He did what is right for him. As others have pointed out more generically, why should he subsidize your Windows use?
Why should my book buying subsidize his non-Windows use? There's no evidence that Asus or Microsoft is paying for the refund--all indications are that Amazon is doing so.
Having run Windows XP, Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my MSI Wind U100 I can say Windows Seven has by far been the best OS
Have you considered giving OS X a try? Instructions for installing it are readily available on the web, and it would be interesting to see how it stacks up to the others.
You have demonstrated yourself to be an idiot, since it was obvious from the first paragraph that the material about the usenet crackpot (and yes, someone who claims that a world wide conspiracy of mathematicians is suppressing his work is a crackpot) was background material, and had nothing to do with the position of either side in the purist versus pragmatists debate.
As far as I've been able to determine from the various articles published on this, the only difference between Microsoft's binary drivers and, say, NVidia's binary drivers is that Microsoft's don't honor the advisory flag that says don't use certain symbols if your code is not under GPL.
Ignoring that flag is not a GPL violation. At worst, it is a discourtesy.
I don't know what the SFLC's position is on binary drivers in the kernel, but a majority of kernel developers, and of lawyers, think that binary modules don't per se violate GPL.
Forgive me for having learned all I know about our criminal justice system from Law & Order (and similar), but wouldn't this be absolutely perfect grounds for appeal? Instructions/rulings from the judge that fly in the face of established precedent, common sense, and possibly even black-letter law...my understanding was that this sort of thing is exactly the stuff that gets verdicts overturned on appeal, which judges don't like...
What does that have to do with this case, where the judge's rulling follows established precendent, common sense, and black letter law?
Tenenbaum will lose and be forced to pay even more than Jammie.
You really think he's going to be as stupid as she was? At every step of the process, from before the first lawsuit was filed, after it was won, before the appeal was filed, before the second trial, and after the second trial, the RIAA has offered to settle with her for a few thousand dollars. She keeps refusing to settle.
If he doesn't exhibit a similar level of brain death, he'll be forced to pay a few thousand dollars, tops.
I wonder why judges are throwing out defenses before the defense could even bring out the arguments of their reasoning
The defense did bring out the arguments of their reasoning. The judge applied the law to those arguments, and rejected them. There were no disputes of fact, and so the matter was for the judge to decide, not a jury.
This seems like another bought off or pressured case
A pretty large fraction of people who search are ultimately searching in order to help with a purchasing decision. If Bing is doing a better job of sending them to relevant sites, then we'd expect them to be more likely to click ads on those sites, as those ads are likely to actually be useful to the searcher.
well as data showing that the Linux-powered and Unix-powered computers topped Amazon's sales charts in all categories for 2007
According to the link that was in the above quote, The Nokia Internet Tablet PC was the best selling computer, the MacBook Pro was the best reviewed computer, the Asus EEE 4G was the most wished for computer, and the MacBook was the most gifted computer.
Only one of those comes from a sales chart. Furthermore, it probably wasn't the computer sales charts, as Amazon puts the Nokia in the handheld and PDA category. So what we really have here is that a Linux-powered device was tops in a minor category, Macs were the best reviewed and most gifted computers, and a lot of people expressed interest in the EEE.
That people have to resort to things this weak in order to get something positive about Linux success with consumers says a lot about how little that success is.
I don't remember what his reaction to this particular one was. He's a prolific crackpot, and all his theories and reactions are hard to keep distinct in my mind. This might have been the one where he decided I really was a top academic mathematician, coming to usenet to undermine him before he could carry out his plan to take us all down by having everybody's tenure removed. (I am not a mathematician, and am not in an academic position).
If you would like to examine some of the works of this prolific crank, he publishes them on his blog. If you want to enjoy his insanity away from the computer, an alternative is his book.
His early work is not covered at the blog, though, so if you want his proof of FLT, you'll have to dig in the usenet archives.
A few months ago, some usenet crackpot posted his latest mathematical research. Among the usual nonsense and ravings about a world-wide conspiracy of academic mathematicians, possibly under the control of aliens (the space kind), to suppress his work, there were some points of mathematical interest--some potentially neat patterns and relationships in how he was wrong.
I spent a very enjoyable few weeks investigating these, using Mathematica to aid in this. I was able to find things using Mathematica that I would not have found otherwise--even using the best current free mathematical software, and those taught me a lot, both directly, and from the books I then consulted.
The most pure purists, such as RMS, take the position that I should not have done that mathematical investigation, because I could not do it without using non-free software. I'm supposed to wait until I can do it with free software, and maybe contribute to developing said free software if I want to speed things up.
If life were infinite, I would consider that. Life is not infinite, so I will go ahead and use the tools that let me get done the things I want to get done during this short life. I see no difference between, say, riding in a vehicle like a boat or plane where I cannot inspect and study the engine and using a piece of software where I cannot see the code. For the boat, all I care about is that it accomplishes the task I need--getting me safely to my destination. Same for software.
The point is that the new computers that are available with Linux or no OS preloaded are a very tiny fraction indeed of the variety of new computers available with Windows. If I want, for example, a Dell Mini 10 with the new low-power US15W/GMA500 chipset, [dell.com] I am forced to buy with it a license for Windows xp. If you know how to buy this particular model new with Linux or no OS preloaded, please do post back with directions
It works that way with many products besides computers. I don't get to pick an arbitrary car stereo when I buy a car, for instance. If I want a Honda car, I have to pay for one of the two or three sound systems Honda offers, even if I'm going to toss that and put in one of my choosing.
Even sticking to computers, if you don't like the particular brand of hard disk that Dell uses, and plan to put in your own instead, will they sell you a Dell Mini without a hard drive (and lower the price accordingly)?
Why should it be any different for operating systems?
You're right it's not a tax, because the MS fee is voluntary whereas taxes are not, however the MS fee is still hard to avoid. You mentioned the Dell N-series, but that series still forces you to pay for a Windows license fee, even though there's no Windows on the machine (i.e. an N-series PC is the same price as a Vista machine).
You are making a couple of unsupported assumptions there.
That Dell isn't simply charging the same for both so they can make more money off the Linux machines.
That a Windows license costs more to Dell than a Linux license. A Windows license can actually cost them less overall, because third parties will pay Dell in order to get their software bundled with Dell Windows machines or get promotional literature included with Dell Windows machines. It is quite possible that Dell makes more on the bundle and advertising deals than the cost of the Windows license.
Amazon is not the company that bought that Windows licensed. That would be Asus. That implies that what really happened here is that Amazon decided to eat the cost to keep a customer happy.
My guess is that the customer (the company that actually bought the computer--not the guy they gave it to) does a lot of business with them, so they were willing to eat a little on one sale to keep the end user happy, to keep their customer happy.
I doubt Amazon is willing to in effect buy a Windows license for everyone who wants to buy a netbook from them and use Linux on it, so I don't expect this to go far.
Laches, estoppel, inequitable conduct. Take your pick. A defendant in such a suit would have numerous avenues to crush any such attempt, and probably even get rule 11b sanctions against Microsoft for filing the suit in the first place.
A comment on Reddit pointed out something interesting. He speculated that the reason the test was after the assignment is that the programmer was trying to follow the often recommended style of initializing your variables when you declare them. The kernel uses C89, which requires all declarations to be at the top of the function, before any code (other than initializers). Thus, he couldn't test for null before initializing.
C99 removes the restriction that declarations have to be first in the body. If the kernel were using C99, the programmer could have done his argument sanity checks first, such as the check for the null pointer, and then declared and initialized the variable, AFTER the test.
Actually, it's already been fixed as of 2.6.31-rc3. Interestingly enough, the code by itself was fine until gcc tries to re-assign the pointer value upon compiling
The code by itself is not fine. The underlying bug is that the kernel is allowing memory at virtual address 0 to be valid. The compiler was designed for an environment where there can never be a valid object at 0, and has chosen the bit pattern 000...000 to be the null pointer. If you want to use C in an environment where 0 can be a valid address, then you need to use a C compiler that uses some bit pattern other then 000...000 for the null pointer.
And yes, compilers can do that. According to the C standard, assigning the constant 0 to a pointer type does NOT mean assigning the numerical representation of 0. It means assigning a machine dependent value that compares unequal when compared to any pointer to valid memory.
Furthermore, the Linux version of gcc is designed for an environment where accessing invalid memory causes a fault. Thus, the compiler is doing nothing wrong optimizing out that test for null, since in the environment for which it was designed, null pointers follow the C standard and do not point to a legitimate object, and accesses of illegitimate objects fault, and in such an environment that test can never be executed.
The kernel developers either need to make sure the kernel environment conforms to gcc's assumptions about its environment, or they should use a special version of gcc designed for the kernel environment.
I thought silverlight was supposed to be microsoft's answer to flash but I guess it will never be more than a curiosity/minor annoyance if they can't even be bothered to support firefox
Slashdot Mirror
Why should my book buying subsidize his non-Windows use? There's no evidence that Asus or Microsoft is paying for the refund--all indications are that Amazon is doing so.
Having run Windows XP, Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my MSI Wind U100 I can say Windows Seven has by far been the best OS
Have you considered giving OS X a try? Instructions for installing it are readily available on the web, and it would be interesting to see how it stacks up to the others.
You have demonstrated yourself to be an idiot, since it was obvious from the first paragraph that the material about the usenet crackpot (and yes, someone who claims that a world wide conspiracy of mathematicians is suppressing his work is a crackpot) was background material, and had nothing to do with the position of either side in the purist versus pragmatists debate.
Nice fantasy. In reality, the threat of rule 11b sanctions would prevent that behavior.
As far as I've been able to determine from the various articles published on this, the only difference between Microsoft's binary drivers and, say, NVidia's binary drivers is that Microsoft's don't honor the advisory flag that says don't use certain symbols if your code is not under GPL.
Ignoring that flag is not a GPL violation. At worst, it is a discourtesy.
I don't know what the SFLC's position is on binary drivers in the kernel, but a majority of kernel developers, and of lawyers, think that binary modules don't per se violate GPL.
What does that have to do with this case, where the judge's rulling follows established precendent, common sense, and black letter law?
You really think he's going to be as stupid as she was? At every step of the process, from before the first lawsuit was filed, after it was won, before the appeal was filed, before the second trial, and after the second trial, the RIAA has offered to settle with her for a few thousand dollars. She keeps refusing to settle.
If he doesn't exhibit a similar level of brain death, he'll be forced to pay a few thousand dollars, tops.
The defense did bring out the arguments of their reasoning. The judge applied the law to those arguments, and rejected them. There were no disputes of fact, and so the matter was for the judge to decide, not a jury.
This seems like you didn't RTFA
A pretty large fraction of people who search are ultimately searching in order to help with a purchasing decision. If Bing is doing a better job of sending them to relevant sites, then we'd expect them to be more likely to click ads on those sites, as those ads are likely to actually be useful to the searcher.
What do either of those have to do with 2007 sales?
well as data showing that the Linux-powered and Unix-powered computers topped Amazon's sales charts in all categories for 2007
According to the link that was in the above quote, The Nokia Internet Tablet PC was the best selling computer, the MacBook Pro was the best reviewed computer, the Asus EEE 4G was the most wished for computer, and the MacBook was the most gifted computer.
Only one of those comes from a sales chart. Furthermore, it probably wasn't the computer sales charts, as Amazon puts the Nokia in the handheld and PDA category. So what we really have here is that a Linux-powered device was tops in a minor category, Macs were the best reviewed and most gifted computers, and a lot of people expressed interest in the EEE.
That people have to resort to things this weak in order to get something positive about Linux success with consumers says a lot about how little that success is.
I don't remember what his reaction to this particular one was. He's a prolific crackpot, and all his theories and reactions are hard to keep distinct in my mind. This might have been the one where he decided I really was a top academic mathematician, coming to usenet to undermine him before he could carry out his plan to take us all down by having everybody's tenure removed. (I am not a mathematician, and am not in an academic position).
If you would like to examine some of the works of this prolific crank, he publishes them on his blog. If you want to enjoy his insanity away from the computer, an alternative is his book.
His early work is not covered at the blog, though, so if you want his proof of FLT, you'll have to dig in the usenet archives.
A few months ago, some usenet crackpot posted his latest mathematical research. Among the usual nonsense and ravings about a world-wide conspiracy of academic mathematicians, possibly under the control of aliens (the space kind), to suppress his work, there were some points of mathematical interest--some potentially neat patterns and relationships in how he was wrong.
I spent a very enjoyable few weeks investigating these, using Mathematica to aid in this. I was able to find things using Mathematica that I would not have found otherwise--even using the best current free mathematical software, and those taught me a lot, both directly, and from the books I then consulted.
The most pure purists, such as RMS, take the position that I should not have done that mathematical investigation, because I could not do it without using non-free software. I'm supposed to wait until I can do it with free software, and maybe contribute to developing said free software if I want to speed things up.
If life were infinite, I would consider that. Life is not infinite, so I will go ahead and use the tools that let me get done the things I want to get done during this short life. I see no difference between, say, riding in a vehicle like a boat or plane where I cannot inspect and study the engine and using a piece of software where I cannot see the code. For the boat, all I care about is that it accomplishes the task I need--getting me safely to my destination. Same for software.
Time to write a browser (well, do a quick fork of Firefox...) where it defaults to a monetized home page, and then try to get on the list.
Expect to see 200 "new" browsers available shortly...
EDT has been fairly hostile to plaintiffs from 2007 on.
It works that way with many products besides computers. I don't get to pick an arbitrary car stereo when I buy a car, for instance. If I want a Honda car, I have to pay for one of the two or three sound systems Honda offers, even if I'm going to toss that and put in one of my choosing.
Even sticking to computers, if you don't like the particular brand of hard disk that Dell uses, and plan to put in your own instead, will they sell you a Dell Mini without a hard drive (and lower the price accordingly)?
Why should it be any different for operating systems?
You are making a couple of unsupported assumptions there.
Amazon is not the company that bought that Windows licensed. That would be Asus. That implies that what really happened here is that Amazon decided to eat the cost to keep a customer happy.
My guess is that the customer (the company that actually bought the computer--not the guy they gave it to) does a lot of business with them, so they were willing to eat a little on one sale to keep the end user happy, to keep their customer happy.
I doubt Amazon is willing to in effect buy a Windows license for everyone who wants to buy a netbook from them and use Linux on it, so I don't expect this to go far.
Provided they have the pockets to front the lawyers' fees to do so
You don't think the FSF, the EFF, Redhat, IBM, and numerous others, not to mention thousands of individuals, wouldn't rush in to cover defense costs?
They can sue for infringement of software patents.
Laches, estoppel, inequitable conduct. Take your pick. A defendant in such a suit would have numerous avenues to crush any such attempt, and probably even get rule 11b sanctions against Microsoft for filing the suit in the first place.
A comment on Reddit pointed out something interesting. He speculated that the reason the test was after the assignment is that the programmer was trying to follow the often recommended style of initializing your variables when you declare them. The kernel uses C89, which requires all declarations to be at the top of the function, before any code (other than initializers). Thus, he couldn't test for null before initializing.
C99 removes the restriction that declarations have to be first in the body. If the kernel were using C99, the programmer could have done his argument sanity checks first, such as the check for the null pointer, and then declared and initialized the variable, AFTER the test.
The code by itself is not fine. The underlying bug is that the kernel is allowing memory at virtual address 0 to be valid. The compiler was designed for an environment where there can never be a valid object at 0, and has chosen the bit pattern 000...000 to be the null pointer. If you want to use C in an environment where 0 can be a valid address, then you need to use a C compiler that uses some bit pattern other then 000...000 for the null pointer.
And yes, compilers can do that. According to the C standard, assigning the constant 0 to a pointer type does NOT mean assigning the numerical representation of 0. It means assigning a machine dependent value that compares unequal when compared to any pointer to valid memory.
Furthermore, the Linux version of gcc is designed for an environment where accessing invalid memory causes a fault. Thus, the compiler is doing nothing wrong optimizing out that test for null, since in the environment for which it was designed, null pointers follow the C standard and do not point to a legitimate object, and accesses of illegitimate objects fault, and in such an environment that test can never be executed.
The kernel developers either need to make sure the kernel environment conforms to gcc's assumptions about its environment, or they should use a special version of gcc designed for the kernel environment.
So Billy G wants to bring "...[the wonders of science to everyone]..." except for those of us not using Internet Explorer...ahhh...so refreshing!
The site works fine in both Firefox and Safari, on my Mac.
I thought silverlight was supposed to be microsoft's answer to flash but I guess it will never be more than a curiosity/minor annoyance if they can't even be bothered to support firefox
It's working fine for me in Firefox on my Mac.
Because requiring Silverlight (and therefore Windows) severely dilutes the notion that Gate's action is altruistic. The content is only kinda free
Silverlight does not require Windows. It is available for Mac, also, where it runs flawlessly. Windows + Mac covers around 99% of personal computers.