Evil CSS vs. Open CSS and why M$ is doomed to fail...

Evil CSS vs. Open CSS and why M$ is doomed to fail...

#written by:Kevin James Lausen for Http://open-source—construction.blogspot.com

#I only had time to write the article, but not the tags, sharing, and so on b4 leaving for work this #morning.

#feel free to use any/all of this article it will be up on my blog by night-fall...

My first step is going to have to be to define Evil CSS, as well as it's saintly brother Open CSS. Evil CSS I(personally) define as “corporation supported software”, as well as “community supported software”. I came up with the idea of “community supported software” after attempting and failing to teach people what FLOSS(Free/Libre Open-source software). On the flip side of the coin, I have found that when I tell them Linux is a “community supported software” platform the concept seems to stick.

Ways to get support in Open Vs. Evil CSS:

Evil:

~buy a book or magazine about the Window$ or Adobe software you need help with.

~There are usually more You-tube videos for closed source projects because they are @ the moment more popular.

~Call the sometimes toll-free number on the back of the products package.

~There are User groups, and Blogs dedicated to any kind of software.

Open:

~Blogs(Muktware, Open-source—construction, OMGubuntu, webUpd8)

~Podcasts(audio and video)(Linux action show{jupiter-broadcasting-Bryan Lunduke && Chris Fisher}, FLOSS weekly{twit.tv}, Osalt{nixie-pixel rev3})

~User Groups(UseNet does still exhist)

~E-mail lists.(open to the public unlike many Evil CSS mailing lists are internal only)

~Personal developer web-site(Lunduke.com/opentablets.org/

~community forums(Linux forums

~IRC(Internet-Relay Chat) The original free Internet chat, where you can chat directly w/ your software's developers.

~Man(manual) pages. Now also on-line, and built into your Linux distribution. (where the old-school hacker term RTFM—read the freaking manual came from)

~Word of mouth. Generally your super geeky friend's are using Linux, and are willing to share their knowledge and time with you to further “Open CSS”.

Besides the many more ways to get support from a passionate community of users, there are many other reasons I think OpenCSS Linux, is going to trounce EvilCSS. The number one I believe is that Linux is going to be the go to gaming platform of the next century. This is mainly to do with a native steam client able to run the core steam games(portal, half-life, counter-strike...etc), as well as a great show of interest from Ubisoft, and EA games for Ubuntu(Linux). The Humble-indie-bundle has consistently proven that Linux users have extra $ to pay for great games. We have extra money because we don't pay the extortion rates of Micro$oft, Apple, or Adobe.

The other main reason I believe that Micro$oft is going to fail is the cost of Upgrade. Windows 8 is going to be 64-bit ONLY. That means that you are going to need a minimum of 4gb of RAM, with a preferred amount of 8gb or more. One of the major problems with 64-bit on windows, is that Mal-ware scans are going to take days, instead of hours; because 64-bit files are generally much larger. So that makes running a 64-bit Window$ system on a HDD impractical. That means you will need to upgrade @ least your Operating System partition on an SSD(Solid State Drive). So in order to upgrade my desktop computer to Windows 8 I would have to buy an SSD($150+),memory($80+), on top of the minimum hundred dollars to Lease(License) your software. The main draw-back is that you never truly Own all of the software on your computer.

I also want to briefly mention that there are entire countries(Russia, China, and Germany), that are either moving away from Microsoft's vendor lock-in; or have even written Laws to out-law Microsoft software. I would also like to mention that Microsoft software is not allowed in Google, although Apple is because it has roots in Unix. Unix is the grand-Father Operating system, before all of the modern pretty graphics started showing up.

I don't really know if the terms I enjoy using to explain free software will become popular, or enrage the FLOSS community; but I have found them to be the best way to teach the foundational concepts of Free software to Microsoft or Apple prone users.

My Ugh it's Windows Monday Rant...

I just want to post a few short thought's today about why Microsoft windows has frustrated me in the last couple of days. Basically yesterday I had a working, although barely windows Vista Operating system on my desktop. There are a few things that I just need windows for, although not as many as you would think.

Some of the proprietary closed-source coded programs done by Apple & Microsft, and netflix do not run on any version of Desktop Linux that I know of. Although I would really enjoy being wrong. Not only do I not get Netflix(which I stopped paying for recently), but the ability to run i-tunes, or manage the two MS Zune's that are in the house. Other than those things, and some gaming I can do everything else w/ Linux.

the CPU inside my desktop.

Luckily I  have access to an old vista Toshiba laptop that we can manage the Zunes with, and also use itunes, although anything else would suck, because that laptop can't do more than one thing at a time. It's a single core pentium M, with only 2GB RAM.

I refuse to look at this situation as a loss. I didn't Lose windows on my desktop, What actually happened is that I now have another hard drive I can install Linux distro's on. And the fact that I can't play portal, or my Lego PC games. I was almost finished with Lego: star wars "the complete saga". :/ When I have enough money to spare for a legitimate copy of windows, I probably will so I can play my games. 

What happened is that when I rescued this desktop from the curb it had a bad power supply in it. Which was recently upgraded to a quality power supply. I believe that the bad power supply, had Toasted some of the RAM chips in it. It made random beeping codes when I rescued it from the curb, just before it started raining. after I removed a pair of 1/2 GB of memory it worked to restore the Machine to factory settings. Although I did not test the power supply right away as I should have. I did not have a tester yet though.

That eventually led me to the problem of a bad mother-board because of a bad power supply. So when I was getting daily BSOD(Microsoft's famous Blue Screen of Death hardware error screen), I stopped using the computer until I replaced the power supply with a good gaming power supply, and a direct replacement mother-board.

The replacement motherboard boot up Windows, and it worked badly until last night. That is when I tried to run the recovery, which refuses to restore because it thinks that it is trying to restore it onto a different computer.

I would never pirate an Operating system, but I understand the need for a PC gamer who can't afford a windows upgrade. I wish they didn't have to have such a closed minded business approach.

I thought I would add pictures of the computer that, can no longer run the version of Windows it has a key for. What I want is the windows 7, but that would be $80-100 for the software, and $20-40 for the extra memory that would be needed.