If the browser wars are over then why is Microsoft highjacking browser preference settings?
The browser wars are over in the same way that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over and the Camp David Accords brought peace to the Middle East.
The world is becoming more and more browser based, like it or not, and he who controls the browser will control the platform, which right now looks to be the network.
That said, Jean-Louis Gasse was right when he told the DoJ they were prosecuting the wrong behaviour.
Because that's the way (uh huh, uh huh) I like it (uh huh, uh huh).
When I need to have two or more apps visible at the same time I split the desktop between them.
When I'm using only one app, or at least mainly one app, I want it to have the most screen real estate possible. Why should I browse the web in a tiny little window when I have a big monitor? The taskbar functions as a switchbox between apps if I've got more than one running just as well switching window focus on tiled windows.
To each task its own strategy. A lot of the time I don't even see the point of running a windowing system just to launch a terminal emulator.
You have to bear in mind that OpenOffice, KDE, and like programs aren't very Unixy in the first place. They are essentially crossover tools for Windows and Mac Users who wish a familiar enviroment in an alternative OS.
The problem is that Unix is not merely an alternative to Windows, it is fundamentally different.
The optimum solution for the same problem is thus going to be different in both systems. As such, crossover apps aren't representative of how to do things in Unix. They offer the functionality for those that require them. That's a legitimate role and I use such apps where appropriate, but they aren't "Unix."
ESR's book isn't about apps. It's about Unix and how to do things in Unix. Not about how to do things in a Microsofty way in Unix.
OpenOffice is perfectly scriptable, although in a somewhat Unixy way, but that isn't really the point. OpenOffice is a particular app, not Unix. Below the level of the app Unix is designed to be run by scripting. Windows is designed to be run from a GUI with added scripting features.
In many ways the enviroments are inverses of each other, much as the East-West cultural issues.
In the "old days" Unix gurus learned Unix much as they learned their own cultures language and way of doing things. By osmosis. They knew Unix. To them it was simply natural.
Now we have more and more people crossing cultural lines and moving to Unix enviroments from a Windows enviroment. They get lost. They don't know the language. They don't know how to use the toilets. They can't order food in a restaurant, and tend to conclude that the language is inherently chaotic and unlearnable, the toilets are "stupid" and the restaurants unusable.
The people to whom ESR's book is likely to be most useful to aren't actually the Unix people (althoug h they should read it too. They might learn something), it is these people who are crossing over ( or just wondering what the hell it's all about anyway, much as people will read books on Japan even if they don't intend to visit there).
I always thought that the X-15 was stunning as well and I might add the Supermarine Spitfire. In some future time when what we consider beautiful is less tied to current cultural biases a few of Burt Rutan's designs might come to be thought of as beautiful.
I've always thought the streamliner Big Boy run by the New York Central rail line was stunning.
F1 cars, where form is supposed to follow function has a number of extremely beautiful designs, although less of them in the modern era than in times past. Gordan Murray is responsible for most of the beautiful modern era cars (and Colin Chapman and his designers are responsible for most of the rest). I like his approach. He says it's just as easy to design something beautiful as it is to design something ugly.
Of course beauty is always in the eye of the beholder ( see comment above on Burt Rutan) and means different things in different situations. A beautiful mathmatical equation, for instance.
Although I think AI in this case stands for "Artificial Idiot."
They're remarkably difficult to tell apart from the real thing though. Perhaps we can start building AI from Frist Prost!ers and try to work up to flatliner from there.
I would posit that if it takes you more than five minutes to copy a Linux file after the first trial run you can't do any of those things better than I can do them myself.
I also reserve the right to be offended at being accused of owning a garbage disposal and/or a condo.
Please read the very part of my post you quoted again. I said the baby breathing thing was nice. Not only because of SIDS but because babies die of accidental suffocation and asphyxiation.
1 in 500 14 year olds don't get abducted as sex slaves by religious maniacs though.
I know several people who have lost babies and I'm eternally greatful I didn't lose mine. I don't know anyone who has had their child abducted.
These are all obvious facts,. but not necessarily to small business or some corporate purchasers.
I can't speak for the corporate buyer as in the corporate enviroment I've only been a plebe or a Director, but as a small businessman I find these facts painfully obvious. If every dollar spent comes directly out of your wallet it tends to sharpen the mind.
If it doesn't you really shouldn't be running a small business.
I've posted it before. I'll post it again. Since switching to Linux several years ago I havn't spent one dime on software for my business. Not one extra dime on hardware ( and saved several by stepping off the upgrade cycle) and not one dime in training I wouldn't have had to do anyway in a Windows enviroment.
I've saved everything it would have cost me to insure license compliance ( just keeping track of license keys, even for just a few computers, was pain and time wasting), I havn't spent one dime on support (I only spent a couple hundred on Microsoft support before I realized that paying money to have someone tell me to reinstall was a pointless exercise for me). My entire system and all of its apps, including all the development tools I've ever needed, fits on two CDs which I can use on every computer, saving me I can't tell you how much time (it's less than it might be, because I don't have to reinstall everything as periodic "maintainence").
It has cost me not one dime to use Linux.
TCO has been the cost of my hardware and few books.
My wallet is much happier than it used to be.
I have given up no functionallity. I'm smart enough to ask "how do I" instead of "where's {blank} app." (Although I'm willing to admit that the answer could be "Get a Mac" if I asked "How do I" to certain things).
But more to the point, the real value that I've found running Linux is knowing that the system and all the data on it is transparently mine.
Since my business is now essentially my data files the "value" of that alone is the value of my business.
Did anybody ever mention to you that if your premises are false your conclusion is false, even if the logical steps are flawless?
Leaving aside, for the moment the ludicrous time parameters you use I'd point out the more subtle idea that not all hours are created equal.
You are not worth $12 and hour. You are only provisionally worth $12 an hour under certain limited conditions.
I would posit that if it takes you more than 5 minutes to copy a file on Linux more than once you never manage to meet those conditions at all.
At least if the money were coming out of my pocket.
KFG
Re:Uhh...
on
Watching You
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I do it the easy way. I only buy what I'm going to drink before it can go bad and when it runs out go to the corner and buy more. They always have fresh.
Since I actually know how to cook, rather than just follow recipes, I can decide how much I want to eat and cook that much, eliminating the whole issue of "leftovers." ( I'm not even sure I know what "leftover" means. I just think of it as "food.")
The baby breathing thing is nice, but beyond that I never felt the need to monitor my kid 24/7. In fact, I find the idea kind of creepy.At best it smacks of neurosis on the part of the parent.
But then this is a culture where people will mortgage their house to buy lottery tickets. We don't have a very good cultural grasp of risk.
Actually, it prevents me from buying an ad for Hoover vacuum cleaners even if I sell them because it restricts such ads to the trademark owner's site, not those with a legitimate right to place ads for the product.
Even so, let's take a somewhat broader perspective and just stick to linking issues. In the "real world" the trademark holder in this particular case refers to as a model it is perfectly legitimate to link directory listing/ads for one product to recommendations for similar competeing products. In fact, it's common practice.
Ever use a dead tree Yellow Pages? My own business has been listed in them. I didn't sue the phone company because they placed a competitor's ad next to my listing where anyone specifically looking for me had to see it. I would have thought any attempt to do so on the basis of trademark rights was daft. And still do.
Ever ask a salesman for one product and have him try to direct you to another? It may be annoying, but it isn't a misuse of the trademark of the product you asked for.
There was no attempt to appropriate the mark or dilution of the mark. Just an attempt to compete.
What's more in the case of Google the requested search item is properly returned and the ads, clearly marked as such and off to the side, may be freely ignored by the searcher.
Yes, but that would be bad drivers within the Windows enviroment.
The bad drivers may trigger the crash, but the crash itself is still due to a flaw in the OS. In Windows everything is tightly tied to everything else making the whole structure brittle.
In UNIX and Unix alikes things are more modular with every function keeping its own place and continuing to chug along when something else goes screwy.
It's the prime reason that DARPA ended up giving Unix favored status for internet infrastructure. The core philosphies matched.
This isn't to say that bad drivers still wouldn't cause annoying problems. I've run any number of graphical programs that have crashed my X server, a couple so hard I had to log in from another machine to fix it. This would be a Bad Thing in consumer space, and hardly a good thing in my own either, but the kernel kept chugging and I was able to recover.
More than that, it's perfectly legitimate for someone who is not the trademark holder to us that trademark in their advertising.
"Well sell cars from a particular manufacturer from a particular country, but we can't tell you which of either."
Please come in and buy one."
This isn't about protecting trademarks, this is about simply being able to advertise what you sell. Advertising that I sell Serta mattresses doesn't in any way delute the trademark.
Until, of course, nearly every electronic device that you own that uses computer logic (CD player, car, TV, possibly even your internet connection) stops working.
You've probably never heard of every amino acid you need either while picking up that two litre bottle of Mountain Dew.
And I'd really love to play around with one of these things running OpenVMS. I had a pretty restricted account on a VAX once and would love to get under the hood.
Slashdot Mirror
If the browser wars are over then why is Microsoft highjacking browser preference settings?
The browser wars are over in the same way that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over and the Camp David Accords brought peace to the Middle East.
The world is becoming more and more browser based, like it or not, and he who controls the browser will control the platform, which right now looks to be the network.
That said, Jean-Louis Gasse was right when he told the DoJ they were prosecuting the wrong behaviour.
KFG
Because that's the way (uh huh, uh huh) I like it (uh huh, uh huh).
When I need to have two or more apps visible at the same time I split the desktop between them.
When I'm using only one app, or at least mainly one app, I want it to have the most screen real estate possible. Why should I browse the web in a tiny little window when I have a big monitor? The taskbar functions as a switchbox between apps if I've got more than one running just as well switching window focus on tiled windows.
To each task its own strategy. A lot of the time I don't even see the point of running a windowing system just to launch a terminal emulator.
KFG
Not only that, it's nearly unique.
KFG
You have to bear in mind that OpenOffice, KDE, and like programs aren't very Unixy in the first place. They are essentially crossover tools for Windows and Mac Users who wish a familiar enviroment in an alternative OS.
The problem is that Unix is not merely an alternative to Windows, it is fundamentally different.
The optimum solution for the same problem is thus going to be different in both systems. As such, crossover apps aren't representative of how to do things in Unix. They offer the functionality for those that require them. That's a legitimate role and I use such apps where appropriate, but they aren't "Unix."
ESR's book isn't about apps. It's about Unix and how to do things in Unix. Not about how to do things in a Microsofty way in Unix.
OpenOffice is perfectly scriptable, although in a somewhat Unixy way, but that isn't really the point. OpenOffice is a particular app, not Unix. Below the level of the app Unix is designed to be run by scripting. Windows is designed to be run from a GUI with added scripting features.
In many ways the enviroments are inverses of each other, much as the East-West cultural issues.
In the "old days" Unix gurus learned Unix much as they learned their own cultures language and way of doing things. By osmosis. They knew Unix. To them it was simply natural.
Now we have more and more people crossing cultural lines and moving to Unix enviroments from a Windows enviroment. They get lost. They don't know the language. They don't know how to use the toilets. They can't order food in a restaurant, and tend to conclude that the language is inherently chaotic and unlearnable, the toilets are "stupid" and the restaurants unusable.
The people to whom ESR's book is likely to be most useful to aren't actually the Unix people (althoug h they should read it too. They might learn something), it is these people who are crossing over ( or just wondering what the hell it's all about anyway, much as people will read books on Japan even if they don't intend to visit there).
It explains UNIX.
Read it with an open mind.
KFG
I always thought that the X-15 was stunning as well and I might add the Supermarine Spitfire. In some future time when what we consider beautiful is less tied to current cultural biases a few of Burt Rutan's designs might come to be thought of as beautiful.
I've always thought the streamliner Big Boy run by the New York Central rail line was stunning.
F1 cars, where form is supposed to follow function has a number of extremely beautiful designs, although less of them in the modern era than in times past. Gordan Murray is responsible for most of the beautiful modern era cars (and Colin Chapman and his designers are responsible for most of the rest). I like his approach. He says it's just as easy to design something beautiful as it is to design something ugly.
Of course beauty is always in the eye of the beholder ( see comment above on Burt Rutan) and means different things in different situations. A beautiful mathmatical equation, for instance.
KFG
Fortunately that great free thinker and inventive mind Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, has several plans for ballistic travel that he's working on.
Launches seem to be a solved problem. Landings still have a few bugs, but we're hopeful.
KFG
Ummmmmmm, most of them are "bots" already.
Although I think AI in this case stands for "Artificial Idiot."
They're remarkably difficult to tell apart from the real thing though. Perhaps we can start building AI from Frist Prost!ers and try to work up to flatliner from there.
KFG
I would posit that if it takes you more than five minutes to copy a Linux file after the first trial run you can't do any of those things better than I can do them myself.
I also reserve the right to be offended at being accused of owning a garbage disposal and/or a condo.
KFG
Please read the very part of my post you quoted again. I said the baby breathing thing was nice. Not only because of SIDS but because babies die of accidental suffocation and asphyxiation.
1 in 500 14 year olds don't get abducted as sex slaves by religious maniacs though.
I know several people who have lost babies and I'm eternally greatful I didn't lose mine. I don't know anyone who has had their child abducted.
KFG
These are all obvious facts ,. but not necessarily to small business or some corporate purchasers .
I can't speak for the corporate buyer as in the corporate enviroment I've only been a plebe or a Director, but as a small businessman I find these facts painfully obvious. If every dollar spent comes directly out of your wallet it tends to sharpen the mind.
If it doesn't you really shouldn't be running a small business.
I've posted it before. I'll post it again. Since switching to Linux several years ago I havn't spent one dime on software for my business. Not one extra dime on hardware ( and saved several by stepping off the upgrade cycle) and not one dime in training I wouldn't have had to do anyway in a Windows enviroment.
I've saved everything it would have cost me to insure license compliance ( just keeping track of license keys, even for just a few computers, was pain and time wasting), I havn't spent one dime on support (I only spent a couple hundred on Microsoft support before I realized that paying money to have someone tell me to reinstall was a pointless exercise for me). My entire system and all of its apps, including all the development tools I've ever needed, fits on two CDs which I can use on every computer, saving me I can't tell you how much time (it's less than it might be, because I don't have to reinstall everything as periodic "maintainence").
It has cost me not one dime to use Linux.
TCO has been the cost of my hardware and few books.
My wallet is much happier than it used to be.
I have given up no functionallity. I'm smart enough to ask "how do I" instead of "where's {blank} app." (Although I'm willing to admit that the answer could be "Get a Mac" if I asked "How do I" to certain things).
But more to the point, the real value that I've found running Linux is knowing that the system and all the data on it is transparently mine.
Since my business is now essentially my data files the "value" of that alone is the value of my business.
KFG
You Photoshop up Rosanne (in real time on the runway) to look like a mythical elvish babe and I might start to believe you.
Good luck.
Besides, they seem to be into convincing us that Brazil and Ethiopia are fairyland these days.
KFG
Did anybody ever mention to you that if your premises are false your conclusion is false, even if the logical steps are flawless?
Leaving aside, for the moment the ludicrous time parameters you use I'd point out the more subtle idea that not all hours are created equal.
You are not worth $12 and hour. You are only provisionally worth $12 an hour under certain limited conditions.
I would posit that if it takes you more than 5 minutes to copy a file on Linux more than once you never manage to meet those conditions at all.
At least if the money were coming out of my pocket.
KFG
I do it the easy way. I only buy what I'm going to drink before it can go bad and when it runs out go to the corner and buy more. They always have fresh.
Since I actually know how to cook, rather than just follow recipes, I can decide how much I want to eat and cook that much, eliminating the whole issue of "leftovers." ( I'm not even sure I know what "leftover" means. I just think of it as "food.")
The baby breathing thing is nice, but beyond that I never felt the need to monitor my kid 24/7. In fact, I find the idea kind of creepy.At best it smacks of neurosis on the part of the parent.
But then this is a culture where people will mortgage their house to buy lottery tickets. We don't have a very good cultural grasp of risk.
KFG
I don't know about anyone else, but I figured it out as soon as they nominated Reagan.
.
:)
I've always thought that Carter could have run a really cool "Let Reagan take you into 1984" campaign.
Of course, judging from the general supression of the irony and sarcasm responses in the general populace that could well have backfired. .
Not that that would have ended up making any difference.
KFG
Actually, it prevents me from buying an ad for Hoover vacuum cleaners even if I sell them because it restricts such ads to the trademark owner's site, not those with a legitimate right to place ads for the product.
Even so, let's take a somewhat broader perspective and just stick to linking issues. In the "real world" the trademark holder in this particular case refers to as a model it is perfectly legitimate to link directory listing/ads for one product to recommendations for similar competeing products. In fact, it's common practice.
Ever use a dead tree Yellow Pages? My own business has been listed in them. I didn't sue the phone company because they placed a competitor's ad next to my listing where anyone specifically looking for me had to see it. I would have thought any attempt to do so on the basis of trademark rights was daft. And still do.
Ever ask a salesman for one product and have him try to direct you to another? It may be annoying, but it isn't a misuse of the trademark of the product you asked for.
There was no attempt to appropriate the mark or dilution of the mark. Just an attempt to compete.
What's more in the case of Google the requested search item is properly returned and the ads, clearly marked as such and off to the side, may be freely ignored by the searcher.
KFG
That's right. Only governments have free speech. :)
You're getting your Pavlovian knee jerk reactions cross wired.
That's ok, I've been know to do it myself.
You might notice that in this particular case we have a private company trying to speak freely and a government telling them they can't.
Unless you're one of those that denies France is a sovreign nation?
KFG
Yes, but that would be bad drivers within the Windows enviroment.
The bad drivers may trigger the crash, but the crash itself is still due to a flaw in the OS. In Windows everything is tightly tied to everything else making the whole structure brittle.
In UNIX and Unix alikes things are more modular with every function keeping its own place and continuing to chug along when something else goes screwy.
It's the prime reason that DARPA ended up giving Unix favored status for internet infrastructure. The core philosphies matched.
This isn't to say that bad drivers still wouldn't cause annoying problems. I've run any number of graphical programs that have crashed my X server, a couple so hard I had to log in from another machine to fix it. This would be a Bad Thing in consumer space, and hardly a good thing in my own either, but the kernel kept chugging and I was able to recover.
I'd rather have native drivers.
KFG
More than that, it's perfectly legitimate for someone who is not the trademark holder to us that trademark in their advertising.
"Well sell cars from a particular manufacturer from a particular country, but we can't tell you which of either."
Please come in and buy one."
This isn't about protecting trademarks, this is about simply being able to advertise what you sell. Advertising that I sell Serta mattresses doesn't in any way delute the trademark.
KFG
Until, of course, nearly every electronic device that you own that uses computer logic (CD player, car, TV, possibly even your internet connection) stops working.
You've probably never heard of every amino acid you need either while picking up that two litre bottle of Mountain Dew.
You'd still regret their absence.
KFG
I don't know specifically about Kathy Tong, but America has to scour the rest of the world to find its gaunt glamour models.
They sure as hell don't find them wandering the ailes at WalMart.
So your post is broken at its conceptual core.
KFG
kinda increase the number of services available to Windows users by one?
KFG
I can see the "Psychic Network" of the future:
"Ok, now all I need is your aura's ip address. . . "
KFG
They meant "upped."
Relax, phonetic spellings happen.
KFG
Alpha is a chip. Not an OS. Many operating systems run on Alpha, including Linux.
I hear what you are saying, it's simply that what you are saying makes no logical sense whatsoever.
The proper comparison would be with Intel, AMD or Power PC chips. Which also, as it happens, run multiple OSes, including Linux.
You're trying to paint apples (as it were) orange and sell them as Clementines.
KFG
And I'd really love to play around with one of these things running OpenVMS. I had a pretty restricted account on a VAX once and would love to get under the hood.
KFG