Slashdot Mirror

Unless someone can prove that Windows has a secret "Disable third-party software" function, I just don't see the problem.

Of course, Microsoft will make certain that no one who hasn't signed a NDA ever sees such things. In fact, it is what makes the concept of open source so dangerous for them. With open source, nothing can remain hidden. Nevertheless, here is an example for you below. You could find others if you really cared for the truth.

This is from:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0,10000,0-1003-200-34183 3,00.html

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there a feature they have that might get in our way?"
-- Bill Gates

Do you still feel like defending their honor?

Shamless self-promotion: The last application I wrote for Windows before I swore off MFC and moved to Linux was a front-end for about ten good text adventures called Adventure Blaster. It's a little dated at this point, but still provides a convenient way for Windows users to play some great games without facing the learning curve of setting up the interpreters. It also has a very extensive help system with walkthroughs and loads of pointers for newbies.

This from good 'ol News.com

Software maker Trilogy Studios said it plans to release a home "censorware" product that will cut scenes and language from DVDs to create PG versions of R-rated movies.

The company, which launched a new Web site last week, said it plans to unveil its Movie Mask DVD player by the first quarter of 2002. The software works on PCs and Microsoft's Xbox game console, telling the device to skip over specific frames in the film that portray violence, profanity or nudity. The company said the DVD remains unaffected, since the censorship instructions reside in the video playback device.

The sum of the components are surely more costly than the price of the unit itself, considering MS is losing money on them, and will continue to do so until about 2005. Estimates of Microsoft's cost to build each unit have ranged from $320 to $400, but those are probably wholesale prices anyways not retail.

The sum of the components are surely more costly than the price of the unit itself, considering MS is losing money on them, and will continue to do so until about 2005. Estimates of Microsoft's cost to build each unit have ranged from $320 to $400, but those are probably wholesale prices anyways not retail.

From an article at Cnet.com about techie Christmas gifts and who wants what:

"Executives ... 15 percent said they wanted an Xbox. ... Interestingly, executives were the only category of professionals who requested the much-hyped gaming console from software giant Microsoft."

Weellll . . .

We're not surprised, are we?

...take a look at C|Net's review of Microsoft's strategies with the Xbox. Bottom line of their article is that Microsoft has had to put on a completely different face to court developers for their game console, switching from monopolistic tyrant to play-nice we-want-to-help-you-succeed hardware investor. According to the quotes cited, it's worked, too. So far.

I forgot to mention that @home scans your machine daily to make sure you are not running a news server.

They were pressured to do this by Usenet administrators. If they had not, their IPs would have been blocked by many usenet servers. The levels of spam from @Home addresses were unacceptable. These scans fixed the problem.

Never mind they *don't provide the bandwith* to run a news server

Right. They provide fucking insane downstream bandwidth and fairly modest upstream, suitable for clients. I would prefer more upstream, too, but not if it means paying more...which of course it would. Bandwidth costs money. If you haven't noticed, @Home isn't in the best financial shape.

Why would you run a Usenet server anyway? This is a huge resource drain (much more content than you actually read is sent to you), when there are plenty of other usenet servers (for modest fees, or even using the ones @Home provides) or alternatives to Usenet entirely.

... and more often than not the *scans* will disrupt your downloads!

Bullshit. Their scans consist of SYN packets to port nntp (119/tcp). If your machine properly issues a ICMP connection refused packet, nothing more will happen. I am an @Home customer and was when they started doing this. I have not experienced any problems due to these scans.

Seriously, look at the heart of what I am saying: you are paying the same, or more, and getting less and less as @home can take from you. Is this the way to run a business?

Given their terrible financial situation, they must do this or go broke. In that case, they would charge you nothing and provide no service. You have that option now. Take it if you like.

My complaint with @Home is that their support is absolutely terrible. When I call about service interruptions, I'm put on hold for way too long before talking to someone who does not have a clue. I'd much rather see them pour money into fixing this problem than into a little more upstream bandwidth.

Actually, there is little reason to doubt the NCTA data. Although it's called a "survey," their findings are better thought of as sales reports. The NCTA is an industry association, and will certainly try to put a spin on their findings (e.g., "Consumers' strong response to digital cable services, in spite of difficult times, confirms the excellent value of these new services"), but they'll still report accurate sales figures.

The RIAA (boo) would LOVE it if album sales plummeted at the same time that Napster was taking off. Yet, that wasn't the case (although CD singles did suffer a drop last year, the increased sales of full albums was significantly greater), and the RIAA reported the numbers correctly. Although they put their spin on it, ("Look at the drop in Singles sales"), they reported valid sales figures.

It looks like the first article was a guy trying to create a news story when there really wasn't one. Sure, people will switch from high bandwidth to low bandwidth, but if the general trend overshadows it, we end up with a very different story.

The newer story, which is just a rehash of an NCTA press release says nothing about the people who are installing (or uninstalling) cable modems. It talks about sales trends. This doesn't negate the other story, it just indicates that it isn't all that big a trend.

It's the equivalent of C|Net reporting that I just bought an AMD processor, so Intel had better watch out. Who cares about me? If there are 50,000 people like me, then you notice.

So, yes there are people switching. But no, it doesn't seem to be affecting the industry. Two separate stories, no conflict.

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, Etc.
Writing with a followup to the Slashdot post titled,

"Who Has Faster Pipes? Linux, Win2000, WinXP Compared"
Splinton had this to say: "In

this article, Ed Bradford compares semaphores, mutexes and window's
critical sections. Pthreads look good, but Win2Ks critical sections are
twice as fast again!"

The computing equivalent of Area 51? A short while
back HP closed its calculator division. Many have thought HP's
calculator department was unprofitable. This was not the case. Many have
thought they had no innovation. This was not the case. Turns out that
management had 4% workforce to kill and they were part of the cut.

This article
explains more. It turns out they had designed several Linux based
PDA's ready to produce that were killed by management. Sounds
interesting? Go check it out.

The biggest expense was the 12 gross of Estes D engines ...
Satellite Designer writes: "The topic of low cost satellites
having been mooted here recently, I though I'd alert readers to another
such project. The HETE-2
satellite recently

located a cosmic gamma-ray burst precisely enough that (with a lot
of help from friends) an afterglow was detected, identifying its source.
HETE-2 cost $26 million, only 1/3 of what a "small" scientific satellite
normally costs.

A lot of commercial "off the shelf" technology went into HETE. Nothing
from Radio Shack, but there are quite a few parts from Digi-Key onboard.
You can't save money by using cheap parts (but you *can* save money by
using easily obtainable parts), and you can't achieve reliability by
using expensive parts (but you *can* help reliability by using the parts
best suited for your application). The radical thing about HETE's parts
selection was that it considered parts in the application context (as
one would do in a normal engineering process), rather than restricting
selection to a QPL assembled to meet irrelevant requirements.

The real trick to keeping costs down is to do the job with as small a
team as possible in the minimum time possible. Rather than employing a
large team of specialists, HETE's scientific investigators did much of
the engineering and technical work. A small, carefully selected
engineering team filled in the knowledge gaps."

Quitting isn't easy, and why bother?
dmarsh writes: "This
new
article from C|Net seems to be a
total contradiction to last week's

"Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!" thread's article. I guess the
important difference being that this one is backed up by an actual
survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association."

Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at
least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source ;)

<

Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, Etc.
Writing with a followup to the Slashdot post titled,

"Who Has Faster Pipes? Linux, Win2000, WinXP Compared"
Splinton had this to say: "In

this article, Ed Bradford compares semaphores, mutexes and window's
critical sections. Pthreads look good, but Win2Ks critical sections are
twice as fast again!"

The computing equivalent of Area 51? A short while
back HP closed its calculator division. Many have thought HP's
calculator department was unprofitable. This was not the case. Many have
thought they had no innovation. This was not the case. Turns out that
management had 4% workforce to kill and they were part of the cut.

This article
explains more. It turns out they had designed several Linux based
PDA's ready to produce that were killed by management. Sounds
interesting? Go check it out.

The biggest expense was the 12 gross of Estes D engines ...
Satellite Designer writes: "The topic of low cost satellites
having been mooted here recently, I though I'd alert readers to another
such project. The HETE-2
satellite recently

located a cosmic gamma-ray burst precisely enough that (with a lot
of help from friends) an afterglow was detected, identifying its source.
HETE-2 cost $26 million, only 1/3 of what a "small" scientific satellite
normally costs.

A lot of commercial "off the shelf" technology went into HETE. Nothing
from Radio Shack, but there are quite a few parts from Digi-Key onboard.
You can't save money by using cheap parts (but you *can* save money by
using easily obtainable parts), and you can't achieve reliability by
using expensive parts (but you *can* help reliability by using the parts
best suited for your application). The radical thing about HETE's parts
selection was that it considered parts in the application context (as
one would do in a normal engineering process), rather than restricting
selection to a QPL assembled to meet irrelevant requirements.

The real trick to keeping costs down is to do the job with as small a
team as possible in the minimum time possible. Rather than employing a
large team of specialists, HETE's scientific investigators did much of
the engineering and technical work. A small, carefully selected
engineering team filled in the knowledge gaps."

Quitting isn't easy, and why bother?
dmarsh writes: "This
new
article from C|Net seems to be a
total contradiction to last week's

"Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!" thread's article. I guess the
important difference being that this one is backed up by an actual
survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association."

Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at
least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source ;)

<

Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer

The agreement only covers the royalties collected under the "statutory license" and not the "interactive licenses". In other words, if you can pick and chose your music, the artists royalties still go through the labels. By making the statutory licenses as narrow as possible to those wanting to "webcast", the RIAA has pretty effectively assured that those who chose to cater to the consumers and public wants with interactive webcasts must seek the interactive licenses (which are negotiated on a case by case basis and cost much more), thus assuring it is business as usual. (and thus bypassing this agreement). SoundExchange does not collect royalties for uses of music directly licensed by labels (or interactive uses), such as the Echo Networks and Warner deal earlier this week.

This still doesn't address the fact that the RIAA and SoundExchange are NOT paying the webcasting royalties this year, even though they were due to be paid in July. This they announced in May. CNet ran an article

According to Webnoize (subscription required) article, The $5.2 Million payment they made on October 15 represents only income from the cable, satellite and Muzak licenses collected from Feb 1996 to March 2000. They do not include any payment for webcasting that they have collected since 1999. Ina ddition their administrative fee is 20% meaning the RIAA collected $1.3 Million for that distribution.

Its a step in the right direction, but its only a baby step. One interesting side note: the payment directly to artists is one thing that is contained in the Music Online Competition Act (MOCA) introduced on Aug 3rd by Rick Boucher and Chris Cannon, that the RIAA has condemned in no uncertain terms.

If Dell &co want reliability, then why do they put up with stuff like this and this? Your argument just doesn't hold water.

Do I even need to mention the Pentium I floating point flaw, coverup, and recall?

Isn't the Ricochet network being restarted by its new owner? Here is a C|Net article on it.

This crazy chinaman linux user wrecked HP's Superdome tests!

You can try to call it something else, but using illegal tactics to screw customers out of their money is just as much stealing as infringing on copyrights is stealing. Why is it just "disagreeable behavior" when the record industry deprives consumers of money through illegal acts, but "criminal behavior" when it happens the other way around?

What's more, your opinions do not represent a majority view.

Do the majority of Americans know a single thing about the record industry or copyright law? Hell, most of them don't even know who their own House representative is. I'm sorry to break it to you, but if we have to depend on what the majority knows or believes, we're in deep shit. Now if you'd said "majority of people who are fairly well informed on the subject, then you might be onto something. But I'd really like to see some evidence of that.

I love that in the previous /. article, they said, " The demise of Napster, a popular music-swapping service ... may also portend a stall in broadband demand. " and then the next /. story is about all the other Napster clones popping up and going strong. Maybe those Cnet people should be more L33t and pay attention to new trends. I mean, Napster was so last year already! :)

CNET

Although this storuy claims "is the first intrusion detection system to reside on individual computers rather than a network"
which is clearly wrong.

Record companies are not "denying musicians fair compensation"; the musicians voluntarily agreed to the compensation they are getting when they signed a contract. If they didn't like the terms of the contract, they weren't required to sign it. Ergo, no denial of compensation. Record companies are also not "price gouging"; you aren't obligated to pay for any album in the first place, so you can't claim that you were obligated to pay too much. If you think an album is too expensive, don't buy it. Ergo, not price gouging.

The RIAA's approach to Gnutella thus far has been actively discovering copyright offenders and sending DMCA complaints to their ISP

I was a bit worried about this so I did some research. The only case of someone actually losing access was covered in an article on Salon. News.com reported about pressure on ISPs, but mentioned only one subscriber being cut off.

I checked the dslreports message boards expecting to find howls of protests by those cut off from their monopoly broadband providers. Silence....

I think the RIAA and MPAA are doing a great job at scaring people away from file sharing without actually paying many bounty hunters because the idea of a secret copyright police force is so juicy.

Similarly, there seems to be hysteria about people being denied boarding on aircraft for being dissidents. The Bangor, Maine Green Party member turns out to have been pretty uncooperative. Yes, the guard was an overbearing oaf, but she admits to provoking him in an interview . The Green's press release doesn't mention any of this.

The guy detained in Germany for having "unconventional" views and the guy denied flying for having a copy of Hayduke Lives look like the result of hysterical untrained guards, not a plot to deny everyone's civil rights. More hysteria won't help.

The guy who was harassed for taking pictures of National Guardsmen at a security checkpoint probably should have asked first (it's supposedly not illegal, but photography at customs is so he should have thought a bit), but he was another victim of a freakazoid with a chip on his shoulder.

I don't think we should have to turn into loyal plastic robots, but I'm not going to wear my Circumvention Device t-shirt through airport security. No need to get the wheels of teeny minds spinning.

There's certainly an epidemic of ineptitude (that's not new since Sept. 11), but I don't believe there's an epidemic of harrassment. Likewise of ISPs and their customers.

Basically it repeats the assertion that large corporations are not looking at Linux as an alternative in the enterprise.

apparently this wasn't newsworthy on /. when MusicCity was originally sued, but now the EFF is involved, and suddenly it is.

You can find the location of every poletop Metricom ever put up as part of the bankruptcy sale asset list at the metricom sale site.

but Aerie has the rights to that equipment as well.

I'm afraid not. The poletop easements and the equipment on them were abandoned by the bankrupcy court, which is what caused Aerie to reduce their bid to $8.25M from $20M; see news coverage for details: Aerie will have to rebuild the equipment.

Ricochet was relit around ground zero after the attacks to give the workers internet access http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-7372683.html? tag=owv

At this url: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-7783542.html? tag=owv there's info on Aerie Networks looking to talk to municipal governments resell their wireless services like utilities. So not only are they reactivating it in some areas, they're also looking for new ways to sell their services and hopefully turn a profit unlike Metricom.

Not by a long shot.

Wired has an article about the settlement allowing dual-boots. An addition at the end says that Senator Pat Leahy intends to have Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to review the settlement.

Also, the EU is still going forward with its investigation

Finally, Sun is mulling the possibility of a civil lawsuit of its own.

Not by a long shot.

Wired has an article about the settlement allowing dual-boots. An addition at the end says that Senator Pat Leahy intends to have Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to review the settlement.

Also, the EU is still going forward with its investigation

Finally, Sun is mulling the possibility of a civil lawsuit of its own.

Interesting commentary from macfixit.com on Microsoft's aggressiveness ever since the breakup remedy was thrown out:

In recent weeks, we have seen Microsoft remove its support for Netscape extensions, forcing Apple to scramble to revise its QuickTime plug-in so that it would work with the Windows version of Explorer (and making us wonder if this also had something to do with Microsoft's desire to push its own Media Player format). At the same time, it omitted Java support from Window's Explorer [see previous item]. Then there is XP's reduced support for the MP3 format (again in favor of Microsoft's own alternative), plus the countless ways XP coerces you to MS-approved web sites [see this item]. Add to all of this the recent controversy over MS blocking access to MSN by web browsers other than Explorer (see next item). We could go on. But you get the point. Yes, it certainly appears that Microsoft has been humbled by this lawsuit.

My take on the court case all along...

Microsoft's defense: "No, Your Honor, we're not responsible for murdering the victim! We only pointed the gun towards him and pulled the trigger -- it was his fault that he wasn't strong enough to deal with that! Besides, he was someday eventually going to die anyway! And there's no point in punishing us now, since he's already dead."

DOJ: "Yes, you're right, we're sorry. We're going to punish you by telling you never to do it again! Here's your gun back."

C|Net disagrees.

Intrestingly enough WinInfo predicted this sort of response. Look under the title "InfoWorld Disses Windows XP: Who Do You Trust?" to see how the other half lives.

I wish these "OS reviews" were as in-depth as the gaming site's card and driver reviews. Both the C|Net and Infoworld reviews leave me with more questions they answer.

(not!) Apparently operating and promoting a criminal monopoly in the United States does not incur much penalty.

The terms of this antitrust agreement (at C|Net) stike me as more of a blowjob than a slap on the wrist. The terms of this agreement do nothing to address the core issues of punitive damages in this "penalty" phase of the trial. Hasn't Microsoft been found to be an illegal monopolist? And even so there is no penalty forthcoming, only what can be described as minor conduct tweaking? Wow.

This deal is also weaker than what was on the table before MS was found guilty. Armed with a 7-0 judge appeals ruling that MS is an illegal monopolist, the DoJ now settles for something even less? [sarcasm] If I didn't have such a high confidence in the current administration, I'd have thought they'd been paid off or something; good thing we know that that can't be the case. [/sarcasm]

We can all be sure that more of the same will now continue. After all, were not similar minor conduct remedies ordered by courts in 1994, etc, only to be ignored by Microsoft? Now these conduct remedies will be... ignored again! And with that scary extension... yet again! Justice prevails in America. So do the undead apparently.

The idea, as is sometimes heard now, that the DoJ should go easy on Microsoft because of the current financial uncertainty does not hold water either. So we should suspend penalties to laws, just so that the economic boat doesn't get rocked? Even if the previous penalty of breaking the company into 2 was applied, this would not substantially change the immediate economic situation. Everyone would still use Windows, it would still come with your Dell, it would still be the de facto stadard for years; it's just that slowly other system choices would gradually appear. How would this be an economic calamity? Even this breakup scenario is now unlikely, after the DoJ unilaterally pulled the IE bundling claim off the table (for what reason, no-one really knows).

I am apalled at what amounts to a near toal capitulation by the Bush Administration's new DoJ attorneys. Mostly, it is the lack of justice that bothers me. I'm glad I'm not a US citizen otherwise I'd also be angry about the millions of taxpayers dollars put into this case over many years, and not even the most minor financial penalty to cover the costs of the case recuperated. If they want any kind of justice, Americans should write their state representatives and attorneys general to make known they do not support the Sates' signing on to this toothless deal. Barring that, it's up to the European Union to reign in the beast now.

(not!) Apparently operating and promoting a criminal monopoly in the United States does not incur much penalty.

The terms of this antitrust agreement (at C|Net) stike me as more of a blowjob than a slap on the wrist. The terms of this agreement do nothing to address the core issues of punitive damages in this "penalty" phase of the trial. Hasn't Microsoft been found to be an illegal monopolist? And even so there is no penalty forthcoming, only what can be described as minor conduct tweaking? Wow.

This deal is also weaker than what was on the table before MS was found guilty. Armed with a 7-0 judge appeals ruling that MS is an illegal monopolist, the DoJ now settles for something even less? [sarcasm] If I didn't have such a high confidence in the current administration, I'd have thought they'd been paid off or something; good thing we know that that can't be the case. [/sarcasm]

We can all be sure that more of the same will now continue. After all, were not similar minor conduct remedies ordered by courts in 1994, etc, only to be ignored by Microsoft? Now these conduct remedies will be... ignored again! And with that scary extension... yet again! Justice prevails in America. So do the undead apparently.

The idea, as is sometimes heard now, that the DoJ should go easy on Microsoft because of the current financial uncertainty does not hold water either. So we should suspend penalties to laws, just so that the economic boat doesn't get rocked? Even if the previous penalty of breaking the company into 2 was applied, this would not substantially change the immediate economic situation. Everyone would still use Windows, it would still come with your Dell, it would still be the de facto stadard for years; it's just that slowly other system choices would gradually appear. How would this be an economic calamity? Even this breakup scenario is now unlikely, after the DoJ unilaterally pulled the IE bundling claim off the table (for what reason, no-one really knows).

I am apalled at what amounts to a near toal capitulation by the Bush Administration's new DoJ attorneys. Mostly, it is the lack of justice that bothers me. I'm glad I'm not a US citizen otherwise I'd also be angry about the millions of taxpayers dollars put into this case over many years, and not even the most minor financial penalty to cover the costs of the case recuperated. If they want any kind of justice, Americans should write their state representatives and attorneys general to make known they do not support the Sates' signing on to this toothless deal. Barring that, it's up to the European Union to reign in the beast now.

(not!) Apparently operating and promoting a criminal monopoly in the United States does not incur much penalty.

The terms of this antitrust agreement (at C|Net) stike me as more of a blowjob than a slap on the wrist. The terms of this agreement do nothing to address the core issues of punitive damages in this "penalty" phase of the trial. Hasn't Microsoft been found to be an illegal monopolist? And even so there is no penalty forthcoming, only what can be described as minor conduct tweaking? Wow.

This deal is also weaker than what was on the table before MS was found guilty. Armed with a 7-0 judge appeals ruling that MS is an illegal monopolist, the DoJ now settles for something even less? [sarcasm] If I didn't have such a high confidence in the current administration, I'd have thought they'd been paid off or something; good thing we know that that can't be the case. [/sarcasm]

We can all be sure that more of the same will now continue. After all, were not similar minor conduct remedies ordered by courts in 1994, etc, only to be ignored by Microsoft? Now these conduct remedies will be... ignored again! And with that scary extension... yet again! Justice prevails in America. So do the undead apparently.

The idea, as is sometimes heard now, that the DoJ should go easy on Microsoft because of the current financial uncertainty does not hold water either. So we should suspend penalties to laws, just so that the economic boat doesn't get rocked? Even if the previous penalty of breaking the company into 2 was applied, this would not substantially change the immediate economic situation. Everyone would still use Windows, it would still come with your Dell, it would still be the de facto stadard for years; it's just that slowly other system choices would gradually appear. How would this be an economic calamity? Even this breakup scenario is now unlikely, after the DoJ unilaterally pulled the IE bundling claim off the table (for what reason, no-one really knows).

I am apalled at what amounts to a near toal capitulation by the Bush Administration's new DoJ attorneys. Mostly, it is the lack of justice that bothers me. I'm glad I'm not a US citizen otherwise I'd also be angry about the millions of taxpayers dollars put into this case over many years, and not even the most minor financial penalty to cover the costs of the case recuperated. If they want any kind of justice, Americans should write their state representatives and attorneys general to make known they do not support the Sates' signing on to this toothless deal. Barring that, it's up to the European Union to reign in the beast now.

(not!) Apparently operating and promoting a criminal monopoly in the United States does not incur much penalty.

The terms of this antitrust agreement (at C|Net) stike me as more of a blowjob than a slap on the wrist. The terms of this agreement do nothing to address the core issues of punitive damages in this "penalty" phase of the trial. Hasn't Microsoft been found to be an illegal monopolist? And even so there is no penalty forthcoming, only what can be described as minor conduct tweaking? Wow.

This deal is also weaker than what was on the table before MS was found guilty. Armed with a 7-0 judge appeals ruling that MS is an illegal monopolist, the DoJ now settles for something even less? [sarcasm] If I didn't have such a high confidence in the current administration, I'd have thought they'd been paid off or something; good thing we know that that can't be the case. [/sarcasm]

We can all be sure that more of the same will now continue. After all, were not similar minor conduct remedies ordered by courts in 1994, etc, only to be ignored by Microsoft? Now these conduct remedies will be... ignored again! And with that scary extension... yet again! Justice prevails in America. So do the undead apparently.

The idea, as is sometimes heard now, that the DoJ should go easy on Microsoft because of the current financial uncertainty does not hold water either. So we should suspend penalties to laws, just so that the economic boat doesn't get rocked? Even if the previous penalty of breaking the company into 2 was applied, this would not substantially change the immediate economic situation. Everyone would still use Windows, it would still come with your Dell, it would still be the de facto stadard for years; it's just that slowly other system choices would gradually appear. How would this be an economic calamity? Even this breakup scenario is now unlikely, after the DoJ unilaterally pulled the IE bundling claim off the table (for what reason, no-one really knows).

I am apalled at what amounts to a near toal capitulation by the Bush Administration's new DoJ attorneys. Mostly, it is the lack of justice that bothers me. I'm glad I'm not a US citizen otherwise I'd also be angry about the millions of taxpayers dollars put into this case over many years, and not even the most minor financial penalty to cover the costs of the case recuperated. If they want any kind of justice, Americans should write their state representatives and attorneys general to make known they do not support the Sates' signing on to this toothless deal. Barring that, it's up to the European Union to reign in the beast now.

On the day Windows XP shipped, it had no monopoly. The product was competing with the other operating systems out there: Win98, Win95, MacOS

Courts don't view software programs as having monopolies. They view companies as having monopolies. That's as it should be, and it's telling that in the example you cite, two of the three primary competitors to Windows XP are other Microsoft products.

Or in this case: If you have a lot of money and you don't give any of it to the party in power and all your competitors do, then the party in power is going to send lawyers after you.

You seem to be suggesting that Microsoft is either too naieve, too forthright, or too cash-strapped to make political donations in an effort to influence the party in power. Evidence suggests otherwise.

Witness also the
latest cracks in the friendship
between SAP and Microsoft wether or not, they'll
support .Net

Big things are coming ;-)

Although many people think of Linux as a replacement for Windows, the truth is that Amazon used Linux instead of other Unixes.

Oh well, it's still good news.

How Linux saved Amazon millions

:-)

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Gawd, I can't believe I'm even replying to you, but I can't help it.

link...

link...

link...

Yep, looks like $1 billion spent only on Linux to me. Just go to google.com and search for "ibm billion linux" and you'll find literally dozens more articles discussing it. Seems that, since you're a Slashdot regular, you'd have your facts straight on this particular issue.

LNUX (linux) stock tells the story right there.

Yeah, right, the stock price of one company sure tells the whole story, doesn't it? Yes, Mr. Canada, I know, several Linux-based companies have seen their stocks go in the tank. Everyone know that people are still trying to find the right business plan. It's no piece of cake trying to sell free software. (although IBM seems to be doing all right. They're selling TONS of server hardware with Linux on it)

People should do what a friend of mine is doing: put together complete, custom solutions that specifically fit their customers' needs. With the thousands/millions saved using OSS (you saw the Amazon.com article, right?) they can pretty much charge what they want.

Ahhhh, I'm probably just talking to a wall, here...

First, read this.

Now, imagine if the hard drive maker, or the memory maker, or the video card maker (etc., you get the point) tried to do the same thing? Compaq would have dumped them in a second and gone to a competitor.

Now, listen carefully:

THEY CAN'T DO THAT WITH WINDOWS BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE!!! If they dumped Windows and went to Red Hat instead, they would GO OUT OF BUSINESS! And they know it all too well.

This is precisely what is a legal definition of a monopoly (as opposed to an absolute monopoly. Many people say Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly because you can buy a copy of Red Hat and install it. These people are confusing a legally defined monopoly with an absolute monopoly like what AT&T had.)

It's technically legal for Microsoft to have this monopoly, but it's illegal to abuse it by forcing other products down computer manufacturers throats (First Explorer, Office, MSN, now Windows Media Player, Windows Messaging, etc.) or to tell them they can't sell computers with 2 operating systems or with no OS or any of the other dozens of things that Microsoft does that they couldn't do if there were any REAL competition in the desktop OS market.

Some folks say that Linux is now to Microsoft what AMD is to Intel. This is simply not accurate for one simple reason: AMD processors run ALL the same software that Intel processors do. If you have an Intel processor, you can simply replace it with an AMD one (yes sometimes you need to replace the motherboard and perhaps the memory) without changing ANY of the software on your computer.

Linux DOES NOT run the same software as Windows. Why is this? Well, Microsoft's license agreements say that you agree to not reverse-engineer their software. If you don't agree to the license, you can't use it (legally). Hmm, let's see, it's legal to reverse-engineer Intel processors, but not Microsoft operating systems. How nice for Microsoft.

To all you Microsoft apologists out there: Do you REALLY want Microsoft in control of EVERYTHING to do with computing? Because, without the anti-trust case, that's exactly where we'd be heading. Without this "government interference", every computing experience would be handled by Microsoft. We'd all use Windows, Explorer, Office, MSN, Media Player, Windows Messaging, Passport, etc. and then Microsoft could charge whatever they want for all this. Not true, you say? You don't think that Microsoft would "encourage" ISP's to only support IE? You think any web pages created with Microsoft Front Page would be readable in Netscape?

Also, without "interference", NONE of the major companies currently supporting Linux to varying degrees (IBM, HP, Compaq, Dell, etc., etc.,) would have had anything to do with Linux. The repurcussions from Microsoft would have been much too severe.

Not to mention all the security problems that would arise out of all of this. Melissa/Love Bug/Sircam/Code Red anyone?

For those without nytimes account: news.com

Hey, but don't forget the value added by Microsoft's update service. I mean sure, RedHat provides similiar features, that work better for managing large number of servers, but with Microsoft update, they will even provide you with the latest 3rd party virus as well. I have yet to see this quality of service from any Linux company.... ;)

Microsoft must position the MSFT stock as a growth stock.

Microsoft is really going downhill compared to other companies.

I've been thinking awhile about making an interactive price comparison web page for my website that would allow users to see how much they could save by switching from Windows to Linux. This is just a formative idea at the moment - if people have suggestions for this, please email me. Right now I'm thinking of something along the lines of a set of "wizard" pages that ask the user a series of questions about what software they want to run (and what hardware they have available) and keeps a running tally of the savings they would get with Linux over Windows.

In the US, for most plans, they will ask for your Social Security Number in order to run a credit check. This isn't needed for prepaid plans, but when I signed up for one, they still wanted a picture id (drivers license), adddress, etc. IIRC, customer support still asks for some of that info. Of course ids can be faked, so it's not like any of this foolproof.

There are a few companies trying to make disposable phones that are made of paper and/or have such limited features that they are very cheap and the cost of the phone will be very small compared to the prepaid air time. How Stuff Works has an article about them too. From what I understand, you have the advantage of a standard handset that can be used with any provider. That's my biggest pet peeve with the US cell phone system.

I have to wholeheartedly agree. Nerds can babble on and on about Konqueror and Opera and such, but 99% of web users will never experience these browsers. For most of them, Microsoft is the way to go, unless someone hands them something better.

The problem is, we need some option out there to take marketshare away from Microsoft, if for the sole reason of getting people to stop designing their sites with IE solely in mind (so the pages don't look like crap to the rest of us). There's a pretty interesting comparison on cNet of IE6 and Netscape 6.2.

And if you want to talk about speed, I'd have to say that both Konqueror and Mozilla/Gnome are painfully slow when compared to running moz0.9.5 on Win2K.

They sell subscriptions to WSJ. They could have just pointed to this article that doesn't require registration. But nooo. Also, here's another article that says SourceForge is proprietary. And had this to say about the VA Linux SourceForge: "The site was an adjunct to its now-abandoned Linux computer sales strategy." So yes, I guess they're stuck with SourceForge, banners, and ThinkGeek.

Standards-compliant HTML which works in all browsers is nice, but contradictory.

First off, there is no HTML Standard - only a WWW Consortium Recommendation. Secondly, there is more than one Recommendation, based on the DTD used to author the page. So making pages largely compatible involves using the relevant DTD for each User-Agent (note User-Agent, not browser). There's no point hacking an HTML4.01 Strict DocType to work in Netscape 3, since this browser implements a form of HTML3.2.

A lot of these myths and fallacies are covered by the document Publishing on the Web Is Different

Detecting browsers is often misused, but with older Javascript implementations the only way is sometimes to use a browser sniffer.

Never use a browser sniffer. MSN.com proved conclusively the idiocy involved in relying on User-Agent strings.

If only there was a standard function like browser.does("DOM_2") or something so you could switch by features rather than browser...

There is, and always have been. Javascript object-detection is a recommended way of determining a browser's functionality, so if(document.getElementById) {} identifies browsers that comply with W3C recommendations to DOM.

The one thing most web-designers are completely forgetting is that plain old HTML is supposed to be a document structure, not a layout format. Trying to force it to layout can only reduce the effectiveness of the structure, thus impair its future as a www-document.

With ideas like the Sematic Web approaching fruition, it is essential for webdesigners to concentrate on getting the document structure right first, then use CSS for layout.

Lets move beyond the fuzzy effects, and concentrate on the web's future. Its obvious msn have no clue about the web's potential as a global and open medium.

Up until a little over a year or so ago, HP was OEMing their CD-RW and maybe their CD drives from Philips Components' Optical Storage business group. Now that they aren't, and they've actually gotten out of the CD-RW drive business (HP Ditches Add-On CD-RW Market), maybe they will OEM a better mechanism.

Not that I have a particularly strong opinion about Philips...

Like /. offering Subscriptions too?

Slashdot sees revenue in ads, fees

By Gwendolyn Mariano

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

October 25, 2001, 12:30 p.m. PT

Slashdot.org, the "news for nerds" Web site popular among software developers and Linux fans, said this week that it plans to use larger ads and offer a subscription service.

When Slashdot increases ad sizes, it plans to introduce a subscription service for people who want to pay for an ad-free version. Jeff Bates, who runs the site, said Thursday that Slashdot will launch the new ads and subscription service early next year. The cost of the service has yet to be determined.

"The larger ad formats are coming about really because, as Bob Dylan put it, 'The times, they are a'changing,'" Bates wrote in an e-mail interview. "While we'll still be mostly featuring the 468-by-60 banner, we're trying to work with our advertisers and see how we can work together. Rest assured though, we'll still be only having one ad per page."