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____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Thursday 08 May 2008 20:48 : \____
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
> <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
> on Thu, 08 May 2008 17:32:31 +0100
> <1539573.QTdYaRutb3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Reason #1: it forces Microsoft to lower its prices,
>> regardless of market share.
>
> Not 100% sure of that; if we're dumb enough to want
> Genuine Windows Vista Expensive Edition(tm), they're
> smart enough not to lower prices.
>
>> Microsoft adjusts its prices in order to remain relevant.
>
> Or monopolistic. ;-)
I ought to add that Microsoft not only gives away Windows for free if it works
against GNU/Linux, but sometimes it actually pays people to take, e.g. by
covering the cost of the /hardware/. There are some very recent examples of
this. Microsoft actually /wastes/ money getting people 'addicted' to its
programs.
Analogy: a drug dealer handing out chocolate boxes to children, with drug
already inside but aside. It's not a good analogy though because chocolate
cannot be duplicated free of charge, unlike software.
>> Free software keeps it on its toes in that respect.
>> Apple, on the other hand, makes sales for Microsoft (Office),
>> keeps its prices up (fixing), and has Microsoft as a
>> partner and shareholder.
>
> Apple has its own issues. One of them is that they have
> the notion of quality / fadness / etc., honed to a fairly
> high art. How useful is the iPhone, really? The Mac Air?
> And yet, both of them are considered cool and now and hip
> and neat and rad and sick and whatever the lingo is nowadays...
>
> (My nx9010 has a floppy, a DVD reader, and space for a true
> hard drive. Granted, flash drives are neat nowadays, but the
> Air needs an *external* DVD unit to read DVDs.)
>
>>
>> Reason #2: Linux dominates the embedded space,
>
> Not sure about that, either; mobiles in particular mostly have
> Symbian. However, I'd have to look, and Microsoft's forays
> into mobile have been less than dominating, though there's
> a few phones flying around with some variant of Windows.
>
>> which is very large (probably
>> orders of magnitude larger than the desktop, in terms of CPUs).
>
> Most likely, yes.
>
>> It also
>> controls supercomputers that are increasingly becoming part
>> of the more universal network, including search engines
>> (Hadoop comes to mind, bigtable).
>
> Google coughed up
> http://hadoop.apache.org/core/
> and
> http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html
>
>>
>> Reason #3: it shatters misconceptions about Microsoft's foundations,
>> which are intellectual monopolies and other nasties like DRM.
>> That's why Microsoft talks about 'education' (pollution of minds)
>> as an anti-Linux tactic in its latest SEC filing.
>
> Watch the spinning watch...you are getting
> sleepy....sleeeeeeepyyyyyy....
>
>>
>> Looking at (1-3) again:
>>
>> * Linux lowers cost.
>>
>> * Linux enables real innovation, performance, efficiency (environment)
>>
>> * Linux enables people to be free and it democratises
>>
>>
>> February 2008:
>>
>>
http://www.news.com/Feeling-the-heat-at-Microsoft/2008-1012_3-6232458.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc
>>
>> "[If I ask you who is Microsoft's biggest competitor now, who would it be?]
>> |
>> [Steve] Ballmer: Open...Linux. I don't want to say open source. Linux,
>> certainly have to go with that..."
>
> Heh. Even if Linux were completely eradicated, there's
> still FreeBSD and HURD to contend with. It would kill
> a good chunk of the buzz, but OSS isn't that fragile.
HURD was going to be based on Mach and if ever Linux came under some threat
there are many other kernels available today. Linux just has the most
momentum... compare to (Open)Solaris, BSDs, Darwin, etc.
It's the stuff at the upper layer that matters, including great applications
that are even better than any of their proprietary counterparts.
- --
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Linux: stop maintenance; get more actual work done
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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