Actually, if you look at it from a standpoint of source code lines in the average Linux distribution, the amount of FSF written (or even GNU licensed) software is actually far less than you'd think. While it'd be hard for Linux to exist without the GNU libc or the GNU Compiler Collection, can you say that these are the absolute most important parts? In fact, the kernel itself has a rather small role in all this, does this mean that Linus Torvalds should go after any distributor that doesn't use the name 'Linux' in their product?
The argument is rather silly if you ask me. Too many egos.
Corel was screwed before getting into Linux, too. They've been searching forever for some kind of 'silver bullet' that'll change things for them and get them back to gaining more customers rather than just trying to maintain their declining customer base. Corel's problem has never been anything but the quality (or lack thereof) of their products. Corel Wordperfect 6 for Windows, 7 and 8 were horrific programs that rarely worked, and often messed up systems just by installing them. The new Corel CEO seems to be more grounded than Micheal Cowpland was, since he picked up on any technology and wasted far too much money on trying to develop for that, only to drop it shortly after (remember WordPerfect for Java?). Honestly, Corel is doing the right thing -- continuing their core products (for any platform they can support), and dropping the ones that can't win.
Actually, to establish legal precident, they'd have to take the case to a high enough court in each and every country. Even if the GPL were to be struck down entirely, the net effect would be rather minor since copyright law in nearly every country prohibits distribution of copyrighted works without permission, and without the GPL license, you have no permission at all.
I doubt anyone will ever try to legally challenge the GPL for the sole reason that if they are successful, they lose ALL rights to distribute the software. By someone challenging it, they lose -- they can no longer distribute the software they were illegally distributing before. I'd have to laugh at that irony if it ever happened.
Try reading between the lines. Wind River makes embeded operating systems and developers kits, and has a huge stake in this. They'd rather not see people designing embeded devices use Linux or any other vendor's products. To that end, this seems a likely move to make people doubt the wisdom of going with a product from Lineo or any other embeded Linux vendor.
The conflict on the term 'linking' comes from Schacker using it to mean anything that's included in the same ROM, which is not the definition that most people agree the GPL means. The GPL uses the term linking to indicate the process of combining one or more object files into an executable, not the process of creating a filesystem, and putting it on the same physical storage unit.
While loser pays tends to prevent repeated frivilous lawsuits, it doesn't prevent someone from caving into legal threats, especially when the chance of losing seems even remotely possible. Remember that a corporation will probably be able to pay $250,000 in legal fees without so much as blinking -- do you think you'd be willing to challenge that if you thought there was even a slim chance you might lose?
On the other hand, this could backfire, and give the RIAA and it's members concrete 'evidence' that Napster is harming their sales and their bottom line, prompting even more governmental action on their behalf. As it stands, it's difficult for them to prove any damage since each and every year, they announce record profits. The last thing we need is to give them legal ammo, since they have more than enough cash ammo already.
What I don't understand is why you Americans keep reelecting Orin Hatch, since despite saying nice words about 'fair use' and 'consumer rights' to the press, he's about as far in the media industry's pocket as someone could get. One man, who was responsible for the 'Sonny Bono' copyright term extension act, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and there's no indication that he'll ever stop. The music and movie industries contribute so little to your GNP, especially compared to businesses like phone companies, etc. Yet, your government is constantly caving into their requests to screw customers.
It appears I misunderstood some of the XML-RPC protocol... Parameters are not named, so it has the same exact problems as DCE-RPC/DCOM and CORBA. Given how heavy the protocol is right now, you'd think that adding parameter names would have been trivial, and would allow them to avoid the stupidity of 'versioned interfaces'. Such a pity, I would've expected more from XML -- it could've made most versioned interfaces obsolete with such a simple extension.
SOAP on the other hand, does appear to name parameters, and since it could be used as a transport for things such as CORBA instead of IIOP. I incorrectly assumed that because XML-RPC and SOAP shared a common heritage, that they shared the same features. A closer look at XML-RPC shows it's nothing more than a basic (very basic) marshalling protocol using XML for nothing more than formatting. SOAP on the other hand, could probably be used as a back end for almost all of the current RPC systems out there, including CORBA (that uses IIOP) and Microsoft DCOM (which currently uses DCE-RPC as it's transport).
And as for reverse engineering, I was talking about figuring out what parameters an undocumented RPC uses/returns. Sniffing DCE or IIOP packets tell you practically nothing. Sniffing SOAP packets would clearly tell you the function names, parameter names, and types.
Obviously another rant from the good old 'if I don't agree with you I'll call you a commie' school of reasoned argument.
I know this post, and it's parent is just another troll, but why is it that every single American I've ever talked to automatically associates all social programs, and communism with dictatorship and the destruction of democracy. It may shock some of these people, but even the United States is not a true democracy, nor is it a true capitalist nation. Pure communism has been shown not to work, likewise pure capitalism also fails. Nearly all of us live in mixed systems that try to ballance certain amounts of capitalism with communism to try and deliver some of the benefits (and drawbacks) from each system.
Microsoft is worried that they might not get to benefit freely from government funded creations. Microsoft would rather see such developments released under the BSD license, which they can freely take any and all 'innovations' they desire from the code. I would agree, however, except I'd go one step further -- all code developed either under contract or by government workers on paid time should release the source code into the public domain (without license). Tax payers paid to have the code developed, so all tax payers should get to benefit from it, in whatever way they want.
Why did MSFT choose to make such an Un-American licensed piece of software the standard scripting language for NT?
Microsoft didn't. The standard scripting language for NT is either.bat/.cmd or VBScript via the Windows Scripting Host. PERL, along with PS, Kill, etc are just included in the Windows NT Resource Kit for all those crazy people out there who hate using the official Microsoft sanctioned GUI interface tools. There are more than a few people out there that refuse to do any type of scripting unless it's done in PERL, and since Microsoft wants to take over all servers, including those running UNIX, they need to at least deliver some tools with somewhat equivelant functionality.
Re:Another case of too little, too late?
on
ESR On XML-RPC
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· Score: 1
... microsoft... put SOAP and XML into the w2k kernal...
Hardly, SOAP and XML may be part of the core SDK and install, but they're hardly part of the kernel in Windows 2000. And indeed a text parser would be stupid to put in kernel space, even for Microsoft. The gains in performance would be so minor to be worthless, whereas the loss in security and stability would undermine Microsoft's efforts to inspire confidence in Windows 2000's stability. Microsoft might've done some stupid things in it's lifetime, but putting something like this in kernel space is definately not one of them. SOAP in Win2K is handled by by IIS for the server and a couple DLLs for the client.
For this XML-RPC effort to succeed, it needs to be implemented as a kernel-loadable module, and be included in the default Linux kernal.
Then and only then will Linux be fully riding the XML bandwagon
Again, this would be stupid. Such code should never run in the kernel's context, because crashes there, are fatal. However, I would like to see XML-RPC and/or SOAP becoming part of standard linux distribution, if for no other reason than to encourage interoperability between platforms (and not just POSIX-like platforms).
XML-RPC (and SOAP) solves some problems that the binary RPC can't. Unlike most of the other RPC solutions, XML-RPC makes extending an interface without breaking other clients fairly seamless. DCE-RPC/DCOM and CORBA solve very different problems, since they're more interested in transparency above all else when making RPC calls. And as for interoperatbility, it'd be much easier to 'reverse engineer' a XML-RPC or SOAP call as opposed to DCE-RPC/DCOM or CORBA, since it is human readable, the parameter types and data are in-the-clear, and so on.
If I wanted to do RPC between programs running on the local machine, or across a small LAN, I'd be much more likely to use CORBA, DCE-RPC, or any of the others, since this is what they excel at. On the other hand, if I wanted to publish services for third parties to use on the internet, I'd be more likely to use XML-RPC or SOAP, since THAT's what they're designed for. Platform neutrality is another thing I'd say that XML-RPC and SOAP would do better at -- nearly every platform has at least one library capable of performing those tasks, compared to the other RPC mechanisms. When was the last time you saw a DCE-RPC/DCOM library for *nix or MacOS? CORBA for Windows is similarly unusual.
The short story is XML-RPC and SOAP won't kill CORBA or DCOM. They accomplish similar tasks for different purposes.
Art is about conveying beauty and/or a message to an audience (sometimes just the artist himself).
Programming (and other mathematical/engineering disciplines) is about building useful structures. The humans doing the building may be partially guided by artistic concerns, but that doesn't make the output "art". The primary purpose is "does it work" not "is it nice to look at" or even "is it elegant."
Functionality and art aren't always at opposite ends of the spectrum. Take carpentry, for example. While one could easily make a chair out of a few 2x4's nailed together and painted, it would be unappealing and not that challenging. Instead you're likely to see exotic woods used, with stains or vanishes selected because they accentuate the natural beauty of the wood. The legs of such a chair might've been worked in a lathe. You could argue that it's not a work of art, but I believe the builder would disagree with you. Art and functionality don't have to be opposites, and I believe that if you can find beauty in something you've made, you've probably done a good job.
I'll agree that there's somethings that functionality (and usually cost) is the only thing that matters. An architect designing an office building, for instance, probably won't include any elegant or beautiful designs in his or her work, since cost and functionality would be the primary concerns. On the other hand, if that architect was designing an individual's residence, elegance in the design would probably be a primary concern.
Unisys once said they would not pursue patent claims for the LZW technology in GIF against any software that was distributed for free. Overnight one day, Unisys changed their policy and started cracking down on even free products, and going so far as demand that websites that designed any graphics in.GIF format, employing LZW compression had to pay royalties to them.
The point is, there's a huge difference between a company publically stating that they don't plan to enforce, and granting an irrevocable royalty-free license to use the patent to the general public. Ten years from now, if Symantec sees their profits starting to dry up, what do you want to bet that this policy will change for the sake of a cash grab. Unlike other forms of intellectual property, such as trademarks (and to a lesser extent, copyright), a company isn't required to enforce their patent to maintain rights over it, and they're fully allowed to change their policies regarding the patents.
Suppose I should be thankful that Canada doesn't grant or respect software patents.
From my understanding, 'Trade Secrets' also apply to just about everything (including the things that'd normally be protected under either copyright or patents). Unless I'm mistaken, the Company could just claim misappropriation of trade secrets because of this IP agreement, and quite possibly win. However, the fact of the matter is, most companies aren't using this as a tool to prevent people from moving on to other organizations, but rather just using it as a weapon against ex-employees that are hired by direct competitors.
At my current place of employment, I was asked to sign an agreement that prohibits me from working for any customers or competitors of my current employer, using any and all skills learned during my employment with with said employer, and from divulging any information about my employer or it's partners. Since my employer is a fairly major vendor (in my city) of x86 machines, this agreement could pretty much effectively prevent me from ever being employed again. Since I would assume such an agreement would be practically unenforcable, I signed it. The agreement was not designed by a lawyer (it was far too vague) but rather by an owner of the company who was worried about passwords being distributed outside the company by ex-employees.
Did you READ the article? The tags have a range between 1 centimetre and 60 centimetres for the really cheap tags or up to 5 metres for the more expensive ones. They only transmit in the presence of a reader which emits either an RF or static electric field. There's about as much potential of this being an invasion of privacy as conventional printed serial numbers on other items.
There has been a standard for a very long time. The W3 Consortium has been working on standards for years, the problem is no one wants to conform to it, instead adding extensions and other things (ActiveX and ShockWave, anyone?) to a shoddy implementation of that standard. It should not be nearly as difficult as it currently is to design a page that is browser, platform and revision neutral. Currently, W3C has produced a specification for XHTML 1.0, which no one yet supports. Even Internet Explorer 5.5 doesn't even support all of of HTML 4.0's features (which was finished December 1997). The only version of HTML that all currently available browsers seem to uninamously support is HTML 3.2 (which was finished in 1996).
IMHO, if Napster wants to go to a subscription model, they will have to host unencrypted high-quality (160/192kbps) MP3 files on their own central servers. There would be no way that I'd pay for them to use my storage resources and my bandwidth for the benefit of their other customers. And if I subscribe to it, I want to be able to do with the music as I please. I want to be able to burn audio CDs to play in my portable CD player, I want to be able to burn them to MP3 CD-Rs to play in my DVD or truck. I want to play them on any computer I want, regardless of make or type (e.g. If I download something on my desktop system, I want to be able to freely transfer it to my laptop).
However, currently with the frenzy of 'Digital Rights Management' junk that recording companies see as a pre-requisite for distributing online music, few or none of these will be possible. Napster's biggest benefit to me wasn't getting music that I didn't pay for, but rather getting music I couldn't pay for by finding otherwise unreleased or unavailable songs from artists that I enjoy listening to, or previewing an album before deciding to buy or not to buy.
I have to say I think that the testing distro is going to do wonders for Debian and the problems it has had (old packages in stable). A release with Kernel 2.4, X4, Kde2, mozilla1.0 in 2001 would stand up respectebly to anything anyone else has done to date, and I'll take a Debian release over a commercial release any-day
For a server, Debian still kicks ass. KDE2.1, Mozilla 0.x/1.0 and XFree86 4.0.x don't really matter to me for the webservers I run at work. I might not have all the fancy new features that RedHat 7.0 users have, but from what I can tell, I don't seem to have the problems they're suffering from either. Like most Debian users, I'll admit pretty much the sole reason I use Debian over anything else is APT.
Honestly, though, I do prefer Debian's methodology for updating programs... Sometimes it's just safer to use an older, known working version with backported security and bug fixes than always update to the latest version. I've been bitten more than once by a routine package upgrade between minor revisions (one of them was PHP4), which broke one or more features I was depending on. For most Debian packages (except PHP), this isn't a problem, because you're still using the same version throughout the life of the version.
Debian is not without it's problems (one could say that dselect is one of them), but it's friendly package handling features is not one of them. Even the rather small 'feature' of distinguishing between removing a package's executables (but not configuration), and purging all traces of the package (executables and configuration) has saved me on more than one occasion. The only thing I wish apt-get could do is reinstall an installed package (for when you do something really stupid, or when fsck finds errors in a file related to such a package), since removing it (and usually all dependancies) and installing it again can be really painful when all you need is the files extracted again.
Photocopiers can be used to mass produce pirate copies of magazines, but, you don't see the Magazine Publisher's Association (or whoever;-)) suing Xerox for making this possible. It's absurd. VCRs are legal.
What's that quote, again..? "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
Don't forget that Hollywood (I believe it was Universal Studios in particular) fought tooth and nail against Sony and the Betamax. They lost, of course, and ever since then, 'fair use' and the right to timeshift has been a thorn in the side of content producers. They've tried various tactics to try and get rid of it. Various poor copy inhibiting technologys (macrovision, for example), the ridiculous 'FBI Warnings', etc. Now in this digital age, and with Senator Orin Hatch passing nice laws that are easy for them to abuse consumers with, they might just have discovered a 'silver bullet' that will let them kill the types of 'fair use' that are problematic to them.
If the music industry would just create what consumers want (near instant access to high quality copies of their favorite music that can be used in any way the consumer wants), rather than trying to restrict and regulate what consumers can and will not be able to do with the music. I have to believe that consumers will resist the music industries attempts to heavily regulate what people may and may not do with their musical collections. Having acquired a taste for unrestricted music sources, it should be extremely painful to go to one that requires strict checks of copyright compliance.
... My big fear... is that WMP will become the standard... I've already seen a portable WMP player.
I'm not sure why anyone would switch to Windows Media format, since it's compression algorithim suffers from problems like pre-echo, even at high bitrates, something that a good MP3 encoder doesn't even do at low bitrates. Real did a comparison (http://www.real.com/msaudio/) in an attempt to invalidate Microsoft's claims that WMA at 64kbit was better than MP3 at 128kbit. The research demonstrated that the WMA codec has severe problems with speech and percussion instruments. They end up muddied and muffled with pre-echo problems.
I would like to believe that M$ is on the run, but I can't. However it may be true that they don't have a clue as to how to deal with open source.
This is probably due to the fact most of their tried and true methods for dealing with such competitors fail to work properly anymore. Trying to smear a product by publishing lies, mistruths and half-truths doesn't work so well now with the proliference of the internet, where one can publish a response to such a work within seconds, and free software projects unlike companies with PR departments, they can be brutally honest about their product and the comparison. Buying them out doesn't work because the product is still covered by the much less restrictive license, so future third party development could continue. Marketing propaganda doesn't work, since the people most attracted to platforms like Linux and *BSD are largely immune to being brainwashed by buzzword advertising (and 'Linux' and 'Open Source' have become the new buzzwords). Microsoft has never had a competitor like this -- one that can't be bought or litigated out of existance, and I think that scares them more than anything else.
Microsoft is facing the same kind of change that pretty much killed Novell's market share. Novell lost it's share when corporate LANs stopped just being about file and printer serving, and more about applications that access services on central servers on their backends, and that's where NT caught on. Microsoft is facing the same kind of problem with the sudden explosion of the internet and related services. They might've managed to weld on enough additional services to make such a web server backend work, but at the same time made the administration of such a server painful enough that few want to use it. So far, I'd say that Microsoft has made the transition to the web far better than Novell ever made it to application services. But, of course, Internet-related services is Linux and *BSD's forte, since that's where these operating systems grew up(so to speak).
The other big danger these free operating systems pose to Microsoft is they could potentially prevent Microsoft from using their Windows franchise to make things like digital rights management manditory, and their ability to manipulate other companies to bend to their will (OEMs, for example, are completely reliant on Microsoft -- lose your license to sell Microsoft products, and you're as good as dead).
The idea of regulating free software is completely ridiculous, anyway. Despite the U.S. government's perception of the Internet being exclusively U.S. based, they're wrong. In fact, many projects exist outside the U.S. borders, including on of the BSDs - OpenBSD(based in Canada). Even if the U.S. were to somehow make such software illegal, it would continue to be developed by people in other countries. Banning such software in any way would only be detrimental to the U.S. and would benefit no one, least of all U.S. taxpayers.
This is why we have contacted Corenic.net, your domain registration provider, to cancel all service on the "openssh.com" domain.
This is prior restraint and flies in the face of the first amendment. SSH Communications Security owns the trademark on "SSH" in the realm of client-server protocols, that does not give it the right to bully openssh about their domain name.
WIPO would probably disagree. Based on their track record for deciding in favor of trademark and other rich people's favor when deciding on domain name disputes, I'd say that the OpenSSH group would probably lose all their domain names. I don't believe that OpenSSH could really win against SSH, because their case is valid, no matter how little those involved like it. The fact that the company, protocol and program all share the same name really doesn't help, and is really poor form. Short of hoping for everyone to agree to rename the protocol, I see little or no resolution to this.
Slashdot Mirror
The argument is rather silly if you ask me. Too many egos.
Only the Toaster 2000 and 3000 series are licensed for use with Pillsbury(R) Pop Tarts(R).
Corel was screwed before getting into Linux, too. They've been searching forever for some kind of 'silver bullet' that'll change things for them and get them back to gaining more customers rather than just trying to maintain their declining customer base. Corel's problem has never been anything but the quality (or lack thereof) of their products. Corel Wordperfect 6 for Windows, 7 and 8 were horrific programs that rarely worked, and often messed up systems just by installing them. The new Corel CEO seems to be more grounded than Micheal Cowpland was, since he picked up on any technology and wasted far too much money on trying to develop for that, only to drop it shortly after (remember WordPerfect for Java?). Honestly, Corel is doing the right thing -- continuing their core products (for any platform they can support), and dropping the ones that can't win.
I doubt anyone will ever try to legally challenge the GPL for the sole reason that if they are successful, they lose ALL rights to distribute the software. By someone challenging it, they lose -- they can no longer distribute the software they were illegally distributing before. I'd have to laugh at that irony if it ever happened.
The conflict on the term 'linking' comes from Schacker using it to mean anything that's included in the same ROM, which is not the definition that most people agree the GPL means. The GPL uses the term linking to indicate the process of combining one or more object files into an executable, not the process of creating a filesystem, and putting it on the same physical storage unit.
While loser pays tends to prevent repeated frivilous lawsuits, it doesn't prevent someone from caving into legal threats, especially when the chance of losing seems even remotely possible. Remember that a corporation will probably be able to pay $250,000 in legal fees without so much as blinking -- do you think you'd be willing to challenge that if you thought there was even a slim chance you might lose?
What I don't understand is why you Americans keep reelecting Orin Hatch, since despite saying nice words about 'fair use' and 'consumer rights' to the press, he's about as far in the media industry's pocket as someone could get. One man, who was responsible for the 'Sonny Bono' copyright term extension act, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and there's no indication that he'll ever stop. The music and movie industries contribute so little to your GNP, especially compared to businesses like phone companies, etc. Yet, your government is constantly caving into their requests to screw customers.
SOAP on the other hand, does appear to name parameters, and since it could be used as a transport for things such as CORBA instead of IIOP. I incorrectly assumed that because XML-RPC and SOAP shared a common heritage, that they shared the same features. A closer look at XML-RPC shows it's nothing more than a basic (very basic) marshalling protocol using XML for nothing more than formatting. SOAP on the other hand, could probably be used as a back end for almost all of the current RPC systems out there, including CORBA (that uses IIOP) and Microsoft DCOM (which currently uses DCE-RPC as it's transport).
And as for reverse engineering, I was talking about figuring out what parameters an undocumented RPC uses/returns. Sniffing DCE or IIOP packets tell you practically nothing. Sniffing SOAP packets would clearly tell you the function names, parameter names, and types.
I know this post, and it's parent is just another troll, but why is it that every single American I've ever talked to automatically associates all social programs, and communism with dictatorship and the destruction of democracy. It may shock some of these people, but even the United States is not a true democracy, nor is it a true capitalist nation. Pure communism has been shown not to work, likewise pure capitalism also fails. Nearly all of us live in mixed systems that try to ballance certain amounts of capitalism with communism to try and deliver some of the benefits (and drawbacks) from each system.
Microsoft is worried that they might not get to benefit freely from government funded creations. Microsoft would rather see such developments released under the BSD license, which they can freely take any and all 'innovations' they desire from the code. I would agree, however, except I'd go one step further -- all code developed either under contract or by government workers on paid time should release the source code into the public domain (without license). Tax payers paid to have the code developed, so all tax payers should get to benefit from it, in whatever way they want.
If I wanted to do RPC between programs running on the local machine, or across a small LAN, I'd be much more likely to use CORBA, DCE-RPC, or any of the others, since this is what they excel at. On the other hand, if I wanted to publish services for third parties to use on the internet, I'd be more likely to use XML-RPC or SOAP, since THAT's what they're designed for. Platform neutrality is another thing I'd say that XML-RPC and SOAP would do better at -- nearly every platform has at least one library capable of performing those tasks, compared to the other RPC mechanisms. When was the last time you saw a DCE-RPC/DCOM library for *nix or MacOS? CORBA for Windows is similarly unusual.
The short story is XML-RPC and SOAP won't kill CORBA or DCOM. They accomplish similar tasks for different purposes.
I'll agree that there's somethings that functionality (and usually cost) is the only thing that matters. An architect designing an office building, for instance, probably won't include any elegant or beautiful designs in his or her work, since cost and functionality would be the primary concerns. On the other hand, if that architect was designing an individual's residence, elegance in the design would probably be a primary concern.
The point is, there's a huge difference between a company publically stating that they don't plan to enforce, and granting an irrevocable royalty-free license to use the patent to the general public. Ten years from now, if Symantec sees their profits starting to dry up, what do you want to bet that this policy will change for the sake of a cash grab. Unlike other forms of intellectual property, such as trademarks (and to a lesser extent, copyright), a company isn't required to enforce their patent to maintain rights over it, and they're fully allowed to change their policies regarding the patents.
Suppose I should be thankful that Canada doesn't grant or respect software patents.
From my understanding, 'Trade Secrets' also apply to just about everything (including the things that'd normally be protected under either copyright or patents). Unless I'm mistaken, the Company could just claim misappropriation of trade secrets because of this IP agreement, and quite possibly win. However, the fact of the matter is, most companies aren't using this as a tool to prevent people from moving on to other organizations, but rather just using it as a weapon against ex-employees that are hired by direct competitors.
At my current place of employment, I was asked to sign an agreement that prohibits me from working for any customers or competitors of my current employer, using any and all skills learned during my employment with with said employer, and from divulging any information about my employer or it's partners. Since my employer is a fairly major vendor (in my city) of x86 machines, this agreement could pretty much effectively prevent me from ever being employed again. Since I would assume such an agreement would be practically unenforcable, I signed it. The agreement was not designed by a lawyer (it was far too vague) but rather by an owner of the company who was worried about passwords being distributed outside the company by ex-employees.
Did you READ the article? The tags have a range between 1 centimetre and 60 centimetres for the really cheap tags or up to 5 metres for the more expensive ones. They only transmit in the presence of a reader which emits either an RF or static electric field. There's about as much potential of this being an invasion of privacy as conventional printed serial numbers on other items.
Duh. Must've missed that part in the man pages... Thanks!
There has been a standard for a very long time. The W3 Consortium has been working on standards for years, the problem is no one wants to conform to it, instead adding extensions and other things (ActiveX and ShockWave, anyone?) to a shoddy implementation of that standard. It should not be nearly as difficult as it currently is to design a page that is browser, platform and revision neutral. Currently, W3C has produced a specification for XHTML 1.0, which no one yet supports. Even Internet Explorer 5.5 doesn't even support all of of HTML 4.0's features (which was finished December 1997). The only version of HTML that all currently available browsers seem to uninamously support is HTML 3.2 (which was finished in 1996).
However, currently with the frenzy of 'Digital Rights Management' junk that recording companies see as a pre-requisite for distributing online music, few or none of these will be possible. Napster's biggest benefit to me wasn't getting music that I didn't pay for, but rather getting music I couldn't pay for by finding otherwise unreleased or unavailable songs from artists that I enjoy listening to, or previewing an album before deciding to buy or not to buy.
Honestly, though, I do prefer Debian's methodology for updating programs... Sometimes it's just safer to use an older, known working version with backported security and bug fixes than always update to the latest version. I've been bitten more than once by a routine package upgrade between minor revisions (one of them was PHP4), which broke one or more features I was depending on. For most Debian packages (except PHP), this isn't a problem, because you're still using the same version throughout the life of the version.
Debian is not without it's problems (one could say that dselect is one of them), but it's friendly package handling features is not one of them. Even the rather small 'feature' of distinguishing between removing a package's executables (but not configuration), and purging all traces of the package (executables and configuration) has saved me on more than one occasion. The only thing I wish apt-get could do is reinstall an installed package (for when you do something really stupid, or when fsck finds errors in a file related to such a package), since removing it (and usually all dependancies) and installing it again can be really painful when all you need is the files extracted again.
If the music industry would just create what consumers want (near instant access to high quality copies of their favorite music that can be used in any way the consumer wants), rather than trying to restrict and regulate what consumers can and will not be able to do with the music. I have to believe that consumers will resist the music industries attempts to heavily regulate what people may and may not do with their musical collections. Having acquired a taste for unrestricted music sources, it should be extremely painful to go to one that requires strict checks of copyright compliance.
Microsoft is facing the same kind of change that pretty much killed Novell's market share. Novell lost it's share when corporate LANs stopped just being about file and printer serving, and more about applications that access services on central servers on their backends, and that's where NT caught on. Microsoft is facing the same kind of problem with the sudden explosion of the internet and related services. They might've managed to weld on enough additional services to make such a web server backend work, but at the same time made the administration of such a server painful enough that few want to use it. So far, I'd say that Microsoft has made the transition to the web far better than Novell ever made it to application services. But, of course, Internet-related services is Linux and *BSD's forte, since that's where these operating systems grew up(so to speak).
The other big danger these free operating systems pose to Microsoft is they could potentially prevent Microsoft from using their Windows franchise to make things like digital rights management manditory, and their ability to manipulate other companies to bend to their will (OEMs, for example, are completely reliant on Microsoft -- lose your license to sell Microsoft products, and you're as good as dead).
The idea of regulating free software is completely ridiculous, anyway. Despite the U.S. government's perception of the Internet being exclusively U.S. based, they're wrong. In fact, many projects exist outside the U.S. borders, including on of the BSDs - OpenBSD(based in Canada). Even if the U.S. were to somehow make such software illegal, it would continue to be developed by people in other countries. Banning such software in any way would only be detrimental to the U.S. and would benefit no one, least of all U.S. taxpayers.