Frankly sir, you don't know what you are talking about.
Defensive patents are a very legitimate business practice, and they most certainly work. It is difficult, or at the very least a nuisance, to be dragged into court day after day, week after week to prove "prior art" on every type and detail of technology in a product.
That wastes money, both in terms of paying lawyers and paying engineers to testify rather than work. Microsoft, love them or hate them, is a well run company and has no interest in such time consumption and waste.
>Furthermore, Microsoft, if it were really >interested in not being sued, would have settled >the anti-trust case.
I am discussing "nuisance" lawsuits. The anti-trust trial is the most important legal challenge that Microsoft, or indeed any company, can ever face. The two types of lawsuits are miles apart and have nothing to do with one another.
True, by not settling Microsoft is open to litigation on many fronts. However, it is now clear that the alternative would have been ritual hara-kiri. The government was demanding a break-up all along. Microsoft had two choices: risk lawsuits that they can win, or kill themselves.
Microsoft has never lost on appeal, and it is becoming likely that the next presidential administration will drop all charges against the company anyway.
Worst case scenario, the states lawsuits will win the first level of appeal, but be struck down by the conservative Supreme Court. Once the high Court rules in Microsoft's favor, it will be difficult for "reprocussion" suits from having any serious chance at beating MS.
Back to Microsoft's legal mentality, can you name a single patent lawsuit that Microsoft has initiated? No. You can't.
Microsoft is an old software company with thousands of patents. They are not "using it like a club" on anybody.
Well, unless you mean to tell me that they are saving them up for the right time, and then they're going to strike with hundreds of "mega-suits." But if you really believe that, perhaps you should be more concerned with the planets lining up today and the world ending. Or the inevitable alien invasion.
>How does getting a patent keep Microsoft >from getting sued??
Perhaps you forgot to read my post. Allow me to restate it for you, and follow it with explanation.
These are defensive patents. Because, believe it or not, there are companies worse than Microsoft. There are companies who have produced nothing, yet patent the most mundane obvious thing and sue like hell.
Now, in case you missed it, other companies patent things like the mouse arrow, and then sue Microsoft because it uses a little arrow icon. Get it? So MS patents the obvious, and prevents others from suing them.
>I wouldn't be supprised if they started
I have no real secret motives to defend MS, but this kind of crap just pisses me off! This is what I'm talking about! Blindly attack Microsoft with no reasonable foundation in fact.
How are they going to sue? Linux has no registry! In the hundreds of hours that you spent analyzing the source, you *must* have seen that! ESR said so!
I also know that every story has some idiot complaining about the degradation of the forums.
Having said that, it is usually painful for me to read the talkbacks. Once upon a time, this was a forum for tech nerds/intellectuals to debate the issues posed in the news items. Now, it is a place to:
A. Mindlessly complain about Microsoft. (as in, "Netscape always crashes on Linux! I bet it's because of Microsoft!")
B. Mindlessly praise Linux! (as in, "Linux is so good that people will begin switching over en masse any day now!! But they can't because Microsoft won't let them! Bill Gate$ suxx!")
Why do I say this? Because in this news article, the facts are clearly stated, but NOBODY is reading it! Yet *everyone* has an opinion!
"I bet Microsoft is going to enforce it on Debian and we will get really mad!! And Bill Gate$ suxx! So the government better get him! But Linux is so good everyone will switch over anyway! But Microsoft is a monopoly so that means that people are incapable of going to CompUSA and buying Red Hat!"
Can't anyone here read? "A determination is made whether the current date is on or after a date stored in a registry key on a computer."
Linux does not have a registry! But I guess everyone here read the source and knows that.
Now then, we should all complain that "Bill's gonna get 'cha!"
No he's not. Microsoft, as far as I can remember, has zero history of suing anyone for patent violations. And Microsoft has thousands of patents. They own a patent for everything they can possibly claim. If they wanted to, they could most likely sue every company in the industry for one violation or another. (They would most likely lose, but they *could* sue.)
These are defensive patents. Because, believe it or not, there are companies worse than Microsoft. There are companies who have produced nothing, yet patent the most mundane obvious thing and sue like hell.
Microsoft has a lot of money and is a big company. People like to sue big companies. Microsoft is patenting to protect themselves from frivilous lawsuits.
"NO WAY! Bill Gate$ is satan and he wants to stop competition! He's going to sue Linux because they are competitors! They are already stopping people from downloading Debian for free on the Internet, and Bill Gates personally is stopping Cheapbytes server from selling distros for 2 dollars!!"
Nobody here likes Microsoft. So before replying to me with "YEAH BUT LINUX IS 3l33t AND BILL GATE$ IS EVIL!" keep in mind that I am aware of your opinion.
Here's mine.
I am afraid of the US Federal government in my industry. I am cheering for Microsoft even though I am a Linux user who doesn't like Microsoft's licensing practices.
Why?
Did you know that there is a federal law determining the minimum width of a pickle on your McDonald's hamburger?
There is. That's the result of opening the Federal Government's floodgates.
I know: "Well, gee, if there wasn't a law, McDonalds would only put a tiny sliver on the burger."
No, they wouldn't. Because if they did, we would go to Wendys or Burger King or any one of a million other restaurants. Even though McDonalds is, by far, the largest restaurant chain.
Yes, this applies to Microsoft.
Our industry is, for the most part, unregulated. If I release my own word processor tomorrow, I can give it the features I want. If I want a spell check, I'll add a spell check. If I want a talking paperclip, I'll add a talking paperclip. It's my software.
That's not what the Justice Department wants. It's no secret that they want some authority over what Microsoft adds to their next generation operating system.
That is fact.
And in the beginning, everyone is as happy as hell, because the MS behemoth won't add "their" application.
The Federal Government won't let them. Yeah government!
But then we find that Microsoft Windows 2004 doesn't support a talkback feature to assist the deaf in word processing.
The Federal Government will have the authority to make them.
Remember: there is a law mandating pickle sizes at McDonalds. There is no limit to where government authority can take us.
Now, maybe you say, well, good! The deaf should be able to use word processors. Go government!
It's not that simple; the government won't be focusing only on Microsoft. They can't go on forever making "Microsoft laws."
They'll be making "industry laws." Now, maybe your startup with the 20 billion dollar IPO can afford to add mandated features. Mine cannot.
That is what I am afraid of. Please don't tell me that the government will rest once they get a bit of leverage over Microsoft. They will not. If they'll go so far as to regulate pickle size, they'll regulate anything.
What is the solution?
The solution is not content regulation. (For reasoning above... once the regulation in this area starts, it will never die. You think software is bloated now? Wait until the "mandate" list arrives in Redmond.
The solution is not opening the Windows source.
I know, this is a point of contention. Software should be free and all that.
For one thing, we all know that there are many security holes in Windows. I'd say thousands. We also know that most banks/high security institutions run Windows as their primary OS.
That is trouble.
Please don't say "Open Source != security problems."
On Linux, you would be right. Linux was designed free from the beginning, and the gaping holes have been patched.
But Windows? The massive security problems that would be exposed might take years to straighten out, far enough time for our savings accounts to be purged by a greedy cracker.
Please, also, don't demand MS release the source to their competitors in order to level the playing field.
This sounds nice, but then I ask you "what competitors?" If my startup want to do it's own Windows, will I be able to? Or will Sun be the only company allowed?
A playing field of MS and Sun is not an attractive one.
Also, if the Windows source is released, there is a good chance that the consumer applications market will suffer. Unix was forked, fragmented and has been permanently damaged. And Unix was a well designed system.
Linux may well be fragmented. It's only a matter of time until the kernel is forked. Then what? Sure, now we can say "No real Linux user would switch to the forked kernel."
But what if the forked kernel was good? I mean Real good. You'd switch if there was something in it for you. A faster server or some such.
Unlikely? Yes.
But in Windows? If the Windows source were released, you bet your ass there'd be a fork. Probably a month later. Because Windows is not well designed. It is not efficient. It is a bad OS.
At first, sure, a forked Windows would be great. We'd all get the better one. Right?
Until it was forked again. And again. Until we get another Unix trainwreck, where the app I wrote on Sun Windows doesn't work on AOL Windows, Microsoft Windows or Red Hat Windows.
I'm a poor startup. I can't afford to write ten versions of my program.
I also don't want the government to demand that vendors offer every OS to every customer on every computer sold.
Sure, Dell could afford it. But could Mom and Pop operations struggling as it is to compete with CompUSA? It wouldn't hurt Gateway to support ten flavors of Linux, BSD, Be, Windows and Amiga. But your corner store couldn't do it. Not in a million years.
In essence, forcing OS distribution on a sales level would serve only to help the titans by killing their smaller less financed competition. And God knows if you want to buy a computer WITHOUT a WinModem, you can pretty much dismiss Gateway/eMachine/Dell/HP/Compaq altogether.
The government should not levy a "standards" list for Windows, where everyone can develop according to the specs. Let's face it, the US Federal Government is not the fastest moving body in existence. I don't want to have to wait three years for the government to release study after study to determine that the best place to position the scroll bar is on the left. As a business, I want to say, "We're doing it this way. If it works, we'll be big. If we don't, we'll die" rather than "When the government releases the big specs sheet next year, we'll be able to write the windowing interface. Until then, we're stuck on writing mode 13h solitare."
Oh, and please don't force them to remove their web browser or bundle a competing one.
An OS without a browser out of the box is useless to almost everyone. Almost all new OSes come with browsers from Linux to PalmOS to Be to Windows. Nobody would be helped by removing the browser, and don't kid yourselves - nobody would switch to Linux just because it comes with a browser and Windows doesn't.
Bundling multiple browsers wouldn't help either. Who gets bundled? Netscape? Mozilla? Lynx? All of them?
Aren't we the ones complaining that Windows is bloated? Can you imagined forced bundling of products? What about Solitare? I be the Hoyle people would love to get a shot at that. And why not? What's so special about the browser?
So what should they do?
Restrict their licensing practices. Don't let them sell Win98 to Dell for $1.00 and to Compaq for $100.00. That'll severely limit their leverage over what is bundled with new PCs. It would have virtually eliminated the catalyst for this trial in the first place, the browser bundling war. And if HP wanted to ship their PCs with Sun Java VM, that would be fine.
Oh, and one last thing. The notion that breaking up MS would cripple them is ridiculous. The powerful MS would be the one who sells Windows. They would still have a monopoly on OSes, and their stock would skyrocket on the first day of trading to, likely, MS's present day value.
That would make Gates richer. Do you really want that?:)
I am delighted that somebody finally brought this issue of censorship to light. It has been a long time coming, but the day of reckoning is finally here.
Ironically, last night I was talking to an old fellow MIT friend of mine (Hi Jimbo!) about this very issue. Jimbo is a hell of an idea man, and he proposed a very radical act to eliminate "filtering-based" censorship.
He proposes that we extend the HTTP spec to allow *zero* access to certain types of information- intelligent data blocking software, or library censorware in this case. We're calling the plan "No Access To All Library Information Eliminators", or NATALIE.
As most of you are no doubt aware, HTTP resolves ports using the very same type of data that we are attempting to eliminate. (On a different level, of course.) So my friend and I took the liberty of also proposing a furter extension of the HTTP, this time in reference to port-resolving issues. The spec that we devised is very much accessable to all types of computer platforms, which we consider important. Because of it's multi-system accessability and success in resolving the port issue, we named it Port-man. (Like Walk Man. Get it?)
It's with great pride that I present to my fellow engineers of/. the latest, greatest expansion to the HTTP spec, the NATALIE Port-man.
There's one problem: You see, to implement this idea it will cost major capital that we lack. Some of the college students reading this though, can actually utilize financial assistance from the federal government. Last night, I read about one of the President's new "IT-sector" grants to encourage just this type of research. It's called the Grants Reward Information Technology Sector, or GRITS.
You see, I believe that GRITS can make NATALIE Port-man a reality. Unfortunately (there's always a hold-up when you deal with the government) the grant requires all research acquired using this financial to go straight to the patent office. I am against this in principle, so it seems that GRITS is petrifying NATALIE Port-man.
(sigh)
There is a loophole, however, that would allow us to get around the patent requirement. It was Bill 2356A, passed by the Senate last month. It stated that all university students' research performed *ON CAMPUS* is not intended for financial gain, and must remain free. They referred to this bill as the Technology Research Of Liability-Limited Students, otherwise known as TROLLS.
Because of the conflicting government viewpoints, it is clear that TROLLS can prevent GRITS from petrifying NATALIE Port-man.
I hope this information helps my fellow engineers here on/.
BSD is clearly a good system, but I have some problems with Bell Labs' implementation, specifically in light of open source's fragile success in the public eye.
It appears, externally at least that Bell Labs' engineers have a king-sized ego, and are patent greedy with their technology. I have an old friend who used to work for Bell Labs (Hi Jimbo!) and he coined an interesting term to describe the iron men there. The tend to believe Kings Never Offer Technology Trade Secrets, or as he put it, they always don KNOTTS.
These engineers are quite aggressive in their research and development, and often patent the obvious. Don't get me wrong, the are great researchers, specifically in the tech area. As my friend stated, Bell Labs has the unique talent of Great Research In Technology Sectors, or as he calls it, GRITS.
What does GRITS have to do with the engineers who don KNOTTS? A great deal, I'm afraid. Because they do not respect the engineers of the past, the leaders, if you will, they often eliminate good R&D in favor of their own flavors of the month. My friend calls this the "No Allegiance To All Leaders In Electronics, Probably Often Resorts To Making All Null," or the NATALIE-PORTMAN problem. GRITS is petrifying the engineers.
Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon. From what I can gather, technology research of logic library systems, or TROLLS is increasing. As TROLLS increase, NATALIE-PORTMAN will no longer be petrified by GRITS from engineers who don KNOTTS.
I hope this helps. I always enjoy assisting my fellow engineers here on/.
I have to say that as an engineer at a large firm, I've logged quite a number of hours researching ways to sucessfully defend our technology against such attacks. It seems that as technology proliferates, and the Internet becomes a global interchange, things like this will increase exponentially. This is not good for eBusiness, as it leads to increased government regulation.
Last month I got with an old college roommate of mine (Hi Jimbo!) who now works at a major hardware powerhouse, and we threw ideas around that may help combat the problem of crackers and l33ts nailing systems to the wall. I suppose this is as good a place as any to publicly gather feedback.
Our first idea was for a "safety net" of sorts, gathering IPS and validating DNS, packet info, etc before return transmitting data. The system, the Gathering, Researching, Intelligent Transport System (GRITS) could theoretically decrease the DoS attack exponentially.
One problem we found with GRITS was its effect on servers running Apache. We dubbed the problem the Nailing Apache Transport Access Line Interface Expansion, or NATALIE. It seems that GRITS petrified the NATALIE port, man.
Our next theory was pretty clever, if I do say so myself. Transit of packets is a genuine problem on servers hit by DoS, and rerouting these packets to low-level systems is imperative. So to counter DoS, we developed the Transit Rerouting Of Low-Level Systems, or TROLLS. TROLLS worked well, as not only did it prevent GRITS from petrifying the NATALIE port, man, but it eliminated cracker attacks.
I hope this helps. I am always glad to assist fellow engineers here on good old/.
I've been following the Itsy project for some time now as a "civilian", and was fortunate enough to have been an engineer on the project early on. I've read a great many of the complaints and suggestions here on/. regarding the schematics and software.
Last month I contacted an old collegue of mine who still works on the project, (Hi Jimbo!) and together we began, using Wine source as a base, porting the Win32 API to Itsy. We are calling the project PORTMAN.
I'm not sure if anyone actually checked out the linked schematics, but the bus of Itsy is actually pretty interesting. It features a proprietary (I know that's an evil word) technology called Timed Rerouting Online Linear-Link System (TROLLS). This allows PORTMAN to function efficiently, bypassing a slight bottleneck in the output system. (The bottleneck I refer to is caused by Grain Reciprocating Isolinear Transit Sensors (GRITS).
Before TROLLS, GRITS had the terrible effect of petrifying PORTMAN. That problem is no more. Thank God for TROLLS.
I hope this was helpful. I am always delighted to help my fellow engineers here on/.
Perhaps the primary problem with Linux games lies not in the core underlying kernel, or even with the small but robust and ever expanding driver availability, but something far more profound. As a longtime observer of/. and Linux in general, I have found that the primary reason that gaming software is so far behind on Linux stems from the utter lack of Tri Realistic Octagonal Level Leveraging Systems, or TROLLS. While the x86 graphics subroutines utilize the bicubic underlings of quadernians, TROLLS are not common enough on 133Mhz graphics buses. The resulting AGP bottleneck is a direct result of Graphics Routing Isolinear Transport Systems, otherwise known as GRITS. The TROLLS could easily eliminate GRITS, with the help of the Nil-Access Tesla Accumulation Linux Information Expresslink, coupled with the Pipeline-Overloading Reroute Transit Micro Alpha Network. Known together as NATALIE-PORTMAN. TROLLS are well known for wanting to merge sources with NATALIE-PORTMAN. I hope you find this interesting, and perhaps gives you greater insights into Linux game systems. General Chalupa
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Frankly sir, you don't know what you are talking about.
Defensive patents are a very legitimate business practice, and they most certainly work. It is difficult, or at the very least a nuisance, to be dragged into court day after day, week after week to prove "prior art" on every type and detail of technology in a product.
That wastes money, both in terms of paying lawyers and paying engineers to testify rather than work. Microsoft, love them or hate them, is a well run company and has no interest in such time consumption and waste.
>Furthermore, Microsoft, if it were really
>interested in not being sued, would have settled
>the anti-trust case.
I am discussing "nuisance" lawsuits. The anti-trust trial is the most important legal challenge that Microsoft, or indeed any company, can ever face. The two types of lawsuits are miles apart and have nothing to do with one another.
True, by not settling Microsoft is open to litigation on many fronts. However, it is now clear that the alternative would have been ritual hara-kiri. The government was demanding a break-up all along. Microsoft had two choices: risk lawsuits that they can win, or kill themselves.
Microsoft has never lost on appeal, and it is becoming likely that the next presidential administration will drop all charges against the company anyway.
Worst case scenario, the states lawsuits will win the first level of appeal, but be struck down by the conservative Supreme Court. Once the high Court rules in Microsoft's favor, it will be difficult for "reprocussion" suits from having any serious chance at beating MS.
Back to Microsoft's legal mentality, can you name a single patent lawsuit that Microsoft has initiated? No. You can't.
Microsoft is an old software company with thousands of patents. They are not "using it like a club" on anybody.
Well, unless you mean to tell me that they are saving them up for the right time, and then they're going to strike with hundreds of "mega-suits." But if you really believe that, perhaps you should be more concerned with the planets lining up today and the world ending. Or the inevitable alien invasion.
Gen Chalupa
>How does getting a patent keep Microsoft
>from getting sued??
Perhaps you forgot to read my post. Allow me to restate it for you, and follow it with explanation.
These are defensive patents. Because, believe it or not, there are companies worse than Microsoft. There are companies who have produced nothing, yet patent the most mundane obvious thing and sue like hell.
Now, in case you missed it, other companies patent things like the mouse arrow, and then sue Microsoft because it uses a little arrow icon. Get it? So MS patents the obvious, and prevents others from suing them.
>I wouldn't be supprised if they started
I have no real secret motives to defend MS, but this kind of crap just pisses me off! This is what I'm talking about! Blindly attack Microsoft with no reasonable foundation in fact.
How are they going to sue? Linux has no registry! In the hundreds of hours that you spent analyzing the source, you *must* have seen that! ESR said so!
Gen Chalupa
I read Slashdot daily and I like it.
I also know that every story has some idiot complaining about the degradation of the forums.
Having said that, it is usually painful for me to read the talkbacks. Once upon a time, this was a forum for tech nerds/intellectuals to debate the issues posed in the news items. Now, it is a place to:
A. Mindlessly complain about Microsoft. (as in, "Netscape always crashes on Linux! I bet it's because of Microsoft!")
B. Mindlessly praise Linux! (as in, "Linux is so good that people will begin switching over en masse any day now!! But they can't because Microsoft won't let them! Bill Gate$ suxx!")
Why do I say this? Because in this news article, the facts are clearly stated, but NOBODY is reading it! Yet *everyone* has an opinion!
"I bet Microsoft is going to enforce it on Debian and we will get really mad!! And Bill Gate$ suxx! So the government better get him! But Linux is so good everyone will switch over anyway! But Microsoft is a monopoly so that means that people are incapable of going to CompUSA and buying Red Hat!"
Can't anyone here read? "A determination is made whether the current date is on or after a date stored in a registry key on a computer."
Linux does not have a registry! But I guess everyone here read the source and knows that.
Now then, we should all complain that "Bill's gonna get 'cha!"
No he's not. Microsoft, as far as I can remember, has zero history of suing anyone for patent violations. And Microsoft has thousands of patents. They own a patent for everything they can possibly claim. If they wanted to, they could most likely sue every company in the industry for one violation or another. (They would most likely lose, but they *could* sue.)
These are defensive patents. Because, believe it or not, there are companies worse than Microsoft. There are companies who have produced nothing, yet patent the most mundane obvious thing and sue like hell.
Microsoft has a lot of money and is a big company. People like to sue big companies. Microsoft is patenting to protect themselves from frivilous lawsuits.
"NO WAY! Bill Gate$ is satan and he wants to stop competition! He's going to sue Linux because they are competitors! They are already stopping people from downloading Debian for free on the Internet, and Bill Gates personally is stopping Cheapbytes server from selling distros for 2 dollars!!"
Fine. Long live groupthink!
Gen Chalupa
OK...
:)
Nobody here likes Microsoft. So before replying to me with "YEAH BUT LINUX IS 3l33t AND BILL GATE$ IS EVIL!" keep in mind that I am aware of your opinion.
Here's mine.
I am afraid of the US Federal government in my industry. I am cheering for Microsoft even though I am a Linux user who doesn't like Microsoft's licensing practices.
Why?
Did you know that there is a federal law determining the minimum width of a pickle on your McDonald's hamburger?
There is. That's the result of opening the Federal Government's floodgates.
I know: "Well, gee, if there wasn't a law, McDonalds would only put a tiny sliver on the burger."
No, they wouldn't. Because if they did, we would go to Wendys or Burger King or any one of a million other restaurants. Even though McDonalds is, by far, the largest restaurant chain.
Yes, this applies to Microsoft.
Our industry is, for the most part, unregulated. If I release my own word processor tomorrow, I can give it the features I want. If I want a spell check, I'll add a spell check. If I want a talking paperclip, I'll add a talking paperclip. It's my software.
That's not what the Justice Department wants. It's no secret that they want some authority over what Microsoft adds to their next generation operating system.
That is fact.
And in the beginning, everyone is as happy as hell, because the MS behemoth won't add "their" application.
The Federal Government won't let them. Yeah government!
But then we find that Microsoft Windows 2004 doesn't support a talkback feature to assist the deaf in word processing.
The Federal Government will have the authority to make them.
Remember: there is a law mandating pickle sizes at McDonalds. There is no limit to where government authority can take us.
Now, maybe you say, well, good! The deaf should be able to use word processors. Go government!
It's not that simple; the government won't be focusing only on Microsoft. They can't go on forever making "Microsoft laws."
They'll be making "industry laws." Now, maybe your startup with the 20 billion dollar IPO can afford to add mandated features. Mine cannot.
That is what I am afraid of. Please don't tell me that the government will rest once they get a bit of leverage over Microsoft. They will not. If they'll go so far as to regulate pickle size, they'll regulate anything.
What is the solution?
The solution is not content regulation. (For reasoning above... once the regulation in this area starts, it will never die. You think software is bloated now? Wait until the "mandate" list arrives in Redmond.
The solution is not opening the Windows source.
I know, this is a point of contention. Software should be free and all that.
For one thing, we all know that there are many security holes in Windows. I'd say thousands. We also know that most banks/high security institutions run Windows as their primary OS.
That is trouble.
Please don't say "Open Source != security problems."
On Linux, you would be right. Linux was designed free from the beginning, and the gaping holes have been patched.
But Windows? The massive security problems that would be exposed might take years to straighten out, far enough time for our savings accounts to be purged by a greedy cracker.
Please, also, don't demand MS release the source to their competitors in order to level the playing field.
This sounds nice, but then I ask you "what competitors?" If my startup want to do it's own Windows, will I be able to? Or will Sun be the only company allowed?
A playing field of MS and Sun is not an attractive one.
Also, if the Windows source is released, there is a good chance that the consumer applications market will suffer. Unix was forked, fragmented and has been permanently damaged. And Unix was a well designed system.
Linux may well be fragmented. It's only a matter of time until the kernel is forked. Then what? Sure, now we can say "No real Linux user would switch to the forked kernel."
But what if the forked kernel was good? I mean Real good. You'd switch if there was something in it for you. A faster server or some such.
Unlikely? Yes.
But in Windows? If the Windows source were released, you bet your ass there'd be a fork. Probably a month later. Because Windows is not well designed. It is not efficient. It is a bad OS.
At first, sure, a forked Windows would be great. We'd all get the better one. Right?
Until it was forked again. And again. Until we get another Unix trainwreck, where the app I wrote on Sun Windows doesn't work on AOL Windows, Microsoft Windows or Red Hat Windows.
I'm a poor startup. I can't afford to write ten versions of my program.
I also don't want the government to demand that vendors offer every OS to every customer on every computer sold.
Sure, Dell could afford it. But could Mom and Pop operations struggling as it is to compete with CompUSA? It wouldn't hurt Gateway to support ten flavors of Linux, BSD, Be, Windows and Amiga. But your corner store couldn't do it. Not in a million years.
In essence, forcing OS distribution on a sales level would serve only to help the titans by killing their smaller less financed competition. And God knows if you want to buy a computer WITHOUT a WinModem, you can pretty much dismiss Gateway/eMachine/Dell/HP/Compaq altogether.
The government should not levy a "standards" list for Windows, where everyone can develop according to the specs. Let's face it, the US Federal Government is not the fastest moving body in existence. I don't want to have to wait three years for the government to release study after study to determine that the best place to position the scroll bar is on the left. As a business, I want to say, "We're doing it this way. If it works, we'll be big. If we don't, we'll die" rather than "When the government releases the big specs sheet next year, we'll be able to write the windowing interface. Until then, we're stuck on writing mode 13h solitare."
Oh, and please don't force them to remove their web browser or bundle a competing one.
An OS without a browser out of the box is useless to almost everyone. Almost all new OSes come with browsers from Linux to PalmOS to Be to Windows. Nobody would be helped by removing the browser, and don't kid yourselves - nobody would switch to Linux just because it comes with a browser and Windows doesn't.
Bundling multiple browsers wouldn't help either. Who gets bundled? Netscape? Mozilla? Lynx? All of them?
Aren't we the ones complaining that Windows is bloated? Can you imagined forced bundling of products? What about Solitare? I be the Hoyle people would love to get a shot at that. And why not? What's so special about the browser?
So what should they do?
Restrict their licensing practices. Don't let them sell Win98 to Dell for $1.00 and to Compaq for $100.00. That'll severely limit their leverage over what is bundled with new PCs. It would have virtually eliminated the catalyst for this trial in the first place, the browser bundling war. And if HP wanted to ship their PCs with Sun Java VM, that would be fine.
Oh, and one last thing. The notion that breaking up MS would cripple them is ridiculous. The powerful MS would be the one who sells Windows. They would still have a monopoly on OSes, and their stock would skyrocket on the first day of trading to, likely, MS's present day value.
That would make Gates richer. Do you really want that?
I welcome debate, but not flames, please.
GenChalupa
I am delighted that somebody finally brought this issue of censorship to light. It has been a long time coming, but the day of reckoning is finally here.
Ironically, last night I was talking to an old fellow MIT friend of mine (Hi Jimbo!) about this very issue. Jimbo is a hell of an idea man, and he proposed a very radical act to eliminate "filtering-based" censorship.
He proposes that we extend the HTTP spec to allow *zero* access to certain types of information- intelligent data blocking software, or library censorware in this case. We're calling the plan "No Access To All Library Information Eliminators", or NATALIE.
As most of you are no doubt aware, HTTP resolves ports using the very same type of data that we are attempting to eliminate. (On a different level, of course.) So my friend and I took the liberty of also proposing a furter extension of the HTTP, this time in reference to port-resolving issues. The spec that we devised is very much accessable to all types of computer platforms, which we consider important. Because of it's multi-system accessability and success in resolving the port issue, we named it Port-man. (Like Walk Man. Get it?)
It's with great pride that I present to my fellow engineers of
There's one problem: You see, to implement this idea it will cost major capital that we lack. Some of the college students reading this though, can actually utilize financial assistance from the federal government. Last night, I read about one of the President's new "IT-sector" grants to encourage just this type of research. It's called the Grants Reward Information Technology Sector, or GRITS.
You see, I believe that GRITS can make NATALIE Port-man a reality. Unfortunately (there's always a hold-up when you deal with the government) the grant requires all research acquired using this financial to go straight to the patent office. I am against this in principle, so it seems that GRITS is petrifying NATALIE Port-man.
(sigh)
There is a loophole, however, that would allow us to get around the patent requirement. It was Bill 2356A, passed by the Senate last month. It stated that all university students' research performed *ON CAMPUS* is not intended for financial gain, and must remain free. They referred to this bill as the Technology Research Of Liability-Limited Students, otherwise known as TROLLS.
Because of the conflicting government viewpoints, it is clear that TROLLS can prevent GRITS from petrifying NATALIE Port-man.
I hope this information helps my fellow engineers here on
General Chalupa
BSD is clearly a good system, but I have some problems with Bell Labs' implementation, specifically in light of open source's fragile success in the public eye.
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It appears, externally at least that Bell Labs' engineers have a king-sized ego, and are patent greedy with their technology. I have an old friend who used to work for Bell Labs (Hi Jimbo!) and he coined an interesting term to describe the iron men there. The tend to believe Kings Never Offer Technology Trade Secrets, or as he put it, they always don KNOTTS.
These engineers are quite aggressive in their research and development, and often patent the obvious. Don't get me wrong, the are great researchers, specifically in the tech area. As my friend stated, Bell Labs has the unique talent of Great Research In Technology Sectors, or as he calls it, GRITS.
What does GRITS have to do with the engineers who don KNOTTS? A great deal, I'm afraid. Because they do not respect the engineers of the past, the leaders, if you will, they often eliminate good R&D in favor of their own flavors of the month. My friend calls this the "No Allegiance To All Leaders In Electronics, Probably Often Resorts To Making All Null," or the NATALIE-PORTMAN problem. GRITS is petrifying the engineers.
Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon. From what I can gather, technology research of logic library systems, or TROLLS is increasing. As TROLLS increase, NATALIE-PORTMAN will no longer be petrified by GRITS from engineers who don KNOTTS.
I hope this helps. I always enjoy assisting my fellow engineers here on
General Chalupa
I have to say that as an engineer at a large firm, I've logged quite a number of hours researching ways to sucessfully defend our technology against such attacks. It seems that as technology proliferates, and the Internet becomes a global interchange, things like this will increase exponentially. This is not good for eBusiness, as it leads to increased government regulation.
/.
Last month I got with an old college roommate of mine (Hi Jimbo!) who now works at a major hardware powerhouse, and we threw ideas around that may help combat the problem of crackers and l33ts nailing systems to the wall. I suppose this is as good a place as any to publicly gather feedback.
Our first idea was for a "safety net" of sorts, gathering IPS and validating DNS, packet info, etc before return transmitting data. The system, the Gathering, Researching, Intelligent Transport System (GRITS) could theoretically decrease the DoS attack exponentially.
One problem we found with GRITS was its effect on servers running Apache. We dubbed the problem the Nailing Apache Transport Access Line Interface Expansion, or NATALIE. It seems that GRITS petrified the NATALIE port, man.
Our next theory was pretty clever, if I do say so myself. Transit of packets is a genuine problem on servers hit by DoS, and rerouting these packets to low-level systems is imperative. So to counter DoS, we developed the Transit Rerouting Of Low-Level Systems, or TROLLS. TROLLS worked well, as not only did it prevent GRITS from petrifying the NATALIE port, man, but it eliminated cracker attacks.
I hope this helps. I am always glad to assist fellow engineers here on good old
General Chalupa
I've been following the Itsy project for some time now as a "civilian", and was fortunate enough to have been an engineer on the project early on. I've read a great many of the complaints and suggestions here on /. regarding the schematics and software.
/.
Last month I contacted an old collegue of mine who still works on the project, (Hi Jimbo!) and together we began, using Wine source as a base, porting the Win32 API to Itsy. We are calling the project PORTMAN.
I'm not sure if anyone actually checked out the linked schematics, but the bus of Itsy is actually pretty interesting. It features a proprietary (I know that's an evil word) technology called Timed Rerouting Online Linear-Link System (TROLLS). This allows PORTMAN to function efficiently, bypassing a slight bottleneck in the output system. (The bottleneck I refer to is caused by Grain Reciprocating Isolinear Transit Sensors (GRITS).
Before TROLLS, GRITS had the terrible effect of petrifying PORTMAN. That problem is no more. Thank God for TROLLS.
I hope this was helpful. I am always delighted to help my fellow engineers here on
General Chalupa
Perhaps the primary problem with Linux games lies not in the core underlying kernel, or even with the small but robust and ever expanding driver availability, but something far more profound. As a longtime observer of /. and Linux in general, I have found that the primary reason that gaming software is so far behind on Linux stems from the utter lack of Tri Realistic Octagonal Level Leveraging Systems, or TROLLS. While the x86 graphics subroutines utilize the bicubic underlings of quadernians, TROLLS are not common enough on 133Mhz graphics buses. The resulting AGP bottleneck is a direct result of Graphics Routing Isolinear Transport Systems, otherwise known as GRITS. The TROLLS could easily eliminate GRITS, with the help of the Nil-Access Tesla Accumulation Linux Information Expresslink, coupled with the Pipeline-Overloading Reroute Transit Micro Alpha Network. Known together as NATALIE-PORTMAN. TROLLS are well known for wanting to merge sources with NATALIE-PORTMAN. I hope you find this interesting, and perhaps gives you greater insights into Linux game systems. General Chalupa