Re: [debian-knoppix] 9 minutes !!!
Hello Gilles
I just noticed that it took only 9 minutes for you to type your
message (Monday 1 Septembre 2003 21:39, Gilles Pelletier wrote :
SCO investing in Troll Tech ???)
I'm interested to learn that :), you type faster than I read !
Alain
Le Lundi 1 Septembre 2003 21:48, Gilles Pelletier a écrit :
> On August 28, 2003 01:48 pm, Klaus Knopper wrote:
>
> > (...)Even if they would not be voting about this
> > draft, it would not make things much better, since there could always be
> > the next draft, which is more obfuscated and confusing, and thus could
> > pass through unnoticed, creating facts. What we need is a definitive
> > "no!"- voting about software patents, in general, from the parliament,
> > to keep Europe as innovator in software technology.
>
> (...)
>
> > Kai, are you aware that MS is one of the largest software patent
> > holders, and as part of BSA lobby, one of the originators of the current
> > pro-softwarepatent draft?
> >
> > Regards
> > -Klaus
>
> Hey, beware Mr Knopper! Pretty soon you're going to sound anti-Microsoft...
> whereas you're not, right? Do you remember this PCtechtalk interview where
> you said "I'm not anti-Microsoft"? : ) (The article, formerly
> http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?id=3D123 , now seems unavailable at
> PCTechTalk.)
>
> Matbe it's time people who sustain... and sometimes maintain Linux ask
> themselves where they stand exactly. Are there or aren't there reasons to be
> anti-Microsoft?
>
> Microsoft has boomed with the spirit of an era. Computers made running
> businesses -- machines, robots, communications, databases, whatever -- so
> much more efficienty! Investors concluded, without thinking for a minute
> about how much effort and knowledge it took to produce such tremendous
> effects, that the company that produced such a commodity would soon be worth
> gazillions.
>
> They bought and bought and bought at ever higher prices until 3 years ago. It
> was a bit like the Red Hat craze, but it lasted years instead of months...
> and the model was not GLPed.
>
> The history behind the two competing OS was at odds from the beginning.
> Whereas Linux Torvalds put this work on the internet saying "People, please
> take it all, 'steal' it from me, and bring it back when it's better", Bill
> Gates went to computer clubs explaining that this OS was his and the kids in
> the clubs were stealing his work. He had his team and he didn't need the
> kids. And it worked... for some 20 years. People decided to pay and not
> "bother" to participate.
>
> But computers were there long before Microsoft. All over the place, servers
> where run by experts that knew as much as MS "certified engineers". When they
> saw this thingy on the net, they thought they'd give it a try. Just for fun,
> of course. And it did produce some results.
>
> When some companies -- say, Hollywood's special effects studios -- and
> government agencies -- the NASA, for instance -- found out they could have
> the code of an OS before their very eyes so they could pursue their
> specialized goals in all liberty, they weren't interested. They were
> completely enthralled. It just blew their heads! This was what they needed.
>
> So they put their efforts to make this little acorn -- shall we say kernel? --
> grow. Not only did the GPL model work, it was very badly needed. A NASA
> engineer apparently provided many drivers for video cards. Whereas such so
> common cards as an ATI Mach 32 weren't recognized by Linux 5 years ago,
> nowadays -- unless you bought equipment from an MS infeodated company --
> pretty much everything runs well.
>
> Debian's developpers extended Linux's capacities to many platforms other than
> the typical IBM PC and designed a package system that made upgrading software
> much easier.
>
> Then came an electrical engineer - IT-consultant who just wanted to know right
> off the bat if this or that equipment would boot with Linux. Unfortunately
> for his little personal project, people liked it and it became the most
> popular Live-CD on the planet. You just boot from the CD, and it configures
> the whole system -- video card, monitor, audio card, ethi cards, everything!
> -- in about 15 seconds while booting. If you don't use cable, you'll have to
> answer a few easy questions such as your username and pasword to connect to
> the net, and that's it!
>
> This is the turning point for Linux: Microsoft just can't do that. And it
> doesn't succeed so well on the server market either: it used to rely on BSD
> for hosting its sites, now it's falling back on Akamai, who uses Linux, to
> prevent DDoS attacks.
>
> People who have religiously relied on MS as if it was God in person are
> beginning to wonder what's going on. And that's bad.
>
> That's bad because if Enron's and Worldcom's discomfiture brought quite a lot
> of turmoil on the Stock Exchange, the fall of Microsoft could send it
> spiraling down to its end in no time at all: at 285 bn $ MS is the second
> market capitalisation, right after... GE (296 bn$) !!!
>
> (MS was first as the beginning of 2000, but its shares, for the first time of
> its history took a beating. They're now at about have the price they were
> then. But GE's shares dwindled too.)
>
> This only goes to show how ridiculous MS capitalisation is. Whereas MS has
> equipment to produce bits and bytes, GE produces jet and train engines, water
> and nuclear power plants, medical imaging equipment, etc. When Steven Ballmer
> said tech stocks were overevaluated, he knew what he was talking about.
>
> But the fact remains that those stocks are what many pension plans in America
> -- and also, but to a lesser degree, in Europe too, I suppose -- are still
> holding on to. Those investments were, they believed, the road to a bright
> future as most indistries in America faced the harsh competition, mainly from
> defeated asian countries.
>
> There's barely any consumer electronics industry left today in America. In the
> car industry, Mercedes-Benz has bought Chrysler and is not doing so bad in
> the context. Ford has problems. As the 2004 models are coming out, GM makes a
> Great Clearance Inventory Sale of 100,000 cars: 0% financing for 5 years and
> $1,000 (CAN) off the price tag. In other words, their cars don't sell. I'd
> say that more than half the cars in the steets of Montreal are now foreign
> made, though the foreign compagnies are sometines wholy or partly owned by
> the american companies: e.g., Mazda (Ford), Suzuki (GM). Even IBM finds its
> cheaper to manufacture the latest generation of its HD heads in China!
>
> So, even with interest rates at 1%, try as you might to make the services
> economy run -- Americans selling hot-dogs to Americans, as Lee Iacocca once
> put it -- there's just so much american buyers can do, because they don't
> have a job.
>
> As this was not enough, because the "REAL power that be" allowed G. W. Bush to
> steal his elections in Florida, this stupid oil jerk decided to get both
> feets in the irakian quagmire and to give tax breaks to the rich who mostly
> buy imported products. Accordingly, the US deficit will be 400 bn $ this year
> and is predicted at 500 bn $ next year. This is when most countries try to
> reduce their deficit. Canada, for instance, now has a surplus of a few bn $
>
> But the big banks don't want the dollar to crash because, even though they now
> also have yens and deutschmarks in stock -- currencies that aren't doing that
> well either --, the dollar remains the currency that replaced the gold
> standard. If it crashed the whole economic system would crash. And, compared
> to this krash, the 1929 one would look like a garden party.
>
> That's why we hear so much about the global economy. While the ice is growing
> thinner, the great financiers strive to mesh the economies so that, if ever
> anyone falls, everybody falls. What this means exactly is making the third
> world countries do the job for next to nothing and making a huge profit by
> selling the product.
>
> Call it the maquilladoras system, if you will. It's saying Third World
> countries: "Want to get jobs? Keep unions under controls, just don't talk
> about ecology, and we'll be there." It's VW making its Golfs and Chrysler
> making its PT Cruiser in Mexico. It's IBM making its HD heads in China. And
> Japan very slowly recovering from its financial crisis by opening plants in
> China... and unemployment appearing in the homeland.
>
> Replace transistors, cars and HD heads by wheat, olives, gold, silver and
> pottery, this is VERY EXACTLY the system that brought Rome down. The
> decadence of Rome took five centuries, ours will have taken five decades.
>
> But Microsoft's case is special. Since it creates money out of nothingness,
> its monopolistic situation could prevent it from shifting its operations
> to... India, for exemple. Because of the leverage computer science has on the
> industry, it could manage to bring more money to America and keep most of the
> jobs in America at the same time. (Of course, there are resellers and
> as-long-as-they-last affiliations to companies all over the world, but...)
> It's the last buoy to hold on to. And the devil asks for so little to keep
> you afloat...
>
> He just wants a little bit ofyour soul. He wants you to forget how you could
> do things yourself, he's going to do it for you, for next to a billion times
> no money at all. He just wants to check where you usually buy so he can
> provide ads that are revelant to you. He wants to provide you with a book
> that will automatically disappear in a few months, so that neither you or
> your children can read it in a few years. He wants to cather the movies he's
> interested you in. He wants to be the unique provider of the Vatican's holy
> pictures. He just wants to make a few bucks by taking a little grip on your
> soul. Why should you object?
>
> You still do? It's just too bad he couldn't be here in prehistoric times to
> put a patent on the first algorithms, a mere addition. Nowadays, you'd
> understand better. You could do 1 + 1 = 2 with an infinitely low premium and
> you just wouldn't ever have noticed the increment as the algorithms got
> incrementally more complicated.
>
> I'm sorry Mr Knopper. I know you never wanted to get involved in politics. You
> just wanted to know if this hardware would boot Linux or not. And since you
> haven't put out a new version of Knoppix for more than a month now, I suppose
> you have pretty much succeeded. (My german teacher used to say that whereas
> most nations work to make a living, Germans live to work. So, despite all
> beaches in Greece, Madeira and the Canaries being filled with Germans, I take
> for granted you're not taking vacations :)
>
> Unfortunately, this has put you right in the eye of the hurricane. Your
> contribution did help, I suppose, to make many distros easier to install, but
> making Knoppix installable or contributing to making Debian easier to install
> would certainly turn the Windows invasion tide.
>
> This is the next step and it's for you to decide whether you're going to take
> it or not. If you do, it's going to wreck a hell of a havoc. You'll be
> qualified as THE enemy of free enterprise, the last sting of the dying
> communist system. (Maybe, just as I, you thought that those people were just
> waving scarecrows. I for one now think they were dead serious in this
> stupidity.)
>
> Just as people say you 'invented" automatic installation whereas a lot of work
> had been done before you (Kudzu!) because you were the first to cross the
> finish line, the first OS that gets to the finish line will be the winner
> even though the other one is a split second behind.
>
> It's a race against the clock. No "ready when it's ready". And, as I believe
> I've already said, in this second in a row year of Linux on the Desktop, less
> than 1% of Google's visits are paid with Linux.
>
> And the reason for this is very simple: there is no distro yet of which you
> can say" "Go for this one! It's not a company trying to subvert to its own
> advantage the work of Linux developpers, it's easy to install and administer
> and the software that has been selected for every need really works fine.'
>
> So, it's for you to decide, Mr Knopper, are you or aren't you starkly and
> openly against Microsoft? If nothing gets done while whining about software
> patents, the game will be lost anyway.
>
> As for myself, since I don't have yet an easily installable version of Debian
> to work on and I pretty much got the hang of Slackware, I'll try to put my
> notes together on the net so that it will be much easier to install and
> use. The equivalent of 40 pages should constitute a pretty good intro.
>
> Here are 2 links to understand better what Microsoft stands for:
>
> 2003 and Beyond:
> http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html
>
> The following pages by Nathan Newman are out of date, but Newman was the first
> to provide me with the figures to get a global pictures and his study is
> still a valid reference:
>
> http://www.netaction.org/msoft/world/
>
> GP
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