Paid for willingly...or taken from without consent?
You have no legal choice as whether or not to pay your taxes.
you can practice tax evasion in any shape, form and fashion that would be deemed legal under federal law.
Irrelevant. You can murder, steal, rape, jaywalk, and all sorts of things, regardless of whether it's legal. The whole *point* of discussing political/social/economic systems is to define what's allowed, not what's physically possible.
With the US military however, once you enlist, you are officially US Government property
That's the Communist aspect I spoke of. In Communism, everyone is essentially, in a non-trivial way, "government property".
And to boot, the soldier is as expendable as the very machines they use in battle. So no, there is no "all for one and one for all".
The "all for one, and one for all" aspect I'm referring to is the unity and cohesion of the individual units. Sometimes the 'one' sacrifices for the 'all', and sometimes the 'all' goes out of their way to help the 'one'. My point is simply that this is a fundamental aspect of the military--it's key to the cohesion of the 'hive' mentality required for an effective and strong military.
There is nothing wrong with socialism. In fact, the open source movement is based on socialism.
Agreed, which makes your admonishment of Amtrak somewhat confusing. The government providing rail service is a Socialist endeavor (and one I fully support). The government providing water, roads, schools, and yes, the military, are all Socialism.
However when you force socialism through the rule of law and against the will of some people (even if only one person), you get the very definition of Communism.
By the above definition (which contradicts the definition in your sig), every law that is Socialist, yet not unanimous, is Communism? There are people who do not believe in requiring automobile makers to include seat belts, there are people who do not believe in a minimum wage, there are people who do not believe in overtime, and there are people who do not believe in Social Security. All these things are Socialism, and they are all enforced by the rule of law. It's not reasonable, however, to call any of them Communism.
A government service, paid for by tax dollars, for the good of the people. That's what right-wing extremists decry as Socialism.
If you want a socialist military, look none other to your local militia.
You're switching contexts. We're talking about the federal government. Local militias are private (or state run if you are talking about the state militaries).
The US military is a Socialist program, which is run in a communist (you do what what you are told, or face severe consequences) and socialist (all for one, one for all) ways.
It's not supposed to be profitable. If it could be, that would be *great*, but since it isn't, we have to deal with the reality of that fact.
Why should my tax dollars be funding a failed business?
Because that's what tax dollars are for. You just go around giving profitable business ventures money, you give it to the ones that need it (if you value their services). Government spending is for the things that the private sector doesn't provide, yet society (via various means) desires.
Communism = Equality at the lowest common denominator.
That's your problem. You're treating reality as though it has to adhere to your dogma. Communism is pretty awful as a system, but that doesn't mean everything that appears to remotely resemble Communism (such as Socialism) is bad.
When the government funds something like a passenger rail system, the extremists cry "Socialism! Look, this is Socialism!". But somehow they overlook the Socialistic nature of the military.
It's actually possible to fund public services (like Amtrak), without turning into the Soviet Union. I know this goes against certain extremist dogmas, but reality trumps dogma every time, and you only have to look at the US to see that Socialism does not mean Soviet Communism.
He wants a computer, not a toy. The Mac Mini is cute and all, but it's also dog slow.
"Dog slow" compared to what? It's the low-end Mac. It's obviously not going to be as fast as a dual G5. Since the guy spends < $500 on his PC's, he's not exactly in the 'high-end' category.
In terms of style, it thrashes any PC ever made. In terms of performance, it can't hold a candle to anything in its price range.
That myth was debunked the day the Mac mini was introduced. When you compare similar offerings from other manufacturers, the mini impresses.
I don't have a "right to know" anything I want about their unreleased product.
This isn't "anything I want to know about their unreleased product", it's "what I expect to be made known about a publicly available beta." The guy who posted the screenshots claims that he was never told he couldn't. Maybe he's right, or wrong, but this isn't the same as having the "right to know" whatever you want. Screenshots are a reasonable thing to expect--especially on something that's publicly available.
As for harming MS, if you can't see how these screenshots do that you haven't been reading the critical reviews of it. It has been widely panned as actually managing to make XP's interface look positively sleek and elegant.
Freedom of Speech is codified in the Constitution. I don't see anywhere that a corporation has the right not to be harmed. This is doubly true if you're harmed by your own screenshots!
Just seems worth pointing out, since being "harmed' seems to be an important point here.
As soon as your copy of XP can keep two folders auto-sync'd over a network, then you give me a call. Longhorn can do that, and it's one of the big features I'm waiting for.
I was skeptical about Longhorn, but after hearing that... lol
Seriously, I can't believe how many people here are focusing on the visuals.
Because there's nothing else to focus on. We've been hearing for years now how Longhorn is going to have all this cool stuff in it, but what have we seen so far? An f'd up XP GUI (it's not even different in that it looks as good or better, it's different in that it looks like it was some crappy early beta of XP).
At one time, wasn't Longhorn supposed to be out, with all its revolutionary features intact, in 2004? Now it's set for "late 2006" in its trimmed down form, and all we have are some lame screenshots?
People go nuts about a 0.1 incremental upgrade to the Mac OS, and are only too happy to pay $130 for it.
First, a.1 in Mac OS X is not the same as an SP in Windows. Second, we've actually *seen* the improvements in Tiger, not just in GUI screenshots, but also in video demonstrations, and textual descriptions of features it *actually has*. With Longhorn, after *years* of "It's gonna be so f'ing cool!" we have screenshots that are worse looking than XP, and that's it?
Longhorn is a far more important and comprehensive upgrade than Tiger
That's not obvious, which is the whole point. Longhorn isn't just XP v2, it's this *huge* new thing that makes every other thing that existed before seem like an etch-a-sketch, or something. So we're at the public unveiling of the beta and we have an ugly version of the XP GUI, and... that's it? It wasn't even worth the time to click the link, except to learn how *little* progress MS has made.
and all anyone can say about it is how much it sucks because it looks like Windows?
Well, Windows isn't exactly considered the paragon of GUI design.
If the computer looks exactly the same, then what's the difference? I mean, eventually the new features have to make their way known in some way, otherwise there's no point in them. Maybe the differences are in speed, or in some transitional effects (although, if that's all, that's not really that big a deal), which are hard to capture in sceenshots, but the only thing that stuck out to me was the search field in Explorer (which has been in Mac OS X since 2002). We hear great things about the new search function (although it keeps getting pared down), and Avalon, and... is there anything else left anymore?
Well, your talk is getting tired, MS. It's time to show us what you've come up with.
and ship 'standard' firewire/usb cables.. 7" and 9" long, respectively.
I've *never* seen 7" or 9" USB/FireWire cables, ever. I'm sure they exist, but I wouldn't call them "standard". Standard is something like 2m and.5m.
pfft. if they were a real Apple accessory company, this box'd have its own little, short, 'smart'-looking cables which are neat enough, and only long enough, to stretch from mac mini port to hub port.
Which is fine, until the first time you try to pick up your Mac mini and you find your ports being stressed, the HD jolted, and that you *can't* do whatever it is you were moving your Mac mini for in the first place (sometimes you just want to move it a few inches to run a cable, or access a port, whatever).
I think 7-9" is about the perfect cable length for this sort of thing.
Personally I don't think a "User Friendly" flavor of BSD is needed. What is needed is trained admins.
Ain't gonna happen. There are already 3 major BSD's aimed at the trained admin.
On the other hand, there's only 1 BSD aimed at the end user, and it's not free (OS X). This BSD fills an empty niche.
BSD is not meant at all for average joe; and selling it as such is misrepresenting the collective BSD OS.
BSD isn't "meant" for anyone. It's just aimed at the trained UNIX user because it's not a reasonable OS to aim at the average joe. OS X proves that you can aim a BSD at the computer neophyte, while still satisfying the upper echelon of UNIX gurus. I don't expect this new BSD to be as user-friendly as OS X, but it will be free. Let's hope great things come of it.
Linux still isn't ready for prime time zero hassle common user usage.
Neither is Windows:-)
Windows will not be killed.
Windows, as we know it, will most certainly "be killed", eventually. Windows in its 3.x form is dead, Windows in its 9X form is all but dead, and Windows in its current NT form too will pass, in time.
Windows the brand may or may not live on. I'd expect that eventually, Windows the brand will be replaced too, but that's one of those 'unknowable' things. Maybe Google will buy MS in 2053, and rebrand its Windows/BSD/Firefox OS as MS Google OS. Or in 2037, MS will release (15 years late) MS Xplore, the "revolutionary" replacement to Windows. Or maybe MS will become just another Linux vendor in 2073. You get the idea.
Anybody that tells you Linux is better than Windows or Windows is better than Linux is, at best, simply wrong.
Nonsense. "Better" is an opinion. Objectively, opinions can't be "wrong". Subjectively, it all depends on the context (what you want, what you can do, etc).
So when someone says Linux is better, or Windows is better, the context makes it subjectively true or false. Windows is certainly a better OS to run Age of Empires and Linux is certainly a better OS to run Apache on, in most reasonable contexts.
The truth of the matter is that you should choose the operating system that suits your needs.
Right.
Similarly, for gaming, business applications, enterprise servers or streaming media from your computer to your TV you won't go wrong with Windows.
That's not accurate. You definitely can go wrong with Windows in those cases.
But to get caught up in "OS 1 is better than OS 2" debates is pure silliness, especially when you can run both easily.
Not at all. Otherwise, you are saying DOS, Amiga OS, CP/M, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X are all subjectively equal?
You are right only to the extent that, in some "universal" sense, there is no best or worst OS. But when taken in context (and we *all* have our contexts, and most of them are shared), there is most certainly a hierarchy of OS's.
however, if you'd learn to read, i also said that the hindsight comment was in reference to the design, not in reference to them ignoring the memo.
Your post, in its entirety:
Hindsight is always 20/20
I guess, in hindsight, you should have been more clear. Your post was +5 Insightful, and unclear enough to give the wrong impression--even if you meant it otherwise, it needed to be replied to. It's sort of like you've spilt some milk and are saying, "I didn't mean to spill it, so why are you trying to clean it up? Don't you know any better?"
If you're referring to this, it doesn't really clear it up.
In other words, it's not my reading that was deficient here. That said, sorry for the confusion.
This is the goddamn stupidest thing I have ever seen on Slashdot,
If the "this" in question is your post, then you have a point.
If you're saying that design doesn't make a difference in impact, you're a bigger moron than pretty much everyone you've ever met.
The idea that memo design led to the 9/11 attacks doesn't deserve a response,
Yet you responded anyway.
except for possibly making armpit noises.
Never mind, then. It appeared you were being hypocritical, until I got to that clause.
And miss the point. The premise isn't that poor design led to 9/11, but that better design could have made the memo more effective. Being more effective does not necessarily mean it would have prevented 9/11.
If it's clear, simple design that's at issue, why not just have a crude drawing of a 747 flying into the White House with a 24-point header reading LOOK OUT, GEORGE!
In other words, to prove that design doesn't matter, you provide a design example that would have conveyed its premise more forcefully. Brilliant!
Fuck. I'm going to have to wash my fucking brain after being around this much stupidity.
Sounds like you've washed your brain before. You should have read the label, though. They tend to shrink in the wash.
(grossly understated, actually--reading a goddamned memo about a known terrorist planning to attack the US is worth ~3,000 lives, two of the world's tallest buildings, part of the Pentagon, four planes, a "smaller" 40+ story building, the Patriot Act, $300bn+, >1.5k troops, 2 wars (so far), well over 100k innocent civilian deaths, our economy, major loss of respect in the eyes of the world, a state of fear, a society on the fast track back to the 1800's and before, and my future.)
And the best you got is "hindsight is always 20/20"? FUCK YOU!
The point is, free or non-free, different products from different vendors tend to be different. Period.
Wow, that's the point? Really, no kidding? I thought your point was that the LSB wouldn't succeed because companies want to maintain competitive advantage, and even if it did succeed, somehow Linux would become like the CDE.
But, OK, that's your new point. I concur, but being different and adhering to the LSB are not mutually exclusive.
You keep trying to say that the magic of Linux will overcome 30 years of recorded history.
Linux != UNIX.
Again: why are they going to do it in the future, when they haven't done it in the past?
"They" didn't exist 30 years ago. Linux and the Free Software/Open Source model are based on fundamentally different rules than the proprietary software model.
No one *EVER* claimed that the LSB would remove all differences, or all incompatibilities, but what it *does* do is make it possible for Real (for example) to write one installer for each arch (x86, PowerPC, IA-64, etc) that can reasonably be expected to run on any LSB-compliant distro.
No. It has nothing to do with understanding business.
Then what, exactly did you mean by this?:
"While the advantage to the *user* might be great in the long run if everyone followed LSB, there is a great deal of disadvantage in the *short run* for companies. And that's why we see little success with LSB."
If the LSB does not succeed, it won't be because of the profit motive at all but because there are too many opinions on how things should be done, and the differences are too large to overcome, or its superseded by something else. The LSB doesn't appear to be so far reaching as to run into those problems, so, eventually, it or something like it will emerge naturally.
I don't ever expect all Linux distros to conform to the LSB, but for the LSB to be effective, they don't have to. All the LSB aims to do is increase the number of assumptions all parties can make about any given LSB compliant Linux system.
Re:Is anyone else curious what SSA trees are?
on
GCC 4.0.0 Released
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· Score: 1
I've just got to ask, what are SSA trees, and what benefit do they serve?
IIRC, they are part of the President's plan for Social Security. If, on retirement, your private Social Security account runs dry due to bad investments, the Social Security Administration gives you a little tree.
As for what benefit they serve, no one's really sure.
I'm not calling IBM or Sun evil, and I've never said RedHat wasn't motivated by profit.
RedHat and others aren't eschewing the LSB just because they don't want to be compatible with each other! That's foolishness, and ignorance, as RedHat, SuSE, IBM, Sun, and many others are actually members of the Free Standards Group (the group that heads the LSB).
RedHat is not to SuSE as Solaris is to AIX. The differences between them are not for the same reasons. Your black-and-white world is an illusion. Just because two companies are motivated by profit does not mean both are equally likely to take similar measures to lock-down their product from competition.
Do you know you have the legal right to freely download RedHat and sell it? You can even change the name to "TMassix" if you want. In fact, SuSE and Madriva are based on RedHat. That's *not* lock-in.
This, in particular, deserves a response:
Oh, wasn't there an article on/. just a couple of days ago about package incompatibilities between Debian and Ubuntu? Let me guess: Ubuntu was just 'making stylistic changes to make their distribution better'. For the users. Think of the users.
Yes, moron, that's exactly why they did it (except the changes weren't just 'stylistic', but bugfixes, and other enhancements as well). They also offer all changes back to Debian. They aren't trying to lock you into Ubuntu.
You truly do not understand how Linux works, nor do you seem willing to question your social-darwinistic view of business.
Lots of very bad things can happen when you think nothing will come of a seemingly minor act.
Some things are risky because the physical make up of the world just is that way (for example, crossing the street, having sex in Haiti, walking home during a thunderstorm). Other things are risky because other people can choose to attack you (walking down a dark alley, calling a guy names at a bar).
If you are crossing a freeway, and get run over, we tend to blame the pedestrian since the driver, most likely, didn't choose to run the person over. Apple, however, chose to sue these people. The design of a system, and the make-up of its components, defines the sort of actions which can take place, and the criticism isn't so much that Apple can't be allowed to protect their interests, but that they had available to them means that far exceed anything that seems "reasonable" for those purposes. Fortunately, Apple, it appears (since we don't really know the terms of the settlement), actually chose a reasonable solution, but the system, as defined, didn't require, or even encourage, it.
Unlike your AIDS example, our system of laws and corporations is one that people define (although we all certainly do not get an equal say in the matter). Criticizing rivers for being dangerous doesn't do anything, but educating people who go rafting does. This places the burden on the individual. Criticizing corporate power for being dangerous *does* do good, as it can lead to reform, instead of putting more and more of the burden on the individual, which is what we (America) are doing.
I'm sure that in the egalitarian world we live in that your thoughts are exactly correct and that grassroots efforts always succeed.
Wait: we *don't* live in such a world? Oh.
What the *$#@! are you talking about? Free/Open Source software *is* an egalitarian world. You're casting the poster's comments into an extreme light that requires they be absolute and universal truths, or nonsense. He said open standards *can* come about, and that they *do* benefit the end user.
There has been 30 years of UNIX. In that 30 years, the closest we ever came to that kind of cross-platform standardization is CDE. Do *you* want to use CDE? Me neither.
So are you saying commercial UNIX vendors are playing the same game as the Linux distro makers? The differences from UNIX to UNIX are far greater than the differences from Linux to Linux. I also find it hard to believe that RedHat and SuSE are trying to come up with ways to more or less 'lock in' their users. What they're trying to do, which does run counter to the LSB, although not for the reasons you describe, is make their distro just that much better than the next--to give it that "RedHat" style (and the "Debian" style, the "Mandrake/Mandriva" style, etc).
I also don't get what you are saying about CDE. Do you mean that the LSB will create a Windows 3.0-era GUI/Desktop? It just doesn't follow.
While the advantage to the *user* might be great in the long run if everyone followed LSB, there is a great deal of disadvantage in the *short run* for companies. And that's why we see little success with LSB.
Very few Linux companies are really "companies" in the dog-eat-dog style world you are describing (if I were feeling sarcastic, I'd give a similar intro to the one you gave "aristotle-dude"). Ubuntu, Knoppix, and about a million other distros are based on Debian, and are more compatible with Debian than I think the LSB would make Debian and RedHat to each other. Yet there are sufficient differences to gather users.
For Linux, the license isn't the money maker, it's the extras, like a pre-pressed CD/DVD, and "corporate" support. RedHat still has a positive corporate image, so even if tomorrow all Linux distros became LSB compliant, corporations will still pay for the RedHat (or SuSE or Mandriva or whatever their favorite is) version to get the RedHat (or whoever) support, hackers would still use Debian or Gentoo, and desktop aficionados would still use Ubuntu/Kubuntu or whatever's popular at the time.
In short, you're wrong that corporate "screw you-ness" is the main reason holding back the LSB, but more of the fact that the LSB, at least on the outset, will shackle innovation--each distro maker has their own way of doing things, and many of these "ways" aren't random, but deliberate choices about how things should be done. The open (and egalitarian) nature of Linux encourages this. Eventually, though, expect the LSB to become more standard. User demand will always trump developer laziness in FS/OSS in the long run, especially since the developers are also the users, and vice versa.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here...
The crux of your argument appears to be "I don't think leaking confidential software is really so bad."
Remove the word "confidential" (how "confidential" is it, really, if anyone is allowed to buy it for $500?), and that's generally what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, Apple does not share this opinion, and Vivek agreed, in the eyes of the law, to align his opinion with Apple's when he got his ADC account and agreed to the NDA accompanying it.
Right.
Had they decided to throw the book at him, there's nothing in current contract or IP law that could have stopped them.
Right.
And it's simply insane to argue that he may not have understood the consequences of his actions.
I agree, but only up to a point. I don't buy the claim that he didn't know it was "wrong", but I don't think he thought much would come of it.
There's been so many people who call the guy a complete idiot for doing what he did, but exactly how many people have been sued for distributing software via BitTorrent? None. Assuming he was fully aware of the details of what creating and seeding a torrent entails, he really had no reason to expect the lawsuit.
The problem is that pretty much everyone violates copyright now and then, and while this is technically a contract violation, it really plays out like a copyright infringement from the guilty party's point of view. I mean, what's one click-through license vs another? It's not like you had to go to some secure area in Cupertino and sign a few contracts to pick up your copy of a disc, accompanied by an unforgettable demonstration and personal warning of the need for confidentiality.
For those who keep saying that he's a moron, and should be subject to the full extent of the contract, I don't see much difference, in practical terms, between what he did, and what everyone does when they copy that floppy. I think (as I've already said) that Apple handled it fairly well, but the fear was that Apple was crossing a line from what people see as a legitimate need to protect their IP (by suing bootleggers and corporations who copy Apple products and software) and stomping on their fan base (who just want to try out a product that Apple hypes up like crazy). Fortunately, Apple didn't actualize people's worst fears, but these vocal outbursts of opinion are important. Without them, the company lawyers might just start fishing for dollars. See DirectTV and the RIAA for examples of this.
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Paid for willingly...or taken from without consent?
You have no legal choice as whether or not to pay your taxes.
you can practice tax evasion in any shape, form and fashion that would be deemed legal under federal law.
Irrelevant. You can murder, steal, rape, jaywalk, and all sorts of things, regardless of whether it's legal. The whole *point* of discussing political/social/economic systems is to define what's allowed, not what's physically possible.
With the US military however, once you enlist, you are officially US Government property
That's the Communist aspect I spoke of. In Communism, everyone is essentially, in a non-trivial way, "government property".
And to boot, the soldier is as expendable as the very machines they use in battle. So no, there is no "all for one and one for all".
The "all for one, and one for all" aspect I'm referring to is the unity and cohesion of the individual units. Sometimes the 'one' sacrifices for the 'all', and sometimes the 'all' goes out of their way to help the 'one'. My point is simply that this is a fundamental aspect of the military--it's key to the cohesion of the 'hive' mentality required for an effective and strong military.
There is nothing wrong with socialism. In fact, the open source movement is based on socialism.
Agreed, which makes your admonishment of Amtrak somewhat confusing. The government providing rail service is a Socialist endeavor (and one I fully support). The government providing water, roads, schools, and yes, the military, are all Socialism.
However when you force socialism through the rule of law and against the will of some people (even if only one person), you get the very definition of Communism.
By the above definition (which contradicts the definition in your sig), every law that is Socialist, yet not unanimous, is Communism? There are people who do not believe in requiring automobile makers to include seat belts, there are people who do not believe in a minimum wage, there are people who do not believe in overtime, and there are people who do not believe in Social Security. All these things are Socialism, and they are all enforced by the rule of law. It's not reasonable, however, to call any of them Communism.
The military is far from socialistic.
A government service, paid for by tax dollars, for the good of the people. That's what right-wing extremists decry as Socialism.
If you want a socialist military, look none other to your local militia.
You're switching contexts. We're talking about the federal government. Local militias are private (or state run if you are talking about the state militaries).
The US military is a Socialist program, which is run in a communist (you do what what you are told, or face severe consequences) and socialist (all for one, one for all) ways.
But Amtrak has never been profitable.
It's not supposed to be profitable. If it could be, that would be *great*, but since it isn't, we have to deal with the reality of that fact.
Why should my tax dollars be funding a failed business?
Because that's what tax dollars are for. You just go around giving profitable business ventures money, you give it to the ones that need it (if you value their services). Government spending is for the things that the private sector doesn't provide, yet society (via various means) desires.
Communism = Equality at the lowest common denominator.
That's your problem. You're treating reality as though it has to adhere to your dogma. Communism is pretty awful as a system, but that doesn't mean everything that appears to remotely resemble Communism (such as Socialism) is bad.
When the government funds something like a passenger rail system, the extremists cry "Socialism! Look, this is Socialism!". But somehow they overlook the Socialistic nature of the military.
It's actually possible to fund public services (like Amtrak), without turning into the Soviet Union. I know this goes against certain extremist dogmas, but reality trumps dogma every time, and you only have to look at the US to see that Socialism does not mean Soviet Communism.
Except that it's still harder (not impossible) to exploit buffer overflows this way, which is the point.
So it seems like for each buffer overflow, you have to create a unique exploit for it.
At least, that's what I got from this story. I could be completely wrong.
Writing "virri" doesn't make you look clever, educated people will laugh at you.
Yeah, I'd say you're right on that one.
That's what I said, what the fuck does the family have to do with the movie industry.
It's not "the family", it's "The Family".
"Don Valenti would like to have a word with you. For your sake, I hope the word isn't 'goodbye'."
I like [...] the NY Times.
Huh? Make up your mind. Do you like them, or are you critical them when you improperly quote them with mal-placed ellipses?
He wants a computer, not a toy. The Mac Mini is cute and all, but it's also dog slow.
"Dog slow" compared to what? It's the low-end Mac. It's obviously not going to be as fast as a dual G5. Since the guy spends < $500 on his PC's, he's not exactly in the 'high-end' category.
In terms of style, it thrashes any PC ever made. In terms of performance, it can't hold a candle to anything in its price range.
That myth was debunked the day the Mac mini was introduced. When you compare similar offerings from other manufacturers, the mini impresses.
I don't have a "right to know" anything I want about their unreleased product.
This isn't "anything I want to know about their unreleased product", it's "what I expect to be made known about a publicly available beta." The guy who posted the screenshots claims that he was never told he couldn't. Maybe he's right, or wrong, but this isn't the same as having the "right to know" whatever you want. Screenshots are a reasonable thing to expect--especially on something that's publicly available.
As for harming MS, if you can't see how these screenshots do that you haven't been reading the critical reviews of it. It has been widely panned as actually managing to make XP's interface look positively sleek and elegant.
Freedom of Speech is codified in the Constitution. I don't see anywhere that a corporation has the right not to be harmed. This is doubly true if you're harmed by your own screenshots!
Just seems worth pointing out, since being "harmed' seems to be an important point here.
As soon as your copy of XP can keep two folders auto-sync'd over a network, then you give me a call. Longhorn can do that, and it's one of the big features I'm waiting for.
.1 in Mac OS X is not the same as an SP in Windows. Second, we've actually *seen* the improvements in Tiger, not just in GUI screenshots, but also in video demonstrations, and textual descriptions of features it *actually has*. With Longhorn, after *years* of "It's gonna be so f'ing cool!" we have screenshots that are worse looking than XP, and that's it?
I was skeptical about Longhorn, but after hearing that... lol
Seriously, I can't believe how many people here are focusing on the visuals.
Because there's nothing else to focus on. We've been hearing for years now how Longhorn is going to have all this cool stuff in it, but what have we seen so far? An f'd up XP GUI (it's not even different in that it looks as good or better, it's different in that it looks like it was some crappy early beta of XP).
At one time, wasn't Longhorn supposed to be out, with all its revolutionary features intact, in 2004? Now it's set for "late 2006" in its trimmed down form, and all we have are some lame screenshots?
People go nuts about a 0.1 incremental upgrade to the Mac OS, and are only too happy to pay $130 for it.
First, a
Longhorn is a far more important and comprehensive upgrade than Tiger
That's not obvious, which is the whole point. Longhorn isn't just XP v2, it's this *huge* new thing that makes every other thing that existed before seem like an etch-a-sketch, or something. So we're at the public unveiling of the beta and we have an ugly version of the XP GUI, and... that's it? It wasn't even worth the time to click the link, except to learn how *little* progress MS has made.
and all anyone can say about it is how much it sucks because it looks like Windows?
Well, Windows isn't exactly considered the paragon of GUI design.
If the computer looks exactly the same, then what's the difference? I mean, eventually the new features have to make their way known in some way, otherwise there's no point in them. Maybe the differences are in speed, or in some transitional effects (although, if that's all, that's not really that big a deal), which are hard to capture in sceenshots, but the only thing that stuck out to me was the search field in Explorer (which has been in Mac OS X since 2002). We hear great things about the new search function (although it keeps getting pared down), and Avalon, and... is there anything else left anymore?
Well, your talk is getting tired, MS. It's time to show us what you've come up with.
Distributed DVD Back-up Solution?
It's called "BitTorrent". It even backs-up DVDs you haven't bought yet.
the title of the book is iCon
Well, at least they didn't call it "I, Con"...
Although, if Ricardo Montalban wants an idea for a name for his autobiography, I now have a *really* good one.
and ship 'standard' firewire/usb cables .. 7" and 9" long, respectively.
.5m.
I've *never* seen 7" or 9" USB/FireWire cables, ever. I'm sure they exist, but I wouldn't call them "standard". Standard is something like 2m and
pfft. if they were a real Apple accessory company, this box'd have its own little, short, 'smart'-looking cables which are neat enough, and only long enough, to stretch from mac mini port to hub port.
Which is fine, until the first time you try to pick up your Mac mini and you find your ports being stressed, the HD jolted, and that you *can't* do whatever it is you were moving your Mac mini for in the first place (sometimes you just want to move it a few inches to run a cable, or access a port, whatever).
I think 7-9" is about the perfect cable length for this sort of thing.
Personally I don't think a "User Friendly" flavor of BSD is needed. What is needed is trained admins.
Ain't gonna happen. There are already 3 major BSD's aimed at the trained admin.
On the other hand, there's only 1 BSD aimed at the end user, and it's not free (OS X). This BSD fills an empty niche.
BSD is not meant at all for average joe; and selling it as such is misrepresenting the collective BSD OS.
BSD isn't "meant" for anyone. It's just aimed at the trained UNIX user because it's not a reasonable OS to aim at the average joe. OS X proves that you can aim a BSD at the computer neophyte, while still satisfying the upper echelon of UNIX gurus. I don't expect this new BSD to be as user-friendly as OS X, but it will be free. Let's hope great things come of it.
Linux still isn't ready for prime time zero hassle common user usage.
:-)
Neither is Windows
Windows will not be killed.
Windows, as we know it, will most certainly "be killed", eventually. Windows in its 3.x form is dead, Windows in its 9X form is all but dead, and Windows in its current NT form too will pass, in time.
Windows the brand may or may not live on. I'd expect that eventually, Windows the brand will be replaced too, but that's one of those 'unknowable' things. Maybe Google will buy MS in 2053, and rebrand its Windows/BSD/Firefox OS as MS Google OS. Or in 2037, MS will release (15 years late) MS Xplore, the "revolutionary" replacement to Windows. Or maybe MS will become just another Linux vendor in 2073. You get the idea.
Anybody that tells you Linux is better than Windows or Windows is better than Linux is, at best, simply wrong.
Nonsense. "Better" is an opinion. Objectively, opinions can't be "wrong". Subjectively, it all depends on the context (what you want, what you can do, etc).
So when someone says Linux is better, or Windows is better, the context makes it subjectively true or false. Windows is certainly a better OS to run Age of Empires and Linux is certainly a better OS to run Apache on, in most reasonable contexts.
The truth of the matter is that you should choose the operating system that suits your needs.
Right.
Similarly, for gaming, business applications, enterprise servers or streaming media from your computer to your TV you won't go wrong with Windows.
That's not accurate. You definitely can go wrong with Windows in those cases.
But to get caught up in "OS 1 is better than OS 2" debates is pure silliness, especially when you can run both easily.
Not at all. Otherwise, you are saying DOS, Amiga OS, CP/M, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X are all subjectively equal?
You are right only to the extent that, in some "universal" sense, there is no best or worst OS. But when taken in context (and we *all* have our contexts, and most of them are shared), there is most certainly a hierarchy of OS's.
Your post, in its entirety:I guess, in hindsight, you should have been more clear. Your post was +5 Insightful, and unclear enough to give the wrong impression--even if you meant it otherwise, it needed to be replied to. It's sort of like you've spilt some milk and are saying, "I didn't mean to spill it, so why are you trying to clean it up? Don't you know any better?"
If you're referring to this, it doesn't really clear it up.
In other words, it's not my reading that was deficient here. That said, sorry for the confusion.
This is the goddamn stupidest thing I have ever seen on Slashdot,
If the "this" in question is your post, then you have a point.
If you're saying that design doesn't make a difference in impact, you're a bigger moron than pretty much everyone you've ever met.
The idea that memo design led to the 9/11 attacks doesn't deserve a response,
Yet you responded anyway.
except for possibly making armpit noises.
Never mind, then. It appeared you were being hypocritical, until I got to that clause.
And miss the point. The premise isn't that poor design led to 9/11, but that better design could have made the memo more effective. Being more effective does not necessarily mean it would have prevented 9/11.
If it's clear, simple design that's at issue, why not just have a crude drawing of a 747 flying into the White House with a 24-point header reading LOOK OUT, GEORGE!
In other words, to prove that design doesn't matter, you provide a design example that would have conveyed its premise more forcefully. Brilliant!
Fuck. I'm going to have to wash my fucking brain after being around this much stupidity.
Sounds like you've washed your brain before. You should have read the label, though. They tend to shrink in the wash.
Hindsight is always 20/20
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
(grossly understated, actually--reading a goddamned memo about a known terrorist planning to attack the US is worth ~3,000 lives, two of the world's tallest buildings, part of the Pentagon, four planes, a "smaller" 40+ story building, the Patriot Act, $300bn+, >1.5k troops, 2 wars (so far), well over 100k innocent civilian deaths, our economy, major loss of respect in the eyes of the world, a state of fear, a society on the fast track back to the 1800's and before, and my future.)
And the best you got is "hindsight is always 20/20"? FUCK YOU!
The point is, free or non-free, different products from different vendors tend to be different. Period.
Wow, that's the point? Really, no kidding? I thought your point was that the LSB wouldn't succeed because companies want to maintain competitive advantage, and even if it did succeed, somehow Linux would become like the CDE.
But, OK, that's your new point. I concur, but being different and adhering to the LSB are not mutually exclusive.
You keep trying to say that the magic of Linux will overcome 30 years of recorded history.
Linux != UNIX.
Again: why are they going to do it in the future, when they haven't done it in the past?
"They" didn't exist 30 years ago. Linux and the Free Software/Open Source model are based on fundamentally different rules than the proprietary software model.
No one *EVER* claimed that the LSB would remove all differences, or all incompatibilities, but what it *does* do is make it possible for Real (for example) to write one installer for each arch (x86, PowerPC, IA-64, etc) that can reasonably be expected to run on any LSB-compliant distro.
No. It has nothing to do with understanding business.
Then what, exactly did you mean by this?:
"While the advantage to the *user* might be great in the long run if everyone followed LSB, there is a great deal of disadvantage in the *short run* for companies. And that's why we see little success with LSB."
If the LSB does not succeed, it won't be because of the profit motive at all but because there are too many opinions on how things should be done, and the differences are too large to overcome, or its superseded by something else. The LSB doesn't appear to be so far reaching as to run into those problems, so, eventually, it or something like it will emerge naturally.
I don't ever expect all Linux distros to conform to the LSB, but for the LSB to be effective, they don't have to. All the LSB aims to do is increase the number of assumptions all parties can make about any given LSB compliant Linux system.
I've just got to ask, what are SSA trees, and what benefit do they serve?
IIRC, they are part of the President's plan for Social Security. If, on retirement, your private Social Security account runs dry due to bad investments, the Social Security Administration gives you a little tree.
As for what benefit they serve, no one's really sure.
Your whole post is nonsense.
/. just a couple of days ago about package incompatibilities between Debian and Ubuntu? Let me guess: Ubuntu was just 'making stylistic changes to make their distribution better'. For the users. Think of the users.
I'm not calling IBM or Sun evil, and I've never said RedHat wasn't motivated by profit.
RedHat and others aren't eschewing the LSB just because they don't want to be compatible with each other! That's foolishness, and ignorance, as RedHat, SuSE, IBM, Sun, and many others are actually members of the Free Standards Group (the group that heads the LSB).
RedHat is not to SuSE as Solaris is to AIX. The differences between them are not for the same reasons. Your black-and-white world is an illusion. Just because two companies are motivated by profit does not mean both are equally likely to take similar measures to lock-down their product from competition.
Do you know you have the legal right to freely download RedHat and sell it? You can even change the name to "TMassix" if you want. In fact, SuSE and Madriva are based on RedHat.
That's *not* lock-in.
This, in particular, deserves a response:
Oh, wasn't there an article on
Yes, moron, that's exactly why they did it (except the changes weren't just 'stylistic', but bugfixes, and other enhancements as well). They also offer all changes back to Debian. They aren't trying to lock you into Ubuntu.
You truly do not understand how Linux works, nor do you seem willing to question your social-darwinistic view of business.
Lots of very bad things can happen when you think nothing will come of a seemingly minor act.
Some things are risky because the physical make up of the world just is that way (for example, crossing the street, having sex in Haiti, walking home during a thunderstorm). Other things are risky because other people can choose to attack you (walking down a dark alley, calling a guy names at a bar).
If you are crossing a freeway, and get run over, we tend to blame the pedestrian since the driver, most likely, didn't choose to run the person over. Apple, however, chose to sue these people. The design of a system, and the make-up of its components, defines the sort of actions which can take place, and the criticism isn't so much that Apple can't be allowed to protect their interests, but that they had available to them means that far exceed anything that seems "reasonable" for those purposes. Fortunately, Apple, it appears (since we don't really know the terms of the settlement), actually chose a reasonable solution, but the system, as defined, didn't require, or even encourage, it.
Unlike your AIDS example, our system of laws and corporations is one that people define (although we all certainly do not get an equal say in the matter). Criticizing rivers for being dangerous doesn't do anything, but educating people who go rafting does. This places the burden on the individual. Criticizing corporate power for being dangerous *does* do good, as it can lead to reform, instead of putting more and more of the burden on the individual, which is what we (America) are doing.
I'm sure that in the egalitarian world we live in that your thoughts are exactly correct and that grassroots efforts always succeed.
Wait: we *don't* live in such a world? Oh.
What the *$#@! are you talking about? Free/Open Source software *is* an egalitarian world. You're casting the poster's comments into an extreme light that requires they be absolute and universal truths, or nonsense. He said open standards *can* come about, and that they *do* benefit the end user.
There has been 30 years of UNIX. In that 30 years, the closest we ever came to that kind of cross-platform standardization is CDE. Do *you* want to use CDE? Me neither.
So are you saying commercial UNIX vendors are playing the same game as the Linux distro makers? The differences from UNIX to UNIX are far greater than the differences from Linux to Linux. I also find it hard to believe that RedHat and SuSE are trying to come up with ways to more or less 'lock in' their users. What they're trying to do, which does run counter to the LSB, although not for the reasons you describe, is make their distro just that much better than the next--to give it that "RedHat" style (and the "Debian" style, the "Mandrake/Mandriva" style, etc).
I also don't get what you are saying about CDE. Do you mean that the LSB will create a Windows 3.0-era GUI/Desktop? It just doesn't follow.
While the advantage to the *user* might be great in the long run if everyone followed LSB, there is a great deal of disadvantage in the *short run* for companies. And that's why we see little success with LSB.
Very few Linux companies are really "companies" in the dog-eat-dog style world you are describing (if I were feeling sarcastic, I'd give a similar intro to the one you gave "aristotle-dude"). Ubuntu, Knoppix, and about a million other distros are based on Debian, and are more compatible with Debian than I think the LSB would make Debian and RedHat to each other. Yet there are sufficient differences to gather users.
For Linux, the license isn't the money maker, it's the extras, like a pre-pressed CD/DVD, and "corporate" support. RedHat still has a positive corporate image, so even if tomorrow all Linux distros became LSB compliant, corporations will still pay for the RedHat (or SuSE or Mandriva or whatever their favorite is) version to get the RedHat (or whoever) support, hackers would still use Debian or Gentoo, and desktop aficionados would still use Ubuntu/Kubuntu or whatever's popular at the time.
In short, you're wrong that corporate "screw you-ness" is the main reason holding back the LSB, but more of the fact that the LSB, at least on the outset, will shackle innovation--each distro maker has their own way of doing things, and many of these "ways" aren't random, but deliberate choices about how things should be done. The open (and egalitarian) nature of Linux encourages this. Eventually, though, expect the LSB to become more standard. User demand will always trump developer laziness in FS/OSS in the long run, especially since the developers are also the users, and vice versa.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here...
The crux of your argument appears to be "I don't think leaking confidential software is really so bad."
Remove the word "confidential" (how "confidential" is it, really, if anyone is allowed to buy it for $500?), and that's generally what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, Apple does not share this opinion, and Vivek agreed, in the eyes of the law, to align his opinion with Apple's when he got his ADC account and agreed to the NDA accompanying it.
Right.
Had they decided to throw the book at him, there's nothing in current contract or IP law that could have stopped them.
Right.
And it's simply insane to argue that he may not have understood the consequences of his actions.
I agree, but only up to a point. I don't buy the claim that he didn't know it was "wrong", but I don't think he thought much would come of it.
There's been so many people who call the guy a complete idiot for doing what he did, but exactly how many people have been sued for distributing software via BitTorrent? None. Assuming he was fully aware of the details of what creating and seeding a torrent entails, he really had no reason to expect the lawsuit.
The problem is that pretty much everyone violates copyright now and then, and while this is technically a contract violation, it really plays out like a copyright infringement from the guilty party's point of view. I mean, what's one click-through license vs another? It's not like you had to go to some secure area in Cupertino and sign a few contracts to pick up your copy of a disc, accompanied by an unforgettable demonstration and personal warning of the need for confidentiality.
For those who keep saying that he's a moron, and should be subject to the full extent of the contract, I don't see much difference, in practical terms, between what he did, and what everyone does when they copy that floppy. I think (as I've already said) that Apple handled it fairly well, but the fear was that Apple was crossing a line from what people see as a legitimate need to protect their IP (by suing bootleggers and corporations who copy Apple products and software) and stomping on their fan base (who just want to try out a product that Apple hypes up like crazy). Fortunately, Apple didn't actualize people's worst fears, but these vocal outbursts of opinion are important. Without them, the company lawyers might just start fishing for dollars. See DirectTV and the RIAA for examples of this.