Linux Hater's Blog: A tale of ogg

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A tale of ogg

Oh Ogg. The format that trapped many a user's music files on lowly Linux desktops. I know I've got some oggs somewhere that I can't listen to any more in itunes. Or any device that I care about, for that matter. And I'm too anal to re-encode them into the only format that matters: mp3.

Then today I saw this nice little tear down of Ogg. I'm not going to write much here since this article has a beauty of it's own. But I will quote a bit:

More commonly, the Ogg proponents will respond with hand-waving arguments best summarised as Ogg isn't bad, it's just different. My reply to this assertion is twofold:
Being too different is bad. We live in a world where multimedia files come in many varieties, and a decent media player will need to handle the majority of them. Fortunately, most multimedia file formats share some basic traits, and they can easily be processed in the same general framework, the specifics being taken care of at the input stage. A format deviating too far from the standard model becomes problematic.
Ogg is bad. When every angle of examination reveals serious flaws, bad is the only fitting description.
The third reaction bypasses all technical analysis: Ogg is patent-free, a claim I am not qualified to directly discuss. Assuming it is true, it still does not alter the fact that Ogg is a bad format. Being free from patents does not magically make Ogg a good choice as file format. If all the standard formats are indeed covered by patents, the only proper solution is to design a new, good format which is not, this time hopefully avoiding the old mistakes.

Wow, doesn't this sound fucking familiar? Oh wait, %s/Ogg/Linux Desktop/g ... Ahhh... there we go.

5261 flames:

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Anonymous said...: Nice post brotha, reminds me of the next battle, html5 vs flash/h.264.; March 3, 2010 at 3:01 PM
FSF fanboy said...: Patent freedom is more important than quality.

That's all there is to it, if you ask me.; March 3, 2010 at 3:04 PM
Anonymous said...: Who cares about lossy anyway? Everything worthy plays flac nowadays. Except for Apple's garbage.; March 3, 2010 at 3:04 PM
Anonymous said...: ^ Are you some sort of anti-apple tard?

Apple's "garbage" is the mp3 player with the highest market share.

If flac doesn't work on the ipod, then flac doesn't exist.; March 3, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Anonymous said...: UH OH!

SJVN panties in a bind!

Elliot Associates' worrisome Novell plans (plans to drop opensuse)

http://blogs.computerworld.com/15688/elliot_associates_worrisome_novell_plans; March 3, 2010 at 3:19 PM
Anonymous said...: You can break down Linux into four basic beliefs:

1. Linux is great, Microsoft is the Devil and we'll support Google no matter how many times they tell us to bend over
2. Anything developed for/in Linux is better than anything else even if the best programmers in the world are hired. Because we're OPEN!
4. YOU WILL SPEND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS DEVELOPING AND THEN RELEASING LINUX DRIVERS FOR YOUR HARDWARE BUT DON'T EXPECT TO CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING OTHER THAN BITCHING ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY SUCK.
3. Also, we're not paying for anything.

This OGG/Theora/Vorbis crap has been going on way to long.

YOU LOST...YOUR "CHAMPION" IS INFERIOR LIKE THE REST OF YOUR OPEN/FREE CHAMPIONS.; March 3, 2010 at 3:23 PM
Anonymous said...: I laughed quite heartily.; March 3, 2010 at 3:24 PM
Anonymous said...: > If flac doesn't work on the ipod, then flac doesn't exist.
Way to go dude, bend over for ze mann.
IPOD! WORSHIP!
PMP market is dying, news at eleven.; March 3, 2010 at 3:27 PM
Anonymous said...: Has LH posted this to circumvent the blogger bug in the last post?

The paging bugs appear regulary since monts.

Has anyone informed google about all the paging bugs by the way? Maybe the didn't notice it. Maybe this blog is indeed the only one that has them (what other blog generates so many comments?); March 3, 2010 at 3:29 PM
Anonymous said...: Hey freetard, if the mp3 player with the highest market share doesn't support your sorry format, then the format doesn't exist in the real world.

Get over it and jerk yourself a wet one.; March 3, 2010 at 3:33 PM
Anonymous said...: The way you are swinging around your iToy is just pathetic. Just shove it up your arse, will you.
High market share doesn't mean monopoly, appleboy.; March 3, 2010 at 3:44 PM
Anonymous said...: I don't even have an iPod, (don't need an mp3 player, has nothing to do with the ipod as such)

I just see the realities of the market.

How was the jerk off? Relaxed now?; March 3, 2010 at 3:47 PM
Anonymous said...: You forgot that FuckYeahAmericaAppleIPod is not the whole world.
By the way, check my business proposal on acquiring viagra pills in your email inbox.; March 3, 2010 at 3:52 PM
Anonymous said...: as much as I hate ogg theora (its lack of quality despite having developed forever), its audio equivalent (ogg vorbis) is actually comparable in quality with aac.; March 3, 2010 at 4:27 PM
Anonymous said...: If it doesn't exist on iSuckOwnMyCockPod(TM), then probably means iMacFagFans were not told by iAwesomeMacSteveJobs that it's great and they should cash out for it.

Yeah, if AppleSucksMyDogsBalls doesn't support it, it doesn't exist or something.

I wouldn't expect some brain dead monkeys to appreciate the quality flac or even know what it is, until papa Steve comes up on the stage and recites "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, amazing, awesome", a few times.

Yep, Apple has fooled you into believing your that tech sawy or something, while in fact you don't know shit, you're a bunch of puppets. (Most of you anyways); March 3, 2010 at 4:35 PM
Anonymous said...: "...until papa Steve comes up on the stage and recites "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, amazing, awesome", a few times."

I couldn't believe it when he was demonstrating the iPad and he kept saying "amazing, wonderful, etc" about mundane things like looking at locally stored photo albums, going to various URLs, watching YouTube videos, etc.

"Look at that, it's coming right off of YouTube. That's wonderful".

I felt like I was in Bizarro World; March 3, 2010 at 4:51 PM
Anonymous said...: **Freeject Alert**

From the $JVN comments:

When I heard of the Elliot deal...
Submitted by Richard Chapman on March 3, 2010 - 7:33 P.M.

The first word that came to my mind was Microsoft. Elliot could be anybody's agent.

"I don't think Microsoft wants to be in the Linux business either."

Of course they don't. Novell is simply a vector for Microsoft to inject its venom into Open Source.

Reply | Report this comment; March 3, 2010 at 4:55 PM
Anonymous said...: > I felt like I was in Bizarro World

"Simple. You can take it the pooper. Magical. Amazing. Exciting."; March 3, 2010 at 5:06 PM
Anonymous said...: Yep, Apple has fooled you into believing your that tech sawy or something, while in fact you don't know shit, you're a bunch of puppets.

Yep, first question I need answered when downloading a 99-cent song is "will this make me feel tech savvy?"; March 3, 2010 at 5:16 PM
Anonymous said...: its audio equivalent (ogg vorbis) is actually comparable in quality with aac.

Only the heavily modified version by that Japanese guy. And why do we need a forked version? Cuz Xiph (Monty) doesn't give a shit about audio quality, only "FREE". Sound familiar?; March 3, 2010 at 5:24 PM
Anonymous said...: Ogg just isn't very good.; March 3, 2010 at 5:42 PM
Anonymous said...: Ok I was trying out linux in a totally off the shelf thin client appliance today, and the fucking sound stack on a embedded device was broken.

So since dog shit, I mean linux, can't even get their sound stack to work reliably on a pre-installed thin client, maybe that has something to do with the complete and utter failure of Ogg/Vorbis in the marketplace of ideas???

Holy shit, linux even sucks in this embedded device...; March 3, 2010 at 7:01 PM
Anonymous said...: Uh...was it just me, or was this post vaguely constructive?

I didn't come here for slightly positive encouragement to build something, I came here to be belittled!

Or to quote, "I came here for an argument!"; March 3, 2010 at 8:10 PM
Anonymous said...: Freetards,

Ogg is simply inferior to h.264. It doesn't matter how open it is. You don't choose obsolete technology as your standard.

For those of you who think that Google is on your side, it will be interesting to see whether Google -- which makes the bulk of its revenue on your backs, with a custom Linux distro on its servers -- gives anything back to "the community". Why don't they license h.264 for you? Answer: Because they don't give a damn about any of you. You're proles. Stop complaining, and keep writing open sores code for them...; March 3, 2010 at 8:14 PM
Anonymous said...: Ogg is a stupid container format. Vorbis, the audio format that goes into it, is an AWESOME audio format.; March 3, 2010 at 8:32 PM
Anonymous said...: maybe that has something to do with the complete and utter failure of Ogg/Vorbis in the marketplace of ideas???

I've concluded that among the many things that makes FOSS suck, the most important has to be the way everything in FOSS develops so slooooowly. FOSS identifies a problem, comes up with a solution, then tinkers away at that solution until several years later, when they roll out a half-working beta. Meanwhile, commercial vendors solved the problem years ago and have already jumped a couple generations ahead of FOSS. So FOSS starts hacking and patching the barely-beta version to compete with the new world (which turns it into unusable shit) and FOSS advocates start pretending that the last decade didn't happen. Eventually, it all gets junked, and a new project is created, with a completion time somewhere in the next decade, which will be similarly obsolete when (and if) it ever gets finished.

There are lots of examples - Ogg being bypassed by h.264 and unsupported by most media players is a good one, but so is the whole idea of desktop linux (Problem: Windows 9x crashes a lot and is really buggy and expensive. Solution: build a bulletproof GUI on top of rock-solid reliable linux. Failure: it still hasn't happened, even though MS has shipped four replacements for 9x (2k/XP/Vista/7) and solved most of the problems. Hell, the funniest version was ReactOS, which spent a dozen years trying to replicate 2K (and later, XP) only to give up once 2K and XP were EOLed and they still hadn't finished their project. Now they're doing some kind of WINE shell thing, which I'm sure will be finished just after the Win32 API is finally retired for good. Or Gnash delivering more-or-less compete compatibility with Flash 7 - when the rest of the world and the web has moved on to Flash 10.

Starting from behind + moving target + a development methodology that's slower than your competitors' = FAIL.

Something I've noticed in the writing of a lot of freetards - that there's something just so unfair about how fast commercial companies improve their products and ship newer, better versions of everything. Stop releasing better products! How can we drive you all out of business if you don't slow down and let us catch up!; March 3, 2010 at 8:43 PM
Anonymous said...: Ogg is a stupid container format. Vorbis, the audio format that goes into it, is an AWESOME audio format.

Ahahahaha, I'm surprised it took 25 posts before some freetard broke out the semantics argument. This is like arguing that the linux only describes the linux KERNEL, so all the problems you have with sound and X and drivers and printing and everything can't really be said to be linux problems at all.

It doesn't matter, freetard. It's a giant festering pile of failure all the way down. Whether the sound format or the sound container format is to blame is of no consequence to the end user. It's just they don't have to deal with because other, better, and more widely-supported formats are around - which is why Ogg/whatever has about a 0.1% share of the media market.

But do go on and give us the "it's a CONTAINER format" dance. I'm sure splitting that particular hair will make everything allllll better for Ogg and open source media formats.; March 3, 2010 at 8:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Way to go dude, bend over for ze mann.
IPOD! WORSHIP!
PMP market is dying, news at eleven.

Too bad he's right. the iPod is so ubiquitous, if it won't play on it, it may as well not exist since the average consumer will just assume the file is broken.

Can't handle the fact that normal people actually want to listen to their music rather than fuck around with formats? Too bad.; March 3, 2010 at 8:57 PM
Anonymous said...: Ogg is a stupid container format. Vorbis, the audio format that goes into it, is an AWESOME audio format.

Nobody cares. Explaining what it is doesn't make it magically better. No normal person knows what an ogg file is, but even my dad knows what an mp3 file is.

The very fact that there's all these container formats just confuses the situation.; March 3, 2010 at 9:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Starting from behind + moving target + a development methodology that's slower than your competitors' = FAIL.

I think you just nailed it. That's why, with few exceptions, the only successful foss projects are those that arn't a "me too" open source version of something proprietary.

JQuery is a good example of this. Sure, other Javascript frameworks existed, but it wasn't trying to be "yet another Prototype". It had a singular focus and goal different from Prototype that wasn't just "let's make a free version" since Prototype was already open source.

At no time has Ogg/Vorbis/Theora every claimed a singular goal of "better quality as smaller file sizes". Instead they're basically branded as "the open source alternative" to their superior proprietary counterparts.; March 3, 2010 at 9:07 PM
TheWHAMBurglar said...: "Starting from behind + moving target + a development methodology that's slower than your competitors' = FAIL."

Holy crap, they should call this the LinuxFailureFormula(TM)!; March 3, 2010 at 9:26 PM
TheWHAMBurglar said...: @March 3, 2010 8:43 PM

Pleas give me your name so that I may credit you for your wit!; March 3, 2010 at 9:28 PM
Anonymous said...: No name - it's an open source observation. It's free as in, you know, free.; March 3, 2010 at 9:34 PM
TheWHAMBurglar said...: Well, here is a TM in your honor:

http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/linuxfailureformula/

Thank you for your effort though.; March 3, 2010 at 9:37 PM
Anonymous said...: GIMP is another good example. It took them more than a decade to deliver a half-working clone of Photoshop 3.0. Meanwhile, Photoshop is up to version 14 or something.

OpenOffice is yet another. A decade of hard work and they've got something that more or less matches the functionality of Office97 (as long as you don't try to do anything too demanding with it). Meanwhile, Office has gone through several new versions (2K/XP/03/07 and now 10) and added several new programs. Where's the OO equivalent of Sharepoint? Or Visio? Or Project? Or OneNote? Or Access? Or even Publisher?

FOSS is a decade late and a dollar short, as always.; March 3, 2010 at 9:55 PM
Anonymous said...: Well, here is a TM in your honor:

http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/linuxfailureformula/

Hehe, I put those text boxes on the right side of the Trademarks for a reason; to make it easy to copy and paste links into here!

LinuxFailureFormula(TM)

FixedThatForYou(TM); March 3, 2010 at 10:08 PM
Anonymous said...: Where's the OO equivalent of Sharepoint? Or Visio? Or Project? Or OneNote? Or Access? Or even Publisher?

Here's your open source Visio.

(Please note the obligatory xterm open in the background at all times); March 3, 2010 at 10:10 PM
Anonymous said...: I've concluded that among the many things that makes FOSS suck, the most important has to be the way everything in FOSS develops so slooooowly. FOSS identifies a problem, comes up with a solution, then tinkers away at that solution until several years later, when they roll out a half-working beta. Meanwhile, commercial vendors solved the problem years ago and have already jumped a couple generations ahead of FOSS. So FOSS starts hacking and patching the barely-beta version to compete with the new world (which turns it into unusable shit) and FOSS advocates start pretending that the last decade didn't happen. Eventually, it all gets junked, and a new project is created, with a completion time somewhere in the next decade, which will be similarly obsolete when (and if) it ever gets finished.

This is a very good observation.

Here are some points that I'd like to add:

1) Linux doesn't have the commercial applications Windows does; therefore FOSS "Me-too" apps have to be developed in order to fill the functionality gap.

You cannot be really innovative until the features are at least at parity with the commercial counterparts. However, as you mention FOSS is always playing catch up.

2) The reason FOSS cannot keep up is simply due to a shortage of developers. It is said that for every thousand *nix users there is one FOSS developer that contributes to a useful project. Writing bash scripts doesn't count nor does writing distro-specific admin tools/control centers.; March 3, 2010 at 10:14 PM
TheWHAMBurglar said...: @March 3, 2010 10:14 PM

"2) The reason FOSS cannot keep up is simply due to a shortage of developers. It is said that for every thousand *nix users there is one FOSS developer that contributes to a useful project. Writing bash scripts doesn't count nor does writing distro-specific admin tools/control centers."

What exactly is going to draw those developers? Money is out of the question for FOSS; March 3, 2010 at 10:23 PM
Anonymous said...: What exactly is going to draw those developers? Money is out of the question for FOSS

This is a complicated question.

What are the incentives to work hard in a communist country when the government grants equal wages and benefits to everyone, regardless of their personal achievements?

In reality the most successful FOSS projects typically have a commercial backing or a steady stream of donation income. Project managers pay certain skilled FOSS developers to encourage them to keep contributing.; March 3, 2010 at 10:39 PM
Anonymous said...: What exactly is going to draw those developers? Money is out of the question for FOSS

FOSS is driven by ego, Eric S. Raymond's blog is a good indication of this.

However, being paid in pats on the back soon leads to a quasi-addiction for some. They need their ego to be stroked constantly or they lose interest or get mad if someone is critical of their work.; March 3, 2010 at 10:49 PM
Anonymous said...: You cannot be really innovative until the features are at least at parity with the commercial counterparts. However, as you mention FOSS is always playing catch up.

What's silly is in their vain attempts to topple the proprietary giants, they totally ignore tonnes of little niches that could use less uber software.

Rather than trying to meet feature parity of the big boys, creating smaller, more focused apps that cater to smaller groups with specific needs.

Look at Paint.NET, look at iPhone apps, hell, look at iMovie/MovieMaker, etc. Most of these have big sister counterparts used by professionals, but these apps fill the niche for the non-professional which is often a much greater market!

The FOSS community, especially on the Linux front, largely ignore this segment. Because they're so ego-driven, they want to land the big fish, not a net full of smaller ones.; March 3, 2010 at 10:56 PM
Anonymous said...: I've concluded that among the many things that makes FOSS suck, the most important has to be the way everything in FOSS develops so slooooowly.

I think braindead design and/or the oxymoron "evolutionary design" is as much to blame, especially since none of these guys know when to cut their losses. Just look at all the audio APIs and window managers.

Anyway, a lot of people forget that there was actually a decent amount of interest in OGG/Vorbis early on, but no one wanted to support it due to the enormous hardware costs. When MP3 decoders were being built essentially out of logic, OGG/Vorbis required not only a CPU, but an FPU! Somewhere along the line Xiph provided a fixed point decoder, which helped somewhat, but I always got the impression that it was a "Here you go now stop bugging me" thing that was promptly abandoned after its release.; March 3, 2010 at 11:00 PM
TheWHAMBurglar said...: This is a complicated question.

What are the incentives to work hard in a communist country when the government grants equal wages and benefits to everyone,
@March 3, 2010 10:39 PM

A Command Economy is not the model that FOSS uses. Hence, a generalization can not be made.

"In reality the most successful FOSS projects typically have a commercial backing or a steady stream of donation income. Project managers pay certain skilled FOSS developers to encourage them to keep contributing."

Exactly a constant source of revenue is needed to retain FOSS developers. Coders have to eat and what not.; March 3, 2010 at 11:04 PM
LIV2 said...: "Nice post brotha, reminds me of the next battle, html5 vs flash/h.264."

You're a Moron

HTML5 IS h.264 unless you're using a freetard browser which is built to support OGG instead. the war will be
HTML5 OGG VS H.264
then HTML5 H.264 vs Flash; March 3, 2010 at 11:04 PM
Anonymous said...: ITT: people who couldn't ABX Vorbis at -3 raging needlessly.; March 3, 2010 at 11:04 PM
Anonymous said...: Whether the sound format or the sound container format is to blame is of no consequence to the end user.

Especially since we already have AAC. While one of the Vorbis forks may be "comparable" to AAC, it never supersedes it in any credible double blind listening test. Given the support headaches it's just not worth it. MP3 and AAC encoders don't cost $300 anymore; they're included with major media players! Hell, Nero gives its AAC encoder away free of charge, and, from what I understand, it's actually the best lossy encoder, period. If that weren't enough, AAC is most commonly packaged in MP4, which is a way better format than OGG.; March 3, 2010 at 11:08 PM
Anonymous said...: A decade of hard work and they've got something that more or less matches the functionality of Office97 (as long as you don't try to do anything too demanding with it).

Or attempt to launch their non-existent equivalents of Outlook, Access, or Publisher.; March 3, 2010 at 11:11 PM
TheWHAMBurglar said...: @March 3, 2010 11:04 PM

Y.O.S.P.O.S., Bitch?; March 3, 2010 at 11:11 PM
Anonymous said...: (Please note the obligatory xterm open in the background at all times)

He loses points for not making it transparent and part of his background 'n stuff. Plus over 9000 system status widgets with ever so useful information like how many half open TCP sockets there are, cache misses, and context switches.; March 3, 2010 at 11:15 PM
Anonymous said...: Rather than trying to meet feature parity of the big boys, creating smaller, more focused apps that cater to smaller groups with specific needs.

Sounds logical, but designing these apps can actually be harder. Everyone pretty much knows what a web browser or word processor should look like, but what about which features to take out of Final Cut for iMovie? The loonz will always cry foul, but simplicity is in the novice's/specialist's best interests. In order to accomplish something like this, you either need to already be an expert in the field or--good god no!--accept feedback from designers and end users.; March 3, 2010 at 11:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Vorbis is pretty easy to ABX on anything with good stereo separation. It's actually downright embarrassing how destructive its buggy stereo coupling can be. People trash MP3 for its incurable ringing and pre-echo problems, but they're way preferable to Vorbis' stereo problems.

However, I haven't checked in on Vorbis in the last 12 months or so, so they might have fixed that (doubt it). And I mean a fix besides "just use -q 6 hurr". If I wanted 200 kbps files I'd just stick with MP3.; March 3, 2010 at 11:33 PM
Anonymous said...: Now I know why blogger fails so often on LHB.

Blogger has a page where "Interesting and noteworthy Blogger-powered blogs, compiled by the Blogger Team" are listed.

OK, I haven't looked on all of them, but I haven't found a blog on the list where thousands of comments are generated.

look for yourself

Blogger seems to be made only for a few hundred comments at max.; March 4, 2010 at 12:14 AM
Anonymous said...: Sounds logical, but designing these apps can actually be harder. Everyone pretty much knows what a web browser or word processor should look like, but what about which features to take out of Final Cut for iMovie?

I know, that's the other side of the ego coin; laziness. Rather than put effort towards the actual idea, the butthurt coders like Eric S. Raymond just start copying. They're not interesting in making something good, just something free that gives them the opportunity to code.

What's funny is if they actually DID invest the effort into coming up with a focused, cohesive idea, the actual coding would be minimal and the project would be really popular. However, that doesn't fully satisfy their ego since writing the code itself wasn't a challenge.

In other words, they have no perspective. What good is a challenging problem if you solve 90% of it outside the source code!; March 4, 2010 at 12:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Interesting, no paging bugs mentioned there:

http://status.blogger.com/; March 4, 2010 at 12:19 AM
Anonymous said...: It'll kill whatever browsers don't support both. Ogg was pushed as hard as possible by the FOSS community and it went nowhere. Browsers that don't support H264 will essentially die if/when YouTube switches to the HTML5 tag running H264.

Also, too bad Flash already supports H264 and Google is already using it. Adobe made a good point on one of their blogs stating that the amount of compositing you have to do in a tag versus a plugin is the same amount. HTML5's video tag still have convert form YUV to RGB, just like Flash, and it has to composite with the rest of the elements on the page, just like Flash.; March 4, 2010 at 12:25 AM
Anonymous said...: the butthurt coders like Eric S. Raymond just start copying. They're not interesting in making something good, just something free that gives them the opportunity to code.

Actually, esr wants to fight back the proprietary software companies, they took his virginity against his will after all.

His dream is that they will go all bankrupt. So, HE IS interested in making good apps to fight back against his former violators, he just sucks at it.; March 4, 2010 at 12:25 AM
TM Repository said...: His dream is that they will go all bankrupt. So, HE IS interested in making good apps to fight back against his former violators, he just sucks at it.

I don't think he cares how it happens, just that it does. He's doing a marginally better job with his FUD and propaganda campaigns than with his software offerings.

Much like RMS, he seems only interested in getting free alternatives out there, not necessarily good ones. They both appear to believe that people will want it over the proprietary version just because its free, with no regard for quality.

just read all the shit storms about ESR's FetchMail software.; March 4, 2010 at 12:30 AM
Anonymous said...: He's doing a marginally better job with his FUD and propaganda campaigns than with his software offerings.

Marginally? WRONG. He is Microsoft's worst nightmare!

esr in his own words:

If you had bothered to do five seconds of background checking, you
might have discovered that I am the guy who responded to Craig
Mundie's "Who are you?" with "I'm your worst nightmare", and that I've
in fact been something pretty close to your company's worst nightmare
since about 1997. You've maybe heard about this "open source" thing?
You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it
and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in.
But don't think I'm trying to destroy your company. Oh, no; I'd be
just as determined to do in any other proprietary-software monopoly,
and the community I helped found is well on its way to accomplishing
that goal.
On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be
heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but
develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone
will go superconductive.
But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On
that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft's
grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you.
Cordially yours,
Eric S. Raymond

source; March 4, 2010 at 12:35 AM
TM Repository said...: "I'm your worst nightmare", and that I've in fact been something pretty close to your company's worst nightmare since about 1997.

So he joins the FOSS movement and two years later Linux has all but ground to a halt? Coincidence?

His "i'm your worst nightmare" remark becomes even more laughable when you see it in this context:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDP8zru0FPE

Eric S. Raymond thinks he's Batman. A bureaucratic corporation, er, I mean "proprietary software" killed his parents and now he's cleaning up the streets of Gotham with his trusty GNUtility belt!; March 4, 2010 at 12:41 AM
TM Repository said...: Sorry, linked for your convenience:

I'm (batman) your worst nightmare; March 4, 2010 at 12:48 AM
Anonymous said...: What do you guys think about Roy Schestowitz?

Now the FOSS world is full of loonies, but Roy is on the way to become the loon king. He could even surpass Stallman in the future.

He even suggested that Microsoft had something to do with Hans Reiser's murder case, even rms didn't come up with something like that.

And Schestowitz is one of the biggest usenet spammers, too.

What drives a young guy like Roy to such lunacy?

I am usually not a Microsoft conspiracy theorist, but reading the MEGA loony boycottnovell, one could almost think it is a Microsoft operation to make FOSSies look bad.; March 4, 2010 at 12:53 AM
Anonymous said...: Roy has been one of the most active loonz for a long time. A student4life activist who has serious paranoia issues. He seems to be obsessed with taking down Microsoft and Novell. Not surprisingly he isn't studying computers. He'd probably be with Earth First or some other loony group if he didn't discover the GPL cult.; March 4, 2010 at 1:05 AM
Anonymous said...: Roy has perfected the "M$" spelling:

"M¥¢ro$o£t Window$"

from roy's site; March 4, 2010 at 1:12 AM
Anonymous said...: ugh, sorry, here is the correct

link; March 4, 2010 at 1:16 AM
Anonymous said...: Speaking of Schestowitz, I love his graphic here:

click

C/C++ is exclusively on the FOSS side there. What does that mean? Only Fossies use c++?; March 4, 2010 at 1:27 AM
Anonymous said...: Enjoy.

Chavs - In me Burberry; March 4, 2010 at 1:57 AM
Anonymous said...: And i who always assumed that Mans was the linux hater! heres teh proofs!; March 4, 2010 at 3:33 AM
Anonymous said...: I just realized that the sentence "ogg isn't bad.." becomes "ogg isn't dead, just resting" when moving the mouse cursor on it.

Probably LH learned longphpcodeZ to do that?

imengsti: UbuntuAngst(TM), I am angsty; March 4, 2010 at 4:14 AM
Anonymous said...: Ogg is simply inferior to h.264. It doesn't matter how open it is. You don't choose obsolete technology as your standard.

JPEG is simply inferior to JPEG 2000. It doesn't matter how open it is. You don't choose obsolete technology as your standard.; March 4, 2010 at 5:49 AM
Anonymous said...: Andrew Laignel has a pretty good new post over at his blog: http://piestar.net/2010/03/04/ubuntu-rebrand

He is talking about how Ubuntu's new visual refresh is kindof shitty.; March 4, 2010 at 6:21 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 3, 2010 11:11 PM

I deal with Access on a daily basis, and I call it MS Suck Access, and it is undoubtedly better than whatever the linux alternative is, and it is probably one of the nicest "easy to use" query and report interfaces.

But right now my whole reason for existing is that people make these deep applications in Access, and they all start to break as they age, and then they call me to make them a SQL Server version of their application.

Buy anyhow, what I am trying to say is that Access looks much nicer than it actually is, and it works great, but if your application has more than one or two database tables, and is going to be used by more than a single person, consider a more robust database solution... Because Access seems to be loaded with heisenbugs, where your data just disappears, not much just a row here and there, and only when you are not looking for it.

Also, I don't want to sound like Ohio Ham with paranoid accusations, I am just saying, if you end up using Access at work CYA.

For example, right now I am debugging a web application that is losing user logon credentials, but only when I am not looking at it...; March 4, 2010 at 6:35 AM
Anonymous said...: Nice. Microsoft software tends to be pretty shitty.; March 4, 2010 at 6:56 AM
Anonymous said...: It seems that "rewriting shitty apps" is a typical software developer job. To the point where I am not sure there are that many people employed actually writing new things.; March 4, 2010 at 6:59 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 6:56 AM

Please go make a simple one or two table database with a data entry screen, some custom validation, and couple different reports on OO Base, and use it daily for six months and get back with me on how much Access sucks;)

Better yet, you need a TPS report, and you need it yesterday, please tell me what you would use as a tool in the fosstard world. I would love to know;)

It would seem the first step to be critical of how much a MS application sucks, is finding a foss version of same that doesn't suck worse.; March 4, 2010 at 7:06 AM
Anonymous said...: @ March 4, 2010 7:06 AM

Your point is that because OOo Base sucks (I can't confirm this, I've never used), Access magically doesn't suck? Way to expose yourself as a typical Winbred.; March 4, 2010 at 7:14 AM
Declination said...: YesButLookAtWindows(TM)

Please try again.; March 4, 2010 at 7:18 AM
Anonymous said...: ButLookAtWindows(tm) is actually valid. Unless there is some kind of Jesus OS that has no problems, I'm going to evidently have to decide what shit OS I'll have to deal with. Thus I'd have to make comparisons.

However, the winbred contention of:
ReviewSomethingWithoutEverUsingIt(tm) is really not valid.; March 4, 2010 at 7:24 AM
Okiemute said...: Dude, how I love your blog. You just keep hitting the nail on the head. Kudos mate; March 4, 2010 at 7:32 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 7:14 AM

No. My contention is that OO Base doesn't work at all.

I encourage you to try the minimal task that I suggested, and eagerly await your review.; March 4, 2010 at 7:50 AM
Declination said...: No its ButLookAtX(TM) is never valid. You cannot excuse the deficiencies of something by pointing out deficiencies in something else. It doesn't work that way.; March 4, 2010 at 7:54 AM
Anonymous said...: @ March 4, 2010 7:50 AM

I'll give it a go.; March 4, 2010 at 8:07 AM
Anonymous said...: Okay so I made a OO Base DB with three tables and added some bullshit into them. What is suppose to happen now?; March 4, 2010 at 8:14 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 3, 2010 3:29 PM

Has anyone informed google about all the paging bugs by the way? Maybe the didn't notice it.

I actually took the trouble to track down the relevant "contact us" page and point the problem out.

It's very, very difficult to find, and when you leave a (polite!) message, they don't get back to you. A year later, and the problem is still there. Blogger's paging even seems to have degraded somewhat.

It's a paradigm for something. Let me see. Got it! LHBRunsOnLinux(TM)...; March 4, 2010 at 8:31 AM
Anonymous said...: What good is a challenging problem if you solve 90% of it outside the source code!

That's why the rest of us bring home the bread: we don't care about "coding", we like to solve problems.; March 4, 2010 at 8:39 AM
Dr Loser said...: Staggering lack of reading comprehension by SVJN on that link (which is here, btw).

"Over the past several years, the Company has attempted to diversify away from its legacy division with a series of acquisitions and changes in strategic focus that have largely been unsuccessful" -- makes no sense what-so-ever. For starters what legacy divisions is this talking about? Ironically, NetWare, which made Novell a networking power in the 1980s, comes to its end of general support on March 7th. Novell's past is dead and buried. Its future, as a real company, lies in Linux and cloud computing.

Well, yes, Steven, NetWare probably is the legacy divisions they're talking about. They never claimed that NetWare is the future. Read the quote again, only this time without moving your lips and making "choo choo" noises. (Thanks to Steve Yegge for that one.)

SJVN, tech strategist extraordinaire, is at it again. It's that "MySQL will be a great acquisition for Sun" guff all over again, only with the unspecified chewy goodiness of Linux and Cloud Computing. I mean, it's not as if hedge funds throw a couple of billion at a company in the fond hope of making a whacking great loss, is it? They might just have run a finger down the financials...

I'm not sure which is worse for Novell: an unsolicited bid, or SJVN's unsolicited ignorance.; March 4, 2010 at 8:44 AM
Dr Loser said...: Talking of SJVN, did anybody notice his wild tantrum over a cross-licencing deal between Amazon and Microsoft?

Does SJVN buy auto insurance, or does he feel that doing so is morally indefensible, because it only encourages insurance companies?

Still, at least it'll give Mr Schestowitz something to fulminate about when Novell finally bites the big twinkie in the sky.

BoycottAmazon has a nice populist feel to it.; March 4, 2010 at 9:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Meh at all this OOo hating.

OxygenOffice Professional and Go-OO are enhanced versions of OOo that offer things like VBA macros and better multimedia support.

http://go-oo.org/discover/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop/

They fit the average end-users needs. Maybe not a business that wants sharepoint, though.; March 4, 2010 at 9:39 AM
Anonymous said...: This is another excellent post from the Linux Hater, but the comment quality from his fans continues to be dismal. Looking at the occassional troubles that blogger seems to have, it's almost like blogger is telling the wintards something.

If Linux stayed just an alternative to the illegal monopoly, it would have stood a better chance of succeeding. There are a lot of supporters for the underdog in any endevor.

Though the open source nature of Linux continues to be a 'good thing' (in the sense of making the knowledge available freely to everyone), the lintards have allowed themselves to be distracted into all kinds of side issues. The whole issue of supporting junk formats just because they are open goes against the hacker values. Hackers are supposed to reject the solutions that are technically inferior. Instead, we have the Linux bums embracing and promoting technology that is doomed to failure.; March 4, 2010 at 9:44 AM
Anonymous said...: I would suggest using SQL Server Express if you nee something more than Access, but not enough complex to run the full SQL Server.

Many of my clients are using old VB apps based on Access databases (regularly updated since Windows 3.11). It's a miracle that it even works over the network, but as far as I know they never had any data loss with that single 4Gb+ file. In any case, it's none of my business as I have a different contract with them and the company behind that software is already rewriting it (that means they'll probably release the new version in 5 years or so at the current pace).

As for me, I'm planning to use SQL Server Express 2008 to add more features to a current product. It will need to scale from small to medium businesses, and it's better to have an easy migration path from Express to full if and when it's needed.

Anyone knows if it's possible to migrate completely Access MDBs to OO Base, and if not how much functionality will be lost? I'm not interested in VBA or macro, just the basic functionality.; March 4, 2010 at 10:13 AM
Anonymous said...: I just realized that the sentence "ogg isn't bad.." becomes "ogg isn't dead, just resting" when moving the mouse cursor on it.

LOL, good catch. Funniest part is that with all the "engineering", marketing, FUD, and whatnot, OGG proliferation is only modestly ahead of Musepack, a format created in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the resources. Even though Musepack has been effectively dead since the mid-2000s (due to the weekend warrior coder one-man-show losing interest), it's still in the ballpark quality wise. Oh, and hardware support? Since OGG compatibility is pretty much restricted to "audiophile" devices, they generally offer Musepack as well (along with FLAC, etc.). And, unlike OGG, there were no massive campaigns and petitions to get Musepack supported. Audio snobs saw something they liked and manufacturers built a niche market around it.; March 4, 2010 at 10:15 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 4, 2010 9:44 AM

High quality comment right there, Queeflet!

(1) Learn to read
(2) Learn to write
(3) Understand legal terms like "illegal monopoly"
(4) Learn to quantify vague terms like "good thing." (Free access to source code doesn't cut it.) Or "hacker values," for that matter.
(5) Contribute to FOSS if you want to make it better
(6) Bugger off; March 4, 2010 at 10:16 AM
Anonymous said...: JPEG is simply inferior to JPEG 2000. It doesn't matter how open it is. You don't choose obsolete technology as your standard.

Is this true? I understood JPEG2000 to be underwhelming in the general case and useful only in specific scenarios. Most of its "killer features" seem to be stuff that's been built in the image processing level since forever. JPEG2000 seems like something that would have been cool had it coincided with the dawn of the consumer Internet (1994-5) Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, JPEG2000 is, at best, an incremental upgrade over the original. The difference between H.264 and Theora is staggering. H.264 is basically a 100% improvement in quality and several orders of magnitude greater in existing decoder proliferation, both in hardware and software.; March 4, 2010 at 10:20 AM
Anonymous said...: Check it out... a JPEG image viewer for the Commodore 64.

Juddpeg:

http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/jpeg/

Oh BTW, JPEG sucks... lossless PNG rules my world.; March 4, 2010 at 10:26 AM
Anonymous said...: TMRepositoryGuy(TM), please include 7:24am's TM, "ReviewSomethingWithoutEverUsingIt(tm)"

I know someone who I need to refer that one too; he rails against "M$" and "Windoze" and talks all kinds of nonsense about IRQ problems and BSODS.

When I called him out on it by asking "IRQ conflicts? What are you running, Windows 98?" and informed him that that is in now way representative of modern Windows, his response was "What's wrong with 98?"

You also have Thomas B, saying that Windows is "slow and unstable".

We also need a TM which conveys "It's not Windows' fault that it won't run on your Pentium 166 RenderStation"; March 4, 2010 at 10:31 AM
Anonymous said...: ^

"...in no way..."; March 4, 2010 at 10:32 AM
Anonymous said...: JPEG is simply inferior to JPEG 2000. It doesn't matter how open it is. You don't choose obsolete technology as your standard.

Too bad most digital cameras shoot Raw or Jpeg!

And the web primarily uses PNGs these days. Jpeg is only useful for photographic content on sites, not the actual layouts anymore.; March 4, 2010 at 10:33 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 4, 2010 9:39 AM

It isn't OOo hating. I expect that I'm a pretty typical OOo user. It's nice to have bare-bones Word compatibility when you're working on a Linux workstation attached to a Sun server. (You can always clean the document up later, in Word.) It's OK by me if the boss wants to save licencing costs by slinging OOo on Windows, and it only takes me 10% more time dealing with OOo peculiarities and rubbishy support for bullet lists. (It's mildly aggravating, but I don't hate it.) A real advance (yea, better even than Word) would be a sensible bundling of templates for reports, memos, resumes, etc. But that will never happen.

The Excel clone is pretty good, too. What PowerPoint and Access are doing in there, I don't know. Bundles were all the rage in the 1990s, and VBA at least made some sense out of the concept, but now? Really. What's the point?

OxygenOffice Professional and Go-OO are enhanced versions of OOo that offer things like VBA macros and better multimedia support.

And there we see the Linux Desktop in all its full glory.

Customer: I'd like a word processor, please.
Evangelist: I've got just the thing: OOo!
Customer: Is it roughly as good as Word?
Evangelist: Well, not out of the box. But we have enhancements!
Customer: I don't want plastic surgery. I just want a word processor.
Evangelist: But Microsoft only offer you a single product. We offer you choice!
Customer: If I want choice, I go down the supermarket. Right now, I want a word processor.
Evangelist: You need enhancements! Finding enhancements is good! Comparing different enhancements is a life-affirming thing! Choice makes you free!
Customer: No thanks, I'll just take Word. Actually, SoftMaker looks pretty decent, too. Let me know how that enhancement thing works out for you.; March 4, 2010 at 10:38 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 9:44 AM

“Looking at the occassional troubles that blogger seems to have, it's almost like blogger is telling the wintards something.”

“LHBRunsOnLinux™”:http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/lhbrunsonlinux/

“If Linux stayed just an alternative to the illegal monopoly…”

[citation needed]

“it would have stood a better chance of succeeding. There are a lot of supporters for the underdog in any endevor.”

[citation needed]

“Though the open source nature of Linux continues to be a 'good thing' (in the sense of making the knowledge available freely to everyone),”

Assuming you have the necessary education in computer science and can understand C. But hey “AllUsersAreDevelopers™”:http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/allusersaredevelopers/ right?

“they are open goes against the hacker values. Hackers are supposed to reject the solutions that are technically inferior.”

What exactly are these “hacker values” and do you speak for all hacker communities? If not do not try to represent them and STFU.; March 4, 2010 at 10:40 AM
Anonymous said...: bX-mvna2g

WTF.; March 4, 2010 at 10:49 AM
Anonymous said...: LHBRunsOnLinux; March 4, 2010 at 10:53 AM
Anonymous said...: It's funny how Adam Queef... err... snickerdouche talks about the hacker values when he would be laughed out of the room by the same hackers he refers to when he shows them that great uncompilable Hello World C programs he can write.; March 4, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Anonymous said...: OxygenOffice Professional and Go-OO are enhanced versions of OOo that offer things like VBA macros and better multimedia support.

And there we see the Linux Desktop in all its full glory.

Except you forgot to mention how OxygenOffice and Go-OO are available to Windows users as well.

Seriously... Linux not having any exclusive applications and limited support for Windows apps and games via Wine is the main reason nobody uses it. The fact that X11 has the reliability of Windows ME doesn't help either.; March 4, 2010 at 11:05 AM
Anonymous said...: Though the open source nature of Linux continues to be a 'good thing' (in the sense of making the knowledge available freely to everyone)

You realize that the source isn't knowledge, its the RESULT of knowledge. That would be like looking at the blueprints for the hadron collider and being able to glean physics knowledge from it. No, looking at source/blueprints only shows you the result of the knowledge of engineers and physicists, not the actual genius it took to come up with said blueprints.

This is the problem with holding source code in such high regard. Inevitably, source code will eventually become incompatible with newer systems or antiquated by newer languages, eventually forcing you to rewrite it anyways. What's important isn't the source itself, its the idea that spurred the source in the first place that matters.; March 4, 2010 at 11:06 AM
Anonymous said...: Hackers are supposed to reject the solutions that are technically inferior.

Bwahaha. Hackers aren't solution finders, they're tinkerers! The same way kids who pull apart their toys aren't engineers, they're just curious.; March 4, 2010 at 11:09 AM
Dr Loser said...: From SVJN, acting halfway sane for once.

"Well, while I can't claim to be a Windows performance expert, I can justifiably claim to be an operating system expert."

Posted just for the LOLZ.; March 4, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 4, 2010 11:05 AM

My bad. I'll try to avoid jokes in future.; March 4, 2010 at 11:12 AM
Anonymous said...: I am trying to say is that Access looks much nicer than it actually is, and it works great, but if your application has more than one or two database tables, and is going to be used by more than a single person, consider a more robust database solution

No argument here, but, fact is, people want it and use it. I hate fixing Access stuff, too, and even Microsoft wants to be done with it. Look on the bright side, it's better than, "My database as an Excel sheet is broken and I've never backed it up! What do I do?!"; March 4, 2010 at 11:16 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 4, 2010 11:06 AM

Actually, that's darned fine thinking.

I mean, has RMS ever released his notebooks, post-its, greasy napkins and back-of-the-envelope work to the public?

And if not, why not?

Is this some unspeakable crime against freedom and humanity?

What use is the GPL if the real source is denied to the starving masses?

(I'm sorry. I promised to lay off jokes.); March 4, 2010 at 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...: Ironically, NetWare, which made Novell a networking power in the 1980s, comes to its end of general support on March 7th.

I try not to be a snob over the rampant misuse of "ironic" like some, but this case is particularly silly. How is ending life of a 25+ year product with its roots in DOS and pre-TCP/IP networking "ironic"? Was Microsoft ending support for Xenix and DOS ironic? They were the most successful products in their respective classes at the time, too. Windows 9x? Fact is, stuff gets old and you retire it. Only in FOSS land do people literally expect software to be supported forever, no matter how silly and useless of an idea that may be.; March 4, 2010 at 11:22 AM
Anonymous said...: This is another excellent post from the Linux Hater, but the comment quality from his fans continues to be dismal.

I would actually say the opposite. His post mostly pointed out another, which is typical in blogging. I come here for the comments.

If Linux stayed just an alternative to the illegal monopoly, it would have stood a better chance of succeeding. There are a lot of supporters for the underdog in any endevor.

Linux has always been an alternative on the desktop, but a lousy one. Linux has had plenty of underdog support as well. But at this point there is something clearly wrong with the team that can't be helped by cheering fans.

Just about everyone here was at one point a cheering fan. We were all misled into believing that basement hack0rz of the world would turn this thing into a viable desktop. Who 10 years ago ever imagined that the sound would still be an issue?

As I said here before I can't believe MS can charge over a grand for their high end version of Server 2008. Everyone thought for sure that Linux would at least kill off server profits.

It's 2010 and I would still tell a small business owner to stay the hell away from Linux. The potential problems are not worth the license savings. Not having to fuck with Samba is easily worth $1000 to the typical small business.; March 4, 2010 at 11:29 AM
Anonymous said...: His post mostly pointed out another, which is typical in blogging. I come here for the comments.

So do I, now, but I miss the days when he wrote actual content.

: ^ /; March 4, 2010 at 11:38 AM
Anonymous said...: For small businesses we usually offer low-end tower servers, and OEM versions of Windows Server (as we are authorized to sell OEM products).

A typical offer is a) HP ML110 G5/6 (depends on availability), b) Windows Server 2008 Standard. 900-1000€ (incl. taxes and setup). Such an offer "just works" in existing environments, and is a really small cost. With Linux even a small business would need an expert to fix things (especially if users do strange stuff), waste time when something doesn't work or even for the initial setup. The Windows solution may seem pricy to the basement dweller, but in fact spending 1000€ once and get a system that coul last years without being touched (or with minimal maintenance from anyone with a good manual at hand) has a greater value than anything Linux can offer.; March 4, 2010 at 11:57 AM
Anonymous said...: Exactly. My dad being able to administrate the server at his practice must really make the lintards' blood boil.

How dare someone outside their guild of elite admins do administrative tasks on their own! You think my dad really wants to hire an IT guy for his office of 4 staff?; March 4, 2010 at 12:34 PM
Dr Loser said...: Courtesy of PieStar, this:

We adopted a style based on the tagline “Linux for Human Beings”, and called it “Human”.

Nice take on Genesis, there. It rather explains the persistent theme of "brown."

Since then, they've been through Warthogs, Hedgehogs, Badgers, Drakes, Efts(???), Fauns, Gibbons, Herons, Ibexes, Jackalopes, Koalas and Lynxes.

Perhaps they should try invertebrates next. Apparently, all that vertebrates do is to stand up, get a bit of backbone, and tell them to piss off.

(Gen. 2:7-8) Then Mark Shuttleworth formed Desktop of dust from the ground, and breathed into its kernel the Theme of life; and Desktop became Humanity To Others. And Mark Shuttleworth planted a holding company toward the east, on the Isle of Man; and there He placed the desktop whom He had deformed.

I may have some of the details wrong there; I'm rubbish at translating from the original Hebrew. Also, whois doesn't seem to work that well. Is there something that Canonical wishes to hide from us?; March 4, 2010 at 12:46 PM
Dr Loser said...: Visually, light is beautiful, light is ethereal, light brings clarity and comfort.

Tosh.

It's impossible to have "visuals" without light, so that's just silly.

Light is not beautiful, per se. A laser shone in your eyes is very far from beautiful. Solar eclipses are beautiful, in many ways, but it may come as a surprise to basement dwellers and marketroids that "light" is the very least of it.

Light is not "ethereal." Clearly this man has never encountered General Relativity, unless he bought into Alfred's bogus "explanation" in the 1920 paper(*).

Light does not bring clarity. Transparency brings clarity.

Light does not bring comfort. Try telling someone in Port-au-Prince that "it's OK. The light is still there."

Is this a cult, or what?

(*) I always thought that theories of the Ether were hammered by Einstein's work on black body radiation. Apparently the concept limped on for another twenty five years.

Well, you learn something every day. Sometimes you even learn from Lintards.; March 4, 2010 at 1:10 PM
Anonymous said...: What are the incentives to work hard in a communist country when the government grants equal wages and benefits to everyone, regardless of their personal achievements?

Your analogy falls apart when you compare FOSS to communism. If anything FOSS is far more similar to the Libertarian ideal free market than anything Marx and Engles thought up.

In Communism people could support themselves with a fair days work, in the Libertarian free market only the douchebags in management can support themselves because the work force is not paid.

Think of FOSS developers as the sweatshop laborers in Haiti that were paid $0.11/day by western corporations eating mud cakes to survive and having give up their children because they couldn't afford to feed them, but far less photo-hygienic and sympathetic, of course, due to the mental health issues that abound in FOSS developers. Now look at the companies selling the shit they code at a healthy profit.

OpenOffice/Star Office is the perfect example of this, a shitty program that wasn't making any money dumped onto the public with a license that idiots would code under for free that could then be repackaged and sold.

Inexpensive R&D and cheap labor are Libertarian ideals, not Communist.; March 4, 2010 at 2:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Linux has had plenty of underdog support as well. But at this point there is something clearly wrong with the team that can't be helped by cheering fans.

They got too caught up in the ideology, may be. Torvalds claims to be practical minded, but he doesn't do anything to accommodate the proprietary software people either. All the vendors seem to hate the Linux crowd, while the illegal monopoly (aka M$) continues to be everyone's darling.; March 4, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Anonymous said...: Ain't nothin' but a GCC thang, baybay. One loc'ed out compiler gone crayzay.; March 4, 2010 at 2:38 PM
Anonymous said...: I encourage all the wintards (you know who you are) to start getting used to the term 'illegal monopoly'.

Illegal monopoly.
Illegal monopoly.
Illegal monopoly.
...

Just repeat it until it starts rolling off your tongue. This kind of practice will enable you to stop jumping up and down like a frightened frog everytime somebody mentions that M$ is an illegal monopoly. You get desensitized and all, and it will start sounding like a compliment after a while.

Face it, once you decided to throw your support behind an unethical company (such as M$), you have got to get used to the insults.; March 4, 2010 at 3:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Face it, once you decided to throw your support behind an unethical company (such as M$), you have got to get used to the insults.

Meanwhile, the world moves on, Linux still sucks, and no one cares.

You can toss that Ubuntu CD with the Benetton-like people holding hands on the cover in the trash and join us in the real world, someday, if you so choose.; March 4, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Anonymous said...: Ogg is free. FREE. That's all that matters. Hell, I don't care if all my songs end up sounding like a hearing test when I convert them from SlaveryP3 format, as long as I am free. FREEDOM is what counts.; March 4, 2010 at 3:21 PM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 3:03 PM

Hey, "illegal monopoly" does have a nice ring to it, I bet convicted monopolists Intel and current under-investigation monopolists Google love the sound of it too!; March 4, 2010 at 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 2:38 PM

Hahaha, nice "Chronic" reference!; March 4, 2010 at 4:21 PM
Anonymous said...: Calling Microsoft an illegal monopoly on the day that Slashtards were openly slandering Microsoft and getting modded +5 is bold.; March 4, 2010 at 4:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Pretty weak post.; March 4, 2010 at 4:59 PM
Anonymous said...: Inexpensive R&D and cheap labor are Libertarian ideals, not Communist.

I think you’ve made a great point.

The drones that buy into the FOSS movement are buying into a communist like ideology, but they are too stupid to see that their idealism is being exploited by others not so concerned with software “freedom”.

I’d also add that this exploitation is not just a libertarian ideal, but it is also a conservative ideal.

Hell, I exploit these people. It’s not part of my ideology; it’s just part of my pragmatism. You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped. So, you might as well take advantage of them I guess. I wonder if this is how conmen think… Hmm… I’ve disturbed myself.; March 4, 2010 at 5:40 PM
Anonymous said...: Just about everyone here was at one point a cheering fan. We were all misled into believing that basement hack0rz of the world would turn this thing into a viable desktop.

I certainly didn’t hate Linux when it first appeared. I was hoping that it would do well. I only started hating it when the propaganda became more important than the damn operating system.

In fact, maybe I don’t really hate Linux itself. It’s just a symbol of a movement that I hate. And I only hate the movement, because their crap ideology has snuck into my job and has made my life hell. Their crap ideology and the crap ideologies that have spun off from it… like “Agile” development.

What we need in my country is another Red Scare. Only targeting FOSS and Agile people. It may be wrong, but it would be oh so satisfying.; March 4, 2010 at 5:58 PM
Anonymous said...: and the crap ideologies that have spun off from it… like “Agile” development.

What many of them consider "agile" isn't even real agile development. They think the bazaar model is agile, when really its just cowboy coding.

Agile development is heavily based on test driven development, clear refactoring paths, and continuous automated deployment.

Most FOSS project don't even write tests, so they fail to meet even the first step of agile development.; March 4, 2010 at 6:31 PM
TM Repository said...: Face it, once you decided to throw your support behind an unethical company (such as M$), you have got to get used to the insults.

Tell me how Microsoft manages to somehow be less ethical than IBM who's custom built computers helped the nazis handle the logistics of the holocaust.

How IBM helped the Nazis

Please explain how IBM, with REAL BLOOD on their hands is somehow more ethical than Microsoft? What custom software has Microsoft made to help organize a genocide?

Oh, wait, I forgot, IBM started an open source lab, I guess that absolves them. But wait, I guess CodePlex absolves Microsoft too then?; March 4, 2010 at 6:39 PM
TM Repository said...: Illegal monopoly.
Illegal monopoly.
Illegal monopoly.

If they're a monopoly then:

WHY CAN I BUY A MAC?
WHY CAN I BUY A MAC?
WHY CAN I BUY A MAC?

WHY CAN I INSTALL LINUX?
WHY CAN I INSTALL LINUX?
WHY CAN I INSTALL LINUX?; March 4, 2010 at 6:41 PM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 6:39 PM

I'm glad to see someone else bringing that up. I've brought up IBM's past here and at $JVN in the past and it's either ignored, or I'm accused of Godwining.

I then explain to the zealots that Godwin's Law is about Nazi comparisons and that it is not apropos since IBM actually worked with them. As usual, they have no comeback at that point.

I also told Thomas B (at Piestar) yesterday that he may want to look up Monsanto if he wants an "evil corporation" to rail against.

IBM and Monsanto have actively helped cause misery and suffering. Those people wouldn't give a damn about (non-existent) "software freedom".

InstallierenMachtFrei(TM); March 4, 2010 at 6:47 PM
Anonymous said...: In Communism people could support themselves with a fair days work

You mean like Holodomor and The Great Leap Forward? Or how about the mass starvations in North Korea?

Communism has been tried.....repeatedly....and with horrible results. It's basic assumptions are flawed just like Stallmanism.; March 4, 2010 at 7:07 PM
Anonymous said...: Yea the same people that tell you to not use Microsoft software because they have a monopoly will tell you to use Linux and swear with their mom's life that it is a valid alternative.

AT&T had a monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System

There was no fruit or penguin phone company that you could use as an alternative. It was AT&T or nothing.; March 4, 2010 at 7:12 PM
TM Repository said...: Yea the same people that tell you to not use Microsoft software because they have a monopoly will tell you to use Linux and swear with their mom's life that it is a valid alternative.

AT&T had a monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System

There was no fruit or penguin phone company that you could use as an alternative. It was AT&T or nothing.

Thank you! Mono means ONE! (and rail means rail)

The very existence of Linux makes it impossible for there to be a monopoly. This is assuming that SnickerDouche is talking about an OS monopoly, since MS makes other products too.

Even if he claims that Microsoft is a commercial entity Linux has no commercial impact, how does he explain the macbook sitting on my coffee table running OSX?

I'd also like to hear how buying something from Apple costs me a "Microsoft Tax".

Please, SnickerDouche, attempt to refute! I need a laugh.; March 4, 2010 at 7:44 PM
TM Repository said...: Communism has been tried.....repeatedly....and with horrible results.

Exactly. Its not so much a problem with the ideal as with human nature.

Regardless of what FOSStards want to believe, people are programmed to get the greatest reward for the least effort. That's how species survive. If this wasn't the case, they'd have no trouble paying for proprietary software!; March 4, 2010 at 7:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Ogg is free. FREE. That's all that matters. Hell, I don't care if all my songs end up sounding like a hearing test when I convert them from SlaveryP3 format, as long as I am free. FREEDOM is what counts.

While I'm writting this comment, I am listening "Voyager" by Daft Punk...

And no matter how I'm not free by listening in a acc format, I feel free.

When is about music, the quality matters more than the fucking format.; March 4, 2010 at 8:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Television. Rules the Nation.; March 4, 2010 at 9:17 PM
Anonymous said...: Also, no matter what you're putting into the format, it will invariably be less "free" than the format itself so ideological concerns over the format itself is kinda moot.; March 4, 2010 at 9:19 PM
Anonymous said...: I can't think of an instance where the industry had settled on a format then decided to make a lateral switch.; March 4, 2010 at 9:28 PM
TM Repository said...: Television. Rules the Nation.

Around the wooooorld.

Daft Punk - Alive 2007 - Television / Around the World

That was a good concert.; March 4, 2010 at 10:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Something else to hate Kanye West for: people believe he wrote Harder Better Faster Stronger and think the original is the ripoff, kinda like how freetards think Vista copied KDE.; March 4, 2010 at 10:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Neither communism nor capitalism work.

As many people here stated, there is no incentive with communism. In order to work, everyone would need to be on board and do their best even though they would receive no immediate benefit from doing so. There’s no way that can work. And it’s why the idiots that actually believe in it never hold on to power. They get killed off by people like Stalin.

The communist ideology is no different than religion; it is a great tool to control people. Tell them you are striving for an ideal or tell them you are trying to please a god. What’s the difference? Either way you get enough people on board that don’t realize they are being screwed and are happy enough to suppress the non-believers.

Capitalism doesn’t work because it’s every man for himself with everyone undermining each other. There is no way to get any big projects done with capitalism.

There has never been a fully fledged communist country or a fully fledged capitalist country. Even the worst of both always had mixed markets. Communism always had black markets. Communist regimes couldn’t survive without them. Capitalist countries always have had government directed projects. You couldn’t build infrastructure without it. Mixed markets work. It is the only thing that works. The trick is finding the balance of where the government ends and the free market begins and vice versa. Go too far in either direction and things start grinding to a halt. That is reality.; March 4, 2010 at 11:00 PM
TM Repository said...: Mixed markets work. It is the only thing that works. The trick is finding the balance of where the government ends and the free market begins and vice versa. Go too far in either direction and things start grinding to a halt. That is reality.

I agree. People have to stand on their own two feet, but a helping hand to get them up when they stumble is also a good thing.

To bring it back around to FOSS, I believe there is a place for it, however, it won't dominate the market. FOSS is best suited to experimentation and academia, people willing to take a risk without consequence. It's only when FOSS projects become depended on before they're ready that problems arise.; March 4, 2010 at 11:10 PM
Anonymous said...: "You down with OOP?" Hahaha, I wish I could say I invented that, but I didn't. I could fork it though, in the interest of "freedom".; March 4, 2010 at 11:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Ubisoft's controversial new DRM cracked 24 hours after it's released; March 4, 2010 at 11:18 PM
Anonymous said...: FOSS is best suited to experimentation and academia, people willing to take a risk without consequence.

I totally agree. It’s a great collaborative sandbox capable of testing out new ideas that are too risky for a commercial enterprise, but it’s no way to develop software for the masses.; March 4, 2010 at 11:54 PM
TM Repository said...: I totally agree. It’s a great collaborative sandbox capable of testing out new ideas that are too risky for a commercial enterprise, but it’s no way to develop software for the masses.

Typically if it does have mass appeal, a commercial entity steps in and provides funding. Which is why Firefox isn't the mess that Gimp is. Had some company seen value in funding Gimp, it would probably turned out a whole lot better. But who wants to sink money into a product that poorly competes against the official standard in image editing.

Sure, one could argue that Firefox took on the defacto standard at the time, since IE6 had something like 90% browser marketshare. But IE was more of a market offering than a piece of money making commercial software like Photoshop is. Hell, after IE6 the Internet Explorer team was disbanded for years since there was no financial incentive to overtake that last 5-10% of the market.; March 5, 2010 at 12:19 AM
Anonymous said...: Is anyone here doing any Android development? I've decided to dabble in it in my spare time. I don't have the $$$ nor the turtleneck and scarf collection to get into iPhone development at the moment.; March 5, 2010 at 12:35 AM
Anonymous said...: Design shop holds "funeral" for IE6; March 5, 2010 at 12:51 AM
buchty said...: a professional manufacturing company.
plastic mold
rapid prototype; March 5, 2010 at 1:04 AM
Anonymous said...: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/severe_openssl_vulnerability/

grabingb: Great Britain's linux campaign, encouraging people to grab some garbage and use is as render stations.; March 5, 2010 at 3:58 AM
Anonymous said...: <a href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/05/0739241/NVIDIA-Driver-Update-Causing-Video-Cards-To-Overheat-In-Games>NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games</a>; March 5, 2010 at 5:05 AM
Anonymous said...: NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games; March 5, 2010 at 5:05 AM
Anonymous said...: I don't have the $$$ nor the turtleneck and scarf collection to get into iPhone development at the moment.

LOL. Morning made.; March 5, 2010 at 6:13 AM
Anonymous said...: Lol, you can't make this up:

found a German Stalin fan-forum, they have a computer section too, and they LOVE Linux:

Stalin loves Torvalds

This is not a parody site.; March 5, 2010 at 6:40 AM
Anonymous said...: I accidentally typed www.slashtard.org in my browser. I had to lol about this freudian.

captcha: hangspin; March 5, 2010 at 7:50 AM
Anonymous said...: @"You're a Moron HTML5 IS h.264 unless you're using a freetard browser which is built to support OGG instead."

Let me catabolize this for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video

"on December 10, 2007, the HTML5 specification was updated[3], replacing the reference to concrete formats:

User agents should support Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis audio, as well as the Ogg container format."; March 5, 2010 at 8:06 AM
Anonymous said...: Something else regarding academic FOSS as an idea tank, which, by the way, existed long before GNU in the form of BSD: once the "idea" is out, the rest of the work is basically the same in every case. R&D needs a sort of free form and unstructured approach, but once it's seen that something can be productized, you get the same type of people who clean it up and package it regardless of what it is. One reason people liked BSD so much is that it actually made commercial development possible where GPL is just a dead end.; March 5, 2010 at 8:19 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 4, 2010 11:00 PM

Great post brotha. Something a lot of the far left/far right could learn from. We need to have an open market, but protected/guided enough to prevent abuse from our own greedy selves.

Look what lower financial regulations has done for our economy, short term financial gains, but long term disastrous results when times went bad.

People were loaned money to homes and cars they could not realistically afford.

People were living beyond their means to keep up with the Joneses.

In thought, it's always easier to blame political organizations (no matter what side), but finger should really be pointed at ourselves for letting it get out of control.

People were living WAY beyond their means and making bad business decisions.

People were using real-estate as the new MLM, buying for quick turnaround cash sale, end up not selling and defaulting on loans.

We are our own monster we created. To be honest, this recession s just what the doctor ordered. And hopefully we can learn better from it.; March 5, 2010 at 8:20 AM
Anonymous said...: I don't have the $$$ nor the turtleneck and scarf collection to get into iPhone development at the moment.

You also need the square, black rimmed glasses. Hopefully you have no eye problems so you can just put clear lenses in.; March 5, 2010 at 8:20 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 5, 2010 8:20 AM

Hahahaha, I forgot about that; you've just made the barrier to entry even higher for me!; March 5, 2010 at 8:23 AM
Anonymous said...: Brothas,

Hiren 10.2 released!

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/

I'm digging the new WinPE cd portion of hirencd that allows you to create WIM drive images for windows machines. Sorta like Norton Ghost:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GImageX

WinPE CD's frakking rock!; March 5, 2010 at 8:39 AM
Anonymous said...: If Microsoft was a convicted "illegal monopoly" why do none of the courts in all the rulings on the case and it's appeals ever use such terminology? In fact, contrary to snickerdouche, the courts ruled that Microsoft's monopoly wasn't illegal at all. The issue at hand was their anti-competitive behavior. And before snickerdouche attempts to conflate the two terms as being equivalent they are not as companies who are not monopolies have been convicted of exactly what Microsoft was.

But then again, it's funny to see snickerdouche continually butthurt over this. It would be funny to also see him strike up the whole mainframe/server debacle too.; March 5, 2010 at 8:47 AM
TM Repository said...: And before snickerdouche attempts to conflate the two terms as being equivalent they are not as companies who are not monopolies have been convicted of exactly what Microsoft was.

Likewise, other companies can't help but have a monopoly by default due to lack of competition. This often happens in markets that a company more or less invented.; March 5, 2010 at 8:51 AM
Anonymous said...: Let’s not forget that Firefox was a complete product by a commercial entity that was basically handed over to FOSS. Firefox is nothing more than a newer version of Netscape Navigator (Mozilla). FOSS did not create Firefox. They created a facelift for Netscape Navigator and called it Firefox.; March 5, 2010 at 8:57 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 6:40 AM

This is not a parody site.

Oh go on, of course it is. Two thousand years since the Hermannsschlacht, and those lovely Volk are still trying to persuade us that they have a sense of humour.

It's got all the usual Linux crap, too:

Frage: Notebook bootet nicht mehr.

Antwort: Ja, nie wieder Vista an die Technik ranlassen.

Was bedeutet "bootet nicht mehr"? Was kommt für eine Fehlermeldung? Mach ma notfalls einen "Screenshot" mit der Digicam an der Stelle, wo es hängt.

Triffically useful. Here's my answer in English:

Because you dual-booted your netbook in Vista and Kubuntu 7.04, you stupid kraut. No more soup for you!

I particularly like the bit where the poor fellow gets the advice to boot the netbook, wait until it hangs, and take a "screenshot" (we non-Stalinists would call this either a photo or a rimshot) using his digital camera. I'm sure that will be very useful...

... I've changed my mind. Perhaps Germans do have a sense of humour.; March 5, 2010 at 9:10 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 8:47 AM

SJVN has already beaten him/her/it to it.; March 5, 2010 at 9:12 AM
Anonymous said...: @ March 5, 2010 8:19 AM

Why is everyone developing for the Linux kernel then? All the commercial support is around Linux, not BSD.; March 5, 2010 at 9:14 AM
Anonymous said...: Okay so I made a OO Base DB with three tables and added some bullshit into them. What is suppose to happen now?

Hey guys, what is suppose to happen next? I still have a bunch of tables with records in them. Wow.

Access has been defeated.; March 5, 2010 at 9:21 AM
Anonymous said...: Pentagon Shooter wasn't an invalid as we thought:

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_14519258?nclick_check=1

"Professor: Pentagon shooter was a top engineering student at SJSU"

SmartestPeopleMakeDumbestMistakes(TM)

Which is why Google should be worried. If you have too many geeky geeks without soome non-geeky guidance, your apt to fail.

BTW, you guys seen this new movie?

Whatever happened to Baby "GoogleWave"?; March 5, 2010 at 9:23 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 8:51 AM

Likewise, other companies can't help but have a monopoly by default due to lack of competition. This often happens in markets that a company more or less invented.

A minor niggle, but [citation needed].

Snickerdouche doesn't have a leg to stand on here. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever that any legal entity anywhere in the world has used the term "illegal monopoly" with respect to Microsoft, but the cretinous little bugger can't even tell the difference between antitrust laws and monopoly "laws".

Of course, if he used the term "antitrust" instead of "monopoly," he'd be hoist with his own petard. IBM were done royally via antitrust (and ironically -- using the adverb correctly -- this is a big part of Microsoft's early success). But that's all right, because IBM have now seen the error of their ways, and are committed to the Freezoids.

More importantly, from Adam's point of view, being antitrust is being anti-AT&T.

I mean, how's the lad ever going to get his Hello World! program to compile if he can't use the vile products of that particular "illegal monopoly?"

He might even have to learn Mono.; March 5, 2010 at 9:23 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 9:14 AM

Why is everyone developing for the Linux kernel then? All the commercial support is around Linux, not BSD.

Free, as in SomebodyPaysMeToDoIt(TM).; March 5, 2010 at 9:25 AM
Anonymous said...: Okay so I made a OO Base DB with three tables and added some bullshit into them. What is suppose to happen now?

PNG is a freetard format that was heavily endorsed by the FSF. I use JPEG/GIF just to boycott them.; March 5, 2010 at 9:27 AM
TM Repository said...: Likewise, other companies can't help but have a monopoly by default due to lack of competition. This often happens in markets that a company more or less invented.

A minor niggle, but [citation needed].

One could argue that Valve has a monopoly on online games stores, for example. At least on the PC.

This isn't because they're crooked, its just because nobody else has stepped up to compete with them besides some minor offerings on the consoles.; March 5, 2010 at 9:27 AM
Anonymous said...: Fuck Ogg Vorbis!
Fuck PNG!
Fuck Ogg Theora!
Fuck JPEG!
Fuck Xvid!
Fuck FLAC!
and FUCK YOU!; March 5, 2010 at 9:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Why is everyone developing for the Linux kernel then? All the commercial support is around Linux, not BSD.

Actually from what I see, all the commercial support is on Windows.; March 5, 2010 at 9:34 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 5, 2010 9:10 AM

Dr. Loser, that was a pretty stupid post. It's pretty cheap to bash someone just because of their nationality.

Here, just found a english speaking forum with Stalin admirers:

link

Those German Linux-Stalinists should be laughed at because they are Linux-Stalinists, not because they are German.; March 5, 2010 at 9:35 AM
Anonymous said...: @March 3, 2010 4:35 PM

Ouch, easy on the mac hate please! I mean, hypothetically, if Microsoft disappeared all of a sudden, would you use Apple OSX or GNU Hanna Montana Linux?

There see, now not so bad?

Pricing aside, I still give Apple props to making computers easier to use. Competition with Apple is what forces Microsoft to compete.
I couldn't imagine a world without either.; March 5, 2010 at 9:39 AM
Anonymous said...: MicrosoftIsDying(TM)
TheFutureIsCloudy(TM)

http://www.techspot.com/news/38121-microsoft-windows-7-is-the-fastest-selling-os-in-history-over-90-million-licenses-sold.html

Windows 7 is the fastest selling OS in history, over 90 million licenses sold

Freeject counterclaims:

Microsoft Yakuza hired Iga and Koga ninjas to force people to upgrade to windows 7. If they didn't buy it, off with their heads!; March 5, 2010 at 9:46 AM
Anonymous said...: @MARCH 5, 2010 9:46 AM

But...but... Microsoft had a profit decline during a major world recession!!; March 5, 2010 at 10:02 AM
Anonymous said...: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100301&mode=67#comments

comment# 57

"It has served me well on a P90 16Meg laptop. On my 250Mhz tower with 128Meg ram "it flies"(as some might say)."

I can find way better machines in a midnight dumpsta dive.

"Now I'm using 1.6Ghz and 512meg, ..This leaves all of that extra cpu for video & gaming etc."

I can find way better machines in a midnight dumpsta dive.; March 5, 2010 at 10:20 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 9:35 AM

Sigh. Apologies for the "stupid kraut" thing. In England, it would intentionally be spoken with irony; not an easy thing to convey on a blog post. I'll explain over a stein some time, if you'll let me.

What got me is that some poor sod has been encouraged by WorldOfLinux(TM) to dual-boot his netbook with Vista (not Seven) and some dire version of Kubuntu. Surprise: Grub/LILO failure.

What to do? I know, I'll check out the local site. It's Stalinist! How could I go wrong?

Then he gets bombarded with stupid information about taking photos, using a LiveCD, etc etc. There's one comment in there that suggests using the Vista disk to reinstall, but that's about it.

Look, if you think I'm anti-German, how do you think I was able to read the site? (Disclaimer: I am not a member of Mossad.) Honestly, it's a bundle of laughs. The best thing about it is -- and I said this -- that the content is not so much German, nor Stalinist, but recognisable Linux Fanboism.

OK, I'll be more sensitive next time.; March 5, 2010 at 10:21 AM
Anonymous said...: Where's the OO equivalent of Sharepoint? Or Visio? Or Project? Or OneNote? Or Access? Or even Publisher?

I was looking into this and found that Oracle/Sun has a Sharepoint connector extension for OOo.

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/sharepoint_connector

Then there is O3spaces, which is a proprietary product that brings Sharepoint server functionality to OpenOffice.

http://www.o3spaces.com

But the express edition is about $400 for 5 users and enterprise version is about $537 for 5 users.; March 5, 2010 at 10:22 AM
Anonymous said...: "Now I'm using 1.6Ghz and 512meg, ..This leaves all of that extra cpu for video & gaming etc."

Yeah because Tux Racer is pretty CPU intensive with those low resolution graphics.; March 5, 2010 at 10:23 AM
Anonymous said...: What do you guys think, would Stalin like Linux?; March 5, 2010 at 10:34 AM
Anonymous said...: @MARCH 5, 2010 10:34 AM

Stalin was a fan of neckbeards; March 5, 2010 at 10:36 AM
Anonymous said...: What do you guys think, would Stalin like Linux?

No but Kim Jong-il does...

http://www.osnews.com/story/22960/North_Korea_Develops_Its_Own_Linux_Distribution; March 5, 2010 at 10:37 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 10:34 AM

Nah. It's more of a Kropotkin thing.; March 5, 2010 at 10:37 AM
TM Repository said...: But...but... Microsoft had a profit decline during a major world recession!!

Obviously due the overhead required paying off all those shills and bribing!; March 5, 2010 at 10:41 AM
Anonymous said...: Speaking of Stalin:

Commander Stalin, the Stalin RTS!

Commander Stalin is a Soviet real time strategy game (RTS) based on Boswars.

In a RTS game, the player has to combat its enemies while running his war economy.

Everything run in so called real-time, in opposition to turn based games where the player always has to wait for his turn. The trick is to balance the effort put into building the economy and building and army to defend an attack the enemies.

The game is set in the Soviet Union ruled by Stalin. The player is Stalin. It must organize the state, industrialization and turn it into a major power. This should effectively manage their resources, creating a broad base of social support (workers), launching the existing industry and develop science and technology.

The game is free and open source, and made by a major freetard:

this guy

He even has "no ie"-banners, leet.; March 5, 2010 at 10:42 AM
Anonymous said...: That's scary. Soviet worshippers are fucking twisted.; March 5, 2010 at 10:43 AM
Anonymous said...: Just played it, well...

The soundtrack is a communist anthem sung in Russian, but the text in the game is in Spanish! And units have a voice response, but they speak in English!

I can't speak Spanish, but what I understood is that in the first missions you play as Stalin and you fight Trotsky (he has his own army and wants to topple Stalin). After that you take on the Nazis I think.

The animationa suck and look worse than on Dune 2, a typical FOSS product.; March 5, 2010 at 11:16 AM
Anonymous said...: LINUX IS COMMUNISM!; March 5, 2010 at 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...: @ March 5, 2010 11:16 AM

You are now on an FBI watch list for downloading that game. =); March 5, 2010 at 11:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Uh, forgot a noteworthy feature:

On the Kremlin (and on all other buildings) is an icon that depicts the soviet coat of arms.

If you build in the Kremlin a unit, Stalin appears superimposed on the coat of arms and vanishes again, and appears again, repeatedly, until the unit is built. It looks almost like he is laughing when he vanishes.

Unfortunately, only the Kremlin has this feature, not the other buildings.; March 5, 2010 at 11:23 AM
Anonymous said...: Capitalism doesn’t work because it’s every man for himself with everyone undermining each other. There is no way to get any big projects done with capitalism.

There has never been a fully fledged communist country or a fully fledged capitalist country. Even the worst of both always had mixed markets.

There have been many fully capitalist countries, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries.

But that said they're certainly too risky compared to mixed markets. Very few economists want to go back to 18th century capitalism. They're too unstable and prone to wild boom/bust periods.; March 5, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Anonymous said...: Microsoft Yakuza hired Iga and Koga ninjas to force people to upgrade to windows 7. If they didn't buy it, off with their heads!

Sounds rough. I had 4 blonds with big tits approach me and offered me head if I switched to Windows 7. Naturally I accepted.; March 5, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Anonymous said...: Why is everyone developing for the Linux kernel then? All the commercial support is around Linux, not BSD.

Yes Linux gained corporate support in the late 90's and now has more commercial support. The typical CTO is very risk averse and wouldn't use an OS that isn't backed by a company like Red Hat or IBM.

No one here cares if you use Linux on the server. This blog is about Linux on the desktop and the loony cult following it has. No one cares if you setup a web server with Linux. I would much rather setup a web server with freeBSD though, especially after reading numerous complaints about CFS.; March 5, 2010 at 11:42 AM
Dr Loser said...: @March 5, 2010 11:26 AM

Not to burst your bubble, but that's utter bollocks.

The scant evidence on your post indicates that you are talking about Mercantilism. You might also be referring to early capitalism in either Holland or the City of London.

Capitalism, per se, requires something like a joint-stock market; possibly also an insurance market. Not too many of those in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Education (or Google) is your Friend.; March 5, 2010 at 11:42 AM

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