Don't know if this is true or not, but it seems like only a matter of when.
So do you think it will take Microsoft ultimately leveraging their monopoly to cannibalize the entire PC (or home PC anyway) industry to finally teach their hardcore supporters at Dell, Compaq, HP, etc. who they're working with?
There's not much these guys can do to prevent it at this point, but backing such monopoly-extenders as, say, the PocketPC can only help to make this kind of coup more likely.
Do you think that interoperability is (or can/should be) the norm for software?
In the unix world, it was always assumed that there would be multiple flavors of unix, if only to accommodate multiple hardware architectures. From that grew the assumption that interoperability between systems was a worthy persuit.
The 'killer apps' of the internet (email and www) are marvels of interoperability, and the realities of a networked world are making interoperability more and more important.
It seems that Microsoft's approach to interoperability is for everybody to be running the same software. Only their huge market share makes this even remotely feasible.
So...
How important do you think software interoperability is?
Should it be a goal in application design as well as communications and infrastructure?
Can Microsoft be convinced to adopt these goals, and if not, can they be achieved?
Do you think the government should 'encourage' movement toward interoperability?
Microsoft's business plan of 'planned obsolesence' combined with ever-increasing hardware requirements may have inadvertently contributed to cheap PC's having enough power to run a real OS.
And having a real OS (i.e. Linux) available for free for those millions of boxes sure provided a shot in the arm for the already long established open source movement.
But spawning open source was the last thing on Gates' mind.
Does this mean we'll now see the X-Windows version of StarOffice for OSX soon?
Don't see why Apple should mind.
These days you see as many apps that have Win32 and X-Windows versions as you used to see that had Win32 and Mac versions. If X-windows apps can (mostly) seemlessly integrate with native Mac apps, that can only be good, right?
Unless Apple wants to force developers to code to their API's only. But it's kind of too late in the game for that.
As stated ad infinitum above, this is a pure stalling tactic.
Which leads me to guess that they thought there was a good chance of an XP injunction being issued. Why else take the chance of having the ruling upheld by the Supreme Court?
My guess is the MS is betting that no judge would have the balls to slap an injuction on XP while we're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether to hear the case. Then they're betting that the S.C. won't weigh in until after XP goes into production, and that no judge would slap an injuction on XP once all those bucks start getting spent (burning CD's, OEM's getting ready to release, etc.).
Well SOMEBODY out there had better get some balls... FAST. I say, no XP until I can get a service pack on Win95/98 to remove all that IE stuff from memory....for starters.
If it had been otherwise, it would never have become ubiquitous, and these people would not now be bemoaning that they can't make money off of it. They never would have tried.
So now they want to change the rules. Typical, maybe even understandable. But I don't think the commie aspects of the internet are what caused the dot-coms to self destruct. They just tried to bait-and-switch with a lot of free stuff and then stupidly assumed people would get hooked enough to start paying.
Is Java 1.2 included by default in any browser today?
It's my impression that one of the goals of IE was to pollute Java with MS-specific extensions, and if that wasn't possible, to hold it back at a primitive level so that people will not like it.
So, once again. What does a developer have to do to deploy a Java 1.2 app?
I assume that the swing stuff can be downloaded in byte-code form and run that way, but performance would have to be nowhere near a native implementation.
Take a second and try to remember the word processing market. The spreadsheet market. The browser market. Etc.
Whether or not Microsoft manages to achieve dominance in a particular market, the initial dynamic whenever they've decided that a product category is successful (or threatening) enough for them to copy.
Overnight, a healthy, competitive market gets narrowed down to 2 choices, MS and the current market leader. From there, depending on how much 'leveraging' MS does, it's a slow war of attrition.
So I guess Sony, as the current champ, gets to battle it out with xbox, and Sega and Nintendo are just caught in the crossfire. So much for 'healthy' competition.
Now if Mozilla would do a mac port of QT...
on
QT Mozilla Port
·
· Score: 1
Your point is well taken. The single most promising aspect of Mozilla is its portability.
Hopefully, they've done a good enough job of abstracting the native toolkit that ports are relatively easy. I read recently that IBM has done an OS/2 port, so maybe it's true.
Then again, XUL, while interesting seems to be the main performance bottleneck in Mozilla. I actually use Mozilla on my Windows machine at work (128MB), where after the long startup, it works fine.
Still, with a mac port of QT, you could have konqueror on unix, windows and mac. Plus, you'd get Koffice, etc. I know that QT wasn't GPL'd when Mozilla was getting started either (neither was Mozilla itself), so that wasn't an option at the time. But these days, a QT (or GTK+, I'm not gonna play favorites) port to the mac would solve the 'mainstream' problem for potential Linux developers while providing (apparently) a great toolkit for building a browser.
Is there a tax credit availble for commercial software developers who decide to make their formerly proprietary code open source?
Something like a charitable deduction?
Seems like that might be an incentive that would get some companies to release code that's no longer a profit center to the public. Of course it could result in a lot of useless crap getting open sourced, but there could be some good stuff too.
Assuming that MS isn't doing any of this.NET stuff for the 'common good'. Now where do you think is it taking them (dragging us)? And why?
Running apps over the cloud is not a new idea. It's what the Java folks had in mind, and might have built had MS not decided to marginalize it (by pushing IE with outdata Java on the world, and by hobbling Netscape, thereby making sure that noone else was out there that could get the job done).
So why do they want to do it? Maybe because they're realizing that with free competition getting better all the time, you can't keep selling apps indefinitely. But you probably can sell services indefinitely.
And then there's the 'platform'. Once they get the world converted over to.NET (stragglers can use Windows Terminal Server to support their 'legacy' Windows code), what's left of the PC. Why it's a network computer. Just like the Java folks wanted. But better. Then can now close down the platform and turn it into a true appliance.
Of course, that means you can't run Linux or BSD on it, but who wants that anyway. Oh, you do? Maybe that's the point. No free OS's, no place to run those free apps, no more competition.
So anybody out there interested in the.NET approach, use Java instead. They don't HAVE to succeed, you know.
Interix is an interesting product that, since being acquired by Microsoft, has recently become much cheaper. So far, so good...
Unfortunately, the Microsoft marketing on this product is 'a great way to ease your transition from Unix to Windows'. Having been down the 'From one source to many' road with the Win32 cross-development kit for the Macintosh, I am reluctant to trust Microsoft enough to use this product.
To those of us who would like to use Interix to allow us to support our Unix applications on NT/W2K as 'just another flavor of unix', can you give us definite assurance 'from the top' that this product will be supported indefinitely?
Is the GUI for this thing based on X-windows, or is it proprietary Apple stuff. In other words, did they implement the Mac API's on top of X or replace X altogether? If X is in the mix, then can you run regular unix/linux apps along side the Mac stuff?
Since what we're talking about here is Windows, it might make sense to redefine the question.
By your definition of a shell, I'd think that what the casual observer thinks of as Windows (the icons and taskbar, etc.) is not an OS at all, but a shell. In the DOS/Win9x world, that's painfully obvious, but it applies to NT as well.
So, what besides program lanuching, file copying, etc is legitimately part of a shell?
This may sound a little drastic, but it's the only way I can think of to enforce open standards for web sites.
There's lots of talk in government these days about incentives to help the web live up to its (over-hyped) promise as the mall of the future. Well, why not condition some of those incentives (like the sales tax moratorium, etc.) on use of open protocols on all web pages associated with a site. New client-side standards can be used if and only if they are open source (or maybe just fully documented).
It's not really as drastic as it sounds. If the web's going to replace TV, telephones, etc. like they all claim, then why not have the government enforce the standards that are used? Imagine the chaos if TV networks had been allowed to tweak the standards.
A lot of people out there have been convinced (mostly by the Republicans since Reagan) that any government involvement in any kind of marketplace is a recipe for disaster. I don't think that's really the case. Anyway, my proposal doesn't really interfere with the creativity of the marketplace. All it insists on is that any new internet standard that is to be rewarded by government tax incentives must be available on all client platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
That's good news.
Cobalt defined the 'server appliance' market, and Linux made it possible. Sun's hints at switching it to Solaris only got in the way.
Now if only they'd try to sell the damn things. Has anybody ever seen a post-Sun Cobalt ad?
Don't know if this is true or not, but it seems like only a matter of when.
So do you think it will take Microsoft ultimately leveraging their monopoly to cannibalize the entire PC (or home PC anyway) industry to finally teach their hardcore supporters at Dell, Compaq, HP, etc. who they're working with?
There's not much these guys can do to prevent it at this point, but backing such monopoly-extenders as, say, the PocketPC can only help to make this kind of coup more likely.
Do you think that interoperability is (or can/should be) the norm for software?
In the unix world, it was always assumed that there would be multiple flavors of unix, if only to accommodate multiple hardware architectures. From that grew the assumption that interoperability between systems was a worthy persuit.
The 'killer apps' of the internet (email and www) are marvels of interoperability, and the realities of a networked world are making interoperability more and more important.
It seems that Microsoft's approach to interoperability is for everybody to be running the same software. Only their huge market share makes this even remotely feasible.
So...
How important do you think software interoperability is?
Should it be a goal in application design as well as communications and infrastructure?
Can Microsoft be convinced to adopt these goals, and if not, can they be achieved?
Do you think the government should 'encourage' movement toward interoperability?
Even using SSH, users with valid accounts can use the login command to exploit this once they're SSH'd in.
SSH helps, but isn't a complete solution to command-line vulnerabilities.
Microsoft's business plan of 'planned obsolesence' combined with ever-increasing hardware requirements may have inadvertently contributed to cheap PC's having enough power to run a real OS.
And having a real OS (i.e. Linux) available for free for those millions of boxes sure provided a shot in the arm for the already long established open source movement.
But spawning open source was the last thing on Gates' mind.
Does this mean we'll now see the X-Windows version of StarOffice for OSX soon?
Don't see why Apple should mind.
These days you see as many apps that have Win32 and X-Windows versions as you used to see that had Win32 and Mac versions. If X-windows apps can (mostly) seemlessly integrate with native Mac apps, that can only be good, right?
Unless Apple wants to force developers to code to their API's only. But it's kind of too late in the game for that.
Can't a Windows-based AOL user just use AOL as an ISP without using the AOL environment (with ads) at all?
That's what I do for Compuserve, and it works fine on Windows and Linux.
So, why should AOL care if you do the same thing with the AOL service. If all you want's the connection, at least they've got you as a customer.
Or are you suggesting that, now that the protocol's been broken, somebody's going to reverse engineer the rest of AOL's shell? Why?
As stated ad infinitum above, this is a pure stalling tactic.
...for starters.
Which leads me to guess that they thought there was a good chance of an XP injunction being issued. Why else take the chance of having the ruling upheld by the Supreme Court?
My guess is the MS is betting that no judge would have the balls to slap an injuction on XP while we're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether to hear the case. Then they're betting that the S.C. won't weigh in until after XP goes into production, and that no judge would slap an injuction on XP once all those bucks start getting spent (burning CD's, OEM's getting ready to release, etc.).
Well SOMEBODY out there had better get some balls... FAST. I say, no XP until I can get a service pack on Win95/98 to remove all that IE stuff from memory.
The internet owes its popularity to its openness.
If it had been otherwise, it would never have become ubiquitous, and these people would not now be bemoaning that they can't make money off of it. They never would have tried.
So now they want to change the rules. Typical, maybe even understandable. But I don't think the commie aspects of the internet are what caused the dot-coms to self destruct. They just tried to bait-and-switch with a lot of free stuff and then stupidly assumed people would get hooked enough to start paying.
Is Java 1.2 included by default in any browser today?
It's my impression that one of the goals of IE was to pollute Java with MS-specific extensions, and if that wasn't possible, to hold it back at a primitive level so that people will not like it.
So, once again. What does a developer have to do to deploy a Java 1.2 app?
I assume that the swing stuff can be downloaded in byte-code form and run that way, but performance would have to be nowhere near a native implementation.
Sega, Nintendo, ...
Take a second and try to remember the word processing market. The spreadsheet market. The browser market. Etc.
Whether or not Microsoft manages to achieve dominance in a particular market, the initial dynamic whenever they've decided that a product category is successful (or threatening) enough for them to copy.
Overnight, a healthy, competitive market gets narrowed down to 2 choices, MS and the current market leader. From there, depending on how much 'leveraging' MS does, it's a slow war of attrition.
So I guess Sony, as the current champ, gets to battle it out with xbox, and Sega and Nintendo are just caught in the crossfire. So much for 'healthy' competition.
Your point is well taken. The single most promising aspect of Mozilla is its portability.
Hopefully, they've done a good enough job of abstracting the native toolkit that ports are relatively easy. I read recently that IBM has done an OS/2 port, so maybe it's true.
Then again, XUL, while interesting seems to be the main performance bottleneck in Mozilla. I actually use Mozilla on my Windows machine at work (128MB), where after the long startup, it works fine.
Still, with a mac port of QT, you could have konqueror on unix, windows and mac. Plus, you'd get Koffice, etc. I know that QT wasn't GPL'd when Mozilla was getting started either (neither was Mozilla itself), so that wasn't an option at the time. But these days, a QT (or GTK+, I'm not gonna play favorites) port to the mac would solve the 'mainstream' problem for potential Linux developers while providing (apparently) a great toolkit for building a browser.
Is there a tax credit availble for commercial software developers who decide to make their formerly proprietary code open source?
Something like a charitable deduction?
Seems like that might be an incentive that would get some companies to release code that's no longer a profit center to the public. Of course it could result in a lot of useless crap getting open sourced, but there could be some good stuff too.
Assuming that MS isn't doing any of this .NET stuff for the 'common good'. Now where do you think is it taking them (dragging us)? And why?
.NET (stragglers can use Windows Terminal Server to support their 'legacy' Windows code), what's left of the PC. Why it's a network computer. Just like the Java folks wanted. But better. Then can now close down the platform and turn it into a true appliance.
.NET approach, use Java instead. They don't HAVE to succeed, you know.
Running apps over the cloud is not a new idea. It's what the Java folks had in mind, and might have built had MS not decided to marginalize it (by pushing IE with outdata Java on the world, and by hobbling Netscape, thereby making sure that noone else was out there that could get the job done).
So why do they want to do it? Maybe because they're realizing that with free competition getting better all the time, you can't keep selling apps indefinitely. But you probably can sell services indefinitely.
And then there's the 'platform'. Once they get the world converted over to
Of course, that means you can't run Linux or BSD on it, but who wants that anyway. Oh, you do? Maybe that's the point. No free OS's, no place to run those free apps, no more competition.
So anybody out there interested in the
Interix is an interesting product that, since being acquired by Microsoft, has recently become much cheaper. So far, so good...
Unfortunately, the Microsoft marketing on this product is 'a great way to ease your transition from Unix to Windows'. Having been down the 'From one source to many' road with the Win32 cross-development kit for the Macintosh, I am reluctant to trust Microsoft enough to use this product.
To those of us who would like to use Interix to allow us to support our Unix applications on NT/W2K as 'just another flavor of unix', can you give us definite assurance 'from the top' that this product will be supported indefinitely?
Any chance of getting support for 'mouse over' expansion of long columns into the thing.
That was my favorite thing about NS4's mail and news app.
Is the GUI for this thing based on X-windows, or is it proprietary Apple stuff.
In other words, did they implement the Mac API's on top of X or replace X altogether?
If X is in the mix, then can you run regular unix/linux apps along side the Mac stuff?
Since what we're talking about here is Windows, it might make sense to redefine the question.
By your definition of a shell, I'd think that what the casual observer thinks of as Windows (the icons and taskbar, etc.) is not an OS at all, but a shell. In the DOS/Win9x world, that's painfully obvious, but it applies to NT as well.
So, what besides program lanuching, file copying, etc is legitimately part of a shell?
This may sound a little drastic, but it's the only way I can think of to enforce open standards for web sites.
There's lots of talk in government these days about incentives to help the web live up to its (over-hyped) promise as the mall of the future. Well, why not condition some of those incentives (like the sales tax moratorium, etc.) on use of open protocols on all web pages associated with a site. New client-side standards can be used if and only if they are open source (or maybe just fully documented).
It's not really as drastic as it sounds. If the web's going to replace TV, telephones, etc. like they all claim, then why not have the government enforce the standards that are used? Imagine the chaos if TV networks had been allowed to tweak the standards.
A lot of people out there have been convinced (mostly by the Republicans since Reagan) that any government involvement in any kind of marketplace is a recipe for disaster. I don't think that's really the case. Anyway, my proposal doesn't really interfere with the creativity of the marketplace. All it insists on is that any new internet standard that is to be rewarded by government tax incentives must be available on all client platforms.
Okay. Flame away, all you government bashers.