"Judge, our business has been seriously damaged because we have been prevented from monopolizing the market with our obsolete and cumbersome technology?"
Yes, in a way it's true that it would be completely ridiculous for Microsoft to try to sue someone based on their patents, considering they're a convicted monopolist. (However, the justice is blind, it doesn't see well, and sometimes does some crazy things.)
But the problem with patents is not only from Microsoft as a monopolist successfully suing free software authors. Some alternatives for MS:
Using patents as FUD, as they already claimed Linux violated 235 of its patents
Selling their patents to some patent troll and using the patent troll as a puppet to sue free software
Microsoft losing most of its market in an area and then suing in the role of the "victim"
In any case, Microsoft is more interested in creating doubt than anything, as long as they can create doubt they'll convince most PHBs from keeping away from free software, and that's what they want. Patents are one way to achieve that.
If you can't win by technical merit, stack the panel and buy the moderator.
Exactly what they're doing to buy MSOOXML into an ISO standard. In the same article, Groklaw talks about how Microsoft bought Rick Jelliffe to defend their cause (Rick even disclosed that Microsoft paid him to edit MSOOXML entry in Wikipedia!) and how Rick is going to the BRM in Australia's name.
Rick hosts a blog at O'Reilly and poses as an "independent" consultant, until you start to dig and try to trace the money.
The comments on this thread on his blog are hilarious (or, in a way, really sad).
Groklaw is complaining that, as usual, Microsoft's marketing department is saying something that doesn't match what Microsoft is doing.
Marketing is saying: "Look! We care for open source! We'll release documentation they can use! We want to interoperate!!!"
Meanwhile, they're releasing some documentation that can be used only for non-commercial projects, and they're only saying they won't sue the developers of such projects.
They try to connect "non-commercial" with "open source", when in fact those are distinct, for instance Red Hat uses open source code for commercial purposes, they sell it. Not to mention Microsoft also tries to mix "open source" and "free software", which are also different concepts, and when their marketing department tries to imply they'll be good to free software, in fact their actions are totally against it.
And consider this snippet (from TFA):
BRAD SMITH: With respect to other distributors, and users, the clear message is that patent licenses will be freely available.
STEVE BALLMER: Patents will be, not freely, will be available.
BRAD SMITH: Readily available.
STEVE BALLMER: Readily available for the right fee.
I mentioned before, they're saying they won't sue the developers... but the users? Oh... they'll have to license Microsoft's valuable patents to be able to use such software!
In other words, it's all FUD. Marketing doing a big fuss about something that is completely different of what they announce. All to try to look good at EU's eyes. It's still just business at usual, Microsoft way.
I agree it would be better for me as a consumer if Microsoft went all-open, but what right do I have to force them to do it?
You forget that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and that they use dirty tactics against their competitors.
that's how our current capitalist/free market system works
And that's exactly one of the problems of the capitalist and free market system (I'm not trolling here! No economic system is perfect and others failed miserably much quicker than capitalism, but that's not my point). The problem here is that once a company becomes a monopoly, it has too much power in its hands. It has, for example, power enough to extinguish small competitors by artificially lowering prices until the competitor dies and then, with no one to compete, rise prices again.
Microsoft is a good example of a company that takes profit from the "loopholes" of capitalism. By using lock in to their proprietary formats and bundling IE and WMP in the OS, they've achieved to keep for a long time more than 90% of market share on a wide range of products, to force people to upgrade and pay them more money, and all that without innovating (if you really look at their products, you'll see that in the last 5 years they didn't introduce any new feature worth buying, mostly cosmetic changes only). All that just using dirty tactics by making sure no one could create programs compatible or interoperatable with theirs.
I do believe in a free market, but this market we have with Microsoft is anything but free. And I do think governments have the responsability to level the playing field here.
Why you think Microsoft ownes it to any of you to give away their computer code is beyond me.
The biggest issue here is why did we get into this situation. If Microsoft had used and promoted open standards since the begining, they wouldn't be in this situation today. They would have to compete in quality of their products, not based on the legacy that only they can access. Since they chose to do everything they could to avoid interoperability at all costs, being forced to do that now is the least I expect.
In my opinion, there are very few times when a company's main goal isn't to help themselves.
The problem is not Microsoft wanting to profit and not wanting to help their competitors. The problem is they doing that while doing a big announcement that they want to help and interoperate, which is exactly what they did.
Re:"How will you use XML in years to come?"
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 1
JSON is inflicting Javascript on everyone. There are other programming languages out there. On the browser? If you want to use AJAX-like technology, JavaScript is still the only viable and portable option as the programming language for the client side.
But do we want to make that even harder to change?
Do we really need other languages in the browser? Unless the language is implemented by everyone, it's not worth it. Requiring yet another language makes it harder for new browsers to hit the market. I think it's better to have one well supported language, than several buggy ones.
Re:XML is a fad, STEP is the future
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 1
Strange. I don't know why, but this STEP reminds me of BASIC.:-) Is this supposed to be a step forward?
Wikipedia page for ISO STEP mentions that many consider replacing it with XML, or rather creating XML schemas to represent the information STEP does (I didn't find Wikipedia's external reference for this though).
...programs can process and present results of STEP incrementally instead of requiring closing tags...
It's not true that XML cannot be rendered incrementally. This Mozilla FAQ points out that versions before Firefox 3/Gecko 1.9 don't support it, which makes me believe that Firefox 3 does support it (I didn't check it myself).
The fact that XML allows you to check it for validity when you have the whole document doesn't prevent you from processing the parts you read already. SAX based parsers work that way, by passing events whenever one element is complete, you don't have to wait for all the document to finish to process the snippet at hand. If the document isn't valid, the processing will stop at the point where the error was found.
It can't be processed with the likes of awk and sed.
Just because you can't use tools made for processing text in Unix line-based format, doesn't mean there aren't tools for this purpose. You can even find tools inspired on awk for XML processing, like xmlgawk (also here).
However...
I agree with you that XML is not the answer for everything. For instance, I just hate XML configuration files, exactly because you can't reliably grep, sed, awk, ex, them. Editing XML with vi is not the nicest task either. For config files I usually like INI-style files, for which there are modules in Python and Perl, and you can easily get around with simple shell tools when you just need a dirty hack. A config file usually has a simple enough structure to allow you to specify anything you need in the constraints of INI files (if it doesn't, you should probably rethink your config, it's probably bloated!).
For other tasks such as tabular data, CSV or just plain text delimited by tabs or ":" (think/etc/passwd) are more suited than XML, exactly for the ability to use simple universal tools (grep, sed, awk) on the data. It's even easier to visually inspect a table if it's in CSV or tab-delimited than it is to inspect an XML file and try to see through the tag soup.
Your comment about logfiles is right on the spot! Log files are just made to be grepped. Anything that doesn't write all relevant information of an action on one line, at the time the action happened, really defeats the purpose of logging.
Re:"How will you use XML in years to come?"
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
JSON is inflicting Javascript on everyone. There are other programming languages out there.
On the browser? If you want to use AJAX-like technology, JavaScript is still the only viable and portable option as the programming language for the client side.
Oh, I forgot to mention. According to their website, TrueCrypt can encrypt the boot partition even after the OS is installed, even with Windows.
Basically, you install it, then you ask it to encrypt the whole disk. It will install the boot code to ask the password and decrypt the partition before loading the OS, and then it will start encrypting your partition in the background, you may continue using the OS. You may even reboot the machine, it will boot correctly and continue encrypting from where it stopped. If it really works as they say it does, this version is indeed amazing.
Hi, I read the site yesterday (from Firehose), and I think I can say one thing or two.
TrueCrypt does a good job of encryption, it's not a trivial level. It uses strong algorithms, and you can choose from 5 or 6 different algorithms. It doesn't store your password anywhere in the disk, when you type the password, it tries to decrypt the header, and if it makes sense (I guess if checksums match) then it knows it's the right password and it goes on, otherwise not. It uses basically the XEX (almost sure that's the name... I don't really know what it is, this is what I remember from the site) schema, but XEX uses only one key for two purposes, and TrueCrypt uses two different keys for these two purposes.
The whole-disk encryption (the correct term is partition encryption) seems to work well, at least from the documentation, I didn't try it (yet). It includes a boot sector that does the part of asking the password during boot and decrypting the partition. The boot sector is obviously encrypted, and I suppose it also stores some unencrypted data to implement the boot code (I don't believe it can be done in 512 bytes only), but after you boot the OS, everything it sees is encrypted, so it will protect even temporary files or logs created by the OS on that drive. Even if it doesn't encrypt 100% of the data (boot sector, boot code), it encrypts everything that you should encrypt. What it doesn't encrypt is not secret in any way.
I tried previous versions and I liked it, it is really a great product, and if 5.0 does everything they say it does, I guess it's really worth it. Whole-disk encryption is no longer missing from this excellent software, many businesses need it for laptops (just see how many information theft happened last year due to lost laptops). I believe TrueCrypt is going mainstream now.
the way for a monopoly to be stopped is to have a competing monopoly buy its nearest competitor?
The more companies sharing the market, the better for the market. The less companies, the worse.
Right now, with the three companies separate, we see quite some innovation, they're competing trying to bring better products to the market, which Google is certainly doing (see the way GMail brought something completely different from what was there), Yahoo also to some extent, and Microsoft is struggling trying to keep their OS lock-in, but bringing products to the market at the same time.
If Microsoft buys Yahoo, the most probable is that it won't keep the same size as before. Either it will grow and overcome Google (which I doubt), after what innovation stops because they're no longer #2, or they'll sink together (more probable to me), after what Google will be stronger than ever, will crunch its competition and won't have any reasons to improve.
It would be better if Microsoft learned that the way for them to improve is to start using standards instead of their own crippled technologies, and start creating online services that are accessible instead of a vehicle for locking in the customers to their crippled OS. Then it could get some market share and be more of a player in this market.
Google learned with Microsoft. Google doesn't need to bid for Yahoo, or even buy Yahoo shares to break the deal. Just use FUD! As long as Google creates enough fear, uncertainty, doubt about the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft, it can stop the deal. Microsoft has done this for years now, with impressive results (after all, they have a monopoly on the OS/Office area).
Microsoft is going to take a little of its own medicine now...
Actually, considering mobile devices OSs makes sense, if you consider that in 10-15 years fewer people will be using desktops than mobile devices. Though mobile devices make for a small percentage of OSs today, the tendency is that they'll make a bigger percentage every year, until they surpass the desktop OSs.
That's why all desktop companies are struggling to get their OSs running on mobile devices. Microsoft has Windows CE, Apple has OSX running on the iPhone. There's been a lot of buzz on Linux for mobile devices as well. Although the desktop is the battle being fought today, everyone knows that the war of tomorrow will be on mobile devices.
So, I would say that considering mobile device OSs when talking OS share may make sense.
A perfect search portal with a perfect algorithm doesn't work.
This isn't about the search algorithm. Microsoft is clearly after Yahoo's user base and users that go to Yahoo for search. For what it's worth, they could scrap Yahoo's search algorithm completely, replace it with MSN, as long as they believe that users will still go to Yahoo after that.
Of course, Microsoft has done that before. Look at Hotmail for instance. They couldn't stand the fact that it was not Microsoft technology under it, so they just had to "improve" it on their way. Results? After Microsoft's "improvement" Hotmail ceased to be #1 in webmail and now must be around #957 in market share.
It's probable that if they finally buy Yahoo it will be just the same. Users will deflect in masses. First it will be the users that leave Yahoo because they don't trust Microsoft (say around 5-10%), then it will be the users that leave Yahoo because Microsoft "improves" the service with their own ways of "improvement" (say around 10-20%), and finally it will be the users that leave Yahoo because Microsoft will introduce its silly single platform locked-in technologies, like Silverlight, and they will try to integrate Yahoo with the desktop, which will make Yahoo no longer as "convenient" it is from the point of view that you can access it anywhere without restrictions (say around 20-40% users leaving because of this).
In the end, Yahoocrosoft will lose from 35% to 70% users, and Google will be a yet bigger #1 with a distant #2. I think Microsoft buying Yahoo will be bad for the search/ads market, but it will be good for the OS/desktop/browser market, because Microsoft will certainly weaken from this. I think it's worth to give Google that much power if we get rid of Microsoft in the process, so I'm happy with this and I actually want it to happen, as much sorry I am for Yahoo, but hey, if they take the bid, they're just asking for it.
If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customers
Yes! Exactly my point. If Microsoft tries to think "as Yahoo does" and doesn't intervene that much, it could use its money and power to actually make it grow and defy Google. But Microsoft is too clever! They'll want to turn Yahoo in Microsoft, they'll want to use their MSN knowledge to grow Yahoo. They'll want to "improve" Yahoo services by migrating them to Windows servers (as with Hotmail), they'll want to "leverage" the desktop on Yahoo services. That will be their biggest mistake. But it's inevitable, there's no way that Microsoft will buy Yahoo and not do that.
This article is trying to imply that Python 3000 (that's what it's called right now) breaking compatibility will be as bad as Perl 6.
But in fact, it's completely different. Perl 6 is actually a completely new language. They're replacing the basics, such as the "." operator, which used to be for string concatenation, and now is for accessing properties and methods of objects (like, they're trying to lose its C heritage and appeal to Java,.NET and Python programmers). There are other silly changes like this, that don't add any new features, they just change it because they thought it would look less ugly that way. On the other side, they didn't change Perl's most ugly side, which is that every variable is global by default! You have to use strict and my this my that... But the result is a language that still has the same shortcomings of Perl 5, and on the other hand, is completely different than Perl 5, in a way that you have to relearn everything you had learned before. If you want my opinion, Perl 6 will fail (not trolling here, just what I really think).
On the other way, Python 3000 changes are on certain core elements, like strings, but the changes are made in a way that the language's general look and feel is still the same. In fact, many scripts will keep working as they are, and the most of those that will have to be changed will need only minimal adjustments. If you're proficient with Python 2 now, you'll probably be as proficient writing Python 3000 in less than an hour.
As for Python 1.5 vs. Python 2, the backwards compatibility was kept. Though, many new constructions were introduced in Python 2, and the "preferred" way to do things changed. Python 2 has cleaner ways to do several common tasks, and the style of writing code actually changed significantly from 1.5 to 2, being much cleaner on 2. However, the 1.5 code kept working. From 2 to 3000, the change will be less in style and more in core concepts that will be reimplemented in a better way (like strings and classes), requiring to break the old and deprecated way to do that before.
Also, DVR permits you to watch the program while taping it, in a way that allows you to "pause" it and continue later. This ability is included in TiVO's patent. There's no way to do this with a VCR, so it doesn't count as previous art for it.
I haven't looked at it (I don't have silverlight available on my Linux machine),
Me neither. Even if this was not on Linux, I would never install a crappy plugin just to see pictures. Why the hell couldn't they just use GIF/JPG/PNG like everybody else? Probably because the comics is just a lame excuse to install their software anyway.
Who wants to idolize some corporate goons?
Maybe this guy? Actually there's been quite a few Microsoft shills and fanboys hanging around Slashdot lately...
But is QNX relevant? I mean, outside the world of embedded devices?
Even agreeing that it is a nice OS, what is its market share as a desktop or server platform? Certainly less than 1/1000th of what Linux or even BSD have.
Although microkernel OSs may be "nicer" from a design point of view, on the practical side the monolithical ones are serving us very well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, in a way it's true that it would be completely ridiculous for Microsoft to try to sue someone based on their patents, considering they're a convicted monopolist. (However, the justice is blind, it doesn't see well, and sometimes does some crazy things.)
But the problem with patents is not only from Microsoft as a monopolist successfully suing free software authors. Some alternatives for MS:
In any case, Microsoft is more interested in creating doubt than anything, as long as they can create doubt they'll convince most PHBs from keeping away from free software, and that's what they want. Patents are one way to achieve that.
Exactly what they're doing to buy MSOOXML into an ISO standard. In the same article, Groklaw talks about how Microsoft bought Rick Jelliffe to defend their cause (Rick even disclosed that Microsoft paid him to edit MSOOXML entry in Wikipedia!) and how Rick is going to the BRM in Australia's name.
Rick hosts a blog at O'Reilly and poses as an "independent" consultant, until you start to dig and try to trace the money.
The comments on this thread on his blog are hilarious (or, in a way, really sad).
This was not the only action related to MSOOXML. Recently, they also released specs of binary formats and disabled old Office formats. They are really desperate to try to get their format into an ISO standard.
Groklaw is complaining that, as usual, Microsoft's marketing department is saying something that doesn't match what Microsoft is doing.
Marketing is saying: "Look! We care for open source! We'll release documentation they can use! We want to interoperate!!!"
Meanwhile, they're releasing some documentation that can be used only for non-commercial projects, and they're only saying they won't sue the developers of such projects.
They try to connect "non-commercial" with "open source", when in fact those are distinct, for instance Red Hat uses open source code for commercial purposes, they sell it. Not to mention Microsoft also tries to mix "open source" and "free software", which are also different concepts, and when their marketing department tries to imply they'll be good to free software, in fact their actions are totally against it.
And consider this snippet (from TFA):
BRAD SMITH: With respect to other distributors, and users, the clear message is that patent licenses will be freely available.STEVE BALLMER: Patents will be, not freely, will be available.
BRAD SMITH: Readily available.
STEVE BALLMER: Readily available for the right fee.
I mentioned before, they're saying they won't sue the developers... but the users? Oh... they'll have to license Microsoft's valuable patents to be able to use such software!
In other words, it's all FUD. Marketing doing a big fuss about something that is completely different of what they announce. All to try to look good at EU's eyes. It's still just business at usual, Microsoft way.
You forget that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and that they use dirty tactics against their competitors.
that's how our current capitalist/free market system worksAnd that's exactly one of the problems of the capitalist and free market system (I'm not trolling here! No economic system is perfect and others failed miserably much quicker than capitalism, but that's not my point). The problem here is that once a company becomes a monopoly, it has too much power in its hands. It has, for example, power enough to extinguish small competitors by artificially lowering prices until the competitor dies and then, with no one to compete, rise prices again.
Microsoft is a good example of a company that takes profit from the "loopholes" of capitalism. By using lock in to their proprietary formats and bundling IE and WMP in the OS, they've achieved to keep for a long time more than 90% of market share on a wide range of products, to force people to upgrade and pay them more money, and all that without innovating (if you really look at their products, you'll see that in the last 5 years they didn't introduce any new feature worth buying, mostly cosmetic changes only). All that just using dirty tactics by making sure no one could create programs compatible or interoperatable with theirs.
I do believe in a free market, but this market we have with Microsoft is anything but free. And I do think governments have the responsability to level the playing field here.
Why you think Microsoft ownes it to any of you to give away their computer code is beyond me.The biggest issue here is why did we get into this situation. If Microsoft had used and promoted open standards since the begining, they wouldn't be in this situation today. They would have to compete in quality of their products, not based on the legacy that only they can access. Since they chose to do everything they could to avoid interoperability at all costs, being forced to do that now is the least I expect.
The problem is not Microsoft wanting to profit and not wanting to help their competitors. The problem is they doing that while doing a big announcement that they want to help and interoperate, which is exactly what they did.
Do we really need other languages in the browser? Unless the language is implemented by everyone, it's not worth it. Requiring yet another language makes it harder for new browsers to hit the market. I think it's better to have one well supported language, than several buggy ones.
Strange. I don't know why, but this STEP reminds me of BASIC. :-)
Is this supposed to be a step forward?
Wikipedia page for ISO STEP mentions that many consider replacing it with XML, or rather creating XML schemas to represent the information STEP does (I didn't find Wikipedia's external reference for this though).
...programs can process and present results of STEP incrementally instead of requiring closing tags...It's not true that XML cannot be rendered incrementally. This Mozilla FAQ points out that versions before Firefox 3/Gecko 1.9 don't support it, which makes me believe that Firefox 3 does support it (I didn't check it myself).
The fact that XML allows you to check it for validity when you have the whole document doesn't prevent you from processing the parts you read already. SAX based parsers work that way, by passing events whenever one element is complete, you don't have to wait for all the document to finish to process the snippet at hand. If the document isn't valid, the processing will stop at the point where the error was found.
Just because you can't use tools made for processing text in Unix line-based format, doesn't mean there aren't tools for this purpose. You can even find tools inspired on awk for XML processing, like xmlgawk (also here).
However...
I agree with you that XML is not the answer for everything. For instance, I just hate XML configuration files, exactly because you can't reliably grep, sed, awk, ex, them. Editing XML with vi is not the nicest task either. For config files I usually like INI-style files, for which there are modules in Python and Perl, and you can easily get around with simple shell tools when you just need a dirty hack. A config file usually has a simple enough structure to allow you to specify anything you need in the constraints of INI files (if it doesn't, you should probably rethink your config, it's probably bloated!).
For other tasks such as tabular data, CSV or just plain text delimited by tabs or ":" (think /etc/passwd) are more suited than XML, exactly for the ability to use simple universal tools (grep, sed, awk) on the data. It's even easier to visually inspect a table if it's in CSV or tab-delimited than it is to inspect an XML file and try to see through the tag soup.
Your comment about logfiles is right on the spot! Log files are just made to be grepped. Anything that doesn't write all relevant information of an action on one line, at the time the action happened, really defeats the purpose of logging.
On the browser? If you want to use AJAX-like technology, JavaScript is still the only viable and portable option as the programming language for the client side.
Oh, I forgot to mention. According to their website, TrueCrypt can encrypt the boot partition even after the OS is installed, even with Windows.
Basically, you install it, then you ask it to encrypt the whole disk. It will install the boot code to ask the password and decrypt the partition before loading the OS, and then it will start encrypting your partition in the background, you may continue using the OS. You may even reboot the machine, it will boot correctly and continue encrypting from where it stopped. If it really works as they say it does, this version is indeed amazing.
Hi, I read the site yesterday (from Firehose), and I think I can say one thing or two.
TrueCrypt does a good job of encryption, it's not a trivial level. It uses strong algorithms, and you can choose from 5 or 6 different algorithms. It doesn't store your password anywhere in the disk, when you type the password, it tries to decrypt the header, and if it makes sense (I guess if checksums match) then it knows it's the right password and it goes on, otherwise not. It uses basically the XEX (almost sure that's the name... I don't really know what it is, this is what I remember from the site) schema, but XEX uses only one key for two purposes, and TrueCrypt uses two different keys for these two purposes.
The whole-disk encryption (the correct term is partition encryption) seems to work well, at least from the documentation, I didn't try it (yet). It includes a boot sector that does the part of asking the password during boot and decrypting the partition. The boot sector is obviously encrypted, and I suppose it also stores some unencrypted data to implement the boot code (I don't believe it can be done in 512 bytes only), but after you boot the OS, everything it sees is encrypted, so it will protect even temporary files or logs created by the OS on that drive. Even if it doesn't encrypt 100% of the data (boot sector, boot code), it encrypts everything that you should encrypt. What it doesn't encrypt is not secret in any way.
I tried previous versions and I liked it, it is really a great product, and if 5.0 does everything they say it does, I guess it's really worth it. Whole-disk encryption is no longer missing from this excellent software, many businesses need it for laptops (just see how many information theft happened last year due to lost laptops). I believe TrueCrypt is going mainstream now.
The more companies sharing the market, the better for the market. The less companies, the worse.
Right now, with the three companies separate, we see quite some innovation, they're competing trying to bring better products to the market, which Google is certainly doing (see the way GMail brought something completely different from what was there), Yahoo also to some extent, and Microsoft is struggling trying to keep their OS lock-in, but bringing products to the market at the same time.
If Microsoft buys Yahoo, the most probable is that it won't keep the same size as before. Either it will grow and overcome Google (which I doubt), after what innovation stops because they're no longer #2, or they'll sink together (more probable to me), after what Google will be stronger than ever, will crunch its competition and won't have any reasons to improve.
It would be better if Microsoft learned that the way for them to improve is to start using standards instead of their own crippled technologies, and start creating online services that are accessible instead of a vehicle for locking in the customers to their crippled OS. Then it could get some market share and be more of a player in this market.
Google learned with Microsoft. Google doesn't need to bid for Yahoo, or even buy Yahoo shares to break the deal. Just use FUD! As long as Google creates enough fear, uncertainty, doubt about the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft, it can stop the deal. Microsoft has done this for years now, with impressive results (after all, they have a monopoly on the OS/Office area).
Microsoft is going to take a little of its own medicine now...
Actually, considering mobile devices OSs makes sense, if you consider that in 10-15 years fewer people will be using desktops than mobile devices. Though mobile devices make for a small percentage of OSs today, the tendency is that they'll make a bigger percentage every year, until they surpass the desktop OSs.
That's why all desktop companies are struggling to get their OSs running on mobile devices. Microsoft has Windows CE, Apple has OSX running on the iPhone. There's been a lot of buzz on Linux for mobile devices as well. Although the desktop is the battle being fought today, everyone knows that the war of tomorrow will be on mobile devices.
So, I would say that considering mobile device OSs when talking OS share may make sense.
This isn't about the search algorithm. Microsoft is clearly after Yahoo's user base and users that go to Yahoo for search. For what it's worth, they could scrap Yahoo's search algorithm completely, replace it with MSN, as long as they believe that users will still go to Yahoo after that.
Of course, Microsoft has done that before. Look at Hotmail for instance. They couldn't stand the fact that it was not Microsoft technology under it, so they just had to "improve" it on their way. Results? After Microsoft's "improvement" Hotmail ceased to be #1 in webmail and now must be around #957 in market share.
It's probable that if they finally buy Yahoo it will be just the same. Users will deflect in masses. First it will be the users that leave Yahoo because they don't trust Microsoft (say around 5-10%), then it will be the users that leave Yahoo because Microsoft "improves" the service with their own ways of "improvement" (say around 10-20%), and finally it will be the users that leave Yahoo because Microsoft will introduce its silly single platform locked-in technologies, like Silverlight, and they will try to integrate Yahoo with the desktop, which will make Yahoo no longer as "convenient" it is from the point of view that you can access it anywhere without restrictions (say around 20-40% users leaving because of this).
In the end, Yahoocrosoft will lose from 35% to 70% users, and Google will be a yet bigger #1 with a distant #2. I think Microsoft buying Yahoo will be bad for the search/ads market, but it will be good for the OS/desktop/browser market, because Microsoft will certainly weaken from this. I think it's worth to give Google that much power if we get rid of Microsoft in the process, so I'm happy with this and I actually want it to happen, as much sorry I am for Yahoo, but hey, if they take the bid, they're just asking for it.
If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customersYes! Exactly my point. If Microsoft tries to think "as Yahoo does" and doesn't intervene that much, it could use its money and power to actually make it grow and defy Google. But Microsoft is too clever! They'll want to turn Yahoo in Microsoft, they'll want to use their MSN knowledge to grow Yahoo. They'll want to "improve" Yahoo services by migrating them to Windows servers (as with Hotmail), they'll want to "leverage" the desktop on Yahoo services. That will be their biggest mistake. But it's inevitable, there's no way that Microsoft will buy Yahoo and not do that.
This article is trying to imply that Python 3000 (that's what it's called right now) breaking compatibility will be as bad as Perl 6.
But in fact, it's completely different. Perl 6 is actually a completely new language. They're replacing the basics, such as the "." operator, which used to be for string concatenation, and now is for accessing properties and methods of objects (like, they're trying to lose its C heritage and appeal to Java, .NET and Python programmers). There are other silly changes like this, that don't add any new features, they just change it because they thought it would look less ugly that way. On the other side, they didn't change Perl's most ugly side, which is that every variable is global by default! You have to use strict and my this my that... But the result is a language that still has the same shortcomings of Perl 5, and on the other hand, is completely different than Perl 5, in a way that you have to relearn everything you had learned before. If you want my opinion, Perl 6 will fail (not trolling here, just what I really think).
On the other way, Python 3000 changes are on certain core elements, like strings, but the changes are made in a way that the language's general look and feel is still the same. In fact, many scripts will keep working as they are, and the most of those that will have to be changed will need only minimal adjustments. If you're proficient with Python 2 now, you'll probably be as proficient writing Python 3000 in less than an hour.
As for Python 1.5 vs. Python 2, the backwards compatibility was kept. Though, many new constructions were introduced in Python 2, and the "preferred" way to do things changed. Python 2 has cleaner ways to do several common tasks, and the style of writing code actually changed significantly from 1.5 to 2, being much cleaner on 2. However, the 1.5 code kept working. From 2 to 3000, the change will be less in style and more in core concepts that will be reimplemented in a better way (like strings and classes), requiring to break the old and deprecated way to do that before.
Also, DVR permits you to watch the program while taping it, in a way that allows you to "pause" it and continue later. This ability is included in TiVO's patent. There's no way to do this with a VCR, so it doesn't count as previous art for it.
You completely missed the point.
This isn't a site requiring a crappy technology, this is a site pushing a crappy technology.
They don't really care about page views to the comics, it's only a bait to make you install Silverlight.
Are you kidding? I won't install Silverlight. Period. Ever.
No way I'm running unsecured web code.Exactly my point here!
...see Ballmer sitting in a swivel chair...Ballmer's chairs aren't meant for sitting.
I read User Friendly as well.
I didn't know there were new stories of the BOFH! I mean, I've read the archives, but where are the new stories?
Me neither. Even if this was not on Linux, I would never install a crappy plugin just to see pictures. Why the hell couldn't they just use GIF/JPG/PNG like everybody else? Probably because the comics is just a lame excuse to install their software anyway.
Who wants to idolize some corporate goons?Maybe this guy? Actually there's been quite a few Microsoft shills and fanboys hanging around Slashdot lately...
This reminds me the latest poll.
What is the Best Part of Being a Super Villain?
But is QNX relevant? I mean, outside the world of embedded devices?
Even agreeing that it is a nice OS, what is its market share as a desktop or server platform? Certainly less than 1/1000th of what Linux or even BSD have.
Although microkernel OSs may be "nicer" from a design point of view, on the practical side the monolithical ones are serving us very well.