Can the same library exist more than once on Windows systems and be used more than once?
Let'say I need to use foo.dll for my application, and I provide a copy in the application's directory. Can I use the functions provided by *my* foo.dll, even though some other application is running and has loaded foo.dll from \system32 or wherever?
I guess I personally think on a binary-only system like Windows (where's there's less concern or interest in rebuilding anything from source), that apps should be all static or at least be able to use their own DLLs, even if those DLLs are older/newer versions of system DLLs.
Perhaps the rule could be arbitrary, like "Libraries included in current RH install" or perhaps based upon the fscking around needed to build & install the library.
Back in the olden days, weren't most applications statically linked? Ie, the libraries included in the application linked into the final executable? That became a problem because apps were using more and more large libraries which lead to huge bloated duplication of libraries, bugs in the libraries meant not just replacing a given library version but rebuilding all the executables.
Could it be that we've gone too far the other way? Is it possible to statically link in obscure or highly version dependent libraries but leave common libraries dynamic?
Re:Chapter 10: Learning Hindi or Russian
on
The Career Programmer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
[ considering you're an average english speaking person who is unaware that other languages, except perhaps spanish, exist, at all. ]
That's kind of a cheap shot. For most Americans, even those motivated to learn another language, there's little practical ways to get and stay proficient (ie, carry on colloquial conversations, read/write), since almost nobody speaks the 'other' languages, excluding Spanish.
In the Southwest, Spanish is probably viable, and in parts of the Northeast Quebecois might be viable. Otherwise your hundreds if not thousands of miles from any speakers of these languages, and if those languages aren't interesting to you, then GOOD LUCK finding other speakers, media in those languages and more than the occasional newspaper.
Yes, I know you could go out of your way to do this: join a language club, subscribe to a newspaper, get a shortwave radio, etc, but for the most part that's not something most people would do or it would supplant something else they already need to do (raise the kids, tend the home, etc).
Europeans can be polyglots because just about any point in Europe is a few hundred km at most from 2-3 other major population centers where those languages are spoken. Remove that, and I'd wager most of those people wouldn't bother, either, or wouldn't have gone to the extra effort.
Even where there are multiple languages *requried*, the locals aren't always hot to it. A friend grew up in South Africa in the 70s; of English extraction, he didn't want anything to do with learning Afrikaans, even though it was required, and to this day can remember/speak little of it.
I'd pay for content delivered over the internet, but it has to be high quality (both in terms of content and production), and portable to other mediums as I see fit.
The problem with most internet content that you pay for is that they don't want you to move it to another platfrom (DVD, CD, etc), they want you to use your computer to consume it.
This throws out most written content, as sitting at the PC sucks for long reads. I could print it out myself I suppose, but even my 3si printer isn't that great for producing a viable formfactor book.
Video? I want it in my living room -- HTPC can do this, but I don't have one and HTPC and my current TV aren't a great combination for all the obvious user interface and form factor reasons. But paid video off the internet is DRM crippled, in a format not suitable for watching on TV, and then there's the whole nuisance of writing a DVD (which I can do from a hardware perspective, but not in an acceptable timeframe if MPEG encoding is required).
Audio? Closer, if it wasn't DRM'd and they'd get the whole catalog to me. But I don't see a commitment on the part of the industry to let me download music and then copy it to CDs, my MP3 player, etc without extra hassle.
I don't know what else they mean by content? Forums and stuff? I'm not paying to listen to slashdotters babble, but it's amusing enough to do for free.
Netware was killed by a demand for application servers that it was ill-suited for and did not have (or had in small, unstable numbers). A lot of places switched to NT4 because of the wealth of applications that could be run on it concurrently with filesharing. Web servers and client-server databases were the biggest culprits.
Linux and NT4 filled the bill there and as a bonus for smaller organizations, could do file and print at the same time.
I think if Novell had moved the filesharing and directory components to an application model instead of the blended OS/application model that it was, and made filesharing/directory available on Linux and NT4 with a less expensive licensing scheme they'd still be out there as contenders for new business, and perhaps keeping marketshare from Microsoft.
I'm not knocking Netware for it base usage -- file and print with a solid directory and security model -- for that, even a 6 year old copy of 4.11 is superior to Win2k. But the fact that it made a poor application server, if you could find reasonably stable applications to run on top of it, is where it failed badly.
In larger organizations I can see why they kept it going -- the directory is great, and larger organizations find it easier to manage a large, heterogeneous environment anyway, so adding Linux or NT or whatever boxes for application serving wasn't as much a cost or management issue as it was in smaller organizations that sought greater efficiencies.
Does anyone sell an unencumbered VoIPPOTS bridge for 1-3 analog lines? I guess I'm thinking of a box with an ethernet jack, line jacks, and extension jacks. POTS extensions go in the extension jacks, POTS lines go into the line jacks, and ethernet into the ethernet jack. Device allows POTS extensions to make POTS or VoIP calls, terminates VoIP calls on extensions or bridges them to the POTS network, or allow POTS network originated phones to make VoIP calls.
I could see that being very useful as a starter device; it'd let you use your normal home phone lines and phones as usual, over IP, terminate VoIP calls to your regular phone. More interestingly is the ability to roam to any IP network with a soft phone and make POTS calls.
I think Vonage's device is like this, but it's encumbered; you can't just get the device can you?
The magic with VoIP seems to me to be in having a way to bridge to the POTS world.
Fraud is the key, and solving the fraud question is the key.
Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that some of these "products" may be technically not fraud, although you and I would recognize them as so.
I think law enforcement is way too lenient with what is euphamistcally referred to as "agressive sales techniques", which are often as not more plainly just seen as fraudulent sales tactics.
A friend and I actually DID go through with a make money fast scheme. Back in '92 when the Internet was really starting to get buzz, we put an add in Popular Science promsing "Valuable information on the Internet just $10" or something similarly hyped. What they got was some photocopied BS we downloaded ourselves; we even reduced it and double-side copied it to keep our costs down.
We figured it was totally legit since, if you read our ad carefully, we did provide exactly what we promised.
I think we got about 10 requests, which we fulfilled, and we ended up basically breaking even or even losing money.
My quesiton is, where's the FTC/FBI in all this? Why aren't these people going to jail for operating a fradulent enterprise? Do we not (or did we ever?) put people in jail for that? Or do we just put them on the cover of Business Week and call them "Corporate Executives"?
Sorry of the cynacism, but it strikes me that in the spam problem arena the money trail is the one thing that can be followed (vs. forged header, hijacked.cn servers, etc), and if people started going to jail for internet fraud (yes, to the infamous Slashdot "Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison"), then spam WOULD slow dramatically, since most spam is for the same small number of "products".
That, and maybe some aggressive advertising by the FTC about the fraudulent, doesn't-do-anything-but-cost-you-money nature of the products:
(Imagine Bob Dole: "Hi, I'm Bob Dole, and like many of you, I thought Viagra wasn't enough, I thought maybe I needed 12" pornstar sledgehammer as well. Well let me tell you, those pills don't work, can't work, won't work, so don't waste your money. I wish they would work, but like my wife Elizabeth, your loved one is just going to have to learn to like your 4" pindick.")
We repulled all our fiber when we moved our data center. The old fiber was lame plastic jacketed single strands.
The new stuff has 8 strands and is inside what I can only describe as being like Liquidtight Metallic Conduit -- a heavy plastic jacket over a coiled metal jacket. Where it's pulled and "publicly" accessable (common closets), it'd be impossible to bend it without a hacksaw.
It's not a terrible idea, but instead of being a site for others to host dodgy content, they should have gone into a more consumer oriented business selling secure, anonymous email, P2P supernodes, personal file sharing, and that sort of thing.
I'm not sure how you'd *pay* them anonymously, but providing the "naughty" services instead of expecting others to rent trifling bandwidth from them to do so might have provided a better revenue stream.
Re:Prohibiting sedition: A fine American tradition
on
Linking Dangerously
·
· Score: 1
As the AC poster noted, the first "Red Scare" was just after WW I and politically had more to do with Anarchists (which I believe are more accurately referred to as "Radical Syndicalists") than with Soviet Communism, which as you point out didn't exist. But the socialist *movement* easily predates WW I; remember, Marx & Engels wrote the Manifesto in the mid 19th Century!
The Anarchists were considered dangerous because they advocated the violent overthrow of the entire system, replacing it with a Syndicalist economic and political structure. Or at least that's how they were labeled. The infamous picture of the "mad bomber" (dark hair, holding a bowling-ball style bomb) comes from popular imagery of the Anarachist at this time.
The anti-German sentiment was more a result of WWI itself and the virulent anti-German propaganda at the time. Germany was quite unpopular, not just for the war and the sinking of the Lusitania. It was also fairly easy to couple anti-Anarchist sentiment to the Germans, since German intellectuals had a rich connection to then Socialist/Communist movements -- Marx and Engels were German, Lenin had been exiled in Germany. Socialism was THE socio-political movement among intellectuals everywhere, and Germany was the leading intellectual center of the western world at the time. The popularity of socialism in Germany even influenced Hitler, even though he was opposed to communism, who labeled his party NDSAP (German abbreviation for National German Socialist Worker's Party).
The "Red Scare" also led a number of important American intellectuals into self-imposed exile in Europe in the 20s -- Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, and to some extent Ernest Hemingway (although more as a traveller than a socialist) as well. Many of these intellectuals ended up staying to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Let's say for argument's sake that the source code really and truly didn't get included in the liquidation, and wasn't included in some blanket "..and all other assets of value or works produced thereof.." statement.
Does ANYBODY own it at that point? Is it considered public domain? Can it be re-copyrighted?
I'd guess that most liquidations do include a statement like that above, just to prevent stuff from slipping through the cracks -- name all the nameable stuff, and then have a catch-all for everything else.
Prohibiting sedition: A fine American tradition
on
Linking Dangerously
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Ahh, a fine tradition. Our Founding Fathers, the guys we're supposed to be so in love with and who supposedly knew so much about liberty, passed the Sedition act in 1798.
I can't remember the name, but I think there was another act prohibiting advocating the violent overthrow of the government passed during the Red Scare, around 1917.
The Patriot Act is only the latest iteration of this.
The new world order being built has a clear line between the Aristocracy and their service help. They're trying very hard to eliminate the pesky "skilled service help" who actually expect to be treated like, and paid like, the peers of the Aristocracy.
You hit the nail on the head; applications were what really killed NW, and gave NT4 a HUGE amount of momentum. Lots of places were not running NT351 at that point, they were Netware shops that needed an application platform -- staffed with x86 guys, Unix was "too complicated" and NT4 seemed totally familiar.
My "save novell" plan was:
1. Port file & print as an application to Unix (especially Linux!) and NT. This allows superior directory and user management and filesharing to co-exist with the app server.
2. Alter the pricing. 1 copy $1000, 2 copies $2000, 3+ $5000. No user limits on any one copy.
I think they kind of did the right thing with NDS and LDAP, but not soon/fast enough and with too many licensing limits.
My simple plan probably would have pinched revenue, but think of it this way; if you could have eliminated MS from the server situation (not needed for app or filesharing) AND kept Netware in 1996, what would the world look like now? Would we have a Novell/Linux combo at 50% of total server market, with MS struggling to keep up and IIS functionally a revision behind?
I'd want MythTV for the total flexibility it would provide, including the ability to write DVD-Rs, copy raw MPEGs and that kind of thing that Tivo can't do.
Even the mail sending and web interface (especially this) would have a lot of use (remote schdeduling, program downloads, etc). When I referred to email server and web server in my previous post, I was kind of knocking the people who would INSIST that because it's Linux, it must also continue to be a general purpose server platform.
Maybe I would too, eventually, but right now I just want the media usage abilities. But I don't have the time or desire to fsck around with getting it up. I gave up on X a long time ago, multimedia & Linux? Ugh, getting grass to grow in the yard is less complicated and more rewarding to me...
Myth TV sure *looks* good, but the idea of doing a Linux distro, X, and then MythTV sounds like way too much nuisance compared to just buying a Tivo (which I already own) or even a DVD recorder.
I'd pay $100 for a install-from-CD distro designed to do MythTV. I'm sure some people insist on it being everything from a web server to an email gateway, too, but I'd care only for the Myth TV functionality.
Is anything coming down the pike like this, a home-media OS package designed to be put in a standard stereo-formfactor PC, without a lot of the endless configuration and hairpulling?
AFAICT Novell is dying, doomed to become another company like Banyan. NDS is a superior technology, but Novell fumbled it with NW 5; we had to switch to Win2k for the sake of our Mac clients, which Novell walked away from.
All the resellers I talk to say nobody buys Netware new, virtually all of the Novell sales they do are upgrades for a few loyalists that won't switch to anything else.
I won't argue the superiority of Win2k in any sense; NW4.11 NDS was vastly better, especially when dealing with multi-site and distributed security setups. But Novell became just impossible for us if we wanted to keep our Macs reasonably integrated with the PCs.
IMHO Novell's purchase of Cambridge Tech Partners was an acknowledgement that their days are numbered. Perhaps purchasing Ximian will enable them to get into the Linux consulting world.
Maybe this is just my gut reaction, but maybe colleges should be spending their time working on EDUCATION and not SELLING MUSIC
I don't exactly know when it happened, but the American educational system stopped being primarily about education and instead is about being a social welfare delivery system. It's why schools spend so much (and are still short of books, teachers, and classrooms) and deliver so little.
College campuses are almost idealized socialist countries -- the college is the source of everything, including rules, laws, and its own peculiar forms of repression. Who goes to college for an education? You go to further your ethnicity, sexuality, and other special-interests.
And in the end, the state colleges will go keep going to the legislature and keep asking for increases in spending...
The property immediately surrounding the development generally sees a slight increase in property taxes as its assessed value tends to rise (which only makes sense). Everything else is a revenue increase from increased usage (sales tax) and follow-on development (property tax).
In effect, it's a "free" benefit because more distant property owners (generally residents) don't pay anything (other than sales tax in the newly developed areas, which they would have paid regardless) -- the users and the follow-on development pick up the tab by paying the newly-increased property taxes in the area.
The only people who end up paying more are people who don't want the development because they benefit in some way from a rundown area (cheap rents, storage, etc).
There's no logical reason why a bond-funded capital development program couldn't pay for itself through increased tax revenues resulting from development; a variant is Tax Increment Financing, which has been around for years.
The downside is that it has to be really strategic -- it has to be the kind of investment that has a high chance of spurring further investment.
If it becomes just a political patronage tool (spend money to reward unions and contractors) without good thought as to what you're building, you can end up with a lot of concrete and zero investment.
Blaming CA's problems merely on bonding is naive. A collapsed tech and aviation sector, economic slowdown generally, a burgeoning immigrant population and a Proposition 13 have all contributed to CA's problems.
Well, it's more like investment. Norm and others would argue (mostly correctly, although only history can say for sure) that it's like business capital investment.
The $800M in bonding Norm was responsible for may actually generate $1.5 billion in new taxes that would have otherwise been unavailable to the city.
New capital projects can raise the value of surrounding properties (more property tax revenue), create taxable properties from non-taxable properties (ditto), as well as spur business investment and economic activity (more sales tax revenue), as well as private property development (which can increase property tax roles and sales tax).
When those things happen, like business investment, the bonds are almost like free money -- they can actually generate a profit.
When they fail, though, the burden IS on the back of the residential taxpayers.
It takes 5-10 years at least to determine this, so the jury is still out on Norm's investments. Perhaps we'll know by the '08 election cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
Can the same library exist more than once on Windows systems and be used more than once?
Let'say I need to use foo.dll for my application, and I provide a copy in the application's directory. Can I use the functions provided by *my* foo.dll, even though some other application is running and has loaded foo.dll from \system32 or wherever?
I guess I personally think on a binary-only system like Windows (where's there's less concern or interest in rebuilding anything from source), that apps should be all static or at least be able to use their own DLLs, even if those DLLs are older/newer versions of system DLLs.
Clearly the line isn't clear.
Perhaps the rule could be arbitrary, like "Libraries included in current RH install" or perhaps based upon the fscking around needed to build & install the library.
Back in the olden days, weren't most applications statically linked? Ie, the libraries included in the application linked into the final executable? That became a problem because apps were using more and more large libraries which lead to huge bloated duplication of libraries, bugs in the libraries meant not just replacing a given library version but rebuilding all the executables.
Could it be that we've gone too far the other way? Is it possible to statically link in obscure or highly version dependent libraries but leave common libraries dynamic?
[ considering you're an average english speaking person who is unaware that other languages, except perhaps spanish, exist, at all. ]
That's kind of a cheap shot. For most Americans, even those motivated to learn another language, there's little practical ways to get and stay proficient (ie, carry on colloquial conversations, read/write), since almost nobody speaks the 'other' languages, excluding Spanish.
In the Southwest, Spanish is probably viable, and in parts of the Northeast Quebecois might be viable. Otherwise your hundreds if not thousands of miles from any speakers of these languages, and if those languages aren't interesting to you, then GOOD LUCK finding other speakers, media in those languages and more than the occasional newspaper.
Yes, I know you could go out of your way to do this: join a language club, subscribe to a newspaper, get a shortwave radio, etc, but for the most part that's not something most people would do or it would supplant something else they already need to do (raise the kids, tend the home, etc).
Europeans can be polyglots because just about any point in Europe is a few hundred km at most from 2-3 other major population centers where those languages are spoken. Remove that, and I'd wager most of those people wouldn't bother, either, or wouldn't have gone to the extra effort.
Even where there are multiple languages *requried*, the locals aren't always hot to it. A friend grew up in South Africa in the 70s; of English extraction, he didn't want anything to do with learning Afrikaans, even though it was required, and to this day can remember/speak little of it.
I'd pay for content delivered over the internet, but it has to be high quality (both in terms of content and production), and portable to other mediums as I see fit.
The problem with most internet content that you pay for is that they don't want you to move it to another platfrom (DVD, CD, etc), they want you to use your computer to consume it.
This throws out most written content, as sitting at the PC sucks for long reads. I could print it out myself I suppose, but even my 3si printer isn't that great for producing a viable formfactor book.
Video? I want it in my living room -- HTPC can do this, but I don't have one and HTPC and my current TV aren't a great combination for all the obvious user interface and form factor reasons. But paid video off the internet is DRM crippled, in a format not suitable for watching on TV, and then there's the whole nuisance of writing a DVD (which I can do from a hardware perspective, but not in an acceptable timeframe if MPEG encoding is required).
Audio? Closer, if it wasn't DRM'd and they'd get the whole catalog to me. But I don't see a commitment on the part of the industry to let me download music and then copy it to CDs, my MP3 player, etc without extra hassle.
I don't know what else they mean by content? Forums and stuff? I'm not paying to listen to slashdotters babble, but it's amusing enough to do for free.
Netware was killed by a demand for application servers that it was ill-suited for and did not have (or had in small, unstable numbers). A lot of places switched to NT4 because of the wealth of applications that could be run on it concurrently with filesharing. Web servers and client-server databases were the biggest culprits.
Linux and NT4 filled the bill there and as a bonus for smaller organizations, could do file and print at the same time.
I think if Novell had moved the filesharing and directory components to an application model instead of the blended OS/application model that it was, and made filesharing/directory available on Linux and NT4 with a less expensive licensing scheme they'd still be out there as contenders for new business, and perhaps keeping marketshare from Microsoft.
I'm not knocking Netware for it base usage -- file and print with a solid directory and security model -- for that, even a 6 year old copy of 4.11 is superior to Win2k. But the fact that it made a poor application server, if you could find reasonably stable applications to run on top of it, is where it failed badly.
In larger organizations I can see why they kept it going -- the directory is great, and larger organizations find it easier to manage a large, heterogeneous environment anyway, so adding Linux or NT or whatever boxes for application serving wasn't as much a cost or management issue as it was in smaller organizations that sought greater efficiencies.
Does anyone sell an unencumbered VoIPPOTS bridge for 1-3 analog lines? I guess I'm thinking of a box with an ethernet jack, line jacks, and extension jacks. POTS extensions go in the extension jacks, POTS lines go into the line jacks, and ethernet into the ethernet jack. Device allows POTS extensions to make POTS or VoIP calls, terminates VoIP calls on extensions or bridges them to the POTS network, or allow POTS network originated phones to make VoIP calls.
I could see that being very useful as a starter device; it'd let you use your normal home phone lines and phones as usual, over IP, terminate VoIP calls to your regular phone. More interestingly is the ability to roam to any IP network with a soft phone and make POTS calls.
I think Vonage's device is like this, but it's encumbered; you can't just get the device can you?
The magic with VoIP seems to me to be in having a way to bridge to the POTS world.
Yay, you agree with me!
Fraud is the key, and solving the fraud question is the key.
Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that some of these "products" may be technically not fraud, although you and I would recognize them as so.
I think law enforcement is way too lenient with what is euphamistcally referred to as "agressive sales techniques", which are often as not more plainly just seen as fraudulent sales tactics.
A friend and I actually DID go through with a make money fast scheme. Back in '92 when the Internet was really starting to get buzz, we put an add in Popular Science promsing "Valuable information on the Internet just $10" or something similarly hyped. What they got was some photocopied BS we downloaded ourselves; we even reduced it and double-side copied it to keep our costs down.
We figured it was totally legit since, if you read our ad carefully, we did provide exactly what we promised.
I think we got about 10 requests, which we fulfilled, and we ended up basically breaking even or even losing money.
My quesiton is, where's the FTC/FBI in all this? Why aren't these people going to jail for operating a fradulent enterprise? Do we not (or did we ever?) put people in jail for that? Or do we just put them on the cover of Business Week and call them "Corporate Executives"?
.cn servers, etc), and if people started going to jail for internet fraud (yes, to the infamous Slashdot "Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison"), then spam WOULD slow dramatically, since most spam is for the same small number of "products".
Sorry of the cynacism, but it strikes me that in the spam problem arena the money trail is the one thing that can be followed (vs. forged header, hijacked
That, and maybe some aggressive advertising by the FTC about the fraudulent, doesn't-do-anything-but-cost-you-money nature of the products:
(Imagine Bob Dole: "Hi, I'm Bob Dole, and like many of you, I thought Viagra wasn't enough, I thought maybe I needed 12" pornstar sledgehammer as well. Well let me tell you, those pills don't work, can't work, won't work, so don't waste your money. I wish they would work, but like my wife Elizabeth, your loved one is just going to have to learn to like your 4" pindick.")
We repulled all our fiber when we moved our data center. The old fiber was lame plastic jacketed single strands.
The new stuff has 8 strands and is inside what I can only describe as being like Liquidtight Metallic Conduit -- a heavy plastic jacket over a coiled metal jacket. Where it's pulled and "publicly" accessable (common closets), it'd be impossible to bend it without a hacksaw.
Silicone is for making tits bigger and keeping water in the tub.
Silicon is what chips are made of.
It's not a terrible idea, but instead of being a site for others to host dodgy content, they should have gone into a more consumer oriented business selling secure, anonymous email, P2P supernodes, personal file sharing, and that sort of thing.
I'm not sure how you'd *pay* them anonymously, but providing the "naughty" services instead of expecting others to rent trifling bandwidth from them to do so might have provided a better revenue stream.
As the AC poster noted, the first "Red Scare" was just after WW I and politically had more to do with Anarchists (which I believe are more accurately referred to as "Radical Syndicalists") than with Soviet Communism, which as you point out didn't exist. But the socialist *movement* easily predates WW I; remember, Marx & Engels wrote the Manifesto in the mid 19th Century!
The Anarchists were considered dangerous because they advocated the violent overthrow of the entire system, replacing it with a Syndicalist economic and political structure. Or at least that's how they were labeled. The infamous picture of the "mad bomber" (dark hair, holding a bowling-ball style bomb) comes from popular imagery of the Anarachist at this time.
The anti-German sentiment was more a result of WWI itself and the virulent anti-German propaganda at the time. Germany was quite unpopular, not just for the war and the sinking of the Lusitania. It was also fairly easy to couple anti-Anarchist sentiment to the Germans, since German intellectuals had a rich connection to then Socialist/Communist movements -- Marx and Engels were German, Lenin had been exiled in Germany. Socialism was THE socio-political movement among intellectuals everywhere, and Germany was the leading intellectual center of the western world at the time. The popularity of socialism in Germany even influenced Hitler, even though he was opposed to communism, who labeled his party NDSAP (German abbreviation for National German Socialist Worker's Party).
The "Red Scare" also led a number of important American intellectuals into self-imposed exile in Europe in the 20s -- Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, and to some extent Ernest Hemingway (although more as a traveller than a socialist) as well. Many of these intellectuals ended up staying to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Well, I remember more than you think...
Let's say for argument's sake that the source code really and truly didn't get included in the liquidation, and wasn't included in some blanket "..and all other assets of value or works produced thereof.." statement.
Does ANYBODY own it at that point? Is it considered public domain? Can it be re-copyrighted?
I'd guess that most liquidations do include a statement like that above, just to prevent stuff from slipping through the cracks -- name all the nameable stuff, and then have a catch-all for everything else.
Ahh, a fine tradition. Our Founding Fathers, the guys we're supposed to be so in love with and who supposedly knew so much about liberty, passed the Sedition act in 1798.
I can't remember the name, but I think there was another act prohibiting advocating the violent overthrow of the government passed during the Red Scare, around 1917.
The Patriot Act is only the latest iteration of this.
The new world order being built has a clear line between the Aristocracy and their service help. They're trying very hard to eliminate the pesky "skilled service help" who actually expect to be treated like, and paid like, the peers of the Aristocracy.
You hit the nail on the head; applications were what really killed NW, and gave NT4 a HUGE amount of momentum. Lots of places were not running NT351 at that point, they were Netware shops that needed an application platform -- staffed with x86 guys, Unix was "too complicated" and NT4 seemed totally familiar.
My "save novell" plan was:
1. Port file & print as an application to Unix (especially Linux!) and NT. This allows superior directory and user management and filesharing to co-exist with the app server.
2. Alter the pricing. 1 copy $1000, 2 copies $2000, 3+ $5000. No user limits on any one copy.
I think they kind of did the right thing with NDS and LDAP, but not soon/fast enough and with too many licensing limits.
My simple plan probably would have pinched revenue, but think of it this way; if you could have eliminated MS from the server situation (not needed for app or filesharing) AND kept Netware in 1996, what would the world look like now? Would we have a Novell/Linux combo at 50% of total server market, with MS struggling to keep up and IIS functionally a revision behind?
I'd want MythTV for the total flexibility it would provide, including the ability to write DVD-Rs, copy raw MPEGs and that kind of thing that Tivo can't do.
Even the mail sending and web interface (especially this) would have a lot of use (remote schdeduling, program downloads, etc). When I referred to email server and web server in my previous post, I was kind of knocking the people who would INSIST that because it's Linux, it must also continue to be a general purpose server platform.
Maybe I would too, eventually, but right now I just want the media usage abilities. But I don't have the time or desire to fsck around with getting it up. I gave up on X a long time ago, multimedia & Linux? Ugh, getting grass to grow in the yard is less complicated and more rewarding to me...
Myth TV sure *looks* good, but the idea of doing a Linux distro, X, and then MythTV sounds like way too much nuisance compared to just buying a Tivo (which I already own) or even a DVD recorder.
I'd pay $100 for a install-from-CD distro designed to do MythTV. I'm sure some people insist on it being everything from a web server to an email gateway, too, but I'd care only for the Myth TV functionality.
Is anything coming down the pike like this, a home-media OS package designed to be put in a standard stereo-formfactor PC, without a lot of the endless configuration and hairpulling?
AFAICT Novell is dying, doomed to become another company like Banyan. NDS is a superior technology, but Novell fumbled it with NW 5; we had to switch to Win2k for the sake of our Mac clients, which Novell walked away from.
All the resellers I talk to say nobody buys Netware new, virtually all of the Novell sales they do are upgrades for a few loyalists that won't switch to anything else.
I won't argue the superiority of Win2k in any sense; NW4.11 NDS was vastly better, especially when dealing with multi-site and distributed security setups. But Novell became just impossible for us if we wanted to keep our Macs reasonably integrated with the PCs.
IMHO Novell's purchase of Cambridge Tech Partners was an acknowledgement that their days are numbered. Perhaps purchasing Ximian will enable them to get into the Linux consulting world.
Maybe this is just my gut reaction, but maybe colleges should be spending their time working on EDUCATION and not SELLING MUSIC
I don't exactly know when it happened, but the American educational system stopped being primarily about education and instead is about being a social welfare delivery system. It's why schools spend so much (and are still short of books, teachers, and classrooms) and deliver so little.
College campuses are almost idealized socialist countries -- the college is the source of everything, including rules, laws, and its own peculiar forms of repression. Who goes to college for an education? You go to further your ethnicity, sexuality, and other special-interests.
And in the end, the state colleges will go keep going to the legislature and keep asking for increases in spending...
The property immediately surrounding the development generally sees a slight increase in property taxes as its assessed value tends to rise (which only makes sense). Everything else is a revenue increase from increased usage (sales tax) and follow-on development (property tax).
In effect, it's a "free" benefit because more distant property owners (generally residents) don't pay anything (other than sales tax in the newly developed areas, which they would have paid regardless) -- the users and the follow-on development pick up the tab by paying the newly-increased property taxes in the area.
The only people who end up paying more are people who don't want the development because they benefit in some way from a rundown area (cheap rents, storage, etc).
There's no logical reason why a bond-funded capital development program couldn't pay for itself through increased tax revenues resulting from development; a variant is Tax Increment Financing, which has been around for years.
The downside is that it has to be really strategic -- it has to be the kind of investment that has a high chance of spurring further investment.
If it becomes just a political patronage tool (spend money to reward unions and contractors) without good thought as to what you're building, you can end up with a lot of concrete and zero investment.
Blaming CA's problems merely on bonding is naive. A collapsed tech and aviation sector, economic slowdown generally, a burgeoning immigrant population and a Proposition 13 have all contributed to CA's problems.
Well, it's more like investment. Norm and others would argue (mostly correctly, although only history can say for sure) that it's like business capital investment.
The $800M in bonding Norm was responsible for may actually generate $1.5 billion in new taxes that would have otherwise been unavailable to the city.
New capital projects can raise the value of surrounding properties (more property tax revenue), create taxable properties from non-taxable properties (ditto), as well as spur business investment and economic activity (more sales tax revenue), as well as private property development (which can increase property tax roles and sales tax).
When those things happen, like business investment, the bonds are almost like free money -- they can actually generate a profit.
When they fail, though, the burden IS on the back of the residential taxpayers.
It takes 5-10 years at least to determine this, so the jury is still out on Norm's investments. Perhaps we'll know by the '08 election cycle.