Don't think any free project would turn him away, would they? I'd say that the GPL protects children's rights just as well as it does anyone else's. Under the GPL, our friend is free to run his software as he sees fit, can modify it to his tast, and can share his improvements with his friends. Why not? US child labor laws protect children from exploitation, not education, entertainment and publication of bright ideas. The copyright protects him just as it does the original authors. He won't be able to use his age a shield to violate other people's rights to the good things that the much less restrictive GPL gave him. So there you have it, Apple chose a restrictive liscense so that they could violate their user's rights. This is an Apple problem, no one else's.
So, I might buy an imac anyway. When, oh when, will the Apple folks trust their superior hardware design's ability to sell? This whole propriatory software swindle does more to hurt them than it does to help. Imagine a Mac Debian distro as one of the simplified install optptions or simply preloaded. Kinda like, "here you go, have a movie editor, CD burner, and software to make all these cool gadgets work. You can install more if you like, after all it's your computer." Yes, I really would buy one, and so would everyone else.
My college [purdue.edu] has a similar set up because it saves an incredible amount of bandwidth. It's not to be mean, or malicious, or spy on your browsing habits, it's just to save bandwidth.
So, if it just happens to allow mean, malicious, spying or filtering, "transparently" so that you can't get around it, THAT'S OK? Nope.
I don't care how easy it is to get around, it sucks. You could save even more bandwith by blocking debian mirrors, red hat's ftp sites and all manner of stuff that only affects a few of your users. No problem eh? Think of how much faster all the comercial crap will load up for all your "consumers". No thanks.
There is, considering the circumstances, only one choice for me to make which is not abysmally moronic. Do not expect to hear much from me in the future.
That should involve sending resumes out as fast as he can, taking extended lunch breaks, sick days and vacation until he lands another job. His company has jerked everyone around and deserves no better for themselves. A whole module? That took time and people at his job knew what he was doing. So they let him do it, let others link into it, then sprung this kind of shit? That's bad faith, NOT HIS BAD. Is there other people's work in that module? Does they company expect to extract money from every distro out there that ever rolled it up? Shit on them, they have acted in bad faith to all and deserve to be lied to and ignored.
Legal is not always moral. Never work for or with people who are not moral. Working with people who are out to screw others really is moronic.
I know of at least one case where we're still running Win 3.1 on about 100 desktops to support one of these ancient apps.
So, the new M$ OS is not as backwards compatible as they say? No Way! I would not believe it if it were not true at each "upgrade".
As this is true, why do so many people cling to the insecure, ineficient and ugly "products" M$ keeps reselling? Joel can sit around and justify MicroSoft's ugly junk all day long. The free world has run circles around his increasingly irrelavant dinosaur, rewriting everything from the ground up multiple times AND making good use of shared and reusable code. M$ has been so busy advertising, squashing the "competitors" who made their platform useful to begin with, and building "security" for pimpy music publishers and their own goofey office suite that their core software looks terribly ancient. What is left to differentiate thier junk from the rest of the world's software but the ease of monopoly forced preloads, and access to closed hardware interfaces that gaurantee your current computer will break in two years and the hardware will not work it's replacement? Phthththtt!
Enough time wasting here, that article on Maryland's county wide LAN for everyone looks like much more fun. I wonder if they run a Debian mirror on it yet...
But what if there is no problem with the Microsoft software?
Well, that could be. I don't have any problems with my M$ software. It sits on floppies and CD's where it can be installed to use some obscure piece of hardware on a second rate computer never attached to the internet. Most of the time, however, it never causes problems.
Bad Microsoft, bad! Quit saying that free software is unusable while using it. Oh yes, good luck hunting thought that vast tree of poorly documented closed source junk you have been purchsing from other companies for the last ten years. Is this what you will build the Digital Rights Management Operating System, TM and patented use of other people's code? Slap! Crack! What a joke of a company. What shall become of all the M$ stock when the world figures out that M$ is the equivalent of an Ice Vendor in Antartica?
They wanted to be the asshole in the middle, stripping ideas and programs from others, to sell as The Sole Operating System. All the people they ruined could be hard at work fixing their codes. Now, those codes will continue to be distributed unmodified. The task is too great for a single company. Like most such ventures, in the end Microsoft can only manage to be assholes.
No, I did not know that. I thoght they still ran on BSD, that all efforts to port had failed and that they put a few win2k machines up front. Eh, what do I know?
Oh well, it's silly to talk to trolls. I like the graph of Hotmail's uptime. It looks like they figured out how to load balance hide their individual machine's poor performance last summer. Since their switch from BSD and solaris (which billgates still uses for his own site) their best uptime was 66 days or so, ptttthfit. You might have a look at Netcraft's good uptime page to see where your mighty 115 day spree really sits. Hint, multiply times ten to get real uptimes that free code provides!
If you compile in debug mode with Visual C++, it does all kinds of checks on malloc/delete calls.
Oh, I thought that the original troll was talking about Windows itself. Silly me.
This troll, however must also be false. If it were true, Outlook, IE and other cruft from M$ would not continue to be plauged with overflows, memory leaks and what not. The results are more powerful than promises.
How is this different from say, they way the US is taxing steel imports and farm product imports or the way Japan taxes automotive and electronic imports?
Could it be because Canada does not own a CD maker or an MP3 maker? More power to them if they want to grow their own, but I'm affraid this is more a move to fund music publishers, hopefully Canadian.
They do have a music industry and it is worth protecting. Much Music / Musiq Plus acutally play music and it's sooo much better than MTV. This is more likely to hurt than to help, just like killing Napster shot down music sales.
$1.23 per CD? That $15 100 CD pack from CompUSA looks like a winner. Someone could drive ten of them home, sell each CD for a buck and pay for their trip. If this goes over, CDs will become another part of the Canadian cash economy. Retail outlets will have them for people who screwed up and need some RIGHT NOW. Because they never sell legitimatly, they will cost $3.00 and be individually wrapped. Kinda like floppies used to be at University book stores.
on most other OS's (including Windows, FreeBSD and OpenBSD) is smart enough to check for this and will print a warning instead of destroying the heap
Windows, Smart? What bullshit, unless things have changed since 98. I've written programs that did the double free thing and never saw an error message other than my or some other program freezing up. With all the "uber-patches" and what not M$ needs monthly, I just don't think that is so.
The only insecure thing I do with my home network is use a windows machine at work to log into it. Apt-get update and upgrade, all fixed in ten minutes before I go home. I'm going to have to call the folks at Red Hat to figure out up2date when I get home, sigh. The M$ box that I have to use for cameras and a scanner? It's blind to the network and usually runs Red Hat. IE? Eye-EEEEEeeee!
Nuclear is the most regulated place in the world, right? Well, even there you have to have people who can think and exercise judgement. Check out 10CFR50-2 for this very important definition:
Design bases means that information which identifies the specific functions to be performed by a structure, system, or component of a facility, and the specific values or ranges of values chosen for controlling parameters as reference bounds for design. These values may be (1) restraints derived from generally accepted "state of the art" practices for achieving functional goals, or (2) requirements derived from analysis (based on calculation and/or experiments) of the effects of a postulated accident for which a structure, system, or component must meet its functional goals.
The same logic underlies all design. At some point you have to have engineers you trust and they should be versed in the "state of the art" and all applicable studies.
In the nuclear industry we can and do rely on vendor studies. Who else but GE is going to know the maximum power levels that are safe with their reactors? They built a full scale model and proved it.
In the software industry, as you have noticed, things are a little less clear. First, Microsoft is an unethical company. (gotta go before finishing!) You and me both know that Windows is an unstable system. It changes all the time and those changes break programs. Some would even say that Windows is unstable without any changes, and indeed sites that use it typically see 30 day uptimes and no better. Anyone who would relly on such a thing for something that in is in any way needed to protect the public safety is incompetent. How that might be worked into a ship is a matter of judgement. I would not use it except as a game platform in the rec room or to look after some system that is superfuous.
what, you expect microsoft to spend four years and hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D to produce a product and then just create a new market in which they can reap no benifit from this investment? Are you fucking crazy?
No, I'm not. M$ could have saved itself a bundle and worked with Sun instead of trying to "innovate" some piece of crap that will never run well. If they did things that way, they might not have to spend BILLIONS of dollars advertisements. Instead they go through these embrace extend and extinguish cycles to screw the world. Seen FORTRAN under XP yet? Ha Ha Ha, just you try to run something Not M$ under M$. Let's not forget other wasteful practices like buying competitors to shut them down, breaking interfaces regularly to force "upgrades" that do the exact same thing and flying in the face of established standards. Do you know anyone else dumb enough to say that http must die? Wastefull practices like this have ruined them.
People like you might think it's natural for one company to dominate something like software for "economic" reasons. Let's think about that. Software that works has been written for just about everything you could want to do on a computer. The costs have been recouped multiple times. The supply of computer programers and potential software companies is limitless. Supply and demand says cost of software should be zero. The people who write it would rather you use if for free and improve it.
I'm an engineer at a nuclear power plant so I know plenty about community effort as well as supply and demand. The plant is part of a regulated monopoly that provides some of the cheapest most abundant electricty in the world. Think about how much equipment and labor it takes to get electricty to your house and compare what you pay for it to what you pay for telecomunications. If tomorrow fuel cells/solar proves cheaper than nuclear, you can be my company will be building big ones that will cost everyone less than being their own fuel cell mechanic. That three billion dollar plant I work at? Oh well, it's made plenty of money and will run until it's cheaper to shut down.
Microsoft is screwed. When the world realizes it, their stock will drop like a pigeon egg and many many computer problems will go away. It's not as needed as they think it is and the free alternatives are better. The loss of their 7,000 jobs won't even show up as a blip on the US economy.
Microsoft may have a case against this, but they probably do not have a case against me. And I doubt they would go after all of my customers.
You're right, they would just send the BSA after you. Your customers files can simply be deleted thanks to the wonders of XP EULA. After they have all pointed back to you, that is.
Is there any reason to develop for Microsoft anymore? Those who have tried, tried and died.
Microsoft intends to provide very liberal non-commercial licensing terms and is interested in gathering community input on the design of the license.
Sounds like the Microsoft we know. Only M$ can make money. We can be sure what they mean by liberal is that they can comercialize anything they want and lock out the orignials. Like winsock.
No thanks. Not making money, that's a restriction most people can't live with. Comercialization is part of software freedom. I don't need Microsoft's platforms, so why would I care about Microsoft's propriatory "standards" that let me talk to it? I've got ssh, X, and ftp for talking accros reasonable platforms. For those who want the pain and suffering of chasing the M$ tail there is mono. This toy is sure to be broken without recourse as soon as convienent to M$. Will comercial interests really be so stupid as to fall for yet another M$ trick? I hope not. Tell your boss, don't let this one get shoved down on you by clueless management.
As this is the same old story, I expect the same results for those not under the clueless. There have been more Linux developers than Microsoft developers for a while now. This is not likely to change much. Microsoft thinks people just want neat toys but where people are spending their time tells a different story.
We wanted to make it as close to a magazine as possible without outright allowing free transmission.
Aha! There you have it. What's wrong is republishing other people's work. Well, there ARE LAWS against that. Enforcing them has nothing to do with softare.
I'm not wrong to see where this is going, regardless of what prommises you make me. If You stick software on My machine that makes it so You can make files that I can't delete, and You can keep me from doing other things, then You OWN my machine not me. If such things become required, as many publishers and telecomunications firms would like, then what happens on my machine will be under someone else's control or I will go to jail. Sorry, that's unAmerican.
There are laws against shooting people. It is unconstitutional to make laws against owning arms.
I don't care what prommises people make about my "fair use rights" and ease of use, what they are going to do is cripple my computer with their code. The bottom line is that publishers don't want me to be able to copy a file. To accomplish this they must own my computer. My computer must have their code and must do what their code says and no more. Publishers will seek to outlaw free software and are the enemy.
They are morraly wrong and in violation of the spirit of US copyright laws. Copyright is a created right which only exists by positive govenment action. It is not like natural rights such as speech which require negative government action to deny. The goal of US copyright law was to enlarge the public domain without unduely limiting people's natural rights. To do this, the framers of the constitution granted a 14 year exclusive franchise to publish works to the creators of the work. That 14 year franchise could be renewed once if the original author was alive. The framers of the constition were well aware of the evils of exclusive franchises, especially ones that forbade the spread of knowledge, but balanced that evil with the good of enlarging the public domain. The laws made sense for dead tree and other physical media publications. They don't make sense in the digital world. Low and non existant costs of duplication remove the need for copyright in the first place as anyone who wants to can add their thoughts to the public domain. Secondly but more important the viewing tool is also the tool of creation and an enforcement of a franchise on that tool is a clear violation of free speech. To achieve their ends, publishers must control ALL digital devices. They must deny my right to create and share software. Indirectly they will gain the ability to deny the creation and sharing of ALL information. There are few things more morraly reprehensible than violations of free speech. Without free speech, there is no truth. Without truth there can be no justice. Without justice there is only the rule of the strongest, amoral anarchy. Digital Rights Denial is the law to end all laws.
why in the Holy creation would someone spy on YOUR computer display???
been watching those special uncut/uncensored Three's Company episodes recently? tsk tsk tsk
Thanks for the great example of how some random asshole might want to reach out and make life difficult for a complete stranger. About one in three posts I make here has some kind of DoS type comment like this for a reply. People go to great lengths to break things. If someone nice has done this and published it, you can be sure hundreds of malicious losers with nothing better to do have mastered the trick.
The one I read was titled, "Microsoft Guru: stamp out http." After extoling the robustness and reliability of http, Microsoft's mouthpiece declares http unusable because trasnactions on the internet take too long for MicroShit's bloated applications and, "Only one entity can initiate an exchange over HTTP, the other entity is passive, and can only respond."
Sounds like the Microsoft I know. Clueless bullshit used to destroy a usefull tool so that they can puch adverts over the new broadcast media. Pull is what makes the internet work. Push is what M$ wants. No thanks, next.
100 points for getting published in Village Voice.
100 points more for getting Village Voice Slashdotted at the same time.
I'm patient, really I am. I have a friend who told me a couple of years ago that he sees the future in his dreams. I'd like him to prove it and suggested methods to do so. One day, he will supprise me. It will come before somnambulist fusion.
For all of the talk about the GPL and commercial software being compatible, it is ironic seeing the countless "down with evil commercial software!" tirades on here (almost always unjust, but such details as facts elude the GPL crusaders).
OK, down with evil comercial software. It is evil and stupid to make people rework everyting every two years so you can sell them a new word processor. It is evil and stupid to intentionally obsolete older equipment for the same reasons. Money spent on waste is a drain to the economy as it should be spent on more important things like education, roads and all those other things that bring people joy and make the world better. The new Intelectual Property Service Economy is supposed to eliminate waste, not create it.
Microsoft's notions stand most of the above thought on their head, and it looks like they are going for regulated monopoly status. Why else would this blithering idiot be shouting stuff about the death of this view of comercial software in terms that he hopes legislators will pick up on? He's hoping that dumb laws like SSSCA will save his outmoded and failing company from extinction. I'll quote him for fun:
If there is not commercialization there, a company can only exist based on ancillary manufacturing or services. If commercialization was cut down, investors would not support research and development in the IT sector, less projects would be developed, less taxes paid and the government would have less money to run universities, and all the other things that governments do.
I'm sorry, that's got to be the dumbest thing I've read all year. Like the US government will die, Universities will shut down and all IT will shutter to a halt if MicroShaft can't make money.
Now back to you:
Having said that: Any company that touches GPLd code with a 20 foot pole needs to ferret out the zealots in their midst.
Thanks for inviting a witch hunt, but I think it's going the other way. As M$ grasps more control, as the BSA breaks more people, as it all costs more and does less, M$ IT is taking a well deserved beating. The simple fact is that Microsoft is no longer competitive, has never been innovative, and is now too risky (both viruses and BSA hastles) to be tollerated. People who advocate Microsoft "solutions" to problems are going to be seen as stuck in the past, clueless or bribed. You would do well to start learning software that works rather than contincuing to work software that sucks. You will not be able to blame others for your failure as the choices on M$ platforms goes to zero. As the next wave of viruses, expoits and auto updates wracks your company, you will be held accountable.
Don't confuse my advice about software choices you should make with the forced extortion Microsoft plans. If you are dumb enough to continue your relationship with Microsoft, so be it. Choice is good. Latter I can say, "I'm so happy you failed," as you are so obviously malicious. Microsoft however would like to eliminate all choice by law.
How many Slashdot stories have their been now crusading against some GPL violation or another?
Name one company or person that has been ruined. There are many software comapnies that have been ruined unfairly by MicroShaft. Since judgement was rendered, it's a matter of public record. Many more smaller companies have been ruined by the BSA, individuals have been ruined, even public school systems have had hundreds of thousands of dollars extorted from them by a company that has obviously not been harmed. Ask yourself why a company with $9 billion would have to steal $250,000 from imporvereshed schools systems like Los Angles and Philidelphia. I don't have to hide my copy of NVI and that's one of the reasons I use it.
For all of the talk about the GPL and commercial software being compatible/I>
They are not compatible. Comercial software restricts your rights. Free software seeks to replace comercial software. No one is going to force you to do anything, but you might feel stupid running expensive, insecure, privacy violating software, when technically superior free alternatives are available. In that way, the makers of restrictive software are doomed.
...you try this trick, but your head collapses because there is nothing inside.
My comment is actually a copy of someones elses writing, but at least I took the time to email it.
Wow, too bad. Words did not fail you here.
The problem is that duplicates under different names will look like a robot mailing unless you prefaced it with something of your own that's more that, "I completely agree with this". Microsoft got themselves burt for just this kind of thing lately. I wonder what part of the advertising budget whent toward filling that list up with bullshit from non persons. There were plenty of comments that would have been marked down as obvious trolls here. I'm waiting for someone to do a study on those letters to nail M$ for stuffing the box again.
Next to comments about how wonderful microsoft is for consumers because it works so well with all sorts of devices and costs so little and works so well (poster takes a moment to vommit), your simple and honest statements about the DCMA and SSSCA undermining the constitution would have been welcome. The letter you quoted was good, I wish that you had the time to make it your own. Yes, even the part about boiled hemmoroids, which kind of validates your claims of being in IT and a biker.
The good news is that crypto is available everywhere. The bad news is it does not work the way it should.
As US residents who did not know how to program crypto know, crypto is available in outher countries. A few years ago, the easiest way to get secure shell was to get OpenBSD from Canada, or buy something expensive. Programers with access to crypto knowledge could make what they wanted.
One of the main goals of public key encryption thechnology was to aid people in countries likely to be on US blacklists. Giving those people the ability to communicate privatly is much worse for oppressive governments than any improvement in that government's software library. Governments can usually afford programers and have what they want where they want it.
Most countries have proved that crypto is a doubtful tool of subversion. Oppresive countries have made cryptography illegal (yes, I'm refering to past US laws and current UK laws). Those that use it only set themselves up for investigation. Indeed, we can be sure that owning a computer at all in some places will earn you a beating.
I'm happy to see the US going in the right direction for a change. I have and love Debian. One of the best things about it is secure shell. It's great to be able to use and administer my home machines from work or anywhere else in the world without worrying about someone breaking in. "ssh user@mahine -X" run on my lan makes all of my machies transparently usable at once through a single monitor and keyboard. Having this wonderful tool even easier to get is a great step forward. Hopefully the US will consider this one of the weapons to freely distribute from the "Arsenal of Democracy". Go get it!
All of your observations and wishes are already cared for by gasoline taxes at a much lower cost! This has all been thought of before. These new privacy invading, "every road a toll road" devices will bring economic ruin. Yeah, I saw the greedy bastards licking their chops about this five years ago when I was working for the Louisiana Transportation Research Center. Not everyone there liked the idea. Now let's look at what you thought:
In urban areas, many poor people can't afford a car (plus insurance, plus parking fees, plus maintanence...) So tax-supported roads help them very little. They need good mass transit.
This is a sidetrack. Ask yourself why poor people in urban areas can't afford vehicles and if burdening them with the cost of mass transit will help. I'm a fan of mass trasit in urban areas, but that does not have much to do with the issue. People who don't drive cars don't pay gasoline taxes! People who don't pay taxes at all but instead get Earned Income Credit are not directly taxed to build the roads that bring them other goods, like food.
In rural areas, the situation is different. But the proposed scheme would have much lower costs-per-mile in rural areas.
People in rural areas already pay through the nose in gasoline taxes! They have to drive further to get anything. Farm equipment fuel is sold on a different basis, but it still has to be trucked around. Done wrong, pay per mile can finish off the rest of America's independent farmers.
Economically, this seesm like a good idea - it makes the paid price of driving closer to the true cost.
Asshole in the middle tolls like this are not designed to bring things, "closer to cost". They are designed to suck as much out of the ends as possible. The idea is to have variable rates on roads and time of driving. You would never know how much your dive would cost you, and your taxation could be raised at the change of a database. Let's face it, we don't drive because we want to, we drive because we have to. The people behind this know that and want to suck you dry. I hate driving, and I'll hate it more or be forced to quit my job if this ever happens here.
Please never ever consider this viable. The costs of implimenting the thing are much greater than the costs of traditional taxes, and those costs will be passed on. One of the United State's great strenghts is the mobility of it's work force. We don't have to go through all the losses involved in a move (selling your house is a loser) for work within a fifty mile range. I can only imagine how this would impact the cost of a truck rental or moving service for those unfortunate enough to have to move. Think of these costs, they are great. Think of the agregate harm losses incured if the right people are less likely to be matched to the right jobs. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Your privacy concerns will be aleviated by the same liars who told you Carnivore would not be invasive and that your email would only be read by machines. There is no point and the costs are great. Tell those greedy camera shoving big brother assholes to reconsider.
Though many in the traditional Internet community react strongly against the very mention of governments, it is simply unrealistic to believe that global coordination of the DNS can succeed without more active involvement of governments. Indeed, it has been for decades a bedrock principle of the Internet that technical managers should stick to what they know and do best, and leave to other organizations what they in turn do best.
The great benevolence of govenments such as China should serve as a shining model and example of plans like this. Who knows, the Chinese government may be able to bring down it's great wall, even Saudi Arabia as ICANT makes the internet safe for all good corporate citezens. What a glorious day this is for public networks and the independence of the North American Directorate. Can you feel the goodwill coming in from WIPPO, and DCMA? Every state will have it's say as the national borders go up in the name of unity. Intelectual property will be safe as will the big pubishers will no longer fear competition. Telcos can loose their fears of loosing their franchises as new more centralized and stronger means of information interchange are devised by ICANTs board members like Microsoft and Sun. The freedom this will bring is unbelievable. Like an advert flier says, there's no limit to the internet is there? Only strong government control will be able to squash the emergent wireless internet, they had better hurry!
Oh well, I did not expect more. As the people of the United States accept violations of the first and fourth amendments, the experiment that was the Bill of Rights dies. It started with regulation of the airwaves. It will end with electronic publishing. As all the dead tree acid paper rots and people are taught that obsolete communications methods are not to be trusted and the ideas contained in those rotting pages are no longer valid, and all electronic publishing comes under the control of the government and two or three large companies.
Bill Gates really can see the future. He's buying it.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I might buy an imac anyway. When, oh when, will the Apple folks trust their superior hardware design's ability to sell? This whole propriatory software swindle does more to hurt them than it does to help. Imagine a Mac Debian distro as one of the simplified install optptions or simply preloaded. Kinda like, "here you go, have a movie editor, CD burner, and software to make all these cool gadgets work. You can install more if you like, after all it's your computer." Yes, I really would buy one, and so would everyone else.
So, if it just happens to allow mean, malicious, spying or filtering, "transparently" so that you can't get around it, THAT'S OK? Nope.
I don't care how easy it is to get around, it sucks. You could save even more bandwith by blocking debian mirrors, red hat's ftp sites and all manner of stuff that only affects a few of your users. No problem eh? Think of how much faster all the comercial crap will load up for all your "consumers". No thanks.
There is, considering the circumstances, only one choice for me to make which is not abysmally moronic. Do not expect to hear much from me in the future.
That should involve sending resumes out as fast as he can, taking extended lunch breaks, sick days and vacation until he lands another job. His company has jerked everyone around and deserves no better for themselves. A whole module? That took time and people at his job knew what he was doing. So they let him do it, let others link into it, then sprung this kind of shit? That's bad faith, NOT HIS BAD. Is there other people's work in that module? Does they company expect to extract money from every distro out there that ever rolled it up? Shit on them, they have acted in bad faith to all and deserve to be lied to and ignored.
Legal is not always moral. Never work for or with people who are not moral. Working with people who are out to screw others really is moronic.
So, the new M$ OS is not as backwards compatible as they say? No Way! I would not believe it if it were not true at each "upgrade".
As this is true, why do so many people cling to the insecure, ineficient and ugly "products" M$ keeps reselling? Joel can sit around and justify MicroSoft's ugly junk all day long. The free world has run circles around his increasingly irrelavant dinosaur, rewriting everything from the ground up multiple times AND making good use of shared and reusable code. M$ has been so busy advertising, squashing the "competitors" who made their platform useful to begin with, and building "security" for pimpy music publishers and their own goofey office suite that their core software looks terribly ancient. What is left to differentiate thier junk from the rest of the world's software but the ease of monopoly forced preloads, and access to closed hardware interfaces that gaurantee your current computer will break in two years and the hardware will not work it's replacement? Phthththtt!
Enough time wasting here, that article on Maryland's county wide LAN for everyone looks like much more fun. I wonder if they run a Debian mirror on it yet...
Well, that could be. I don't have any problems with my M$ software. It sits on floppies and CD's where it can be installed to use some obscure piece of hardware on a second rate computer never attached to the internet. Most of the time, however, it never causes problems.
Bad Microsoft, bad! Quit saying that free software is unusable while using it. Oh yes, good luck hunting thought that vast tree of poorly documented closed source junk you have been purchsing from other companies for the last ten years. Is this what you will build the Digital Rights Management Operating System, TM and patented use of other people's code? Slap! Crack! What a joke of a company. What shall become of all the M$ stock when the world figures out that M$ is the equivalent of an Ice Vendor in Antartica?
They wanted to be the asshole in the middle, stripping ideas and programs from others, to sell as The Sole Operating System. All the people they ruined could be hard at work fixing their codes. Now, those codes will continue to be distributed unmodified. The task is too great for a single company. Like most such ventures, in the end Microsoft can only manage to be assholes.
No, I did not know that. I thoght they still ran on BSD, that all efforts to port had failed and that they put a few win2k machines up front. Eh, what do I know?
Hotmil Hacked Go team!
Hotmail still using non-microshit software last summer Oh yeah, at leas one of the posters there notes that NT code has lots of BSD in it too. Fanboys like you know that, don't you?
the start of their effor, summer of 2000 Don't look like it happened does it?
Oh well, it's silly to talk to trolls. I like the graph of Hotmail's uptime. It looks like they figured out how to load balance hide their individual machine's poor performance last summer. Since their switch from BSD and solaris (which billgates still uses for his own site) their best uptime was 66 days or so, ptttthfit. You might have a look at Netcraft's good uptime page to see where your mighty 115 day spree really sits. Hint, multiply times ten to get real uptimes that free code provides!
Oh, I thought that the original troll was talking about Windows itself. Silly me.
This troll, however must also be false. If it were true, Outlook, IE and other cruft from M$ would not continue to be plauged with overflows, memory leaks and what not. The results are more powerful than promises.
VC virtual functions are not.
Could it be because Canada does not own a CD maker or an MP3 maker? More power to them if they want to grow their own, but I'm affraid this is more a move to fund music publishers, hopefully Canadian.
They do have a music industry and it is worth protecting. Much Music / Musiq Plus acutally play music and it's sooo much better than MTV. This is more likely to hurt than to help, just like killing Napster shot down music sales.
$1.23 per CD? That $15 100 CD pack from CompUSA looks like a winner. Someone could drive ten of them home, sell each CD for a buck and pay for their trip. If this goes over, CDs will become another part of the Canadian cash economy. Retail outlets will have them for people who screwed up and need some RIGHT NOW. Because they never sell legitimatly, they will cost $3.00 and be individually wrapped. Kinda like floppies used to be at University book stores.
Sorry, I must have gotten confused with all those viruses like code red, nimida, sircam, and countless minor expoits for M$ OS. Ha Ha!
Windows, Smart? What bullshit, unless things have changed since 98. I've written programs that did the double free thing and never saw an error message other than my or some other program freezing up. With all the "uber-patches" and what not M$ needs monthly, I just don't think that is so.
The only insecure thing I do with my home network is use a windows machine at work to log into it. Apt-get update and upgrade, all fixed in ten minutes before I go home. I'm going to have to call the folks at Red Hat to figure out up2date when I get home, sigh. The M$ box that I have to use for cameras and a scanner? It's blind to the network and usually runs Red Hat. IE? Eye-EEEEEeeee!
Design bases means that information which identifies the specific functions to be performed by a structure, system, or component of a facility, and the specific values or ranges of values chosen for controlling parameters as reference bounds for design. These values may be (1) restraints derived from generally accepted "state of the art" practices for achieving functional goals, or (2) requirements derived from analysis (based on calculation and/or experiments) of the effects of a postulated accident for which a structure, system, or component must meet its functional goals.
The same logic underlies all design. At some point you have to have engineers you trust and they should be versed in the "state of the art" and all applicable studies.
In the nuclear industry we can and do rely on vendor studies. Who else but GE is going to know the maximum power levels that are safe with their reactors? They built a full scale model and proved it.
In the software industry, as you have noticed, things are a little less clear. First, Microsoft is an unethical company. (gotta go before finishing!) You and me both know that Windows is an unstable system. It changes all the time and those changes break programs. Some would even say that Windows is unstable without any changes, and indeed sites that use it typically see 30 day uptimes and no better. Anyone who would relly on such a thing for something that in is in any way needed to protect the public safety is incompetent. How that might be worked into a ship is a matter of judgement. I would not use it except as a game platform in the rec room or to look after some system that is superfuous.
No, I'm not. M$ could have saved itself a bundle and worked with Sun instead of trying to "innovate" some piece of crap that will never run well. If they did things that way, they might not have to spend BILLIONS of dollars advertisements. Instead they go through these embrace extend and extinguish cycles to screw the world. Seen FORTRAN under XP yet? Ha Ha Ha, just you try to run something Not M$ under M$. Let's not forget other wasteful practices like buying competitors to shut them down, breaking interfaces regularly to force "upgrades" that do the exact same thing and flying in the face of established standards. Do you know anyone else dumb enough to say that http must die? Wastefull practices like this have ruined them.
People like you might think it's natural for one company to dominate something like software for "economic" reasons. Let's think about that. Software that works has been written for just about everything you could want to do on a computer. The costs have been recouped multiple times. The supply of computer programers and potential software companies is limitless. Supply and demand says cost of software should be zero. The people who write it would rather you use if for free and improve it.
I'm an engineer at a nuclear power plant so I know plenty about community effort as well as supply and demand. The plant is part of a regulated monopoly that provides some of the cheapest most abundant electricty in the world. Think about how much equipment and labor it takes to get electricty to your house and compare what you pay for it to what you pay for telecomunications. If tomorrow fuel cells/solar proves cheaper than nuclear, you can be my company will be building big ones that will cost everyone less than being their own fuel cell mechanic. That three billion dollar plant I work at? Oh well, it's made plenty of money and will run until it's cheaper to shut down.
Microsoft is screwed. When the world realizes it, their stock will drop like a pigeon egg and many many computer problems will go away. It's not as needed as they think it is and the free alternatives are better. The loss of their 7,000 jobs won't even show up as a blip on the US economy.
You're right, they would just send the BSA after you. Your customers files can simply be deleted thanks to the wonders of XP EULA. After they have all pointed back to you, that is.
Is there any reason to develop for Microsoft anymore? Those who have tried, tried and died.
Sounds like the Microsoft we know. Only M$ can make money. We can be sure what they mean by liberal is that they can comercialize anything they want and lock out the orignials. Like winsock.
No thanks. Not making money, that's a restriction most people can't live with. Comercialization is part of software freedom. I don't need Microsoft's platforms, so why would I care about Microsoft's propriatory "standards" that let me talk to it? I've got ssh, X, and ftp for talking accros reasonable platforms. For those who want the pain and suffering of chasing the M$ tail there is mono. This toy is sure to be broken without recourse as soon as convienent to M$. Will comercial interests really be so stupid as to fall for yet another M$ trick? I hope not. Tell your boss, don't let this one get shoved down on you by clueless management.
As this is the same old story, I expect the same results for those not under the clueless. There have been more Linux developers than Microsoft developers for a while now. This is not likely to change much. Microsoft thinks people just want neat toys but where people are spending their time tells a different story.
Aha! There you have it. What's wrong is republishing other people's work. Well, there ARE LAWS against that. Enforcing them has nothing to do with softare.
I'm not wrong to see where this is going, regardless of what prommises you make me. If You stick software on My machine that makes it so You can make files that I can't delete, and You can keep me from doing other things, then You OWN my machine not me. If such things become required, as many publishers and telecomunications firms would like, then what happens on my machine will be under someone else's control or I will go to jail. Sorry, that's unAmerican.
There are laws against shooting people. It is unconstitutional to make laws against owning arms.
They are morraly wrong and in violation of the spirit of US copyright laws. Copyright is a created right which only exists by positive govenment action. It is not like natural rights such as speech which require negative government action to deny. The goal of US copyright law was to enlarge the public domain without unduely limiting people's natural rights. To do this, the framers of the constitution granted a 14 year exclusive franchise to publish works to the creators of the work. That 14 year franchise could be renewed once if the original author was alive. The framers of the constition were well aware of the evils of exclusive franchises, especially ones that forbade the spread of knowledge, but balanced that evil with the good of enlarging the public domain. The laws made sense for dead tree and other physical media publications. They don't make sense in the digital world. Low and non existant costs of duplication remove the need for copyright in the first place as anyone who wants to can add their thoughts to the public domain. Secondly but more important the viewing tool is also the tool of creation and an enforcement of a franchise on that tool is a clear violation of free speech. To achieve their ends, publishers must control ALL digital devices. They must deny my right to create and share software. Indirectly they will gain the ability to deny the creation and sharing of ALL information. There are few things more morraly reprehensible than violations of free speech. Without free speech, there is no truth. Without truth there can be no justice. Without justice there is only the rule of the strongest, amoral anarchy. Digital Rights Denial is the law to end all laws.
been watching those special uncut/uncensored Three's Company episodes recently? tsk tsk tsk
Thanks for the great example of how some random asshole might want to reach out and make life difficult for a complete stranger. About one in three posts I make here has some kind of DoS type comment like this for a reply. People go to great lengths to break things. If someone nice has done this and published it, you can be sure hundreds of malicious losers with nothing better to do have mastered the trick.
Sounds like the Microsoft I know. Clueless bullshit used to destroy a usefull tool so that they can puch adverts over the new broadcast media. Pull is what makes the internet work. Push is what M$ wants. No thanks, next.
100 points more for getting Village Voice Slashdotted at the same time.
I'm patient, really I am. I have a friend who told me a couple of years ago that he sees the future in his dreams. I'd like him to prove it and suggested methods to do so. One day, he will supprise me. It will come before somnambulist fusion.
OK, down with evil comercial software. It is evil and stupid to make people rework everyting every two years so you can sell them a new word processor. It is evil and stupid to intentionally obsolete older equipment for the same reasons. Money spent on waste is a drain to the economy as it should be spent on more important things like education, roads and all those other things that bring people joy and make the world better. The new Intelectual Property Service Economy is supposed to eliminate waste, not create it.
Microsoft's notions stand most of the above thought on their head, and it looks like they are going for regulated monopoly status. Why else would this blithering idiot be shouting stuff about the death of this view of comercial software in terms that he hopes legislators will pick up on? He's hoping that dumb laws like SSSCA will save his outmoded and failing company from extinction. I'll quote him for fun:
If there is not commercialization there, a company can only exist based on ancillary manufacturing or services. If commercialization was cut down, investors would not support research and development in the IT sector, less projects would be developed, less taxes paid and the government would have less money to run universities, and all the other things that governments do.
I'm sorry, that's got to be the dumbest thing I've read all year. Like the US government will die, Universities will shut down and all IT will shutter to a halt if MicroShaft can't make money.
Now back to you:
Having said that: Any company that touches GPLd code with a 20 foot pole needs to ferret out the zealots in their midst.
Thanks for inviting a witch hunt, but I think it's going the other way. As M$ grasps more control, as the BSA breaks more people, as it all costs more and does less, M$ IT is taking a well deserved beating. The simple fact is that Microsoft is no longer competitive, has never been innovative, and is now too risky (both viruses and BSA hastles) to be tollerated. People who advocate Microsoft "solutions" to problems are going to be seen as stuck in the past, clueless or bribed. You would do well to start learning software that works rather than contincuing to work software that sucks. You will not be able to blame others for your failure as the choices on M$ platforms goes to zero. As the next wave of viruses, expoits and auto updates wracks your company, you will be held accountable.
Don't confuse my advice about software choices you should make with the forced extortion Microsoft plans. If you are dumb enough to continue your relationship with Microsoft, so be it. Choice is good. Latter I can say, "I'm so happy you failed," as you are so obviously malicious. Microsoft however would like to eliminate all choice by law.
How many Slashdot stories have their been now crusading against some GPL violation or another?
Name one company or person that has been ruined. There are many software comapnies that have been ruined unfairly by MicroShaft. Since judgement was rendered, it's a matter of public record. Many more smaller companies have been ruined by the BSA, individuals have been ruined, even public school systems have had hundreds of thousands of dollars extorted from them by a company that has obviously not been harmed. Ask yourself why a company with $9 billion would have to steal $250,000 from imporvereshed schools systems like Los Angles and Philidelphia. I don't have to hide my copy of NVI and that's one of the reasons I use it.
For all of the talk about the GPL and commercial software being compatible/I>
They are not compatible. Comercial software restricts your rights. Free software seeks to replace comercial software. No one is going to force you to do anything, but you might feel stupid running expensive, insecure, privacy violating software, when technically superior free alternatives are available. In that way, the makers of restrictive software are doomed.
...you try this trick, but your head collapses because there is nothing inside.
Wow, too bad. Words did not fail you here.
The problem is that duplicates under different names will look like a robot mailing unless you prefaced it with something of your own that's more that, "I completely agree with this". Microsoft got themselves burt for just this kind of thing lately. I wonder what part of the advertising budget whent toward filling that list up with bullshit from non persons. There were plenty of comments that would have been marked down as obvious trolls here. I'm waiting for someone to do a study on those letters to nail M$ for stuffing the box again.
Next to comments about how wonderful microsoft is for consumers because it works so well with all sorts of devices and costs so little and works so well (poster takes a moment to vommit), your simple and honest statements about the DCMA and SSSCA undermining the constitution would have been welcome. The letter you quoted was good, I wish that you had the time to make it your own. Yes, even the part about boiled hemmoroids, which kind of validates your claims of being in IT and a biker.
As US residents who did not know how to program crypto know, crypto is available in outher countries. A few years ago, the easiest way to get secure shell was to get OpenBSD from Canada, or buy something expensive. Programers with access to crypto knowledge could make what they wanted.
One of the main goals of public key encryption thechnology was to aid people in countries likely to be on US blacklists. Giving those people the ability to communicate privatly is much worse for oppressive governments than any improvement in that government's software library. Governments can usually afford programers and have what they want where they want it.
Most countries have proved that crypto is a doubtful tool of subversion. Oppresive countries have made cryptography illegal (yes, I'm refering to past US laws and current UK laws). Those that use it only set themselves up for investigation. Indeed, we can be sure that owning a computer at all in some places will earn you a beating.
I'm happy to see the US going in the right direction for a change. I have and love Debian. One of the best things about it is secure shell. It's great to be able to use and administer my home machines from work or anywhere else in the world without worrying about someone breaking in. "ssh user@mahine -X" run on my lan makes all of my machies transparently usable at once through a single monitor and keyboard. Having this wonderful tool even easier to get is a great step forward. Hopefully the US will consider this one of the weapons to freely distribute from the "Arsenal of Democracy". Go get it!
This has all been thought of before. These new privacy invading, "every road a toll road" devices will bring economic ruin. Yeah, I saw the greedy bastards licking their chops about this five years ago when I was working for the Louisiana Transportation Research Center. Not everyone there liked the idea. Now let's look at what you thought:
In urban areas, many poor people can't afford a car (plus insurance, plus parking fees, plus maintanence...) So tax-supported roads help them very little. They need good mass transit.
This is a sidetrack. Ask yourself why poor people in urban areas can't afford vehicles and if burdening them with the cost of mass transit will help. I'm a fan of mass trasit in urban areas, but that does not have much to do with the issue. People who don't drive cars don't pay gasoline taxes! People who don't pay taxes at all but instead get Earned Income Credit are not directly taxed to build the roads that bring them other goods, like food.
In rural areas, the situation is different. But the proposed scheme would have much lower costs-per-mile in rural areas.
People in rural areas already pay through the nose in gasoline taxes! They have to drive further to get anything. Farm equipment fuel is sold on a different basis, but it still has to be trucked around. Done wrong, pay per mile can finish off the rest of America's independent farmers.
Economically, this seesm like a good idea - it makes the paid price of driving closer to the true cost.
Asshole in the middle tolls like this are not designed to bring things, "closer to cost". They are designed to suck as much out of the ends as possible. The idea is to have variable rates on roads and time of driving. You would never know how much your dive would cost you, and your taxation could be raised at the change of a database. Let's face it, we don't drive because we want to, we drive because we have to. The people behind this know that and want to suck you dry. I hate driving, and I'll hate it more or be forced to quit my job if this ever happens here.
Please never ever consider this viable. The costs of implimenting the thing are much greater than the costs of traditional taxes, and those costs will be passed on. One of the United State's great strenghts is the mobility of it's work force. We don't have to go through all the losses involved in a move (selling your house is a loser) for work within a fifty mile range. I can only imagine how this would impact the cost of a truck rental or moving service for those unfortunate enough to have to move. Think of these costs, they are great. Think of the agregate harm losses incured if the right people are less likely to be matched to the right jobs. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Your privacy concerns will be aleviated by the same liars who told you Carnivore would not be invasive and that your email would only be read by machines. There is no point and the costs are great. Tell those greedy camera shoving big brother assholes to reconsider.
The great benevolence of govenments such as China should serve as a shining model and example of plans like this. Who knows, the Chinese government may be able to bring down it's great wall, even Saudi Arabia as ICANT makes the internet safe for all good corporate citezens. What a glorious day this is for public networks and the independence of the North American Directorate. Can you feel the goodwill coming in from WIPPO, and DCMA? Every state will have it's say as the national borders go up in the name of unity. Intelectual property will be safe as will the big pubishers will no longer fear competition. Telcos can loose their fears of loosing their franchises as new more centralized and stronger means of information interchange are devised by ICANTs board members like Microsoft and Sun. The freedom this will bring is unbelievable. Like an advert flier says, there's no limit to the internet is there? Only strong government control will be able to squash the emergent wireless internet, they had better hurry!
Oh well, I did not expect more. As the people of the United States accept violations of the first and fourth amendments, the experiment that was the Bill of Rights dies. It started with regulation of the airwaves. It will end with electronic publishing. As all the dead tree acid paper rots and people are taught that obsolete communications methods are not to be trusted and the ideas contained in those rotting pages are no longer valid, and all electronic publishing comes under the control of the government and two or three large companies.
Bill Gates really can see the future. He's buying it.