In the same venue, some countries are safer from terrorism than others and this is not going to change dramatically (unless Iceland manages to piss off Pakistan or Angola somehow).
Well, let's hope they like Bjork then. Then again, Iceland is just too damned cold (and far away) for Arabs to want to go there anyway.:P
What? his threat to shot McBride's "high horse" out from under him??? His threat that he "will not like" what we're cooking up for him? Analogies and references.
I picked up some implied physical threats. But seeing as Eric's a gun aficionado, it's easy to see why. Hmm, deja vu.
Yes, the USA has come to quite a pass if actually believing in the Constitution means that you are a criminal. But the way things have been going, I would not be surprised. "Oh! He thinks we have the right to bear arms! That means he is going to kill me with his arsenal!"
For the record, I believe the second amendment gives us the right to own any weapon up to and including nuclear warheads, but I do not personally possess any unless perhaps you count the knives in my kitchen.
In Canada? Your joking. Please list the law you were breaking doing that.
Canadians don't have the same free speech rights as the US. The Canadian constitution specifically gives the government the right to curtail free speech. The US constitution specifically forbids this. Granted, the US Government does not obey the US Constitution, but that may be because as manya congresscritters have actually read the US Constitution as Canadians have read theirs.
SCO sued IBM in March, claiming that the Armonk, N.Y., company had inappropriately contributed code to the Linux operating system in violation of a Unix licensing contract that IBM had signed with AT&T but that had later been transferred to SCO. In May, Novell claimed that it, and not IBM, had the rights to the Unix source code -- a claim it later retracted.
Novell never retracted their claim to own the UNIX license. What happened was when Novell pointed out publicly that they owned the license to UNIX and SCO had been asking them to sell it to them, SCO produced an addendum to the contract which they said transferred the license. Novell pointed out that their copy of the contract never contained that addendum, but has not said anything since. Later SCO published the quoted sentence almost verbatim in a press release (IIRC it was a quote from Darl McBride) and the press has been plagiarizing it ever since.
I would be willing to bet hat the Novell lawyers are feverishly tryingto figure out the following:
1) in this wacky world of law, can "double secret" addendums be considered legal?
2) How far does the Judge's imagination need to stratch for this?
3) Does the contract say itself anything about addendums?
4) Where did this addendum come from?
5) Can they punish SCO legally for fabricating the addendum?
That rant pushes the edge of legal. One could definitely consider some of those words to be threats. I just hope they don't come to take him away. He's needed right now.
The letter does not contain threats; it contains facts. If SCO does not back down they are going to be in a world of hurt, because they have opened themselves up to all kinds of legal attacks and being cut off technilogically. Their major products are or depend on Free Software to work. If they were sued by the authors of the Free Software they are using for violating the licenses (which they are) and committing libel against the authors (which they are) they would be buried in lawsuits and unable to sell *anything.*
That is just the beginning. They are upsetting a lot of people who are responsible for purchasing decisions in companies and who probably will never buy SCO products again. They are angering a number of companies which will be filing suits against them as well as time wears on with this. (After all, they accused the entire computing world of piracy and demanded they "pay up" or face lawsuits...)
It could be argued that the officers of SCO are acting illegal as well. Blackmail, racketeering, fraud and that is just the beginning of the charges they could face.
Face it, the more a pain in the ass someone makes themselves the more likely it will be that people will agitate for them to pay for such crimes. Right now SCO is a serious pain and working to increase the volume. This factor will also play into whether Microsoft ends up getting punished (as they should) for paying SCO off and getting them to go this route in the first place (as they did).
I think the point with the guns was a bit off, (after all, I have access to the internet, I could download a copy of the anarchist's cookbook and make a bomb, that doesn't make me a terrorist).
I take it you haven't read the GPL lately. Free Software, and thus the GPL, does NOT depend on IP-law. In fact, the GPL defines source code and programs under its license as fully modifiable, in the public domain, where EVERYBODY who wants to can use it. Free software is an antonym of Intellectual Property, get that through your skull. If Linux depended on IP, then it would wind up just like Window$ and other closed-source shitty OS's. Do your research before you post here.
That is very funny but a common misconception. If you did read the GPL or RMS' explanations of it, you woudl realize the whole point of the GPL is to protect intellectual property. And no Linux is NOT in teh public domain. If it was, Microsoft could use the code for anything.
Linux, and all GPL software, does not restrict simple usage. BUt the GPL defines usage of code, because copyright law says you have no right to distribute or modify copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder. The GPL gives you permission under the conditions of the license, which requires that any distributor must provide the code in machine readable form, either with the binary, or request of any third party, unless you meet special criteria under which case you may elect to give a reference to where they can be obtained (it gives a choice of the three).
The GPL derives its power from copyright law and would not work without it. It also specifically addresses software patents. Any patentable work included in GPL software must have a carte-blanche, gratis license for use associated with it. All of this adds up to a compromise wherein the owner of IP who chooses to share has some control over the mechanism through which it is shared, such that the ownership of IP is respected, the community receives rights to use the IP, and there is control so that the IP cannot be stolen. It can only be used under the conditions of the license which is provided, in this case the GPL. No one can come up later and claim they own it and therefore no one can use it (unless they are the owner and it was not properly released by them, in whihc case that IP must be removed from the GPL software), and no one can put that IP into a commercial closed source product.
No one can come and charge extra license fees to everyone using the software as caldera and SCO have done (as when caldera charged a per-user license fee on linux and now where SCO is trying to charge linux users $1300). Again, this is all because of the GPL and curent IP law, which the GPL honours and relies upon for its power.
What the hell are you talking about? When did I even mention that office productivity suites save config files? I was merely stating that several *nix projects I've used have changed their formats a couple times and are not backward compatible. You all were bitching that document formats change "all the time", so I was merely stating that your precious config files change too, and no one bitches about that.
So what you're saying is, you're nobody. Why are you editing config files then, you bastard?
--root
Ok ok, but seriously, most of the core unix utilities have not changed config files in decades. Most unix utilities never change backward compatability. That is how it should be. When they do change the format, people sure as hell bitch, and if the developers are decent they change them for good, technical reasons and not "just because we feel like it because it's our program and we can do what we want." This is not true of microsoft because a) they don't really design their programs in any real sense and b) they are evil and like to break things on purpose, especially if it can make people spend money with their company.
What about the rest of the Office "family"? Both Access. and Project have changed file formats. Sure you can downgrade when you save your files as previous versions, but you lose many of the features that are available in the newer version -- essentially crippling your software.
Not only that, but I have found out the hard way that at least as of Office2k the downgrade feature does not really work. In other words, If I downgrade a document to Word 6 (which I had routinely done as it was most portable to other machines) it cannot be read properly in Word 6, word 2k, or any version of word I can find.
"New Features" you say? Goddannit! I was only using plain text with tables and bullets, which have been in Word from its inception. But Word routinely cannot deal with these simple features which any html document can deal with. I have also noticed that making a file in OpenOffice and then opeining it in Word gives similarly mixed results. Unless you match versions *exactly* down to the OS and processor used and level of patches even simple text elements like italics, bold, tables, and bullets will not translate properly. Word sucks and Microsoft deserves to be lambasted for this. It has been their method of keeping all companies that care about the way their documents look upgrading to the latest version every year.
Also, for the idiots who said that Microsoft does not force upgrades of OS, I call bullshit. It is not just a matter of ending support in terms of patches and tech support which is perfectly within their right to do so (It was pretty damn nice of them to support NT4 for 8 years + like they did. There I said something nice about them.) Microsoft has claimed they can retroactively revoke licenses for old software (and announced that Windows before 2000/ME/XP is illegal now) and whereas they really can;t afford to enforce that on the home user, they have been able to do so with the corporate user by
1) Changing the license model so now the software is rented/leased on a yearly basis, and
2) Only selling licenses for the current versions (XP/2000/2003).
It is built into the contracts they sign with corporations and governments these days that the customer *will* upgrade and *will* buy more licenses each year than in the previous year. Before the forced upgrades were informal and a matter of convention (new computers woudl only come with new OS versions, old OS versions not being sold, no patches for old OS versions, etc) but now they are formalized in the contracts Microsoft requires.
If I were a CFO I would be running like hell from Microsoft right now. They will be the death of everyone if people don't get a clue. It isn't just because "It's not Linux" or "Windows sucks" or "wah wah they won't let me use their software like I want to." It is because they refuse to refactor their products as would be required to fix the design flaws inherent in their products, they absolutely do not care about the suffering they induce on their customers and they wait up nights trying to figure out how to cause more. They are trying to own your company by owning the proceses by which your company functions, then act like the mafia going around for protection money. Feeding the monster is only making it worse.
If they showed any sign of even wanting to fix these problems I would feel differently. BUt the fact of the matter is their entire attitude lends itself directly to creating more problems than ever and getting far worse without any hope of getting better. I would have thought aftre the threat of Linux and their narrow escape from teh DOJ they would have wised up and cleaned house in their shop, but Microsoft is a criminal organization rotten from top to bottom, bent on the destruction of the entire computing world. They have proven it even more with their recent shenanigans proxied through SCO.
The only way to stop them is going to be to cut off their oxygen supply. Make Linux better and replace Windows everywhere we can. This is war, gentlemen, and if we want to have control of our companies, our country, our homes and our computers we had better wake up and realize what we are up against.
Proof? Look on any of their string packs. Look at their web site. Their technology is PROPRIETARY.
They will (and have) sued any company or individual that dares infringe on their IP. Just like Microsoft. Chew on THAT conundrum for a bit.
Interesting. Of course, the GPL and the support of Linux depends on IP law. MOst (all?) of the Linux developers work with IP regularly at their jobs and have a professional responsibility to protect the IP of the companies they work for. When we win the SCO case it will be because they infringed our IP and had the gall to claim otherwise.
Get it through your head. Free Software is all about IP. It is about the true creators of IP regaining control over their IP rather than a few hoarders who let technology rot on the shelf. And P2P is about IP ultimately as well. The real creators of the IP benefit most from the sharing of their music. This is about taking back the property that should be ours and not letting corporate thieves get away with stealing it.
IP law is in need of serious modification, either in its implementation, its enforcement, or its application. Probbaly a littel of all three. BUt it is not in and of itself bad and most sane people do not believe that. Hell even RMS supports IP in the GPL, and would probably sue to protect it (he has threatened to do so in the past).
Anyway, the real lesson with Ernie Ball is that this is the Right Thing To Do when the BSA knocks on your door. Microsoft has been blackmailing companies and governments into buying more software than they need or even use and this needs to be stopped. The right answer is to get rid of them utterly and not negotiate with terrorists. When they learn to act like a decent softwrae company you might use their products where they are applicable.
I would encourage everyone who is involved with pruchasing decisions to remember to consider the true cost of dealing with Microsoft. I know as a taxpayer am outraged that our government all the way to the federal level with the exception of a few city governments has been completely infiltrated by people who pay tribute/protection money to Microsoft and never punish them for their practices. Even if you do not agree that Windows is in itself a waste of taxpayer dollars (as I think it is in most of the applications it is used in) you would have to be insane to believe that it is right for our government to be paying taxpayer money for copies of windows it does not even use.
I recently left a city which was threatened by Microsoft and in response bought three windows licenses plus office licenses for every computer including computers that did not even exist with an agreement to buy exponentially more every year. This was Microsoft's idea of settling the dispute which consisted of them saying "you did not buy enough Microsoft software for our taste last year. The only explanation is that you are pirating X Million dollars worth of Microsoft software." Never mind there had been a major thrust to move to Linux and this town happens to be one in which the Linux expertise s particularly rich. The machines rnning Linux were moved to windows fr no reason (except perhaps to alleviate some of this public waste of taxpayer dollars).
In a time of high unemployment, high budget deficits, and low revenues, companies and governments have inexplicably been moving even more to Microsoft. (Well, unless you realize Microsoft blackmail is part of the explanation). This is stupid and unconscionable. Even if you accept Microsoft's lie that Free Software alternatives require more expertise/personnel, realize that people are cheaper than software licenses when you are talking about the kind of money Microsoft, Oracle, et al want for typical solutions.
Companies and governments would have been doing the economy a much better service by hiring/retaining the people and saving money on the software. Even if the free software lacks features they want, think ho
Yes! the traditional method of supporting Open Source: T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc etc:). Actually the benefit of this approach is that peopel who do not play guitars can support Ernie Ball and still get something useful, though I have generally ben in the habit of buying stuff from Free Software companies whether I use it or not just to help support them.
Actually I happen to like features. The point I was making is that Linux, with a large user base, will turn into Windows. Then the community will move to some other brand new OS because they like the benefits of what happens when it's got its little niche audience.
Only if they close the source and/or remove the ability to modify and distribute distributions. Otherwise you will always be free to strip out features you don't want. What you say? "I am not a programmer?" That's alright, Jack because someone is and will be just as annoyed as you that Linux is bloated, guaranteed. Those people will provide either the distro stripped down or instructions to make your installation go that route.
This is why we have Slackware, debian, the source based distros, et al. Someone did not like the way other distros worked and made their own and maintained it with these design goals in mind. And if you don't like it, you can mke your own. There are thousands of distros to choose from if you don't feel like doing that, or LFS if you want to learn how.
Yes, you are absolutely right. This is why you have to use the right size integer for the number of places you want to be accurate to. It is also much more complicated than I made it sound, mainly because I have not been called upon to do this myself and also because it would take a good sized book to properly describe the nuances IMHO.
Essentially you would have to predict that the numbers were going to get bigger and use custom types (classes or structs) and some funny math routines to get this right.
The diff is that you don't get karma for being funny.
Ah, you do have a point. Now, in my opinion the original poster made an insightful joke (he noticed a pun on the name of the professor and a famous fictional character used to market wine coolers) so it was actually both, anyway. I was just trying to be funny myself, anyway.
Wow, an article on the influence of business on open Source Projects which consists solely of videos in Quicktime which cannot be viewed on any open source platform or with any open source viewer. Maybe corporate influence is very very bad after all!:P
I don't understand why people are all pissy about this. Microsoft built a private system for communication, they allowed/tolerated anyone connecting to the network with any compatible client up to this point.
Microsoft sued in federal court when AOL continually changed their protocol and took other measures to prevent MSN clients from connecting to their private network. A judge found that what they were doing was illegal. I say what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If it is illegal for AOL to prevent specific software to connect to their free service it is illegal for Microsoft to do it as well.
Microsoft is also unfairly leveraging their monopoly in doing this because you cannot connect to their network without buying Windows once they do this. They are trying to claim that they have the sole right to the entire chat protocol of MSN and no one is allowed to reverse engineer it to make their own client. That is far overreaching their bounds in my opinion. IANAL.
It is fairly common to represent units as integers either by using smaller numbers or by representing a decimal number as integers in the program and using integer math to do all teh calculations. This way you do not lose digits or have unnecessary rounding.
I should have previewed.. this is probably unclear. What I meant to say is that it is common to use integer math, perhaps by using smaller units of measurement (e.g. 1mm instead of 0.001m ) or using routines which take integers and "remember" where the decimal place is and handle it in software.
What a blanket statement. So it's impossible (or too difficult) to use floating point numbers correctly? You know this... how?
IANAM(athematician), but....
Using floats introduces innacuracy because there is rounding and because of the fundamental limit in accuracy of floats in terms of how many decimal places are represented on a computer. For some applications the number of possible significant digits is unacceptable because it is not accurate enough.
It is fairly common to represent units as integers either by using smaller numbers or by representing a decimal number as integers in the program and using integer math to do all teh calculations. This way you do not lose digits or have unnecessary rounding.
The funny thing is I remember reading about this technique being used in DOOM because for this critical application the innacuracy of floating point was unacceptable and the performance was unacceptably degraded by the floating point processors of the day. Now that we have multiGhz CPUs and more video ram than we know what to do with and deicated video processors I regularly hear about floating point performance being important which to me implies floats are being used in games now.
However I would not be surprosed if programs written for NASA and such where they need billions of decimal places and being off at all means people die or are lost in space forever some pretty sophisticated techniques are required in programs. I think the poster was implying that the calculations for the engine of a Naval ship might need similar treatment. It is certain that the programmers designing the software handling calculations used for the armaments (trajectories of shells and navigation systems for the missiles, etc) would do well to excercise such care. After all, what is more mission critical? DOOM? or a ship with hundreds of people on it in enemy terrirtory?
You are presenting it as if it was some "very difficult program" that only experts inside IBM can solve. Crap. It is easy. A bit like reentrant code: you have to understand that some things are common between the CPUs and you must implement semaphores to protect them. Anybody who can write an OS, can see which places need to be protected by semaphores.
You don't need "decades of experience". Doh! Any kiddie can learn to write reentrant code in a couple of days.
It is not my intention to speak to the difficulty or lack thereof of writing this code. I have not written it, but I have read IBM's docs, and understand that a reasonably decent programmer should be able to whip up a clean implementation just based on publicly available information.
The "decades of experience" refer to what IBM has, and the reason why they did *not* need help from SCO to come up with improvements in Linux. SCO is asserting that IBM would have to steal SCO code to write decent multiproc support for Linux, when they have literally written the book on the subject (actually whole libraries on the subject) . That is just wrong.
So essentially to clarify my position: a college student reading publicly available information and/or paying attention in class would have been able to write multiproc support that works. The expertise IBM applied in making it work better is considerable but wholly their own.
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In the same venue, some countries are safer from terrorism than others and this is not going to change dramatically (unless Iceland manages to piss off Pakistan or Angola somehow).
Well, let's hope they like Bjork then. Then again, Iceland is just too damned cold (and far away) for Arabs to want to go there anyway. :P
So instead of having a sizeable percentage of our population stuck in jail, we should throw everyone in jail?
Sure, that would be the Bush way to alleviate unemployment!
What? his threat to shot McBride's "high horse" out from under him??? His threat that he "will not like" what we're cooking up for him? Analogies and references.
Sure! He threatened to kill Bill Gates! :)
I picked up some implied physical threats. But seeing as Eric's a gun aficionado, it's easy to see why. Hmm, deja vu.
Yes, the USA has come to quite a pass if actually believing in the Constitution means that you are a criminal. But the way things have been going, I would not be surprised. "Oh! He thinks we have the right to bear arms! That means he is going to kill me with his arsenal!"
For the record, I believe the second amendment gives us the right to own any weapon up to and including nuclear warheads, but I do not personally possess any unless perhaps you count the knives in my kitchen.
In Canada? Your joking. Please list the law you were breaking doing that.
Canadians don't have the same free speech rights as the US. The Canadian constitution specifically gives the government the right to curtail free speech. The US constitution specifically forbids this. Granted, the US Government does not obey the US Constitution, but that may be because as manya congresscritters have actually read the US Constitution as Canadians have read theirs.
SCO sued IBM in March, claiming that the Armonk, N.Y., company had inappropriately contributed code to the Linux operating system in violation of a Unix licensing contract that IBM had signed with AT&T but that had later been transferred to SCO. In May, Novell claimed that it, and not IBM, had the rights to the Unix source code -- a claim it later retracted.
Novell never retracted their claim to own the UNIX license. What happened was when Novell pointed out publicly that they owned the license to UNIX and SCO had been asking them to sell it to them, SCO produced an addendum to the contract which they said transferred the license. Novell pointed out that their copy of the contract never contained that addendum, but has not said anything since. Later SCO published the quoted sentence almost verbatim in a press release (IIRC it was a quote from Darl McBride) and the press has been plagiarizing it ever since.
I would be willing to bet hat the Novell lawyers are feverishly tryingto figure out the following:
1) in this wacky world of law, can "double secret" addendums be considered legal?
2) How far does the Judge's imagination need to stratch for this?
3) Does the contract say itself anything about addendums?
4) Where did this addendum come from?
5) Can they punish SCO legally for fabricating the addendum?
That rant pushes the edge of legal. One could definitely consider some of those words to be threats. I just hope they don't come to take him away. He's needed right now.
The letter does not contain threats; it contains facts. If SCO does not back down they are going to be in a world of hurt, because they have opened themselves up to all kinds of legal attacks and being cut off technilogically. Their major products are or depend on Free Software to work. If they were sued by the authors of the Free Software they are using for violating the licenses (which they are) and committing libel against the authors (which they are) they would be buried in lawsuits and unable to sell *anything.*
That is just the beginning. They are upsetting a lot of people who are responsible for purchasing decisions in companies and who probably will never buy SCO products again. They are angering a number of companies which will be filing suits against them as well as time wears on with this. (After all, they accused the entire computing world of piracy and demanded they "pay up" or face lawsuits...)
It could be argued that the officers of SCO are acting illegal as well. Blackmail, racketeering, fraud and that is just the beginning of the charges they could face.
Face it, the more a pain in the ass someone makes themselves the more likely it will be that people will agitate for them to pay for such crimes. Right now SCO is a serious pain and working to increase the volume. This factor will also play into whether Microsoft ends up getting punished (as they should) for paying SCO off and getting them to go this route in the first place (as they did).
I think the point with the guns was a bit off, (after all, I have access to the internet, I could download a copy of the anarchist's cookbook and make a bomb, that doesn't make me a terrorist).
No, using Linux is what makes you a terorist! :)
So? I'm still receiving viruses from spammers.
And spam from viruses!
Leave her home!
I say fuck her.
I take it you haven't read the GPL lately. Free Software, and thus the GPL, does NOT depend on IP-law. In fact, the GPL defines source code and programs under its license as fully modifiable, in the public domain, where EVERYBODY who wants to can use it. Free software is an antonym of Intellectual Property, get that through your skull. If Linux depended on IP, then it would wind up just like Window$ and other closed-source shitty OS's. Do your research before you post here.
That is very funny but a common misconception. If you did read the GPL or RMS' explanations of it, you woudl realize the whole point of the GPL is to protect intellectual property. And no Linux is NOT in teh public domain. If it was, Microsoft could use the code for anything.
Linux, and all GPL software, does not restrict simple usage. BUt the GPL defines usage of code, because copyright law says you have no right to distribute or modify copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder. The GPL gives you permission under the conditions of the license, which requires that any distributor must provide the code in machine readable form, either with the binary, or request of any third party, unless you meet special criteria under which case you may elect to give a reference to where they can be obtained (it gives a choice of the three).
The GPL derives its power from copyright law and would not work without it. It also specifically addresses software patents. Any patentable work included in GPL software must have a carte-blanche, gratis license for use associated with it. All of this adds up to a compromise wherein the owner of IP who chooses to share has some control over the mechanism through which it is shared, such that the ownership of IP is respected, the community receives rights to use the IP, and there is control so that the IP cannot be stolen. It can only be used under the conditions of the license which is provided, in this case the GPL. No one can come up later and claim they own it and therefore no one can use it (unless they are the owner and it was not properly released by them, in whihc case that IP must be removed from the GPL software), and no one can put that IP into a commercial closed source product.
No one can come and charge extra license fees to everyone using the software as caldera and SCO have done (as when caldera charged a per-user license fee on linux and now where SCO is trying to charge linux users $1300). Again, this is all because of the GPL and curent IP law, which the GPL honours and relies upon for its power.
What the hell are you talking about? When did I even mention that office productivity suites save config files? I was merely stating that several *nix projects I've used have changed their formats a couple times and are not backward compatible. You all were bitching that document formats change "all the time", so I was merely stating that your precious config files change too, and no one bitches about that.
So what you're saying is, you're nobody. Why are you editing config files then, you bastard?
--root
Ok ok, but seriously, most of the core unix utilities have not changed config files in decades. Most unix utilities never change backward compatability. That is how it should be. When they do change the format, people sure as hell bitch, and if the developers are decent they change them for good, technical reasons and not "just because we feel like it because it's our program and we can do what we want." This is not true of microsoft because a) they don't really design their programs in any real sense and b) they are evil and like to break things on purpose, especially if it can make people spend money with their company.
What about the rest of the Office "family"? Both Access. and Project have changed file formats. Sure you can downgrade when you save your files as previous versions, but you lose many of the features that are available in the newer version -- essentially crippling your software.
Not only that, but I have found out the hard way that at least as of Office2k the downgrade feature does not really work. In other words, If I downgrade a document to Word 6 (which I had routinely done as it was most portable to other machines) it cannot be read properly in Word 6, word 2k, or any version of word I can find.
"New Features" you say? Goddannit! I was only using plain text with tables and bullets, which have been in Word from its inception. But Word routinely cannot deal with these simple features which any html document can deal with. I have also noticed that making a file in OpenOffice and then opeining it in Word gives similarly mixed results. Unless you match versions *exactly* down to the OS and processor used and level of patches even simple text elements like italics, bold, tables, and bullets will not translate properly. Word sucks and Microsoft deserves to be lambasted for this. It has been their method of keeping all companies that care about the way their documents look upgrading to the latest version every year.
Also, for the idiots who said that Microsoft does not force upgrades of OS, I call bullshit. It is not just a matter of ending support in terms of patches and tech support which is perfectly within their right to do so (It was pretty damn nice of them to support NT4 for 8 years + like they did. There I said something nice about them.) Microsoft has claimed they can retroactively revoke licenses for old software (and announced that Windows before 2000/ME/XP is illegal now) and whereas they really can;t afford to enforce that on the home user, they have been able to do so with the corporate user by
1) Changing the license model so now the software is rented/leased on a yearly basis, and
2) Only selling licenses for the current versions (XP/2000/2003).
It is built into the contracts they sign with corporations and governments these days that the customer *will* upgrade and *will* buy more licenses each year than in the previous year. Before the forced upgrades were informal and a matter of convention (new computers woudl only come with new OS versions, old OS versions not being sold, no patches for old OS versions, etc) but now they are formalized in the contracts Microsoft requires.
If I were a CFO I would be running like hell from Microsoft right now. They will be the death of everyone if people don't get a clue. It isn't just because "It's not Linux" or "Windows sucks" or "wah wah they won't let me use their software like I want to." It is because they refuse to refactor their products as would be required to fix the design flaws inherent in their products, they absolutely do not care about the suffering they induce on their customers and they wait up nights trying to figure out how to cause more. They are trying to own your company by owning the proceses by which your company functions, then act like the mafia going around for protection money. Feeding the monster is only making it worse.
If they showed any sign of even wanting to fix these problems I would feel differently. BUt the fact of the matter is their entire attitude lends itself directly to creating more problems than ever and getting far worse without any hope of getting better. I would have thought aftre the threat of Linux and their narrow escape from teh DOJ they would have wised up and cleaned house in their shop, but Microsoft is a criminal organization rotten from top to bottom, bent on the destruction of the entire computing world. They have proven it even more with their recent shenanigans proxied through SCO.
The only way to stop them is going to be to cut off their oxygen supply. Make Linux better and replace Windows everywhere we can. This is war, gentlemen, and if we want to have control of our companies, our country, our homes and our computers we had better wake up and realize what we are up against.
Proof? Look on any of their string packs. Look at their web site. Their technology is PROPRIETARY.
They will (and have) sued any company or individual that dares infringe on their IP. Just like Microsoft. Chew on THAT conundrum for a bit.
Interesting. Of course, the GPL and the support of Linux depends on IP law. MOst (all?) of the Linux developers work with IP regularly at their jobs and have a professional responsibility to protect the IP of the companies they work for. When we win the SCO case it will be because they infringed our IP and had the gall to claim otherwise.
Get it through your head. Free Software is all about IP. It is about the true creators of IP regaining control over their IP rather than a few hoarders who let technology rot on the shelf. And P2P is about IP ultimately as well. The real creators of the IP benefit most from the sharing of their music. This is about taking back the property that should be ours and not letting corporate thieves get away with stealing it.
IP law is in need of serious modification, either in its implementation, its enforcement, or its application. Probbaly a littel of all three. BUt it is not in and of itself bad and most sane people do not believe that. Hell even RMS supports IP in the GPL, and would probably sue to protect it (he has threatened to do so in the past).
Anyway, the real lesson with Ernie Ball is that this is the Right Thing To Do when the BSA knocks on your door. Microsoft has been blackmailing companies and governments into buying more software than they need or even use and this needs to be stopped. The right answer is to get rid of them utterly and not negotiate with terrorists. When they learn to act like a decent softwrae company you might use their products where they are applicable.
I would encourage everyone who is involved with pruchasing decisions to remember to consider the true cost of dealing with Microsoft. I know as a taxpayer am outraged that our government all the way to the federal level with the exception of a few city governments has been completely infiltrated by people who pay tribute/protection money to Microsoft and never punish them for their practices. Even if you do not agree that Windows is in itself a waste of taxpayer dollars (as I think it is in most of the applications it is used in) you would have to be insane to believe that it is right for our government to be paying taxpayer money for copies of windows it does not even use.
I recently left a city which was threatened by Microsoft and in response bought three windows licenses plus office licenses for every computer including computers that did not even exist with an agreement to buy exponentially more every year. This was Microsoft's idea of settling the dispute which consisted of them saying "you did not buy enough Microsoft software for our taste last year. The only explanation is that you are pirating X Million dollars worth of Microsoft software." Never mind there had been a major thrust to move to Linux and this town happens to be one in which the Linux expertise s particularly rich. The machines rnning Linux were moved to windows fr no reason (except perhaps to alleviate some of this public waste of taxpayer dollars).
In a time of high unemployment, high budget deficits, and low revenues, companies and governments have inexplicably been moving even more to Microsoft. (Well, unless you realize Microsoft blackmail is part of the explanation). This is stupid and unconscionable. Even if you accept Microsoft's lie that Free Software alternatives require more expertise/personnel, realize that people are cheaper than software licenses when you are talking about the kind of money Microsoft, Oracle, et al want for typical solutions.
Companies and governments would have been doing the economy a much better service by hiring/retaining the people and saving money on the software. Even if the free software lacks features they want, think ho
Yes! the traditional method of supporting Open Source: T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc etc :). Actually the benefit of this approach is that peopel who do not play guitars can support Ernie Ball and still get something useful, though I have generally ben in the habit of buying stuff from Free Software companies whether I use it or not just to help support them.
Actually I happen to like features. The point I was making is that Linux, with a large user base, will turn into Windows. Then the community will move to some other brand new OS because they like the benefits of what happens when it's got its little niche audience.
Only if they close the source and/or remove the ability to modify and distribute distributions. Otherwise you will always be free to strip out features you don't want. What you say? "I am not a programmer?" That's alright, Jack because someone is and will be just as annoyed as you that Linux is bloated, guaranteed. Those people will provide either the distro stripped down or instructions to make your installation go that route.
This is why we have Slackware, debian, the source based distros, et al. Someone did not like the way other distros worked and made their own and maintained it with these design goals in mind. And if you don't like it, you can mke your own. There are thousands of distros to choose from if you don't feel like doing that, or LFS if you want to learn how.
Yeah, that works until you wrap the integer.
Yes, you are absolutely right. This is why you have to use the right size integer for the number of places you want to be accurate to. It is also much more complicated than I made it sound, mainly because I have not been called upon to do this myself and also because it would take a good sized book to properly describe the nuances IMHO.
Essentially you would have to predict that the numbers were going to get bigger and use custom types (classes or structs) and some funny math routines to get this right.
The diff is that you don't get karma for being funny.
Ah, you do have a point. Now, in my opinion the original poster made an insightful joke (he noticed a pun on the name of the professor and a famous fictional character used to market wine coolers) so it was actually both, anyway. I was just trying to be funny myself, anyway.
Wow, an article on the influence of business on open Source Projects which consists solely of videos in Quicktime which cannot be viewed on any open source platform or with any open source viewer. Maybe corporate influence is very very bad after all! :P
I don't understand why people are all pissy about this.
Microsoft built a private system for communication, they allowed/tolerated anyone connecting to the network with any compatible client up to this point.
Microsoft sued in federal court when AOL continually changed their protocol and took other measures to prevent MSN clients from connecting to their private network. A judge found that what they were doing was illegal. I say what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If it is illegal for AOL to prevent specific software to connect to their free service it is illegal for Microsoft to do it as well.
Microsoft is also unfairly leveraging their monopoly in doing this because you cannot connect to their network without buying Windows once they do this. They are trying to claim that they have the sole right to the entire chat protocol of MSN and no one is allowed to reverse engineer it to make their own client. That is far overreaching their bounds in my opinion. IANAL.
It is fairly common to represent units as integers either by using smaller numbers or by representing a decimal number as integers in the program and using integer math to do all teh calculations. This way you do not lose digits or have unnecessary rounding.
I should have previewed.. this is probably unclear. What I meant to say is that it is common to use integer math, perhaps by using smaller units of measurement (e.g. 1mm instead of 0.001m ) or using routines which take integers and "remember" where the decimal place is and handle it in software.
What a blanket statement. So it's impossible (or too difficult) to use floating point numbers correctly? You know this... how?
IANAM(athematician), but....
Using floats introduces innacuracy because there is rounding and because of the fundamental limit in accuracy of floats in terms of how many decimal places are represented on a computer. For some applications the number of possible significant digits is unacceptable because it is not accurate enough.
It is fairly common to represent units as integers either by using smaller numbers or by representing a decimal number as integers in the program and using integer math to do all teh calculations. This way you do not lose digits or have unnecessary rounding.
The funny thing is I remember reading about this technique being used in DOOM because for this critical application the innacuracy of floating point was unacceptable and the performance was unacceptably degraded by the floating point processors of the day. Now that we have multiGhz CPUs and more video ram than we know what to do with and deicated video processors I regularly hear about floating point performance being important which to me implies floats are being used in games now.
However I would not be surprosed if programs written for NASA and such where they need billions of decimal places and being off at all means people die or are lost in space forever some pretty sophisticated techniques are required in programs. I think the poster was implying that the calculations for the engine of a Naval ship might need similar treatment. It is certain that the programmers designing the software handling calculations used for the armaments (trajectories of shells and navigation systems for the missiles, etc) would do well to excercise such care. After all, what is more mission critical? DOOM? or a ship with hundreds of people on it in enemy terrirtory?
Wine coolers are insightful?
Funny, insightful, yeah what the diff. You however are redundant, my friend :).
Hello??
You are presenting it as if it was some "very difficult program" that only experts inside IBM can solve. Crap. It is easy. A bit like reentrant code: you have to understand that some things are common between the CPUs and you must implement semaphores to protect them. Anybody who can write an OS, can see which places need to be protected by semaphores.
You don't need "decades of experience". Doh! Any kiddie can learn to write reentrant code in a couple of days.
It is not my intention to speak to the difficulty or lack thereof of writing this code. I have not written it, but I have read IBM's docs, and understand that a reasonably decent programmer should be able to whip up a clean implementation just based on publicly available information.
The "decades of experience" refer to what IBM has, and the reason why they did *not* need help from SCO to come up with improvements in Linux. SCO is asserting that IBM would have to steal SCO code to write decent multiproc support for Linux, when they have literally written the book on the subject (actually whole libraries on the subject) . That is just wrong.
So essentially to clarify my position: a college student reading publicly available information and/or paying attention in class would have been able to write multiproc support that works. The expertise IBM applied in making it work better is considerable but wholly their own.
After this fucking thread I am not surprised. Man, everyone's mind is in the gutter tonight. Seven Inches of Essential Fiber, indeed! :P :)