I swear it's like watching a game of chess that ol' Bill is playing with the Open Source folks:)
Yes it is like a game of chess. With all the short term feints hiding a long term strategy. In this case the long term goal beiung controll of a critical percentage of the servers on the Internet and corporate LANs. This seems to be far harder for them to do than they had originally thought. I believe the primary contributer to this delay is the improper balance they palced in features vs. security for thier products. This is not surprising since they have been fairly succesfull with a featrue first strategy.
Going forward, they will obviously need to revese this policy and neutralize the GPL at the same time. Doing one is hard enough. Doing both will be herculean. To do both they need their entire SW development teams to completly change directions AND convince the general public that the GPL and the LGPL is bad.
Knowing Microsoft, their next step will be to implement a completely new filesystem, encourage (force) everyone to upgrade, and protect it with encryption (if they claim that the encryption is for protection of a user's intellectual property, then perhaps the DMCA would have more teeth in this situation), and/or patents (somewhat akin to what they did with ASF).
Yeah you heard right I am pro-MS. Why? Because nobody else is.
As you read this Perl processed Apache served page please keep an open mind why I think MS is not such a bad company.
The monopoly
Ok so you guys think because MS packs IE and MSN stuff with Windows it is a monopoly right? Well monopolies only exist where alternatives are removed from the playing field. Goto msn.com and type in Mozilla into the search box.
Microsoft has no qualms about pissing off their (locked-in) developer community.
Couldn't agree more.
Just a while back I found some STL code to be broken in VC++ 6.0 that worked fine in VC++5.0 - Funny how the MFC stuff still works though. It seems that they target what to break. Breaking STL code is a no-brainer because that fosters apps that are more portable and from the MS standpoint that is bad.
So what does the average developer do? Avoid code rewrite and code to MFC - they (Microsoft) win.
Regarding Miguel's Actions:
I also believe Miguel is not thinking this through. But as has been said often here: Once the code GNU'd it can't be undone. Also if the Gnome project adopts.NET as the underlying technology, KDE wins (If it hasn't already).
Yea, but will they still charge the content creator to have their content show up fist in the search results?
Wouldn't that be kinda like double dipping?
This has to do with the fact that Presidents that destroy the economy don't get re-elected.
What does breaking up Microsoft have to do with destroying the economy?
Show me something conclusive. I see this argument, often from Microsoft itself, but it is never backed with facts.
Even if you use their stock price dropping as an argument, this would be short lived until people realized that
a Microsoft forced to actually genuinely compete is better for the economy than a company using software as a service
so they can milk gullible customers of yearly subscription money without adding any real value to the service provided.
I just don't buy that breaking Microsoft up will have any lasting effects on the economy.
BTW Dubya won't get re-elected because the American people have come to realize that he is an idiot.
It's the consumer's choice to use proprietary file formats (read: vendor lock-in), not Microsoft's.
This is not explicitly true. While the clueless computer newbies perpetuate the proprietary file formats explosion
by typing every 3 line memo/note in Word. It is the choice by MicroShaft et. al. to make these proprietary formats
that causes the problem in the first place.
Question: Why didn't Microsoft propose an open standard for documents
and put it in the public domain? Note I'm not talking about the source code just the document format.
Why? because it is not in their business interests to do so.
Then they root for a technology they can't even use on those same computers. What gives?
This just reflects the fact that/. has a diverse readership. Then there is also the "Anything that MicroShaft hates is a good thing" crowd.
Personally I was never hot on Java - it reminds me too much of Smalltalk. And listening to those OO purists always gave me a headache.
If microsoft really was as evil as a monopoly as you say they are, then why do they continue to innovate?
If you mean by innovate, why do they continue to do things to lure people to continue on the upgrade treadmill then
the obvious answer is - their stock would tank if they didn't.
I hope that answers your question.
Or do you men the other innovate. Coming up with completely novel technologies that they didn't steal from some one else?
They don't do that. Sorry, wrong company.
Why did it become expected that technical support people should be able to fix any software problem through the phone?
I blame this on Microsoft
There used to be a time when to use a computer meant you had to go through some sort of training. But Microsoft has brainwashed the
masses that computers are really simple to use and training is not needed. You see this in all their propaganda as to how they brought
computing to the average user. I'm not saying only geeks should have access to computers by any means.
But we have to stop living under the delusion that they are really simple to use. They aren't. Maybe they will be one day but today they aren't. That includes any flavour of Windoze you choose. At least Linux is honest about the fact that you have to RTFM. I have installed Windows from 95-Win2K on a clean machine and sometimes its a piece of cake and sometimes I curse Bill and his merry gang of thieves. Same with Linux (Red Hat) sometimes it's easy other times... lets not go there.
But once you have people believing computers are simple to use and fix then it's natural that they will expect to be able to fix problems through the phone.
Funny thing is the same people who won't open the hood of their car think they can install hardware without knowing an IRQ from a hole in the wall.
I'm going to start throwing out some wild guesses at this point. I'm going to guess that most Unix advocates in business world today were exposed to Unix while they were in college.
Nope!
Silicon Graphics Irixs. Molding and simulation, 1992. There just wasn't a Windows box that could come close.
And before you start spouting nonsense that I am unusual. Talk to any engineer that needed to do serious computing
where rendering was an integral part of the analysis 7-8 years ago. Anything from heat transfer, fluid flow, 3d modeling..
It intrigues me that, while millions put up with television and radio advertising that literally dictates the content they can consume, it takes a frontier like the web to awaken them to the annoyance (some say "evil") that is advertising.
Um, ever heard of PBS:^) ?
That is the only thing worth watching on TV anyway, besides the Simspons (the commercials during the Sippsons are annoying but just to hear a good Homer quote is worth it!).
"Honey do you mind opening the window. The cops have daddy's prints on file"
That's just it..NET isn't a defacto standard yet. We need an OSS competitor from the beginning.
Why? Just because Microsoft is doing it does not mean we should follow along.
Frankly I want to know what compelling components of.Net can't be performed with existent technologies such as Java, XML, etc...
I am no expert so if some one want s to answer this I would like a legit answer. I just don't seen any reason why we have to jump at something because Microsoft does it. It is distracting to the movement.
Besides with the current broadband roll-out timetable, building server side applications/services as a main business is not smart right now,
not to mentions the issues of security when data is centralized.
Everyone already *knows* Microsoft does these things, and most people already believe that it's evil
Weather it is evil is not the issue. Is it illegal? If it is illegal, why is this company allowed to continue as an entity?
If there ever was a case for the DOJ involvement in Microsoft's business practices, this would be it.
I guess that if someone wants something so detrimental to their well being, they should be allowed it.
I have to assume you are playing the devils advocate here. Much of the readership of slashdot are Americans,
and they are fiercely proud of the tradition that country has towards privacy. The assumption is, wrong or right,
that the only way to stop a government from becoming a police state is maintain certain rights.
And while it is true that your acts are visible when you are in public, you are not allays recognized and monitored. This is a key
distinction. The best argument I have heard for this is what is legal today might be illegal tomorrow, and in
state with too much power then things get ugly. The situation in China with the Falun Gong comes to mind.
So I believe the Americans have a point. It is better to err on the side of too much privacy than not enough.
Erm, none of the judges hearing this case were appointed by the incumbent president, so your comment is rather pointless.
Oh stuff it!
You are fully aware that my comment was not related to this case specifically, but rather the relationship between the executive and judicial branch
in general. And if you aren't, then arguing with you is a waste of my time.
"oh, Lordy, MS is going to change my links"
If the common user mom & pop doesn't know how to edit this XML file or if worse yet they can't find it what's the difference?
They are stuck with the MicroShaft defaults. Although not as hard to fix, I see this as being no
different than having IE already on the machine. Why would mom/pop download Netscape, Mozilla, or yikes, pay for Opera.
MicroShaft is well aware that the VAST majority of users won't edit the defaults to this file. So in effect they get to hijack
the HTML pages of 80% of the internet by default.
So for all intents an purposes "oh, Lordy, MS is going to change my links" is closer to the truth than even
MicroShaft will admit.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it is like a game of chess. With all the short term feints hiding a long term strategy. In this case the long term goal
beiung controll of a critical percentage of the servers on the Internet and corporate LANs. This seems to be far harder for
them to do than they had originally thought. I believe the primary contributer to this delay is the improper balance they
palced in features vs. security for thier products. This is not surprising since they have been fairly succesfull with a featrue
first strategy.
Going forward, they will obviously need to revese this policy and neutralize the GPL at the same time.
Doing one is hard enough. Doing both will be herculean. To do both they need their entire SW development teams to
completly change directions AND convince the general public that the GPL and the LGPL is bad.
I am curious to see what the next move will be.
Knowing Microsoft, their next step will be to implement a completely new filesystem, encourage (force)
everyone to upgrade, and protect it with encryption (if they claim that the encryption is
for protection of a user's intellectual property, then perhaps the DMCA would have more teeth
in this situation), and/or patents (somewhat akin to what they did with ASF).
You sir have hit the nail right on the head!
Here it is:
MS to overhaul files for next Windows
-DF
No moderation privileges today, but I had to comment on a well written post.
My local Borders Bookstore is obtaining a copy of this book for me. Should have it by next Friday.
Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity ISBN 0-8147-8806-8
Thanks again.
ILEC-Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier
CLEC-Competitive Local Exchange Carrier
From tomstdenis.home.dhs.org/
<Page Cut>
Pro MS?
Yeah you heard right I am pro-MS. Why? Because nobody else is.
As you read this Perl processed Apache served page please keep an open
mind why I think MS is not such a bad company.
The monopoly
Ok so you guys think because MS packs IE and MSN stuff with Windows it
is a monopoly right? Well monopolies only exist where alternatives are
removed from the playing field. Goto msn.com and type in Mozilla into
the search box.
</Page Cut>
Oh well even the smart ones can be misguided :^)
Couldn't agree more.
Just a while back I found some STL code to be broken in VC++ 6.0 that worked fine in VC++5.0 - Funny how the MFC stuff still works though. It seems that they target what to break. Breaking STL code is a no-brainer because that fosters apps that are more portable and from the MS standpoint that is bad.
So what does the average developer do? Avoid code rewrite and code to MFC - they (Microsoft) win.
Regarding Miguel's Actions:
.NET as the underlying technology, KDE wins (If it hasn't already).
I also believe Miguel is not thinking this through. But as has been said often here: Once the code GNU'd it can't be undone. Also if the Gnome project adopts
Yea, but will they still charge the content creator to have their content show up fist in the search results?
Wouldn't that be kinda like double dipping?
What does breaking up Microsoft have to do with destroying the economy?
Show me something conclusive. I see this argument, often from Microsoft itself, but it is never backed with facts.
Even if you use their stock price dropping as an argument, this would be short lived until people realized that
a Microsoft forced to actually genuinely compete is better for the economy than a company using software as a service
so they can milk gullible customers of yearly subscription money without adding any real value to the service provided.
I just don't buy that breaking Microsoft up will have any lasting effects on the economy.
BTW Dubya won't get re-elected because the American people have come to realize that he is an idiot.
Nothing to do with the economy ...
This is not explicitly true. While the clueless computer newbies perpetuate the proprietary file formats explosion by typing every 3 line memo/note in Word. It is the choice by MicroShaft et. al. to make these proprietary formats that causes the problem in the first place.
Question: Why didn't Microsoft propose an open standard for documents and put it in the public domain? Note I'm not talking about the source code just the document format.
Why? because it is not in their business interests to do so.
consumer's choice like hell.
Personally I was never hot on Java - it reminds me too much of Smalltalk. And listening to those OO purists always gave me a headache.
If you mean by innovate, why do they continue to do things to lure people to continue on the upgrade treadmill then the obvious answer is - their stock would tank if they didn't.
I hope that answers your question.
Or do you men the other innovate. Coming up with completely novel technologies that they didn't steal from some one else?
They don't do that. Sorry, wrong company.
This has been an Astroturf (TM) burning moment
-DF.
I blame this on Microsoft
There used to be a time when to use a computer meant you had to go through some sort of training. But Microsoft has brainwashed the masses that computers are really simple to use and training is not needed. You see this in all their propaganda as to how they brought computing to the average user. I'm not saying only geeks should have access to computers by any means.
But we have to stop living under the delusion that they are really simple to use. They aren't. Maybe they will be one day but today they aren't. That includes any flavour of Windoze you choose. At least Linux is honest about the fact that you have to RTFM. I have installed Windows from 95-Win2K on a clean machine and sometimes its a piece of cake and sometimes I curse Bill and his merry gang of thieves. Same with Linux (Red Hat) sometimes it's easy other times ... lets not go there.
But once you have people believing computers are simple to use and fix then it's natural that they will expect to be able to fix problems through the phone.
Funny thing is the same people who won't open the hood of their car think they can install hardware without knowing an IRQ from a hole in the wall.
I'm going to guess that most Unix advocates in business world today were exposed to Unix while they were in college.
My assertion:
Many Unix advocates were engineers using Unix in industry (not school) because Windoze couldn't cut it back then.
Show me numbers to back up your claim or shut up. I will refrain, as much as I want to to, to resort to personally attacking you.
Nope! Silicon Graphics Irixs. Molding and simulation, 1992. There just wasn't a Windows box that could come close.
And before you start spouting nonsense that I am unusual. Talk to any engineer that needed to do serious computing where rendering was an integral part of the analysis 7-8 years ago. Anything from heat transfer, fluid flow, 3d modeling ..
School indeed ....
Agreed. But it is a dignified everybody in and out in a matter of a minute or two, and if the show is an hour long that is bearable.
It's the commercial every 6-8 minutes on the commercial channels that makes me want to throw a brick at the TV.
Um, ever heard of PBS :^) ?
That is the only thing worth watching on TV anyway, besides the Simspons (the commercials during the Sippsons are annoying but just to hear a good Homer quote is worth it!). "Honey do you mind opening the window. The cops have daddy's prints on file"
Or some such.
JavaScript is useless for what I do with myt browser so I just tuen it off. This kills pop-over/under/beside.
Why? Just because Microsoft is doing it does not mean we should follow along.
Frankly I want to know what compelling components of .Net can't be performed with existent technologies such as Java, XML, etc...
I am no expert so if some one want s to answer this I would like a legit answer. I just don't seen any reason why we have to jump at something because Microsoft does it. It is distracting to the movement.
Besides with the current broadband roll-out timetable, building server side applications/services as a main business is not smart right now, not to mentions the issues of security when data is centralized.
Weather it is evil is not the issue. Is it illegal? If it is illegal, why is this company allowed to continue as an entity? If there ever was a case for the DOJ involvement in Microsoft's business practices, this would be it.
I have to assume you are playing the devils advocate here. Much of the readership of slashdot are Americans, and they are fiercely proud of the tradition that country has towards privacy. The assumption is, wrong or right, that the only way to stop a government from becoming a police state is maintain certain rights.
And while it is true that your acts are visible when you are in public, you are not allays recognized and monitored. This is a key distinction. The best argument I have heard for this is what is legal today might be illegal tomorrow, and in state with too much power then things get ugly. The situation in China with the Falun Gong comes to mind.
So I believe the Americans have a point. It is better to err on the side of too much privacy than not enough.
You are fully aware that my comment was not related to this case specifically, but rather the relationship between the executive and judicial branch in general. And if you aren't, then arguing with you is a waste of my time.
Yes. This is true but they must get the nomination first. And if you piss of the nominator [Incumbent President] you don't get nominated.
From the link
You must have scripting enabled in order to view this site. Please modify your browser's settings accordingly.
Translated:
Move along! There's nothing here for you to see
If the common user mom & pop doesn't know how to edit this XML file or if worse yet they can't find it what's the difference?
They are stuck with the MicroShaft defaults. Although not as hard to fix, I see this as being no different than having IE already on the machine. Why would mom/pop download Netscape, Mozilla, or yikes, pay for Opera.
MicroShaft is well aware that the VAST majority of users won't edit the defaults to this file. So in effect they get to hijack the HTML pages of 80% of the internet by default.
So for all intents an purposes "oh, Lordy, MS is going to change my links" is closer to the truth than even MicroShaft will admit.
-DF.
What are you smoking?
Here try this:
On Win95 try putting NULL in the last argument to CreateThread()
On NT this works just fine.
On CE Try calling: LoadMenu(), or better yet fopen(); :0).
Works fine on NT.
Dealing with the incomparabilities between Windows version pays my salary