i always felt dirty (and not in a good way!) when i use MS products.
this will be long winded, but here goes. when i was in college, my gf came up to me all tearful, etc. her aunt had passed away, and the family had agreed to meet at the aunt's house, and go through her things, and decide who would get what. they were supposed to meet at something like 8:30am, as i recall.
anyway, her part of the family shows up at like 8:15, and some other family members already had gone in the house and were loading things up in a truck -- get this, they said "you snooze, you lose"!!!
so, she was upset because she wanted a couple pieces of jewelry that she liked, but the relatives took her aunt's whole jewel case.
okay, i was angry and upset too. i was raised that things like that just shouldn't happen, fair is fair, wrong is wrong.
but as i get older, i realize that many people in our society don't feel that way. it really is "you snooze, you lose". whatever they can grab, between birth and death, well -- that's competition -- you lose if you're on the losing end. go cry about it or something.
case in point: whenever developers yap about MS innovation, thay always get on Visual Studio and "Intellisense".
I'm always glad to see it, cuz i know who (by name, anyway) made visual studio -- something like "Anders Helsjborg". he was with borland, made delphi (which was killing vb) and was targeted by bill gates for recruitment. the final offer? something like $6M to leave borland for MS.
that, in itself, was not so bad. certainly not illegal. but what came next was stunning -- MS rented the top floor of a hotel nearby borland, and called borland's top engineers and invited them over for a "technology expo".
when the enginners arrived, it was not a tech expo, but a recruiting center. several of borland's top employees accepted offers and left for redmond. this move, "Brain Draining" a competitor, is illegal in california. a lawsuit ensued, and MS settled out of court late in the trial (as usual -- another MS tactic -- keep the expensive lawsuit going til the end, then settle).
in the meantime, borland struggled to bring the less senior people up to speed, while MS developed visual studio.
bill gates, like the people who took the jewelry case, may honesty believe that what they are doing is somehow "acceptable". a lot of people agree with him -- that, somehow, "morality and fairness is for losers".
myself? i've found that most microsoft people are intolerable little wretches, enjoying life on the winning side, at any cost. harsh, but true. i've only met a couple microsofties that i though were decent folks -- the rest? watch your back.
i can legally write a binary that touches glibc, and keep it in house or sell it, whatever.
can't do that with qt.
it's like over a $1K to touch qt libs, and keep the source in house.
any linux distribution shipping with kde should carry a warning label, like the cigarette label, that says something like:
********************************************** WARNING: this product contains "trolltech" binary codes, that, depending on use, may obligate you to $1000 or more in licensing fees. **********************************************
isn't their something in the DCMA that outlawed these kinds of domains as well?
so you can't have a www.peta-sux.org site?
i think it's a severe resriction on our freedom to communicate, for example, i've gone through hell with my gm car (the GM dealerships, imho, qualify for a phat RICO lawsuit) regarding warranty work, but the only recourse we have is to post on usenet or on car webpages.
can't make a sit devoted to warning people about GM products.
i wonder is you can have a more generic site like "warranty_ripoff.org" and load the page description with keywords like "Ford Sucks, Chevy Sucks, Buick Sucks, Honda Sucks,..." etc.
>You never called me poopy-pants, but you >repeatedly say things like "people of your ilk," >"people like you," "no reasonable person," "no >thinking person," etc, implying that I am a >member of a group of unreasonable, unthinking, >and uninformed people. The fact that in this case >I'm making a similar argument to a certain >group of people does not mean I share all of >their views. And the fact that I disagree with >you does not make me stupid, uninformed, twisted, >or evil.
oops, there you go again. i never made the assertion you were twisted, stupid or evil, nor did I ever say you share all the views of some group.
however, i do beleive you tend not to think when you post, that you are uninformed about several subjects, and when you post you say unreasonable things. Additionally, several other posters in the thread are like you, in that they exhibit the same behavior.
the opinions you espouse are ones that tend to be held by a vociferous herd that, in all honesty, fails to take in the facts. there's nothing wrong with being ignorant, but to maintain the opinion once certain facts have been revealed to you is a mark of someone who has some maturing to do.
ignorance is not a bad thing, as long as you learn. unfortunately, you seem to have problems admitting when you are wrong, even when faced with evidence to the contrary.
Your comments on the FCC, Microsoft "standardizing hardware" and FTP being a closed standard were completely false. Yet you fail to admit you were ignorant of the facts and admit it. To cover your ignorance, and the fact that I point it out, you start claiming "ad hom, ad hom". It's not ad hom, if you and other continue to exhibit herd ignorance.
You also keep saying I advocate the government "regulating standards" or "overseeing standards". Once again, you (and the herd like you) tend to hear the word "legislation" and inject "regulation" and "oversight". This is simply not the case -- some types of legislation are merely advisory, and have nothing to do with bureaucracy or the creation of a government standards body.
Try to relax for a minute -- I never said those words! That "velocinews" guy, a couple others, and you created a number of falsehoods and ascribed it to me.
That, binarybits, is the mark of an unthinking herd. And you are a member -- you and your kind.
>He was advocating that the government step in and >*mandate* that all standards that are used be >open.
and...
>the poster was advocating that intermachine >protocols be open and standardized.
...are the same thing? you can't be. that would be a grotesque distortion. a variety of standards are already legislated, and compliance monitored.
I don't want to go that far, what I'd like to see is the threat of legislation force MS to participate more fully and earlier with other companies like they did with DHCP and ODBC, as opposed to what they did with SOAP, writing it internally and dumping it on the standards committee at the last minute so they could claim innovation.
but if the software companies don't enter into meaningful standards, early and inclusive, on the issues of intermachine communication and open peer-peer/client-server applications, then a legal solution would be fully acceptable to me.
as i've said elsewhere, your example of firewire is an open standard. IEEE has codified it and published the results. apple makes money licensing it -- although many people consider the fee too high. MS should (for example) license the exchange protocol in a fair and inclusive way.
you (AND OTHERS OF YOUR ILK) keep implying i am somehow trying to impose a bureauracy on the s/w industry. this is a false assertion someone made early on. it just isn't true, and reading my responses and the various other comments shows i never made that jump. that "velocinews" guy did it when he was calling me names, which lead to other people calling me a commie. just unfair and wrong, that's all.
>You can't have it both ways. Either the >government mandates open standards or companies >are free to have closed standards. Which is it?
actually, legally and historically, you can have it both ways. Example : some companies, based on their size, are exempted from certain city, county and federal regulations (race, gender, inspections) while others are not.
in our last few exchanges, i have tried to explain to you where you have distorted my words, and also where you have made misstatements, yet you never admit an error.
you seem to have real problems admitting your mistakes.
>Most ActiveX controls (in fact, all of them but >one) are not IE, and most of them do not depend >on it, unless the author specifically wishes it >to be so. (This is no 'worse' then a Linux >package that "depends on" (your phrase) glibc, >for example.)
in all honesty, i know nothing about programming on MS products, except for the two and a half years i spent writing ODBC/C++ clients for NT. That was years ago, and COM/DCOM/active-x were just starting up.
our web based apps, written by the IT dept., *require* IE to work. I've tried them under Netscape and they do not work. They sent out an email saying everyone must use IE if they want to access the system from home, or participate in the upcoming work-at-home projects. As you say, they must have written them purposefully to break under netscape.
Since I have not written any code for MS for nearly three years, I actually don't know or care how they did it...hate to say that, but it's the truth. I simply don't want to use or write code for microsoft...anything.
>Did you actually read what I wrote?
Yes, I did. I'm not sure why you made this comment, there are a couple MS/Linux types at work (not MS-haters, not MS-lovers) who looked at the pages and said "...they broke netscape by using active-x..." other than that, I can't say.
so, i guess MS standards are not really effective or something, i'm not really qualified to judge in this case, except for the reasons i've mentioned (exchange is closed, active-x can be written to break netscape).
In the various and sundry replies to my post, which called for a government mandate that all intercommunication standards be open and documented, I have been called a communist and have read several distortions of the original statement.
I have been told "If you don't like it there, get another job". When one admin of one division allows any client to work wih the exchange server, and another admin of another division (mine) decides to close out all non-MS clients, why should I be the one to "get another job"? Why should I have to transfer? By company policy, admins are allowed to run their servers as they see fit. Yet I am no longer allowed to use my mail client of choice? To me, this sounds much more like communism than anything I have written. "Don't like our shoes? Go barefoot." That's not freedom.
This "communist" has worked for this division for 7 years, cultivating relationships with the customer, insuring quality and satisfaction at every cycle of the process -- and my record shows it. I am often requested by name when things go awry, since I never "drop the ball". So that makes me a "communist"?
Somehow, a number of posters have insisted that my post demands the creation of some kind of Orwellian "Ministry of Protocols". Ridiculous. My post says nothing of the sort, it simply states that the protocols be open and documented -- my interpretation of "open" is that a variety of entities can attend, without undue discrimination. For example, there's no reason to let Lars Ulrich in, but Sun representatives should nt be disallowed.
One poster brought up the subject of firewire, as a standard created without government intervention. Note that the companies involved did not need coercion by the government -- they wanted to spread it's use. Firewire is now an IEEE standard, anyone can get it, and must be licensed for use.
Microsoft used standards when it suited them -- ODBC and DHCP let them get on the desktop in most corporations -- but now that they control the market, they refuse to let anyone license exchange.
Another poster states COM/Active-X are open standards. I'm glad someone brought this up. Increasingly, companies like Microsoft and Sun pervert the standards process by inviting one or two NDA participants, creating and stabilizing everything, then releasing the "standard" after they have a huge head start. I really question this kind of "standard" -- while everyone tries to implement version 1.0, you're already debugged and running it, and working on version 2.0. This moving target, with a small group of NDA participants, is hardly an "open, documented standard". Add on to that the widespread use of Active-X controls that work with no browser except Netscape, and you have something, but it's not really a "standard".
I think there are real threats to our civil liberties in the making here, folks. When a company makes a change that essentially forces the employees to use Microsoft products at home, and the best your peers and management can say is "Go Get Another Job", there is something deeply wrong with the way the software industry is working and the way Management is thinking.
Corporations once had the right to listen in on your phone calls, on company property, without any regulations or hinderence. They cannot do that anymore, by law. This is a case where corporate america had to take a loss of power for the sake of individual rights.
All I'm asking is that solutions be found to insure companies cannot be in the position to force the use of Microsoft products or services at home. I proposed a solution that makes sense to me. If you have a better solution, that doesn't involve my changing jobs or putting me in a deathcamp for being some kind of "communist", I'd like to hear it.
...uses active-x, and the authors wrote it in such a way that it ONLY works with IE.
so, i question the qualities of your "Microsoft Standard".
If something uses active-x, and it only works with Microsoft products, it's not much of a "standard".
If one entity writes the "standard", and publishes it after the fact so everyone else gets to play catch up on a moving target, that's not much of a "standard" either.
so, i was aware of what you mentioned, it just doesn't really have much of a "standard" flavor to it.
>The previous poster was not simply advocating >standards.
this is true, the poster was advocating that intermachine protocols be standardized.
>He was advocating that the government >step in and *mandate* that all standards that are >used be open.
wrong. the poster was advocating that intermachine protocols be open and standardized.
for example, what was firewire is now an IEEE standard, that can be licensed for a reasonable cost and used by anyone.
microsoft, as far as i know, is not licensing the exchange protocol to anyone, and there are free and open solutions that provide similar functionality.
in other words, microsoft is using a proprietary protocol to maintain their monopoly. when you support this type of behavior, giving corporations the ability to mandate what OS people use at home via a closed protocol, you are treading pretty heavily on civil liberties, whether you intend to or not.
and before you say it, i know the rallying cry of you and your ilk -- "Don't like it? Go get another job".
well, binarybits, as much as you and your pals want to write me off as a kook, a commie, or whatever, the fact is I have several years invested with my customers, and i enjoy serving them.
i don't see why that relationship has to be destroyed by microsoft's desire to control the software we use. the company i work for wants to keep the employees happy, but the fact is, in this division, we have a microsoft nazi who want microsoft everywhere. he runs the exchange server.
in another division, where i know a few people, the admin is totally different. he lets people use whatever mail client they want -- he keeps pop3/smtp open.
the company lets divisions handle things the way they think best. should i leave the company? should i change divisions? why should i? all i want is for the company to give people some freedom and choice.
there are a variety of laws on the books regulating when and how a employer can listen in on their own phone systems, let you refuse to allow MS to be forced to adhere to standards.
i think it's wrong to make me get another job so i can have a bit more freedom in my workplace. i also think a company that gives it's employees a bit of freedom and choice has happier employees and more production. in the long run, it's better for the company, the employee and the customer.
so, before you complain that i should get another job, you might want to consider that i'd like my workplace to be better, and i'd like to keep working here, for my customer base, with a bit more freedom.
>In other words, he wanted to *ban* >closed standards.
wrong. the effect, to some extent, would be to *ban* closed intermachine protocols. but calling it a *banning* is a stretch. that's like calling calling FDA inspections of food products *the banning of kangaroo meat in hamburger*
the problem here is your poor reading skills. if i were to call you a name, the sentence would resemble something like "oh, that binarybits, he's a poopy-pants"
the way you and your ilk continually claim that i want to see the government write the standards is ludicrous. i never said that.
what i said was, taken in context of the story posted to, is that exchange is a closed protocol, and Microsoft's latest strategy is to create proprietary protocols designed to lock up the client and server as a pair.
what you and your ilk have twisted my post into, is that i want the government to create some kind of "Ministry of Protocols". that's ridiculous. you people cut the last sentence out of my post, hold it up on it's own, and say that i intend to allow no company to create a proprietary protocol.
no thinking person can read the story, and the post, and not understand what the comment meant. you are taking it entirely out of context, and literally pissing on all the people who use RFC to insure all our computers can talk together.
i also never said standards can't exist in a free market -- most of them were created without any government influence or intervention -- remember, binarybits, you are the one making the claim i said that. i never did.
microsoft was a driving force in standards when they wanted the desktop. ODBC, DHCP. They wanted all the unices to participate...but now that other want in, it's a quick about face.
you claim microsoft is losing market share in in server space. this is a half-truth. in the server space we can measure, portions of the internet, this is the case. in many places of employment, this is false.
Example : an employer has mutiple divisions, each with their own exchange server. One division's admin decides to close pop3 and go exhange protocol only. another division keeps opens the mail server to all clients, since some want to use other mail clients, and they don't have a problem with that.
whos right, whos wrong? the feeling on slashdot, as expressed by people like you, is that i should get another job. i think that should be the last resort. i have years of relationships built with the customer. why should i have to sacrifice that? so you can feel good that "corporate rights" are being protected?
by the way, you spent a lot of time saying i'm trying to assert that "i'm smarter than you" (again, i never said that--you did). let's go take a peek at some of the assertions in your posts, shall we?
>> soviet union, china, nazi germany
>Funny, these are all governments. That's not a >coincidence. It's also not a coincidence that >government regulation of the airwaves and cable >has lead to restricted freedom of speech and less >diversity than would otherwise exist. If you say >something on the air that the FCC doesn't like, >they can yank your liscence.
binarybits, you are wrong again. they are not all governments. China is a country. Anyway, one thing they all have in common is a government-controlled path of communication through some type of monolithic organization.
the point here is that, without an iron grip on communications, it would be very difficult for a totalitarian state to rise and maintain power. having one corporation control the client and server side would make that job easier. the restrictions i mentioned would prevent any one company from assuming or maintaing such a position.
Oh, the FCC can't "yank your license" if you say something they don't like. First of all, someone has to complain, and second, the speech must fall under a very small set of specific rules; for example, espousing the murder of an individual.
>Ironically, Microsoft is a good example of this. >The reason that the PC beat the Mac is >primarily that the PC was an open, >commodity-based hardware system while Apple tried >to keep their platform closed.
binarybits' version of history : Microsoft created the PC.
>Will the Feds force me to take down my FTP server >until I publish specs?
Newsflash for binarybits : the specs for FTP have been published for many years, via the RFC mechanism.
>Your attempt to equate standards exclusively with >the government is absurd
Never, ever did that in my posts. that bit must have bubbled up through your brain cells somehow...
>The computer industry is full of standards that >were created with no help from the >government--Unix, FireWire, USB, SCSI, IDE, ADB, >etc.
Actually, wrong again. Unix matured from some good ideas from the posix group, which had a lot of funding by the government. And your assertion is pretty grey here, as most of the electronics and software we use were originally funded by the government through contracts. For example, the IEEE is an NGO, but many of their members reap huge profits through government funding.
>The rest of your post is a string of irrelevant >ad homs and weak "philosophical" ramblings.
i did pretty well in my philosophy classes. especially the parts where we talked about the demonization of communism in the USA, and the reasons for it. that was really interesting.
>"I'm smarter than you are" >"If you weren't such an ignoramous you'd >understand"
i find it fascinating that you put these in quotes, and you request i stop making the statements, but i have never made those statements in any of my posts. therefore, you are falsifying my statements -- in other words, you are lying. if you are lying, you are a liar, right? is that an "ad hom"? did i call you a name, or state a simple fact?
>>in the animal world, you would have a much >>shorter life than you have in our modern, >>western society.
>Points for medicine, not government. A strong >individual could live as long without government >as with government, assuming he can get the >medical benefits (by force, if necessary). A >smart one probably as long, if he can make others >dependent on him (as a medic, for example).
>A weaker individual without saleable talents or >the social skills to market them would die, >Nature considers him/her not worthy. I think >that's your point, but you >didn't make it, I have to guess.
Actually, your post is hideously contrived in many areas, but I'll limit myself to the inaccuracies above for the sake of brevity.
You claim that a longer lifespan in western society, as opposed to a shorter lifespan in a strictly laissez faire "animal" society is restricted strictly to medicinal benefits.
You then go on to give an example of a "smart person" living as long (or longer) regardless of government.
What you fail to recognize is that the government protects both individuals and groups, through the rule of law, to prevent them from competing in what our society considers inapproporiate ways.
Example: A group of disgruntled programmers drug and hypnotize an Air Force pilot such that he napalms Bill Gate's island mansion.
There is no "medicinal" influence here. It's just a matter of doing things within the law. In the animal kingdom, ganging together and removing a strong/unfair leader from power is a social victory. (Babboons occasionally do this when a troop leader is monopolizing power).
Your second point is that "Nature considers some unworthy". Ah, yes. You're one of those "Kill the 'tards" people, aren't you?
Perhaps if you grew up with a brain damaged brother or sister, you might have more compassion, but your inability to project your existence into that of the less fortunate counts strongly against any such expression of compassion. Truly an animalist.
I'm cheering for the first baboon with the guts to take a swing at you, and I hope the rest join in bravely.
Whereas, Microsoft, a Corporation of that great State of Washington has been found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act;
And furthermore, such actions have harmed to a great extent both the population of these Great States and the global community;
It is hereby ordered:
The Microsoft Corporation shall participate fully in a Intermachine Communications Standards commitee for a period not less than ten years;
Any and all protocols used for intermachine communication shall be fully disclosed, documented and approved of by the committee before implementation;
The standards committee shall be composed of not less than twelve persons or corporate leaders from the fields of software or electronics.
A steering committee shall choose the initial membership. The steering committee shall be composed of William Gates III (Microsoft Incorporated), Richard M. Stallman (The Free Software Foundation), Robert Malda (SlashDot.org), Steven Jobs (Apple, Inc), Robert Young (RedHat Linux) and Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems).
Each member of the steering commitee may nominate two individuals or corporations to serve on the initial committee. After a service of two years, committee members may assign their seat to an alternate, with approval of a majority of the remainder of the board. If a majority cannot be made after three rounds of nomination, the replacement shall be selected by a simple majority of the board.
At the end of the ten year period the Microsoft Corporation may remove its prescense from the organization, and the organization may be disbanded according to the wishes of the remaining members.
This board shall have one mandate : preserving for the future that all internetworking machines be able to seamlessly communicate through industry standard protocols. The very foundation of the internetworking community was built by industry leaders agreeing on protocols and sharing enough information such that disparate machines and software could intercommunicate.
It is the sole intent of this law to restore that spirit of teamwork back into an industry that has fallen to the mere pursuit of greed at the expense of the communicating community.
how am i being overly violent to newsboy, when he didn't read or understand my original post, and responded with a post calling me names?
like him, you failed to read the posts. remember, reading is more than recognizing the letters on the screen. reading also implies that you understand what was posted.
i would very much like the government to force microsoft to participate in a standards group for all future protocols. many other industries, worldwide, have to participate in standards groups.
like the original poster, you made the incredible error of allowing your mind to place text in my post that was not there. you think i said "let the government write the protocols", your error, your mistake, not mine.
also, like the original poster, you claim i "should go get another job". actually, i think my employer should adhere to open standards. they did when i was hired. don't get me wrong, i know i'm on the losing end of the battle, but i will continue to voice my opinion that it is unfair and wrong.
microsoft people, people like you, want to take that away. "don't like microsoft? don't use it -- leave your place of employment." if anything, you're the one who sounds like a communist -- one choice, for all.
the government sometimes dictates free speech takes place over the majority view. i want that to continue.
the government mandates that someone bigger or stronger than you faces grave consequences for killing you and stealing what you own. it hasn't always been that way -- in the animal world, you would have a much shorter life than you have in our modern, western society.
when the government fails, it's because people like you turned their back on it and let the system run rampant.
like it or not, there is a place for government done well, and it screws up sometimes.
many companies develop kick ass standards and let others license it. they make great profits off this, and the consumer benefits as well.
by the way, as much as i hate correcting you monkeys, the RFC process is not monitored by a beauracracy. there would be no IRC, mail, ftp, http, etc. w/o the the RFC process. All of these protocols help different computer systems interoperate.
many standards processes are not monitored by a bureaucracy, and do quite well. products throughout your home, on the desk in front of you, in your car and on the road are proof.
you say it will lead to ruin, i'm a commie, etc. the truth is, you are an unthinking name-caller like the first poster. sometimes government makes mistakes, sometimes industry makes mistakes. the truth is, i'm not pleased with the size of our government, nor with many of it's decisions. but there are many functions it provides on a daily basis that keeps us safe, and from being ripped off by companies like microsoft.
imagine gasoline companies and auto manufacturers colluding to make engines fail early by adding contaminants to fuel. the only way to stop such a thing is through government regulation and monitoring. you think the free market will "protect" us from such a thing -- some gas company will come clean, some car manufacturer will do the right thing. history has shown you to be pitifully wrong.
example: car companies secretly buying all public transporation in los angeles and destroying it to sell more vehicles (GM did this, and was fined $1).
there are countless examples of the medical industry falsifying records to make medicine seem more effective or less dangerous. do you want your loved ones taking that medicine? (presuming you love or care about anyone).
if you still don't think the government has the right and duty to take from the privileged (in some cases) and give to the public, if your point of view is that it is always wrong, go study the phrase "riparian rights". if you still don't understand, your brain is defective.
look who was the darling of standards when it suited them -- microsoft (ODBC, DHCP) -- when they needed to get on the client side of unix.
look who refuses to accept standards, and like you, calls anyone who thinks standards can be good a "communist", or someone who needs a "nanny" -- that same microsoft, now that other companies would like to expand onto the desktop.
standards go wrong sometimes. people like you take that fact and say all standards are bad.
governments go wrong sometimes. people like you take that fact and say all governments are bad.
corporations like microsoft refuse to promote or use the standards process when it means holding or gaining market share and limiting consumer choice. people like me want it to stop, and if it means asking the government to hop in to help, i'm for that.
when a corporation throws billions of dollars of it's invester's money away, people like you claim it's the price of progress. those dumb investors should have known better.
you never realize that the waste of tax dollars happens sometimes, too. you think all government is bad, all regulations are bad, all standards are bad.
you are woefully ignorant, like the original replier, who doesn't even realize that with inches of his face are dozens of standards that made his pc cheap, easy and safe to use -- many of which are mandated and inspected by the government. (insulation, wiring voltages, etc). the 2x4's in the wall next to you, the medicine in your cabinet, the plastic in your monitor.
for some reason, people like you and the newsboy think i want the government to *write* or *create* the protocols. nothing could be further from the truth. all i'm saying, is that for the good of the free market, more than one entity be in the process, and privy to any intermachine protocols.
if it takes government intervention to make that happen, i vote yes.
i don't understand how people can interpret my original post as anything other than forcing the protocol process to be open. someone, your twisted mind seems to think i wrote "make the government write them". you have a very poor language parser there.
geez...i can't believe you slept through BOTH your history classes and your philosophy classes...
anyway, when you control the medium, you control the content. that's history. soviet union, china, nazi germany...in fact, that's why we have laws (strong laws) controling who controls how mauch bandwidth, particularly in radio and tv.
it makes it much easier for people/companies to compete when you have standards. that is, someone can't take over networking by coming up with some oddball networking standard --- the IEEE takes recommendations and codifies them. You would probably no be a happy camper if none of your network cards would talk to each other.
Or if your Honda (you seem like a honda owner, dunno why) had proprietary rims, such that you could only go to the honda dealer for tires. standards again.
I'm taking about between machines -- a natural place for standards. they are often placed in this position.
And what of philosophy? We're stronger together than apart. One of the basics of philosophy, and why government exists. Forgot about that, eh? You must have been too busy calling me names to think about any of this.
As far as "...no ones putting a gun to your head to use any given product or standard...", you are literally correct. It's not a physical gun, but it is a virtual one -- if you don't use microsoft at home, you can't take advantage of the work-at-home program I mentioned. Probable result : discrimination that would be very hard to prove.
Hmmm...I've dealt with your type before. When a gang of thugs starts breaking down your door to get at your wife and daughters, guess who will be calling the 911 line "Oh, help, nanny help, I'm not strong enough to deal with these thugs. Please send over the police I paid for with my taxes, driving on standardized tires and armed with lots of standard weapons!!
There are standards all around you, that get you through every one of your days. Goverment and international standards, on poer tranmission (so your toaster doesn't have to be made by the same company that made the power generation plant).
How can you be so ignorant. I'm not saying companies can't innovate, or that they all have to write the same OS, all I'm saying is they make protocols using the existing RFC mechanism or something like it.
The goal is not Microsoft on more platforms, it's the elimination of closed, proprietary protocols like exchange and active-x controls.
MSHAFT's strategy is to develop as many closed protocols as possible, and foist them on their corporate customers, hoping it will lock up the home market.
Imagine your company decides to let you work at home. If you use non-ms products at home, you night not be able to get your email or access the company web pages. You're screwed.
My main concern is the way they develop closed protocols and make workplaces "Microsoft Only" -- if the exchange server has Microserfs administering it, no mail client will work except outlook.
If the company does webpages with active-x, no browser works except IE.
The situation sucks. The only hope is that I keep seeing more ads on the job boards for Linux developers and admins.
I'm a firm believer that legislation should be enacted to force all inter-machine communication protocols to be open and documented.
the crux of the case was that MSHAFT bound IE to the OS to screw netscape.
anyone familiar with the issues knows a browser is really just an app.
but maybe the judge doesn't want to get in a situation forcing MSHAFT to split out the browser? he's already asking for a lot with the conduct remedies and split, maybe tossing a breakout of the browser would put the case over the top in the appeals court.
the one remedy that would really help wasn't even on the list! smear bill gate's balls with alpo and lower him into a pen filled with starving pit bulls.
then maybe he would know how ibm, novell, netscape, borland, stac et. al. and all the people who had tough times because of bill gate's illegal behaviors feel.
bastard is totally untrustworthy and disrespectful of the court. try breaking the law and going to court, and then lie to the judge. watch what happens to you...it won't be pleasant.
i'm still suprised there hasen't been any shareholder lawsuits against gates for gross mismanagement...any other large corporation would have ousted him by now.
does anyone actually use borland for large projects? i used c++b and delphi for three years, and watched the price skyrocket as they started splitting out "enterprise versions" etc.
i really liked their stuff years ago when it was like $79 for a full version, but the full versions of borland stuff are $1500 or more.
QT is $1550 for commercial work (non-open source). now add on all the borland objects, and you're gonna get a hefty price tag.
nice of all these folks to take advantage of Linus and friends, eh? esp. when you can get VC++ pro and w2k for less than QT alone.
use wxWindows or something. Free cross platform development now.
Slashdot Mirror
i always felt dirty (and not in a good way!) when i use MS products.
this will be long winded, but here goes. when i was in college, my gf came up to me all tearful, etc. her aunt had passed away, and the family had agreed to meet at the aunt's house, and go through her things, and decide who would get what. they were supposed to meet at something like 8:30am, as i recall.
anyway, her part of the family shows up at like 8:15, and some other family members already had gone in the house and were loading things up in a truck -- get this, they said "you snooze, you lose"!!!
so, she was upset because she wanted a couple pieces of jewelry that she liked, but the relatives took her aunt's whole jewel case.
okay, i was angry and upset too. i was raised that things like that just shouldn't happen, fair is fair, wrong is wrong.
but as i get older, i realize that many people in our society don't feel that way. it really is "you snooze, you lose". whatever they can grab, between birth and death, well -- that's competition -- you lose if you're on the losing end. go cry about it or something.
case in point: whenever developers yap about MS innovation, thay always get on Visual Studio and "Intellisense".
I'm always glad to see it, cuz i know who (by name, anyway) made visual studio -- something like "Anders Helsjborg". he was with borland, made delphi (which was killing vb) and was targeted by bill gates for recruitment. the final offer? something like $6M to leave borland for MS.
that, in itself, was not so bad. certainly not illegal. but what came next was stunning -- MS rented the top floor of a hotel nearby borland, and called borland's top engineers and invited them over for a "technology expo".
when the enginners arrived, it was not a tech expo, but a recruiting center. several of borland's top employees accepted offers and left for redmond. this move, "Brain Draining" a competitor, is illegal in california. a lawsuit ensued, and MS settled out of court late in the trial (as usual -- another MS tactic -- keep the expensive lawsuit going til the end, then settle).
in the meantime, borland struggled to bring the less senior people up to speed, while MS developed visual studio.
bill gates, like the people who took the jewelry case, may honesty believe that what they are doing is somehow "acceptable". a lot of people agree with him -- that, somehow, "morality and fairness is for losers".
myself? i've found that most microsoft people are intolerable little wretches, enjoying life on the winning side, at any cost. harsh, but true. i've only met a couple microsofties that i though were decent folks -- the rest? watch your back.
i can legally write a binary that touches glibc, and keep it in house or sell it, whatever.
can't do that with qt.
it's like over a $1K to touch qt libs, and keep the source in house.
any linux distribution shipping with kde should carry a warning label, like the cigarette label, that says something like:
**********************************************
WARNING: this product contains "trolltech" binary codes, that, depending on use, may obligate you to $1000 or more in licensing fees.
**********************************************
isn't their something in the DCMA that outlawed these kinds of domains as well?
..." etc.
so you can't have a www.peta-sux.org site?
i think it's a severe resriction on our freedom to communicate, for example, i've gone through hell with my gm car (the GM dealerships, imho, qualify for a phat RICO lawsuit) regarding warranty work, but the only recourse we have is to post on usenet or on car webpages.
can't make a sit devoted to warning people about GM products.
i wonder is you can have a more generic site like "warranty_ripoff.org" and load the page description with keywords like "Ford Sucks, Chevy Sucks, Buick Sucks, Honda Sucks,
www.eatmytastymeat.org?
this is suprising to me. i've never seen sun.com go down before under pressure.
ouch! the ne^Hotwork is the computer.
must be a java servlet or something, i'm sure hotspot will circumvent the bottleneck any hour now...
$9.99 CD-ROM of SO 5.2 is not available in english.
People who speak english must pay $39.99 for a CD, which includes a printed manual.
See what all those RTFM comments got you?!
just write dsp app that analyzes the ambient noise in the room and pumps anti-noise out the speakers.
>You never called me poopy-pants, but you
>repeatedly say things like "people of your ilk,"
>"people like you," "no reasonable person," "no
>thinking person," etc, implying that I am a
>member of a group of unreasonable, unthinking,
>and uninformed people. The fact that in this case
>I'm making a similar argument to a certain
>group of people does not mean I share all of
>their views. And the fact that I disagree with
>you does not make me stupid, uninformed, twisted,
>or evil.
oops, there you go again. i never made the assertion you were twisted, stupid or evil, nor did I ever say you share all the views of some group.
however, i do beleive you tend not to think when you post, that you are uninformed about several subjects, and when you post you say unreasonable things. Additionally, several other posters in the thread are like you, in that they exhibit the same behavior.
the opinions you espouse are ones that tend to be held by a vociferous herd that, in all honesty, fails to take in the facts. there's nothing wrong with being ignorant, but to maintain the opinion once certain facts have been revealed to you is a mark of someone who has some maturing to do.
ignorance is not a bad thing, as long as you learn. unfortunately, you seem to have problems admitting when you are wrong, even when faced with evidence to the contrary.
Your comments on the FCC, Microsoft "standardizing hardware" and FTP being a closed standard were completely false. Yet you fail to admit you were ignorant of the facts and admit it. To cover your ignorance, and the fact that I point it out, you start claiming "ad hom, ad hom". It's not ad hom, if you and other continue to exhibit herd ignorance.
You also keep saying I advocate the government "regulating standards" or "overseeing standards". Once again, you (and the herd like you) tend to hear the word "legislation" and inject "regulation" and "oversight". This is simply not the case -- some types of legislation are merely advisory, and have nothing to do with bureaucracy or the creation of a government standards body.
Try to relax for a minute -- I never said those words! That "velocinews" guy, a couple others, and you created a number of falsehoods and ascribed it to me.
That, binarybits, is the mark of an unthinking herd. And you are a member -- you and your kind.
wait...are you really saying that :
>He was advocating that the government step in and
>*mandate* that all standards that are used be
>open.
and...
>the poster was advocating that intermachine
>protocols be open and standardized.
...are the same thing? you can't be. that would be a grotesque distortion. a variety of standards are already legislated, and compliance monitored.
I don't want to go that far, what I'd like to see is the threat of legislation force MS to participate more fully and earlier with other companies like they did with DHCP and ODBC, as opposed to what they did with SOAP, writing it internally and dumping it on the standards committee at the last minute so they could claim innovation.
but if the software companies don't enter into meaningful standards, early and inclusive, on the issues of intermachine communication and open peer-peer/client-server applications, then a legal solution would be fully acceptable to me.
as i've said elsewhere, your example of firewire is an open standard. IEEE has codified it and published the results. apple makes money licensing it -- although many people consider the fee too high. MS should (for example) license the exchange protocol in a fair and inclusive way.
you (AND OTHERS OF YOUR ILK) keep implying i am somehow trying to impose a bureauracy on the s/w industry. this is a false assertion someone made early on. it just isn't true, and reading my responses and the various other comments shows i never made that jump. that "velocinews" guy did it when he was calling me names, which lead to other people calling me a commie. just unfair and wrong, that's all.
>You can't have it both ways. Either the
>government mandates open standards or companies
>are free to have closed standards. Which is it?
actually, legally and historically, you can have it both ways. Example : some companies, based on their size, are exempted from certain city, county and federal regulations (race, gender, inspections) while others are not.
in our last few exchanges, i have tried to explain to you where you have distorted my words, and also where you have made misstatements, yet you never admit an error.
you seem to have real problems admitting your mistakes.
>Most ActiveX controls (in fact, all of them but >one) are not IE, and most of them do not depend >on it, unless the author specifically wishes it >to be so. (This is no 'worse' then a Linux
>package that "depends on" (your phrase) glibc,
>for example.)
in all honesty, i know nothing about programming on MS products, except for the two and a half years i spent writing ODBC/C++ clients for NT. That was years ago, and COM/DCOM/active-x were just starting up.
our web based apps, written by the IT dept., *require* IE to work. I've tried them under Netscape and they do not work. They sent out an email saying everyone must use IE if they want to access the system from home, or participate in the upcoming work-at-home projects. As you say, they must have written them purposefully to break under netscape.
Since I have not written any code for MS for nearly three years, I actually don't know or care how they did it...hate to say that, but it's the truth. I simply don't want to use or write code for microsoft...anything.
>Did you actually read what I wrote?
Yes, I did. I'm not sure why you made this comment, there are a couple MS/Linux types at work (not MS-haters, not MS-lovers) who looked at the pages and said "...they broke netscape by using active-x..." other than that, I can't say.
so, i guess MS standards are not really effective or something, i'm not really qualified to judge in this case, except for the reasons i've mentioned (exchange is closed, active-x can be written to break netscape).
thanks for not cursing me or calling me a commie.
In the various and sundry replies to my post, which called for a government mandate that all intercommunication standards be open and documented, I have been called a communist and have read several distortions of the original statement.
I have been told "If you don't like it there, get another job". When one admin of one division allows any client to work wih the exchange server, and another admin of another division (mine) decides to close out all non-MS clients, why should I be the one to "get another job"? Why should I have to transfer? By company policy, admins are allowed to run their servers as they see fit. Yet I am no longer allowed to use my mail client of choice? To me, this sounds much more like communism than anything I have written. "Don't like our shoes? Go barefoot." That's not freedom.
This "communist" has worked for this division for 7 years, cultivating relationships with the customer, insuring quality and satisfaction at every cycle of the process -- and my record shows it. I am often requested by name when things go awry, since I never "drop the ball". So that makes me a "communist"?
Somehow, a number of posters have insisted that my post demands the creation of some kind of Orwellian "Ministry of Protocols". Ridiculous. My post says nothing of the sort, it simply states that the protocols be open and documented -- my interpretation of "open" is that a variety of entities can attend, without undue discrimination. For example, there's no reason to let Lars Ulrich in, but Sun representatives should nt be disallowed.
One poster brought up the subject of firewire, as a standard created without government intervention. Note that the companies involved did not need coercion by the government -- they wanted to spread it's use. Firewire is now an IEEE standard, anyone can get it, and must be licensed for use.
Microsoft used standards when it suited them -- ODBC and DHCP let them get on the desktop in most corporations -- but now that they control the market, they refuse to let anyone license exchange.
Another poster states COM/Active-X are open standards. I'm glad someone brought this up. Increasingly, companies like Microsoft and Sun pervert the standards process by inviting one or two NDA participants, creating and stabilizing everything, then releasing the "standard" after they have a huge head start. I really question this kind of "standard" -- while everyone tries to implement version 1.0, you're already debugged and running it, and working on version 2.0. This moving target, with a small group of NDA participants, is hardly an "open, documented standard". Add on to that the widespread use of Active-X controls that work with no browser except Netscape, and you have something, but it's not really a "standard".
I think there are real threats to our civil liberties in the making here, folks. When a company makes a change that essentially forces the employees to use Microsoft products at home, and the best your peers and management can say is "Go Get Another Job", there is something deeply wrong with the way the software industry is working and the way Management is thinking.
Corporations once had the right to listen in on your phone calls, on company property, without any regulations or hinderence. They cannot do that anymore, by law. This is a case where corporate america had to take a loss of power for the sake of individual rights.
All I'm asking is that solutions be found to insure companies cannot be in the position to force the use of Microsoft products or services at home. I proposed a solution that makes sense to me. If you have a better solution, that doesn't involve my changing jobs or putting me in a deathcamp for being some kind of "communist", I'd like to hear it.
...uses active-x, and the authors wrote it in such a way that it ONLY works with IE.
so, i question the qualities of your "Microsoft Standard".
If something uses active-x, and it only works with Microsoft products, it's not much of a "standard".
If one entity writes the "standard", and publishes it after the fact so everyone else gets to play catch up on a moving target, that's not much of a "standard" either.
so, i was aware of what you mentioned, it just doesn't really have much of a "standard" flavor to it.
>The previous poster was not simply advocating
>standards.
this is true, the poster was advocating that intermachine protocols be standardized.
>He was advocating that the government
>step in and *mandate* that all standards that are
>used be open.
wrong. the poster was advocating that intermachine protocols be open and standardized.
for example, what was firewire is now an IEEE standard, that can be licensed for a reasonable cost and used by anyone.
microsoft, as far as i know, is not licensing the exchange protocol to anyone, and there are free and open solutions that provide similar functionality.
in other words, microsoft is using a proprietary protocol to maintain their monopoly. when you support this type of behavior, giving corporations the ability to mandate what OS people use at home via a closed protocol, you are treading pretty heavily on civil liberties, whether you intend to or not.
and before you say it, i know the rallying cry of you and your ilk -- "Don't like it? Go get another job".
well, binarybits, as much as you and your pals want to write me off as a kook, a commie, or whatever, the fact is I have several years invested with my customers, and i enjoy serving them.
i don't see why that relationship has to be destroyed by microsoft's desire to control the software we use. the company i work for wants to keep the employees happy, but the fact is, in this division, we have a microsoft nazi who want microsoft everywhere. he runs the exchange server.
in another division, where i know a few people, the admin is totally different. he lets people use whatever mail client they want -- he keeps pop3/smtp open.
the company lets divisions handle things the way they think best. should i leave the company? should i change divisions? why should i? all i want is for the company to give people some freedom and choice.
there are a variety of laws on the books regulating when and how a employer can listen in on their own phone systems, let you refuse to allow MS to be forced to adhere to standards.
i think it's wrong to make me get another job so i can have a bit more freedom in my workplace. i also think a company that gives it's employees a bit of freedom and choice has happier employees and more production. in the long run, it's better for the company, the employee and the customer.
so, before you complain that i should get another job, you might want to consider that i'd like my workplace to be better, and i'd like to keep working here, for my customer base, with a bit more freedom.
>In other words, he wanted to *ban*
>closed standards.
wrong. the effect, to some extent, would be to *ban* closed intermachine protocols. but calling it a *banning* is a stretch. that's like calling calling FDA inspections of food products *the banning of kangaroo meat in hamburger*
where did i call you a name?
the problem here is your poor reading skills. if i were to call you a name, the sentence would resemble something like "oh, that binarybits, he's a poopy-pants"
the way you and your ilk continually claim that i want to see the government write the standards is ludicrous. i never said that.
what i said was, taken in context of the story posted to, is that exchange is a closed protocol, and Microsoft's latest strategy is to create proprietary protocols designed to lock up the client and server as a pair.
what you and your ilk have twisted my post into, is that i want the government to create some kind of "Ministry of Protocols". that's ridiculous. you people cut the last sentence out of my post, hold it up on it's own, and say that i intend to allow no company to create a proprietary protocol.
no thinking person can read the story, and the post, and not understand what the comment meant. you are taking it entirely out of context, and literally pissing on all the people who use RFC to insure all our computers can talk together.
i also never said standards can't exist in a free market -- most of them were created without any government influence or intervention -- remember, binarybits, you are the one making the claim i said that. i never did.
microsoft was a driving force in standards when they wanted the desktop. ODBC, DHCP. They wanted all the unices to participate...but now that other want in, it's a quick about face.
you claim microsoft is losing market share in in server space. this is a half-truth. in the server space we can measure, portions of the internet, this is the case. in many places of employment, this is false.
Example : an employer has mutiple divisions, each with their own exchange server. One division's admin decides to close pop3 and go exhange protocol only. another division keeps opens the mail server to all clients, since some want to use other mail clients, and they don't have a problem with that.
whos right, whos wrong? the feeling on slashdot, as expressed by people like you, is that i should get another job. i think that should be the last resort. i have years of relationships built with the customer. why should i have to sacrifice that? so you can feel good that "corporate rights" are being protected?
by the way, you spent a lot of time saying i'm trying to assert that "i'm smarter than you" (again, i never said that--you did). let's go take a peek at some of the assertions in your posts, shall we?
>> soviet union, china, nazi germany
>Funny, these are all governments. That's not a
>coincidence. It's also not a coincidence that >government regulation of the airwaves and cable
>has lead to restricted freedom of speech and less
>diversity than would otherwise exist. If you say
>something on the air that the FCC doesn't like,
>they can yank your liscence.
binarybits, you are wrong again. they are not all governments. China is a country. Anyway, one thing they all have in common is a government-controlled path of communication through some type of monolithic organization.
the point here is that, without an iron grip on communications, it would be very difficult for a totalitarian state to rise and maintain power. having one corporation control the client and server side would make that job easier. the restrictions i mentioned would prevent any one company from assuming or maintaing such a position.
Oh, the FCC can't "yank your license" if you say something they don't like. First of all, someone has to complain, and second, the speech must fall under a very small set of specific rules; for example, espousing the murder of an individual.
>Ironically, Microsoft is a good example of this.
>The reason that the PC beat the Mac is
>primarily that the PC was an open,
>commodity-based hardware system while Apple tried
>to keep their platform closed.
binarybits' version of history : Microsoft created the PC.
>Will the Feds force me to take down my FTP server >until I publish specs?
Newsflash for binarybits : the specs for FTP have been published for many years, via the RFC mechanism.
>Your attempt to equate standards exclusively with
>the government is absurd
Never, ever did that in my posts. that bit must have bubbled up through your brain cells somehow...
>The computer industry is full of standards that
>were created with no help from the
>government--Unix, FireWire, USB, SCSI, IDE, ADB,
>etc.
Actually, wrong again. Unix matured from some good ideas from the posix group, which had a lot of funding by the government. And your assertion is pretty grey here, as most of the electronics and software we use were originally funded by the government through contracts. For example, the IEEE is an NGO, but many of their members reap huge profits through government funding.
>The rest of your post is a string of irrelevant
>ad homs and weak "philosophical" ramblings.
i did pretty well in my philosophy classes. especially the parts where we talked about the demonization of communism in the USA, and the reasons for it. that was really interesting.
>"I'm smarter than you are"
>"If you weren't such an ignoramous you'd
>understand"
i find it fascinating that you put these in quotes, and you request i stop making the statements, but i have never made those statements in any of my posts. therefore, you are falsifying my statements -- in other words, you are lying. if you are lying, you are a liar, right? is that an "ad hom"? did i call you a name, or state a simple fact?
>>in the animal world, you would have a much
>>shorter life than you have in our modern,
>>western society.
>Points for medicine, not government. A strong >individual could live as long without government >as with government, assuming he can get the >medical benefits (by force, if necessary). A
>smart one probably as long, if he can make others
>dependent on him (as a medic, for example).
>A weaker individual without saleable talents or >the social skills to market them would die, >Nature considers him/her not worthy. I think >that's your point, but you
>didn't make it, I have to guess.
Actually, your post is hideously contrived in many areas, but I'll limit myself to the inaccuracies above for the sake of brevity.
You claim that a longer lifespan in western society, as opposed to a shorter lifespan in a strictly laissez faire "animal" society is restricted strictly to medicinal benefits.
You then go on to give an example of a "smart person" living as long (or longer) regardless of government.
What you fail to recognize is that the government protects both individuals and groups, through the rule of law, to prevent them from competing in what our society considers inapproporiate ways.
Example: A group of disgruntled programmers drug and hypnotize an Air Force pilot such that he napalms Bill Gate's island mansion.
There is no "medicinal" influence here. It's just a matter of doing things within the law. In the animal kingdom, ganging together and removing a strong/unfair leader from power is a social victory. (Babboons occasionally do this when a troop leader is monopolizing power).
Your second point is that "Nature considers some unworthy". Ah, yes. You're one of those "Kill the 'tards" people, aren't you?
Perhaps if you grew up with a brain damaged brother or sister, you might have more compassion, but your inability to project your existence into that of the less fortunate counts strongly against any such expression of compassion. Truly an animalist.
I'm cheering for the first baboon with the guts to take a swing at you, and I hope the rest join in bravely.
Comrades! lend me your ears!
Whereas, Microsoft, a Corporation of that great State of Washington has been found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act;
And furthermore, such actions have harmed to a great extent both the population of these Great States and the global community;
It is hereby ordered:
The Microsoft Corporation shall participate fully in a Intermachine Communications Standards commitee for a period not less than ten years;
Any and all protocols used for intermachine communication shall be fully disclosed, documented and approved of by the committee before implementation;
The standards committee shall be composed of not less than twelve persons or corporate leaders from the fields of software or electronics.
A steering committee shall choose the initial membership. The steering committee shall be composed of William Gates III (Microsoft Incorporated), Richard M. Stallman (The Free Software Foundation), Robert Malda (SlashDot.org), Steven Jobs (Apple, Inc), Robert Young (RedHat Linux) and Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems).
Each member of the steering commitee may nominate two individuals or corporations to serve on the initial committee. After a service of two years, committee members may assign their seat to an alternate, with approval of a majority of the remainder of the board. If a majority cannot be made after three rounds of nomination, the replacement shall be selected by a simple majority of the board.
At the end of the ten year period the Microsoft Corporation may remove its prescense from the organization, and the organization may be disbanded according to the wishes of the remaining members.
This board shall have one mandate : preserving for the future that all internetworking machines be able to seamlessly communicate through industry standard protocols. The very foundation of the internetworking community was built by industry leaders agreeing on protocols and sharing enough information such that disparate machines and software could intercommunicate.
It is the sole intent of this law to restore that spirit of teamwork back into an industry that has fallen to the mere pursuit of greed at the expense of the communicating community.
how am i being overly violent to newsboy, when he didn't read or understand my original post, and responded with a post calling me names?
like him, you failed to read the posts. remember, reading is more than recognizing the letters on the screen. reading also implies that you understand what was posted.
i would very much like the government to force microsoft to participate in a standards group for all future protocols. many other industries, worldwide, have to participate in standards groups.
like the original poster, you made the incredible error of allowing your mind to place text in my post that was not there. you think i said "let the government write the protocols", your error, your mistake, not mine.
also, like the original poster, you claim i "should go get another job". actually, i think my employer should adhere to open standards. they did when i was hired. don't get me wrong, i know i'm on the losing end of the battle, but i will continue to voice my opinion that it is unfair and wrong.
microsoft people, people like you, want to take that away. "don't like microsoft? don't use it -- leave your place of employment." if anything, you're the one who sounds like a communist -- one choice, for all.
the government sometimes dictates free speech takes place over the majority view. i want that to continue.
the government mandates that someone bigger or stronger than you faces grave consequences for killing you and stealing what you own. it hasn't always been that way -- in the animal world, you would have a much shorter life than you have in our modern, western society.
when the government fails, it's because people like you turned their back on it and let the system run rampant.
like it or not, there is a place for government done well, and it screws up sometimes.
many companies develop kick ass standards and let others license it. they make great profits off this, and the consumer benefits as well.
by the way, as much as i hate correcting you monkeys, the RFC process is not monitored by a beauracracy. there would be no IRC, mail, ftp, http, etc. w/o the the RFC process. All of these protocols help different computer systems interoperate.
many standards processes are not monitored by a bureaucracy, and do quite well. products throughout your home, on the desk in front of you, in your car and on the road are proof.
you say it will lead to ruin, i'm a commie, etc. the truth is, you are an unthinking name-caller like the first poster. sometimes government makes mistakes, sometimes industry makes mistakes. the truth is, i'm not pleased with the size of our government, nor with many of it's decisions. but there are many functions it provides on a daily basis that keeps us safe, and from being ripped off by companies like microsoft.
imagine gasoline companies and auto manufacturers colluding to make engines fail early by adding contaminants to fuel. the only way to stop such a thing is through government regulation and monitoring. you think the free market will "protect" us from such a thing -- some gas company will come clean, some car manufacturer will do the right thing. history has shown you to be pitifully wrong.
example: car companies secretly buying all public transporation in los angeles and destroying it to sell more vehicles (GM did this, and was fined $1).
there are countless examples of the medical industry falsifying records to make medicine seem more effective or less dangerous. do you want your loved ones taking that medicine? (presuming you love or care about anyone).
if you still don't think the government has the right and duty to take from the privileged (in some cases) and give to the public, if your point of view is that it is always wrong, go study the phrase "riparian rights". if you still don't understand, your brain is defective.
quite wrong.
look who was the darling of standards when it suited them -- microsoft (ODBC, DHCP) -- when they needed to get on the client side of unix.
look who refuses to accept standards, and like you, calls anyone who thinks standards can be good a "communist", or someone who needs a "nanny" -- that same microsoft, now that other companies would like to expand onto the desktop.
standards go wrong sometimes. people like you take that fact and say all standards are bad.
governments go wrong sometimes. people like you take that fact and say all governments are bad.
corporations like microsoft refuse to promote or use the standards process when it means holding or gaining market share and limiting consumer choice. people like me want it to stop, and if it means asking the government to hop in to help, i'm for that.
when a corporation throws billions of dollars of it's invester's money away, people like you claim it's the price of progress. those dumb investors should have known better.
you never realize that the waste of tax dollars happens sometimes, too. you think all government is bad, all regulations are bad, all standards are bad.
you are woefully ignorant, like the original replier, who doesn't even realize that with inches of his face are dozens of standards that made his pc cheap, easy and safe to use -- many of which are mandated and inspected by the government. (insulation, wiring voltages, etc). the 2x4's in the wall next to you, the medicine in your cabinet, the plastic in your monitor.
for some reason, people like you and the newsboy think i want the government to *write* or *create* the protocols. nothing could be further from the truth. all i'm saying, is that for the good of the free market, more than one entity be in the process, and privy to any intermachine protocols.
if it takes government intervention to make that happen, i vote yes.
i don't understand how people can interpret my original post as anything other than forcing the protocol process to be open. someone, your twisted mind seems to think i wrote "make the government write them". you have a very poor language parser there.
geez...i can't believe you slept through BOTH your history classes and your philosophy classes...
anyway, when you control the medium, you control the content. that's history. soviet union, china, nazi germany...in fact, that's why we have laws (strong laws) controling who controls how mauch bandwidth, particularly in radio and tv.
it makes it much easier for people/companies to compete when you have standards. that is, someone can't take over networking by coming up with some oddball networking standard --- the IEEE takes recommendations and codifies them. You would probably no be a happy camper if none of your network cards would talk to each other.
Or if your Honda (you seem like a honda owner, dunno why) had proprietary rims, such that you could only go to the honda dealer for tires. standards again.
I'm taking about between machines -- a natural place for standards. they are often placed in this position.
And what of philosophy? We're stronger together than apart. One of the basics of philosophy, and why government exists. Forgot about that, eh? You must have been too busy calling me names to think about any of this.
As far as "...no ones putting a gun to your head to use any given product or standard...", you are literally correct. It's not a physical gun, but it is a virtual one -- if you don't use microsoft at home, you can't take advantage of the work-at-home program I mentioned. Probable result : discrimination that would be very hard to prove.
Hmmm...I've dealt with your type before. When a gang of thugs starts breaking down your door to get at your wife and daughters, guess who will be calling the 911 line "Oh, help, nanny help, I'm not strong enough to deal with these thugs. Please send over the police I paid for with my taxes, driving on standardized tires and armed with lots of standard weapons!!
There are standards all around you, that get you through every one of your days. Goverment and international standards, on poer tranmission (so your toaster doesn't have to be made by the same company that made the power generation plant).
How can you be so ignorant. I'm not saying companies can't innovate, or that they all have to write the same OS, all I'm saying is they make protocols using the existing RFC mechanism or something like it.
The goal is not Microsoft on more platforms, it's the elimination of closed, proprietary protocols like exchange and active-x controls.
MSHAFT's strategy is to develop as many closed protocols as possible, and foist them on their corporate customers, hoping it will lock up the home market.
Imagine your company decides to let you work at home. If you use non-ms products at home, you night not be able to get your email or access the company web pages. You're screwed.
My main concern is the way they develop closed protocols and make workplaces "Microsoft Only" -- if the exchange server has Microserfs administering it, no mail client will work except outlook.
If the company does webpages with active-x, no browser works except IE.
The situation sucks. The only hope is that I keep seeing more ads on the job boards for Linux developers and admins.
I'm a firm believer that legislation should be enacted to force all inter-machine communication protocols to be open and documented.
You must only learn to code by purchasing and using visual C++.
Anything else will stunt your development.
Didn't the person who wrote than go on to found Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)?
Sheesh...now just another glorified IT company.
the crux of the case was that MSHAFT bound IE to the OS to screw netscape.
anyone familiar with the issues knows a browser is really just an app.
but maybe the judge doesn't want to get in a situation forcing MSHAFT to split out the browser? he's already asking for a lot with the conduct remedies and split, maybe tossing a breakout of the browser would put the case over the top in the appeals court.
the one remedy that would really help wasn't even on the list! smear bill gate's balls with alpo and lower him into a pen filled with starving pit bulls.
then maybe he would know how ibm, novell, netscape, borland, stac et. al. and all the people who had tough times because of bill gate's illegal behaviors feel.
bastard is totally untrustworthy and disrespectful of the court. try breaking the law and going to court, and then lie to the judge. watch what happens to you...it won't be pleasant.
i'm still suprised there hasen't been any shareholder lawsuits against gates for gross mismanagement...any other large corporation would have ousted him by now.
if you actually look at what MSHAFT is doing right now, they are expanding activex and exchange protocols throughout industry.
why? they work with nothing but MSHAFT products -- DESKTOP products.
the judge or legislature should force/legislate the opening of exchange, and removal of active X controls from all gov't web pages.
alternatively, they could mandate opening of LDAP or POP3 on all exchange servers.
does anyone actually use borland for large projects? i used c++b and delphi for three years, and watched the price skyrocket as they started splitting out "enterprise versions" etc.
i really liked their stuff years ago when it was like $79 for a full version, but the full versions of borland stuff are $1500 or more.
QT is $1550 for commercial work (non-open source). now add on all the borland objects, and you're gonna get a hefty price tag.
nice of all these folks to take advantage of Linus and friends, eh? esp. when you can get VC++ pro and w2k for less than QT alone.
use wxWindows or something. Free cross platform development now.