When the customer starts changing the contract, the proper answer is always "No". It's tempting to think that they can only change their minds once. They can change their minds over and over until you get driven out of business, especially if they think they can buy your product directly from the manufacturer, which is now a local company. If your only contribution is capital and an idea, you've made yourself irrelevant once the product hits the production stage. Especially if the buyer and the manufacturer are in the same place, while you are on the other side of the world. This is something anyone could have told them, if they'd bothered to ask around. It's not like this sort of thing never happens, in China it's considered fairly common.

They would have been much better off doing the production and development locally, where they can have constant dialogue with a manufacturer that they trust. Preferably because someone on their team had worked with them before. It would then be much easier for them to say "No" to a changed contract, and sell their product directly to their targets, either to private schools in India or to other places worldwide.

I think Advertising and Marketing are overrated. There's only so much you can do to push Linux into the market when it's not supported by common software, where APIs change and people can still spend entirely too much time to get too little done.

That's not really the problem though. If you're starting with the fundamental assumption that the users won't know what's best for them, and will just give up everything they've been using so far and switch sides if only your subject is sufficiently polished; that approach can only be unhelpful.

There needs to be an acceptance among the current linux community that there are still flaws with the basic system, a taking of responsibility for actually fixing those flaws. Then fixing the flaws. Currently anyone pointing out a problem gets bombarded with a huge list of patches and long explanations about why it's not really a problem. They're missing the point that users won't really care who is responsible or to spend the time implementing a workaround. At least those users who aren't accused of being subversives working for Microsoft and spreading FUD; that's not doing the movement any favours either.

Linux as a whole would be better off by setting up something like "Kickstarter" for getting bugs fixed. Not a bounty system, because that won't persuade people to invest time, but a system where people are funded to start working on basic system features. So we can have professional programmers investing their time to solidifying the groundwork and porting or replicating windows applications.

I've had some experience running marketing and I can't say it's ever done me that much good. I got far more business by word of mouth and I suspect it works pretty similarly for larger businesses too. When Microsoft pushes out Windows 8, it'll probably have some ads that everyone blocks out; people will buy it because it's the next version of the Windows that they've had experience with before, and they'll buy it because they've had good experiences with Windows in the past.

I've had the same experiences with Visual Studio, with some libraries more than others. The way I've started to see it is that it's just not worth using "clever" tricks. Doing stuff the really basic way guarantees that your code won't instantly break when the environment changes, especially when it comes to passing information out of your functions. Of course, maybe I'm not experienced enough to see the reasons for some of those implementations.

If it's a valid tactic or not, her experience matches mine pretty closely. Though seriously, if your first thought to someone disagreeing with you is that they're a spy planted by a multinational organization; I seriously suggest you consider getting help.

Are you implying that Linux is not equivalent to a commercial operating system?

I think you're missing the point. She was explaining why she stopped using linux, not asking for advice. This is something that shouldn't happen anyway, since both Windows and Mac know to check a driver's compatibility before trying to load it. Linux had it's chance in this instance, but couldn't make it work.

For one thing, no one's going to say "Yeah I expected they were totally going to shaft me for it because I always knew they were evil.".

Personally I am surprised, there was still time for the company to go "my bad", pay a fine and just walk away. Once people start putting pressure on the whistleblower like they're in the mob or even something really stupid like death threats, the company has essentially made it impossible for themselves to back down. They're virtually guaranteeing that management will be criminally prosecuted and will probably go to jail for what will turn out to be a fairly small amount of money.

I dunno, I'm leaning towards the ban after seeing that. If there are people who can't put a sock in it even when faced with criminal penalties, we might be better off without them. Also, yeah flying is bad enough without people nattering on non stop right next to you.

Anyway there's more to the phone ban than plane problems. The networks can't keep up with phones moving across the country that fast, and it tends to mess with every cell tower you pass over.

Maybe not. If they were the kind of people who were sharp enough to manage a project successfully then they wouldn't think that controlling everyone's information is a good idea. Both are manifestations of incompetence, so we're pretty safe.

Did you see the video? They were very scary weren't they? Sitting down on the ground like that with their arms pinned and not moving. So scary that the officer felt the need to prance around spraying them while his mates turned their backs to the protesters.

It's a problem because in a first world country, people expect better than to have violence used against them for not running scared when the officers arrive. Police are supposed to work together with people to keep the community together; not come when those in power call them to put the hurt on people who're being difficult.

That's the crisis. What makes it worse is that the officers involved were so relaxed that they don't appear to be worried about the protesters at all; they used pain just because it was easier.

There are many places where protesting means they'll just shoot you and then forget you exist. Libya was one example and North Korea is an example now; where the government is perfectly happy to shoot as many people as it takes, even if it kills half the country as long as it keeps them in power.

Your advice only works in America, and only because the government and the people in power don't want to win badly enough that they're willing to risk their skins. The reason they don't want to win badly enough is that they're fairly comfortable and that the OWS movement still has the implicit assumption that they can push back just as violently as the Libyan people if cornered.

In the end, unless the people involved suddenly grow a conscience; societal change is about having enough power to back up your demands, if only in theory. If you can't do that; there are people who are quite happy to reduce others to the level of slaves. They will sleep perfectly well at night afterward.

Also, there's no point in appealing to the media when the media is controlled in whole by the very people you're fighting against. They will always report the very worst, even if they have to make it up from scratch. This happens everywhere, China, Libya, North Korea, Egypt and America.

After seeing some of the posts in recent threads; I'm tempted to agree. I come to slashdot to see opinions of people who have personal experience in subjects relating to stories they're commenting on. It's great when it happens but it seems to be fairly rare.

If you thought your argument had merit, why did you end up posting anonymously?

It's interesting that prejudgment is a logical fallacy but implicitly assuming that you're better than everyone and that they're all sheep is not a fallacy. Tell me straight, can you honestly say that previous law breaking doesn't correlate at all with future law breaking?

We don't want to be tracked but still want to be able to talk to people; which is why people carry phones in the first place.