Microsoft isn't the only company that does fucked-up things. Human nature is to fuck up and be mean to your fellow human.
And when you take it to a certain point, the government steps in and smacks your ass down. Unless, of course, you've contributed enough money to keep them on your side.
You technically can already do this. Assuming of course you can find the documentation you need. I haven't looked for it, so I don't know how complete (or incomplete as the case may be) it is. The real problem is that even though Compaq could technically do this, Microsoft won't let them. That is one of the issues that should be addressed by the court. Lawyers should not be redesigning Windows. They should be removing Microsoft's ability to leverage its OS and Office monopolies to extort and coerce OEMs. They should be made to document all of their APIs, protocols, and file formats completely and make that information available in a very timely manner. Once you fix the leveraging and the interoperability problems, Microsoft will have largely been de-clawed. That's what they should be doing, not wasting everyone's time and making a joke of this case by trying to rewrite Windows.
Remember that story a week or so ago? The one about monkeys controlling a PC mouse with their brain? They said that it only takes about 6 to 8 neurons to control the mouse cursor. Adding more just refines the control. That's the only hint I have to go on when comparing brain power to computer power.
Seriously, have the disclaimers you read in practically every EULA in existence ever been overturned in court? Are they saying that they plan to wait until someone does sue over such a disclaimer before they decide whether or not to release their code? Sounds kinda like a cop-out to me since I've never heard of such disclaimers being overturned. In fact, all I've seen is moves towards strengthening such EULAs.
For them to do the same thing to Internet radio suggests they might be borrowing pages from the Scientology PR department's playbook.
That would be cool. Maybe then the CoS would go after the RIAA for "borrowing" from their playbook! We already know how touchy they are about their various documents:) Anybody have some good ideas about how we could engineer a conflict between the RIAA/MPAA and the CoS? We could rid ourselves of some of the worst organizations around if we could get them to destroy each other!
MHz can be just as misleading as the PR numbers. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a lot more that goes into CPU performance than just the MHz speed. You have to take the whole architecture into consideration. So, until and unless an objective, independent, accurrate benchmark (or set of benchmarks) is agreed upon by CPU manufacturers, I don't fault either of them for choosing to advertise in a way that is beneficial to them. While it might seem reasonable to expect people to understand that an Athlon can perform as well as a higher-clocked Pentium, consumers really don't understand anything except which number is higher, nor are they interested in learning. Sales people don't want to deal with it either. It makes them look like they're trying to hustle the customer. I think the PR ratings are pretty accurate, and even err on the conservative side. I don't see any foul here.
I just received my new Athlon 1800+ XP from UPS:) Screw Intel if they can't just put out a good product at a good price. This just makes me that much more glad I bought an Athlon.
Which is exactly why things such as this split happen, and should happen. He can do what he likes, but if it doesn't suit enough people, they'll go elsewhere and make their own. So whether he likes it or not, this is how things should be. I'm glad to see someone doing something interesting with AtheOS.
I said "more creatively", referring to the breakup of AT&T. I happen to agree that a lot of what the states are asking for is pointless, but unfortunately it's still better than the DOJ's decision to give Microsoft a lollipop and send them on their way.
Hundreds of errors on their part? If these letters were sent out as widely as they appear to have been, then it would be pretty easy to show that it wasn't just a mistake on their part.
You obviously have been out of touch for the last 5 years or so. Otherwise you would know that monopolies play by a different set of rules. Microsoft has been determined to be a monopoly and has been convicted of monopolistic behavior. The remedy is supposed to help competition return to the relevant market(s). Sometimes it's done in a heavy-handed way (like the AT&T breakup). Sometimes it's done more creatively, such as what we're seeing now.
One of my senators is Phil Gramm. He's about as crooked as they come. If I was ever forced at gunpoint to shake hands with him, I would make sure to count my fingers afterwards. Whatever he votes on this issue, it won't be because of anything I have to say about it.
I don't think that's what the implication was at all. I think it was more along the lines of "If you can't fix your hardware problems, you're most likely not running Linux either."
Depends on what you mean by "extensive discourse" I guess. We probably have extensive discourse about a lot of things the government does, but that doesn't mean that the average person has a clue what's going on or what the effects of the decision will be. We probably won't be dealing with things that are as voodoo as economics, but when you start talking about technical issues regarding the Internet, I think people will vote just like they do in American electinos. Whoever has the most money for advertising and the most popular candidate will win. It's a great way for people with agendas counter to the interests of most internet users to get their ideas put into practice. Just make some deals to get yourself the upfront cash to win the election, then pay back with favors. Just like American politics.
Your.sig perplexes me. How is GNU non-free speech-wise? Seems to me it's as free as any other speech in the US, or anywhere else that has copyright laws. If the US has free speech, the GNU is just as free, if not more so, since it gives you the ability to gain even more rights to use the material if you agree to certain stipulations. Most other works don't even offer that. Anyway, just had to get that off my chest.
I happen to think that ICANN would work best as a representative democracy, for much the same reason that the US is a representative democracy. The people, in general, haven't got a clue about how the Internet works. Allowing them to vote on how to run it would be insane. However, allowing them to vote for people that do (well, we would hope anyway) seems like a much better idea.
Here's where we run into problems though. What happens if (when?) these elections become popular? Will we end up with something similar to the two-party farce we have in the States? Will the candidates with big corporate backing end up monopolizing AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and other major webites to promote their candidacy, reducing candidates like Auerbach to third-party obscurity? Would Auerbach have stood a chance if it weren't for the fact that most of the US At-Large members were pretty clued-in to what ICANN was and had outlets such as/. and other non-mainstream sites to find out about his views? Will an election system simply ensure that only mediocre, controllable individuals get elected?
I'm running Win2K here at work and aside from testing websites, I use Mozilla exclusively. Why? Because it supports standards, and has a lot more features I like than IE does. I like the tabbed browsing. I like the fine-grained (a lot better than IE at least) security controls and the ability to be prompted about cookies and be able to decide on the spot to block or allow all future cookies from any given site. Mozilla is full of conveniences, and it keeps getting better. Aside from the 40MB footprint, it rocks. It renders faster than IE, pops up just as quick when you use the quickload feature, creates windows just as quick. I don't know what some people are complaining about. I haven't seen anything that Mozilla is slower at yet. I have a decent PC here. P3 700MHz with 256MB RAM. It runs Moz just fine. My home PC has a faster processor, but only 128MB RAM, and it runs Moz just as well. I'm wondering what the complainers are using. I could see Moz sucking if you only have 64MB RAM. But with 128 and up it seems to zip right along. If they can shrink that footprint, they will go a long ways towards silencing a lot of the criticism I think.
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Microsoft isn't the only company that does fucked-up things. Human nature is to fuck up and be mean to your fellow human.
And when you take it to a certain point, the government steps in and smacks your ass down. Unless, of course, you've contributed enough money to keep them on your side.
Gecko renders pages to W3C specifications better than anything else out there, bar none. It does it fast too.
You technically can already do this. Assuming of course you can find the documentation you need. I haven't looked for it, so I don't know how complete (or incomplete as the case may be) it is. The real problem is that even though Compaq could technically do this, Microsoft won't let them. That is one of the issues that should be addressed by the court. Lawyers should not be redesigning Windows. They should be removing Microsoft's ability to leverage its OS and Office monopolies to extort and coerce OEMs. They should be made to document all of their APIs, protocols, and file formats completely and make that information available in a very timely manner. Once you fix the leveraging and the interoperability problems, Microsoft will have largely been de-clawed. That's what they should be doing, not wasting everyone's time and making a joke of this case by trying to rewrite Windows.
Ok, then let's consider that instead. Has such a third-party case ever been won in court?
Remember that story a week or so ago? The one about monkeys controlling a PC mouse with their brain? They said that it only takes about 6 to 8 neurons to control the mouse cursor. Adding more just refines the control. That's the only hint I have to go on when comparing brain power to computer power.
Seriously, have the disclaimers you read in practically every EULA in existence ever been overturned in court? Are they saying that they plan to wait until someone does sue over such a disclaimer before they decide whether or not to release their code? Sounds kinda like a cop-out to me since I've never heard of such disclaimers being overturned. In fact, all I've seen is moves towards strengthening such EULAs.
For them to do the same thing to Internet radio suggests they might be borrowing pages from the Scientology PR department's playbook.
:) Anybody have some good ideas about how we could engineer a conflict between the RIAA/MPAA and the CoS? We could rid ourselves of some of the worst organizations around if we could get them to destroy each other!
That would be cool. Maybe then the CoS would go after the RIAA for "borrowing" from their playbook! We already know how touchy they are about their various documents
MHz can be just as misleading as the PR numbers. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a lot more that goes into CPU performance than just the MHz speed. You have to take the whole architecture into consideration. So, until and unless an objective, independent, accurrate benchmark (or set of benchmarks) is agreed upon by CPU manufacturers, I don't fault either of them for choosing to advertise in a way that is beneficial to them. While it might seem reasonable to expect people to understand that an Athlon can perform as well as a higher-clocked Pentium, consumers really don't understand anything except which number is higher, nor are they interested in learning. Sales people don't want to deal with it either. It makes them look like they're trying to hustle the customer. I think the PR ratings are pretty accurate, and even err on the conservative side. I don't see any foul here.
I just received my new Athlon 1800+ XP from UPS :) Screw Intel if they can't just put out a good product at a good price. This just makes me that much more glad I bought an Athlon.
I'm thinking some people just have a major persecution complex.
Which is exactly why things such as this split happen, and should happen. He can do what he likes, but if it doesn't suit enough people, they'll go elsewhere and make their own. So whether he likes it or not, this is how things should be. I'm glad to see someone doing something interesting with AtheOS.
I said "more creatively", referring to the breakup of AT&T. I happen to agree that a lot of what the states are asking for is pointless, but unfortunately it's still better than the DOJ's decision to give Microsoft a lollipop and send them on their way.
Hundreds of errors on their part? If these letters were sent out as widely as they appear to have been, then it would be pretty easy to show that it wasn't just a mistake on their part.
You obviously have been out of touch for the last 5 years or so. Otherwise you would know that monopolies play by a different set of rules. Microsoft has been determined to be a monopoly and has been convicted of monopolistic behavior. The remedy is supposed to help competition return to the relevant market(s). Sometimes it's done in a heavy-handed way (like the AT&T breakup). Sometimes it's done more creatively, such as what we're seeing now.
One of my senators is Phil Gramm. He's about as crooked as they come. If I was ever forced at gunpoint to shake hands with him, I would make sure to count my fingers afterwards. Whatever he votes on this issue, it won't be because of anything I have to say about it.
It looks like that link to the Penny Arcade comic from the EFF site is being redirected now :)
Even in Starcraft, 8-player games were pretty ridiculous. 4 players offered a better gaming experience. More than that and it was just too crowded.
I don't think that's what the implication was at all. I think it was more along the lines of "If you can't fix your hardware problems, you're most likely not running Linux either."
The ad was bought by Kuro5hin user oc3. Apparently his actions were quite popular.
Depends on what you mean by "extensive discourse" I guess. We probably have extensive discourse about a lot of things the government does, but that doesn't mean that the average person has a clue what's going on or what the effects of the decision will be. We probably won't be dealing with things that are as voodoo as economics, but when you start talking about technical issues regarding the Internet, I think people will vote just like they do in American electinos. Whoever has the most money for advertising and the most popular candidate will win. It's a great way for people with agendas counter to the interests of most internet users to get their ideas put into practice. Just make some deals to get yourself the upfront cash to win the election, then pay back with favors. Just like American politics.
Your .sig perplexes me. How is GNU non-free speech-wise? Seems to me it's as free as any other speech in the US, or anywhere else that has copyright laws. If the US has free speech, the GNU is just as free, if not more so, since it gives you the ability to gain even more rights to use the material if you agree to certain stipulations. Most other works don't even offer that. Anyway, just had to get that off my chest.
I happen to think that ICANN would work best as a representative democracy, for much the same reason that the US is a representative democracy. The people, in general, haven't got a clue about how the Internet works. Allowing them to vote on how to run it would be insane. However, allowing them to vote for people that do (well, we would hope anyway) seems like a much better idea.
/. and other non-mainstream sites to find out about his views? Will an election system simply ensure that only mediocre, controllable individuals get elected?
Here's where we run into problems though. What happens if (when?) these elections become popular? Will we end up with something similar to the two-party farce we have in the States? Will the candidates with big corporate backing end up monopolizing AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and other major webites to promote their candidacy, reducing candidates like Auerbach to third-party obscurity? Would Auerbach have stood a chance if it weren't for the fact that most of the US At-Large members were pretty clued-in to what ICANN was and had outlets such as
I'm running Win2K here at work and aside from testing websites, I use Mozilla exclusively. Why? Because it supports standards, and has a lot more features I like than IE does. I like the tabbed browsing. I like the fine-grained (a lot better than IE at least) security controls and the ability to be prompted about cookies and be able to decide on the spot to block or allow all future cookies from any given site. Mozilla is full of conveniences, and it keeps getting better. Aside from the 40MB footprint, it rocks. It renders faster than IE, pops up just as quick when you use the quickload feature, creates windows just as quick. I don't know what some people are complaining about. I haven't seen anything that Mozilla is slower at yet. I have a decent PC here. P3 700MHz with 256MB RAM. It runs Moz just fine. My home PC has a faster processor, but only 128MB RAM, and it runs Moz just as well. I'm wondering what the complainers are using. I could see Moz sucking if you only have 64MB RAM. But with 128 and up it seems to zip right along. If they can shrink that footprint, they will go a long ways towards silencing a lot of the criticism I think.
Please tell me you were kidding. Please?
What happens after the wall, is there also a parachute, or are you just supposed to land after your 20 foot fall.
GO! GO! Gadget Pogo-Stick!