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Jeremy Allison Calls Microsoft Dangerous Elephant
oranghutan writes "At the annual Linux.conf.au event being held in Wellington, NZ, one of the lead developers for the Samba Team (and Google employee) Jeremy Allison described Microsoft as 'an elephant that needs to be turned to stop it trampling the open source community.' Allison has been an outspoken critic of the vendor since he quit Novell over a deal it did with Microsoft that he saw as dangerous to open source intentions. And now he has evolved his argument to incorporate new case studies to explain why Microsoft's use of patents and its general tactics on free software are harmful.
jeremany allinson won't stop me from tampling on all other forst post attempts !
This demagogue is appealing to a cult of automated Microsoft haters as a Google employee. How do you moderate a story Flamebait?
It wouldn't be a problem if the FLOSS community would stop stealing from legitimate patents holders. I know you FLOSS developers are busting your ass, writing code, and what not and not getting paid for it, but.....God! What a bunch of losers!
How about inventing something of your own instead of stealing ideas from others!
If you were any good you'd be getting paid for what you're doing.
Who cares? That's about as news-worthy as Alistair calling Morrigan a "sneaky witch thief".
Move along. Nothing to see here...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
sorry, there are no European elephants....
Ho hum - another anti-MS rant by another Stallman butt-puppet. When something new comes along - then let me know. Slashdot hopefully has more to offer than just a repository for negative sentiment regarding MS and commercial software. The world is big - let MS and open source slug it out in the marketplace.
I wish I could talk trash like him.
I really don't like the tone of the summary, it's almost as if there no bias whatsoever against MS with the proxy & safe language, "x described y as", "that he saw as", "evolved his argument". What the hell is wrong with you slashdot? Why are you not stating those things as fact? MS is evil, Steve Ballmer is a chair throwing maniac, etc. Have you been taken over by MS zealots and anti-OS shills??
Oh how I long for the slashdot days of lore when the MS trolls and shills were easily recognizable and always in for a game of the ol' troll-trolling. Well, still anti-MS over here!
A. A. Milne saw this coming. :-)
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
"Microsoft produces software that competes with FOSS" is basically the headline. Well who knew?!
Something they're also learning is that the above statement doesn't necessarily mean they can't work with FOSS in areas that are mutually beneficial. This, believe it or not, is happening too.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Is this some new cleric ability in D&D 4.0? Back in my day clerics could only turn undead.
And I - being no one of significance, am going to call Microsoft a small, fluffy, harmless kitten that needs to be petted.
Take THAT.
..who would you (the OS crew..) invent then as Our Pantomime Villan?
Want Open to win? Stop being bloody purists. See, Ubuntu Software Commercial Survey for a pragmatic approach. Ubuntu is a bridge, get the Windows people over first and once they know what they're doing they can compile their own Gentoo. Commercial software on Linux is also such a bridge, let it in: as long as the core operating system is Open who gives a crap. If the commercial is amazingly good compared to the Open then it will survive while the Open matures. But don't deny your users the commercial because you're being a dick about it. Follow the Linux philosophy: Openness, including commercial. Then work with it yourself, I have converted two of my family-members desktops over to Ubuntu within the last month, not including my own. If I wasn't using a "stupid" distribution it wouldn't have happened because I have no idea of the required options while building your kernel. Support the bridges, they all lead into Open.
Shh.
Film at 11! /sarcasm
Really, is this actually news?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
First off, this isn't news, which is glaringly obvious. If I said something along the same lines, would I get my own slashdot article? Probably not If I were, however, a little girl who felt betrayed by my corporate overlords making a deal with one of the most reliable companies on the planet, thus giving me and my fellow employees more job security, so I quit and start yelling WAHHH THE BIG BAD MICROSOFT MONSTER IS MEAN AND SO IS MY FORMER EMPLOYER AND MICROSOFT IS AN ELEPHANT RAWWWWR!, I probably would get this article.
How about something important and interesting, like the pork meat being created from stem cells? That's pretty fucking cool right there. Delicious progress.
Instead, we're fed this bullshit. I know we all love open source, theres nothing wrong with that. This, however, is NOT news, nor is it IMPORTANT to anyone, and as I'm about to present my case, it's not TRUE either.
"Oh, but wait, roAm, what about the fact that Microsoft is doing all these naughty things to threaten the open source community?"
FUD -- and as we all know, Microsoft's special brand of FUD only really works for promoting their products, not squashing the competition.
OSS is the elephant in this situation. A docile, elegant creature that never forgets. Microsoft is more like an annoying horsefly buzzing around the truck of said elephant, incessantly annoying the elephant, which can't quite seem to smash the annoying bug, but at the same time this is irrelevant because the bug has a limited lifespan compared to the near-immortality of the elephant.
Scale-wise, I know this comparison is skewed, but that doesn't make it any less true.
~The roAm
Microsoft wants marketshare (to make money), open source wants marketshare (for a variety of reasons, some of which involve making money)
Microsoft isn't going do anything to benefit its competitors (without getting something out of it), open source advocates aren't going do anything to benefit its competitors without (without getting something out of it)
There's nothing about either side that can be redirected.
Microsoft is a software company, selling proprietary software, with a business model based around lock-in and obscurity on file formats and the like. Open source is the complete opposite of what MS's business model needs. Now obviously MS's business model is (was) a pretty good one considering they got very very rich with it (one of the richest companies in the world, if not the richest). Business wise they're a winner, no contest. Open source is breaking that.
Absolute winners for MS are of course Office with their doc format lock-in (slowly being eroded by OOo), and the Windows/Exchange/Outlook combo for which I don't know of any true competitor. Plus the many windows-only games of course. MS needs to keep their sources closed, their standards theirs and theirs alone, and needs to keep competitors out of their network. The network situation is improving but it is still very much everything except Windows talks easily to everything except Windows, and Windows talks easily to Windows alone.
When I'm at it, I was thinking of their two most high-profile competitors.
Apple: they couldn't care less about open/closed source and will likely go with the wind. Except maybe iTunes but then that contains DRM which requires the closed-source obscurity to not be cracked before it's released. OS-X is largely open-source even. Apple is a hardware company, after all. They make software to sell their hardware.
Google. Google appears to love open source: they are all about interoperability. Everyone on the Internet, everything on the Internet, the browser is the platform. Which browser? Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari? What would they care. Operating system? Irrelevant. Hardware platform? The cheaper the better, whether it's a laptop, phone, desktop or "slate". As long as the device understands standards. And open source is pretty good at exactly that: standards.
Yahoo is likely in the Google camp, being an Internet company. Though I don't hear much of any software developments coming from there. And they are quite friendly with Microsoft.
Then there is Microsoft's Bing. Gaining market share rapidly, got some positive comments a few stories ago here on /.. Makes me wonder where that stands really, as Bing just needs a standards-compliant browser. I haven't used the site, but I understand from the comments that it is pretty standards-compliant at the moment. And with the current market share of non-IE browsers, they will have to. You can't afford to lose 30% or so of your market, especially as that 30% will tell their friends "Bing sucks, doesn't work properly, use Google, that works good". People don't tend to try again later.
Look this is the real world. If Linux wants respect you can't do it by crying about MS, Google, or any other company.
Just take the high road, fight the good fight, and take care of business. If open source is truely great it will work out. Don't try and take on MS just write better code and better systems.
The truth of Linux's and OS adoption is less about MS, and more about the little tweeks to make Linux easier not only for your grandma, but even for techs. Instead of some arbitrary command line arguments to change a driver option...make a check box on a dialog...both side wins. Make a GUI tool to configure Apache. The truth is many technical folks actually want that.
Let me write a few more... ...You want some wine with that cheese? ...You need some open source vagisil ( can a women please come up with the equivalent for men...).
Seriuosly can we a baby crying icon for these stories?
Mr. Allison, What is Googles software patent policy in regards to things like the recent map/reduce patent?
If I put a wall around the elephant in the garden, won't it trample all my flowers?
I teach a computational physics class for freshmen.
When I was going over our syllabus, I said: "Email your homework here. Don't send us Microsoft Word documents. My TA and I don't have Word, we're probably not on a computer that does when we grade your homework, and we can't be arsed to go find a decoder for whatever the newest obscure Microsoft format is."
The students were shocked -- you don't have Word? Really? How is this possible? (Answer: LaTeX.)
(Except for the one guy with the Ubuntu laptop, in the back, who chuckled...)
He just made himself a powerful enemy, and the elephant never forgets!
The enemies of Democracy are
"So you see this especially in the appliance market where Microsoft will go to a company — off the record as this is never ever done in public — and say 'this product you have there, shame if someone brought a patent suit. So you have two options you can re-architect — here is Windows — or the other thing is why don't you give us a cut on all the free software you are using?'.
This is very common business practice in the U.S. not exclusive to Microsoft. Bigger companies want two things from the smaller companies they intimidate, revenue and market penetration information. If they don't get it privately, they certainly get it with patent/trademark litigation.
I'm not calling Microsoft out exclusively on this, but it should give the average /. an idea of how fundamentally frozen the American economy is by patent and trademark law.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"Just take the high road, fight the good fight, and take care of business .. Don't try and take on MS just write better code and better systems .."
'Linux' isn't trying to take on Microsoft, it's the other way around. A company with a long time enmity towards anything open source and not adverse to using any dirty trick to get its own way.
Comes v. Microsoft
Microsoft EDGI: How It Works
I have no love for Microsoft.
But in the last decade I've seen Linux on the Desktop split between two different competing environments and API's, usability experts not being able to get any meaningful traction early on in FLOSS projects, newbies being flamed on IRC for asking questions, legitimate criticism of user experience issues being written of as FUD, billions of FLOSS company dollars going to enterprise systems buyouts and kernel hacker salaries instead of high quality user testing labs (and then saying FLOSS has no money for such things like evil proprietary companies do), etc.
When I look at Microsoft, I don't see FLOSS's greatest enemy; I see a boogeyman and a scapegoat used to explain FLOSS' lack of success at getting outside of a server room.
...when all they really wanted was a taxicab! DrrrTISH!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ever since Bill Gates left, and possibly a while longer _causing_ him to leave, Microsoft has been a symbol of whats wrong with the economy. Company gets built around an innovative idea by a bunch of enthusiastic experts, grows big because it actually sells useful products that make peoples lives easier. Then it all goes awry, clueless MBA types (hi Ballmer) take over pushed forward by vulture capitalists, monetizing, marketing, market share hogging and patent litigations take over the core business of making useful stuff and the company turns into yet another corporate zombie.
That's a great description of Microsoft. Slow to get up to speed, difficult to turn once they get rolling. The real problem with elephants on the battle field is once they got a head of steam they would charge through the enemy lines, then turn around and charge back through the lines and trample their own people. Not exactly a smart bomb.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But then, I'm not on the MS 'turfing payroll
Do you happen to have any idea how I can get on the MS Apologists' payroll?
:(
I'm too broke to keep doing this for free
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
"If I were, however, a little girl who felt betrayed by my corporate overlords making a deal with one of the most reliable companies on the planet, thus giving me and my fellow employees more job security, so I quit and .."
Novell gave away the family silver for a buch of vouchers. They also took to uttering vague IP protection threats against the Open Source community on their web site. They also stoped promoting their own desktop and recommended Windows instead. At least one of their technical people has the personaly integrity to resign. Person abuse from some a******e is not required.
--
reliable at what exactly?
davecb5620@gmail.com
My favorite part though, as per TFA:
"We have a system that is absolutely free that we can do anything with, so why are we so obsessed with picking on Microsoft? ... Shouldn't we leave the elephant alone and stop poking it with sticks? Well, the problem is they aren't going to leave us alone."
Of course Microsoft is going to compete with your solutions. They're a god damned software company that makes every type of application they can produce without getting [successfully] sued by their competitors. I've never actually said this before, but...
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Oh yeah? Well, so's your mom!
Get those trank darts ready Mr Allison .. I'm afraid your going to need them. After the Elephant gave you all the SMB protocol documentation you'd ever need its going to sit on you and suck out your nuts through its snout.
No, the headline is "Microsoft bullies FOSS with patents and conspiratorial coersion."
When Microsoft patents obvious things, then uses those patents to threaten law suits, that is a threat.
If Microsoft was competing by building great software, we would be having a different conversation. This conversation is about Microsoft competing without building software.
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
The easiest way to stop an elephant from trampling, is with a mouse. Get back to work!
Yes, like many academics you like to demonstrate to your students that you are superior and in charge. There's no significant difference between you and the other guy who won't accept anything from his students that isn't in Word format.
ten problems with the new Moonlight Covenant
...
Novell-Only, OS limitiations, the Killswitch, overlapping Promises, Novell-Only, Novell-Only, Platform Limited, GPL-Hostile, expiration Date
So, if Microsoft is the elephant, does that mean that Open Source is the mouse that scares the elephant, and Google is the sneaky snake that convinces the mouse to scare the elephant before said snake eats the mouse?
I don't know about you, but I'd rather deal with the evil I know rather than deal with the treacherous snake that pretends to be my ally one week (Mozilla / Android) and is my enemy the next (Chrome / NexusOne).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
If Microsoft has deliberately set out to harm open source then the open source community should set out to harm Microsoft. Perhaps a contest could be run with a prize going to the person doing the greatest harm. Hacking, law suits, interesting illegal acts should all be judged for creativity and harm done.
So the evidence that this happens is that he's in the industry where it happens?
I was in Dennys at the weekend and couldn't help listening to a conversation that was taking place on the table behind me. Some woman was proud of her new netbook that she had to buy because her old laptop had too many windows virusses to run (fast) any more. Clearly she was one of those people that surf everywhere and click yes to everything.
I had the revelation that she actually represents nearly all 'normal' people (us techies definately aren't normal). Most 'normal' people have already been conditioned by companies like Microsoft, Dell and Apple to view laptops as appliances, not something user-maintainable. Many people can't even differentiate between hardware and OS.
Also, most people are already familiar the windows environment, and also don't like change. Even a slightly different desktop menu layout or whatever is enough to make them feel uncomfortable enough to not want to go further. Just a new version of Windows represents a significant learning curve to these people. I mean most people still use IE for christ sake even after all the warnings and free alternatives one mouse-click away. They just want their PC to plug and play. When it runs slow, in their ignorance they prefer to throw it away and blow $1500 on another laptop rather than change their behavior or just learn about their PC.
These are most consumers, and if we want them to adopt Linux we have to take their natural behavior and all their preconceptions into account.
The only way to get desktop Linux to the majority is to beat Microsoft at being able to plug in any hardware or application and have it just work, which means getting hardware manufacturers and app developers to stop blindly developing stuff for Microsoft-based OS only. As long as hardware suppliers don't provide Linux drivers and, for example, games developers still use DirectX and not OpenGL, Linux will never be in a position to reach the public consciousness, even though its technically and intrinsically better. Linux has clearly already won that war but obviously thats not enough as still no mass migration from Windows to Linux desktop that we'd all like to see.
The thing is, most people still have never heard of Linux. We need to stop hoping people will join our community just because its technically better, and start spending money on advertising.
Linux needs to be shoved into the public perception through the TV and media at least as hard and frequently as Microsoft do with their products. Advertising is the only way that desktop Linux will ever get to critical mass, which it needs to do so that its obvious to all HW and SW manufacturers that they will quickly loose out if they continue to only target Windows. Furthermore 'Normal' consumers need to at least know that Linux exists before they can try it.
From TFA:
"Microsoft is often compared to the Star Trek icon 'The Borg'. You have this wonderful little Patrick Stewart icon with his Borg headgear on whenever you have Microsoft on a Slashdot story," he said referring to the popular science fiction series and IT website.
The ./ MS icon is a Borg-ified Bill Gates. Not Patrick Stewart.
It would be better to simply get a clue, or go to a different site where there aren't so many that do have a clue, especially when you consider that you can tell a convention of astronomers that the world is flat until you are blue in the face without actually converting any of them to your viewpoint.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
To continue, while I'm here ;), Some things are: too important to patent if you believe Mr. Jefferson. And as a matter of fact in the founding of the United States of America it was a close call whether patents should be allowed at all. The promoting the progress bit won out narrowly. Today, I believe this should be re-examined. We have reached the critical mass where if someone does not do it, someone else will. Therefore, the promoting the progress bit is not as valid. But stagnation rules the day, the slow slide into irrelevance because of a lack of keeping up with the times. There are many vested interests who manipulate issues to their own ends so I doubt we'll see a honest look at the issue any time soon. Perhaps, in the mean-time, when it comes to patents just emulate ironically those who appear to have that little bit right: China. Hell, distribute your software out of nations that are not stupid and let the USA wallow in itself for this issue.
Shh.
This isn't news to the court systems, or OS/2 present and former users.
Microsoft is an abusive, anti-competitive monopoly. Microsoft's been tried and found guilty in a court of law, but there's been no remedy applied. People still sign up to use the substandard OS, Windows, because of the applications barrier to entry. Until Linux gets major game and greeting card software companies on board, it'll continue to get marginalized by Microsoft.
The vast majority of freshman enter college believing that there a is Microsoft software monoculture. This requirement forces them to open their minds when they learn that alternatives do exist. Once so enlightened, it is short leap from realizing that they don't have to depend on a corporation to meet their needs to realizing that they don't have to depend on a government to meet their needs.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Depends on which standards you mean, which I guess is normal when talking about Microsoft products. Bing does not honor the robots.txt standard which is pretty critically important to many websites (such as CPAN). Because Bing will not play nice and effectively poses a denial-of-service threat to sites which heavily use virtual hostnames (such as SourceForge), the site owners have to either lock the Bing search robot's IP out fairly far up the pipe and thus remove themselves from Bing's indexing (because blocking them inside your network doesn't help, the packetstorm will still prevent your customers from reaching you efficiently) or invest massively in infrastructure upgrades to counter Bing's site saturation.
The upshot of this is Bing says "we are sorry, we have a technical problem we aren't smart enough to solve right away" and the sites getting hammered say "isn't it odd how Microsoft is hammering the crap out of FOSS sites and sparing ISS sites" and the public says "hmmm, there isn't any listing for a free product that does what I want in Bing, and everyone says Bing works great so there must not be a free product".
Draw what conclusions you wish. I personally believe that you should never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained as incompetence, and thus I haven't bothered to ever use Bing. The owners/authors of Bing don't respect my robots.txt file so obviously their product must be shitty, case closed for me.
Essential YouTube viewing:
Jeremy Allison is one of the top villains of the software world (Richard Stalinman of course being #1), locking away software behind the restrictive anti-free-market legal virus they call the GPL, instead of something closer to truly free software (i.e. BSD license or public domain) which is how it would have naturally ended up due to free market competition. Neither freedom nor the ability to earn a living, inevitably leading to government funding and control of all software - that's the GNU way!
Microsoft is a much lesser evil, and one that is much easier to avoid. It is noteworthy that Microsoft didn't start using patents aggressively until it has become a victim of government violence itself. Microsoft could do just fine without copyright / "intellectual property" bull entirely, as would be the case in a 100% free society where they would be forced to operate through contract law, while GNU is completely and utterly impossible in a 100% free society - government force is what it's all about!
The GNU fiends love using the sword of government to their benefit, but when it is used back against them, oh no - hell hath no fury like a software commie scorned! He'll rant and rave in his mother's basement or government-subsidized dorm room - "I am a victim, hear me roar!"
(Now watch as my karma here goes to negative infinity and beyond, tee hee hee.)
Thats why I use the standard ISO 29500 for documents. Which should be supported by Office 2010 soon.
My first Linux install was RH 5.1; it was a bit of a bumpy ride getting X to work, and there were some other issues, so I didn't do much with it- just stuck to Windows. I tried again a year later, and RH 6.x was much better- the 2.2 kernel series made a big difference, GNOME was new and exciting, most things just worked, etc. I did more dual-booting and thought that surely the pace of improvement would make it so after the next release or two I'd always be booting into Linux. But from my point of view the past decade brought very little improvement in making Linux more palatable to use- in some ways it's worse now than it was in 2000.
As someone else mentioned, the purism issues and the hostility towards those developing proprietary software for Linux have been a major detriment. Plenty of old programs that worked well and shipped with earlier distros but had not-quite-free licenses (many of which used Xt or Motif) have just recently started to get decent RMS-approved replacements. In 1999-2000, with Corel making a serious WordPerfect for Linux push, Loki doing ports of most of the biggest games, etc. it looked like a market for consumer Linux software was developing, and I thought that it wouldn't be long before one could find Linux versions of most software on the shelves of box stores. Piracy, hostility towards those developing proprietary software for Linux, ABI churn, Loki going nova, the end of RH's commercial desktop distro (after a couple of less-than-stellar releases), and other factors scared developers away.
Usability is little better than it was then. Having a cadre of self-proclaimed UI experts arguing about button order doesn't help anything, and many of the actions that have been taken in the name of usability have been major steps backward (GNOME 2.0, anybody?). While there are things to be learned from real, long term usability studies, it's counterproductive to make changes based on an assumption that all users are stupid and thus can't be trusted to do anything outside of the most common tasks or on the basis of what someone unacquainted with the software said in their first 5 minutes of trying to familiarize themselves with it.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with Chrome OS. It's possible that a company the size of Google will be able to overcome the worst offenses of the modern Linux desktop scene and create a viable ecosystem for the development of 3rd-party consumer software, taking the good points of how Apple made a similar move in the OS X transition while keeping things more open than Apple has. I don't know that any other company or group is really in a position to bring Linux to desktop relevance.
A metaphor with many meanings
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Would it be OK if I just went back to work developing free software with like-minded people? I quite like my job and I'd rather do that than the blanket-milk-cookie thing.
Thinking about it a bit further, I guess the security blanket solution is more for the people who enjoy being locked-in, isn't it? Not to mention the sort of people who think belittling others is a way to win arguments :)
You're thinking about doing /. like M$ did ISO.
Don't worry, it's already being done...
And I thought Jeremy was the master of trash talk, but I was wrong.
" Some woman was proud of her new netbook that she had to buy because her old laptop had too many windows virusses to run (fast) any more." - by JustNiz (692889) on Thursday January 21, @01:37PM (#30848950)
Ok, you're OBVIOUSLY part of what I have LONG been calling "the 'Pro-*NIX crew'" around here on /. ... & to be fair about it? Yes, Linux has come a LONG ways (since I first tried it in Slackware 1.02 iirc, circa 1993) & MacOS X is a HUGE improvement on System9 on macs, this is also certain.
HOWEVER:
Well, when *NIX variants have 95% or better of the PC market, & as far as security?
Then it is going to be a DIFFERENT STORY, this much you can be certain of...
HOWEVER, on that note? Well- The only thing is, I keep hearing (especially here, lol) "this is the year of [insert *NIX variant here]", for oh, only around 5++ yrs. of my hanging around here is all...
Yes, that *NIX of mine includes LINUX, BSD's (like MacOS X), etc. et al) - & IF that ever does "go down", well... I think the *NIX crew is in for a bit of a surprise!
(Simply because, per my subject-line above? Well - The REAL thing keeping MacOS X &/or Linux for example, 'safe', is "Security-By-Obscurity", & the fact that online criminals are just like ANY OTHER CRIMINALS: They gather where the most OTHERS gather, to maximize their surface area of attack - & guess where THAT is, online? Yes, that's right - Windows).
Windows has what? Roughly a 95% share of market out there for personal computing approximately?
Well - that "all said & aside", what do you REALLY think goes through the mind of those doing the attacking (when they want to "hit" as many people as they can to victimize them, and maximize their criminal enterprise's profits)??
I.E.-> "LET'S ATTACK WINDOWS, IT IS THE MOST USED! WE WILL GET THE 'MOST MILEAGE OUT OF OUR ATTACK CODE' THAT WAY..."
So, they write their (for example) javascript code to attack Windows & its surrounding apps...
----
"Linux needs to be shoved into the public perception through the TV and media at least as hard and frequently as Microsoft do with their products" - by JustNiz (692889) on Thursday January 21, @01:37PM (#30848950)
Now - YOU MENTIONED USING "THE GOD-ALMIGHT TOOB"... Well, ok:
For example - The Apple commercials? THEY ARE COMPLETE BULLSHIT, & ANYONE WITH ANY SENSE or KNOW-HOW IN THIS ART & SCIENCE/FIELD OF COMPUTING, REALIZES IT... "Security by Obscurity" is MacOS X & Linux's ally, & that's about it...
(Now, again - Please, don't get me wrong (mainly because your post is NOT of the "trollish ilk", imo @ least): I like MacOS X, & Linux, as much as the next guy (they work, they are well-done by this point, & in general are as much a pleasure to use as Windows is)... but, I don't like hearing a bunch of misinforming market-speak bullshit lies, either).
HOWEVER:
IF ANYONE HERE TRIES TO TELL MYSELF OR OTHERS THAT IT'S "IMPOSSIBLE TO WRITE A VIRUS/WORM/TROJAN/SPYWARE/MALWARE-IN-GENERAL FOR LINUX or MAC OS X, THEN I SUGGEST THEY REALIZE THAT JAVASCRIPT (the main tool used to attack others online via webbrowsers & email programs as of the past 5++ yrs. now) RUNS ON THEIR OS' TOO... & THUS, THEY ARE JUST AS ATTACKABLE AS WINDOWS IS... EASILY!
APK
P.S.=> Once more, for "reinforcement" on this note, per my subject-line? "Security-By-Obscurity" is the only so-called "security-advantage" that the *NIX variants on PC's have, & it's also their biggest enemy too (sales & market share, anyone?)... apk
Since I don't oppose commercial free software, I tend to agree. All free software is commercial since any of it may be distributed for a fee (otherwise it would not qualify as free software) and any of it may be used by a business to pursue their ends. I figure that to be anti-commercial software is to be anti-free software. The free software movement is not anti-business. We're pro-software freedom—people should be free to run, inspect, share, and modify all published computer software. So, as Jeremy Allison said in TFA, "Keep our eyes on the prize -- we keep doing this [free software development] and we will end up with a world where, yes, there may be more proprietary gardens but we can ignore them by creating our own content, creating our own software and creating our own hardware. Let's build the world that we want to see.". Indeed, that's what's gotten us this far and that's how we should keep going.
We need to teach people about the software freedom too: share the values of our community of cooperative collaboration, including teaching them that paying for free software is a good thing; it helps make more free software!
Digital Citizen
You can make book that any successful shakedown is protected by a non-disclosure agreement, NDA. MS has an essentially bottomless well of cash to use for lawyers to harass and intimidate anyone they feel like screwing/destroying.
+ 4 Informative.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Apple contributes next to nothing to the FOSS community. They are openly hostile to requests for source code and haven't open sourced a single significant in house development. Most of what Apple has made available is the stock standard BSD code that they are required to make available and a "chess" program.
Apple dislikes open source and only used it to get around the fact that Mac OS 9 was so horribly outdated and buggy that it was easier to start again from scratch (or just use someone elses work). Make no mistake, the GUI, parts of the Kernel and several other key components of OS X will remain locked up forever. Apple's contributions and acceptance of the OSS community is steadily decreasing as they need less and less from OSS.
MS has actually contributed quite a bit more to open source then Apple, I'm not letting them off the hook mind you, Allison has a point about MS's actions towards Linux. Microsoft does not hate Open Source, they hate Linux because Linux is a threat to MS making more money. As much as we like to blame MS for their evil, they are not evil by nature. Microsoft's evilness is entirely a side effect of their greed.
MS is better towards FOSS for one reason, they don't take and don't give back, Apple takes and doesn't give back.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is what I was thinking. The biggest threat to OSS is not forms of less open and more closed software, the two can coexist
Jeremy Allison mentioned it briefly, but I don't think they really can. Let me specific, I think that you're right that in an ideal world both forms of software licensing "could" exist. But I've also learned from experience that in this world they can't. Why not? Because Microsoft doesn't want to exist in a world of Open Software. I think their record of business dealings demonstrates this behavior, everything from the Halloween Documents, to "Linux is a cancer", "Linux is violating 200+ of Microsoft's patents" (but they never mention which ones), to funding SCO's lawsuit, The whole turning ISO's integrity into shit with their antics on pushing their OOXML format, the Tom Tom lawsuit, etc.
I know based on what I have seen of Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, that they are perfectly willing to let Microsoft live, not that they would encourage the use of closed software, but they wouldn't use dirty handed tricks like Microsoft. I can't say the same about Microsoft.
Wasting resources trying to attack a ghost like Linux, where there is no one corp they can go after...
But they keep attacking, don't they? TomTom, Novell, Lindows, other attacks from 1998 to 2007.
And, since 2003 MS has considered Linux their number two threat.
Microsoft disagrees with you.
Ummm...well lets tackle these one at a time, shall we? TomTom...MSFT holding patents on Fat32 weren't exactly a big secret there Chuck. Just because they aren't actively trying to kill Linux does NOT mean they are just gonna give you their patents for free! TomTom could have paid up, it was THEY who decided to go for it and not license. That was their stupidity, not MSFT's since as I said everyone and their dog knew about the Fat32 (and now EXFat) patents. So no smoke there, just simple patent licensing issues.
Novell? Signed a deal, as did Xandros. Novell got cash, Xandros licensed their server tech to interact with xandros server. Again that is just business 101. MSFT wanted licenses so they could offer a "mixed stack" if the client wanted it, and both Novell and Xandros said "sure". After trying Xandros Business and server, I have to say it was a REALLY smart move. Xandros is the only Linux distro that plays nice with a mixed Linux/Windows corporate environment out of the box with no gotchas. In fact AD worked quicker in Xandros than it did in XP.
Lindows? You are really grabbing at straws with that one. If I started selling an OS called "Abble" that was a cheap OSX ripoff you don't think the Apple would bust my ass? I saw Lindows machines in walmart, and frankly the way they were set up you would have been hard pressed to tell by glancing that they weren't Windows, which was of course the whole point of naming it Lindows. Hell anybody with a brain would have busted their ass, as their whole marketing strategy was built on confusion. Last I heard the CEO took the money and ran, so I wouldn't hold them up as a shining example of the "poor FLOSS company" there.
And finally, did you happen to notice the date on that CFO report? 2003, which in case you forgot was at a time when there was still serious rumblings about MSFT being "too big" and the possibility that they should be broken up. So yeah, they are gonna have to point to somebody and say "See? We really aren't that big! They are really hot and heavy on our heels buddy!" Just as I'm sure that while part of the Intel settlement was to keep AMD from digging out skeletons, another part was like the MSFT Apple bailout, in that they need competition to keep from being labeled a monopoly and having all kinds of antitrust raining on their heads.
But the simple fact is that was then, and this is now. MSFT is MUCH more worried about Google, which is why they are trying to woo Apple into their camp. They know that a good chunk of the future is the web, and they are behind when it comes to the web. The majority of their customers are using a 10 year old OS and 7 year old Office, the still need to grow Bing and not just simply take numbers from Yahoo, the X360 is finally starting to bear fruit and get past the RRoD fiasco, and the simple fact is Linux is just too much of a ghost to hit with the old MSFT strategies.
What Linux needs to worry about is not MSFT but radical FLOSSies who are hurting them more than anything. The SCoN! (source code or nothing!) brigade make it hard to incorporate non free drivers into distros, making them more of a PITA than they need to be. They keep hanging onto the "give us all your code and we'll take care of the rest" mantra, which while it might work in corporate, where these hardware manufacturers have serious $$$ invested in servers and HPC, but won't work in retail where by the time a driver "trickles down" to the distros a device isn't being sold at retail anymore.
The big "gotcha" that Linux faces is the fact that the support for consumer class hardware sucks balls, no offense. Checking my own local Walmart, staples, and Best Buy, I found that maybe 35% of the hardware being sold actually works, and that is if you count "works" as having to put in a mountain of CLI "fixes" and other hacks that will most likely bork when you update. And of there is absolutely NO WAY to tell by looking at the box what
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Dude. I'm clearly not the only one who can't be bothered to argue with your rabidly ignorant and whackily formatted diatribes. Could you just do us all a favour and stop posting until you've grown up, please?
Codeweavers has a good model going, older code merged back into WINE, cutting edge closed and sold for the moment! I *bought* *on Linux* Crossover because of its true value and to the lesser degree that contribution back as a responsible member of the community.
Shh.
"Ahhh....I know I shouldn't slap the fanboy, but I'm bored people, and therefor can't help it." - by hairyfeet (841228) on Thursday January 21, @07:58PM (#30854896)
Hairyfeet, You had to "eat your words" numerous times in the exchanges in these very posts which everyone will now see, verbatim, by just going to them here:
----
("Exhibit A", where I merely extolled both SPEED and SECURITY issues in FAVOR of Opera, vs. FireFox):
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30852888
("Exhibit B", where I first caught you in mistakes, regarding SPEED and SECURITY issues in FAVOR of Opera, vs. FireFox):
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856394
("Exhibit C", where I further caught you in mistakes, regarding SPEED and SECURITY issues in FAVOR of Opera, vs. FireFox):
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856658
----
(Big mistake(s) on your part, starting up hassles with others by your intentionally trolling!)
ANYONE IS FREE TO READ THE ABOVE, WHERE "HAIRYFEET" HERE FIRST ADMITTEDLY TROLLED MYSELF & GOT HIS ASS HANDED TO HIM, WITH EASE, & LMAO - DUE TO HIS OWN MISTAKES & RANTS!
(Hilarious!)
Whereas, by way of comparison (when I tried to warn he to leave me be no less, initially)?
I stated nothing but verifiable facts in the 1st URL, & subsequently supporting ones regarding BOTH Opera, FireFox (& addons for them).
APK
P.S.=> The result? "HAIRYFEET" ran, like the TYPICAL /. TROLL (or, any other elsewhere) when confronted with facts, vs. his fictions and outrageous technical errors...
However, before he ran (in "typical troll fashion" no less)? He lastly used the OLDEST "troll trick" in the book: Downrating ALL of my posts as "offtopic" & "troll" etc. / et al (Where my replies actually WERE on-topic unlike his largely stupid & erroneous replies no less)...
No, I think from now on here? Well - Everyone ought to see EXACTLY how you & those LIKE YOU, operate around here & elsewhere online as well (and how you UTTERLY "screwed-up" for it on your part also, all per the above examples thereof on YOUR part)... apk
Couple of things... (just opinions)
Software Patents - Don't think it's right to patent non-physical devices. Hopefully we can someday we can fix this horrible innovation-stifling law.
Lindows - Don't think anyone ever confused Lindows with Windows.
Old dates on information - I was trying to show a long standing pattern of attacks. You went through many of the items essentially saying that the attacks were justified. Don't wish to put words in your mouth but I think that's the gist of your opinion.
Whether the attacks were justified or not it does show that 1) Linux was/is a threat, as indicated by Microsoft. 2) Linux is not a "ghost" that no one can sue or strong arm.
The last few paragraphs seem to be irrelevant to what I wrote so I'll let others comment on the pros and cons of FOSS.
See subject goof
See subject you goofy little bitch. Is it our fault you're so stupid and work on a loser's Operating System douchebag?
Awwww, poor little Penguin loser. What's the matter? Can't you handle the truth? Was it just just too complex for your dull & imbecilic brain to come up with a response here? Yes, yes, Just think: 2011 may be the year of Linux finally. Yea rite. Guess what? Too bad you off topic loser. If you can't handle the truth then too bad for you cry baby bitch. Now since you said to shut up then why don't you make me you powerless loser? Oh that's right. You can't.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1426407&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=29948572
Does that ring a bell, Dude? Poor "Booby". You shot your mouth off there and got youself shot down badly, now didn't you?? Hahaha. That's not anyone's fault but your own, you stupid moron. The next time a "Dude" post comes up, you can be sure to see that there as an indication of your utter stupidity.
Please excuse the Opera troll I've had following me around lately, he drools and is rather smelly but harmless.
As for your points? Software patents-agree completely, but until the law is changed expect companies to use patents. All of the big corps, MSFT, AMD, Intel, IBM, etc all play the same game. You license or get sued. My point was TomTom was offered a license, and chose to give MSFT the finger. So no crap they sued.
Lindows?I actually saw a lady in Walmart try to load Windows software on a "Lindows special" so while YOU wouldn't be confused and I wouldn't be confused, other people? Not so much. In fact most of my customers can't tell you if they are on Windows 98 or WinXP. To them there is only ONE OS, and it is Windows. The concept of different versions? Just don't compute. In fact the ONLY customers I have that know what they've got is Vista ones, and it is always followed by "I hate it". So again, MSFT was in the rights. There were and are plenty of names that won't cause confusion, and theirs was pretty much designed to 'fool" the clueless. How much support do you think Canonical would get if they changed their name to "Windoows"? probably not much. I put Lindows in the same camp as those that register mickeymoouse.com" and other crap. If they have a good product they shouldn't need to copy someone else,yes?
As for the old date? I was simply pointing out that at that time MSFT had their nuts in a fire, with talk of "monopoly busting" which I frankly wish they would have done. But again the threat to Linux isn't MSFT, it is zealotry by RMS and the SCoN! camp. Look at how much easier things would be if non free drivers were already built in and ready to go. You don't get that thanks to SCoN! While MSFT can and does compete with Linux, frankly I think until the internal conflicts are worked out Linux has gained about as much as it will. The "hackers" and SCoN! like a CLI heavy, research your ass off Linux, because they think it makes them "smarter" and "better" than the average Joe, which is why you get so much foaming at the mouth "M$" speak here.
So to me the old saying about glass houses applies. It doesn't really matter what MSFT does at this point, it really isn't gonna damage Linux in the long run. But to gain those "Joe and Sally" average users Linux needs to be easier, CLI free, and non open source drivers need to be on CDs so that I can send a customer into Walmart without them playing paperweight roulette. As it is now Linux is a nightmare to shop for, pretty much useless without a CLI interface, and every time I update I end up spending a good couple of hours looking for "fixes" to things that weren't broken before. That shit just has to go! Right now MSFT has their own problems, and if Linux wants to become more than a niche geek OS, it needs to see to its own house. Sorry if it seemed I was putting words in your mouth, I was simply trying to address each point in order. No offense.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856394
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856658
Hairyfeet, face it, You had your ass absolutely handed to you for your trolling him is all. You say you want to teach PC tech stuff in your profile, but you sure got "schooled" above. So much for "ITT training" because apparently it's not worth squat, seeing as you got blown away, lmao.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856394
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856658
Folks, we'd like to introduce you to "Professor Hairyfeet" graduate of "Bottom of the barrell university" @ ITT! That's where they teach you to troll others as well as how to lose very, very badly on technical topics, as he demonstrates above. So, when "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'" fails you, as it has the professor above? Well, there is always, "bottom-of-the-barrell U" for you too, as it's where ALL of the proudest loser trolls like the professor above graduated from (including getting their fake sheepskin from a gumball machine, lol). Professor Hairyfeet, You say you want to teach PC tech stuff in your profile here, but you sure got "schooled" above in both urls above there hairyfeet, lmao. Yes, folks - That's the KIND OF EXCELLENT RESULTS you'll be guaranteed to get, when you go to "Bottom-of-the-Barrell U" @ ITT. Guaranteed, or your money back (all 5 cents of it, lmao).
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856394
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856658
Folks, we'd like to introduce you to "Professor Hairyfeet" graduate of "Bottom of the barrell university" @ ITT! That's where they teach you to troll others as well as how to lose very, very badly on technical topics, as he demonstrates above. So, when "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'" fails you, as it has the professor above? Well, there is always, "bottom-of-the-barrell U" for you too, as it's where ALL of the proudest loser trolls like the professor above graduated from (including getting their fake sheepskin from a gumball machine, lol). Professor Hairyfeet, You say you want to teach PC tech stuff in your profile here, but you sure got "schooled" above in both urls above there hairyfeet, lmao. Yes, folks - That's the KIND OF EXCELLENT RESULTS you'll be guaranteed to get, when you go to "Bottom-of-the-Barrell U" @ ITT. Guaranteed, or your money back (all 5 cents of it, lmao).
I won go thwu "The POWER of... 'ITT Training'" jes soes ah kin be jes laik Yew, PWUFESSUH HAIWYPHEAT. so kin ah be, PWEEZ? YO MAH HEIRO PWUFFESSUH! PWUFESSUH HARRYPHEAT I WAN B LAIK U 2.
(ROTFLMAO)
Wow. I'm well aware of the "don't feed the troll" rules, but I'll reply this one time.
You sound like you were foaming at the mouth and punching the keyboard while typing these responses. Relax, it's just an internet forum - nothing's worth that amount of anger.
Also, re-read those posts if you like because there's a lesson in there. That guy was wrong, I explained why he was wrong, he didn't pay attention and said something that showed he hadn't understood what I'd said so I gave up. If people aren't interested in what you have to say, then don't worry about it - just leave them to it. I suggest you do the same in future, instead of bursting a blood vessel over it.
Life's too short to let the ramblings of random strangers get to you, so just have a drink or a smoke or whatever you like to do to calm the fuck down before you hurt yourself. Losing your temper just makes you look like a dick and destroys your credibility in any debate.
I won't be replying again, so don't waste your time with a response.
"Company gets built around an innovative idea by a bunch of enthusiastic experts, grows big because it actually sells useful products that make peoples lives easier"
,
Yea, 'the innovative idea' was buying DOS from Seattle Computers and licensing it to IBM and their idea of selling useful products was to make sure running third party software on WinDOS was a jolting experience.
Many have tried and tried and tried and failed. The guy is a nutjob.
Did you disprove anything that was said by the initial poster? No. That makes you another off topic troll who's done nothing of worth with himself, period. It was however, quite amusing to see how badly you screwed up in the post that was pointed out, Mr. "know it all" (lol, not).
Well, well, nice to see that I am literally being "stalked" by trolling idiots... lmao!
What's even NICER to see, is that you screwed up hugely in doing so! Read on:
"Many have http://foredecker.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/dear-anonymous-slashdot-guy/" - by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23, @06:08AM (#30868524)
Oh, really? Many have failed, OR, have turned to my point of view, as in the 1st case here with Microsoft:
Foredecker (Richard R. of Microsoft) is actually looking into my points!
(Ask him yourself here -> http://slashdot.org/~Foredecker OR write him here -> Foredecker@rocketmail.com )
Thus, by March, per my points? We'll most likely see 0 back in use inside a HOSTS file, per my points here in response to he -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1467692&cid=30384918 AND here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1513822&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=30819978
So much for that troll!
(So... "onwards & upwards")
----
"and http://www.jeremyreimer.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4128 " - by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23, @06:08AM (#30868524)
Jeremy Reimer is just pissed off that while in 2003, over @ the Windows IT Pro forums, he was shot down when I exposed the fact he has no degree or certifications in this art & science.
So, Reimer also later sent several people from arstechnica to try to "get the better of me" on technical issues surrounding memory mgt. in Windows over to try to to do so!
LOL!
EACH failed... it was hilarious!
(or, ended up agreeing with me, as in the case of Jarrett DeAngelis a post doc grad student).
Jay Little was the most hilarious of all though - he tried to say he was a "AN EXCHANGE EXPERT" & when I pointed out that memory optimizing programs can clear up STALLED EXCHANGE SERVERS? He ran... & then, he made threats to "end my life" etc. & had his websites removed by CrystalTech.com... Jeremy Reimer also had large portions of his website FORCIBLY REMOVED by Shaw of Canada (his ISP/BSP) for doing the same & libelling me as well...
Reimer's just an impotent (no kids & has been married for years) limp whimp (who is a homosexual playing "married man"). His wife? Heh, she is a "dancer"... so, in other words, that just makes REIMER her PIMP... she's "damaged goods" & if Reimer is not queer (he is though)? She's so screwed up from the life of a stripper, she CANNOT HAVE KIDS... period. It's that, or REIMER can't "get it up" with a woman is all... lol!
(TOO EASY morons - truth always is...).
----
"and http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1464032&cid=30305362 and failed. " - by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23, @06:08AM (#30868524)
LOL, all about "THOR SCHMUCK" here ->
PERTINENT EXCERPT:
====
I myself have been a victim of it as a freeware developer!
E.G.-> I wrote an application back in 1999 that is "flagged" by CA as a threat, albeit with "ZERO THREAT LEVELS", listing it claiming it can be used by malware authors to do damage to others... wtf?
So, upon the advisement of an attorney, I took their 21 point test (via vendorappeals@ca.com & writing greg.jensen@ca.com also in regards to this), & my application did not violate a SINGLE CONSTRAINT, & yet? They STILL list it on their website... - this was prior to ANY RULING that antivirus/ant
Per my subject-line above? Yet another screwup, as BOOBY (bobintetley (643462)) has FINALLY given himself away as the "dude troll" who stalks me around here.
FIRST PERTINENT EVIDENCE THEREOF (his constant use of the slang phrase "dude" as he uses here in his first reply to me here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1505462&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=30721040 :
"Dude, the regular perl script has fewer funky symbols than your post. You may or may not have a good point, it's hard to tell with all that noise in your posts. Hint: Stop using & all the time, there is a regular word you can use instead. 'and'. See? Wasn't that hard to type." - by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11, @04:26AM (#30721040)
LOL, now comes the FUNNY part, where he lies about being some PROFESSIONAL WRITER, & got his ass shot down first in his not having a PHD in English, but after his statements of being a "pro writer", lol... HE MADE A GRADE SCHOOLER'S LEVEL ERROR IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR (by starting a sentence with a conjunction, in the word "AND"):
====
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1505462&cid=30729986
"And no, I don't have a PhD, but I do know spelling, grammar, and usage much better than you do, apparently." - by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11, @08:42AM (#30722214)
"The rule against starting sentences with and, but or because is a hypercorrection teachers insist on in elementary school so that kids don't stay in the habit of writing fragments" - http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic7888.html
"I remember learning in grade school that this was absolutely out of the question" - http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic7888.html
"Novice writers should be especially careful not to begin sentence fragments with conjunctions." - http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/Is-it-okay-to-begin-a-sentence-with-and-.id-305408,articleId-27216.html
"Formal alternatives to 'and', include words such as 'furthermore', 'moreover' and 'additionally" - http://languagestyle.suite101.com/article.cfm/grammar_starting_a_sentence_with_or_and_or_but
Want more, Mr. "Truly Anonymous Coward", who claimed to be a professional writer above?
(No way you are a professional writer...)
APK
P.S.=> "Judge not, lest YE be judged"... apk
====
Keep stalking me you twisted little freak "Booby"?
Well, then I will just keep shooting you down with your OWN BLATANT SCREWUPS, & lies exposed easily!
APK
P.S.=> Again - "too, Too, TOO EASY"++... apk
I am not as pervy to all the other crap a certain OS company puts out.. but when did they stop making quality software.. ? I have seen them buy and trash or conscript many others.. and re heat and sell at top dollar , the same OS without dealing with obvious issues. I have watched them use a lot of propaganda and power pressure to get groups to Toe the Line.. Now patent the crap out of any thing they can get their hands on. Wouldn't they more easily and cheaply solve all this competition by putting out undeniable absolutely Incredible products?When did all the Real code writers stop working there? Love the CORY quote .. chuckled.
the Bare reason why groups like MAC , LINUX or UNIX will prevail.. because they develop real quality stuff.. and listen to what we need.
FWJ