Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Hawaii Linux Institute wrote: I really wish someone could have shown me his/her Ubuntu installation so I wouldn't have to waste the past weekend. But I understand we all have our priorities. In the interest in saving future weekends, please know that you can come by McKinley any Saturday to see an Ubuntu installation. In fact, as we grow our inventory of pre-installed and ready-to-donate, or sell, computers, we have constant opportunities for any of you to hone your installing skills. Just tonight, as part of my UH Outreach talk, I dazzled and bewildered a good crowd of 20 with the Ubuntu Desktop. I have nearly turned these presentations into performance art, and they keep getting better. Better than showing off the Desktop and explaining the beauty of FOSS was booting off a Live install CD and performing a live install. When I show how we can boot an ewaste thin client off of a faster server, jaws drop. With a UH crowd, folks really appreciate that FOSS, enabled by the GPL, institutionalizes sharing. They also appreciate that FOSS has brought the academic virtues of transparency, integrity, and peer review to software development. Oh, with respect to the core of this thread - Free Wireless is coming to places in Hawaii where folks would have never expected it. Things do change. While the crabs bite, the fact remains that two distinct kinds of people exist - those who find problems and those who find solutions. Hawai`i will always attract the latter. Wayne --scott
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
R. Scott Belford wrote: In the interest in saving future weekends, please know that you can come by McKinley any Saturday to see an Ubuntu installation. Thanks, I didn't know that. Wayne
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Since I started this thread, I don't want to leave an impression that I endorse Ubuntu. Actually I don't. Windows killer it is not. Far from it. For the things I am doing and planning to do, SuSE is still the best (and the comparison pool includes Windows XP-Pro). As I mentioned in a previous post, there are some rough edges with SuSE 10.1, but there also are ways to get around them. But more important, in several critical areas, I like what I saw as SuSE 10.0 moved one point up to 10.1. And they are more than superficial. I really wish someone could have shown me his/her Ubuntu installation so I wouldn't have to waste the past weekend. But I understand we all have our priorities. Wayne
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote: And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left. It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. Good point. I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it. Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales. Things like the VP of Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl. (My response, You want a heads-down display? didn't win me any friends that day.) Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents protected by the in-room safe. Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO. Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of free wifi from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- end chains. The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR, (REVenue Per Available Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are occupancy and the rack rate. As soon as a lack of Internet services (and most people would rather connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel management as a primary (or even secondary) cause for a drop in occupancy or having to discount the rack rate (in order to fill the rooms), it will be installed, and it will be free-to-guest. I saw this happen first in the extended stay space, where the guests would preferentially book rooms where they had a T1 connected to in-room Ethernet, and then would stay where it was free to guest (bundled into the price of the room). Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of their affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from Marriot and Starwood. It worked, so Marriot went free-to-guest in those segments where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites). Wingate and other chains followed suit. Hilton turned up their Garden Inn chain (as free to guest). Then LaQuinta (who had been refusing to even pay attention to offering Internet access) went and installed in every hotel (chain-wide) and turned it all on ... for free. Why? Because their hand was forced. Yes, you still pay in the higher-end brands, but most of the people who stay in these hotels aren't the kind who live-and-die by access to their email/Exchange and back-end (VPN-protected) applications. And, oh, btw, I managed to keep all of Wayport's airport installations (some of which cost nearly $500,000 to install) as 'free' for the longest time. It was easier to treat it as a marketing expense than to make the changes to the billing system to accommodate how the airport authorities wanted to 'split' the meager fees. And yes, we could see real results in folks who used the (free) WiFi at the airport in-turn preferentially staying at Wayport hotels. Then we got the new Neanderthal CEO who insisted that the world would not go free or go 802.11 (despite clear evidence to the contrary) and the rest is history.His big deal now is WiFi in McDonalds, and that deal has several provisions which allow McDonalds to turn it on 'for free' when they so desire. I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am just too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even if the hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with! The politicians don't own the hotels, so they have little say. Part of what makes dealing with hotels complex is that you have several parties to deal with. You have people who own hotels (REITs), people who manage hotels (Benchmark, Interstate, Outrigger, WestCoast), people who brand hotels (Hilton, Marriott) and people who build hotels. Sometimes one party will fill more than one role. You've also got they guys in the back-rooms of the REITs who are literally playing Monopoly flipping hotels in and out of the portfolio. Moreover, it costs money to be able to charge money. Shall I wax eloquent about PMS interfaces, credit card charge-backs, and the size of the customer support department you need to be able to deal with several thousand locations? Want to know how small those (and other) issues get when you don't charge? And yes, hotel managers are a capricious bunch. Just to keep the linux content 'up', Wayport used an on-property (custom debian distro) linux machine (we called it a 'nmd') at every location, and still does. You put 1,000 PeeCees in the world in wildly dispersed locations, with every one responsible for carrying money back to the
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
All that is fine but you missed one thing. On the mainland you have competition, this is Hawaii, home of the monopoly and groups that act as a monopoly. I have been dealing with that for going on 10 years now. I only wish we would come out of our third world attitude and join the rest of the mainland in a truly free economy. As far as the politicians, they own everything. Did you see the news this morning? Cal Kawamoto, the traffic cam senator, under investigation by the FBI and IRS. Nothing happens in this town unless you know (read $$$) someone. Beer? I'd love too. I can tell you some stories about this place too. I don't know much about the Hotel ownershuip structure but I know plenty about the commercial real estate industry. MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:06 AM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote: And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left.It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. Good point. I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it. Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales. Things like the VP of Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl. (My response, You want a heads-down display? didn't win me any friends that day.) Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents protected by the in-room safe. Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO. Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of free wifi from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- end chains. The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR, (REVenue Per Available Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are occupancy and the rack rate. As soon as a lack of Internet services (and most people would rather connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel management as a primary (or even secondary) cause for a drop in occupancy or having to discount the rack rate (in order to fill the rooms), it will be installed, and it will be free-to-guest. I saw this happen first in the extended stay space, where the guests would preferentially book rooms where they had a T1 connected to in-room Ethernet, and then would stay where it was free to guest (bundled into the price of the room). Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of their affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from Marriot and Starwood. It worked, so Marriot went free-to-guest in those segments where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites). Wingate and other chains followed suit. Hilton turned up their Garden Inn chain (as free to guest). Then LaQuinta (who had been refusing to even pay attention to offering Internet access) went and installed in every hotel (chain-wide) and turned it all on ... for free. Why? Because their hand was forced. Yes, you still pay in the higher-end brands, but most of the people who stay in these hotels aren't the kind who live-and-die by access to their email/Exchange and back-end (VPN-protected) applications. And, oh, btw, I managed to keep all of Wayport's airport installations (some of which cost nearly $500,000 to install) as 'free' for the longest time. It was easier to treat it as a marketing expense than to make the changes to the billing system to accommodate how the airport authorities wanted to 'split' the meager fees. And yes, we could see real results in folks who used the (free) WiFi at the airport in-turn preferentially staying at Wayport hotels. Then we got the new Neanderthal CEO who insisted that the world would not go free or go 802.11 (despite clear evidence to the contrary) and the rest is history.His big deal now is WiFi in McDonalds, and that deal has several provisions which allow McDonalds to turn it on 'for free' when they so desire. I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am just too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even if the hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with! The politicians don't own the hotels, so they have little say. Part of what makes dealing with hotels complex is that you have several parties to deal with. You have people who own hotels (REITs), people who manage hotels (Benchmark, Interstate, Outrigger, WestCoast), people who
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Hotels (on the mainland) have figured out that people will preferentially stay where there first was WiFi and now folks will stay where its free. This is especially true in the 3 star level places. (Nobody expects water to be free in the Four Seasons.) I'm currently staying in a Hyatt in a tech-heavy area. The majority of the people I see in the lobby are here on business with a large technology firm. Wirless is $10/day as is ethernet in the room. (There are the occasional 3 stars down the road that have free wifi.) Jim Tim Newsham http://www.lava.net/~newsham/
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Compared to the rest of you, my knowledge of such things is very limited, so this may be an embarrassing question. Are there any city or state governments trying to do this as a service for their citizens? If so, have any of them been successful? Will the Net eventually evolve into something like roads and sidewalks? Not embarrassing. Remember: there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.. The city of Philadelphia is trying to roll out free wifi. Google wants to roll out free (ad supported) wifi in SF. There are various community efforts in many cities to offer free wireless hotspots. There are probably more efforts that I'm unaware of. --Peter Tim Newsham http://www.lava.net/~newsham/
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
The Four Seasons usually has free wi-fi but you pay $10/24hrs to access ethernet in the rooms. Most hotels that offer Internet access do it in the room via either straight ethernet or LRE. I have not personaly encountered any free wi-fi at any hotels here except the Halkulani. I am speaking of Hawaii hotels above, I do not know much about mainland hotels except the Four Seasons where my boss stays MD - Original Message - From: Tim Newsham [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 6:33 AM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities Hotels (on the mainland) have figured out that people will preferentially stay where there first was WiFi and now folks will stay where its free. This is especially true in the 3 star level places. (Nobody expects water to be free in the Four Seasons.) I'm currently staying in a Hyatt in a tech-heavy area. The majority of the people I see in the lobby are here on business with a large technology firm. Wirless is $10/day as is ethernet in the room. (There are the occasional 3 stars down the road that have free wifi.) Jim Tim Newsham http://www.lava.net/~newsham/ ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Piladelphia's wi-fi rollout ispretty small. I looked it up yesterday. They want to expand it but since they offer free 24x7 tech support I would bet that the costs will outweight the benefits. Google has teamed with Earthlink to offer a combo model, free ad supported or for pay with no ads. As I stated earlier, a few ISP's tried that model with no success. Even so, it is a business model and if you think about it, ad supported wi-fi is not free. In order for it to stay free they either have to turn a profit from the ads or turn a profit from the subscriptions. MD - Original Message - From: Tim Newsham [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 6:37 AM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities Compared to the rest of you, my knowledge of such things is very limited, so this may be an embarrassing question. Are there any city or state governments trying to do this as a service for their citizens? If so, have any of them been successful? Will the Net eventually evolve into something like roads and sidewalks? Not embarrassing. Remember: there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.. The city of Philadelphia is trying to roll out free wifi. Google wants to roll out free (ad supported) wifi in SF. There are various community efforts in many cities to offer free wireless hotspots. There are probably more efforts that I'm unaware of. --Peter Tim Newsham http://www.lava.net/~newsham/ ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 7, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Maddog wrote: All that is fine but you missed one thing. On the mainland you have competition, this is Hawaii, home of the monopoly and groups that act as a monopoly. I've only been here 2 years, but I still find this its different here, give up thing irksome. I have been dealing with that for going on 10 years now. I only wish we would come out of our third world attitude and join the rest of the mainland in a truly free economy. Similar things happen on the mainland. As far as the politicians, they own everything. Did you see the news this morning? Cal Kawamoto, the traffic cam senator, under investigation by the FBI and IRS. Nothing happens in this town unless you know (read $$$) someone. Kawamoto has been in trouble before. Rod Haraga is in-trouble too, but then, the current national administration is looting the treasury and I don't hear many complaining about that, either. Beer? I'd love too. I can tell you some stories about this place too. I don't know much about the Hotel ownershuip structure but I know plenty about the commercial real estate industry. I'm 'free' starting Friday for about two weeks (though I've got a quick back-n-forth trip to LA in there.) MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:06 AM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote: And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left.It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. Good point. I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it. Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales. Things like the VP of Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl. (My response, You want a heads-down display? didn't win me any friends that day.) Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents protected by the in-room safe. Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO. Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of free wifi from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- end chains. The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR, (REVenue Per Available Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are occupancy and the rack rate. As soon as a lack of Internet services (and most people would rather connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel management as a primary (or even secondary) cause for a drop in occupancy or having to discount the rack rate (in order to fill the rooms), it will be installed, and it will be free-to-guest. I saw this happen first in the extended stay space, where the guests would preferentially book rooms where they had a T1 connected to in-room Ethernet, and then would stay where it was free to guest (bundled into the price of the room). Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of their affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from Marriot and Starwood. It worked, so Marriot went free-to- guest in those segments where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites). Wingate and other chains followed suit. Hilton turned up their Garden Inn chain (as free to guest). Then LaQuinta (who had been refusing to even pay attention to offering Internet access) went and installed in every hotel (chain-wide) and turned it all on ... for free. Why? Because their hand was forced. Yes, you still pay in the higher-end brands, but most of the people who stay in these hotels aren't the kind who live-and-die by access to their email/Exchange and back-end (VPN-protected) applications. And, oh, btw, I managed to keep all of Wayport's airport installations (some of which cost nearly $500,000 to install) as 'free' for the longest time. It was easier to treat it as a marketing expense than to make the changes to the billing system to accommodate how the airport authorities wanted to 'split' the meager fees. And yes, we could see real results in folks who used the (free) WiFi at the airport in-turn preferentially staying at Wayport hotels. Then we got the new Neanderthal CEO who insisted that the world would not go free or go 802.11 (despite clear evidence to the contrary) and the rest is history.His big deal now is WiFi in McDonalds, and that deal has several provisions which allow
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
I coach baseball and am involved for another couple weeks. Sheesh, I didn't sign up for 5-6 days a week for little league (6-8 yr. olds). It's crazy how time consuming (or vacation time consuming) coaching little kids can be. Sheesh, and the coaches that just want to win the minor B championship. There ought to be a law! I don't think a lot of those poor kids will continue next year. I'd love to find a way to crack the old boy network here and move into the 21st Century while it's still young! Trouble is, bandwidth here is double what you pay on the mainland (real bandwidth), and equipment costs and taxes will kill you. Maybe not you, but I am not really sure what your relationship is with Wayport ... I'd be interested in hearing some of your war stories though. As far as the we're different thing, it is totally irksome, but I guess after fighting it for so long you learn to live with it. It really is like living in a third world country at times. MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 8:36 AM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 7, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Maddog wrote: All that is fine but you missed one thing. On the mainland you have competition, this is Hawaii, home of the monopoly and groups that act as a monopoly. I've only been here 2 years, but I still find this its different here, give up thing irksome. I have been dealing with that for going on 10 years now. I only wish we would come out of our third world attitude and join the rest of the mainland in a truly free economy. Similar things happen on the mainland. As far as the politicians, they own everything. Did you see the news this morning? Cal Kawamoto, the traffic cam senator, under investigation by the FBI and IRS. Nothing happens in this town unless you know (read $$$) someone. Kawamoto has been in trouble before. Rod Haraga is in-trouble too, but then, the current national administration is looting the treasury and I don't hear many complaining about that, either. Beer? I'd love too. I can tell you some stories about this place too. I don't know much about the Hotel ownershuip structure but I know plenty about the commercial real estate industry. I'm 'free' starting Friday for about two weeks (though I've got a quick back-n-forth trip to LA in there.) MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:06 AM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote: And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left.It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. Good point. I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it. Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales. Things like the VP of Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl. (My response, You want a heads-down display? didn't win me any friends that day.) Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents protected by the in-room safe. Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO. Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of free wifi from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- end chains. The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR, (REVenue Per Available Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are occupancy and the rack rate. As soon as a lack of Internet services (and most people would rather connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel management as a primary (or even secondary) cause for a drop in occupancy or having to discount the rack rate (in order to fill the rooms), it will be installed, and it will be free-to-guest. I saw this happen first in the extended stay space, where the guests would preferentially book rooms where they had a T1 connected to in-room Ethernet, and then would stay where it was free to guest (bundled into the price of the room). Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of their affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from Marriot and Starwood. It worked, so Marriot went free-to- guest in those segments where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites). Wingate and other chains followed suit. Hilton turned up their Garden Inn chain (as free to guest). Then LaQuinta (who had been
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
My point was that most folks will pay for convenience. Most folks will pay for a Linspire or Mandriva edition because it has all the conveniences built in (i.e. an autoplay DVD player, etc.). As far as marketing crap I believe you way oversimplified it. If people will pay for it you now have a business model. You nailed it with your statement about valuing freedion over market share. The only folks in that boat are the folks with the technical know how, time and drive to make a FOSS product work (highly intelligent guys like yoursself). Can you put together a Debian or Ubuntu, et al system for free? Yes. Will the majority of folks in the world take the time to do it and troubleshoot it when it breaks? No. Not because their time is not free but because they can pay Mandriva $129 and get a working system out of the box and when it breaks they can contact somone to fix it. That is worth $129 and that is why Mandriva is succeeding. As far as Wi-Fi being free. Who are you kidding? There is no such thing as a free lunch. Here in Hawaii the old boys all want a cut. It will never be free here. I ran into a guy the other day who is proposing totally free Wi-Fi. Heh, it's supported by driving folks to his website to buy products and services (and the hotels are resisting because if someone buys something from the website while on hotel property, they want a cut) and if it doesn't work (i.e. make his site more profitable)? It'll shut down. There is going to have to be some kind of business model to support free hotspots. Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies lining up to donate either. MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 10:17 PM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 5, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Maddog wrote: Jim, One point I think most of the FOSS community misses is that it's great if you have the technical knowhow to find, install and troubleshoot these free softwares. The majority of users in the world either don't have the time, or don't have the expertise to do that or simply would rather point and click. Probably why Linspire has half a chance to get a foothold in replacing Windows XP From what I can tell, (k)unbuntu is as easy to drive as linspire, and costs less. If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A large majority would go to the more expensive station out of convenience. I think you'll find they're better off paying the $3.35/gallon at the local station. Lets say you've got a car with a big tank, perhaps 20 gallons, and you manage to arrive in Millilani with 1/4 tank or less, so you can manage to squeeze 16 gallons in on your fill-up. You've saved 16 x ($3.35 - $3.09), or $4.16 on your fill-up, and you had to drive to Millilani and back. Google says its 17.9 miles from Lionel's 76 at 1505 S King St, Honolulu, HI 96826 to the Chevron a t95-130 Kamehameha Hwy, Mililani Town, HI 96789 If you burn just 1 gallon of gas, (your car averages 36 mpg, which I find unlikely) you've only saved $1.07, and you have yet to consider what your time is worth. (Google says its 30 minutes each way.) I find it more likely that your car gets around 22mpg, so it cost you $5.05 in gas to drive to Millilani and back. Even if you manage to arrive running on fumes (with an empty tank) you've spent $5.05 to save $5.20. This doesn't even make sense if you're driving something that holds a lot of gas, because most of these vehicles guzzle gas. GM rates Hummer H2 at 10-13 mpg. The Ford Expedition gets 14-19 mpg, and the three-quarter ton Chevy Suburban gets 13-17 mpg. The standard H2 holds 32 gallons, the Expedition holds 28 gallons and the 3/4 Ton Suburban holds 26 gallons. We'll assume that you can manage to arrive in Millilani running on fumes (impossible with these fuel injected engines, and same will shorten the life of the fuel pump, but I digress, and give you the benefit of doubt.) Suburban: 26 * $0.26 = $6.76 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $6.51 Expedition: 28 * $0.26 = $7.28 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $5.82 H2 32 * $0.26 = $8.32 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $8.51 at the other end of the scale: Prius 51mpg (highway) and holds 11.9 gallons. $3.09 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $2.17 Keep running the numbers, it starts to make sense to drive to Millilani if your car holds about 100 gallons of fuel. There are societal issues that prevent FOSS from becoming dominant. Maybe if Linux distributions concentrated on that they would be able to infiltrate the market to a higher degree. Conquering the market (especially while sweeping freedom under the rug
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A large majority would go to the more expensive station out of convenience. I think you'll find they're better off paying the $3.35/gallon at the local station. You've just proved the validity of his analogy. Now compute the cost of installing your own codec versus buying a package with the codec installed. Be sure to include the value of your time. You definitely have to drive a lot further when you do it yourself. Tim Newsham http://www.lava.net/~newsham/
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 6, 2006, at 5:13 AM, Maddog wrote: My point was that most folks will pay for convenience. Most folks will pay for a Linspire or Mandriva edition because it has all the conveniences built in (i.e. an autoplay DVD player, etc.). As far as marketing crap I believe you way oversimplified it. If people will pay for it you now have a business model. You need enough people to pay enough such that your take-home (profit) provides enough incentive to you. This can be one person paying you $1,000,000 or 1000 people paying you $1,200 each, or 1,000,000 people paying you $2 each. (There are transaction costs, which I've tried to show.) You nailed it with your statement about valuing freedion over market share. The only folks in that boat are the folks with the technical know how, time and drive to make a FOSS product work (highly intelligent guys like yoursself). Can you put together a Debian or Ubuntu, et al system for free? Yes. Will the majority of folks in the world take the time to do it and troubleshoot it when it breaks? No. Not because their time is not free but because they can pay Mandriva $129 and get a working system out of the box and when it breaks they can contact somone to fix it. That is worth $129 and that is why Mandriva is succeeding. People buy luxury cars, too. But the majority don't, they drive Toyotas. There is money to be made all over the scale from 'it didn't cost' to 'you can buy better, but you can't pay more'. As far as Wi-Fi being free. Who are you kidding? There is no such thing as a free lunch. Here in Hawaii the old boys all want a cut. it was this way on the mainland too (years ago). It will never be free here. Never is a long time. I ran into a guy the other day who is proposing totally free Wi-Fi. Heh, it's supported by driving folks to his website to buy products and services (and the hotels are resisting because if someone buys something from the website while on hotel property, they want a cut) and if it doesn't work (i.e. make his site more profitable)? It'll shut down. There is going to have to be some kind of business model to support free hotspots. For most situations, your customers will demand it, and the marginal cost of adding it is so low that you'll do it. Paid WiFi is like a pay toilet. You may get some people to pay, but you'll piss-off most of us. Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies lining up to donate either. Bandwidth... what do you know about bandwidth charges? MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 10:17 PM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 5, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Maddog wrote: Jim, One point I think most of the FOSS community misses is that it's great if you have the technical knowhow to find, install and troubleshoot these free softwares. The majority of users in the world either don't have the time, or don't have the expertise to do that or simply would rather point and click. Probably why Linspire has half a chance to get a foothold in replacing Windows XP From what I can tell, (k)unbuntu is as easy to drive as linspire, and costs less. If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A large majority would go to the more expensive station out of convenience. I think you'll find they're better off paying the $3.35/gallon at the local station. Lets say you've got a car with a big tank, perhaps 20 gallons, and you manage to arrive in Millilani with 1/4 tank or less, so you can manage to squeeze 16 gallons in on your fill-up. You've saved 16 x ($3.35 - $3.09), or $4.16 on your fill-up, and you had to drive to Millilani and back. Google says its 17.9 miles from Lionel's 76 at 1505 S King St, Honolulu, HI 96826 to the Chevron a t95-130 Kamehameha Hwy, Mililani Town, HI 96789 If you burn just 1 gallon of gas, (your car averages 36 mpg, which I find unlikely) you've only saved $1.07, and you have yet to consider what your time is worth. (Google says its 30 minutes each way.) I find it more likely that your car gets around 22mpg, so it cost you $5.05 in gas to drive to Millilani and back. Even if you manage to arrive running on fumes (with an empty tank) you've spent $5.05 to save $5.20. This doesn't even make sense if you're driving something that holds a lot of gas, because most of these vehicles guzzle gas. GM rates Hummer H2 at 10-13 mpg. The Ford Expedition gets 14-19 mpg, and the three-quarter ton Chevy Suburban gets 13-17 mpg. The standard H2 holds 32 gallons, the Expedition holds 28 gallons and the 3/4 Ton Suburban holds 26 gallons. We'll assume that you can manage to arrive
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
You've just proved the validity of his analogy. Now compute the cost of installing your own codec versus buying a package with the codec installed. Be sure to include the value of your time. You definitely have to drive a lot further when you do it yourself. apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2 The analogy breaks down with Linux, because you get better efficiency with increased knowledge. As someone said, time is money, but in my case, if I know how to add the Marillat repository and issue the command, the time is minimal. With each computer I work with, the cost of increased time decreases. Ubuntu tries to achieve this efficiency with the Easy-Ubuntu script. The only way the car analogy works would be to claim that with knowledge, the distance to cheaper gas drops with each tank full. Now consider the Windows side of the issue. Many new computers (but not all) come with some form of DVD playing software, along with the ability to play Windows media files. They still need to get Quicktime, and they need to learn to avoid Web sites that insist you download and install a special codec to play a requested file (spyware in disguise). Then there is the Windows user that buys a DVD drive. He, or she, still needs to install the software, but with my knowledge I can do it faster in Linux. Then there is the case of the person who took his laptop in for repair, got his drive re-imaged, and lost the ability to play DVDs. After going round and round with CompUSA for months, he began looking for free players. He didn't want to spend $50 for a full version of commercial software. Fortunately, I warned him about spyware bundling. In the end, since money was tight, he elected to stop playing DVDs on his laptop. Now before you ask where his restore disks were, he had them. All he had to do was copy his data to a CD-R, restore the system, re-install his other software (he managed to keep MOST of the relevant CDs), and restore his data. Unfortunately, he lost the ability to burn CDs when CompUSA did the re-imaging. -- Hawaiian Astronomical Society: http://www.hawastsoc.org HAS Deepsky Atlas: http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 6, 2006, at 6:47 AM, Tim Newsham wrote: If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A large majority would go to the more expensive station out of convenience. I think you'll find they're better off paying the $3.35/gallon at the local station. You've just proved the validity of his analogy. Now compute the cost of installing your own codec versus buying a package with the codec installed. Be sure to include the value of your time. You definitely have to drive a lot further when you do it yourself. I understood where he was driving, but his analogy was flawed. Its not convenience that keeps people from driving to Mililani or Ewa to fill-up, and they're not paying for that convenience in his example, but they are when they buy Linspire or Minerva, or... Vista. Jim
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
I know plenty about the cost of bandwidth. I also know about the cost of deploying wireless equipment and maintaining the network. It is not viable to offer free wi-fi unless you can pay for the costs. MD Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies lining up to donate either. Bandwidth... what do you know about bandwidth charges? MD
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
I'm sorry, but a single AP in your coffee shop/mcdonalds/lunch counter/ will cost you less than $100. Hotels (on the mainland) have figured out that people will preferentially stay where there first was WiFi and now folks will stay where its free. This is especially true in the 3 star level places. (Nobody expects water to be free in the Four Seasons.) Jim On Jun 6, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Maddog wrote: I know plenty about the cost of bandwidth. I also know about the cost of deploying wireless equipment and maintaining the network. It is not viable to offer free wi-fi unless you can pay for the costs. MD Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies lining up to donate either. Bandwidth... what do you know about bandwidth charges? MD ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
I'm not talking about putting a Linksys et. al, AP in you hotel hallway, I am talking about a commercial Wi-Fi deployment. You are not going to deploy that crappy equipment in Waikiki and expect not to be over run by the guys already there using much more powerful equipment. C'mon Jim. We are going to be on opposite sides of this discussion forever so let's just agree to disagree. As long as you have hardheaded, old boys running the hotels there is no way you are going to have free wireless in Waikiki. I have been here for 15 years and nothing has changed that would make hotel execs see the light. If something is sold on your wireless AP they want a cut. As recently as last week Friday that was the case. If you don't believe me talk to Gordon Bruce. He'll tell you of the countless headaches and bickering he has endured from all the players about how they are going to get their cut of the rev-share pie. It is just not realistic to think it will ever happen here. I am right in the middle of it. Bandwidth charges and Wi-Fi. I know all about it. MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 2:47 PM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities I'm sorry, but a single AP in your coffee shop/mcdonalds/lunch counter/ will cost you less than $100. Hotels (on the mainland) have figured out that people will preferentially stay where there first was WiFi and now folks will stay where its free. This is especially true in the 3 star level places. (Nobody expects water to be free in the Four Seasons.) Jim On Jun 6, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Maddog wrote: I know plenty about the cost of bandwidth. I also know about the cost of deploying wireless equipment and maintaining the network. It is not viable to offer free wi-fi unless you can pay for the costs. MD Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies lining up to donate either. Bandwidth... what do you know about bandwidth charges? MD ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 6, 2006, at 3:07 PM, Maddog wrote: I'm not talking about putting a Linksys et. al, AP in you hotel hallway, I am talking about a commercial Wi-Fi deployment. You are not going to deploy that crappy equipment in Waikiki and expect not to be over run by the guys already there using much more powerful equipment. I have equipment deployed in Waikiki. Really. (I'm not the provider, but we did sell the gear.) C'mon Jim. We are going to be on opposite sides of this discussion forever so let's just agree to disagree. As long as you have hardheaded, old boys running the hotels there is no way you are going to have free wireless in Waikiki. I have been here for 15 years and nothing has changed that would make hotel execs see the light. If something is sold on your wireless AP they want a cut. As recently as last week Friday that was the case. And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left. It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. If you don't believe me talk to Gordon Bruce. He'll tell you of the countless headaches and bickering he has endured from all the players about how they are going to get their cut of the rev-share pie. It is just not realistic to think it will ever happen here. Since anyone can put up the next AP, there is no business model possible in outdoor WiFi. I am right in the middle of it. Bandwidth charges and Wi-Fi. I know all about it. MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 2:47 PM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities I'm sorry, but a single AP in your coffee shop/mcdonalds/lunch counter/ will cost you less than $100. Hotels (on the mainland) have figured out that people will preferentially stay where there first was WiFi and now folks will stay where its free. This is especially true in the 3 star level places. (Nobody expects water to be free in the Four Seasons.) Jim On Jun 6, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Maddog wrote: I know plenty about the cost of bandwidth. I also know about the cost of deploying wireless equipment and maintaining the network. It is not viable to offer free wi-fi unless you can pay for the costs. MD Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies lining up to donate either. Bandwidth... what do you know about bandwidth charges? MD ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left. It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. Good point. I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it. Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO. I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am just too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even if the hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with! MD
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Tuesday, June 6, 2006, at 07:43 PM, Maddog wrote: And it will change. I've been doing hotel WiFi in various guises since 1998. Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left. It will change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is no business requirement driving the hotels here. Hawaii is a resort destination. People come here to play. That said, even Disney's hotels are going free wireless. Good point. I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it. Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway, change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO. I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am just too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even if the hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with! MD Compared to the rest of you, my knowledge of such things is very limited, so this may be an embarrassing question. Are there any city or state governments trying to do this as a service for their citizens? If so, have any of them been successful? Will the Net eventually evolve into something like roads and sidewalks? --Peter
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 13:22 -1000, Jim Thompson wrote: On Jun 3, 2006, at 11:28 AM, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote: But in order to do MP3, DVD, and/or play movies, etc., you need to do something extra. Fortunately, there is a Python script that will do all these, and more, in one simple batch process: http://users.on.net/~goetz/EasyUbuntu/get.html Of course, once you do that, you no longer have a 100% FOSS system. .. And also, you no longer have a legal system. For example, DVD playback capabilities are in violation of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (and similar laws in other countries) Some FOSS distros have similar pages which make for interesting reading: http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormatsProblem There's a bug in Malone regarding this issue as well: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-express/+bug/5237 One solution is to install free (as in beer) software such as RealPlayer. So yeah, on a personal level I'm looking into some of the legalities for HOSEF. As we are not a distribution like Ubuntu with a commitment to FOSS, it may be legal for us to distribute non-free applications like RealPlayer. It would be on a case-by-case basis based on the distribution clauses of the applications. I'm still weighing things up in my mind to even go down that route. Conversely, it is legal to license DVD playback and build a distro based on Ubuntu and call it DVD-Ubuntu or something like that. Say it costs you $10 per seat. You could then charge the break even cost per seat for a copy of DVD-Ubuntu... Now telling them that the cost of DVD playback costs them $10 is one thing. Educating them that the price of freedom costs more than $10 is another thing. If you give people freedom but don't teach them to value it, they won't hold on to it for long. So it is not enough to spread free software. We have to teach people to demand freedom, to fight for freedom. Then we may be able to overcome the problems that today I see no way to solve. - RMS (http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484) ~ Julian
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 5, 2006, at 12:43 AM, Julian Yap wrote: On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 13:22 -1000, Jim Thompson wrote: On Jun 3, 2006, at 11:28 AM, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote: But in order to do MP3, DVD, and/or play movies, etc., you need to do something extra. Fortunately, there is a Python script that will do all these, and more, in one simple batch process: http://users.on.net/~goetz/EasyUbuntu/get.html Of course, once you do that, you no longer have a 100% FOSS system. .. And also, you no longer have a legal system. I was going to leave the legalities out of it, as I didn't want you (or anyone else) to think I was attacking you. Perhaps some on this list will begin to understand why i side with Stallman on the issue of Free Software .vs Open Source Software. Jim
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Julian Yap wrote: On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 13:22 -1000, Jim Thompson wrote: On Jun 3, 2006, at 11:28 AM, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote: But in order to do MP3, DVD, and/or play movies, etc., you need to do something extra. Fortunately, there is a Python script that will do all these, and more, in one simple batch process: http://users.on.net/~goetz/EasyUbuntu/get.html Of course, once you do that, you no longer have a 100% FOSS system. .. And also, you no longer have a legal system. For example, DVD playback capabilities are in violation of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (and similar laws in other countries) Some FOSS distros have similar pages which make for interesting reading: http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormatsProblem There's a bug in Malone regarding this issue as well: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-express/+bug/5237 One solution is to install free (as in beer) software such as RealPlayer. So yeah, on a personal level I'm looking into some of the legalities for HOSEF. As we are not a distribution like Ubuntu with a commitment to FOSS, it may be legal for us to distribute non-free applications like RealPlayer. It would be on a case-by-case basis based on the distribution clauses of the applications. I'm still weighing things up in my mind to even go down that route. Conversely, it is legal to license DVD playback and build a distro based on Ubuntu and call it DVD-Ubuntu or something like that. Say it costs you $10 per seat. You could then charge the break even cost per seat for a copy of DVD-Ubuntu... Now telling them that the cost of DVD playback costs them $10 is one thing. Educating them that the price of freedom costs more than $10 is another thing. If you give people freedom but don't teach them to value it, they won't hold on to it for long. So it is not enough to spread free software. We have to teach people to demand freedom, to fight for freedom. Then we may be able to overcome the problems that today I see no way to solve. - RMS (http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484) ~ Julian ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau How would you explain Linspire's DVD player that plays commercial DVD's? The Linspire DVD player is a software multimedia player that includes legal, licensed commercial-quality codecs and auto-detection of DVDs to enhance the DVD playback experience under Linspire 4.5 and higher. This from their website. DaveK
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
--- David Kiwerski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Julian Yap wrote: On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 13:22 -1000, Jim Thompson wrote: On Jun 3, 2006, at 11:28 AM, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote: But in order to do MP3, DVD, and/or play movies, etc., you need to do something extra. Fortunately, there is a Python script that will do all these, and more, in one simple batch process: http://users.on.net/~goetz/EasyUbuntu/get.html Of course, once you do that, you no longer have a 100% FOSS system. .. And also, you no longer have a legal system. For example, DVD playback capabilities are in violation of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (and similar laws in other countries) Some FOSS distros have similar pages which make for interesting reading: http://en.opensuse.org/Restricted_Formats http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormatsProblem There's a bug in Malone regarding this issue as well: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-express/+bug/5237 One solution is to install free (as in beer) software such as RealPlayer. So yeah, on a personal level I'm looking into some of the legalities for HOSEF. As we are not a distribution like Ubuntu with a commitment to FOSS, it may be legal for us to distribute non-free applications like RealPlayer. It would be on a case-by-case basis based on the distribution clauses of the applications. I'm still weighing things up in my mind to even go down that route. Conversely, it is legal to license DVD playback and build a distro based on Ubuntu and call it DVD-Ubuntu or something like that. Say it costs you $10 per seat. You could then charge the break even cost per seat for a copy of DVD-Ubuntu... Now telling them that the cost of DVD playback costs them $10 is one thing. Educating them that the price of freedom costs more than $10 is another thing. If you give people freedom but don't teach them to value it, they won't hold on to it for long. So it is not enough to spread free software. We have to teach people to demand freedom, to fight for freedom. Then we may be able to overcome the problems that today I see no way to solve. - RMS (http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484) ~ Julian How would you explain Linspire's DVD player that plays commercial DVD's? The Linspire DVD player is a software multimedia player that includes legal, licensed commercial-quality codecs and auto-detection of DVDs to enhance the DVD playback experience under Linspire 4.5 and higher. This from their website. Linspire is a commercial Linux distribution. They make the effort to license DVD playback and other codecs. Their target market is to replace Windows XP Home. Linspire this year announced their community distribution called Freespire (http://www.freespire.org). Linspire/Freespire is in turn based off Debian. Many of the commercial distributions have similar free (as in freedom) community distributions. SUSE = OpenSUSE Redhat = Fedora Tom Welch, CIO of Linspire spoke earlier this year at TPOSSCON: http://www.hosef.org/wiki/TPOSSCON_2006_media ~ Julian
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:25 PM, David Kiwerski wrote: How would you explain Linspire's DVD player that plays commercial DVD's? I think he already did. The Linspire DVD player is a software multimedia player that includes legal, licensed commercial-quality codecs and auto- detection of DVDs to enhance the DVD playback experience under Linspire 4.5 and higher. This from their website. Its not 'free' in either sense of the word. It will cost you $9.95 *and* you have to be a CNR member' ($19.95/year). http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=11804 http://www.linspire.com/products_cnr_whatis.php?tab=whatis jim
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 5, 2006, at 7:20 PM, Jim Thompson wrote: On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:25 PM, David Kiwerski wrote: How would you explain Linspire's DVD player that plays commercial DVD's? I think he already did. The Linspire DVD player is a software multimedia player that includes legal, licensed commercial-quality codecs and auto- detection of DVDs to enhance the DVD playback experience under Linspire 4.5 and higher. This from their website. Its not 'free' in either sense of the word. It will cost you $9.95 *and* you have to be a CNR member' ($19.95/year). http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=11804 http://www.linspire.com/products_cnr_whatis.php?tab=whatis Not to put too fine a point on it, but, quoting the rest of the first URL above (which you appear to be unwilling to do): --- How is the Linspire DVD player different from Xine and other DVD players available for Linux? The Linspire DVD player is actually based on the Xine player, but there are three main differences: First, the Linspire DVD player includes a commercial license for the DVD playback decoding so you don't have to find, buy and install this on your own (this can be expensive and a tricky, complicated process). Second, Linspire DVD player has been optimized for ease-of-use, making it one-click easy to install and use. And third, Linspire DVD player has been integrated fully with Linspire, making things like auto-play possible so that when you put a DVD into your Linspire computer, it recognizes it and loads the DVD software automatically. Linspire users can also, if they choose, install the regular Xine player (without the items mentioned above) at no charge via CNR. --- So what you get by sending $10 to Linspire is Xine plus a license to the CODECs you need to play DVDs, plus the CNR functions (which you only care about if you're running Linspire). Most linux distros can be setup to auto-play DVDs.
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
Jim, One point I think most of the FOSS community misses is that it's great if you have the technical knowhow to find, install and troubleshoot these free softwares. The majority of users in the world either don't have the time, or don't have the expertise to do that or simply would rather point and click. Probably why Linspire has half a chance to get a foothold in replacing Windows XP If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A large majority would go to the more expensive station out of convenience. There are societal issues that prevent FOSS from becoming dominant. Maybe if Linux distributions concentrated on that they would be able to infiltrate the market to a higher degree. I think the new wireless models have taken notice, free with lots of ads or pay a bit for no ads. We'll see if it works but as I recall an ISP tried that without success. Maybe a combo FOSS and for pay model works? Mandriva seems to live by it and judging by the bottom line they have had some success. MD - Original Message - From: Jim Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LUAU luau@lists.hosef.org Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 7:33 PM Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities On Jun 5, 2006, at 7:20 PM, Jim Thompson wrote: On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:25 PM, David Kiwerski wrote: How would you explain Linspire's DVD player that plays commercial DVD's? I think he already did. The Linspire DVD player is a software multimedia player that includes legal, licensed commercial-quality codecs and auto- detection of DVDs to enhance the DVD playback experience under Linspire 4.5 and higher. This from their website. Its not 'free' in either sense of the word. It will cost you $9.95 *and* you have to be a CNR member' ($19.95/year). http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=11804 http://www.linspire.com/products_cnr_whatis.php?tab=whatis Not to put too fine a point on it, but, quoting the rest of the first URL above (which you appear to be unwilling to do): --- How is the Linspire DVD player different from Xine and other DVD players available for Linux? The Linspire DVD player is actually based on the Xine player, but there are three main differences: First, the Linspire DVD player includes a commercial license for the DVD playback decoding so you don't have to find, buy and install this on your own (this can be expensive and a tricky, complicated process). Second, Linspire DVD player has been optimized for ease-of-use, making it one-click easy to install and use. And third, Linspire DVD player has been integrated fully with Linspire, making things like auto-play possible so that when you put a DVD into your Linspire computer, it recognizes it and loads the DVD software automatically. Linspire users can also, if they choose, install the regular Xine player (without the items mentioned above) at no charge via CNR. --- So what you get by sending $10 to Linspire is Xine plus a license to the CODECs you need to play DVDs, plus the CNR functions (which you only care about if you're running Linspire). Most linux distros can be setup to auto-play DVDs. ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 5, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Maddog wrote: Jim, One point I think most of the FOSS community misses is that it's great if you have the technical knowhow to find, install and troubleshoot these free softwares. The majority of users in the world either don't have the time, or don't have the expertise to do that or simply would rather point and click. Probably why Linspire has half a chance to get a foothold in replacing Windows XP From what I can tell, (k)unbuntu is as easy to drive as linspire, and costs less. If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A large majority would go to the more expensive station out of convenience. I think you'll find they're better off paying the $3.35/gallon at the local station. Lets say you've got a car with a big tank, perhaps 20 gallons, and you manage to arrive in Millilani with 1/4 tank or less, so you can manage to squeeze 16 gallons in on your fill-up. You've saved 16 x ($3.35 - $3.09), or $4.16 on your fill-up, and you had to drive to Millilani and back. Google says its 17.9 miles from Lionel's 76 at 1505 S King St, Honolulu, HI 96826 to the Chevron a t95-130 Kamehameha Hwy, Mililani Town, HI 96789 If you burn just 1 gallon of gas, (your car averages 36 mpg, which I find unlikely) you've only saved $1.07, and you have yet to consider what your time is worth. (Google says its 30 minutes each way.) I find it more likely that your car gets around 22mpg, so it cost you $5.05 in gas to drive to Millilani and back. Even if you manage to arrive running on fumes (with an empty tank) you've spent $5.05 to save $5.20. This doesn't even make sense if you're driving something that holds a lot of gas, because most of these vehicles guzzle gas. GM rates Hummer H2 at 10-13 mpg. The Ford Expedition gets 14-19 mpg, and the three-quarter ton Chevy Suburban gets 13-17 mpg. The standard H2 holds 32 gallons, the Expedition holds 28 gallons and the 3/4 Ton Suburban holds 26 gallons. We'll assume that you can manage to arrive in Millilani running on fumes (impossible with these fuel injected engines, and same will shorten the life of the fuel pump, but I digress, and give you the benefit of doubt.) Suburban: 26 * $0.26 = $6.76 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $6.51 Expedition: 28 * $0.26 = $7.28 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $5.82 H2 32 * $0.26 = $8.32 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $8.51 at the other end of the scale: Prius 51mpg (highway) and holds 11.9 gallons. $3.09 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $2.17 Keep running the numbers, it starts to make sense to drive to Millilani if your car holds about 100 gallons of fuel. There are societal issues that prevent FOSS from becoming dominant. Maybe if Linux distributions concentrated on that they would be able to infiltrate the market to a higher degree. Conquering the market (especially while sweeping freedom under the rug) is the stance taken by many open source advocates. Others (including Free Software advocates) value freedom over 'market share'. I think the new wireless models have taken notice, free with lots of ads or pay a bit for no ads. We'll see if it works but as I recall an ISP tried that without success. unlicensed wireless will only succeed when its free ($0 cost). I say this as the former CTO of Wayport (a for-pay hotspot ISP), with a lot of wireless experience ever since. Point in fact, we sell gear to a lo of folks who are trying to install for-pay wireless. I think any forced ads will be quickly defeated. Maybe a combo FOSS and for pay model works? Mandriva seems to live by it and judging by the bottom line they have had some success. There is value in support, and there is money in customization, because nobody's time is free (at least, not all the time). As for the Windows vs. Linux: The Great Battle stance, it is very much a Marketing Myth. The only people who believe this myth are people who are susceptible to believing marketing crap. I've found that companies trust suppliers who respect their choices. That cuts both ways.
