Yes, I think so. Too lazy for linkage, but I believe there was a IDN exploit on FireFox which did actually work on Linux/OS X.
The problem, however, is in the acutal design of IDN. AFAIK, Mozilla decided there was no way to fix it, and turned it off; if you correctly implement IDN, you leave yourself open to the exploit (insecure redirection, spoofing exploit).
What you illustrate is an inherent problem with IDNA and the international Unicode characterset. On many systems success may depend on which fonts and languages the user have installed (and what is included in the default installation)
There was a discussion about a similar issue in our forums a couple of days ago:
Unfortunately, I do not believe your suggestion of warning the user about IDNA encoded names in the name of secure servers is particable. It might look that way when you are dealing with spoofsites such as your example, but it would be maddening for Chinese and Japanese websurfers, in fact it would also irritate many European (e.g. French, German and Scandinavian) surfers who are using languages with characters that will generate punycode servernames.
The problem about spoofing websites using IDNA is IMO best solved by the domainname registrars, by limiting on their side the character-combinations they want to accept in a domainname. AFAIK such limitations are implemented in (e.g.) the Norwegian zone, but Verisign has not yet implemented something similar, which is understandable given the worldwide use of.com domains.
Please note that Wand or cookies will not be tricked by this kind of servernames."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Run Windows, and you WILL get infected. You can run in on an intel mac, you can run it in Virutal PC, you can run it in VMware, or on you smart phone.
But run Windows, and you WILL get infected.
Will it affect OS X? Or Linux? Or anything else on the system? Thankfully, no; but mainly because MS software is braindead in terms of competing file systems. Vista can't access anything as mundane as ext2 (without 3rd party drivers), let alone HFS+ or Reiserfs/Reiser4.
At least Windows is self limiting in that regards; lack of compatibiltiy keeps it from smearing shit on the rest of your hard drive;-)
Explain Apache's relative invulnerability, despite it leading IIS in marketshare.
Explain why there are 0 automated OS X or Linux desktop worms. Sure, there should be only a small relative percentage, but 0? OS X and Linux are virgin territory; surely SOME hacker out there would love the notoriety, and would love to exploit operating systems where security&anti-virus measures are completely non-existant.
Explain why Unix/Linux servers, which compromise a majority of the server market (and linux represents 1/3 alone), and which have no anti-virus installed experience no automated worms.
The math doesn't add up; its not lack of targetting, its not even better default setups. Linux distributions aren't perfect, and neither is OS X. Plenty of opensource apps have random, crazy security holes. But no company in the industry produces software with such a poor eye towards security as MS.
Simply put, I believe that if Windows vanished tomorrow, and we only existed in a world with Linux and OS X, computing security would not be as big of an issue as it is today. We might have Linux/OS X viruses/worms, but these things would not reach the level of noise as we experience with the MS World(TM). The reason we don't see as many security problems on the OS X/Linux side of things is not because Unix people are security geniuses. It's because Microsoft's implementations are so god-awful. Malware creators will be an everpresent part of the computing environment, as will black-hat hackers. But MS uniquely has given them a great deal of fertile ground through poor system design.
1. Safari doesn't open ANYTHING executable, period. If it's got executable permissions, it can't be opened.
2. The Finder should implement an icon overlay showing that a file is executable. Like the shortcut arrow on Windows, except some kind of notification that this is not an document, but is a program.
3. The first time the system runs ANY new executable that has not been run before, it pops up a warning window: "Warning! You are trying to run . Please be aware that this is an untrusted program you are running for the first time on your system. If you weren't expecting this dialogue, or thought you were opening a document file, please press Cancel NOW!"
Perhaps not in those words, but something similar.
The main thing is number 2. Worms like this won't happen on Linux, because you have to mark programs as "executable", or you have to run them through your package manager. Plus, icons are specified exclusively by mime-type, not by the thing you download. Apple's.app system means you can fake out people by making a program or shell script look like a JPG or Word document, and there's no good visual que as to what is a document and what is an application.
Providing that que will eliminate this hole for 99% of users.
No, 100% of windows exploits are software exploits, not hardware exploits. There's still no similarity between OS x86 and Windows in terms of software; really, the two environments couldn't be any less similar. There's still no binary compatibilty, just because both environments run with the same endianess is meaningless.
OS X is still nearly unix. Windows is still just Windows.
Plus, I don't buy the marketshare argument. 1. Apache, of course. 2. Notoriety. Many virus writers simply do it to become well known, or to break new terrority. From their perspective, the Mac is virgin territory; I agree that if all else were the same, we'd see a small fraction of the # of Mac viruses as Windows. But instead, we see 0. 5% marketshare is no small thing, you'd think we'd have a handfull of viruses. But there are 0 that require no user intervention.
The hardware platform has terribly little to do with viruses/worms, otherwise we'd see common WindowsLinux viruses, especially given Linux's substantial server marketshare. But we don't; even though Windows servers are common targets for viruses.
I cannot imagine that this case will go on appeal.
SCO's deal with Boise & Schiller (or whatever the name of the lawfirm is) was a one time payment of stock & cash for representation. I doubt it requires representation at an appeal, and there's no way they'll be able to pay for an appeal.
Once you've been determined by a court to be an illegal monopolist, the rules about how you conduct your business become substantially stricter. If you are just another competitor in a large market, you can be as anti-competitive (well, to a limit) as you like. If you are the market dominator, as in monopolist, you are requried (under the Sherman Antitrust Act) to play nice. The relative strength of your company is a big issue, as well.
It's a reasonability standard. Microsoft is a 900 lb. gorilla. Apple's just another chimp. The legal system scrutinizes the gorilla's behavior at a much higher level, because the gorilla can do much more damage.
Doesn't matter; once you are a convicted monopolist in an 'area' of industry, it changes the way your permitted to operate.
This is doubly so when the company is as large as Microsoft. Monopolists, as a rule, are not permitted anti-competitive actions in any of their industries; the idea is to keep the monopoly (or market failure) from spreading to other areas. A monopolist has access to a captive market; this allows them to unnaturally channel funds from Windows to whatever, including office. Until such time they that become cleared of the title, "Monopolist", their business actions in any area must not be "anticompetitive".
This is one of the largest reasons that IBM took so much damage in its antitrust case. Even though IBM was never determined to be a monopolist (the DoJ settled), IBM self-regulated its actions in _every_ area, and was excessive about avoiding "anticompetitive" behavior. It cost them quite a bit of marketshare.
It's the same thing with criminals; once you've committed a felony, you live by different rules. It doesn't matter if you were a drug dealer, a white collar criminal, or a murderer. Either way, you are no longer permitted to own a gun.
The court may find exceptions to this, but I doubt it would ever apply one to Microsoft. Think a small company with a monopoly in a particular (small) industry; perhaps Apple in online music sales, or Acme Widget Company in production of #9 widgets.
These could be considered monopolies, but the barriers to entry of these markets are not high, and neither company wields an enormous amount of "market power".
Microsoft got a pansy settlement with the DoJ because the DoJ "won" by too large of a margin.
It's almost like they shot the moon in the legal system; by loosing as badly as they did, they drove the judge to literally foam at the mouth, and even though the appeals court did not find any errors in Judge Jackson's decision making, they revoked his judgement because of his extreme behavior unbecoming of a federal judge.
He liked MS (and MS executives) to the Mob. He's accused them of lying and deceiving intentionally. Even after he was removed from the case, he didn't change his tune; they little drove him to the "blood boiling angry" point.
Here's some good quotes: (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-253250.html ) Among the examples, in the Jan. 8 issue of The New Yorker, Jackson said Microsoft founder Bill Gates "has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses." He added that company executives "don't act like grown-ups!"
In the book, "World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies," author Ken Auletta writes that Jackson took aim at the appeals court that is now hearing the Microsoft case. The court "made up about 90 percent of the facts on their own," Jackson said of the appellate judges' decision in another case.
Also in that book, Auletta writes that Jackson likened Microsoft's "proclamation of innocence to those of four members of the Newton Street Crew convicting in a racketeering, drug-dealing and murder trial he had presided over five years before."
Notice that the appeals court said that although the appearance of bias was enough for them to return the case to a lower court, they "did not find evidence of bias."
Perhaps if Microsoft had not of been so brazen, if they had not gotten Judge Jackson quite so riled up, Microsoft would have been broken up. It's bizarre; but they didn't win the case on merit; they got the judgement overturned on the fact that their trial judge was so furious with them he couldn't hold his tongue.
They shot the moon, and it actually worked out. Bizarre; but you can bet your ass the next Microsoft antitrust judge will not operate like that.
It's too bad, really; Judge Jackson showed a surprising grasp of the issues. One can only hope the next judge has similar technical aptitude.
I posted this deep in a conversation, so I'll repost it. The matter at hand is not whether or not you thing its a legitimate business practice for Microsoft to bundle products. The legal issues are far more limited than that. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, so its business practices are very, very tightly controlled under anti-trust regulations. The rules that apply to Microsoft are very different than the rules that apply to say, Apple, or Sun, or IBM. When you've been convicted of having an illegal monopoly, you have to abide by certain rules, or face legal action. If you disagree with this, the proper place to register complaints is with congress, not the courts. The courts have to make judgements on the existing legal framework, and under this framework Microsoft is not permitted certain business practices that would be perfectly fine for anyone else.
Bundling by a monopolist is considered "tying". Tying is illegal under the Sherman Anti-trust act.
Vertical tying is the practice of requiring customers to purchase related products or services from the same company. For example, a company's automobile only runs on its own proprietary gas and can only be serviced by its own dealers. In an effort to curb this, many jurisdictions require that warranties not be voided by outside servicing; for example see the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in the United States. More recently, video game consoles run only software licensed by the console manufacturer and use lockout chips to enforce this.
Microsoft ties together Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook Express.
Tying may be the action of several companies, as well as the work of just one firm.
It was first made potentially illegal in the United States by the Sherman Antitrust Act (section 1) if the firm has market power in the tying good, and a "non-trivial" amount of business is affected by the tying. See International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392 (1947).
At issue is not whether or not this is a reasonable law; but whether or not Microsoft has violated it.
A) Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. B) Microsoft ties its products together. C) Tying of its products affects a substantial number of businesses D) The DoJ settlement did not measurably reduce Microsoft's market power.
Therefore, a new antitrust case is in order.
If you disagree, don't argue about the courts; they are just doing their job. Congress will have to pass some legislation either revoking the Sherman AntiTrust act, or specifically exempting Microsoft.
Regardless of whether or not you support Microsoft, you should support the rule of law. If you believe that Microsoft should be permitted to tie products together, you should be writing your congress man, not bitching about federal courts.
Microsoft is welcome to bundle whatever they choose so long as they dont prevent/cripple users from installing products from competing vendors.
Maybe in some capitalist moral frameworks, yes, but not under U.S. law. Bundling by a monopolist is considered "tying". Tying is illegal under the Sherman Anti-trust act.
Vertical tying is the practice of requiring customers to purchase related products or services from the same company. For example, a company's automobile only runs on its own proprietary gas and can only be serviced by its own dealers. In an effort to curb this, many jurisdictions require that warranties not be voided by outside servicing; for example see the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in the United States. More recently, video game consoles run only software licensed by the console manufacturer and use lockout chips to enforce this.
Microsoft ties together Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook Express.
Tying may be the action of several companies, as well as the work of just one firm.
It was first made potentially illegal in the United States by the Sherman Antitrust Act (section 1) if the firm has market power in the tying good, and a "non-trivial" amount of business is affected by the tying. See International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392 (1947).
At issue is not whether or not this is a reasonable law; but whether or not Microsoft has violated it.
A) Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. B) Microsoft ties its products together. C) Tying of its products affects a substantial number of businesses D) The DoJ settlement did not measurably reduce Microsoft's market power.
Therefore, a new antitrust case is in order.
If you disagree, don't argue about the courts; they are just doing their job. Congress will have to pass some legislation either revoking the Sherman AntiTrust act, or specifically exempting Microsoft.
You do realize that people refer to IBM's lawyers as the Nazgul?
Frankly, the reason they don't appear so high up on your radar is because their opponents rarely bother to go to court. They give in; because they know if they go to court IBM will crush them. IBM's legal staff dots every I, and crosses every T. Not to mention a massive bankroll, a huge patent portfolio, and the services of the best lawfirm in the country.
MS has proven rather terrible in court, actually. Caldera beat them. Stacker beat them. The US DoJ beat them.
Bill Gates always looks terrible in a court, various MS execs always look terrible at court. MS was caught lying to judges, and even drove their judge (in the Antitrust case) to truly, truly hate them. I believe Judge Jackson compared MS to the Mob.
Compare this with IBM. IBM has the sharpest lawyers in the business. IBM fought the DoJ to a standstill over 20 years. No one _ever_ intentionally picks a fight with IBM. Cravath, Swaine & Moore, IBM's lawfirm, is one of the most powerful in the country. I've heard that one of their filings with the DoJ was a full semitruck of file cabinets, which DoJ attorenys took 4 years to read.
MSFT lost to the DoJ, and only managed to survive because they "shot the moon"; they lost so badly that the judge got so upset his opinion was overturned on his over-emotionalism.
IBM fought the DoJ to a standstill. If IBM gets the opportunity to really hurt MSFT, they'll grind them into a pulp.
No, but it means that Nvidia and ATI should consider cross-licensing with Transgaming.
ATI/Nvidia fund Transgaming's Direct3D on Linux development, and Transgaming directly contributes code to both Wine and a libdirect3d. This would allow ATI/Nvidia to keep a firm grasp on both OpenGL (which they have now) and a firm grasp on Direct3D (which Microsoft is doing its damndest to take away from them).
I suspect you may be able to use AIGLX on XGL on OpenGL on X. It's probably really ugly, but then much of the cruft in X is really ugly. The ugliness doesn't mean it won't work well; in fact, it tends to work really well. Kind of like x86.
Did you know: X1x00 series of ATI cards don't have drivers yet (3 months after release!) and won't for the next 3 months?
Did you know: ATI driver's performance on Linux is ~ 1/5th driver performance on Windows?
Did you know: ATI's DRI driver is based upon outdated docs ATI released along time ago with all the performance stuff torn out (no pixel shaders, for example).
At least Nvidia's closed source driver tends to work. Have you tried the latest nvidia drivers? They do list support for your NX6200. Perhaps try sending them a bug report, or posting on NVNews.net's forums (official Nvidia Linux support forums).
Nvidias drivers are closed source, but they are 98% feature complete with Windows. ATI's drivers suck, both the open and closed source ones.
A full OpenGl desktop will be problematic when you want to run a 'windowed' version of Quake in for example, as the applicaiton will be expecting to have full control of the OpenGL/GPU and not expecting the first priority to be going to the Desktop Environment.
Nope, you is wrong;-)
Checkout the Compiz/XGL Novell videos. Doom III in a Window, running OpenGL properly accelerated, with the Window Manager effects applied to the Doom III window. Yes, even the wobbly windows, and minimization effects, and transparency, and cube mapping. Xvideo and OpenGL work just fine.
WMV, AVI and DiVX are all technically patented encumbered on Linux. DiVX (and hence XviD) is probably the safest bet, but OGG is free (as in beer and speech).
Does it really make sense to distribute Linux videos in a format that violates the law if you want to view it on Linux? No, I think not.
Just install OGG already. Don't tell me you didn't have to upgrade your "Winders" box Windows Media Player half a dozen times since you installed XP.
Vista's eye candy has tremendous system requirements. On X, if you can offload window operations to an OpenGL compositor, you save a significant number of CPU cycles.
Yes, there is a difference. Take a look at your system. Turn off NVIDIA's custom render accel, and watch X's CPU usage while moving windows around, or resizing, or scrolling.
Install XGL, or this new Fedora thing.
Play a video on X, run a background compilation process, and then resize your video window. It'll stutter like mad. Try the same thing on XGL; its fluid. Watch all the fluid animations, and watch what happens to your CPU usage. With any accelerated video card (even ancient POS like Intel's i810, or Radeon 7500+, or older low-end Geforce) you'll see negligble CPU impact.
Contrast that with Vista's requirements for the full "Aeroglass" experience. You can do the same thing on XGL at a far, far lower cost of system resources.
One approach makes your computer faster. The other requires a faster computer. Understand?
Are you intentionally obtuse, or just have poor reading skills?
Debian represents 16% of linux server marketshare. Does that count as tiny tiny tiny? Debian, even when you contract for support, rarely makes much of an impact in the preloaded system sales (which is what the article is about).
What about Google, or the variety of companies that run Google appliances? While Google is unique in advertising its own custom Linux, I'd bet quite a few dollars they are far from the only company that rolls their own.
Not to mention that bulk hosting companies tend to roll their own distros, and they represent a significant fraction of the internet.
Pay for support doesn't always mean purchase RHN. Pay for support can mean hiring linux admins, or contracting with Linux support companies (you know, Mom and Pop operations, like IBM, or Novell). Preloaded system sales != Good measure of Linux marketshare. The Linux server number is off by at least 16% (Debian alone).
Don't get me wrong, many organization do pay for Linux service/support for service, however, on the ends of the spectrum many organizations do small installs.
Small business, bulk hosting companies, and realy gigantic companies tend to roll their own Linux or use Free as in Beer distributions. Look at Google, for example. Note that Debian controls 16% of the linux server market: http://www.computerweekly.com/Article1319
That's 16% that goes unrepresented in marketshare numbers. Sun's OSS Solaris is going to have this same effect in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I think so. Too lazy for linkage, but I believe there was a IDN exploit on FireFox which did actually work on Linux/OS X.
9 9 (I think you have to copy-paste bugzilla links, no slashdot referrals).
.com domains.
The problem, however, is in the acutal design of IDN. AFAIK, Mozilla decided there was no way to fix it, and turned it off; if you correctly implement IDN, you leave yourself open to the exploit (insecure redirection, spoofing exploit).
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2790
Quote from Opera:"
Hello Eric,
What you illustrate is an inherent problem with IDNA and the international
Unicode characterset. On many systems success may depend on which fonts and
languages the user have installed (and what is included in the default installation)
There was a discussion about a similar issue in our forums a couple of days ago:
Unfortunately, I do not believe your suggestion of warning the user about IDNA
encoded names in the name of secure servers is particable. It might look
that way when you are dealing with spoofsites such as your example, but it would
be maddening for Chinese and Japanese websurfers, in fact it would also
irritate many European (e.g. French, German and Scandinavian) surfers who are
using languages with characters that will generate punycode servernames.
The problem about spoofing websites using IDNA is IMO best solved by the
domainname registrars, by limiting on their side the character-combinations they
want to accept in a domainname. AFAIK such limitations are implemented in (e.g.)
the Norwegian zone, but Verisign has not yet implemented something
similar, which is understandable given the worldwide use of
Please note that Wand or cookies will not be tricked by this kind of servernames."
So yes, the answer is "Sort of"
It's not the hardware, its the OS.
;-)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Run Windows, and you WILL get infected. You can run in on an intel mac, you can run it in Virutal PC, you can run it in VMware, or on you smart phone.
But run Windows, and you WILL get infected.
Will it affect OS X? Or Linux? Or anything else on the system? Thankfully, no; but mainly because MS software is braindead in terms of competing file systems. Vista can't access anything as mundane as ext2 (without 3rd party drivers), let alone HFS+ or Reiserfs/Reiser4.
At least Windows is self limiting in that regards; lack of compatibiltiy keeps it from smearing shit on the rest of your hard drive
Explain Apache's relative invulnerability, despite it leading IIS in marketshare.
Explain why there are 0 automated OS X or Linux desktop worms. Sure, there should be only a small relative percentage, but 0? OS X and Linux are virgin territory; surely SOME hacker out there would love the notoriety, and would love to exploit operating systems where security&anti-virus measures are completely non-existant.
Explain why Unix/Linux servers, which compromise a majority of the server market (and linux represents 1/3 alone), and which have no anti-virus installed experience no automated worms.
The math doesn't add up; its not lack of targetting, its not even better default setups. Linux distributions aren't perfect, and neither is OS X. Plenty of opensource apps have random, crazy security holes. But no company in the industry produces software with such a poor eye towards security as MS.
Simply put, I believe that if Windows vanished tomorrow, and we only existed in a world with Linux and OS X, computing security would not be as big of an issue as it is today. We might have Linux/OS X viruses/worms, but these things would not reach the level of noise as we experience with the MS World(TM). The reason we don't see as many security problems on the OS X/Linux side of things is not because Unix people are security geniuses. It's because Microsoft's implementations are so god-awful. Malware creators will be an everpresent part of the computing environment, as will black-hat hackers. But MS uniquely has given them a great deal of fertile ground through poor system design.
There's a better solution.
.app system means you can fake out people by making a program or shell script look like a JPG or Word document, and there's no good visual que as to what is a document and what is an application.
1. Safari doesn't open ANYTHING executable, period. If it's got executable permissions, it can't be opened.
2. The Finder should implement an icon overlay showing that a file is executable. Like the shortcut arrow on Windows, except some kind of notification that this is not an document, but is a program.
3. The first time the system runs ANY new executable that has not been run before, it pops up a warning window: "Warning! You are trying to run . Please be aware that this is an untrusted program you are running for the first time on your system. If you weren't expecting this dialogue, or thought you were opening a document file, please press Cancel NOW!"
Perhaps not in those words, but something similar.
The main thing is number 2. Worms like this won't happen on Linux, because you have to mark programs as "executable", or you have to run them through your package manager. Plus, icons are specified exclusively by mime-type, not by the thing you download. Apple's
Providing that que will eliminate this hole for 99% of users.
No, 100% of windows exploits are software exploits, not hardware exploits. There's still no similarity between OS x86 and Windows in terms of software; really, the two environments couldn't be any less similar. There's still no binary compatibilty, just because both environments run with the same endianess is meaningless.
OS X is still nearly unix. Windows is still just Windows.
Plus, I don't buy the marketshare argument.
1. Apache, of course.
2. Notoriety. Many virus writers simply do it to become well known, or to break new terrority. From their perspective, the Mac is virgin territory; I agree that if all else were the same, we'd see a small fraction of the # of Mac viruses as Windows. But instead, we see 0. 5% marketshare is no small thing, you'd think we'd have a handfull of viruses. But there are 0 that require no user intervention.
The hardware platform has terribly little to do with viruses/worms, otherwise we'd see common WindowsLinux viruses, especially given Linux's substantial server marketshare. But we don't; even though Windows servers are common targets for viruses.
Do you think that everyone else sees the same shades of "only-black" and "only-white" that you see?
There is no such thing as "secure".
Is there such a thing as "more secure" or "less secure"?
Or do you earnestly believe that Windows = OS X = Linux = OpenBSD in terms of security?
Or will you parrot the same argument that marketshare=exploits?
Just curious, I like to understand how the mad man's mind works.
I cannot imagine that this case will go on appeal.
SCO's deal with Boise & Schiller (or whatever the name of the lawfirm is) was a one time payment of stock & cash for representation. I doubt it requires representation at an appeal, and there's no way they'll be able to pay for an appeal.
Mac mini bundles for $499. So is Fry's Electronics. Mac Mini, 14 (for micro) or 17 (for Frys) LCD screens, Epson All-in-One printers, keyboard, mouse.
You still have to buy a USB cord for the printer though.
All around better for the neophyte computer user.
It's simple, really.
Apple isn't a monopoly.
Microsoft is.
Once you've been determined by a court to be an illegal monopolist, the rules about how you conduct your business become substantially stricter. If you are just another competitor in a large market, you can be as anti-competitive (well, to a limit) as you like. If you are the market dominator, as in monopolist, you are requried (under the Sherman Antitrust Act) to play nice. The relative strength of your company is a big issue, as well.
It's a reasonability standard. Microsoft is a 900 lb. gorilla. Apple's just another chimp. The legal system scrutinizes the gorilla's behavior at a much higher level, because the gorilla can do much more damage.
Doesn't matter; once you are a convicted monopolist in an 'area' of industry, it changes the way your permitted to operate.
This is doubly so when the company is as large as Microsoft. Monopolists, as a rule, are not permitted anti-competitive actions in any of their industries; the idea is to keep the monopoly (or market failure) from spreading to other areas. A monopolist has access to a captive market; this allows them to unnaturally channel funds from Windows to whatever, including office. Until such time they that become cleared of the title, "Monopolist", their business actions in any area must not be "anticompetitive".
This is one of the largest reasons that IBM took so much damage in its antitrust case. Even though IBM was never determined to be a monopolist (the DoJ settled), IBM self-regulated its actions in _every_ area, and was excessive about avoiding "anticompetitive" behavior. It cost them quite a bit of marketshare.
It's the same thing with criminals; once you've committed a felony, you live by different rules. It doesn't matter if you were a drug dealer, a white collar criminal, or a murderer. Either way, you are no longer permitted to own a gun.
The court may find exceptions to this, but I doubt it would ever apply one to Microsoft. Think a small company with a monopoly in a particular (small) industry; perhaps Apple in online music sales, or Acme Widget Company in production of #9 widgets.
These could be considered monopolies, but the barriers to entry of these markets are not high, and neither company wields an enormous amount of "market power".
Microsoft got a pansy settlement with the DoJ because the DoJ "won" by too large of a margin.
t icleID=20269&DisplayTab=Article
It's almost like they shot the moon in the legal system; by loosing as badly as they did, they drove the judge to literally foam at the mouth, and even though the appeals court did not find any errors in Judge Jackson's decision making, they revoked his judgement because of his extreme behavior unbecoming of a federal judge.
He liked MS (and MS executives) to the Mob. He's accused them of lying and deceiving intentionally. Even after he was removed from the case, he didn't change his tune; they little drove him to the "blood boiling angry" point.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Ar
Here's some good quotes: (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-253250.html )
Among the examples, in the Jan. 8 issue of The New Yorker, Jackson said Microsoft founder Bill Gates "has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses." He added that company executives "don't act like grown-ups!"
In the book, "World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies," author Ken Auletta writes that Jackson took aim at the appeals court that is now hearing the Microsoft case. The court "made up about 90 percent of the facts on their own," Jackson said of the appellate judges' decision in another case.
Also in that book, Auletta writes that Jackson likened Microsoft's "proclamation of innocence to those of four members of the Newton Street Crew convicting in a racketeering, drug-dealing and murder trial he had presided over five years before."
Notice that the appeals court said that although the appearance of bias was enough for them to return the case to a lower court, they "did not find evidence of bias."
Perhaps if Microsoft had not of been so brazen, if they had not gotten Judge Jackson quite so riled up, Microsoft would have been broken up. It's bizarre; but they didn't win the case on merit; they got the judgement overturned on the fact that their trial judge was so furious with them he couldn't hold his tongue.
They shot the moon, and it actually worked out. Bizarre; but you can bet your ass the next Microsoft antitrust judge will not operate like that.
It's too bad, really; Judge Jackson showed a surprising grasp of the issues. One can only hope the next judge has similar technical aptitude.
I posted this deep in a conversation, so I'll repost it. The matter at hand is not whether or not you thing its a legitimate business practice for Microsoft to bundle products. The legal issues are far more limited than that. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, so its business practices are very, very tightly controlled under anti-trust regulations. The rules that apply to Microsoft are very different than the rules that apply to say, Apple, or Sun, or IBM. When you've been convicted of having an illegal monopoly, you have to abide by certain rules, or face legal action. If you disagree with this, the proper place to register complaints is with congress, not the courts. The courts have to make judgements on the existing legal framework, and under this framework Microsoft is not permitted certain business practices that would be perfectly fine for anyone else.
Bundling by a monopolist is considered "tying". Tying is illegal under the Sherman Anti-trust act.
Vertical tying is the practice of requiring customers to purchase related products or services from the same company. For example, a company's automobile only runs on its own proprietary gas and can only be serviced by its own dealers. In an effort to curb this, many jurisdictions require that warranties not be voided by outside servicing; for example see the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in the United States. More recently, video game consoles run only software licensed by the console manufacturer and use lockout chips to enforce this.
Microsoft ties together Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook Express.
Tying may be the action of several companies, as well as the work of just one firm.
It was first made potentially illegal in the United States by the Sherman Antitrust Act (section 1) if the firm has market power in the tying good, and a "non-trivial" amount of business is affected by the tying. See International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392 (1947).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying
At issue is not whether or not this is a reasonable law; but whether or not Microsoft has violated it.
A) Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
B) Microsoft ties its products together.
C) Tying of its products affects a substantial number of businesses
D) The DoJ settlement did not measurably reduce Microsoft's market power.
Therefore, a new antitrust case is in order.
If you disagree, don't argue about the courts; they are just doing their job. Congress will have to pass some legislation either revoking the Sherman AntiTrust act, or specifically exempting Microsoft.
Regardless of whether or not you support Microsoft, you should support the rule of law. If you believe that Microsoft should be permitted to tie products together, you should be writing your congress man, not bitching about federal courts.
Microsoft is welcome to bundle whatever they choose so long as they dont prevent/cripple users from installing products from competing vendors.
Maybe in some capitalist moral frameworks, yes, but not under U.S. law.
Bundling by a monopolist is considered "tying". Tying is illegal under the Sherman Anti-trust act.
Vertical tying is the practice of requiring customers to purchase related products or services from the same company. For example, a company's automobile only runs on its own proprietary gas and can only be serviced by its own dealers. In an effort to curb this, many jurisdictions require that warranties not be voided by outside servicing; for example see the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in the United States. More recently, video game consoles run only software licensed by the console manufacturer and use lockout chips to enforce this.
Microsoft ties together Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook Express.
Tying may be the action of several companies, as well as the work of just one firm.
It was first made potentially illegal in the United States by the Sherman Antitrust Act (section 1) if the firm has market power in the tying good, and a "non-trivial" amount of business is affected by the tying. See International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392 (1947).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying
At issue is not whether or not this is a reasonable law; but whether or not Microsoft has violated it.
A) Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
B) Microsoft ties its products together.
C) Tying of its products affects a substantial number of businesses
D) The DoJ settlement did not measurably reduce Microsoft's market power.
Therefore, a new antitrust case is in order.
If you disagree, don't argue about the courts; they are just doing their job. Congress will have to pass some legislation either revoking the Sherman AntiTrust act, or specifically exempting Microsoft.
You do realize that people refer to IBM's lawyers as the Nazgul?
Frankly, the reason they don't appear so high up on your radar is because their opponents rarely bother to go to court. They give in; because they know if they go to court IBM will crush them. IBM's legal staff dots every I, and crosses every T. Not to mention a massive bankroll, a huge patent portfolio, and the services of the best lawfirm in the country.
MS has proven rather terrible in court, actually. Caldera beat them. Stacker beat them. The US DoJ beat them.
Bill Gates always looks terrible in a court, various MS execs always look terrible at court. MS was caught lying to judges, and even drove their judge (in the Antitrust case) to truly, truly hate them. I believe Judge Jackson compared MS to the Mob.
Compare this with IBM. IBM has the sharpest lawyers in the business. IBM fought the DoJ to a standstill over 20 years. No one _ever_ intentionally picks a fight with IBM. Cravath, Swaine & Moore, IBM's lawfirm, is one of the most powerful in the country. I've heard that one of their filings with the DoJ was a full semitruck of file cabinets, which DoJ attorenys took 4 years to read.
MSFT lost to the DoJ, and only managed to survive because they "shot the moon"; they lost so badly that the judge got so upset his opinion was overturned on his over-emotionalism.
IBM fought the DoJ to a standstill. If IBM gets the opportunity to really hurt MSFT, they'll grind them into a pulp.
No, but it means that Nvidia and ATI should consider cross-licensing with Transgaming.
ATI/Nvidia fund Transgaming's Direct3D on Linux development, and Transgaming directly contributes code to both Wine and a libdirect3d. This would allow ATI/Nvidia to keep a firm grasp on both OpenGL (which they have now) and a firm grasp on Direct3D (which Microsoft is doing its damndest to take away from them).
Did you miss the Gnome 2.14 announcement?
Cairo integration?
Cairo Snippets
Go down on this page to the section labelled "Sharp Dressed Man".
Cairo Introduction
It's good stuff, and exactly what you are asking for, I think.
Currently, XGL runs as OpenGL on X.
I suspect you may be able to use AIGLX on XGL on OpenGL on X. It's probably really ugly, but then much of the cruft in X is really ugly. The ugliness doesn't mean it won't work well; in fact, it tends to work really well. Kind of like x86.
NO NO NO
Did you know: X1x00 series of ATI cards don't have drivers yet (3 months after release!) and won't for the next 3 months?
Did you know: ATI driver's performance on Linux is ~ 1/5th driver performance on Windows?
Did you know: ATI's DRI driver is based upon outdated docs ATI released along time ago with all the performance stuff torn out (no pixel shaders, for example).
At least Nvidia's closed source driver tends to work. Have you tried the latest nvidia drivers? They do list support for your NX6200. Perhaps try sending them a bug report, or posting on NVNews.net's forums (official Nvidia Linux support forums).
Nvidias drivers are closed source, but they are 98% feature complete with Windows. ATI's drivers suck, both the open and closed source ones.
A full OpenGl desktop will be problematic when you want to run a 'windowed' version of Quake in for example, as the applicaiton will be expecting to have full control of the OpenGL/GPU and not expecting the first priority to be going to the Desktop Environment.
;-)
Nope, you is wrong
Checkout the Compiz/XGL Novell videos. Doom III in a Window, running OpenGL properly accelerated, with the Window Manager effects applied to the Doom III window. Yes, even the wobbly windows, and minimization effects, and transparency, and cube mapping. Xvideo and OpenGL work just fine.
WMV, AVI and DiVX are all technically patented encumbered on Linux. DiVX (and hence XviD) is probably the safest bet, but OGG is free (as in beer and speech).
Does it really make sense to distribute Linux videos in a format that violates the law if you want to view it on Linux? No, I think not.
Just install OGG already. Don't tell me you didn't have to upgrade your "Winders" box Windows Media Player half a dozen times since you installed XP.
Go here. It just takes a little bit of time.
Vista's eye candy has tremendous system requirements. On X, if you can offload window operations to an OpenGL compositor, you save a significant number of CPU cycles.
Yes, there is a difference. Take a look at your system. Turn off NVIDIA's custom render accel, and watch X's CPU usage while moving windows around, or resizing, or scrolling.
Install XGL, or this new Fedora thing.
Play a video on X, run a background compilation process, and then resize your video window. It'll stutter like mad. Try the same thing on XGL; its fluid. Watch all the fluid animations, and watch what happens to your CPU usage. With any accelerated video card (even ancient POS like Intel's i810, or Radeon 7500+, or older low-end Geforce) you'll see negligble CPU impact.
Contrast that with Vista's requirements for the full "Aeroglass" experience. You can do the same thing on XGL at a far, far lower cost of system resources.
One approach makes your computer faster. The other requires a faster computer. Understand?
Are you intentionally obtuse, or just have poor reading skills?
Debian represents 16% of linux server marketshare. Does that count as tiny tiny tiny? Debian, even when you contract for support, rarely makes much of an impact in the preloaded system sales (which is what the article is about).
What about Google, or the variety of companies that run Google appliances? While Google is unique in advertising its own custom Linux, I'd bet quite a few dollars they are far from the only company that rolls their own.
Not to mention that bulk hosting companies tend to roll their own distros, and they represent a significant fraction of the internet.
Pay for support doesn't always mean purchase RHN. Pay for support can mean hiring linux admins, or contracting with Linux support companies (you know, Mom and Pop operations, like IBM, or Novell). Preloaded system sales != Good measure of Linux marketshare. The Linux server number is off by at least 16% (Debian alone).
You don't need quite so much security or lockdown with an OS X network, and most art programs lean in that direction.
Don't get me wrong, many organization do pay for Linux service/support for service, however, on the ends of the spectrum many organizations do small installs.
Small business, bulk hosting companies, and realy gigantic companies tend to roll their own Linux or use Free as in Beer distributions. Look at Google, for example. Note that Debian controls 16% of the linux server market: http://www.computerweekly.com/Article1319
That's 16% that goes unrepresented in marketshare numbers. Sun's OSS Solaris is going to have this same effect in the future.