If you're working on a multi-million dollar, long-term bond that comes to quite a bit of change dropped betwen the cracks
How many of those deals have you done? Excel is not used for the actual calculations, some nasty propriatory thing made by a crazy former LSU person is used to do that. The silly $60,000 program's results are looked at by Excel, but I suspect anything could do that. The actual calculations made are some rather funny money, and only Federal regulations could lead to such a Byzantine calculation. I have been aproached to replicate the thing and I just might.
You would be nuts to try to match those calculations in a general spreadsheet. You are correct about precision in integration. While the numerical methods are well known, a general program would be geared to Engineering accuracy in the results, within 5% because that's what you can measure. When greater accuracy is needed, it's time to turn to a special program or write your own. In either case you will have to prove your specific set up against test cases and known results. Bond calculations and other accounting programs that have to be accurate to the penny are good examples of where you need a special proven program. Other exapmples are nuclear criticality calculations, space craft thermo-dynamic work and radiotherapy dose estimations. A spreadsheed in cases like that is good only for independent verification of a proven system. The system is known good, but it's nice to verify each and every calculation with something completely unrelated and much simpler just to make sure everything is working.
Oh wait, this fsf thing from year 2000 says use guile. Damn it, I'm going to have to read the article. Nope not there. The world of free software may have given you the bizare and strange thing you want, but I can't find it. Start writing and let us know when you are done =;)
For example, I would be amazed if the graphs embedded in spreadsheets and generated from the data look anything like they do in Excell;
Do you really care if it's identical or not? The graphs are already good. If you need really fancy graphs, just use the free DX package, which does 3D, topographical and all that. The rest of Gnumeric works just the same as M$ junk except it's stable. Quit raining on the parade, this is great news.
I used to be a big Excel user, and thought it was the only thing Microsoft ever made that was worth anything. The trade up to free software was easy to make. On one hand, I had viruses and sytems that needed rebuilding every few months. On the other I had an adequate spreadsheet, excellent graph programs, compilers to make my own statistical analysis programs, and none of the Microsoft headaches. Excell and it's prety graphs are not worth the hastle of dealing with Microsoft bullshit, and though I miss some things, I'm much happier here. You, of course, will have to make up your own mind.
Here is great praise to the Gnumeric team! Your sheet is great for what a sheet is good for, simple small data set calculations. Keep up the great work.
First and foremost, it dents their credibility. Either they don't know what they own, or they are guilty of intellectual theft. Either way, would you subcontract to a company with serious IP issues?
This case is really the end of proprietary software. McBride thought he was going to ride over the world of free software and be able to tie it all up in "derivative works" arguments. The case was designed to hard me credibility of free software, but it's going to have exactly the opposite effect. It is being shown, in the show trial atmosphere SCO has created, that free software is squeaky clean while proprietary software has issues. They stole BSD code and did not even know it. How's that for sloppy, irresponsible, unauditable and all those things? SCO is going to go down in flames and no one is going to be dumb enough to accuse publically published software of theft again. If SCO and Caldera are not really clean, what comercial software vendor is? Could Microsoft's code stand up to such an inspection? The whole weight of SCO and Microsoft FUD has been transfered where it always belonged, to people who have code to hide. The whole basis of proprietary software has been broken - they don't have anything others don't and they have to steal from public software to get what they need. It is impossible for them to continue their charrade about "innovation" and "theft". Good riddance.
Dumbo McBitch might be saying things like, "Unix is a tree and we own the branches," but he'll have a hard time making a judge listen to him. Such a scheme would make it impossible to software that interoperates and know who to pay, much less claim ownership to your own work. Not even the US court system is that blindly impractical. SCO will also be a hard sell, now that it's been publically shown that they ripped off BSD and did not even know about it. They want to own everything everyone does and that's exactly why they will fail.
If anything, this is going to backfire hard on Microsoft. Proprietary code is being revealed as sloppy, theiving, derivative and obnoxious. Caldera and SCO used to be reputable companies, yet the best that can be said of their BSD theft is that they were careless.. Just think of what a real audit of M$ code would turn up. The main proponents of "IP rights" are being shown up for what they are, people who have no respect for the IP rights of others and never have. Hopefully, the press will maintian it's interest and publish all the nasty details for everyone to see.
great advantage to Vector in free software.
on
Corel Goes Private
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· Score: 4, Insightful
a list of software companies owned by Vector. The majority of them seem to be the types of names you don't recognize unless you work in a specific field -- "enterprise software" tailored to a very specific business application. And like it or not, that usually means Windows these days.
So, by purchasing a company with experience porting software to free they could establish a distro and port all their other stuff to free and save themselves that many coppies of M$ dependence and development costs? What could be better for specialty software than that?
The direction Microsoft took Corel when they bought 25% of them and shut down their Linux work was obviously and disaserously wrong. Corel has continued to lose market share, even in government work where it once ruled. Hell, they used to rule the comercial text editor world. They did not lose out because Microsoft made something better, they lost out because Microsfot made Word Perfect into an expensive Windows only additional purchase most people would not make. They OS/2'd them, making Word Perfect more expensive than Word in all cases. That's easy to do when you own the platform and sell everyone else required libraries.
There is still a market and it seems obvious that Linux is the way to go. Those who remember Word Perfect want it back on a stable platform. It will cost less for Vector to do things this way and customers will get more of what they want.
Let's hope they revive that Linux package before Paladium swings into action. People want what they have and the people who want it are influential.
There's a huge market of lawfirms just waiting for this one. They are sick to death of M$ nonsense and know about free software now. Between a Linux Word Perfect for their documents and printing and Star Office for M$ translation, Microsoft does not stand a chance there. I don't have to mention that government offices would be happy to have this too, do I?
When free software makes it into those places, where everyone can see them, the myth of Microsoft dependence will be completely crushed. There's something about seeing free software running where you go for good advice that does way more than an IBM advert in the Wall Street Journal. Many good things will come from that.
Hmmm, Corel feels a pain in the ass, what is it? It's the head of a big snake from Redmond, what else? Duh.
Apply your reasoning to their Microsoft stratagy. They continue to lose share, yet they continue to feed the beast that would destroy them. Do Linux, have a chance. Continue Windoze, die. What would you spend your efforts on? Oh yeah, you would continue with your oh so sucessful statagy of purchasing M$ licenses, development kits, and doing what M$ wants you to do, which is die. Good move. Next!
Considering Microsoft pays about one billion dollars each time they lose an anti-trust lawsuit, $124 was nothing. They got to shut down a Linux distro and crippled Word Perfect, the then dominant comercial text editor and main competitor to Microsoft Office, Microsoft't big cash cow. It was a predatory practice and Corel decline in value of 75% reflects the result. 75% is much greater than the decline of other IT firms with as much going for them. Corell lost that value because Word Perfect lost it's market share, market share it could easily have maintained with it's Linux distribution. Lawfirms still use Word Perfect and they cry out for stable software underneath it. Had they been given that platform, they would have eaten it up and proved the value of a comercial Linux distribution five years ago as well as it is proven today. By purchasing 25% of Corel, Microsoft pushed back Linux competition five years, prevented an anti-trust lawsuit and gained all the fruits of predatory behavior. It saved them a minimum of a billion dollars and much more in lost sales revenue.
Lois, she is implying that either Open-Source is based on the destruction/weakening of IP rights, or encourages the violation of IP rights, and you wouldn't want to be one of those kinds of people, now would you?
Nice troll, the whole question only makes sense if you don't examine it.
Some of what Microsoft and others consider "IP rights" deserve to be destroyed. Microsoft should not have the right to tell you how to use their software. I can do what I want with any of my other property. I can read a book anyway I want including out loud in a room full of friends, lend it to friends and sell it. These are things Microsoft does not allow you to do with your software. How copyright law was perverted into this strange, one user at a time, non transferable, you can't say bad things about Microsoft, straight jacket is beyond me. How Microsoft considers the restrictions they put on their users a "right" they have is also beyond me. The free software foundation has a much better idea about what your rights are, check it out yourself, you might learn something, even if you are an evil troll.
I certianly do not encourage the violation of any law, regardless of how silly. When that law is morraly wrong, I will violate it myself and encourage others to do so. Never let bad laws make you a bad person.
Fortunately, I'm not caught in any of Microsfot's evil snares and I don't have to figure out ways to defeat them, because free software is all about sharing methods of getting things done. I don't need Microsoft's crap and I don't recomend it to anyone. Free software has produced whole operating systems that are easy to use and of exceptional quality. I own my computer and all the softare that runs on it in a way that terrifies the likes of Microsoft. The few restrictions the authors place on my distribution of that software has little effect on me. The whole "IP rights" you think of make no sense whatsoever to me because I don't need anything from people who would violate what I consider my rights.
What Lois says implies a violation of my ability to distribute code under the GPL. That would be a terrible violation of everyone's IP rights.
install the Mozilla evangelism sidebar. Set your user agent string to something IE5ish. I'll bet that a recent Mozilla will work just fine. After all, the sign says ``IE5 or better''!
Please don't do that, it hurts everyone. Sure Mozilla is better than IE, what isn't? The people who made that silly IE only site argued that "everyone uses IE anyway". By changing your user agent, you help convince them that it's true.
If you absolutly must have something that a company wants to share, but has such a site, pick up the phone. Chances are they don't know they are creating a problem for customers. Once they know, they can turn on the dummy that set them up. If they say something stupid like, "just go get IE," you don't want what they are selling anyway. Banks, government agencies have all moved to public standards. They did this because they realized that the Microsoft jerk around never ended and every time M$ jerked, 1/2 of their customers could not get what they needed.
And unless a company (like IBM) gets a vested interest in selling hardware and services to accompany this free software, there's not going to be money to counter the lobbyists who steer WIPO's agenda in a pro-Microsoft direction.
It is your elected official's duty to ignore such bullshit. They all put their hands on a Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution and laws of this country. I never saw anthing about Microsoft's right to make money off my software, especially if such a right can only exist by infringing on my free speech. Sorry M$, if I want to make a better text editor than you and people no longer want to buy your text editor, you are out of luck. It is very distrubing that Louis would consider my anything but the most restrictive publication to be a waiving of IP rights. If Microsoft get's government protection for a text editor distributed in binary form and if government further enforces Microsoft's silly End User restriction that only one user at a time may use that text editor, then my government had better protect me when I wish to publish my work much less restrictivly. If I publish my text editor in source and binary form and grant as many people as want it the abiltity to use it as they see fit, modify it and share those modifications on the sole condition that the work be redistributed on the same terms, my government had better respect that single restriction. If they do not respect that restriction, why do they respect all those other restrictions?
Free software directly meets the goal of copyright law. Copyright law exists to promote the state of the art and enlarge the public domain. Free software directly contributes to the state of the art and more directly enlarges the public domain.
Companies, such as Microsoft, who brag about waiting for a market to "mature" before entering it and crushing the "loss leaders", should not be rewared by copyright law. They contribute little to the state of the art and generally do everything in their power to remove usefull conceptes from the public doamin. Non free software, given it's machine readable format, is unlikely to ever contribute to the public domain and the basis for it's protection are dubious at best.
The current state of affairs represents a massive deriliction of duty by our elected officials. Boland should resign because she seems unaware of this.
I asked her the majority of the questions in this post. Most importantly, I asked if she really meant what she said. It's just too incredible, but then so are the USA, Patriot DMC and No Net Theft acts.
Hey, if I had that kind of money, I sure as hell would use it to my advantage.
Yeah, you might be a dick, but my govenrment should not listen to you. Your lobiest can make their point and be on their way. The level of ignorance diplayed by Louis, the US government repreentative who quashed this meeting, is egrevious. If I don't have the right to give my work away with few or no restrictions, why would the government protect the many restrictions I'd place on my work? She's nuts, bought or just stupid.
IP law has become nothing more than an authorization for a gold rush, as everyone hurries to stake their claims until there's nothing left that you can do for free.
No, it's worse than that. A US Governemet representative has spouted some of Microsft's more outrageous and stupid anti-GPL FUD. This, from Lessing, is absolutly incredible:
Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said "that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights."
If I don't have the right to share my IP as I please, what rights do I have? If I can't take my software and release it so that others can use it and share their insights to make it better, what can I do with it? Do I have to keep it to myself and hope that Microsoft will make me an offer for it?
This is total bullshit, I have every right to do as I please with my own work. If the government will back me up when I put silly restrictions on my users, it had better back me up when I put reasonable ones or none at all on them.
Louis Boland, for such a stupid statement, should be removed from her post imediatly. It shows a complete disregard for copyright law, free speech and even lacks common sense. It does not follow that the US government would spend my tax money to protect a restrictive publisher or author, but not one that is less restrictive and more directly meeting the purpose of copyright laws: to promote the state of the art and expand the public domain. Some people do not need government protection or direct monetary reward to share their ideas. It's as American as Ben Franklin's newspapers. Louis, I hope you have been taken out of context and will work to reverse this cancellation. WIPO needs to consider the issue and should encourage it because it is in everyone's best interest. If you really think free software is somehow counter to Intelectual Property rights, I hope that you are removed tomorrow and never see another public appointment.
This message was composed and posted on free software that is arguably better than Microsoft crap. It cost me less money to aquire and continues to cost me less money to maintain as well as enriching my knowledge of software and enabling me to contribute to the state of the art. Non-free software vendors won't even let me understand their inner workings, much less contribute to it's improvement.
Why is Slashdot not "the media"?
1. Slashdot usually does not write articles. Exceptions would be occasional interviews and book reviews. Slashdot posts articles that are written by "the media" in general.
2. Slashdot is too specifically focused to be "the media". Only techies tend to read it - even technical magazines have a much wider audience than slashdot.
#2 is certainly debatable; I could be wrong - but really, when you consider #1, how can you call Slashdot "the media"?
Most papers are like that. They grab their stories from the wire. News organizations like UPS API and Kight Ridder write storries. Newspapers and broadcasters simply publish them. Slashdot has take the place of monthly journals and newspapers for me. They provide impartial publication of various sources and some original content of their own.
Slashdot is the future of media. Focused, knowlegable, open to cluefull commentary, and self moderating. I get better "news" from Slashdot than I do from MSNBC and other organizations that are living with the restrictions of pulp and 1900 radio transmision.
Because they are students computers. When you start going to college, you'll understand this.
Nice flame, dipshit. I've got a BA and a BS I can show you, but I'd rather fold them into sharp corners and... well, you know. I also know that trolls like you generally recomend restrictions on student computing. Well, when you are not filling up the world with useless Israeli/Plaestinian posts.
College. Students. They don't give a fuck about Linux. Why is it so hard for you to understand that some people like Windows?
People who don't care generally can't tell the difference between Windoze and KDE. Very few people actually like Microsoft. Most people put up with it because that's what their PC came with. Anyone who's used free software for any length of time knows windoze blows.
However, SCO's public relations (PR) department has had a busy few months. McBride proudly dumped two phone-book-sized binders of press clippings on the stage during his SCO Forum keynote on Monday as proof that his company had become more relevant in the high technology industry.
Did he print out one Slashdot article with all posts or two? Those are partly sponsored by Microsoft, har har. Perhaps he printed out 1/1,000,000 th of the World's outraged Blog comments. Unlike McBitch, wholy bought by Microsoft and the rape of Caldera, most people don't need to be paid by Microsoft, IBM or anyone else to hold or express an opinion.
That phone book trick is funny. He's like a kid in potty training that brings you a big steaming turd. Nice work McBitch, the whole world hates your theiving guts! Now go to jail where you belong.
Try to give telephone support to someone if you don't even know how the OS looks.
You only need phone support when something is broken. I like how Ernie Ball said it:
Q. But there's a real argument now about total cost of ownership, once you start adding up service, support, etc
What support? I'm not making calls to Red Hat; I don't need to. I think that's propaganda...What about the cost of dealing with a virus? We don't have 'em. How about when we do have a problem, you don't have to send some guy to a corner of the building to find out what's going on--he never leaves his desk, because everything's server-based. There's no doubt that what I'm doing is cheaper to operate.
Fewer and fewer people need help to use a GUI and no one needs "support" when things just work right from the start.
When I make a call for "support" because some else's service is not working right, I ask for specific configuration information. When clueless tries to tell me how to open a menue item in IE or Outlook, I simply follow along, saying "OK, OK" and extract what I need. That's not service support, it's freaking Microsoft product support. Though it's a pain in the ass, I don't let it bug me unless they let their ignorance upset them. Think about that the next time you are having trouble with a differnt interface, smart-ass.
To get a clue, you might try reading RFCs or simply use free software. From this you might extract the real and universal from M$ details that currently shroud your and your customer's minds in ignorance.
Customization is fine as long as it's not just a weak excuse for not setting up stuff properly in the first place.
I agree. That's why I think the M$ system of ever changing forests of GUI tabs that don't reveal adequate information to understand misconfigurations, much less fix them, sucks jaged rocks. If they want standardization, why do they keep changing what they put out? When M$ screws up, it's burried in that nasty binary registry and you may never fix it. That is not a proper set up at all, is it? View the source of your missery and income!
Don't you wish you could do something productive for a living? I do, and that's why I use free software. It is set up well, does not requrire support and leaves me free to do other things.
No free softare based system can be as ugly or as abusive as Microsoft was.
Oh yes it can!
Just wait until I'm in charge.
When you see the sort of stuff I'm gonna pull, it'll make Microsoft seem like a benevolent-software-monopoly-dictatorship.
Get back in your hole Daryl McBitch, you only think you can screw everyone. -SMACK- -SMACK- You are going to jail.
It's even less strange when you consider that Debian was developed specifically to counter "Linux Companies," and dillusory comercialization of free software. So I don't mind either.
The funny thing is that I actually did try Suse the other day. I downloaded and burned their "Live CD" as part of a lecture. I was very impressed at how well it worked. It really was a no fuss deal. Like you I'll put up with a little meglomania for that. What harm can he really do to free softare? Who really needs large IT vendors? The future is free.
He also says lots of good stuff too. He slams SCO and easily dances around all their FUD. He's creating value and sees himself as a big institutional player. Good for him. No free softare based system can be as ugly or as abusive as Microsoft was.
This article claims that time wasted will cost businesses tens on millions of dollars. It seems to me that no matter how much spam/virus flooding/crap you get in your inbox, you only do so much work everyday. If you take five extra minutes to clean out your inbox, that's five minutes less of surfing slashdot or screwing around.
Either you don't have a real job, or you are Astroturfing. The time wasted is rebuilding a computer that no longer works. You are right about deadlines though, they don't change. That means many people will be spending that much more overtime. This is bad for businesses that actually pay overtime, bad for people who don't get paid for it or have better things to do and bad for everyone with work to do.
Slashdot Mirror
How many of those deals have you done? Excel is not used for the actual calculations, some nasty propriatory thing made by a crazy former LSU person is used to do that. The silly $60,000 program's results are looked at by Excel, but I suspect anything could do that. The actual calculations made are some rather funny money, and only Federal regulations could lead to such a Byzantine calculation. I have been aproached to replicate the thing and I just might.
You would be nuts to try to match those calculations in a general spreadsheet. You are correct about precision in integration. While the numerical methods are well known, a general program would be geared to Engineering accuracy in the results, within 5% because that's what you can measure. When greater accuracy is needed, it's time to turn to a special program or write your own. In either case you will have to prove your specific set up against test cases and known results. Bond calculations and other accounting programs that have to be accurate to the penny are good examples of where you need a special proven program. Other exapmples are nuclear criticality calculations, space craft thermo-dynamic work and radiotherapy dose estimations. A spreadsheed in cases like that is good only for independent verification of a proven system. The system is known good, but it's nice to verify each and every calculation with something completely unrelated and much simpler just to make sure everything is working.
Ah! a little web search shows what a clever troll you are! This letter from way back in 0.7 days promisses arbitrary prcision will come when "Gnumeric is caught up with Excel in other ways". Well crovira, you want it, get cracking and merge BC into Gnumeric so that I can have arbitrary prcision by point and click. -crack- feel my whip and get coding bitch! I'll just keep using the older tried and true method of special programs for special applications.
Oh wait, this fsf thing from year 2000 says use guile. Damn it, I'm going to have to read the article. Nope not there. The world of free software may have given you the bizare and strange thing you want, but I can't find it. Start writing and let us know when you are done =;)
Do you really care if it's identical or not? The graphs are already good. If you need really fancy graphs, just use the free DX package, which does 3D, topographical and all that. The rest of Gnumeric works just the same as M$ junk except it's stable. Quit raining on the parade, this is great news.
I used to be a big Excel user, and thought it was the only thing Microsoft ever made that was worth anything. The trade up to free software was easy to make. On one hand, I had viruses and sytems that needed rebuilding every few months. On the other I had an adequate spreadsheet, excellent graph programs, compilers to make my own statistical analysis programs, and none of the Microsoft headaches. Excell and it's prety graphs are not worth the hastle of dealing with Microsoft bullshit, and though I miss some things, I'm much happier here. You, of course, will have to make up your own mind.
Here is great praise to the Gnumeric team! Your sheet is great for what a sheet is good for, simple small data set calculations. Keep up the great work.
Before he dumbpster dived BASIC, before he wrote his infamous open letter, he was a theif.
This case is really the end of proprietary software. McBride thought he was going to ride over the world of free software and be able to tie it all up in "derivative works" arguments. The case was designed to hard me credibility of free software, but it's going to have exactly the opposite effect. It is being shown, in the show trial atmosphere SCO has created, that free software is squeaky clean while proprietary software has issues. They stole BSD code and did not even know it. How's that for sloppy, irresponsible, unauditable and all those things? SCO is going to go down in flames and no one is going to be dumb enough to accuse publically published software of theft again. If SCO and Caldera are not really clean, what comercial software vendor is? Could Microsoft's code stand up to such an inspection? The whole weight of SCO and Microsoft FUD has been transfered where it always belonged, to people who have code to hide. The whole basis of proprietary software has been broken - they don't have anything others don't and they have to steal from public software to get what they need. It is impossible for them to continue their charrade about "innovation" and "theft". Good riddance.
If anything, this is going to backfire hard on Microsoft. Proprietary code is being revealed as sloppy, theiving, derivative and obnoxious. Caldera and SCO used to be reputable companies, yet the best that can be said of their BSD theft is that they were careless.. Just think of what a real audit of M$ code would turn up. The main proponents of "IP rights" are being shown up for what they are, people who have no respect for the IP rights of others and never have. Hopefully, the press will maintian it's interest and publish all the nasty details for everyone to see.
So, by purchasing a company with experience porting software to free they could establish a distro and port all their other stuff to free and save themselves that many coppies of M$ dependence and development costs? What could be better for specialty software than that?
The direction Microsoft took Corel when they bought 25% of them and shut down their Linux work was obviously and disaserously wrong. Corel has continued to lose market share, even in government work where it once ruled. Hell, they used to rule the comercial text editor world. They did not lose out because Microsoft made something better, they lost out because Microsfot made Word Perfect into an expensive Windows only additional purchase most people would not make. They OS/2'd them, making Word Perfect more expensive than Word in all cases. That's easy to do when you own the platform and sell everyone else required libraries.
There is still a market and it seems obvious that Linux is the way to go. Those who remember Word Perfect want it back on a stable platform. It will cost less for Vector to do things this way and customers will get more of what they want.
There's a huge market of lawfirms just waiting for this one. They are sick to death of M$ nonsense and know about free software now. Between a Linux Word Perfect for their documents and printing and Star Office for M$ translation, Microsoft does not stand a chance there. I don't have to mention that government offices would be happy to have this too, do I?
When free software makes it into those places, where everyone can see them, the myth of Microsoft dependence will be completely crushed. There's something about seeing free software running where you go for good advice that does way more than an IBM advert in the Wall Street Journal. Many good things will come from that.
Go Go, Vector!
Apply your reasoning to their Microsoft stratagy. They continue to lose share, yet they continue to feed the beast that would destroy them. Do Linux, have a chance. Continue Windoze, die. What would you spend your efforts on? Oh yeah, you would continue with your oh so sucessful statagy of purchasing M$ licenses, development kits, and doing what M$ wants you to do, which is die. Good move. Next!
Considering Microsoft pays about one billion dollars each time they lose an anti-trust lawsuit, $124 was nothing. They got to shut down a Linux distro and crippled Word Perfect, the then dominant comercial text editor and main competitor to Microsoft Office, Microsoft't big cash cow. It was a predatory practice and Corel decline in value of 75% reflects the result. 75% is much greater than the decline of other IT firms with as much going for them. Corell lost that value because Word Perfect lost it's market share, market share it could easily have maintained with it's Linux distribution. Lawfirms still use Word Perfect and they cry out for stable software underneath it. Had they been given that platform, they would have eaten it up and proved the value of a comercial Linux distribution five years ago as well as it is proven today. By purchasing 25% of Corel, Microsoft pushed back Linux competition five years, prevented an anti-trust lawsuit and gained all the fruits of predatory behavior. It saved them a minimum of a billion dollars and much more in lost sales revenue.
Lois, she is implying that either Open-Source is based on the destruction/weakening of IP rights, or encourages the violation of IP rights, and you wouldn't want to be one of those kinds of people, now would you?
Nice troll, the whole question only makes sense if you don't examine it.
Some of what Microsoft and others consider "IP rights" deserve to be destroyed. Microsoft should not have the right to tell you how to use their software. I can do what I want with any of my other property. I can read a book anyway I want including out loud in a room full of friends, lend it to friends and sell it. These are things Microsoft does not allow you to do with your software. How copyright law was perverted into this strange, one user at a time, non transferable, you can't say bad things about Microsoft, straight jacket is beyond me. How Microsoft considers the restrictions they put on their users a "right" they have is also beyond me. The free software foundation has a much better idea about what your rights are, check it out yourself, you might learn something, even if you are an evil troll.
I certianly do not encourage the violation of any law, regardless of how silly. When that law is morraly wrong, I will violate it myself and encourage others to do so. Never let bad laws make you a bad person.
Fortunately, I'm not caught in any of Microsfot's evil snares and I don't have to figure out ways to defeat them, because free software is all about sharing methods of getting things done. I don't need Microsoft's crap and I don't recomend it to anyone. Free software has produced whole operating systems that are easy to use and of exceptional quality. I own my computer and all the softare that runs on it in a way that terrifies the likes of Microsoft. The few restrictions the authors place on my distribution of that software has little effect on me. The whole "IP rights" you think of make no sense whatsoever to me because I don't need anything from people who would violate what I consider my rights.
What Lois says implies a violation of my ability to distribute code under the GPL. That would be a terrible violation of everyone's IP rights.
Please don't do that, it hurts everyone. Sure Mozilla is better than IE, what isn't? The people who made that silly IE only site argued that "everyone uses IE anyway". By changing your user agent, you help convince them that it's true.
If you absolutly must have something that a company wants to share, but has such a site, pick up the phone. Chances are they don't know they are creating a problem for customers. Once they know, they can turn on the dummy that set them up. If they say something stupid like, "just go get IE," you don't want what they are selling anyway. Banks, government agencies have all moved to public standards. They did this because they realized that the Microsoft jerk around never ended and every time M$ jerked, 1/2 of their customers could not get what they needed.
It is your elected official's duty to ignore such bullshit. They all put their hands on a Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution and laws of this country. I never saw anthing about Microsoft's right to make money off my software, especially if such a right can only exist by infringing on my free speech. Sorry M$, if I want to make a better text editor than you and people no longer want to buy your text editor, you are out of luck. It is very distrubing that Louis would consider my anything but the most restrictive publication to be a waiving of IP rights. If Microsoft get's government protection for a text editor distributed in binary form and if government further enforces Microsoft's silly End User restriction that only one user at a time may use that text editor, then my government had better protect me when I wish to publish my work much less restrictivly. If I publish my text editor in source and binary form and grant as many people as want it the abiltity to use it as they see fit, modify it and share those modifications on the sole condition that the work be redistributed on the same terms, my government had better respect that single restriction. If they do not respect that restriction, why do they respect all those other restrictions?
Free software directly meets the goal of copyright law. Copyright law exists to promote the state of the art and enlarge the public domain. Free software directly contributes to the state of the art and more directly enlarges the public domain.
Companies, such as Microsoft, who brag about waiting for a market to "mature" before entering it and crushing the "loss leaders", should not be rewared by copyright law. They contribute little to the state of the art and generally do everything in their power to remove usefull conceptes from the public doamin. Non free software, given it's machine readable format, is unlikely to ever contribute to the public domain and the basis for it's protection are dubious at best.
The current state of affairs represents a massive deriliction of duty by our elected officials. Boland should resign because she seems unaware of this.
Yeah, you might be a dick, but my govenrment should not listen to you. Your lobiest can make their point and be on their way. The level of ignorance diplayed by Louis, the US government repreentative who quashed this meeting, is egrevious. If I don't have the right to give my work away with few or no restrictions, why would the government protect the many restrictions I'd place on my work? She's nuts, bought or just stupid.
No, it's worse than that. A US Governemet representative has spouted some of Microsft's more outrageous and stupid anti-GPL FUD. This, from Lessing, is absolutly incredible:
Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said "that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights."
If I don't have the right to share my IP as I please, what rights do I have? If I can't take my software and release it so that others can use it and share their insights to make it better, what can I do with it? Do I have to keep it to myself and hope that Microsoft will make me an offer for it?
This is total bullshit, I have every right to do as I please with my own work. If the government will back me up when I put silly restrictions on my users, it had better back me up when I put reasonable ones or none at all on them.
Louis Boland, for such a stupid statement, should be removed from her post imediatly. It shows a complete disregard for copyright law, free speech and even lacks common sense. It does not follow that the US government would spend my tax money to protect a restrictive publisher or author, but not one that is less restrictive and more directly meeting the purpose of copyright laws: to promote the state of the art and expand the public domain. Some people do not need government protection or direct monetary reward to share their ideas. It's as American as Ben Franklin's newspapers. Louis, I hope you have been taken out of context and will work to reverse this cancellation. WIPO needs to consider the issue and should encourage it because it is in everyone's best interest. If you really think free software is somehow counter to Intelectual Property rights, I hope that you are removed tomorrow and never see another public appointment.
This message was composed and posted on free software that is arguably better than Microsoft crap. It cost me less money to aquire and continues to cost me less money to maintain as well as enriching my knowledge of software and enabling me to contribute to the state of the art. Non-free software vendors won't even let me understand their inner workings, much less contribute to it's improvement.
2. Slashdot is too specifically focused to be "the media". Only techies tend to read it - even technical magazines have a much wider audience than slashdot.
#2 is certainly debatable; I could be wrong - but really, when you consider #1, how can you call Slashdot "the media"?
Most papers are like that. They grab their stories from the wire. News organizations like UPS API and Kight Ridder write storries. Newspapers and broadcasters simply publish them. Slashdot has take the place of monthly journals and newspapers for me. They provide impartial publication of various sources and some original content of their own.
Slashdot is the future of media. Focused, knowlegable, open to cluefull commentary, and self moderating. I get better "news" from Slashdot than I do from MSNBC and other organizations that are living with the restrictions of pulp and 1900 radio transmision.
Nice flame, dipshit. I've got a BA and a BS I can show you, but I'd rather fold them into sharp corners and ... well, you know. I also know that trolls like you generally recomend restrictions on student computing. Well, when you are not filling up the world with useless Israeli/Plaestinian posts.
College. Students. They don't give a fuck about Linux. Why is it so hard for you to understand that some people like Windows?
People who don't care generally can't tell the difference between Windoze and KDE. Very few people actually like Microsoft. Most people put up with it because that's what their PC came with. Anyone who's used free software for any length of time knows windoze blows.
Yeah, those whores at MSNBC will say anything for money.
Repeat after me: Slashdot is NOT the media.
What's the missing ingredient that will make Slashdot Media for you?
Go away, captian_craptacurlar. Whoever's paying you to post your bullshit is getting a bad deal, regardless of how little you make.
Did he print out one Slashdot article with all posts or two? Those are partly sponsored by Microsoft, har har. Perhaps he printed out 1/1,000,000 th of the World's outraged Blog comments. Unlike McBitch, wholy bought by Microsoft and the rape of Caldera, most people don't need to be paid by Microsoft, IBM or anyone else to hold or express an opinion.
That phone book trick is funny. He's like a kid in potty training that brings you a big steaming turd. Nice work McBitch, the whole world hates your theiving guts! Now go to jail where you belong.
You only need phone support when something is broken. I like how Ernie Ball said it:
Q. But there's a real argument now about total cost of ownership, once you start adding up service, support, etc
What support? I'm not making calls to Red Hat; I don't need to. I think that's propaganda...What about the cost of dealing with a virus? We don't have 'em. How about when we do have a problem, you don't have to send some guy to a corner of the building to find out what's going on--he never leaves his desk, because everything's server-based. There's no doubt that what I'm doing is cheaper to operate.
Fewer and fewer people need help to use a GUI and no one needs "support" when things just work right from the start.
When I make a call for "support" because some else's service is not working right, I ask for specific configuration information. When clueless tries to tell me how to open a menue item in IE or Outlook, I simply follow along, saying "OK, OK" and extract what I need. That's not service support, it's freaking Microsoft product support. Though it's a pain in the ass, I don't let it bug me unless they let their ignorance upset them. Think about that the next time you are having trouble with a differnt interface, smart-ass.
To get a clue, you might try reading RFCs or simply use free software. From this you might extract the real and universal from M$ details that currently shroud your and your customer's minds in ignorance.
Customization is fine as long as it's not just a weak excuse for not setting up stuff properly in the first place.
I agree. That's why I think the M$ system of ever changing forests of GUI tabs that don't reveal adequate information to understand misconfigurations, much less fix them, sucks jaged rocks. If they want standardization, why do they keep changing what they put out? When M$ screws up, it's burried in that nasty binary registry and you may never fix it. That is not a proper set up at all, is it? View the source of your missery and income!
Don't you wish you could do something productive for a living? I do, and that's why I use free software. It is set up well, does not requrire support and leaves me free to do other things.
It's all just themes on the same damn GUI components.
Yeah, see above.
Just wait until I'm in charge. When you see the sort of stuff I'm gonna pull, it'll make Microsoft seem like a benevolent-software-monopoly-dictatorship.
Get back in your hole Daryl McBitch, you only think you can screw everyone. -SMACK- -SMACK- You are going to jail.
The funny thing is that I actually did try Suse the other day. I downloaded and burned their "Live CD" as part of a lecture. I was very impressed at how well it worked. It really was a no fuss deal. Like you I'll put up with a little meglomania for that. What harm can he really do to free softare? Who really needs large IT vendors? The future is free.
He also says lots of good stuff too. He slams SCO and easily dances around all their FUD. He's creating value and sees himself as a big institutional player. Good for him. No free softare based system can be as ugly or as abusive as Microsoft was.
Either you don't have a real job, or you are Astroturfing. The time wasted is rebuilding a computer that no longer works. You are right about deadlines though, they don't change. That means many people will be spending that much more overtime. This is bad for businesses that actually pay overtime, bad for people who don't get paid for it or have better things to do and bad for everyone with work to do.
At most places, it's time to pack your bags when things go this way.