And that's not their only gaff. Read the Netscape part:
"Not only did Netscape crush competition with its free browser model, but it also infuriated members of the open source community by aggressively introducing proprietary standards to the public Internet, something they felt no one should own. Conveniently, Netscape turned its enemies to Microsoft and their new browsers, Internet Explorer".
Count the number of bald factual errors, and false insinuations. In just two sentences.
Re:Open source is about freedom, not profit
on
Open Source Limitations?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I think there is a whine about how people can't make money from Open Source software because Microsoft can't make money from Open Source software. And that scares them. Their two bread-and-butter software categories: Operating Systems and Office Suites, now have to compete against open-source competitors. Microsoft has never been about being better than the competition; they started out being cheaper; once that drove out the competition (CPM-86 & P-system, mostly) they moved to "don't let anyone choose to not pay you". They crushed their competition in office apps using similar tactics.
What happens when Wine gets "good enough"? Who would pay Microsoft the $49/year that they want for their every-other-year updates?
So, take roads, for example. Roads have a high fixed cost, but it doesn't cost anything extra to use it.
Actually, the more a road is used, the more maintenance it needs. I've seen estimates that over-the-road trucks, even with their thousands of dollars per year in taxes, are paying around half of their share of road maintenance costs.
Capitalism is fairly efficient. But only when there is reasonable competition. And the captains of industry are doing their damndest to eliminate competitive threats, denying consumers the ability to make a choice (per processor licensing fees anyone?), and reducing overall efficiency while lining their own pockets.. Recall the saga of local channels on Satellite TV.
And capitalism doesn't produce optimal results for information products. It just doesn't. Laws have been passed to grant monopoly priviledges to the information creators, but they are far from perfect. Microsoft's businss model relies on those monopoly grants. Monopolies are only efficient at lining their owners pockets and fleecing the public.
The question is, for the 90% of software that is developed for purposes other than being marketed and sold, is opening the source a good business proposition? Is the world and NIST better off because Don Libes open-sourced expect?
How about Larry Wall and Perl? Are they hurting because they gave useful software to another company?
SF's Bridges? The Golden Gate, sure. But the Bay Bridge is not exactly "in fine shape"; they were talking about replacing it, 'cause maintenance would be so much.
But it does run an open-source BSD-Derived Unix clone (Darwin), with a great GUI and application frameworks/environments (Cocoa, Carbon, Classic).
Re:Didn't here the E or T words..
on
Cradle to Cradle
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Why is energy an issue? We get lots of energy every day... from the sun.
It's the chemistry that's important; the material cycle must be closed.
I quibble with a couple of the reviewer's (or maybe the author's) points: life has not evolved so that waste products are inputs to other reactions; it's the other way around. Life has evolved to make use of whatever resources are available; frequently, another creature's waste is exploitable somehow. And recycled paper, even if it degrades, is still part of a closed cycle: eventually, someone or something burns (or metabolizes) the cellulose back to CO2 + H2O, and trees photosynthesize that back into "high grade" cellulose.
The solution is left as an exercise for the reader.
A more interesting question is why anyone, like the ACM here http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0603m. html#item3 chose to run the press release as a news item.
FireWire is on my 1999 (purchased Spring 2000) iMac. FireWire is on many digital camcorders you can go out and buy today. USB2 isn't.
User Base is important. If you were designing a digital camcorder, would you put in a firewire port so that millions could use it today, or a USB2 port so that a few tens of thousands could?
Experience: bought a Apple Adjustable Keyboard (great idea, terrible execution) in 1994. Replaced it circa 1997. Coding got hectic at work (NT workstation developing for Unix; was C++, now Java), and my wrists/forearms started to hurt. So I bought a literal no-name (no brand name on the box or device) ergo keyboard. The pain stopped. The tenderness went away.
I'm still looking for a good (i.e. without the three stupid microsoft tax keys) USB ergo keyboard. With a "power on" button.
They don't have to outlaw equipment already in use.
Civil forfeiture. Your equipment was used to commit a crime (since any unauthorized copying is now a crime), therefore the authorities get it. You could sue to get it back. But that would take years. And thousands of dollars. And accidents just might happen while the authorities were "storing" it.
The blank CD-R, the case, and the mailing label. Paying someone to put the blank in the burner, take the blank out (and label it?), putting it into a jewel case, putting the jewel case into an envelope, and putting a label on it.
Capital costs on the CD burner and the Hard Drive to store the master on. Paying someone to "upload" the tracks onto the server.
I'm impressed. The artists get more per disk than with a major label. Customers get more music per dollar. If they can keep their costs down and remain an ongoing, growing concern, we're all better off.
No. For a photon, energy is proportional to frequency. So a single photon can carry a little bit of energy, or a lot of energy, or any value in between.
"Quantized" means only that energy is carried in discrete packets, or photons. Or, in the context of an atom, each electron is at a particular energy level, and there are a set of possible energy levels, and you get photon emission/absorption only at specific energies.
Paul Kennedy's thesis in _The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers_ ascribes the military progress (and the scientific progress to sustain that) made in Europe from 1500 through the present to the fact that geography and climate made it impossible for a single Monarch/Emperor to control all of Europe. Lack of competition caused the other "world class" empires (China, Persia, northern India, Japan, IIRC) in 1500 to stagnate.
one of the things about quantum physics is that it deals with "quanta", distinct units of something. E.g. "energy" is a quantum, there is a distinct unit of energy that is indivisible. Same for length, time, etc. From that you can conclude that the universe does indeed have a finite number of states, since it is (at the lowest level) essentially "digital" rather than "analog".
Ehhh, no. Mostly. In a "signals and systems" context, you have both sampling (measuring a value at discrete points of time), and quantization (rounding continuous values to select a member of a finite set).
Whether space and time themselves exhibit quantized behavior is an open question, AFAIK (and my physics is a bit out of date). The challenge is that any bandwidth-limited analog system can be simulated by a sampled/quantized system, as long as the samples are frequent enough and the quantization is fine enough.
I will pro'lly buy the book. A question for those who have it: How closely does, say, the quantum-mechanical model of an atom (electron orbitals and the nucleus) fulfill Wolfram's definition of a CA? And isn't the former model the basis of all of chemistry? And relatively impractical to biologically-interesting molecules, as application of the equation becomes intractable? Or does Wolfram think he can come up with a more useful model for chemistry via CAs? Can he show, by experiment, that his model is "more correct"? Or show, by computation, that his model is more useful?
There has been no contention in this court case that Microsoft has used its monopoly to thwart OS competition. That will take another case, and another day.
No, that day happened when Microsoft signed a consent decree in 1994 that thay wouldn't do that any more. They changed a few words ("cliff pricing") and kept on doing what they said they wouldn't do.
This memo goes directly to the issue of what punishment should be imposed on Microsoft. They cannot be trusted to follow any agreement they make. There must be inforcement mechanisms.
In a truly free market system, being one in which there is no government intervention in the economy, monopolies can exist only as temporary aberrations.
Ummm, no. A free market is one in which suppliers can enter freely. You're making up the part about 'no government intervention', and the part about monopolies existing as a temporary aberrations. There is no support for your statement in economic theory, and there is considerable evidence from history that it isn't true, unless your definition of 'temporary' is 'decades long'.
On the third hand, Microsoft did work to repeatedly break the law to prevent consumers from having any real alternatives. I feel they should be compensated.
Why do you have a distaste for paying Microsoft for Windows whether you want it or not? After all, they should be compensated. Right?
Your assertion hinges on your definition of "belief". Today's science is very much based on objective evidence.
The "sad truth" is that today's science very much rejects ideas that are unsupported by objective evidence, and embraces those ideas that are supported by evidence.
Compare the scientific response to Pons and Fleischman's "cold fusion" announcement with the "high-temperature" superconductors announced around the same time. One could be replicated by others; the other couldn't. One was accepted; the other wasn't.
However, there are also people whose cheap computers have just died, and they need a new one, and they already have a "legal" copy of Windows that was installed on the dead computer (assuming that it's not an OEM version tied to the original hardware).
That's a pretty big assumption. You'd have to go back quite a few years to find an Windows preinstall that wasn't tied to the hardware. You have got to pay the Microsoft Tax, as many times as possible, says Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's not their only gaff. Read the Netscape part:
"Not only did Netscape crush competition with its free browser model, but it also infuriated members of the open source community by aggressively introducing proprietary standards to the public Internet, something they felt no one should own. Conveniently, Netscape turned its enemies to Microsoft and their new browsers, Internet Explorer".
Count the number of bald factual errors, and false insinuations. In just two sentences.
I think there is a whine about how people can't make money from Open Source software because Microsoft can't make money from Open Source software. And that scares them. Their two bread-and-butter software categories: Operating Systems and Office Suites, now have to compete against open-source competitors. Microsoft has never been about being better than the competition; they started out being cheaper; once that drove out the competition (CPM-86 & P-system, mostly) they moved to "don't let anyone choose to not pay you". They crushed their competition in office apps using similar tactics.
What happens when Wine gets "good enough"? Who would pay Microsoft the $49/year that they want for their every-other-year updates?
NIST, Don Libes, expect. Reality sometimes works like that.
Your anti-government rhetoric is worn out. Try living in the real world for a while.
Sometimes that happens, so what?
The question is, for the 90% of software that is developed for purposes other than being marketed and sold, is opening the source a good business proposition? Is the world and NIST better off because Don Libes open-sourced expect?
How about Larry Wall and Perl? Are they hurting because they gave useful software to another company?
SF's Bridges? The Golden Gate, sure. But the Bay Bridge is not exactly "in fine shape"; they were talking about replacing it, 'cause maintenance would be so much.
I am a mac user by choice. And an emacs user and Unix software developer by profession.
Not yet.
But it does run an open-source BSD-Derived Unix clone (Darwin), with a great GUI and application frameworks/environments (Cocoa, Carbon, Classic).
Why is energy an issue? We get lots of energy every day... from the sun.
It's the chemistry that's important; the material cycle must be closed.
I quibble with a couple of the reviewer's (or maybe the author's) points: life has not evolved so that waste products are inputs to other reactions; it's the other way around. Life has evolved to make use of whatever resources are available; frequently, another creature's waste is exploitable somehow. And recycled paper, even if it degrades, is still part of a closed cycle: eventually, someone or something burns (or metabolizes) the cellulose back to CO2 + H2O, and trees photosynthesize that back into "high grade" cellulose.
Uhhh, "security through obscurity" isn't.
. html#item3 chose to run the press release as a news item.
ADTI is ignoring this widely known fact. Why?
The solution is left as an exercise for the reader.
A more interesting question is why anyone, like the ACM here http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0603m
FireWire is on my 1999 (purchased Spring 2000) iMac. FireWire is on many digital camcorders you can go out and buy today. USB2 isn't.
User Base is important. If you were designing a digital camcorder, would you put in a firewire port so that millions could use it today, or a USB2 port so that a few tens of thousands could?
Experience: bought a Apple Adjustable Keyboard (great idea, terrible execution) in 1994. Replaced it circa 1997. Coding got hectic at work (NT workstation developing for Unix; was C++, now Java), and my wrists/forearms started to hurt. So I bought a literal no-name (no brand name on the box or device) ergo keyboard. The pain stopped. The tenderness went away.
I'm still looking for a good (i.e. without the three stupid microsoft tax keys) USB ergo keyboard. With a "power on" button.
They don't have to outlaw equipment already in use.
Civil forfeiture. Your equipment was used to commit a crime (since any unauthorized copying is now a crime), therefore the authorities get it. You could sue to get it back. But that would take years. And thousands of dollars. And accidents just might happen while the authorities were "storing" it.
The blank CD-R, the case, and the mailing label. Paying someone to put the blank in the burner, take the blank out (and label it?), putting it into a jewel case, putting the jewel case into an envelope, and putting a label on it.
Capital costs on the CD burner and the Hard Drive to store the master on. Paying someone to "upload" the tracks onto the server.
I'm impressed. The artists get more per disk than with a major label. Customers get more music per dollar. If they can keep their costs down and remain an ongoing, growing concern, we're all better off.
No. For a photon, energy is proportional to frequency. So a single photon can carry a little bit of energy, or a lot of energy, or any value in between.
"Quantized" means only that energy is carried in discrete packets, or photons. Or, in the context of an atom, each electron is at a particular energy level, and there are a set of possible energy levels, and you get photon emission/absorption only at specific energies.
Paul Kennedy's thesis in _The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers_ ascribes the military progress (and the scientific progress to sustain that) made in Europe from 1500 through the present to the fact that geography and climate made it impossible for a single Monarch/Emperor to control all of Europe. Lack of competition caused the other "world class" empires (China, Persia, northern India, Japan, IIRC) in 1500 to stagnate.
Ehhh, no. Mostly. In a "signals and systems" context, you have both sampling (measuring a value at discrete points of time), and quantization (rounding continuous values to select a member of a finite set).
Whether space and time themselves exhibit quantized behavior is an open question, AFAIK (and my physics is a bit out of date). The challenge is that any bandwidth-limited analog system can be simulated by a sampled/quantized system, as long as the samples are frequent enough and the quantization is fine enough.
I will pro'lly buy the book. A question for those who have it: How closely does, say, the quantum-mechanical model of an atom (electron orbitals and the nucleus) fulfill Wolfram's definition of a CA? And isn't the former model the basis of all of chemistry? And relatively impractical to biologically-interesting molecules, as application of the equation becomes intractable? Or does Wolfram think he can come up with a more useful model for chemistry via CAs? Can he show, by experiment, that his model is "more correct"? Or show, by computation, that his model is more useful?
Too true. It doesn't matter if the rules get in the way of justice being served. The rules are the rules.
No, that day happened when Microsoft signed a consent decree in 1994 that thay wouldn't do that any more. They changed a few words ("cliff pricing") and kept on doing what they said they wouldn't do.
This memo goes directly to the issue of what punishment should be imposed on Microsoft. They cannot be trusted to follow any agreement they make. There must be inforcement mechanisms.
Ummm, no. A free market is one in which suppliers can enter freely. You're making up the part about 'no government intervention', and the part about monopolies existing as a temporary aberrations. There is no support for your statement in economic theory, and there is considerable evidence from history that it isn't true, unless your definition of 'temporary' is 'decades long'.
On the third hand, Microsoft did work to repeatedly break the law to prevent consumers from having any real alternatives. I feel they should be compensated.
Why do you have a distaste for paying Microsoft for Windows whether you want it or not? After all, they should be compensated. Right?
Your assertion hinges on your definition of "belief". Today's science is very much based on objective evidence.
The "sad truth" is that today's science very much rejects ideas that are unsupported by objective evidence, and embraces those ideas that are supported by evidence.
Compare the scientific response to Pons and Fleischman's "cold fusion" announcement with the "high-temperature" superconductors announced around the same time. One could be replicated by others; the other couldn't. One was accepted; the other wasn't.
Ping! The light bulb goes on. Did Microsoft actually say that you "purchased" a copy of Windows? Not that you "licensed" a copy...?
What does that do to the "this software is licensed, not sold..." term in the EULA?
However, there are also people whose cheap computers have just died, and they need a new one, and they already have a "legal" copy of Windows that was installed on the dead computer (assuming that it's not an OEM version tied to the original hardware).
That's a pretty big assumption. You'd have to go back quite a few years to find an Windows preinstall that wasn't tied to the hardware. You have got to pay the Microsoft Tax, as many times as possible, says Microsoft.
X was designed _20_ years ago.