Posts by Nigel Kneale

Another blow against armchair lawyers

Face it, freetards, when it comes to the law, you know jack shit.

Re SLAs

"Without a proper SLA (or something like it) how can I and the service provider possibly work out if the service fits my needs"

You use your intelligence and intuition. With *no* SLA, assume the worst can happen and you wouldn't have a pot to piss in when it came to compensation.

" - and how can the provider be sure that my expectations are not too high for what they are offering?"

I'm sure the provider couldn't care less about your personal requirements if it's attracting enough sign-ups to its free lunch, I mean service.

"I go to some lengths to try and block Google from tracking me"

The answer's simple - if you don't want Google tracking how you use Google services, don't use them. Oh, and fool yourself into thinking that every other significant web service doesn't do exactly the same thing.

Sigh - more misguided Google-bashing?

"But whether Google has run afoul of the law or not, it's certainly enabling outfits that do. Judging from Edelman's study, Google could end 80 per cent of all typo-squatting if it would simply ban domain parkers from AdSense."

Bollocks. Typo-squatting happened before without Google involvement, complete with ads. Under that proposal, the money will be earned by another organisation and the squatters will still exist.

Not recession-proof - by far

Whilst I believe that companies should use Google advertising only when it works for them (i.e. make more money on sales provided than it spends on the Google ad campaign), recessions more or less wipe out marketing budgets of any sorts, be it in print, on TV or online. The effectiveness or otherwise of Google's ads become irrelevant if you haven't got the budget to buy them.

Given that Google lives or dies by ads right now, all they're going to do is live off the giant pile of money they have under the stairs somewhere.

@Chris C

Guilty until proven innocent, eh? Classy.

Simple reason why

Migrating critical Windows servers to Linux is less risky if you switch individual services to a Linux VM running on the same server. Once you have enough services running in the Linux VM, then switching over completely to a native Linux server becomes much easier.

And vice versa, of course.

Wow.

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. Run out of ways to run down Google? Never mind, you'll think of some more soon.

@Matt Bradley

I agree, even going so far as saying Macs and Linux too.

Especially considering Linux apps aren't as usable as they could be - having a more usable online equivalent Google app would be a very tempting choice.

The way to combat this? Develop better applications so people won't want to use the Google options.

Which is how it should be, really.

You might not click on an ad...

...but someone else will. The percentage of clickers over viewers (and of eventual buyers over clickers) might be small, but for *any* ad campaign, if that percentage is high enough to cover costs and generate enough sales to make the ad campaign worthwhile, then these ads work.

It's like spam emails and Nigerian scams - their hit-rate is probably a fraction of one percent, but enough people respond to make it all worthwhile.

El Reg's coverage of Adwords, and most of the comments following it, reveal that very very few people here understand marketing strategies. Which of course is good for El Reg as it enables them to climb onto their anti-Google hobbyhorse and start spreading more FUD about them.

Moonlight will never match Silverlight 100%

But then again, does Firefox support match MSIE support? OpenOffice and MSOffice? (that one's obvious) SAMBA and MS file shares? Mono and .NET?

Vice versa?

Each of those projects will live or die by their compatibility level. 100% will never be attained - the browser wars showed that.

90% might be good enough for most people. What's important is whether or not the remaining 10% could be lived without.

@Paul

Seems you've been so brainwashed by Groklaw so that you don't notice when SCO wins on various points in court. Let me guess - you believe that everything SCO claims is a lie, right?

Read the ruling. SCO Source licences was ruled to cover "SCO IP" - which doesn't cover SVRX as SCO doesn't have the rights to that. SCO misrepresented the SCO Source licence, but the licence itself is legitimate, although virtually worthless. So, Novell has no claim to that money, and the SCO Source licence had a get-out clause such that licencees couldn't get a refund if it was found to be worthless. End result: SCO keeps $17.4m out of $19.9m. Still think that's not a win for SCO?

I'm no SCO backer, but at least have the objectivity to realise that Novell only won on one single counterclaim out of many. Yes, SCO got toasted in SCO vs Novell, but Novell vs SCO went quite well for them.

Forcing the issue is *good*

Sooner or later the (US) patent timebomb is going to blow, so lets get some case law on the books to use as ammo to get the laws fixed.

@AC

"If you've used Xandros on the EEE, you'll notice that it basically IS Windows now."

I have, and it isn't.

The Full Desktop looks like any other KDE desktop (because it *is* KDE), and the Simple Desktop looks unlike anything I've used before.

Xandros have a good little product there: Linux for the masses.

Funny how the mere mention of Microsoft stops a lot of people around here being rational.

@Peyton

I don't think NetApp had a chance, PR-wise, being trapped in a no-win situation where they had to choose between suing, being sued, or paying massive licence fees for their own technology.

All Sun had to do was mutter the words "patent troll" whilst dangling ZFS in front of the "Free Software" crowd and all NetApp could rely on from that moment on was a favourable court judgement or settlement in order to prove their case to the masses.

A win for NetApp will harm the credibility of the "Free Software" movement as their morality-based arguments will be undermined by selling their soul to aid a greedy corporation whilst it attempts to crush a competitor.

Pity RealPlayer is getting droppped

I used to use mplayer to dump RealAudio streams to WAV files before converting them to MP3s.

"Coming up next on BBC News Channel...

...Private company keeps one of its competitive edges secret to maximize profits. But first here's Sindy with the weather..."

Reality bites

A bit of due-diligence at the start of the project would have revealed that most govts out there won't make significant cash outlays on non-MS IT systems - not unless you've got a *really* good salesman who can understand and calm their fears. Mere FLOSS advocacy isn't enough.

Must admit...

...with bespoke hardware *and* software, attempting to redefine how a computer is supposed to be, I can't help thinking about the QL and the SAM Coupe.

Both were meant to be revolutionary, both used specialist hardware, and both died on their arses because little companies with small budgets run by inexperienced directors attempting to do big new things mean that so many corners have to be cut that the end result loses its appeal.

A bigger company with more talented staff could have pulled this off.

And other companies will do so.

Groklaw's already found the Microsoft connection.

But then again yesterday they found the Microsoft connection between their toast being burnt and their breakfast ruined.

I like the FSF

I love the way the FSF assumes that companies that rely on GPL'd software should be told how to run their business, all in the name of freedom.

Questionable logic

These FSF claims rely on a few questionable assumptions:

1) That MS is a distributor by selling/giving vouchers for Linux support. The FSF is now saying that anyone doing this now has to obey GPL3, even if they never copied or even touched code released under it. The FUD risk is immeasurable: "Have any business with GPL'd code and you'll lose all your patents!"

2) That the coupons will be redeemed and not cancelled/replaced.

3) That Novell won't turn around and say "ah, but those vouchers are only for the latest GPL2 versions of everything".

It's #1 I have real problems with. I cannot see how any company can be party to the GPL, or can be shown to have accepted the GPL, if they're not copying GPL code and giving it out to other people.

NK

Nothing changes

Pipex has been for sale officially and unofficially for at least four years. The infrastructure is shoddy, the management more than a little cliquey, and have only been buying up other companies to buy time and make their bottom line look good to potential buyers. I'm glad I stopped working for them - in fact working for them put me off working for corporations for life.