Hate to sound like a troll, but I think everybody is blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. Every once in a while somebody needs to remind slashdot that Linux makes for a marginally useful general purpose operating system. Microsoft dominates the market because their products are better, plain and simple (unless you define better as "can run on a 386 with 4mb of RAM").
I couldn't care less about what marketting practices Microsoft uses; as far as I am concerned, let it be survival of the fittest.
Windows 98 sucked, I will grant you that, but Windows 2000/XP are fantastic operating systems. All of the Microsoft Office products do everything I could possibly want to do and then some. And above all, I consider the price of it all quite reasonable.
I have tried Linux and Star Office, etc, and quite frankly they suck compared to Microsoft products. They always lag behind in features, ease of use, and compatibility. I know it's not a popular opinion here at Slashdot, but until you give people like me a compelling reason to change, why should I? I am getting more than I need already from Microsoft for a price I consider reasonable.
I am not a blind follower of Microsoft. For the few products I actually use day to day, I generally try several different options (warez:) and then put my money into the one that I like the best. Microsoft doesn't always win, but Linux-based products NEVER seem to win. Make a better product, and my money and support is yours. Until then, it seems like spilt milk to me.
Hate to sound like a troll, but I think everybody is blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. Every once in a while somebody needs to remind slashdot that Linux makes for a marginally useful general purpose operating system. Microsoft dominates the market because their products are better, plain and simple (unless you define better as "can run on a 386 with 4mb of RAM").
I couldn't care less about what marketting practices Microsoft uses; as far as I am concerned, let it be survival of the fittest.
Windows 98 sucked, I will grant you that, but Windows 2000/XP are fantastic operating systems. All of the Microsoft Office products do everything I could possibly want to do and then some. And above all, I consider the price of it all quite reasonable.
I have tried Linux and Star Office, etc, and quite frankly they suck compared to Microsoft products. They always lag behind in features, ease of use, and compatibility. I know it's not a popular opinion here at Slashdot, but until you give people like me a compelling reason to change, why should I? I am getting more than I need already from Microsoft for a price I consider reasonable.
I am not a blind follower of Microsoft. For the few products I actually use day to day, I generally try several different options (warez:) and then put my money into the one that I like the best. Microsoft doesn't always win, but Linux-based products NEVER seem to win. Make a better product, and my money and support is yours. Until then, it seems like spilt milk to me.
You guys are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Have any of you actually read the key aspects of the patriot act? You think roaming wire taps versus fixed taps is going to change your personal freedoms at all? I suppose if you are a criminal it might make life a bit more difficult for you.
I'm not one to say that if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to these things, but you have to be a little bit pragmatic. The Patriot Act is narrowly enough focussed that it should be of little concern to law abiding citizens.
The slippery slope argument has screwed this country up on everything from reasonable gun controls to giving law enforcement a fighting chance against criminals.
There certainly needs to be a voice of opposition such that things balance out to right medium, but don't fool yourself, the ACLU clearly represents views that are too far to the left for what is good for the country. It should be called the american criminal liberties union -- call a spade a spade.
Along those same lines. Too much knowledge can take away free will. If man knew for a fact that God exists (let say once a year God went on Larry King Live), it would effectively take away our ability to choose for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. It would all be spelled out clearly, presenting you with the choice between 1) do this and get big reward 2) do this and burn in hell.
Is there really free agency when those are the two choices and the results are irrefutable (after all, God said so on CNN).
I am religious, and it is my belief that veil that prevents us from having a perfect knowledge of God is put there by design for our own good, and not amount of searching will ever be able to pierce it.
Since there is no viable alternative out there for the average joe-user, this just means the Norwegian government will be paying higher licensing fees (ie. they won't get the bulk-discount bargain they have been getting for agreeing to put it on all desktops), and M$ will be making more money.
Sure, mark me as a troll,/. isn't interested in hearing points of view that aren't pro-linux...
Not that I am defending Microsoft's not following the standards, but that is really a secondary issue at this point. Rather than stubbornly sit on their principles and go out of business, the other browser makers would be wise to make their browsers compatible with all the sites, including the ones that use various Microsoft extensions.
Microsoft was able to hijack the standards in the first place because they made a better browser and had a more effective marketting 'scheme'. The market leader has always be in the position to set the standards and extend them.
When Microsoft was behind, they ended up making their product compatible with the market leader at the time (netscape), despite there being ways in which netscape didn't follow the standards as well. Microsoft knew that to survive in the market, they had to swallow their pride and follow the beat of a different drummer for a while.
Now, it may be blasphemy to say this on slashdot, but perhaps you guys could learn a thing or two from Microsoft after all.
You argument almost makes my point. Nintendo has a virtual monopoly on hand-held games, and palm-os a virtual monopoly on PDA's. In these cases, Microsoft is actually the good guy, trying to break up other people's monopolies. If they do this to try and prevent Nintendo and Palm from moving into other markets that Microsoft competes in (or dominates), then so be it...again, this seems perfectly fair to me.
A few issues here. Any states that opt out of the settlement are ultimately going to just end up having to go along with a court imposed deal. Whether they like it or not, that deal is most likely to be structured almost identical to the federal settlement. The bottom line, the hold-out states aren't going to get a whole lot more than the current settlement agreement.
Second, if CA does prevail in winning $3b from Microsoft (for example), then all Microsoft is going to do is pass those costs on to consumers. They will call it the "California-tax" and charge software dealers in California an extra $5 to purchase Windows. This cost will be passed on to the consumer. Financial penalties in this situation serve only to punish the people you are trying to protect.
Finally, I have seen some people talk direct and indirect consumers as reason for some states going along. They assert that in some states only Dell and Compaq and others have standing in anti-trust cases. That is simply not the case. Anti-trust laws are designed to protect the consumer, not protect the competition. Competitors are not even in-line to receive awards from this case, nor will they ever be, nor should they be.
Having read the actual terms, I think this is merely a slap on the wrist for Microsoft. Then again, a slap on the wrist is really all they deserved. The purpose of this case was not so much to punish Microsoft for past wrongs, but to try to ensure that they don't continue to abuse their OS monopoly position.
Remember, having a monopoly is not illegal (it's the goal of every business). The fact that the software industry has a strong tendency toward standardizing on one platform (be it OS or office-suite) isn't the fault of Microsoft. After all WordPerfect had a monopoly in word processors until Microsoft took that over. There is not room in the software market for two competitors generally, because standardization is critical. Employees move from job to job and it costs too much money to keep retraining them on different software systems. Everybody is moving to Microsoft Word because the employees they hire already know it from their last job. It's a snowball effect, and it applies to all aspects of end-user software from the OS to office-applications.
If Microsoft goes by the spirit of the agreement instead of trying to find every little loophole to get around it, then I think justice will be done. Unlike everybody else on this forum, I actually think Microsoft will make an honest effort to follow the spirit of the agreement. Why? Because the agreement really isn't that onerous. Basically what we have here is two primary things:
1) release all the protocols/API's you actually use in your own middleware. Big deal, 99% of the stuff is already public information and the few shortcuts that Microsoft takes in their middleware don't so much prevent others from competing, but are rather more the result of a lazy Microsoft programmer taking a shortcut. Is there anything that Microsoft Word does that another competitor couldn't do if they wanted to? no. The same applies to protocols, all meaningful ones are already documented or accessible through API's.
2)Let OEMs customize Windows a bit more. Again, big deal, so now we can get AOL icons on our desktop instead of MSN icons. If Microsoft see's some third party software making significant in-roads into the OEM market, they will simply make sure their product offering is a better product. Microsoft doesn't really care if OEM's can now ship Netscape pre-installed and remove IE, why? Because only a braindead OEM would do that since IE is so much better. Likewise, what you gonna do, pre-install Corel Office? give me a break, even here in Utah where WordPerfect gave the state government free licenses to their software across the board, they are now switching over to Microsoft products. The fact is, MS products are very good products if not the best out there generally, and their OS market position has little to do with it.
So, another company is raping the linux community for free development resources and increasing their profit margins in the process, why do I not feel like celebrating? The irony in all this is that here sits the linux community cheering and saying, "yes, please rape me again, I like it". Corporate America must be absolutely loving all you software-communists. Who would have guessed that all Amazon had to do to get back on the slashdot good-list is steal their efforts and offer nothing in return.
Now we see why linux will never really take off, it's the same reason communism never really worked, you simply end up with a small number of people pulling the wagon and the rest of the people riding.
How useful is this discussion? I have never seen a slashdot story with so many posts moderated to the 4 and 5 levels... The sad thing is every single one of them favors the exact same side of the story (no backdoors). So everybody sits here preaching to the choir is that the plan? -- lame
While I agree that the genie is out of the bottle on encryption and the government better just find another way to accomplish their security goals, I also think concern for privacy is way overrated. While I may not want my neighbor next door to know how much money I make, I don't mind filling out those surveys with all my demographic information at all. I mean, what are they possibly going to do with it...I am just a number to most of these people. The same thing goes for the police.
I can safely say that I couldn't care less if the police read every email I had ever written or received. It just doesn't matter...information about me simply isn't that useful and you are a fool if you think the information about you matters one iota.
First off, I applaud slashdot for bringing up what must be a sore subject for them. After all, they have been advocating free/open-source software since inception. I realize you didn't want this to devolve into a intellectual property discussion, but how can you avoid that when you ask the question "why won't users pay?".
Perhaps when there is nothing left on the internet but IRC and a few lame-ass user-brewed sites, slashdotters will finally come to realize that the basic concept of intellectual property and the right to charge for it is fundamental to there being information in the first place.
The article suggests that compensation should be limited to distribution costs, but to believe that is to deny the obvious. The relative value of the information is not the problem at all...in every business there is a balancing act between price and volume and the goal is to optimize the profit. Personally, I would be willing to pay $10 for a Fuddruckers hamburger because they are so good and I could afford it. But I am sure Fudd's realizes that they will make more money selling them for $5 instead. The same is true of information...the content owner (that's right) needs to simply weight the money left on the table versus the volume of business they could do, and they should optimize that curve.
As I see it, there are two possible solutions, one is micropayments, but the problem with that is you often don't know if the information is worth paying for before you see it. The second, and better approach would be to have it setup like cable TV. Websites could join a conglomerate of other websites and charge for a subscription. I suspect things would consolidate fairly quickly and you could get access to thousands of great websites for one monthly subscription fee of say $10. ISP's would then negotiate better-deals and roll the cost into the cost of their service.
It's funny how the entire thing is starting to sound like AOL 5 years ago. What comes around goes around...
Why doesn't the Linux community put together a decent enough product that it can compete instead of crying that daddy-government isn't fixing their problems for them. You sound like a bunch of welfare receipients who were just told they are going to have to fend for themselves from now on.
Also, something you geeks may eventually learn (I finally learned it (the hard way) after decades of programming) is that technical-superiority != good-product. There is a lot more to making a product successful than just programming the code and you guys aren't even close to figuring that out as is evidenced by your jealous daddy-make-it-fair attitude.
You can keep your dreams of socialized software, I'd rather make companies compete for my dollars.
There is a company called SwitchPoint (www.switchpoint.net) that has ran 100mb ethernet to the entire towns of Springville and American Fork, Utah. Approximately 50000 people live in these two towns combined and have access to the service. They are in the process of expanding the service into my town right now. My parents already have the service and it appears to work very well.
Additionally, SwitchPoint has a deal going with Blockbuster to allow you to rent almost any movie over the pipe. You need a special set-top box that does it, and the movies are $4.99 each to rent.
The biggest hurdle the company has had is getting the local communities to agree to let them run the wires all over the town.
The electoral college effectively makes the vote of residents of small states worth more than the vote of residents of large states. Utah (where I live) has 3 congressmen based on our population and 2 senators, so Utah get's 5 electoral votes. A larger state might have 30 congressmen and 2 senators for 32 electoral votes.
Assuming 1 million people per congressman, in Utah my vote is worth 5/3,000,000=.000001666 whereas the larger-state resident vote is worth 32/30,000,000=.000001066.
And as somebody else mentioned, Clinton came in 3rd place in the '92 election here in Utah. There is absolutely no chance that Utah will go anything but republican this year, so it does give me the feeling that my vote isn't actually counting at all (especially since I am voting republican anyhow).
There is no doubt in my mind that voter turnout would be higher if the President were elected by direct popular vote. Also, I think if none of the candidates gets a 50% majority, then there should be a run-off election between the top 2, we never would have had to deal with a loser like Clinton (who only got 43% of the vote in '92) if we had a run-off election and a direct popular vote.
The thing that really bugs me is that whenever the name finally becomes available, odds are some company that specializes in grabbing domains (like greatdomains.com) will likely get it first.
I think they have arrangements with registrars like NSI such that they get the list of names that are going to be released before anybody else, and can then take all the ones they want.
The reason NSI is giving until the end of the billing cycle is so they can sell off large blocks of expired domains at once to these name-stealing services, saving a lot of hassles.
The whole first-come first-served policy is a load of crap, there are preferences being offered here...
The US Constitution reserves the right to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. The purpose of this is to prevent things like states from imposing tarriffs and stuff on goods coming into or out of a state. Can you imagine if each state treated import/export regulations the same way a country like the United States does with the rest of the world? It would be a total disaster; particular if I had to truck my goods all the way across the country and was subject to taxation at each port of entry.
This same constitutional clause prevents states from collecting sales tax on goods bought from another state as this would effectively be a tarriff. The states (including my home state of Utah) have done an end-run around the constitution by calling it a use-tax instead of a sales tax. In these scheme, you are taxes for using/consuming the item in the state instead of for the actual purchase.
Oddly enough this would apply to non-mail-order type things as well. The law here is that you get to reduce the use-tax rate (which is the same as the sales-tax rate) by whatever amount of sales tax you have already paid to another state. This means that if the neighboring state has no sales tax and I drive across the state line and buy it, bring it back to Utah, I am then subject to use-tax on it. Similarly, if the neighboring state has a 4% sales tax rate and Utah has a 7% sales tax rate, I have to pay a use-tax rate of 3%, regardless of how I obtained the product.
I am a huge fan of states-rights and the 10th amendment, but this just happens to be one of the areas where the Constitution is explicit. Somebody should seriously challenge these laws up to the Supreme Court as they seem very much against the spirit of the Constitution if not the letter of the Constitution.
Seems to me like Microsofts illegal activities could easily be dealt with in a less invasive manner. I believe the courts should choose the least disruptive course that will accomplish the goal. The problems we have here are several:
1) They are not only trying to solve the problem of illegal activities, but they are trying to weaken the company from doing legal business as well. The government simply feels they are too big and want them smaller. Having Microsoft obey the law is not enough for the government. This is where I start to strongly disagree with the government. The fact is that Microsoft is where they are primarily because they make pretty good or great products, and they market them well. They won the browser war because their product was better by all accounts. Similarly with their Office Suite. I will grant that they engaged in some questionable behavior that gave them a slight advantage, but I really don't think the end result would have been different had they played a bit more fairly. I really hate to see the government punishing success...why don't we just turn Windows over to the government to run?
2) The plantiffs in this case are not at all interested in what is fair or what is in the publics interest. To them, the bigger the penalty, the bigger the success. This is all about ego for people like Klien. It's a trophy to put on their wall to say that they broke up one of the largest companies in the world. It seems clear to me that there were countless other less invasive and more meaningful measures the government could have taken and didn't. It was all about having that trophy IMO...shameful really.
3) The judge was predisposed to dislike Microsoft before the trial began. Judges hate getting overturned on appeal and was no doubt reeling from being overturned on his previous decision. Clearly this whole matter should have been moved to a different venue to be fair. The government didn't have to do squat in this case, all they had to do was show up, they had the judge in their pocket. The judges predisposition was evident on several occasions along the way.
To conclude, I suspect the appeals court will order the judge to find a less invasive remedy to the relatively minor infractions that have occurred.
You're the second person who has suggested C++ is slower than C in a round about way (this is a reply to both posts). There are certainly constructs you can make in C++ that will incur a fair amount of overhead; however, remember always that C++ started out as a pre-compiler (CFront) that translated it into C.
You suggest using structures and pointers to functions to accomplish OO techniques in C. I used to do this about 12 years ago when C++ was not portable/standardized enough to use for the project I was one. But don't fool youself into thinking that you are getting better performance. The C constructs you talk about are largely the same thing that was produced by the CFront compiler in the first place.
The problem now days is that most programmers don't understand how the various features of the language they are using ultimately get implemented at the assembly level. If you use the MFC CString type (for example) as proof that C++ is slower than C you truely are missing the point. In the case of CString, you are sacraficing performance for notational and functional convienence. If you are writing a word processor, that probably isn't the best idea. If you are writing a game that rarely deals in text, it's probably worth the slight speed hit you get for the manageability.
The bottom line is that C++ will produce every bit as tight of code as C will and it will do multi-threading every bit as well as C does. Proper multithreading has a lot more to do with algorithmic design than it does the language you are using.
More often than not, C++ will actually produce faster code than C. The reason being is that few programmers will go to the hassle of setting up arrays of pointers to functions in order to accomplish the polymorphism that is often needed in a programs design. They resort to switch statements and such as the easy way out.
If you blindly put 'virtual' in front of every function cause the manual suggested it, and then wonder why the implementation of a simple GetValue() function is so slow when you marked it 'inline', then is it any wonder? A good knowledge of what is being produced at the assembly level will make you a MUCH better coder and largely if not completely eliminate any C++ performance gotchas.
I think it's unfair to compare the two languages by using test programs that are algorithmicly identical between the two languages. Any language can translate simple math and array functions into nearly equivalent assembly. The differences between the languages comes from the types of constructs that can be produced.
While I am only vaguely familiar with Java, I am a seasoned C++ programmer. My understanding is that Java doesn't support pointers. A well designed algorithm will often do things such as walk a pointer through an array instead of indexing off of it. I can't speak for everybody, but most veteran C/C++ programmers I know use pointers extensively to create optimizations in their algorithms that simply can't be simulated with references or other constructs. It's the ability to design these sorts of things that makes C++ a more powerful language.
I look at Java as little more than a C++ that has been dumbified so a Visual Basic programmer can use it. All that said, I have to agree that the vast majority of program time is spent waiting for external dependencies like SQL servers, hard drives, system calls, etc... As such, Java is likely to produce just as acceptable of programs as C++ the vast majority of the time.
Well, the judge has shown just how incompetent he is by thinking that IE should be it's own company. Clearly the judge has no clue the IE is a trivial application...little more than a user-interface really, that ought to be part of the operating system (largely replacing the traditional windows shell in this case). Microsoft didn't invent this concept of browser=windows-shell, that was Netscape's grand scheme.
Breaking up a software company is much different than breaking up a telephone company or oil-company too. Unlike the previous, there is no concept of territory to divide amoung. For the most part, all of Microsoft resides in one location...what are you going to do, have all the companies on the same campus? Make them waste 2/3 of their infrastructure over this? No, breaking up makes no sense at all, especially for the relatively minor violations they have done.
You could solve all these problem by requiring that Microsoft simply have published price schedules for all their products and an inability to discriminate on who they sell to.
Slashdot Mirror
(on topic now?, morons)
:) and then put my money into the one that I like the best. Microsoft doesn't always win, but Linux-based products NEVER seem to win. Make a better product, and my money and support is yours. Until then, it seems like spilt milk to me.
Hate to sound like a troll, but I think everybody is blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. Every once in a while somebody needs to remind slashdot that Linux makes for a marginally useful general purpose operating system. Microsoft dominates the market because their products are better, plain and simple (unless you define better as "can run on a 386 with 4mb of RAM").
I couldn't care less about what marketting practices Microsoft uses; as far as I am concerned, let it be survival of the fittest.
Windows 98 sucked, I will grant you that, but Windows 2000/XP are fantastic operating systems. All of the Microsoft Office products do everything I could possibly want to do and then some. And above all, I consider the price of it all quite reasonable.
I have tried Linux and Star Office, etc, and quite frankly they suck compared to Microsoft products. They always lag behind in features, ease of use, and compatibility. I know it's not a popular opinion here at Slashdot, but until you give people like me a compelling reason to change, why should I? I am getting more than I need already from Microsoft for a price I consider reasonable.
I am not a blind follower of Microsoft. For the few products I actually use day to day, I generally try several different options (warez
Hate to sound like a troll, but I think everybody is blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. Every once in a while somebody needs to remind slashdot that Linux makes for a marginally useful general purpose operating system. Microsoft dominates the market because their products are better, plain and simple (unless you define better as "can run on a 386 with 4mb of RAM").
:) and then put my money into the one that I like the best. Microsoft doesn't always win, but Linux-based products NEVER seem to win. Make a better product, and my money and support is yours. Until then, it seems like spilt milk to me.
I couldn't care less about what marketting practices Microsoft uses; as far as I am concerned, let it be survival of the fittest.
Windows 98 sucked, I will grant you that, but Windows 2000/XP are fantastic operating systems. All of the Microsoft Office products do everything I could possibly want to do and then some. And above all, I consider the price of it all quite reasonable.
I have tried Linux and Star Office, etc, and quite frankly they suck compared to Microsoft products. They always lag behind in features, ease of use, and compatibility. I know it's not a popular opinion here at Slashdot, but until you give people like me a compelling reason to change, why should I? I am getting more than I need already from Microsoft for a price I consider reasonable.
I am not a blind follower of Microsoft. For the few products I actually use day to day, I generally try several different options (warez
You guys are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Have any of you actually read the key aspects of the patriot act? You think roaming wire taps versus fixed taps is going to change your personal freedoms at all? I suppose if you are a criminal it might make life a bit more difficult for you.
I'm not one to say that if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to these things, but you have to be a little bit pragmatic. The Patriot Act is narrowly enough focussed that it should be of little concern to law abiding citizens.
The slippery slope argument has screwed this country up on everything from reasonable gun controls to giving law enforcement a fighting chance against criminals.
There certainly needs to be a voice of opposition such that things balance out to right medium, but don't fool yourself, the ACLU clearly represents views that are too far to the left for what is good for the country. It should be called the american criminal liberties union -- call a spade a spade.
Along those same lines. Too much knowledge can take away free will. If man knew for a fact that God exists (let say once a year God went on Larry King Live), it would effectively take away our ability to choose for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. It would all be spelled out clearly, presenting you with the choice between 1) do this and get big reward 2) do this and burn in hell.
Is there really free agency when those are the two choices and the results are irrefutable (after all, God said so on CNN).
I am religious, and it is my belief that veil that prevents us from having a perfect knowledge of God is put there by design for our own good, and not amount of searching will ever be able to pierce it.
Since there is no viable alternative out there for the average joe-user, this just means the Norwegian government will be paying higher licensing fees (ie. they won't get the bulk-discount bargain they have been getting for agreeing to put it on all desktops), and M$ will be making more money.
/. isn't interested in hearing points of view that aren't pro-linux...
Sure, mark me as a troll,
If you have an office machine or a friend with good bandwidth, just setup a VPN with 3DES and they will never have any idea what you are doing.
Not that I am defending Microsoft's not following the standards, but that is really a secondary issue at this point. Rather than stubbornly sit on their principles and go out of business, the other browser makers would be wise to make their browsers compatible with all the sites, including the ones that use various Microsoft extensions.
Microsoft was able to hijack the standards in the first place because they made a better browser and had a more effective marketting 'scheme'. The market leader has always be in the position to set the standards and extend them.
When Microsoft was behind, they ended up making their product compatible with the market leader at the time (netscape), despite there being ways in which netscape didn't follow the standards as well. Microsoft knew that to survive in the market, they had to swallow their pride and follow the beat of a different drummer for a while.
Now, it may be blasphemy to say this on slashdot, but perhaps you guys could learn a thing or two from Microsoft after all.
You argument almost makes my point. Nintendo has a virtual monopoly on hand-held games, and palm-os a virtual monopoly on PDA's. In these cases, Microsoft is actually the good guy, trying to break up other people's monopolies. If they do this to try and prevent Nintendo and Palm from moving into other markets that Microsoft competes in (or dominates), then so be it...again, this seems perfectly fair to me.
region free is marginally useful for those who live in the United States. Most movies come out first in the USA anyways and are reasonably cheap.
yup, I agree, but then again, isn't that what capitalism is all about? You act as if there is something immoral about this strategy.
A few issues here. Any states that opt out of the settlement are ultimately going to just end up having to go along with a court imposed deal. Whether they like it or not, that deal is most likely to be structured almost identical to the federal settlement. The bottom line, the hold-out states aren't going to get a whole lot more than the current settlement agreement.
Second, if CA does prevail in winning $3b from Microsoft (for example), then all Microsoft is going to do is pass those costs on to consumers. They will call it the "California-tax" and charge software dealers in California an extra $5 to purchase Windows. This cost will be passed on to the consumer. Financial penalties in this situation serve only to punish the people you are trying to protect.
Finally, I have seen some people talk direct and indirect consumers as reason for some states going along. They assert that in some states only Dell and Compaq and others have standing in anti-trust cases. That is simply not the case. Anti-trust laws are designed to protect the consumer, not protect the competition. Competitors are not even in-line to receive awards from this case, nor will they ever be, nor should they be.
Having read the actual terms, I think this is merely a slap on the wrist for Microsoft. Then again, a slap on the wrist is really all they deserved. The purpose of this case was not so much to punish Microsoft for past wrongs, but to try to ensure that they don't continue to abuse their OS monopoly position.
Remember, having a monopoly is not illegal (it's the goal of every business). The fact that the software industry has a strong tendency toward standardizing on one platform (be it OS or office-suite) isn't the fault of Microsoft. After all WordPerfect had a monopoly in word processors until Microsoft took that over. There is not room in the software market for two competitors generally, because standardization is critical. Employees move from job to job and it costs too much money to keep retraining them on different software systems. Everybody is moving to Microsoft Word because the employees they hire already know it from their last job. It's a snowball effect, and it applies to all aspects of end-user software from the OS to office-applications.
If Microsoft goes by the spirit of the agreement instead of trying to find every little loophole to get around it, then I think justice will be done. Unlike everybody else on this forum, I actually think Microsoft will make an honest effort to follow the spirit of the agreement. Why? Because the agreement really isn't that onerous. Basically what we have here is two primary things:
1) release all the protocols/API's you actually use in your own middleware. Big deal, 99% of the stuff is already public information and the few shortcuts that Microsoft takes in their middleware don't so much prevent others from competing, but are rather more the result of a lazy Microsoft programmer taking a shortcut. Is there anything that Microsoft Word does that another competitor couldn't do if they wanted to? no. The same applies to protocols, all meaningful ones are already documented or accessible through API's.
2)Let OEMs customize Windows a bit more. Again, big deal, so now we can get AOL icons on our desktop instead of MSN icons. If Microsoft see's some third party software making significant in-roads into the OEM market, they will simply make sure their product offering is a better product. Microsoft doesn't really care if OEM's can now ship Netscape pre-installed and remove IE, why? Because only a braindead OEM would do that since IE is so much better. Likewise, what you gonna do, pre-install Corel Office? give me a break, even here in Utah where WordPerfect gave the state government free licenses to their software across the board, they are now switching over to Microsoft products. The fact is, MS products are very good products if not the best out there generally, and their OS market position has little to do with it.
So, another company is raping the linux community for free development resources and increasing their profit margins in the process, why do I not feel like celebrating? The irony in all this is that here sits the linux community cheering and saying, "yes, please rape me again, I like it". Corporate America must be absolutely loving all you software-communists. Who would have guessed that all Amazon had to do to get back on the slashdot good-list is steal their efforts and offer nothing in return.
Now we see why linux will never really take off, it's the same reason communism never really worked, you simply end up with a small number of people pulling the wagon and the rest of the people riding.
How useful is this discussion? I have never seen a slashdot story with so many posts moderated to the 4 and 5 levels... The sad thing is every single one of them favors the exact same side of the story (no backdoors). So everybody sits here preaching to the choir is that the plan? -- lame
While I agree that the genie is out of the bottle on encryption and the government better just find another way to accomplish their security goals, I also think concern for privacy is way overrated. While I may not want my neighbor next door to know how much money I make, I don't mind filling out those surveys with all my demographic information at all. I mean, what are they possibly going to do with it...I am just a number to most of these people. The same thing goes for the police.
I can safely say that I couldn't care less if the police read every email I had ever written or received. It just doesn't matter...information about me simply isn't that useful and you are a fool if you think the information about you matters one iota.
well?
First off, I applaud slashdot for bringing up what must be a sore subject for them. After all, they have been advocating free/open-source software since inception. I realize you didn't want this to devolve into a intellectual property discussion, but how can you avoid that when you ask the question "why won't users pay?".
Perhaps when there is nothing left on the internet but IRC and a few lame-ass user-brewed sites, slashdotters will finally come to realize that the basic concept of intellectual property and the right to charge for it is fundamental to there being information in the first place.
The article suggests that compensation should be limited to distribution costs, but to believe that is to deny the obvious. The relative value of the information is not the problem at all...in every business there is a balancing act between price and volume and the goal is to optimize the profit. Personally, I would be willing to pay $10 for a Fuddruckers hamburger because they are so good and I could afford it. But I am sure Fudd's realizes that they will make more money selling them for $5 instead. The same is true of information...the content owner (that's right) needs to simply weight the money left on the table versus the volume of business they could do, and they should optimize that curve.
As I see it, there are two possible solutions, one is micropayments, but the problem with that is you often don't know if the information is worth paying for before you see it. The second, and better approach would be to have it setup like cable TV. Websites could join a conglomerate of other websites and charge for a subscription. I suspect things would consolidate fairly quickly and you could get access to thousands of great websites for one monthly subscription fee of say $10. ISP's would then negotiate better-deals and roll the cost into the cost of their service.
It's funny how the entire thing is starting to sound like AOL 5 years ago. What comes around goes around...
Why doesn't the Linux community put together a decent enough product that it can compete instead of crying that daddy-government isn't fixing their problems for them. You sound like a bunch of welfare receipients who were just told they are going to have to fend for themselves from now on.
Also, something you geeks may eventually learn (I finally learned it (the hard way) after decades of programming) is that technical-superiority != good-product. There is a lot more to making a product successful than just programming the code and you guys aren't even close to figuring that out as is evidenced by your jealous daddy-make-it-fair attitude.
You can keep your dreams of socialized software, I'd rather make companies compete for my dollars.
There is a company called SwitchPoint (www.switchpoint.net) that has ran 100mb ethernet to the entire towns of Springville and American Fork, Utah. Approximately 50000 people live in these two towns combined and have access to the service. They are in the process of expanding the service into my town right now. My parents already have the service and it appears to work very well.
Additionally, SwitchPoint has a deal going with Blockbuster to allow you to rent almost any movie over the pipe. You need a special set-top box that does it, and the movies are $4.99 each to rent.
The biggest hurdle the company has had is getting the local communities to agree to let them run the wires all over the town.
The electoral college effectively makes the vote of residents of small states worth more than the vote of residents of large states. Utah (where I live) has 3 congressmen based on our population and 2 senators, so Utah get's 5 electoral votes. A larger state might have 30 congressmen and 2 senators for 32 electoral votes.
Assuming 1 million people per congressman, in Utah my vote is worth 5/3,000,000=.000001666 whereas the larger-state resident vote is worth 32/30,000,000=.000001066.
And as somebody else mentioned, Clinton came in 3rd place in the '92 election here in Utah. There is absolutely no chance that Utah will go anything but republican this year, so it does give me the feeling that my vote isn't actually counting at all (especially since I am voting republican anyhow).
There is no doubt in my mind that voter turnout would be higher if the President were elected by direct popular vote. Also, I think if none of the candidates gets a 50% majority, then there should be a run-off election between the top 2, we never would have had to deal with a loser like Clinton (who only got 43% of the vote in '92) if we had a run-off election and a direct popular vote.
The thing that really bugs me is that whenever the name finally becomes available, odds are some company that specializes in grabbing domains (like greatdomains.com) will likely get it first.
I think they have arrangements with registrars like NSI such that they get the list of names that are going to be released before anybody else, and can then take all the ones they want.
The reason NSI is giving until the end of the billing cycle is so they can sell off large blocks of expired domains at once to these name-stealing services, saving a lot of hassles.
The whole first-come first-served policy is a load of crap, there are preferences being offered here...
The US Constitution reserves the right to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. The purpose of this is to prevent things like states from imposing tarriffs and stuff on goods coming into or out of a state. Can you imagine if each state treated import/export regulations the same way a country like the United States does with the rest of the world? It would be a total disaster; particular if I had to truck my goods all the way across the country and was subject to taxation at each port of entry.
This same constitutional clause prevents states from collecting sales tax on goods bought from another state as this would effectively be a tarriff. The states (including my home state of Utah) have done an end-run around the constitution by calling it a use-tax instead of a sales tax. In these scheme, you are taxes for using/consuming the item in the state instead of for the actual purchase.
Oddly enough this would apply to non-mail-order type things as well. The law here is that you get to reduce the use-tax rate (which is the same as the sales-tax rate) by whatever amount of sales tax you have already paid to another state. This means that if the neighboring state has no sales tax and I drive across the state line and buy it, bring it back to Utah, I am then subject to use-tax on it. Similarly, if the neighboring state has a 4% sales tax rate and Utah has a 7% sales tax rate, I have to pay a use-tax rate of 3%, regardless of how I obtained the product.
I am a huge fan of states-rights and the 10th amendment, but this just happens to be one of the areas where the Constitution is explicit. Somebody should seriously challenge these laws up to the Supreme Court as they seem very much against the spirit of the Constitution if not the letter of the Constitution.
Seems to me like Microsofts illegal activities could easily be dealt with in a less invasive manner. I believe the courts should choose the least disruptive course that will accomplish the goal. The problems we have here are several:
1) They are not only trying to solve the problem of illegal activities, but they are trying to weaken the company from doing legal business as well. The government simply feels they are too big and want them smaller. Having Microsoft obey the law is not enough for the government. This is where I start to strongly disagree with the government. The fact is that Microsoft is where they are primarily because they make pretty good or great products, and they market them well. They won the browser war because their product was better by all accounts. Similarly with their Office Suite. I will grant that they engaged in some questionable behavior that gave them a slight advantage, but I really don't think the end result would have been different had they played a bit more fairly. I really hate to see the government punishing success...why don't we just turn Windows over to the government to run?
2) The plantiffs in this case are not at all interested in what is fair or what is in the publics interest. To them, the bigger the penalty, the bigger the success. This is all about ego for people like Klien. It's a trophy to put on their wall to say that they broke up one of the largest companies in the world. It seems clear to me that there were countless other less invasive and more meaningful measures the government could have taken and didn't. It was all about having that trophy IMO...shameful really.
3) The judge was predisposed to dislike Microsoft before the trial began. Judges hate getting overturned on appeal and was no doubt reeling from being overturned on his previous decision. Clearly this whole matter should have been moved to a different venue to be fair. The government didn't have to do squat in this case, all they had to do was show up, they had the judge in their pocket. The judges predisposition was evident on several occasions along the way.
To conclude, I suspect the appeals court will order the judge to find a less invasive remedy to the relatively minor infractions that have occurred.
You're the second person who has suggested C++ is slower than C in a round about way (this is a reply to both posts). There are certainly constructs you can make in C++ that will incur a fair amount of overhead; however, remember always that C++ started out as a pre-compiler (CFront) that translated it into C.
You suggest using structures and pointers to functions to accomplish OO techniques in C. I used to do this about 12 years ago when C++ was not portable/standardized enough to use for the project I was one. But don't fool youself into thinking that you are getting better performance. The C constructs you talk about are largely the same thing that was produced by the CFront compiler in the first place.
The problem now days is that most programmers don't understand how the various features of the language they are using ultimately get implemented at the assembly level. If you use the MFC CString type (for example) as proof that C++ is slower than C you truely are missing the point. In the case of CString, you are sacraficing performance for notational and functional convienence. If you are writing a word processor, that probably isn't the best idea. If you are writing a game that rarely deals in text, it's probably worth the slight speed hit you get for the manageability.
The bottom line is that C++ will produce every bit as tight of code as C will and it will do multi-threading every bit as well as C does. Proper multithreading has a lot more to do with algorithmic design than it does the language you are using.
More often than not, C++ will actually produce faster code than C. The reason being is that few programmers will go to the hassle of setting up arrays of pointers to functions in order to accomplish the polymorphism that is often needed in a programs design. They resort to switch statements and such as the easy way out.
If you blindly put 'virtual' in front of every function cause the manual suggested it, and then wonder why the implementation of a simple GetValue() function is so slow when you marked it 'inline', then is it any wonder? A good knowledge of what is being produced at the assembly level will make you a MUCH better coder and largely if not completely eliminate any C++ performance gotchas.
I think it's unfair to compare the two languages by using test programs that are algorithmicly identical between the two languages. Any language can translate simple math and array functions into nearly equivalent assembly. The differences between the languages comes from the types of constructs that can be produced.
While I am only vaguely familiar with Java, I am a seasoned C++ programmer. My understanding is that Java doesn't support pointers. A well designed algorithm will often do things such as walk a pointer through an array instead of indexing off of it. I can't speak for everybody, but most veteran C/C++ programmers I know use pointers extensively to create optimizations in their algorithms that simply can't be simulated with references or other constructs. It's the ability to design these sorts of things that makes C++ a more powerful language.
I look at Java as little more than a C++ that has been dumbified so a Visual Basic programmer can use it. All that said, I have to agree that the vast majority of program time is spent waiting for external dependencies like SQL servers, hard drives, system calls, etc... As such, Java is likely to produce just as acceptable of programs as C++ the vast majority of the time.
Well, the judge has shown just how incompetent he is by thinking that IE should be it's own company. Clearly the judge has no clue the IE is a trivial application...little more than a user-interface really, that ought to be part of the operating system (largely replacing the traditional windows shell in this case). Microsoft didn't invent this concept of browser=windows-shell, that was Netscape's grand scheme.
Breaking up a software company is much different than breaking up a telephone company or oil-company too. Unlike the previous, there is no concept of territory to divide amoung. For the most part, all of Microsoft resides in one location...what are you going to do, have all the companies on the same campus? Make them waste 2/3 of their infrastructure over this? No, breaking up makes no sense at all, especially for the relatively minor violations they have done.
You could solve all these problem by requiring that Microsoft simply have published price schedules for all their products and an inability to discriminate on who they sell to.