These things aren't being sold in Wal-Mart stores. They're only available online.
Maybe the target market is businesses that want to run Sun JD (or other Linux distro) and aren't big enough to get Dell to sell them PC's without Windows.
There are enough *real* Linux customers out there that are not being served by the majors. Could this be Wal-Mart's way of going after Dell in the small business market that they've owned for too long now?
Microsoft's next big upgrade is going to be timed so that it comes out as soon after the 3-year DOJ wrist slap expires as they can possibly throw together a criitical mass of new lock-in mechanisms.
It'll then take another 3 years (and a new Administration) to bring the next antitrust suit, and another 3 years to win it.
Customers will buy Longhorn for the same reason they've bought all other Windows systems. It will come on all new PC's, it'll break compatibility with older versions, and eventually, it'll get to be too much of a hassle NOT to upgrade.
So what else is new?
question: will it take quotes in a macro
on
GCC 3.3 Released
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· Score: 1
>>The preprocessor now accepts directives within macro arguments. It processes them just as if they had not been within macro arguments. The separate ISO and traditional preprocessors have been completely removed. The front-end handles either type of preprocessed output if necessary.
This quote below makes me hopeful.
I've had trouble with this macro in gcc: #define TRIGGER_PUSHBUTTON(c)
((PUSHBUTTON16) | 'c')
gcc doesn't like having the macro add the quotes around the character argument. Only works if you to leave the quotes out of the macro definition and require them in the macro argument.
But I have a lot of code written on AIX that uses this macro (and others like it). Porting to linux requires 'fixing' all the occurrances.
Assuming they have specific examples of infringement, they must be witholding the specifics because it's small and/or easily removed/replaced stuff.
If SCO were talking about serious structural things, and were to make them public, maybe we all wouldn't be so mad at them. As it is, people are talking about boycotting all SCO products.
Then again, from the sound of the SCO interview, it looks like they're going to try to make the case that cloning unix is in and of itself a theft of IP. A big gamble there, but if it works, well, bye-bye Linux.
So they're either hoping for an ideological judge to come down on their side or just that the trial will drag on long enough to scare the marketplace away from Linux. If that happens, and RedHat goes down, then SCO might stand a chance of surviving when it's all over. But more likely, Microsoft would wade into the vaccuum and SCO loses anyway.
Perhaps the BSD license would be more 'fair' to everybody, but there's a difference between starting up a new government project and contributing enhancements to an existing project.
This law prevents Government agencies from contributing to existing GPL projects. The Government can't just waltz in and say "if you want our enhancements, you have to relicense your code".
So, exactly who is it 'fair' to when you disallow the Government to contribute to, say, Linux or Mozilla, etc.
Maybe various GPL projects should switch to dual licensing. Keep the code GPL'd, but make it available for a (large) fee under a license that allows incorporation into closed-source projects but disallows changes. All GPL'd enhancements become immediately available to the closed-source guys too, but they can't 'embrace and extend'.
It would be quite interesting to find out just how eager the closed-source guys would be to get their hands on the code if they can't use it to exclude others.
The scrolling behavior of the arrow and page up/down keys seems to have changed too.
Used to be able to simply scroll through the page with these keys (nicer than having to keep a hand on the mouse while reading).
Now these keys seem to behave differently depending on where you are within a page. Sometimes it seems to move a 'paragraph' at a time. Sometimes a line at a time. Sometimes scrolls from the 'banner' section at the top directly to the bottom with 1 down-arrow.
What's up with this, and can I disable it without losing type-ahead find?
I did a little playing around with wxWindows and QT about a year ago with an eye toward portint a Windows app to the Macintosh (yes, Linux would be nice, but try telling that to the bosses - and the app runs fine under wine already).
Anyway, found that the QT signals/slots thing was really nice, but wxWindows was plenty easy to use, and its messaging system was more 'familiar' to somebody porting from Windows.
But. The whole point was to get Mac support. WxMac was supposed to work under OS9 and OSX. So far, so good (QT3 is OSX only). But it seems to get very little attention. Strange for a project whose claims of portability are its main attraction.
I've periodically checked out the wxWindows web site, and the Mac version is less and less prominent. Does anybody know if wxWindows' Mac support is coming along? Here to stay?
Just loaded up MDK9.0, and beyond the problem-free install, it looks not much different than my 8.2 system (with KDE3.0 loaded).
That's a problem, because KDE3 loads VERY slowly. Much worse than KDE2. Takes minutes on my PII-233 (192MB) to put up the splash screen. So much for the "Linux works great on old hardware" argument.
I tried the GNOME setup in MDK9.0 and it's actually pretty fast - even Nautilus. While I like KDE better than GNOME, I'm considering using GNOME for the time being because of the startup time.
So what happened to preload patches, etc? Is this being addressed, or will KDE continue to be slow until the linker gets a major overhaul?
Assuming there are enough applications that *need* the power of Oracle to run so that this wouldn't be suicidal,...
Ellison ought to consider an Oracle-supported distro of Postgres. Put in the work to make porting between Oracle and Postgres trivial and then position Postgres as the low-end Oracle offering.
If this pulls more MSSQL deployments into the Oracle camp than the number of Oracle deployments it pushes to Postgres, it could be a net win for Oracle and OSS.
And if it enables Oracle's own enterprise apps to scale down in price to appeal to a broader audience, it could be a big win for Oracle.
Donating software and taking a big tax break probably has a negative cost to Microsoft. At the same time, they can prevent adoption of rival software, and if they keep it up long enough (they hope) kill said rival.
Then, finally, they have a new 'market' that has 'chosen' to pay for Microsoft software in the future.
May (here's hoping) not work out that way, but that's definitely the play.
The DOJ's hand-slap has them forced (with loopholes, of course) to release specs for 3 years.
So, you're not going to see anything new from Microsoft until they can obscure it and break compatibility with any competitive software that has emerged in that time frame.
And then things'll get worse even than today, and eventually the Bush ass-lickers will be gone, and there'll be another antitrust suit. and maybe -just maybe- you'll get some competition. Of course Sun will have long since given up on funding OpenOffice. RedHat might still be hanging on in the server space...
I know IBM/Motorola haven't kept up in the MHz race, but I was under the impression that the PowerPC architecture was pretty nice and had plenty of headroom for growth.
Is that not true? Only IBM makes the 64-bit version, and only in thier pricy RS/6000's, but in theory at least...
As for the Alpha, I tried to port my application to Alpha when it first came out, and there was a problem. It seems the Alpha processor could not access memory at the byte level. All byte writes had to merge the byte in question into a 64-bit word to write back into memory. PowerPC has no such problem.
Not the worst thing in the world until you have an application that stores byte-aligned data in shared memory. Since I didn't want to have to use a mutex every time I accessed this shared memory area (which was constantly), I gave up on Alpha. Was I wrong?
For a decent sysadm, the differences between various unices should be pretty easy to manage, once they get the hang of the new system.
Bug if you are developing your own software using a non-portable language (i.e. C or C++) it could get to be a hassle.
Sysadm training is a one-time thing.
Your software development/test/release cycle is recurring, and having to compile/test/release for multiple targets will complicate things from now on.
It's not even the issue of dealing with OS differences at the programmer level (although that too is not insignificant). It's having to keep multiple test beds in sync, control releases so the right versions go to the right machines, etc.
2 targets might not be too bad, and if your 2nd unix is one of the free ones, it might be worth it for the savings.
The good news is there are a few advantages to be had from going through the porting process.
Certain bugs that don't cause problems on one architecture (and so are not detected) are likely to cause problems on the other. That's a good thing.
Also, regular porting makes sure that you're dealing correctly with architecture-specific issues. If you find you NEED to switch platforms in the future, it'd be much harder if you weren't going through this process all along.
> Spokesman Jon Murchinson said Microsoft has been talking about how to allow open-source and proprietary software to coexist. "Our goal is to resolve difficult issues that are driving a wedge between the commercial and free software models," he said.
Ummm... How about a native Linux port of MS Office?
Lets see. The owner of the Monopoly desktop OS and Monopoly desktop office suite (which requires the Monopoly desktop OS, which contains components that prefer to work with that owner's not-quite-monopoly server systems) wants to talk about coexisting with free software.
Just what role do they plan to 'let' free software play?
You are either a 1) liberal that believes in a finite amount of money. 2) Never taken econ classes. The latter is forgivable, the former isn't.:)
What does being a liberal have to do with 'believing in a finite amount of money'? I swear, some of you young'ns have been so brainwashed with this 'the L-word' bullshit, it's scary.
Despite what the Republicans would have you believe, liberalism is not communism. It may involve a slightly different definition of 'equality of opportunity' than the conservative or libertarian sets might like, and it definitely does not stand for corporations over individuals, but it's not the boogey man either.
So, what do you think of the GPL?
Is it FUD to be concerned that this will essentially require anyone desiring to do business online with the Federal governmet to run Windows on their computers?
There's Fear alright, but not much Uncertainty or Doubt.
Whatever you think about the Government collecting info, they should certainly not do it in such a way as to mandate Windows on every desktop. You see, the Liberty Alliance really is about something other than a 'me too' response by Sun, AOL, etc.
Competition's fine -- as long as you have real competition.
Let's see. I'ts 2003. All Windows systems come with the latest C# runtime environment and no Java environment.
Well, yes. You can download A JVM for IE (you know, the web browser used by most people, you know why). Of course it's based on the old Java 1 AWT stuff, and anything newer will run really slow.
Well, yes. You can also download the latest Sun Java runtime for standalone apps (or if you're a Mozilla user), but it won't work in IE.
Do you think this is really competition?
And by the way, you can bet any server side components used in any C# enterprise configuration will be Windows only. And for all the talk of openness, you can bet portability will extend to Windows on Intel and Windows on ARM (maybe Mac).
So, it looks like all the Java crowd's got left to run on is some pretty good, truely portable technology and some very valid distrust of Microsoft.
But MS's thumb's going to be pressing as hard as it can on the scale. That is, unless the Judge evaluating the DOJ settlement has *anything* on the ball.
> The whole problem with ESR and RMS is they're preaching a religion when all we want are tools and options to get our jobs done.
> Now, If you can explain the *REAL* benefits of a *SPECIFIC* Open Source tool,...
If there's any 'religion' involved here, it's the current USA 'religion' of free markets, and the belief that competition is inherently good.
Rants against Microsoft are essentially rants against their practicies and the laws they've broken to monopolize the computer industry.
The main reason people are looking to Open Source to save the day is that in today's grossly distorted marketplace, the only model that can compete with endless Monopoly leveraging is free software.
Back when it was still possible to compete, companies like WordPerfect did a perfectly good job of providing people with the tools they needed. And charging for them. But today's ill-gotten 'network effects' render all other comparably-priced office software uncompetitive. That changes some when the price is too good to overlook. But even then it's hard, because desktop Windows stuff is not all that expensive.
Still, if you care about competition and the benefits it will provide, you've got to support Open Source, because, face it, there's no other game in town.
So if ESR and RMS resort to wishfull cheerleading and excessive MS bashing, look at that as a reflection of how frustrating it is to try to survive in this distorted market rather than resort to branding them as commies or whatever.
You may find them embarrasing, but that does not make them any less heroic.
Re:"Netscape-style plug-in modules" - HUH?
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 1
No, No, No!
Acrobat is a plug-in whether the document opens 'in the browser' or not.
The issue here is whether the plugin API Acrobat is coded to is the Netscape plugin API or ActiveX.
MS got rid of NS plugins for no other reason than to attempt to limit the number of plugins available for Netscape. Just like they included it in the first place in order to make sure there *were* plugins available for IE when it was starting out.
The difference is that Netscape and the NS plugin API are cross-platform, while in the case of IE, "monopoly is Job 1".
Netscape 4 did not suck. It was much better than IE3 and 4, which were its contemporaries.
You can argue all you want about why Netscape didn't 'keep up'. The rewrite that has become today's Mozilla took a long time, no question. But it was done by a company that had already been denied any way to make money off of the product.
Considering that the parent company, AOL, was contractually prohibited from pushing Netscape as part of it's ISP package, the slow and (overly?) ambitions Mozilla project may have made sense.
Not to you and I, maybe. But with the monopoly dynamics in play, there was little chance that anybody but us die-hards would be using Netscape regardless of how good it was. Mozilla's pretty good right now, but it still isn't widely used. Compaq's still prohibited from setting it up as the default browser, even if they wanted to.
And from AOL's point of view, it might make more sense to lose that impossible battle, and then come back fighting once the courts have addressed the criminality involved.
So, yes. AOL may be guilty of a bit of cynicism, but that doesn't make Microsoft's actions any more defensible. Netscape was wronged, damaged, and deserves to be compensated.
Ever since Sun bought Cobalt, we've heard less and less about their product line.
Initially, it was assumed Sun would (try to) switch these server appliances to run Solaris, but with the recent announcement that Solaris was going to drop support for X86 boxes, this seems less likely.
So, what ARE Sun's plans for Cobalt? They can still serve the very large market for file/print/firewall appliances without harming Sun's big iron. And file/print servers without per-seat charges are just what it would take to blunt the Microsoft 'bottom-up' push into the server space. So why so little noise?
Slashdot Mirror
These things aren't being sold in Wal-Mart stores. They're only available online.
Maybe the target market is businesses that want to run Sun JD (or other Linux distro) and aren't big enough to get Dell to sell them PC's without Windows.
There are enough *real* Linux customers out there that are not being served by the majors. Could this be Wal-Mart's way of going after Dell in the small business market that they've owned for too long now?
Duh...
Microsoft's next big upgrade is going to be timed so that it comes out as soon after the 3-year DOJ wrist slap expires as they can possibly throw together a criitical mass of new lock-in mechanisms.
It'll then take another 3 years (and a new Administration) to bring the next antitrust suit, and another 3 years to win it.
Customers will buy Longhorn for the same reason they've bought all other Windows systems. It will come on all new PC's, it'll break compatibility with older versions, and eventually, it'll get to be too much of a hassle NOT to upgrade.
So what else is new?
>>The preprocessor now accepts directives within macro arguments. It processes them just as if they had not been within macro arguments.
The separate ISO and traditional preprocessors have been completely removed. The front-end handles either type of preprocessed output if necessary.
This quote below makes me hopeful.
I've had trouble with this macro in gcc:
#define TRIGGER_PUSHBUTTON(c)
((PUSHBUTTON16) | 'c')
gcc doesn't like having the macro add the quotes around the character argument. Only works if you to leave the quotes out of the macro definition and require them in the macro argument.
But I have a lot of code written on AIX that uses this macro (and others like it). Porting to linux requires 'fixing' all the occurrances.
Anybody know if this applies?
Assuming they have specific examples of infringement, they must be witholding the specifics because it's small and/or easily removed/replaced stuff.
If SCO were talking about serious structural things, and were to make them public, maybe we all wouldn't be so mad at them. As it is, people are talking about boycotting all SCO products.
Then again, from the sound of the SCO interview, it looks like they're going to try to make the case that cloning unix is in and of itself a theft of IP. A big gamble there, but if it works, well, bye-bye Linux.
So they're either hoping for an ideological judge to come down on their side or just that the trial will drag on long enough to scare the marketplace away from Linux. If that happens, and RedHat goes down, then SCO might stand a chance of surviving when it's all over. But more likely, Microsoft would wade into the vaccuum and SCO loses anyway.
Perhaps the BSD license would be more 'fair' to everybody, but there's a difference between starting up a new government project and contributing enhancements to an existing project.
This law prevents Government agencies from contributing to existing GPL projects. The Government can't just waltz in and say "if you want our enhancements, you have to relicense your code".
So, exactly who is it 'fair' to when you disallow the Government to contribute to, say, Linux or Mozilla, etc.
Maybe various GPL projects should switch to dual licensing. Keep the code GPL'd, but make it available for a (large) fee under a license that allows incorporation into closed-source projects but disallows changes. All GPL'd enhancements become immediately available to the closed-source guys too, but they can't 'embrace and extend'.
It would be quite interesting to find out just how eager the closed-source guys would be to get their hands on the code if they can't use it to exclude others.
The scrolling behavior of the arrow and page up/down keys seems to have changed too.
Used to be able to simply scroll through the page with these keys (nicer than having to keep a hand on the mouse while reading).
Now these keys seem to behave differently depending on where you are within a page. Sometimes it seems to move a 'paragraph' at a time. Sometimes a line at a time. Sometimes scrolls from the 'banner' section at the top directly to the bottom with 1 down-arrow.
What's up with this, and can I disable it without losing type-ahead find?
I did a little playing around with wxWindows and QT about a year ago with an eye toward portint a Windows app to the Macintosh (yes, Linux would be nice, but try telling that to the bosses - and the app runs fine under wine already).
Anyway, found that the QT signals/slots thing was really nice, but wxWindows was plenty easy to use, and its messaging system was more 'familiar' to somebody porting from Windows.
But. The whole point was to get Mac support. WxMac was supposed to work under OS9 and OSX. So far, so good (QT3 is OSX only). But it seems to get very little attention. Strange for a project whose claims of portability are its main attraction.
I've periodically checked out the wxWindows web site, and the Mac version is less and less prominent. Does anybody know if wxWindows' Mac support is coming along? Here to stay?
Just loaded up MDK9.0, and beyond the problem-free install, it looks not much different than my 8.2 system (with KDE3.0 loaded).
That's a problem, because KDE3 loads VERY slowly. Much worse than KDE2. Takes minutes on my PII-233 (192MB) to put up the splash screen. So much for the "Linux works great on old hardware" argument.
I tried the GNOME setup in MDK9.0 and it's actually pretty fast - even Nautilus. While I like KDE better than GNOME, I'm considering using GNOME for the time being because of the startup time.
So what happened to preload patches, etc? Is this being addressed, or will KDE continue to be slow until the linker gets a major overhaul?
Assuming there are enough applications that *need* the power of Oracle to run so that this wouldn't be suicidal, ...
Ellison ought to consider an Oracle-supported distro of Postgres. Put in the work to make porting between Oracle and Postgres trivial and then position Postgres as the low-end Oracle offering.
If this pulls more MSSQL deployments into the Oracle camp than the number of Oracle deployments it pushes to Postgres, it could be a net win for Oracle and OSS.
And if it enables Oracle's own enterprise apps to scale down in price to appeal to a broader audience, it could be a big win for Oracle.
I believe they're actually making StarOffice free for educational use.
Contrast that to Microsoft which makes a 'donation' at list price and writes it off on their taxes, for a net gain.
Even if Sun is going the 'donation' route, the list price is only $70, so the exploit's not so nasty.
Okay, I'll bite.
Donating software and taking a big tax break probably has a negative cost to Microsoft. At the same time, they can prevent adoption of rival software, and if they keep it up long enough (they hope) kill said rival.
Then, finally, they have a new 'market' that has 'chosen' to pay for Microsoft software in the future.
May (here's hoping) not work out that way, but that's definitely the play.
The DOJ's hand-slap has them forced (with loopholes, of course) to release specs for 3 years.
So, you're not going to see anything new from Microsoft until they can obscure it and break compatibility with any competitive software that has emerged in that time frame.
And then things'll get worse even than today, and eventually the Bush ass-lickers will be gone, and there'll be another antitrust suit. and maybe -just maybe- you'll get some competition. Of course Sun will have long since given up on funding OpenOffice. RedHat might still be hanging on in the server space...
I too was appalled to see the
"This game will not work on unix or Macintosh systems"
footnote on games.yahoo.com (for the fabulous 'twisttext' game).
But I tried it under Linux, and (once I got the latest JVM installed), it worked fine.
Go figure.
I know IBM/Motorola haven't kept up in the MHz race, but I was under the impression that the PowerPC architecture was pretty nice and had plenty of headroom for growth.
Is that not true? Only IBM makes the 64-bit version, and only in thier pricy RS/6000's, but in theory at least...
As for the Alpha, I tried to port my application to Alpha when it first came out, and there was a problem. It seems the Alpha processor could not access memory at the byte level. All byte writes had to merge the byte in question into a 64-bit word to write back into memory. PowerPC has no such problem.
Not the worst thing in the world until you have an application that stores byte-aligned data in shared memory. Since I didn't want to have to use a mutex every time I accessed this shared memory area (which was constantly), I gave up on Alpha. Was I wrong?
-Rob
For a decent sysadm, the differences between various unices should be pretty easy to manage, once they get the hang of the new system.
Bug if you are developing your own software using a non-portable language (i.e. C or C++) it could get to be a hassle.
Sysadm training is a one-time thing.
Your software development/test/release cycle is recurring, and having to compile/test/release for multiple targets will complicate things from now on.
It's not even the issue of dealing with OS differences at the programmer level (although that too is not insignificant). It's having to keep multiple test beds in sync, control releases so the right versions go to the right machines, etc.
2 targets might not be too bad, and if your 2nd unix is one of the free ones, it might be worth it for the savings.
The good news is there are a few advantages to be had from going through the porting process.
Certain bugs that don't cause problems on one architecture (and so are not detected) are likely to cause problems on the other. That's a good thing.
Also, regular porting makes sure that you're dealing correctly with architecture-specific issues. If you find you NEED to switch platforms in the future, it'd be much harder if you weren't going through this process all along.
> Spokesman Jon Murchinson said Microsoft has been talking about how to allow open-source and proprietary software to coexist. "Our goal is to resolve difficult issues that are driving a wedge between the commercial and free software models," he said.
Ummm... How about a native Linux port of MS Office?
Lets see. The owner of the Monopoly desktop OS and Monopoly desktop office suite (which requires the Monopoly desktop OS, which contains components that prefer to work with that owner's not-quite-monopoly server systems) wants to talk about coexisting with free software.
Just what role do they plan to 'let' free software play?
You are either a 1) liberal that believes in a finite amount of money. 2) Never taken econ classes. The latter is forgivable, the former isn't. :)
What does being a liberal have to do with 'believing in a finite amount of money'? I swear, some of you young'ns have been so brainwashed with this 'the L-word' bullshit, it's scary.
Despite what the Republicans would have you believe, liberalism is not communism. It may involve a slightly different definition of 'equality of opportunity' than the conservative or libertarian sets might like, and it definitely does not stand for corporations over individuals, but it's not the boogey man either.
So, what do you think of the GPL?
Is it FUD to be concerned that this will essentially require anyone desiring to do business online with the Federal governmet to run Windows on their computers?
There's Fear alright, but not much Uncertainty or Doubt.
Whatever you think about the Government collecting info, they should certainly not do it in such a way as to mandate Windows on every desktop. You see, the Liberty Alliance really is about something other than a 'me too' response by Sun, AOL, etc.
Well, Mozilla 1.0's a hell of a lot better than the crap that was IE3 when they started using that.
Competition's fine -- as long as you have real competition.
Let's see. I'ts 2003. All Windows systems come with the latest C# runtime environment and no Java environment.
Well, yes. You can download A JVM for IE (you know, the web browser used by most people, you know why). Of course it's based on the old Java 1 AWT stuff, and anything newer will run really slow.
Well, yes. You can also download the latest Sun Java runtime for standalone apps (or if you're a Mozilla user), but it won't work in IE.
Do you think this is really competition?
And by the way, you can bet any server side components used in any C# enterprise configuration will be Windows only. And for all the talk of openness, you can bet portability will extend to Windows on Intel and Windows on ARM (maybe Mac).
So, it looks like all the Java crowd's got left to run on is some pretty good, truely portable technology and some very valid distrust of Microsoft.
But MS's thumb's going to be pressing as hard as it can on the scale. That is, unless the Judge evaluating the DOJ settlement has *anything* on the ball.
> The whole problem with ESR and RMS is they're preaching a religion when all we want are tools and options to get our jobs done.
> Now, If you can explain the *REAL* benefits of a *SPECIFIC* Open Source tool,...
If there's any 'religion' involved here, it's the current USA 'religion' of free markets, and the belief that competition is inherently good.
Rants against Microsoft are essentially rants against their practicies and the laws they've broken to monopolize the computer industry.
The main reason people are looking to Open Source to save the day is that in today's grossly distorted marketplace, the only model that can compete with endless Monopoly leveraging is free software.
Back when it was still possible to compete, companies like WordPerfect did a perfectly good job of providing people with the tools they needed. And charging for them. But today's ill-gotten 'network effects' render all other comparably-priced office software uncompetitive. That changes some when the price is too good to overlook. But even then it's hard, because desktop Windows stuff is not all that expensive.
Still, if you care about competition and the benefits it will provide, you've got to support Open Source, because, face it, there's no other game in town.
So if ESR and RMS resort to wishfull cheerleading and excessive MS bashing, look at that as a reflection of how frustrating it is to try to survive in this distorted market rather than resort to branding them as commies or whatever.
You may find them embarrasing, but that does not make them any less heroic.
No, No, No!
Acrobat is a plug-in whether the document opens 'in the browser' or not.
The issue here is whether the plugin API Acrobat is coded to is the Netscape plugin API or ActiveX.
MS got rid of NS plugins for no other reason than to attempt to limit the number of plugins available for Netscape. Just like they included it in the first place in order to make sure there *were* plugins available for IE when it was starting out.
The difference is that Netscape and the NS plugin API are cross-platform, while in the case of IE, "monopoly is Job 1".
And the WINE analogy is just plain wrong.
Netscape 4 did not suck. It was much better than IE3 and 4, which were its contemporaries.
You can argue all you want about why Netscape didn't 'keep up'. The rewrite that has become today's Mozilla took a long time, no question. But it was done by a company that had already been denied any way to make money off of the product.
Considering that the parent company, AOL, was contractually prohibited from pushing Netscape as part of it's ISP package, the slow and (overly?) ambitions Mozilla project may have made sense.
Not to you and I, maybe. But with the monopoly dynamics in play, there was little chance that anybody but us die-hards would be using Netscape regardless of how good it was. Mozilla's pretty good right now, but it still isn't widely used. Compaq's still prohibited from setting it up as the default browser, even if they wanted to.
And from AOL's point of view, it might make more sense to lose that impossible battle, and then come back fighting once the courts have addressed the criminality involved.
So, yes. AOL may be guilty of a bit of cynicism, but that doesn't make Microsoft's actions any more defensible. Netscape was wronged, damaged, and deserves to be compensated.
Ever since Sun bought Cobalt, we've heard less and less about their product line.
Initially, it was assumed Sun would (try to) switch these server appliances to run Solaris, but with the recent announcement that Solaris was going to drop support for X86 boxes, this seems less likely.
So, what ARE Sun's plans for Cobalt? They can still serve the very large market for file/print/firewall appliances without harming Sun's big iron. And file/print servers without per-seat charges are just what it would take to blunt the Microsoft 'bottom-up' push into the server space. So why so little noise?