.6%, linux 3.4%. So while, on these stats, linux is static, Vista is taking share from other Windows flavours (April 2007 Mac = 3.9%, July Mac = 4.0%).
And just to add to the confusion, Market Share by Net Applications at
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2
show
April: Vista 3.02%, linux 0.80%, Mac OS 3.89%, MacIntel 2.32%
July: Vista 5.41%, linux 0.75%, Mac OS 3.36%, MacIntel 2.61%
And yes I'm sure the usage stats from www.onlylinuxuserswelcomehere.com would show something different again.
Regardless of which set of stats you look at, a clear majority of people are using Windows. So it is not exactly surprising that the first beta to emerge from the BBC is for Windows.
No no no no no, Kate Humble (and SImon King, albeit he is usually marooned on some offshore rock getting covered in bird poo) makes Spring || Autumnwatch watchable - it's Bill Oddie with his inability to shut up for five seconds and let the adults do the talking who always endangers my enjoyment of those programmes.
In fact if we can't have Sally Sparrow as the new Dr Who companion, how about Kate Humble?
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