load NC 4.7 on startup. that's what's happening with IE, and that's why your machine boots ever so slightly slower, and IE starts up faster.
It's a good thing, yes, but if you never use a browser, it's a bad thing, and if you don't want to use Microsoft's it's a very bad thing, and if you want to write and sell your own better browser and catch a peice of the american dream, you're fucked.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I'm sure that there was probably some sort of underhanded deal that got MS there. It was in MS's best interest to fearmonger against the judge making that decision: "ooh, you'll tip the DJIA down, you'll ruin the economy, don't Dave, I can feel my mind going Dave, stop. stop. Daisy, daisy, give me your answe- BSOD"
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
The government is us. You and me. Representative Democracy - blah blah blah. . .
Let me tell you a story about the first generation of MY family to come to this great country. They came over from Norway, went to UP Michigan, where a copper mining company owned a mine, plant, and the three towns within 100 miles of the mine. They paid the passage for my great grandpa to come over. Great grandpa agreed to work for this company to pay off what he owed for the passage. (something like $12). Five years later, he was virtually a human slave. Hundreds of dollars in debt, due to simple living expenses, and wages too low to pay them, he lived in a town where everyone was in the same boat. The government didn't come to rescue these poor people, but a US Citizen did. A farmer from Iowa came there, paid my great grandfather's debt, and brought him to Iowa, (along with a bunch of others - we Norweigans stick up for eachother, I guess), and gave them jobs as farmhands to pay off what they owed him - no interest was charged, unlike the debt to the mining company. Ten years later, my great grandpa had paid off his debt and bought a farm of his own, which remains in the family today. A few years later, the mining company was forced to divest itself of some of it's holdings, and decist the practices which led to those abuses. The reasons behind that was legislation that was a precursor to the Sherman Antitrust act.
In other words, the company is people, the consumers are people, and the government are people. Some people can be counted on to treat others nicely, others can be counted on to be real bastards. This is definately the land of opportunity, but when some people are given free reign to do what they want, it's the land of opportunity for them, and not others. That's why we have laws, and why we have government to make and enforce those laws. This was not some whine-job by Sun and Netscape. These were legitimate laws, that are needed in a civilized society so that we can guarantee that people "play nice", and that everybody has an opportunity for success.
It would have been nicer if people had decided on their own - but that could only have happened had their been a choice (REAL choice), and that could only have happened with a level playing field. MS tipped the balance, and used that angle as a lever. Somebody's gotta take that lever away, and level out the field so we can all play.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I still don't forgive them for the countless hours I spent in 1991-1995 rearranging drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat to squeeze out a few more K of RAM so I could load netware client, SCSI driver, and ethernet driver, and still run DOS programs.
#1 this is NOT a Capitalism and Free Enterprise system. Capitalism and Free Enterprise are strong foundational principals, but be careful with the word Free, because Wolves and Lambs are Free. If we let the Wolves eat as many Lambs as they want, then we'd be SOL for warm sweaters this Winter.
#2 Linux, Be, *BSD, MacOS, (countless others!!!) ARE better than Windows. We need the Govt to yank Microsoft's chain to level the playing field. A Monopoly gives MS too big a lever. If that were not the case, Windows would be a MUCH better OS today, and the others would have much larger marketshares - and Amiga would still exist. Probably not Atari tho;)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I think there's way too much paranoia about "the government diddling with the tech industry".
Yes, it's true, that would be a complete and unmitigated disaster (never mind that before computers, the government pretty much DID control the technology industry - - Basic Science research, aerospace, space exploration, etc.).
I don't think ANYONE in the government is stupid enough to want to mess with the magic formula that's propping up half of the economy (the other half is cheap oil). The economy is what makes for tax revenues, which is what makes the government in all it's slovenly glory possible. The tech industry tanks, the economy tanks, revenue tanks, cats and dogs sleeping together, POSIX, etc.
The government DOES want to get in and mess with Microsoft, but I think that it's generally well believed that the rest of the tech industry are grownups, and can handle playing nicely on their own, and will gladly fill the power vacuum left by the contraction of Microsoft.
Yes, there is a potential for well-meaning lawyers to really fuck things up beyond recognition, but I don't think this is bad news for Linux users. The US Govt can't do much to regulate the use or development of Linux. If anything, this may bring more developers and ISVs over to a more healthy cross-platform way of thinking.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Which means jack diddly squat. Okay? Linux is NOT a commercial operating system. It's FREE.
Microsoft has NO COMMERCIAL competition.
How do you think I feel - I like Macs, and MacOS is not only commercial, but Apple is vertically integrated, AND one of the TOP 5 in PC sales, and still isn't a blip on Jackson's radar screen.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
It can be argued that justice was NOT served in the case of IBM. But, because of the trial, some very significant changes happened within IBM, regarding managment, business practices, and business processes. I'd argue that these changes made for a kinder, gentler IBM. A cultural change happened there.
Now in the case of Microsoft, we're dealing with people who honestly don't believe they were doing wrong, so the Govt. definately has it's work cut out for it, and that's why I honestly feel that, as vindictive as it sounds, the only REAL way to solve the problem; the problem of nasty people doing nasty things, is to lock them up, and NOT in minimum security either. Take them out of the decision making process of the business, so the business won't do these nasty mean bad, bad, bad things anymore.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Well, from the evidence presented, it WAS established that Microsoft did some stuff. That stuff was not illegal if Microsoft was NOT a Monopoly. Microsoft always said that they were NOT a Monopoly, that was the core of their defense.
Since they ARE a Monopoly, and they DID do the stuff, it's almost certain that we'll see a GUILTY verdict.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Make no mistake, though, this was a VERY important ruling. Had it gone the other way, a GUILTY verdict would not have been possible.
On the other hand, there's still the dilemma of what punishment to mete out, and will it be worse than no punishment (for consumers).
And after that, of course there are appeals, and what I'm expecting: Microsoft to flat-out ignore any injunctions (as they have in the past, both the 1995 injunction about bundling, and the Java injunction, which was later overturned anyway).
Hooray for our side.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I just read that Jackson ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
With Regard To Intel - I agree wholeheartedly, and a judge just overturned the injunction in the Intergraph case too. I see Intel dodging their comeuppance WAY more than Microsoft.
Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
hm. If I was granted moderator points more often than once every 9 months, I'd moderate you up.
This is JUST what I'm looking for, well, it answers most of my complaints. Unfortunately, it does seem to be W2K only, not NT 4, which is likely to represent 99% of my install base for well past 12 months. (I seriously doubt that there will be any significant migration to W2K until this time next year. Oh, there will be a few early adopters, but among MY customers - almost nobody plans on putting it into production).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
occasionally, the folks in your office will have to exchange data with folks in other companies. If they've standardized on Windows/Office, you're SOL.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Someday, there WILL be content you can't get to that you want.
And by that time, it WILL be too late. If it isn't already.
While this article may seem a bit melodramatic and alarmist, it does raise a very important issue. And I harp on this all the time in my rabid anti-microsoft posts.
It's the PLATFORM stupid.
Not the OS. It's the Platform, and how file-formats, protocols and content are tied to it.
If you don't remember that theme from about a year ago, I suggest you go back and re-read the Halloween document.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
For me it's not the size of the binary file - I was already used to 256 - 512 Meg binary memory dumps of Netware (I guess now they have some sort of selective tool for NW 5 that makes the dumps much smaller).
What others have pointed out, and what I was saying is that, on my side of the phone, that does me NO good. Unless my customer has MS Visual Studio on it (which, by the way, usually screws up the delicate mix of MFC dlls and causes problems of it's own), this file is useless.
On Netware, you could drop into the debugger, even on a production file server, check a few pages of the stack, and the registers, and jump back, and quite often, not greatly interrupt service (if you did it within the timeout period of the Netware Clients). Not possible on NT. You learned ONE tool, console debugger, and it was the SAME interface and commands as the tool that examined the coredump files on your DOS machine at your leisure. I quite often used to talk customers through debugger sessions on the phone to gather information. Even when the customer was totally non-technical. This is not possible for NT, because if you're lucky, and the customer HAS a debugger, it most likely isn't one you're familliar with. And if the customer is non-technical (MUCH more likely on NT than Novell), again, you're SOL.
On NT, your ONLY option is, 99% of the time, is to get the memory file transported to you (FTP or whatever), and send it to a programmer who has the time and the very expensive software to debug it. With Novell, ME, a non-programmer, a tech support guy, without a costly subscription to MSDN, without a costly copy of MS Visual Studio or SoftICE, could quickly and cheaply debug problems, compare the call stack to other incidents to see if it's a similar problem, or distill the pertinant information down to a paragraph or two and email it to a developer for debugging or suggestions; and if that wasn't enough info for the developer, I could THEN resort to getting the whole file, or trying to reproduce the problem.
The thing is, the integrated debugger solution gave support some granularity in how much resources were devoted to a problem. Now, we either have to be equipped like a developer (COSTLY!), or we have to forward MOST cases to a developer (COSTLY, and ugly!).
I know that Microsoft's reason for this was that an integral debugger compromises security (in theory, you could look up user-data with it that you wouldn't otherwise have rights to). IMO, this is totally lame, because if the administrator was worried about security, the debugger could be disabled and locked out. And for cases where a debugger was needed, the administrator could go into the user setup, and check the box that enables the debugger. The real reason was probably so they could increase the value of MS Visual Studio, and ask a higher price. Before NT came out, a debugger was commonly considered a necessity of life, and I can't think of one OS (other than Windows95) that a debugger didn't ship free of charge with (even dos had DEBUG.COM).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
NT kernel = OS command.com = OS explorer.exe = um, OS. Internet Explorer = um, if you say so, Bill, I mean, Netscape's already dead anyway right? Notepad.exe = um - er, that's a toughie, OS. Calculator.exe = um, I've always wondered why there aren't any software companies out there making a decent calculator software for the PC. . . Outlook Express = um, hey it's part of IE right? no? okay, Application.
See? it gets REAL gray and fuzzy, REAL fast. It's not the problem that the OS dominates. The problem is the PLATFORM.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
"we'll most likely end up in a situation that was common in the desktop computer industry circa 1976 to 1985, when everyone had to purchase the operating system as a separate cost item."
-and of course, that would be fscking GREAT. But, you know Microsoft will just start charging like $150 where they used to charge OEMs like ~$30 (or whatever), and consumers will feel the pain, though most folks will still be compelled to buy Windows because they NEED to because it's the standard (blah, blah, same tired but effective argument) - and MS will blame "govt. interference" as to why they HAD to raise the price, and whine about how it ruined the industry by stepping in and not permitting "innovation".
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Right, just because your wife died five years after you beat the crap out of her and put her in a coma, doesn't mean you shouldn't be punished for wife beating. Actually, by that time you should be charged with murder. Unfortunately, as someone else already pointed out, there's no corporate equivalent to the death penalty in America. Not even "breaking up".
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Justice would be nice, but for me, that's icing on the cake. What I really need to see is Microsoft leashed. Prevented from making these "hard nosed business deals". Prevented from being a dishonest player, prevented from withholding information, prevented from strongarm tactics, prevented with unrestrained bundling and price gouging (and ironically, dumping).
In short, I want to see a level playing field, where some startup (like Be perhaps?) could come up with a great new OS, and have more than a snowball's chance of succeeding (ok, many here will argue that Be did succeed - but only by sucking off the other Don of the industry, Intel).
Is that too much to ask?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Not to mention, PDF allows the author to LOCK a document, preventing the user from changing it (cracks aside).
It's just a damn shame that the economic barrier towards CREATING PDF documents is way beyond 95% of computer owners, otherwise it could become THE standard (like Adobe says it IS).
Oh yeah, PDF can be read on Solaris too. (not sure about WP).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Slashdot Mirror
666. Just kidding, they're not a Monopoly. psych!
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
load NC 4.7 on startup. that's what's happening with IE, and that's why your machine boots ever so slightly slower, and IE starts up faster.
It's a good thing, yes, but if you never use a browser, it's a bad thing, and if you don't want to use Microsoft's it's a very bad thing, and if you want to write and sell your own better browser and catch a peice of the american dream, you're fucked.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I'm sure that there was probably some sort of underhanded deal that got MS there. It was in MS's best interest to fearmonger against the judge making that decision: "ooh, you'll tip the DJIA down, you'll ruin the economy, don't Dave, I can feel my mind going Dave, stop. stop. Daisy, daisy, give me your answe- BSOD"
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Okay, for the clueless libertarians out there:
The government is us. You and me. Representative Democracy - blah blah blah. . .
Let me tell you a story about the first generation of MY family to come to this great country. They came over from Norway, went to UP Michigan, where a copper mining company owned a mine, plant, and the three towns within 100 miles of the mine. They paid the passage for my great grandpa to come over.
Great grandpa agreed to work for this company to pay off what he owed for the passage. (something like $12). Five years later, he was virtually a human slave. Hundreds of dollars in debt, due to simple living expenses, and wages too low to pay them, he lived in a town where everyone was in the same boat. The government didn't come to rescue these poor people, but a US Citizen did. A farmer from Iowa came there, paid my great grandfather's debt, and brought him to Iowa, (along with a bunch of others - we Norweigans stick up for eachother, I guess), and gave them jobs as farmhands to pay off what they owed him - no interest was charged, unlike the debt to the mining company. Ten years later, my great grandpa had paid off his debt and bought a farm of his own, which remains in the family today. A few years later, the mining company was forced to divest itself of some of it's holdings, and decist the practices which led to those abuses. The reasons behind that was legislation that was a precursor to the Sherman Antitrust act.
In other words, the company is people, the consumers are people, and the government are people. Some people can be counted on to treat others nicely, others can be counted on to be real bastards. This is definately the land of opportunity, but when some people are given free reign to do what they want, it's the land of opportunity for them, and not others. That's why we have laws, and why we have government to make and enforce those laws. This was not some whine-job by Sun and Netscape. These were legitimate laws, that are needed in a civilized society so that we can guarantee that people "play nice", and that everybody has an opportunity for success.
It would have been nicer if people had decided on their own - but that could only have happened had their been a choice (REAL choice), and that could only have happened with a level playing field. MS tipped the balance, and used that angle as a lever. Somebody's gotta take that lever away, and level out the field so we can all play.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I still don't forgive them for the countless hours I spent in 1991-1995 rearranging drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat to squeeze out a few more K of RAM so I could load netware client, SCSI driver, and ethernet driver, and still run DOS programs.
;)
#1 this is NOT a Capitalism and Free Enterprise system. Capitalism and Free Enterprise are strong foundational principals, but be careful with the word Free, because Wolves and Lambs are Free. If we let the Wolves eat as many Lambs as they want, then we'd be SOL for warm sweaters this Winter.
#2 Linux, Be, *BSD, MacOS, (countless others!!!) ARE better than Windows. We need the Govt to yank Microsoft's chain to level the playing field. A Monopoly gives MS too big a lever. If that were not the case, Windows would be a MUCH better OS today, and the others would have much larger marketshares - and Amiga would still exist. Probably not Atari tho
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I think there's way too much paranoia about "the government diddling with the tech industry".
Yes, it's true, that would be a complete and unmitigated disaster (never mind that before computers, the government pretty much DID control the technology industry - - Basic Science research, aerospace, space exploration, etc.).
I don't think ANYONE in the government is stupid enough to want to mess with the magic formula that's propping up half of the economy (the other half is cheap oil). The economy is what makes for tax revenues, which is what makes the government in all it's slovenly glory possible. The tech industry tanks, the economy tanks, revenue tanks, cats and dogs sleeping together, POSIX, etc.
The government DOES want to get in and mess with Microsoft, but I think that it's generally well believed that the rest of the tech industry are grownups, and can handle playing nicely on their own, and will gladly fill the power vacuum left by the contraction of Microsoft.
Yes, there is a potential for well-meaning lawyers to really fuck things up beyond recognition, but I don't think this is bad news for Linux users. The US Govt can't do much to regulate the use or development of Linux. If anything, this may bring more developers and ISVs over to a more healthy cross-platform way of thinking.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Which means jack diddly squat. Okay? Linux is NOT a commercial operating system. It's FREE.
Microsoft has NO COMMERCIAL competition.
How do you think I feel - I like Macs, and MacOS is not only commercial, but Apple is vertically integrated, AND one of the TOP 5 in PC sales, and still isn't a blip on Jackson's radar screen.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Ayn Rand was a goof anyway.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
It can be argued that justice was NOT served in the case of IBM. But, because of the trial, some very significant changes happened within IBM, regarding managment, business practices, and business processes. I'd argue that these changes made for a kinder, gentler IBM. A cultural change happened there.
Now in the case of Microsoft, we're dealing with people who honestly don't believe they were doing wrong, so the Govt. definately has it's work cut out for it, and that's why I honestly feel that, as vindictive as it sounds, the only REAL way to solve the problem; the problem of nasty people doing nasty things, is to lock them up, and NOT in minimum security either. Take them out of the decision making process of the business, so the business won't do these nasty mean bad, bad, bad things anymore.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
awlright! let's get the torches and pichforks, and head on down to the Gates' place!
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Well, from the evidence presented, it WAS established that Microsoft did some stuff. That stuff was not illegal if Microsoft was NOT a Monopoly. Microsoft always said that they were NOT a Monopoly, that was the core of their defense.
Since they ARE a Monopoly, and they DID do the stuff, it's almost certain that we'll see a GUILTY verdict.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Make no mistake, though, this was a VERY important ruling. Had it gone the other way, a GUILTY verdict would not have been possible.
On the other hand, there's still the dilemma of what punishment to mete out, and will it be worse than no punishment (for consumers).
And after that, of course there are appeals, and what I'm expecting: Microsoft to flat-out ignore any injunctions (as they have in the past, both the 1995 injunction about bundling, and the Java injunction, which was later overturned anyway).
Hooray for our side.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I just read that Jackson ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
With Regard To Intel - I agree wholeheartedly, and a judge just overturned the injunction in the Intergraph case too. I see Intel dodging their comeuppance WAY more than Microsoft.
Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
hm. If I was granted moderator points more often than once every 9 months, I'd moderate you up.
This is JUST what I'm looking for, well, it answers most of my complaints. Unfortunately, it does seem to be W2K only, not NT 4, which is likely to represent 99% of my install base for well past 12 months. (I seriously doubt that there will be any significant migration to W2K until this time next year. Oh, there will be a few early adopters, but among MY customers - almost nobody plans on putting it into production).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
nump.
MacPerl is a very different animal from Perl.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
occasionally, the folks in your office will have to exchange data with folks in other companies. If they've standardized on Windows/Office, you're SOL.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Someday you WILL care.
Someday, there WILL be content you can't get to that you want.
And by that time, it WILL be too late. If it isn't already.
While this article may seem a bit melodramatic and alarmist, it does raise a very important issue. And I harp on this all the time in my rabid anti-microsoft posts.
It's the PLATFORM stupid.
Not the OS.
It's the Platform, and how file-formats, protocols and content are tied to it.
If you don't remember that theme from about a year ago, I suggest you go back and re-read the Halloween document.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
For me it's not the size of the binary file - I was already used to 256 - 512 Meg binary memory dumps of Netware (I guess now they have some sort of selective tool for NW 5 that makes the dumps much smaller).
What others have pointed out, and what I was saying is that, on my side of the phone, that does me NO good. Unless my customer has MS Visual Studio on it (which, by the way, usually screws up the delicate mix of MFC dlls and causes problems of it's own), this file is useless.
On Netware, you could drop into the debugger, even on a production file server, check a few pages of the stack, and the registers, and jump back, and quite often, not greatly interrupt service (if you did it within the timeout period of the Netware Clients). Not possible on NT.
You learned ONE tool, console debugger, and it was the SAME interface and commands as the tool that examined the coredump files on your DOS machine at your leisure. I quite often used to talk customers through debugger sessions on the phone to gather information. Even when the customer was totally non-technical. This is not possible for NT, because if you're lucky, and the customer HAS a debugger, it most likely isn't one you're familliar with. And if the customer is non-technical (MUCH more likely on NT than Novell), again, you're SOL.
On NT, your ONLY option is, 99% of the time, is to get the memory file transported to you (FTP or whatever), and send it to a programmer who has the time and the very expensive software to debug it. With Novell, ME, a non-programmer, a tech support guy, without a costly subscription to MSDN, without a costly copy of MS Visual Studio or SoftICE, could quickly and cheaply debug problems, compare the call stack to other incidents to see if it's a similar problem, or distill the pertinant information down to a paragraph or two and email it to a developer for debugging or suggestions; and if that wasn't enough info for the developer, I could THEN resort to getting the whole file, or trying to reproduce the problem.
The thing is, the integrated debugger solution gave support some granularity in how much resources were devoted to a problem. Now, we either have to be equipped like a developer (COSTLY!), or we have to forward MOST cases to a developer (COSTLY, and ugly!).
I know that Microsoft's reason for this was that an integral debugger compromises security (in theory, you could look up user-data with it that you wouldn't otherwise have rights to).
IMO, this is totally lame, because if the administrator was worried about security, the debugger could be disabled and locked out. And for cases where a debugger was needed, the administrator could go into the user setup, and check the box that enables the debugger.
The real reason was probably so they could increase the value of MS Visual Studio, and ask a higher price. Before NT came out, a debugger was commonly considered a necessity of life, and I can't think of one OS (other than Windows95) that a debugger didn't ship free of charge with (even dos had DEBUG.COM).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
I agree. None of the proposed remedies seem workable or realistic.
So my remedy (unfortunately, the US legal system doesn't provide for this) is:
Hard Time.
Let Bill Gates and his cronies dominate the license plate manufacture industry.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Sun and Apple both do OS and Apps.
And Hardware.
And, they're both pretty damn big.
Apple may not have the market cap of MS, or the marketshare, but they are a bigger corp.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
OS/App split won't work.
two words:
Define "OS".
NT kernel = OS
command.com = OS
explorer.exe = um, OS.
Internet Explorer = um, if you say so, Bill, I mean, Netscape's already dead anyway right?
Notepad.exe = um - er, that's a toughie, OS.
Calculator.exe = um, I've always wondered why there aren't any software companies out there making a decent calculator software for the PC. . .
Outlook Express = um, hey it's part of IE right? no? okay, Application.
See? it gets REAL gray and fuzzy, REAL fast. It's not the problem that the OS dominates. The problem is the PLATFORM.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
"we'll most likely end up in a
situation that was common in the desktop computer industry circa 1976 to 1985, when everyone had to
purchase the operating system as a separate cost item."
-and of course, that would be fscking GREAT. But, you know Microsoft will just start charging like $150 where they used to charge OEMs like ~$30 (or whatever), and consumers will feel the pain, though most folks will still be compelled to buy Windows because they NEED to because it's the standard (blah, blah, same tired but effective argument) - and MS will blame "govt. interference" as to why they HAD to raise the price, and whine about how it ruined the industry by stepping in and not permitting "innovation".
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Right, just because your wife died five years after you beat the crap out of her and put her in a coma, doesn't mean you shouldn't be punished for wife beating. Actually, by that time you should be charged with murder. Unfortunately, as someone else already pointed out, there's no corporate equivalent to the death penalty in America. Not even "breaking up".
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Justice would be nice, but for me, that's icing on the cake. What I really need to see is Microsoft leashed. Prevented from making these "hard nosed business deals". Prevented from being a dishonest player, prevented from withholding information, prevented from strongarm tactics, prevented with unrestrained bundling and price gouging (and ironically, dumping).
In short, I want to see a level playing field, where some startup (like Be perhaps?) could come up with a great new OS, and have more than a snowball's chance of succeeding (ok, many here will argue that Be did succeed - but only by sucking off the other Don of the industry, Intel).
Is that too much to ask?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Not to mention, PDF allows the author to LOCK a document, preventing the user from changing it (cracks aside).
It's just a damn shame that the economic barrier towards CREATING PDF documents is way beyond 95% of computer owners, otherwise it could become THE standard (like Adobe says it IS).
Oh yeah, PDF can be read on Solaris too. (not sure about WP).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".