Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Applies For .NET Patent
Wojina writes "Microsoft has applied for a comprehensive patent on what appears to be the entire implementation of the .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) and the framework APIs. Microsoft's CLR is an implementation of the CLI (submitted to ECMA for standardization). Does this bode ill for the Mono project? See the CNET News story." And a chaser: Nept points to this interesting Microsoft-funded .NET obfuscation project.
A successful patent has them control the market for how long? And legally now? This could cause some serious problems for people.
This note was originally published at John Munsch weblog on January the 14th.
.NET to fail and fail badly
.NET "rebuttal" that I linked to above, "For non-profit use VS.NET can be had pretty cheaply, especially if you know anyone that is in college somewhere." Pretty cheaply? For a non-profit (that means charities, churches, universities, the hobbiest who is going to give away his work for FREE)... pretty cheaply? Wow. That is well and truly pathetic. To try and justify it, and say, oh well, you can try to scam an educational discount so it won't be so dear, is even more pathetic.
.NET commercials with William H. Gacy telling you how great it is without really ever telling you anything about it? Microsoft doesn't trust .NET to stand on its own technical merits and it knows it may go like cod-liver oil down the gullets of a lot of people who have seen how the company works behind closed doors even if it were the tech shiznit.
.NET just in case there wasn't any grassroots community who actually wanted to do it. Or maybe just in case there was and they couldn't control it.
.NET for other platforms? If those same people were working on giving us new libraries and new tools for an already existing language instead of pouring in the thousands of man hours it's going to take to build a copy of the C# compiler or a .NET version of Ant and JUnit?
Lots of reasons why I want
It's benefits a criminal organization. Not one that's been found guilty of crimes once or maybe twice, but lots and lots of times. Those crimes are many and varied, but here's just a few of them: Stac Electronics v. Microsoft, DOJ v. Microsoft, Sun v. Microsoft.
P.S. If you want to split hairs, Stac v. Microsoft isn't a criminal action, it's doesn't stem from a criminal abuse of their monopoly like the other two cases. Instead it was just a case of a small company being driven out of business by willful patent infringement, theft of trade secrets, etc.
Microsoft isn't just one thing anymore. It's too damn big for that. I'm sure even Bill himself knows better than to think that he truly controls the whole ship because it's become big enough that he can't possibly know all the projects, people, etc. anymore. But even a really large company still has a kind of collective personality that it exudes and a large part of the personality both internal and external to Microsoft for many years now is that of a total control freak.
If they don't own it, if they don't control it, if they didn't create it, if it doesn't have a broad stamp from Microsoft on it, then they don't want it. Sometimes it's sufficient for the thing to merely exist and they'll refuse to acknowledge it, other times they need to actively stamp it out because they can't control it.
When was the last time you can remember Microsoft saying they supported a standard? That is, not something they invented and submitted a RFC for, an actual, take it off the shelf and re-implement it without renaming it or "improving" it so it doesn't work with anybody else standard. C++? Basic? HTML? A video or audio codec? Java? Anything?
I'm sure there's something, somebody will point out their excellent support for TCP/IP or something and I'm sure that's true. But if you were to look at Microsoft as a person in your life, you'd wonder what was wrong with him or her such that so much had to be controlled by that person.
When your business is selling the operating systems that 90+% of everybody uses, software development tools should not be a profit center.
Why should I have to plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for a "universal subscription" in order to have access to compilers and basic development information? Sun doesn't have to do that? On this point I'll quote from the
Marketing. Have you been "lucky" enough to catch one of the
So they are going to pull a page out of Intel's bum-bum-buh-bum "Intel Inside" playbook and try to sell the brand like it's sneakers and cola. Trust us, you'll look cool if you use it, and we'll keep hammering the brand on TV so somebody who doesn't have much tech savvy in your organization will ask you if you are using it, or have plans to port to it, or whatever, even if he hasn't got a clue what "it" is in this case.
They don't trust you. They don't like what they can't control and they can't control you. They can try and they always will keep trying but ultimately you are going to see them keep trying to do things and always keep a step towards the door just so they can bolt if they have to. Want to see what I mean? Go visit GotDotNet sometime if you haven't already been there. It's the grassroots community website that Microsoft put up to support
Ever been to SourceForge? Of course you have, everybody has because that's one of the hubs of all open source projects. You can go there and get the source of thousands of cool open source projects and it really serves the community well. There's even hundreds of projects now that list C# among their programming languages. So why did Microsoft feel compelled to create their own GotDotNet Workspaces that is clearly just a ripoff of SourceForge?
A few reasons are fairly clear: First, at many of their workspaces you don't get in unless they know who you are. Ever been stopped at SourceForge and asked for a name and password to look at a project? What about download binaries or source? No? At GotDotNet you will, lots of projects are marked with a lock. Second, forget about all those messy licenses that Microsoft might not approve of, you don't need to worry your little head about BSD vs. GPL vs. LGPL. You've got the one true workspace license that you have to agree to, or else you won't be putting your project there. Lastly, well it's kind of obvious, but it's really all about control isn't it. After all, if you aren't under their thumb, that has to be a bad thing. So a SourceForge that they control is pretty much a requirement, isn't it?
It's a really sad way for a lot of people to waste a whole lot of time rebuilding that which already exists. Wouldn't the whole computing world be a lot better if there wasn't a team of people, maybe a couple of teams of people building complete copies of
In the end, we'll all just be left with another way to do the exact same thing only in a different language. Lord knows the world benefits now from being unable to share media between France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US, and Japan because we can't all speak the same language. I benefit every day from the fact that I can't read a Japanese manga I might enjoy or understand a TV show from Europe. Once you are done building this tower, go build a few more right beside it using Perl, Python, and Ruby too. They're all trailing behind in certain areas, we need to make sure the same set of stuff is reinvented and rewritten for all of them too.
Someone mentioned to me that they had read/heard somewhere that Microsoft was going to change the name of .NET to something else. He continued on to mumble something about this being less confusing or something like that.
Anyone else know anything about this?
Posting as directed.
"I TOLD YOU SO" goes out to the Mono project guys. You can't trust Microsoft. Unless they had signed a solid, binding legal document that says "this is the .NET spec, and MS irrevocably grants free patent licenses to anyone implementing it", you should not touch it. Java has no patent problems. The open source community should stick to Java instead of dealing with MS.
One of the biggest obstacles for
All your base are belong to us!
Wouldn't the Mono project constitute as prior art? Can patents prevent derivatives after they've already been in existance?
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
A software architecture for a distributed computing system comprising: an application configured to handle requests submitted by remote devices over a network; and an application program interface to present functions used by the application to access network and computing resources of the distributed computing system.
When you file a patent you enter a negotiation with the patent office. You start by claiming the sun, moon and stars (i.e. claim 1 which you quoted). Usually you end up with considerably more narrow coverage. Sometimes you end up with nothing (no patent).
So after trying to patent anything with the word "Windows" in it and getting shot down, and trying to patent everything from the GUI on through to how to click a mouse (read:sarcasm), they're going to try to patent a philosophy and theory that has been in place in Unix structures from time eternal.... 10:1 odds they get shot down.
According to Java History on Sun's website, 1.0a didn't come out till 1995.
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
Will it even stand up with Mono around? Even if it is Microsoft's idea to begin with, they didn't apply for the patent until after Mono showed up.
I'm not sure it will fly. US Code title 35 Sec. 102 says something like
"A person shall be entitled to a patent unless the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States"
Mono has been around since July 2001, but since it's half-done, does that count?
Thats why Ximian is misguided. They actually help MS in their .Net marketing initiatives. Because of them, MS can point to an open source alternative and claim that .Net is kind of open. On the other hand, Ximian only release their code under GPL and GPL-like licenses, not under more permissive BSD license. My belief is that Ximian's business plan involves keeping this right to themselves, probably for sale later on - perhaps in a couple of years - when (if) .Net ever achieves dominance. If that happens, IT mega-companies (IBM and the like) would pay large sums for unrestricted access to a .Net lookalike, and only Ximian will have it. Ximian could dispel this by releasing their code under a BSD license. After all, the normal argument that applies to BSD does not matter here - MS already have their own .Net platform and have nothing to gain from Ximian's code.
Don't support .Net. And don't support Mono. They are Microsoft's whores.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
I have an idea... Don't use this stupid .NET thing. I simply don't understand why it's such a big deal. Seriously... What is there in this .NET that is so important that the whole world needs to jump on it like flies on shit? Microsoft does these things on purpose to screw everyone over, and every time they do, everyone falls for it again. Well I'm not going to fall for it. This .NET thing can take a long walk on a short pier. I'm gonna continue performing my work on FreeBSD, without all this fancy shmancy junk, and guess what? It'll cost less too.
I had trouble following the patent text; it's pretty dry. It's not clear to me whether the patent covers just the .NET API, or if it would cover any similar system.
.NET API, the Mono guys won't care much.
.NET servers and vice versa. But it isn't strictly necessary. Mono is potentially a useful system, all by itself, without it ever talking to a Microsoft server.
.NET? How many even really understand what it is? Now, Microsoft not only needs to explain why you should abandon your current system to use .NET, they need to explain why .NET is worth locking yourself in.
If it covers any similar system, and the patent is granted as-is, that would be bad for the Mono project. But if it just covers the
It would be nice if Mono projects could talk to
This action by Microsoft really reminds me of IBM's Microchannel. Before Microchannel, anyone could make hardware cards compatible with IBM computers (ISA bus). The Microchannel PCs (the PS/2 series) were different: you had to license patents from IBM to make cards for Microchannel. IBM probably thought they would be able to lock customers in, but what actually happened was that people voted with their wallets for non-Microchannel solutions. Microchannel drove customers away from IBM and towards IBM's competition.
Does anyone really need
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The bonus with obfuscated code is that when some 3rd party library fails, you won't have a chance in hell of fixing it!
Java has the same problem, but thanksfully most vendors choose not to obfuscate their bytecode. I've had to 'hack' 3rd party apps a number of times to fix bugs in their code that would have otherwise killed a few projects.
Obfuscation is bad for business.
-nate
The sad thing is that about 50 guys had to waste their time writing this patent.
50 guys? You must've never dealt with a patent lawyer. It takes one guy a couple of days to write 20 pages of that gibberish.
They're amazingly good at converting a simple diagram along with a couple of plain sentences into piles and piles of patent-speak.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Do you have benchmark figures indicating that Java is slower than CLR code? My limited experience is that the reverse is true by a considerable margin, plus there's the theoretical argument that run-time optimization (Java JIT) will always beat compile-time optimization (IL compiler).
I've also taken a PC-developed Java application and deployed it on a 64-way machine, achiving near linear scalability. Has anyone achieved similar results with Dotnet?
Come on now, you guys didn't really think Microsoft was going to sit back and let someone else build a free implementation of their golden goose before it was even in wide acceptance, did you? What is it about some Open Source projects that makes their fearless leaders so starry-eyed? It is perhaps surprising that Microsoft waited this long.
.NET, their new platform-of-choice, they can lock out all competing implementations, either a little bit or completely, making sure that the only full .NET implementation is the one they've delivered, under Windows.
.NET. If you ask me, the lawyers at Microsoft won an argument on this one. If MS really wanted to get a stranglehold on the market, they'd have waited until .NET actually had its foot in the door before filing a patent. By doing so now, before it's really even gotten out of the gate, they've doomed it to be "just another Windows-based programming platform".
.NET bandwagon now? Commit all your resources to a platform that still performs more poorly than those available for higher-end, non-Wintel machines? Doubtful. The development benefits are marginal compared to Java, and native application developers will still prefer C or C++. Now that Microsoft will have a legal noose around .NET's neck, all circulation is effectively cut off.
.Gnu should have seen coming a mile away. Microsoft has nothing to gain by researching, developing, and standardizing a platform that could conceivably allow network AND desktop applications to run on non-Microsoft platforms. Did Miguel et al just think Microsoft had learned the error of their ways?
Microsoft still makes more off Windows sales than anything else -- don't forget that. No matter how ubiquitous Office is, Windows is the cornerstone of the Monopoly. By filing for a patent on
This also bodes pretty badly for
Don't believe me? What shop that isn't pure Microsoft would even consider jumping onto the
It's a stupid move for Microsoft, if they intend to expand and defend their monopoly. It's also a move that projects like Mono and
I assume if Mono dates from the period before the Patent application then MS is too late.
Either I don't understand what's so special about the .NET framework, or it seems safe to assume that this issue will be a moot point until CORBA is wiped from the earth.
Maybe now an OSS equivalent [...] .NET will be developed
Indeed.
One interesting angle is that an OSS VM can very naturally enforce open source. While Java bytecode can be turned back into source code, minus the comments and some stylistic info, an OSS-centric VM could have a bytecode that was exactly equivalent to the source code. This way, it would be effectively impossible to ship anything other than the source.
It's been obvious for 40 years (LISP) or maybe 55 (Turing's ACE Report) that programs-are-data, and tools today like IBM Eclipse go as far as they reasonably can to treat Java this way.
OSS has the opportunity to steal a march on Java and Dotnet and converge the worlds of users and developers. This is a natural evolutionary step, but OSS is only model that has a strong reason to promote it.
I think this is Microsoft's plan. If Mono has to chop out pieces, it'll kind of be like embrace and extend in reverse.
Instead of extending the standard to work uniquely with Windows, they'll force other platforms to retract so the standard works uniquely with Windows.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Get a grip. Microsoft has already announced that, as part of the ECMA standards process, they are granting EVERYONE the right to implement the .Net Framework, WITHOUT paying any royalties whatsoever.
The patents are purely defensive.
And in related news, the sky is not falling.
Sarcazmo wrote:
> Back up, most unix-ish C code can be compiled on any
> vaguely unix-like system with very little modification. I'd
> call that platform independence, wouldn't you?
Very good point. Back in 1989-91, I was working on a 3D radiation treatment planning program, in C, that had to run under X11 on a DEC MicroVAX, HP, and a SGI, with their various flavors of Unix. The program had a single source, with all the platform dependent stuff (there wasn't a lot of it) isolated from the rest. Back then, platform independence (also known as portability) was the in thing.
Historical note: in the first year of that job, in a lab down the hall, was a pre-3.0 version of Windows. The poor primitive thing was still trying to figure out task switching. By the last year of that job, Linux was born.
> Imagine that, and without the overhead of a bloated VM
> to slow things way down.
Despite the VM and its warts, Java is still a pretty cool language. It would be quite amusing to run Java on one of today's computers side-by-side with a 1990 computer running a C program under X11. I wonder if advances in computing speed really compensate for having a VM?
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
I'm slightly shocked and saddened to see an institution of higher learning working on a "Code Obfuscation" project for MS. But what I really wonder, is what companies are interested in buying "obfuscated" binaries?
I guess the target audience is the same people who buy closed source software now. MS has basically hired Oxford so their hands can remain clean of accusations of making .NET code non-portable, after all that was one of their main features of .NET..
Why is this news for any programmer? .Net has always been Microsoft's to patent or change at will.
.Net will work on Win95/Win98. The answer will be no. Ask Microsoft if you can still code to the win32 API. The answer will be to code for .Net. Win9x and Win2000 users will have to upgrade to XP and the latest version of IE to benefit from .Net
For windows programmers, either you code at the Win32 level or you get changing wrapper libraries. I feel sorry for the VB/MFC experts in the world, but you made your bed, lie in it. If you count on c# for a living, count on the spec changing.
Ask Microsoft if
Take advice from one who has been burned on several projects since 1990. It's Microsoft's specification to change at will. There are no promises in API's(linux kernel or Windows).
When is the last time you heard of ANSI VB, ANSI MFC, ANSI c#, or ANSI Linux?
Sorry, enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
I was hoping that one day I could write my applications on windows and deploy them on something more stable than windows/iis like Linux/Apache. That appears to be a pipe dream
I knew that MS was evil, but this just illustrates that I had better start learning something like Java quick smart, because I no longer want to be affiliated with Microsoft.
Looks like MS didnt learn anything when they alienated developers with the last open source FUD thing that backfired.
Wayyyy back when the .Net Beta 1 was widely released (I got the CDRom in Dr Dobbs), there was an article about how much more detailed the assembly disassembler was than even Java Reflection can be, stating that this could be a significant problem for commercial code unless some form of obfuscator is created.
Of course, I remember "hacking" [sic] Temple of Apshai by editing its mildly obfuscated C-64 Basic code... (adjusting the RNG factors in various places).
[sic] = I couldn't hack my way out of a wet paper bag, that is how trivial this was.
In addition to the independent claims, you have a set of "dependent" claims, which are like "The device of claim 1, where [some more specific requirement]." These dependent claims serve three purposes:
I am not a lawyer, but I have worked with a number of lawyers to draft (non-software) patent claims and to deal with US and international patent examiners.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
I'm not sure everyone knows how big this is. It seems to me that Microsoft is betting the farm here. But realistically, it is a good bet; for Microsoft of course.
Either they are granted the patent, or they are not. The decision has to be made. With what kind of granularity I don't know. But even if they are able to patent only parts .NET, the plan still works well in their favor. The more modules of the software they patent, the more interoperability we loose.
However, given the government Microsoft finds itself under; (both politically, and in the patent office) Microsoft will likely get the entire standard under their control.
How much of this is a good thing?
Realistically, if they mark-out their corner of sandbox again, will they be able to survive? Open Source solutions are gaining momentum, especially in the server space. Generally, it seems people are impressed with the results. Even though it costs a bit more to manage. A slim few are doing desktop installations, but we're just begining to get information on how Open Source solutions are performing. I might note that I'm talking about real businesses, corporations and the like. As we get more feedback from business installations, we'll be able to improve what we're doing. But will we be able to make up the gap between system management costs, versus licensing costs?Unfortunately, I'm afraid Microsoft has too much inertia with their installation base. It's really hard to switch when everyone else is using the same thing. So how much of .NET does Microsoft need to seal in their market share again? Probably none at all. What companies have to ask themselve is,
People are beginning to realize that monopolistic markets are costly from a consumer standpoint; And with software, business is the largest consumer. Perhpas companies will start switching over. Either way, we're in for an interesting few years. So, at the very least, we'll have a few interesting years here. In general as well, it seems.Hopefully this makes sense to someone... but probably not. =P
Remember: umount it before you fsck it.
IBM will do nothing. The beast may be hard to stir (though not necessarily on IP issues), but real tough to stop.
I see much talk about how costly to defend etc, and how the Mono et al people will not be able to do much about Microsoft if it slaps them with a patent.
I have not seen anyone mention what IBM will think of this. You think there is nothing in there patent library about any of this? SNA/SAA comes to mind - but this was maybe just copyrighted no patented - IANAPL.
With what % of there PROFIT coming from web services you think IBM won't challenge anything that may screw them up in the future. Unless MS puts it out royalty free (a defensive patent) as some have suggested I think IBM will be Mono's friend.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I think perhaps it's a better way to get people to read the link, at least.
-- Nate
> Microsoft has already announced that, as part of the ECMA standards process, they are granting EVERYONE the right to implement the .Net Framework, WITHOUT paying any royalties whatsoever.
.Net is the framework? Can I build web services with the framework alone?
So how much of the whole
Or will it turn out that I need the run time libraries which are not part of the ECMA standardisation, which are completely under the control of Redmond and are the likely place that implementation of these patents will occur.
Maybe, but they have never used patents to do so. Based on some quotes from billg, I even get the idea that he's opposed to it.
Hitler didn't use chemical weapons in WWII because he was a soldier in WWI.
.NET is language-independent, not platform-independent.
I think you misunderstood. I used to be a "Java fan" and am responsible for its adoption by several companies. But Sun has demonstrated bad faith and incompetence when it comes to Java over the last half dozen years: not only has Sun patented key aspects of Java, they have also pulled out of several standardization efforts, and they have failed to deliver essential technologies and enhancements that they promised.
I trust you've seen NZHeretic's post [slashdot.org]?
NZHeretic is wrong: it is unclear whether Java is open to reimplementation; Sun still holds key patents, for example, and those have not been dedicated to the public domain. But that question is academic anyway because key APIs (like Swing) are not suficiently documented, so you couldn't reimplement them without reading Sun's sources if you wanted to, and if you do read Sun's sources, you are bound by their source license.
Java is not the answer for open source development--Sun has demonstrated that amply since 1996. There is still some hope for C#: the Mono project is actually increasingly relying on non-.NET APIs. Unless the Microsoft patent also covers ECMA C# (which seems really unlikely), ECMA C# with Gnome libraries may still be a perfectly good and viable choice, whith fewer technical warts than Java and fewer legal problems than Java.
Now, if we are going to develop "the next" programming language or platform, let's look at your points:
Java is not a particularly well-engineered platform because many of its tradeoffs were driven by one environment (platform-independent, untrusted client software) and make no sense for a general-purpose language. And C# has copied most of those bad tradeoffs. Perhaps it's good that both Java and C# are removing themselves from the space of open, free languages: it might be best to start over with a simpler, better engineered system anyway.
I'm sorry, but there's no way in hell we are going to eliminate the negative effects of patent law by embracing patent law. If you really believe that patent law is absolute -- that if "everything" was patented, eventually "everyting" would be released -- then you should review some history. Here in the US, the income tax was supposed to be temporary. Originally the rate was very low -- low enough that people would hardly notice. Now we're paying out the ass to support countless "pork" programs. Coincidence? How about the troops we have "stationed" (occupying) in hundreds of countries around the world? Exactly how long does it take to achieve peace? The "war on drugs" has been dragging on for the better part of a century. All we have to show for it is violent crime (from the resulting black market), corruption in government, the highest ratio of inmates per poplulation in the world, and -- surprise -- more drug addicts! Coincidence?
Let's think about this. Why haven't these expansions of government (power grabs) been rolled back? It's very simple. Government is nothing but a collection of unique, thinking individuals driven by self-interest, just like any human being. Thus government is a business by definition; it exists to profit. (The only way to prove that it doesn't is to prove that individuals in government are not driven by self-interest, which contradicts the whole of psychological theory.) The sole difference between government and the market is that government does business through force.
An expansion of government represents profit, just as an expansion of private business does. But since government operates on the principle of coercion, it doesn't matter when government programs fail. More often than not, failed government programs are rewarded with more funding. Look at Amtrak or the post office for a blatant example.
What does this all boil down to? You can't go out of business when your business model is based on coercion!
Go to the official Mono site and have a look at the modules being developed that are a direct copy of a Microsoft technology. Here is a quick list:
Of these only the CLR and C# are ECMA standards. All the rest (with very minor exceptions, perhaps) are essentially proprietary Microsoft technologies and are subject to corporate protection in one form or another.
Now, whether such a protection is justified or not is a completely different question, which unfortunately is largely irrelevant when taking into account that in litigation money is what counts most.
In the long run, Mono depends on the good will of Microsoft in many ways, including, but not limited to the lack of litigation. See Wine and the current state of Samba, for a quick example. In the mean time, Mono brings ligitimacy to a major Microsoft technology and helps MS with its marketing, which is hardly the best thing that an OSS project can do.
Of course, it is entirely within Ximian's rights to do that, but it is our right not to like what they do at all.
Many times I've pointed out that something like this was going to happen and the Mono guys were quick to point out that I was crazy; as were many of the Slashdot population.
On one side, you have exactly what has been expected and follows a long historical ethic from Microsoft. On the other side, you have a bunch or people in denial. Hmmm...wonder who's crazy now.
Anyone that's surprised by this strikes me as exactly the same as a battered-wife. How many times do you have to beaten over the head before you figure out the relationship is never going to be good for you? When are you going to learn?
Long story short, people who can't wait to line up to do business with Microsoft are fools.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And who will regulate the business called government? Again, government is nothing but a collection of unique, thinking individuals -- each and every one driven by self-interest. How exactly is it that private enterprise needs regulation but government does not? They are both organizations of business driven by profit. Don't be fooled into thinking that government represents "the people" or "society". It is logically impossible.
You are in much greater danger from the local mill owner's ambitions than you are from your neighbor or the government.
Are you kidding? I am more in danger of a private organization that does business through voluntary association (whose customers choose to do business by their own will) than I am in danger of a government which does business through force (whose customers are forced to do business)? Are you actually trying to assert that voluntary association (free will) is more dangerous than coercion (force)?
Where government fails is where it attempts to do things beyond its central purpose of limiting individual's power.
Again, are you kidding? The central purpose of government is to limit the individual's power? You are dead wrong, my friend. The purpose of government is to secure the individual's rights, not to limit them. The purpose of government is to protect us from coercion, not to initiate coercion.
I don't know if you're kidding or not, but don't fall into the trap (like so many slashdotters) of believing that private business holds the power to harm the individual, government or not. The only possible way that a private business can initiate force "legally" is through government. Otherwise they have comitted a crime and should be dealt with accordingly. Without the aid of government, even the largest corporations are equal in power to you and me.
Think about it. Free trade is based on voluntary association, which is defined by the lack of force. Free trade is the natural state of human society. The only possible way that an "accepted" ("legal") force can be introduced into a free market is through government.
No it doesn't, since many of the platforms C is used on don't have a concept of a GUI. It would be nice if the next generation of C/C++ had different levels of compliance.
.EXE, fork() threads, etc).
Standard languge bits templates, keywords etc.
Standard IPC bits
Standard Process Management (.DLL,
Standard GUI bits.
And different platforms could adhere to one or other of the levels of support. I mean, it's not as if we don't already have a nasty PITA time trying to figure out if our compiler's template support is broken, or if the STL that shipped from the vendor has flaws in it.
Are you trying to say that .NET packaging is easier than .JAR files?
.NET CLR was designed to support C#, C++, VB, and Foxpro, all of which are languages that Microsoft writes compilers for. The rest is fluff designed to placate the OSS masses. But your point is essentially correct. However, both have been taken quite beyond their design expectations, to support many languages, so it's really a moot point.
The
-Chris
Worse if you are a Spanish speaker :)
# is named "gato" (tic-tac-toe) or "signo de número" and only in a musical context you would name it "sostenido" (sharp). Nowhere but in mistranslated programming books it's named "libra" (pound)... I think I read it so in a book of turbo pascal sometime.
I see 57005 people