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Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

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Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#11
post #2

Challenge for November: No Google Software. That's where I'd have trouble.

Search: I can use Bing or Yahoo, no problem here.

Mail: gmail is integrated deeply into my workflow. Hard to live without it.

Money: Adsense pays for my hosting bill so can't drop them, besides there is no worthy competitor with Adsense (for small blogs)

Analytics: Google's product is great and free but i would be very happy to try some alternative.

Docs: don't use google docs a lot. Not important.

Calendar: I have too few plans/appointments so a calendar is useless :-p

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#12
post #4

That's kindof like trying to quit smoking cold turkey. It's killing you, and you know it, but you still have to make the transition gradually.

What a load of waffle. You still get to write documents, do spreadsheets, you just use different products to do it. Products that have some advantages, and disadvantages.

It is more like changing your brand of cigarette.

Clearly not a follower of logic, are you?

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#13
post #11
post #2

Challenge for November: No Google Software. That's where I'd have trouble.

Search: I can use Bing or Yahoo, no problem here. Mail: gmail is integrated deeply into my workflow. Hard to live without it. Money: Adsense pays for my hosting bill so can't drop them, besides there is no worthy competitor with Adsense (for small blogs) Analytics: Google's product is great and free but i would be very happy to try some alternative. Docs: don't use google docs a lot. Not important. Calendar: I have t…

Y!'s analytics are neat.

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#14
post #4

That's kindof like trying to quit smoking cold turkey. It's killing you, and you know it, but you still have to make the transition gradually.

Bad analogy. It is actually easier to quit smoking cold turkey than gradually. The reason is that a nicotine addiction comes back every time you smoke a cigarette. So if you've just tried to limit your smoking, then you are constantly in the position of craving a cigarette with a recently re-established addiction. You're drawing out the pain. By contrast when you quit cold turkey you have a rough time until the addiction fades, but then it is over.

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#15
post #11
post #2

Challenge for November: No Google Software. That's where I'd have trouble.

Search: I can use Bing or Yahoo, no problem here. Mail: gmail is integrated deeply into my workflow. Hard to live without it. Money: Adsense pays for my hosting bill so can't drop them, besides there is no worthy competitor with Adsense (for small blogs) Analytics: Google's product is great and free but i would be very happy to try some alternative. Docs: don't use google docs a lot. Not important. Calendar: I have t…

Makes you wonder what is easy to change. Apart from search, it's all difficult to swap over. In many ways, more difficult then office software or even an OS.

We're getting there.

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#16
A more eye-opening challenge would be: no free-open source software for a month, no services using open source software (no sites running on an open source OS or server etc.) and no operating systems which are even partly open source (so no OSX either).

Another less radical but still quite interesting variant would allow using open source licensed software (BSD, Apache etc.) but no free software (GPL, LGPL etc.).

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#17
post #14
post #4

That's kindof like trying to quit smoking cold turkey. It's killing you, and you know it, but you still have to make the transition gradually.

Bad analogy. It is actually easier to quit smoking cold turkey than gradually. The reason is that a nicotine addiction comes back every time you smoke a cigarette. So if you've just tried to limit your smoking, then you are constantly in the position of craving a cigarette with a recently re-established addiction. You're drawing out the pain. By contrast when you quit cold turkey you have a rough time until the addic…

It's been three years for me. Still not over.

Re: Matt Cutts 30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

#18
post #16

A more eye-opening challenge would be: no free-open source software for a month, no services using open source software (no sites running on an open source OS or server etc.) and no operating systems which are even partly open source (so no OSX either). Another less radical but still quite interesting variant would allow using open source licensed software (BSD, Apache etc.) but no free software (GPL, LGPL etc.).

I'm not sure if it's still true for Windows 7, but I remember that XP also used some BSD code in the network stack. The challenge shouldn't really be eye opening. Free working code will make its way into many pieces of software.

Your second challenge is more interesting, as it may illustrate the effect of using more restrictive copyleft licensing in terms of code reuse.

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