Elektroschock writes "For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council's 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council's study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, 'I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.' Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution."
Sure you can arrest the drug dealer, put him in prison for a few years and then release him without changing anything or you can go after the head [microsoft.com] of the operation and solve the problem permanently. The only party that benefits from this is Microsoft, no fucking bullshit-FUD-internet-forum-made-up word doubt about it.
Unfortunately, their cutting public humiliation, while well deserved, would probably be a ratings nightmare. If you aren't familiar with the jargon, correct technical analysis and bullshit technobabble look virtually identical. Stewart owned Cramer because Cramer made the mistake of fucking up in a domain that virtually everybody cares about, and most people know at least a little about.
Stewart owned Cramer because Cramer made the mistake of fucking up in a domain that virtually everybody cares about, and most people know at least a little about.
Stewart owned Cramer because Cramer spilled the beans about how easy it is to manipulate the market and gave examples of things he would do as a hedge fund manager.
It was a video for thestreet.com or something like that. I guess back then he thought the internet was just full of investors and pedophiles and there would be some sort of honor among thieves and they wouldn't rat him out. But once the web was replaced by tubes, people that were afraid of spiders started joining the party.
Gartner also made the case that EU governments should not abandon open standards, but rather redefine open standards by removing royalty free use. Thats basically tossing the success story of the Internet out the window and still using it as branding name for the new EIFv2 "European Interoperability Framework"
See EU-commission pages at:
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7728 [europa.eu]
and a post about it here:
http://bosson.blogspot.com/2009/05/stealing-free-from-open-standards.html [blogspot.com]
Well, ARE there any "sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop" in Europe (in companies and government, I mean--not on some geek's home PC)? It seems to me that if you're going to refute a study, you should start by showing they're actually wrong.
I don't think CERN has ever been big on using Windows on the desktop. After all, it was at CERN that the World Wide Web was created, on a Unix workstation.
Then CERN is not relevant in a story discussing a windows to linux and OSS office suite on the desktop.
High end unix workstations are not the same as typical office worker desktops.
The claim was that there were no examples of people using open alternatives, which was false.
First, that's not what the Gartner guy said and the previous posters comment has to be taken in the context of what the Gartner guy said to be meaningful in this discussion. The summary is even misleading.
I know shooting off without RTFA is the norm around here, but that doesn't make it right. Here's the emails where that question was raised. (emphasis added)
Dear Mr. Silver, recently I attended a Gartner presentation in Brussels by Nikos Drakon on OSS. I told him that at the European Parliament we would be interested in visiting one or more sites where OSS workstations are implemented on a large scale. He was kind enough to send me your presentation titled "Client OS and Office: is Open Source in Your future?". I find this presentation brilliant, and very useful.
At the European Parliament we often receive questions from Members on "why have we not migrated our workstations to OSS?" and we are examining the possibilities. We definitely do not want to embark in a migration without having verified that others have done it successfully before us, and that the benefits would exceed the disadvantages. In this spirit, we would like to visit 2 or 3 successful sites, if any exist.
We have a base of 11.000 PC's (in the process of migrating from Win NT + Ofiice 97 to Win XP + Office 2003).
The question is: can you help me obtaining the name and e-mail or adress of a contact person in some of the main Organizations that have installed, and are working with, OSS workstations ? I am thinking of the Organizations you quote in your slide: -city of Munich -city of Bergen (N) -Allied Irish Bank -NSW RTA and others: -Bundestag (Germany) -Ville de Paris -etc. Regards Pietro Bianchessi
And the response the guy from Gartner gave was:
Dear Mr. Bianchessi,
Thank you for your inquiry on desktop Linux and open source office products.
The organizations I mentioned in my presentation are in their infancy, if that, in their open source desktop deployments. I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments. Here is the status of the ones you mentioned.
-City of Munich â" in the planning phase -City of Bergen (N) â" this organization is not doing Linux desktop. I mentioned these people as an example of the Linux hype. There was an erroneous press report and since then the CIO has been trying to correct it, saying that they are doing servers, not Linux desktops. -Allied Irish Bank â" Sun and AIB put out a press release last year, but Sun informed me a few months ago that AIB was not doing reference calls. You can ask your Sun representatives to connect you with a reference. -NSW RTA â" This is another Sun reference, but they are only doing StarOffice, not Sun Java (Linux) Desktop. Again, Sun should be able to connect you.
I continue to work with my colleague, Andrea DiMaio, to find references at these and other government organizations. We will keep you in mind as we speak with other organizations that might be appropriate references and ask their permission to give you their contact information. Unless I hear otherwise, I will assume we are free to give them your information and ask them to contact you.
I would be happy to discuss your Linux desktop plans with you on an ongoing basis if you like and I believe Ms. Heyneman can help you arrange a call with me. I recently spoke with a large bank that had been seriously considering Linux for a large portion of their users but found that staying with Windows would be less expensive. There may be other benefits that government organizations have considered that companies cannot (like economic benefit) and we can discuss that, but I cannot share this organizationâ(TM)s name or contac
Yes there are. They have been in the news. There have been instances in the UK and France since 2006, there are many schools and educational institutions as well as companies that have made the switch. I know in the Netherlands and Belgium government agencies have been looking into it and if I'm correct a lot of the ex-Soviet countries that are now part of the EU (Hungary, Poland,...) and the Scandinavians have less advertised but nonetheless important conversions.
Gartner is a sock puppet for Microsoft and everybody in the industry knows that (they made the analysis that Windows XP before SP1 was safer than Linux by comparing it to Red Hat Linux 5.3 (not RHEL, the original 5.3))
The study was in 2005, so to show it was wrong you need to find examples of widespread Linux deployments in Europe that existed then. Not deployments that started in 2006, or governments that 'have been looking into it'.
Extramdura [europa.eu]. Quoting the paper's abstract:
Extremadura is the poorest region of Spain, lagging behind the rest of the country in both the economic and technological arena. Though short on financial resources, the region has set very high goals for itself in its Regional Strategy on Information Society. This paper briefly describes the region's strategy and continues to discuss how the use of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) aids the regional government in achieving its goals.
The fun part is the link that I provide comes from the EU's site! lol
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday May 15 2009, @08:51AM (#27965521)
let's see from the top of my head: - all government and schools in extramadura in spain - schools in gran canaria - french police (still migrating) - munich
and those are just the ones that immediately come to mind, there's undoubtfully more if you dig a bit.
all government and schools in extramadura in spain This started in 2006/2007 [theregister.co.uk] so of course the study in 2005 didn't notice it. schools in gran canaria I couldn't find details of this on the web, but are you sure it was up and running in 2005? french police (still migrating) This was announced in 2008 [google.com]. munich I believe the migration started in 2006 [heise.de].
I know we all hate the Gartner Group and all that, but seriously, was it such a gross error to say there were no widespread public (that is, govermnent or municipal)
Please read more than the first paragraph, especially if you link to a source yourself:) Goverment migration in Extramadura started in 2006/2007 however in 2002 they migrated 70000-80000 (the figures differ from source to source) desktops for their schools and they set up 33 public computer centers.
french police [google.com] french railway [google.com] cern [web.cern.ch] 900 pharmacies [ad-hoc-news.de] Thats 5 minutes of googling (im sure EU offices of google also use linux) if i got paid to do a study, I'm sure i could find more.
In goverment...
* 1000+ in French parliament : http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/4060 [computerworld.com]
* 11000 at German Foreign ministry.
* 14000 in Munich.
* 13000 at The Federal Employment Office of Germany
* 80000+ in Spain 2003: http://lwn.net/Articles/41738/ [lwn.net]
* 90000 at France's national police force in 2007
In education...
* "Germany has announced that 560,000 students in 33 universities will migrate to Linux."
* "Russia announced in October 2007 that all its school computers will run on Linux."
* "9,000 computers to be converted to Linux and OpenOffice.org in school district Geneva, Switzerland by September 2008"
In business...
* "Peugeot, the European car maker, announced plans to deploy up to 20,000 copies of Novell's Linux desktop."
The company I worked for immediately after I graduated in 2002 had Linux on all desktops in the branches - and it was already mostly rolled out when I started.
That was something like 2-300 branches and about 1500 staff altogether.
While I dislike Gartner about as much as anyone on this list, we must remember that this report is 5 YEARS OLD. I would be surprised if there WERE any large-scale mature Linux desktop sites back then.
Still, it's a steaming pile of FUD: before companies started rolling out Windows in a big way, how many large-scale Windows sites were there?
Cern would have been a large scale mature system even back in 2004, and AFAIK most of their desktops run linux, granted it is because they need scientific tools, but if you were paid to do research you could of atleast taken a look at their system.
Gartner is the former DataQuest company, the came company people used to call DataGuess. They're just a place for companies to purchase "Gartner Research" papers using the following form: 1) What is it you want research on? 2) How many pages do you require? 3) What is the target result you're looking for? 4) How quickly do you need the research paper? 5) Price is based on the following formula: cost= number of pages * $1,000 * needFactor needFactor = 10 * inverse of #weeks needed
Mod me down if you want, but Linux needs to go "full retard" in order to reach the masses.
Essentially, a 6 year old and a 96 year old need to be able to use the system. If they can't, start over.
> precisely what Ubuntu is trying to do. It is a matter of opinion > as the whether they are succeeding, but I believe that they are.
At the latest when my GF wanted to burn a simple mp3 file and Brasero mumbled something about an "missing gstreamer plugin" she said, that (Ubuntu) Linux is still too complicated for normal users. I couldn't really argue with her, just explain the Why's and How's of proprietary stuff and the legal issues of their use. Installed the restricted stuff (which she'd have had n
Essentially, a 6 year old and a 96 year old need to be able to use the system.
Actually, those two demographics are the easiest to convert. While my mom isn't 96 by a long stretch, she uses Ubuntu and has no problems whatsoever. Her computer literacy is close to 0.
The problem users are those we call "power users". People that have used Windows for years and know the ins-and-outs, but do not know them deep enough. They can pretty much be found in the 20-65 demographics, also known as those of working age. My dad falls in the power-user demographic and he still uses WinXP. That said, he is very open to Linux and understands it well enough to use it.
Do note that you said "use". The system still has to be set up by someone who knows what he does.
Actuall a PC system (http://simpc.nl/) created especially for the elderly is based on Linux (Gentoo to be precise). That little device has a UI that is kept very simple and foolproof. Read only system, just some user files locally and remote (synced)
Same concept can easily be used for six year olds. I believe in this way Linux is even more suited for the 6 and 96 year old.
Installing new software and new hardware is now easier on the latest Ubuntu than it is under Windows Vista. Linux is not mature : it is simply superior. As a pre-installed OS it would be a dangerous competitor for wiindows on the non-gaming market.
The show-stopper is store salesmen who don't actually believe that a "layman user" could get along just fine with Linux and not XP or Vista.
My job is an MS only shop. I still use a Linux netbook for presentations. It works just fine, and cost about as much as a non-OEM version of Windows Vista Home Basic alone..
Ubuntu? Really? Try clicking the "system" option, then "Synaptic Package Manager". As you would've found had you paid any attention, you click the pretty box for the software you want, and your system installs the precompiled binaries along with any dependencies. No files (not even the equivalent of a.exe or.msi) required.
Your description of installing software on Linux is one way to do it, but it has not been the only way and certainly not the easiest way for a very long time.
Sue Silver for fraud; also he has a conflict of interest because he is a self-declared Windows tool and Linux is the main competition (sorry, Mac users.) Finally, never ask an all-business BA+MBA for technical information. You will only get statistics.
I'm in no way trying to defend Gartner and his study, but I believe there is a huge difference between Linux adoption in 2005 and now. Some slides from the pdf linked in the article suggest that major portions of the study were made even earlier, in 2003.
Of course basing any technology-related decisions on such a outdated study is another matter...
that was just the technique used to get the "right" results. They'd have to go back more than 5 years today to pull the same stunt and will have to use different techniques. Maybe they'd use info from Microsofts "Get the Facts" campaign where it's not obvious that Microsoft gave sweetheart deals to migrate people from Linux or away from Linux.
People still think it was mostly the OLPCs fault they couldn't close any million unit deals even though they had dozens of MOU's. Little do they know that all those cu
I love it! Here's our infamous "Gartner" group in prime form. FTFPDF, we see that they are predicting the arrival of WinFS anywhere from late 2008 to early 2010.
Now, anyone who's been around as long as Gartner knows that Microsoft has been promising this "feature" since Windows codename "Cairo," which was announced in 1991, and publically demo'ed in '93. There was a lot of hope that it would be delivered in NT 4.0. That's roughly 16 years folks. WAY more time than they had to develop Duke Nukem Forever, and it's just a _file system_.
If you want to talk about basing your corporate purchasing decisions on "features" like WinFS, then all this slagging off on Linux as not being "there yet" is directly hyporcritical, now, isn't it?
WAY more time than they had to develop Duke Nukem Forever, and it's just a _file system_.
It's not "just a _file system_". It's not even a file system in the traditional sense. I would describe it as a very fancy metadata and structured data indexing system [wikipedia.org] built on top of an existing file system and relational database.
I suspect that the system would be too complex if fully implemented considering the benefits it would bring - lots of potentially "cool" features, but not a whole lot of stuff that is truly
Well racist troll or not I feel compelled to point you don't know what you're talking about. I'm native of the UK, currently living in Spain, and I can tell you your cab driver doesn't know shit.
Since it joined the EU Spain has received massive investment from the EU, which it has used to modernise in all sorts of ways and has gone from a stagnant low GDP economy to being one of the leading economies in Europe.
The UK on the other hand has benefited greatly from having to take on a modicum of human rights law from the EU which its leaders (and popular press) have hated but IMHO have been a huge boon to human rights in the country. Of course the UK government is doing its best to trample all over those rights still but are repeatedly slapped down when they over-step the mark.
You're unhappy with Linux because you're making the fatal mistake of trying to live a Microsoft life with a Linux based OS. It's like deciding you like nautical life so you buy an airplane. I had the same problem when I switched from windows 98 to Linux. I used XP along side Linux for a while, but eventually Linux (more acurately, POSIX) felt oh so more right and sensible than windows. Now, if it isn't POSIX compatible, it's a weird niche system to me. If you can let go of all your windows-isms and microsoft-isms you can be much happier with your computer. You can't constantly compare the two OSes, either. You'll never be satisfied like that, especially if you're really used to the first OS. It's like watching a really great movie many times and then years later watching a remake. Even if the remake is fantastic and new and has all the elements of the old that you like, it'll still be different. It will still feel like a shameless copy that doesn't quite work the way you want it to. You'll expect a line from your favorite character only to hear something different. Does the fact it was different from what you expected make it a bad line? Probably not, but it still leaves you a bit disappointed. I guess my point is to leave behind all your preconceptions about what an OS is and how it should behave, if you truly wish to switch to Linux--or any other OS for that matter--and be happy with it.
Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone needs to pull a John Stewart/Jim Cramer on Gartner. These guys spread so much BS, yet continue to be considered an authority.
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Stewart owned Cramer because Cramer made the mistake of fucking up in a domain that virtually everybody cares about, and most people know at least a little about.
Stewart owned Cramer because Cramer spilled the beans about how easy it is to manipulate the market and gave examples of things he would do as a hedge fund manager.
It was a video for thestreet.com or something like that. I guess back then he thought the internet was just full of investors and pedophiles and there would be some sort of honor among thieves and they wouldn't rat him out. But once the web was replaced by tubes, people that were afraid of spiders started joining the party.
There's some guy that p
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But... But... Gartner says they're a useful institution. Gartner!
Gartner helps EU redefine open standards (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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is LHC running Windows?
Do they have a large deployment of Linux desktops? Sounds like they're just using it for their grid.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think CERN has ever been big on using Windows on the desktop. After all, it was at CERN that the World Wide Web was created, on a Unix workstation.
Then CERN is not relevant in a story discussing a windows to linux and OSS office suite on the desktop.
High end unix workstations are not the same as typical office worker desktops.
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:4, Informative)
The claim was that there were no examples of people using open alternatives, which was false.
First, that's not what the Gartner guy said and the previous posters comment has to be taken in the context of what the Gartner guy said to be meaningful in this discussion. The summary is even misleading.
I know shooting off without RTFA is the norm around here, but that doesn't make it right. Here's the emails where that question was raised. (emphasis added)
Dear Mr. Silver,
recently I attended a Gartner presentation in Brussels by Nikos Drakon on OSS. I told him that at the European Parliament we would be interested in visiting one or more sites where OSS workstations are implemented on a large scale. He was kind enough to send me your presentation titled "Client OS and Office: is Open Source in Your future?". I find this presentation brilliant, and very useful.
At the European Parliament we often receive questions from Members on "why have we not migrated our workstations to OSS?" and we are examining the possibilities. We definitely do not want to embark in a migration without having verified that others have done it successfully before us, and that the benefits would exceed the disadvantages. In this spirit, we would like to visit 2 or 3 successful sites, if any exist.
We have a base of 11.000 PC's (in the process of migrating from Win NT + Ofiice 97 to Win XP +
Office 2003).
The question is: can you help me obtaining the name and e-mail or adress of a contact person
in some of the main Organizations that have installed, and are working with, OSS workstations ?
I am thinking of the Organizations you quote in your slide:
-city of Munich
-city of Bergen (N)
-Allied Irish Bank
-NSW RTA
and others:
-Bundestag (Germany)
-Ville de Paris
-etc.
Regards
Pietro Bianchessi
And the response the guy from Gartner gave was:
Dear Mr. Bianchessi,
Thank you for your inquiry on desktop Linux and open source office products.
The organizations I mentioned in my presentation are in their infancy, if that, in their open source desktop deployments. I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments. Here is the status of the ones you mentioned.
-City of Munich â" in the planning phase
-City of Bergen (N) â" this organization is not doing Linux desktop. I mentioned these people as an example of the Linux hype. There was an erroneous press report and since then the CIO has been trying to correct it, saying that they are doing servers, not Linux desktops.
-Allied Irish Bank â" Sun and AIB put out a press release last year, but Sun informed me a few months ago that AIB was not doing reference calls. You can ask your Sun representatives to connect you with a reference.
-NSW RTA â" This is another Sun reference, but they are only doing StarOffice, not Sun Java (Linux)
Desktop. Again, Sun should be able to connect you.
I continue to work with my colleague, Andrea DiMaio, to find references at these and other
government organizations. We will keep you in mind as we speak with other organizations that might
be appropriate references and ask their permission to give you their contact information. Unless I hear otherwise, I will assume we are free to give them your information and ask them to contact you.
I would be happy to discuss your Linux desktop plans with you on an ongoing basis if you like and I believe Ms. Heyneman can help you arrange a call with me. I recently spoke with a large bank that
had been seriously considering Linux for a large portion of their users but found that staying with
Windows would be less expensive. There may be other benefits that government organizations have
considered that companies cannot (like economic benefit) and we can discuss that, but I cannot share this organizationâ(TM)s name or contac
Parent
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes there are. They have been in the news. There have been instances in the UK and France since 2006, there are many schools and educational institutions as well as companies that have made the switch. I know in the Netherlands and Belgium government agencies have been looking into it and if I'm correct a lot of the ex-Soviet countries that are now part of the EU (Hungary, Poland, ...) and the Scandinavians have less advertised but nonetheless important conversions.
Gartner is a sock puppet for Microsoft and everybody in the industry knows that (they made the analysis that Windows XP before SP1 was safer than Linux by comparing it to Red Hat Linux 5.3 (not RHEL, the original 5.3))
Parent
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Informative)
The study was in 2005, so to show it was wrong you need to find examples of widespread Linux deployments in Europe that existed then. Not deployments that started in 2006, or governments that 'have been looking into it'.
Parent
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Informative)
Extramdura [europa.eu]. Quoting the paper's abstract:
The fun part is the link that I provide comes from the EU's site! lol
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying you're wrong but you haven't refuted the claim regarding large desktop deployments in the EU.
Here's one [desktoplinux.com] that is large but probably hasn't been deployed and isn't in the EU.
Also, since the study is 5 years old, you would need to find references of large desktop deployments in the EU that are at least that old.
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:4, Interesting)
let's see from the top of my head:
- all government and schools in extramadura in spain
- schools in gran canaria
- french police (still migrating)
- munich
and those are just the ones that immediately come to mind, there's undoubtfully more if you dig a bit.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
all government and schools in extramadura in spain
This started in 2006/2007 [theregister.co.uk] so of course the study in 2005 didn't notice it.
schools in gran canaria
I couldn't find details of this on the web, but are you sure it was up and running in 2005?
french police (still migrating)
This was announced in 2008 [google.com].
munich
I believe the migration started in 2006 [heise.de].
I know we all hate the Gartner Group and all that, but seriously, was it such a gross error to say there were no widespread public (that is, govermnent or municipal)
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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french police [google.com]
french railway [google.com]
cern [web.cern.ch]
900 pharmacies [ad-hoc-news.de]
Thats 5 minutes of googling (im sure EU offices of google also use linux) if i got paid to do a study, I'm sure i could find more.
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:4, Informative)
* 1000+ in French parliament : http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/4060 [computerworld.com]
* 11000 at German Foreign ministry.
* 14000 in Munich.
* 13000 at The Federal Employment Office of Germany
* 80000+ in Spain 2003: http://lwn.net/Articles/41738/ [lwn.net]
* 90000 at France's national police force in 2007
In education...
* "Germany has announced that 560,000 students in 33 universities will migrate to Linux."
* "Russia announced in October 2007 that all its school computers will run on Linux."
* "9,000 computers to be converted to Linux and OpenOffice.org in school district Geneva, Switzerland by September 2008"
In business...
* "Peugeot, the European car maker, announced plans to deploy up to 20,000 copies of Novell's Linux desktop."
Read more about adoption of Linux at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_adoption [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The company I worked for immediately after I graduated in 2002 had Linux on all desktops in the branches - and it was already mostly rolled out when I started.
That was something like 2-300 branches and about 1500 staff altogether.
Re:Why do we let Gartner Continue? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I dislike Gartner about as much as anyone on this list, we must remember that this report is 5 YEARS OLD. I would be surprised if there WERE any large-scale mature Linux desktop sites back then.
Still, it's a steaming pile of FUD: before companies started rolling out Windows in a big way, how many large-scale Windows sites were there?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cern would have been a large scale mature system even back in 2004, and AFAIK most of their desktops run linux, granted it is because they need scientific tools, but if you were paid to do research you could of atleast taken a look at their system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gartner is the former DataQuest company, the came company people used to call DataGuess. They're just a place for companies to purchase "Gartner Research" papers using the following form:
1) What is it you want research on?
2) How many pages do you require?
3) What is the target result you're looking for?
4) How quickly do you need the research paper?
5) Price is based on the following formula:
cost= number of pages * $1,000 * needFactor
needFactor = 10 * inverse of #weeks needed
If you want to stop them, advocate
Oh noes! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod me down if you want, but Linux needs to go "full retard" in order to reach the masses.
Essentially, a 6 year old and a 96 year old need to be able to use the system. If they can't, start over.
And that is precisely what Ubuntu is trying to do. It is a matter of opinion as the whether they are succeeding, but I believe that they are.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> precisely what Ubuntu is trying to do. It is a matter of opinion
> as the whether they are succeeding, but I believe that they are.
At the latest when my GF wanted to burn a simple mp3 file and Brasero mumbled something about an "missing gstreamer plugin" she said, that (Ubuntu) Linux is still too complicated for normal users. I couldn't really argue with her, just explain the Why's and How's of proprietary stuff and the legal issues of their use. Installed the restricted stuff (which she'd have had n
Be fair. Same issue with Windows. (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows Media Player does not play MP3 files by default and I believe you don;t have a CD/DVD burner out of the box.
Lets start from the point where the systems are configured equally for the most common tasks and see how systems fare from there.
Parent
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A modern 6 year old can move between Windows, Linux and MacOS and not even realize they are different operating sytsems.
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Funny)
I am not some bitter FreeBSD user hiding out in his mother's basement.
Goddamnit, for the last time, it's not a basement, it's my command centre.
Parent
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Oh noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, those two demographics are the easiest to convert. While my mom isn't 96 by a long stretch, she uses Ubuntu and has no problems whatsoever. Her computer literacy is close to 0.
The problem users are those we call "power users". People that have used Windows for years and know the ins-and-outs, but do not know them deep enough. They can pretty much be found in the 20-65 demographics, also known as those of working age. My dad falls in the power-user demographic and he still uses WinXP. That said, he is very open to Linux and understands it well enough to use it.
Do note that you said "use". The system still has to be set up by someone who knows what he does.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actuall a PC system (http://simpc.nl/) created especially for the elderly is based on Linux (Gentoo to be precise). That little device has a UI that is kept very simple and foolproof. Read only system, just some user files locally and remote (synced)
Same concept can easily be used for six year olds. I believe in this way Linux is even more suited for the 6 and 96 year old.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My job is an MS only shop. I still use a Linux netbook for presentations. It works just fine, and cost about as much as a non-OEM version of Windows Vista Home Basic alone..
Re:Oh noes! - Grandma hates to compile apps (Score:4, Informative)
Ubuntu? Really? Try clicking the "system" option, then "Synaptic Package Manager". As you would've found had you paid any attention, you click the pretty box for the software you want, and your system installs the precompiled binaries along with any dependencies. No files (not even the equivalent of a .exe or .msi) required.
Your description of installing software on Linux is one way to do it, but it has not been the only way and certainly not the easiest way for a very long time.
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Fraud and conflict of interest (Score:5, Interesting)
Sue Silver for fraud; also he has a conflict of interest because he is a self-declared Windows tool and Linux is the main competition (sorry, Mac users.) Finally, never ask an all-business BA+MBA for technical information. You will only get statistics.
Re:Fraud and conflict of interest (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Fraud and conflict of interest (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Fraud and conflict of interest (Score:5, Funny)
15% of MBA's will get you the correct statistics though.
So all I need 7 MBAs to achieve 100% accurate knowledge of everything. Great!
(Yes, I know that's flawed math, just making a point)
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2005 != 2009 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
that was just the technique used to get the "right" results. They'd have to go back more than 5 years today to pull the same stunt and will have to use different techniques. Maybe they'd use info from Microsofts "Get the Facts" campaign where it's not obvious that Microsoft gave sweetheart deals to migrate people from Linux or away from Linux.
People still think it was mostly the OLPCs fault they couldn't close any million unit deals even though they had dozens of MOU's. Little do they know that all those cu
"WinFS Arrives?" (Score:5, Insightful)
I love it! Here's our infamous "Gartner" group in prime form. FTFPDF, we see that they are predicting the arrival of WinFS anywhere from late 2008 to early 2010.
Now, anyone who's been around as long as Gartner knows that Microsoft has been promising this "feature" since Windows codename "Cairo," which was announced in 1991, and publically demo'ed in '93. There was a lot of hope that it would be delivered in NT 4.0. That's roughly 16 years folks. WAY more time than they had to develop Duke Nukem Forever, and it's just a _file system_.
If you want to talk about basing your corporate purchasing decisions on "features" like WinFS, then all this slagging off on Linux as not being "there yet" is directly hyporcritical, now, isn't it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not "just a _file system_". It's not even a file system in the traditional sense. I would describe it as a very fancy metadata and structured data indexing system [wikipedia.org] built on top of an existing file system and relational database.
I suspect that the system would be too complex if fully implemented considering the benefits it would bring - lots of potentially "cool" features, but not a whole lot of stuff that is truly
gartner myths of linux on the desktop (Score:5, Informative)
* Linux is free.
* There are no forced upgrades.
* Linux will require significantly less labor to manage.
* Linux will have a lower TCO than Windows because of available management tools.
* Applications will be inexpensive or free.
* Hardware can be kept longer if Linux is used, or older hardware can be used.
* Skills are transferable. - Gartner
Re:EU sucks. Fuck that kumbayah shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well racist troll or not I feel compelled to point you don't know what you're talking about. I'm native of the UK, currently living in Spain, and I can tell you your cab driver doesn't know shit.
Since it joined the EU Spain has received massive investment from the EU, which it has used to modernise in all sorts of ways and has gone from a stagnant low GDP economy to being one of the leading economies in Europe.
The UK on the other hand has benefited greatly from having to take on a modicum of human rights law from the EU which its leaders (and popular press) have hated but IMHO have been a huge boon to human rights in the country. Of course the UK government is doing its best to trample all over those rights still but are repeatedly slapped down when they over-step the mark.
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Re:As an European who's been using linux desktop.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, enough bad analogies.
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Re:As an European who's been using linux desktop.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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