[CS-FSLUG] timestamp, was Re: Fw: GM vs Microsoft

[Alan Trick]

On Mon, 2006-04-17 at 20:47 -0500, doc wrote:
> 
> It is pitiful that Gates & Thugs cannot compete in
> a truly free and open marketplace given their massive
> advantages in money and corporate size but there it
> is.

I have a feeling that they problable 'could', IE was actually decent
software, until netscape died. Of course they don't want to, but this is
pretty much standard fare for any monopoly.

> Meanwhile I try to load all of the latest workarounds
> so Flash and Shockwave and WMV and etc. may be viewed
> from Seamonkey on a Linux box and really struggle to
> get Linux to talk to a Samsung laser printer or a
> wireless pci card whose chipset changed from a Linux
> friendly one to a Linux-unfriendly one in the middle
> of production and the manufacturer is not obligated
> (nor professional enough) to note that on the package
> or anywhere in their pre-sales materials.

I've never had much trouble with Flash or Windows Media junk, and I've
never tried to get shockwave to work though. My luck with hardware has
been amazingly good. In fact, my bios PnP seems to have died. It makes
the keyboard unusable in Windows, but Linux will go ahead and detect it
anyways. Also, the (binary) ATI drivers work ok, and I can even get Xgl
and compiz to work (/drools). I think my experience is better than most.

> Linux is a superior technology same as Beta was to
> VHS.  Those who needed the superior technology in
> the broadcast industry stayed with Beta and paid the
> premium, the uninformed masses bought the marketing
> misinformation and went with VHS.

I think this is actually a bad analogy. Both Beta and VHS were
proprietary, so the difference is on off features vs price. In which
case VHS won because it came to the market earlier and was able to be
cheaper because of mass production. Beta:VHS::Windows::Mac is probably a
better analogy.

The chief apology for Linux is one of freedom. Otherwise why didn't we
go with Solaris, which was better than Linux for a long time. Stallman
rants about Gnu/Linux every once in a while, it's a bit silly, but he
does have a point. If it wasn't for Gnu, linux would be about as popular
as minix is these days.



P.S. I use apology to mean an argument used in defense or justification,
not as in an expression of regret.

P.P.S. The subject of this thread has gotten a bit carried away :P