If we ever do hit the absolute extreme of capitalism, information such as recorded history, will only be availible to those who can pay for it.
It already is available only to those who can pay for it. Encyclopedias, CD-ROMS and teachers aren't free. They are all paid for either by private individuals, or out of taxation - nothing is free.
This is the reason Open Source coexists so uneasily with the existing economy. The cost of duplicating a piece of software is negligible compared to the cost of developing it, and tends to zero if you can make assumptions like that the infrastructure is a) a fixed cost and b) already present. But the cost of cars, loaves of bread, woolly socks, etc, doesn't - so how do you trade a piece of software for these things, if you don't make units of software behave like them, economically speaking? After all, you can't make material goods behave like software until humanity develops an unlimited power source and has access to unlimited raw materials, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Open Source is a great idea in the Star Trek universe, but it's an anomaly in ours.
Only do so if you are willing to spend significant cash money buying licenses. Remember what happened to a certain Linux games company? Lots of people said they wanted games on Linux, but no-one wanted to pay for them, and stuffing ballot boxes did no-one any favors in the long run.
I haven't used MATLAB for years, but I have very fond memories of version 4 on AlphaStations.
A little excessive? $50,000 is the best part of 2 years full-time undergrad tuition at MIT! It's more than the total cost of most MBAs! What on earth sort of training costs $50,000 over one year, especially considering it's for employees who presumably will have work to do and can devote only a few hours a week to it?!
Make sure these aren't Mickey Mouse courses at a training unit run by another part of your company where the fees are theoretical (i.e. internal to the company so no real money changes hands) and bear no relation to the market cost of the courses. And make especially sure it isn't a not-too-covert kickback arrangement between the trainers and your management. And make damn sure that if you get made redundant or dismissed, you aren't liable for the cost!
Isn't the Mac a limited enough market already? What's next the Left Handed, Brown Eyed, Blonde Haired, Colorblind, Education only Mac?
You've a good point; Steve Jobs once tried to sell NeXT cubes to education only. They were fantastic machines, but they came with a $10,000 price tag (and that was back when that was some real money). Meanwhile, people were crying out for the NeXTStep development environment in the finance industry, but NeXT only sold to the reluctantly... the rest is history. He seems not to be making the same mistake, at least not to the same magnitude, this time, but Apple have retrenched to pretty much education and publishing only. Will we see them go for the CAD or scientific visualization market? Or heaven forbid, finance? Time will tell.
I was always under the impression that an AS400 was the computing equivilent of a tank; it took a crew of people to maintain and run, but could sustain lots more abuse than, say, a car (PC).
The AS/400 is about as close as anyone's come to a black-box server appliance (and for good measure, it literally is a black box too). Long before Java, OS/400 had the Virtual Machine concept down to a science: AS/400 programs will run happily on 48-bit CISC (yup, 48-bit CPU) or 64-bit RISC without recompilation - and because of the abstraction layer, old, old software can take advantage of the advances in the underlying OS. There is no memory management to worry about: the main memory and the disks are in one address space, and the OS shuffles programs and data around as it needs to. Upgrading the OS is a matter of sticking in a tape and typing one command. Backup and recovery is as simple. Everything is an object, and access control is fine-grained. The database is built-in, because that's what these are, commercial data processing appliances. Ridiculously easy to build data-entry forms and reports for terminals and a printer. It's a better server that Netware, and has a lower TCO, and you can train an AS/400 operator (they aren't sysadmins, there's no point) in a few hours, to sufficient level to run an AS/400 for years. Years of uptime, that is. How many newbie Unix sysadmins can do that?
Sadly, most people when they hear "AS/400" think "ancient IBM dinosaur". That simply isn't true - the AS/400 is in many ways more advanced than any Unix or Java solution, with the advantage that the hardware and OS are fully integrated. AS/400 could go head-to-head with Windows 2000 server or Sun's "midframes". But it's going the way of DEC - superb engineering, lousy marketing. Remember that next time you see a Slashbot sneering at "sales drones" or "marketing suits".
All of us are for the most part almost completely identical at the genetic level. More than 99.99% of our DNA is probably the same. Most of the variation in our DNA is likely due to selfish elements and "junk DNA" where variation is irrelevant. When it comes down to what separates you from me from Dr. Venter, you'd be surprised that it might come down to a relatively few locations on the genome, and very subtle changes.
This was a bad move on his part purely because it shows him to be untrustworthy, even in a minor way. He should have been upfront with his advisory board. Now, on his next project, it will mean that the sponsors will take a more risk-averse attitude, and this may interfere with good science being done. But as you say, human DNA is human DNA.
Celera and Venter, however, have abandoned that tradition. On the bright side, Celera does offer public access to their database with a free registration. The payed-for access gives you a superior genome browser which allows you to find material much easier.
So what's the problem here? You've already paid for their rival's database through your taxes. Celera are true to the "open source" principle: give away the generic product for free (speech *and* beer), charge for the value-added services. I don't think even RMS could complain about that - and the people footing the bill are Celera's shareholders, not the ordinary taxpayer.
For any question which begins "Can Microsoft really afford...", the answer is usually 'Yes'. Some quick Googling revealed that they have "over $30 billion in cash reserves, with $40 billion expected by the end of the year"
This is an interesting article on how Microsoft manage their cash reserve - later pages discuss their plans for it.
If you look at the number of CS graduates at any level: bachelors, masters, Ph.D you will find that since the early 80s the numbers all go down.
Meanwhile every company that wishes to not go out of business uses computers more and more. The number of jobs naturally goes up.
You are forgetting that there are many other academics disciplines that turn out as good or even better programmers than CS does (say, Physics, Engineering, Math, etc).
Further, you are forgetting that there is less need for "programming" now, because there are high-level tools and APIs available - say what you like about VB programmers, if the project needs a simple form for data entry and reporting, then VB's got C/Xlib beaten, hands down. There are many "computer" jobs that don't even involve CS at all. A lot of the software that's written can and is being written on a white-collar assembly line. Still better paid than metal-bashing... for now.
(BTW, when I say Computer Science, I mean Discrete Math, not "Java 101")
Given that Gates testified one day earlier, that it was impossible, and made similar claims in his 163 page written testimony, it is an important issue.
You would have to check the exact legal meanings. It could be that Gates position is that it would be impossible to split Windows without destroying Microsoft. Given his fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders, it *is* impossible.
Here's the rub - the only way to protect the US population is to stop making enemies and to work against poverty and illiteracy all over the world. The guys who get drafted for fundamentalist causes are mainly poor and uneducated orphans from the streets. A standard brainwash takes place, where the organization offers food and shelter, thus getting total emotional control over the victim.
I disagree. For a start, working against poverty and illiteracy to us is understood to be cultural imperialism by much of the Middle East. In many parts of that region, the only reason that children are taught to read is so that they can read the Qu'ran. The only reason that there isn't universal poverty is oil - Saudi Arabian universities turn out more graduates in Religious Studies than they do engineers, doctors, etc. What I'm trying to say is, there is no way to address illiteracy and poverty - by our standards - without a radical overhaul of the society, but even trying to do that is provocative to terrorists.
Secondly, the terrorists that would be provoked aren't poor or illiterate. Osama himself is a multi-millionaire who has travelled extensively in the West. Sheik Omar, on trial for the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, was educated at the London School of Economics, one of Europe's most prestigious universities. Osama's second in command was a dentist before becoming an international gangster.
But you are right to a certain extent, the way for the US to stop making enemies is to stop intervening in other cultures unless it is specifically for the defense of the mainland (or perhaps to help a long-term ally).
Re:doesnt seem economical
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2
I think the whole "being on the moon" is a pretty good defense...
A somewhat bigger threat is someone using similar technology to build a solar-powered-laser factory on the moon, leaving it to run quietly by itself for a few years then having a million of them pointing back at Earth. Sure it would get attenuated by the Earth's atmosphere, that's why you need a million of 'em. Assuming your automated factory was reliable enough, it costs as much to make 1 as it does to make as many as you like, since raw materials and power are free, and you can fire the array as quickly as you can recharge it.
More choices is not always better when trying to compete. That's why MSFT tries to limit your choices - to just their OS. If you don't use their OS, they try to make your life impossible in as many ways as possible.
Your analogy is flawed. In the case of an airline, the benefits of standardizing are both with the vendor and the customer - the vendor gets a stream of orders, the customer gets economies of scale on equipment, components, training, hiring, etc. The two points at which negotiation occur are the initial purchase, and in the case where it becomes cheaper to break with standardization, eating the cost of doing so because the economies of scale have been eroded. So long as that doesn't happen, it's a win-win. For employees, on the one hand, engineers on a particular model find that they're easy to replace, but they also find that they're well trained and can go work for another airline without too much trouble. This increases competitiveness for alrcraft manufacturers, airlines, and airline employees.
The same is true for operating systems. There are very few IT shops in the world who don't standardize. Even if they go for "best of breed" and integrate components, they will have a workstation supplier, a server supplier, a router supplier, etc - even if your application./configure's on a dozen OSs, simply having lots of different hardware means you can't afford to keep parts in stock for them all. Different operating systems have different quirks, meaning you need staff trained on them all, or hard to find specialists.
In summary, the average Slashbot's obsession with Microsoft cannot be leveraged into every topic posted on the site...
April 23rd 2002: Although AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge will close shortly, VNC will continue to be freely available and supported at this web address
And the original VNC team has something cooking...
Maybe they plan to set up a company, sell support or commercial licences?
Do that and you'll never accomplish anything. Rarely does a community vote for referendums that will tax them more, even when things like schools, libraries and public works are desperately needed.
The people who "need" them (i.e. want them) will vote for them, of course. The people who don't need or want them will vote against it, why should they pay for something they neither need nor want? If those people are in a minority, they will lose the vote. What's your point?
Read the first quote in the ad. They're not competing with Microsoft, they're competing with Sun, SGI and Compaq (DEC AlphaStation). Most of the people quoted are people who've come to MacOS X from other Unix variants.
I see the same thing on/. all the time, Linux people thinking they're competing with Microsoft. People use NT (particularly on workstations) because they've decided for whatever reason not to use Unix - Linux mostly competes (if that is the right word) with other Unixes.
Because you're a human being with human rights. One of those rights is freedom of speech, and part of that freedom is the ability to control when, where and to whom to speak. The speech is what should be protected, not the company's stupid network.
By that argument, a newspaper editor has no right not to publish your letter. It's your right to free speech, right? Wrong. The right to free speech means that the Government won't send armed men to assault you if your criticize it. It's nothing to do with the right to use other people's property in ways that they do not agree to.
If your company says, you cannot use your personal mobile phone to make a personal call during your lunch break, then we have a problem. I'm not aware of any company that says that.
Their list of accomplishments [xerox.com] reads like high-tech-marketing-mumbo-jumbo, and makes some pretty far-reaching claims (object-oriented programming)?
Yes, OO and GUI were developed at PARC, but Xerox had no idea what they had in their hands, and let it slip away. Steve Jobs visited them on a corporate junket, and that's where the Macintosh came from (true story). A bit later, Jobs came out with NeXTStep. This illustrates that engineers need marketing and vice versa.
This would be embarassing if not for the fact that IBM did exactly the same thing with RDBMS and indeed the PC, but it's got to rate alongside the greatest corporate blunders of all time.
As are all "Instant Message" programs. They are a poorly-designed, short-sighted solution to a problem that should've been addressed elsewhere in the internet architecture.
You are correct, but it's a limitation of TCP/IP, which is very much a "lowest common denominator" protocol. The NETMBX feature of DECnet on VMS, in which nodes, processes and users are all principals is the most-correct solution I have found. Exactly the same protocol and API are used whether you want to to IPC between processes, instant messaging between users or any combination of the two, for example notification of status of a running process, or sending instructions. No need to worry about RPC, talkd, sockets and SMTP, etc.
The writer makes the point at the end that it's not so much what is being done that is the problem, but the fact that it's done without telling you and without giving you a choice about whether you want it to happen.
Ermm, it says in the article that it tells you exactly what it does in the "privacy statement". So this is right out in the open, in the documentation! Really, I don't think there is any controversy here.
I can run.NET compiled programs on Solaris, Linux, Windows, MacOS?
Not yet, so far it's only Win32 and FreeBSD. But since it's an ECMA standard, an ISV can implement the CLR on any platform. I expect Microsoft themselves to be very supportive of CLR on MacOS X, since that will simplify their own development for that platform, for example Office.
Or perhaps I misinterpret you and you are bitter that FreeBSD and not Linux is the "free Unix of choice". Microsoft worked with Software AG to get DCOM onto Linux - so there is a good chance CLR will be there as well.
that said, i have a PS2 and love it...is there anything better then taking out your agressions and leftover frustration from work then with a good game of Grand Theft Auto 3???
One word: Halo
Microsoft have deep pockets, a history of being willing and able to take losses while they wait out competitors, and the barriers to entry for X-Box developers are lower than for PS2. Some reckon this is what killed Sega, their latest console was just too difficult to program relative to the others.
Remember how MS were caught with their pants down on the Internet, but they turned on a dime and now they are a very serious player in the space. It's far too early for "Death of X-box, film at 11" type commentary.
People have a right to choose what type of software they want to use. But people have no right to choose what type of license they want to apply.
Philosophies like this are all well and good until you realize that consumers need producers a lot more than producers need consumers in the free software world. Unless you make the assumption that all software consumers are fully capable of independently producing their own software - which was probably true when RMS was growing up in academia - but isn't now, particularly if Linux wants to go mainstream.
You analogy is like saying consumers should set prices in stores, and that producers should be compelled to offer the product at that price. The reality is, any price, or in this case licensing model, must be mutually acceptable, or nothing can happen. If consumers have the right to choose what software licenses they want to accept, then producers have the right to choose which licenses they want to offer products under.
Besides, I like the way he shoves this "freedom" down people throat. If anyone want to use closed source and proprietary formats, then you better stayed out of my machines and networks.
You are free to make that choice. The problem I have with RMS is that he is really anti-freedom: an analogy would be invading a country and deposing the government in order to enforce democracy.
I disagree. Capitalist businesses will benefit greatly by not having to pay for restrictive software licenses.
That is, assuming the software exists for them not to pay restrictive licenses for. ERP systems like SAP R/3 are, well, dull. I don't think they'd exist if people weren't being well-paid to develop them.
Slashdot Mirror
If we ever do hit the absolute extreme of capitalism, information such as recorded history, will only be availible to those who can pay for it.
It already is available only to those who can pay for it. Encyclopedias, CD-ROMS and teachers aren't free. They are all paid for either by private individuals, or out of taxation - nothing is free.
This is the reason Open Source coexists so uneasily with the existing economy. The cost of duplicating a piece of software is negligible compared to the cost of developing it, and tends to zero if you can make assumptions like that the infrastructure is a) a fixed cost and b) already present. But the cost of cars, loaves of bread, woolly socks, etc, doesn't - so how do you trade a piece of software for these things, if you don't make units of software behave like them, economically speaking? After all, you can't make material goods behave like software until humanity develops an unlimited power source and has access to unlimited raw materials, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Open Source is a great idea in the Star Trek universe, but it's an anomaly in ours.
I plan to vote early and often for this.
Only do so if you are willing to spend significant cash money buying licenses. Remember what happened to a certain Linux games company? Lots of people said they wanted games on Linux, but no-one wanted to pay for them, and stuffing ballot boxes did no-one any favors in the long run.
I haven't used MATLAB for years, but I have very fond memories of version 4 on AlphaStations.
$50,000 seems a little excessive to me.
A little excessive? $50,000 is the best part of 2 years full-time undergrad tuition at MIT! It's more than the total cost of most MBAs! What on earth sort of training costs $50,000 over one year, especially considering it's for employees who presumably will have work to do and can devote only a few hours a week to it?!
Make sure these aren't Mickey Mouse courses at a training unit run by another part of your company where the fees are theoretical (i.e. internal to the company so no real money changes hands) and bear no relation to the market cost of the courses. And make especially sure it isn't a not-too-covert kickback arrangement between the trainers and your management. And make damn sure that if you get made redundant or dismissed, you aren't liable for the cost!
Isn't the Mac a limited enough market already? What's next the Left Handed, Brown Eyed, Blonde Haired, Colorblind, Education only Mac?
You've a good point; Steve Jobs once tried to sell NeXT cubes to education only. They were fantastic machines, but they came with a $10,000 price tag (and that was back when that was some real money). Meanwhile, people were crying out for the NeXTStep development environment in the finance industry, but NeXT only sold to the reluctantly... the rest is history. He seems not to be making the same mistake, at least not to the same magnitude, this time, but Apple have retrenched to pretty much education and publishing only. Will we see them go for the CAD or scientific visualization market? Or heaven forbid, finance? Time will tell.
I was always under the impression that an AS400 was the computing equivilent of a tank; it took a crew of people to maintain and run, but could sustain lots more abuse than, say, a car (PC).
The AS/400 is about as close as anyone's come to a black-box server appliance (and for good measure, it literally is a black box too). Long before Java, OS/400 had the Virtual Machine concept down to a science: AS/400 programs will run happily on 48-bit CISC (yup, 48-bit CPU) or 64-bit RISC without recompilation - and because of the abstraction layer, old, old software can take advantage of the advances in the underlying OS. There is no memory management to worry about: the main memory and the disks are in one address space, and the OS shuffles programs and data around as it needs to. Upgrading the OS is a matter of sticking in a tape and typing one command. Backup and recovery is as simple. Everything is an object, and access control is fine-grained. The database is built-in, because that's what these are, commercial data processing appliances. Ridiculously easy to build data-entry forms and reports for terminals and a printer. It's a better server that Netware, and has a lower TCO, and you can train an AS/400 operator (they aren't sysadmins, there's no point) in a few hours, to sufficient level to run an AS/400 for years. Years of uptime, that is. How many newbie Unix sysadmins can do that?
Sadly, most people when they hear "AS/400" think "ancient IBM dinosaur". That simply isn't true - the AS/400 is in many ways more advanced than any Unix or Java solution, with the advantage that the hardware and OS are fully integrated. AS/400 could go head-to-head with Windows 2000 server or Sun's "midframes". But it's going the way of DEC - superb engineering, lousy marketing. Remember that next time you see a Slashbot sneering at "sales drones" or "marketing suits".
All of us are for the most part almost completely identical at the genetic level. More than 99.99% of our DNA is probably the same. Most of the variation in our DNA is likely due to selfish elements and "junk DNA" where variation is irrelevant. When it comes down to what separates you from me from Dr. Venter, you'd be surprised that it might come down to a relatively few locations on the genome, and very subtle changes.
This was a bad move on his part purely because it shows him to be untrustworthy, even in a minor way. He should have been upfront with his advisory board. Now, on his next project, it will mean that the sponsors will take a more risk-averse attitude, and this may interfere with good science being done. But as you say, human DNA is human DNA.
Celera and Venter, however, have abandoned that tradition. On the bright side, Celera does offer public access to their database with a free registration. The payed-for access gives you a superior genome browser which allows you to find material much easier.
So what's the problem here? You've already paid for their rival's database through your taxes. Celera are true to the "open source" principle: give away the generic product for free (speech *and* beer), charge for the value-added services. I don't think even RMS could complain about that - and the people footing the bill are Celera's shareholders, not the ordinary taxpayer.
For any question which begins "Can Microsoft really afford...", the answer is usually 'Yes'. Some quick Googling revealed that they have "over $30 billion in cash reserves, with $40 billion expected by the end of the year"
This is an interesting article on how Microsoft manage their cash reserve - later pages discuss their plans for it.
Meanwhile every company that wishes to not go out of business uses computers more and more. The number of jobs naturally goes up.
You are forgetting that there are many other academics disciplines that turn out as good or even better programmers than CS does (say, Physics, Engineering, Math, etc).
Further, you are forgetting that there is less need for "programming" now, because there are high-level tools and APIs available - say what you like about VB programmers, if the project needs a simple form for data entry and reporting, then VB's got C/Xlib beaten, hands down. There are many "computer" jobs that don't even involve CS at all. A lot of the software that's written can and is being written on a white-collar assembly line. Still better paid than metal-bashing... for now.
(BTW, when I say Computer Science, I mean Discrete Math, not "Java 101")
Given that Gates testified one day earlier, that it was impossible, and made similar claims in his 163 page written testimony, it is an important issue.
You would have to check the exact legal meanings. It could be that Gates position is that it would be impossible to split Windows without destroying Microsoft. Given his fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders, it *is* impossible.
Here's the rub - the only way to protect the US population is to stop making enemies and to work against poverty and illiteracy all over the world. The guys who get drafted for fundamentalist causes are mainly poor and uneducated orphans from the streets. A standard brainwash takes place, where the organization offers food and shelter, thus getting total emotional control over the victim.
I disagree. For a start, working against poverty and illiteracy to us is understood to be cultural imperialism by much of the Middle East. In many parts of that region, the only reason that children are taught to read is so that they can read the Qu'ran. The only reason that there isn't universal poverty is oil - Saudi Arabian universities turn out more graduates in Religious Studies than they do engineers, doctors, etc. What I'm trying to say is, there is no way to address illiteracy and poverty - by our standards - without a radical overhaul of the society, but even trying to do that is provocative to terrorists.
Secondly, the terrorists that would be provoked aren't poor or illiterate. Osama himself is a multi-millionaire who has travelled extensively in the West. Sheik Omar, on trial for the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, was educated at the London School of Economics, one of Europe's most prestigious universities. Osama's second in command was a dentist before becoming an international gangster.
But you are right to a certain extent, the way for the US to stop making enemies is to stop intervening in other cultures unless it is specifically for the defense of the mainland (or perhaps to help a long-term ally).
I think the whole "being on the moon" is a pretty good defense...
A somewhat bigger threat is someone using similar technology to build a solar-powered-laser factory on the moon, leaving it to run quietly by itself for a few years then having a million of them pointing back at Earth. Sure it would get attenuated by the Earth's atmosphere, that's why you need a million of 'em. Assuming your automated factory was reliable enough, it costs as much to make 1 as it does to make as many as you like, since raw materials and power are free, and you can fire the array as quickly as you can recharge it.
More choices is not always better when trying to compete. That's why MSFT tries to limit your choices - to just their OS. If you don't use their OS, they try to make your life impossible in as many ways as possible.
./configure's on a dozen OSs, simply having lots of different hardware means you can't afford to keep parts in stock for them all. Different operating systems have different quirks, meaning you need staff trained on them all, or hard to find specialists.
Your analogy is flawed. In the case of an airline, the benefits of standardizing are both with the vendor and the customer - the vendor gets a stream of orders, the customer gets economies of scale on equipment, components, training, hiring, etc. The two points at which negotiation occur are the initial purchase, and in the case where it becomes cheaper to break with standardization, eating the cost of doing so because the economies of scale have been eroded. So long as that doesn't happen, it's a win-win. For employees, on the one hand, engineers on a particular model find that they're easy to replace, but they also find that they're well trained and can go work for another airline without too much trouble. This increases competitiveness for alrcraft manufacturers, airlines, and airline employees.
The same is true for operating systems. There are very few IT shops in the world who don't standardize. Even if they go for "best of breed" and integrate components, they will have a workstation supplier, a server supplier, a router supplier, etc - even if your application
In summary, the average Slashbot's obsession with Microsoft cannot be leveraged into every topic posted on the site...
From the link:
Maybe they plan to set up a company, sell support or commercial licences?
Do that and you'll never accomplish anything. Rarely does a community vote for referendums that will tax them more, even when things like schools, libraries and public works are desperately needed.
The people who "need" them (i.e. want them) will vote for them, of course. The people who don't need or want them will vote against it, why should they pay for something they neither need nor want? If those people are in a minority, they will lose the vote. What's your point?
So... when are we going to see the linux kernel compiled on VC++?
:0)
Oh, I guess that'll happen soon after kernel hackers throw away their free GCC and sign up for Visual Studio.NET
... But there are 3 Microsoft Office icons.
/. all the time, Linux people thinking they're competing with Microsoft. People use NT (particularly on workstations) because they've decided for whatever reason not to use Unix - Linux mostly competes (if that is the right word) with other Unixes.
Read the first quote in the ad. They're not competing with Microsoft, they're competing with Sun, SGI and Compaq (DEC AlphaStation). Most of the people quoted are people who've come to MacOS X from other Unix variants.
I see the same thing on
Because you're a human being with human rights. One of those rights is freedom of speech, and part of that freedom is the ability to control when, where and to whom to speak. The speech is what should be protected, not the company's stupid network.
By that argument, a newspaper editor has no right not to publish your letter. It's your right to free speech, right? Wrong. The right to free speech means that the Government won't send armed men to assault you if your criticize it. It's nothing to do with the right to use other people's property in ways that they do not agree to.
If your company says, you cannot use your personal mobile phone to make a personal call during your lunch break, then we have a problem. I'm not aware of any company that says that.
Their list of accomplishments [xerox.com] reads like high-tech-marketing-mumbo-jumbo, and makes some pretty far-reaching claims (object-oriented programming)?
Yes, OO and GUI were developed at PARC, but Xerox had no idea what they had in their hands, and let it slip away. Steve Jobs visited them on a corporate junket, and that's where the Macintosh came from (true story). A bit later, Jobs came out with NeXTStep. This illustrates that engineers need marketing and vice versa.
This would be embarassing if not for the fact that IBM did exactly the same thing with RDBMS and indeed the PC, but it's got to rate alongside the greatest corporate blunders of all time.
As are all "Instant Message" programs. They are a poorly-designed, short-sighted solution to a problem that should've been addressed elsewhere in the internet architecture.
You are correct, but it's a limitation of TCP/IP, which is very much a "lowest common denominator" protocol. The NETMBX feature of DECnet on VMS, in which nodes, processes and users are all principals is the most-correct solution I have found. Exactly the same protocol and API are used whether you want to to IPC between processes, instant messaging between users or any combination of the two, for example notification of status of a running process, or sending instructions. No need to worry about RPC, talkd, sockets and SMTP, etc.
The writer makes the point at the end that it's not so much what is being done that is the problem, but the fact that it's done without telling you and without giving you a choice about whether you want it to happen.
Ermm, it says in the article that it tells you exactly what it does in the "privacy statement". So this is right out in the open, in the documentation! Really, I don't think there is any controversy here.
I can run .NET compiled programs on Solaris, Linux, Windows, MacOS?
Not yet, so far it's only Win32 and FreeBSD. But since it's an ECMA standard, an ISV can implement the CLR on any platform. I expect Microsoft themselves to be very supportive of CLR on MacOS X, since that will simplify their own development for that platform, for example Office.
Or perhaps I misinterpret you and you are bitter that FreeBSD and not Linux is the "free Unix of choice". Microsoft worked with Software AG to get DCOM onto Linux - so there is a good chance CLR will be there as well.
that said, i have a PS2 and love it...is there anything better then taking out your agressions and leftover frustration from work then with a good game of Grand Theft Auto 3???
One word: Halo
Microsoft have deep pockets, a history of being willing and able to take losses while they wait out competitors, and the barriers to entry for X-Box developers are lower than for PS2. Some reckon this is what killed Sega, their latest console was just too difficult to program relative to the others.
Remember how MS were caught with their pants down on the Internet, but they turned on a dime and now they are a very serious player in the space. It's far too early for "Death of X-box, film at 11" type commentary.
People have a right to choose what type of software they want to use. But people have no right to choose what type of license they want to apply.
Philosophies like this are all well and good until you realize that consumers need producers a lot more than producers need consumers in the free software world. Unless you make the assumption that all software consumers are fully capable of independently producing their own software - which was probably true when RMS was growing up in academia - but isn't now, particularly if Linux wants to go mainstream.
You analogy is like saying consumers should set prices in stores, and that producers should be compelled to offer the product at that price. The reality is, any price, or in this case licensing model, must be mutually acceptable, or nothing can happen. If consumers have the right to choose what software licenses they want to accept, then producers have the right to choose which licenses they want to offer products under.
Besides, I like the way he shoves this "freedom" down people throat. If anyone want to use closed source and proprietary formats, then you better stayed out of my machines and networks.
You are free to make that choice. The problem I have with RMS is that he is really anti-freedom: an analogy would be invading a country and deposing the government in order to enforce democracy.
I disagree. Capitalist businesses will benefit greatly by not having to pay for restrictive software licenses.
That is, assuming the software exists for them not to pay restrictive licenses for. ERP systems like SAP R/3 are, well, dull. I don't think they'd exist if people weren't being well-paid to develop them.
Can you explain to me how making the world aware of your idea, but a slave to your licensing terms for the next 20 years, benifits people?
Sure, they benefit in the case that renting a wheel from you is cheaper than re-inventing it for themselves.