Enforcement is going to be the pain here...are they going to go after hosting services that aren't located in any EU country? Or just after the originator of the material? Or the person holding the domain registration?
Unenforceable laws do nothing but weaken the entire legal system, and it doesn't matter what nation or group of nations sets the law up. My advice, unasked: don't bother. 'Nuff said.
Here's the full text of the Frederick v. Morse case...typical legalese, but it also provides links to the cases which set the precedents. IANAL, but my impression after reading the case decision all the way through is that Frederick's speech was considered protected under the 1st and 14th Amendments based on its political (albeit dumb-humor and ill-timed) message...a message which Morse took umbrage to because of who he was and where he was at the time.
I don't think the courts will use the Frederick case as a precedent, but I'm pretty certain the kid's attorney will use Tinker and its precedents to support the case.
If nothing else comes of this, though, I do hope the school unbends enough to shuck out for the kid's therapy. After this, he's definitely gonna need it, whether he needed it or not beforehand.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...
This is potentially a very small website. I mean, about 98% of all its entries can probably be summed up by one word, so why not just put that word up and leave it there, sort of like Something.com?
Oh, almost forgot to mention the word that they could use to replace all those entries.
No color profiler in Elements 3, at least...and I've heard enough negative about Elements 4 not to "upgrade" to it to find out if there's one included.
I'm puzzled over something. How, exactly, does a woman donate an egg without anyone else knowing about it?
Sperm donations are easy to figure out (I'll leave the visuals to the reader's deranged imagination). But women? Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the extraction of a viable egg is a surgical procedure, and no matter how good Waldos have gotten over the years, I haven't heard of one sophisticated enough yet to allow a woman to perform that procedure on herself. So the question is, who performed the procedure, and who assisted?
"Three can keep a secret if two are dead." So goes the cliche. It's been proven accurate with this minor scandal. Unfortunately for the researcher, the gory details got out before he was able to either bring them forward himself or develop a solid-enough cover. But rather than looking to the surreptitious donors, I'd be looking for whoever did the egg extractions, and asking why they outed the mess. No publication credit? Money? Personality clash? Something I haven't thought of?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled slashdotting intellectual discussion, already in progress...
For those of us who live on the outskirts of Far South BFE, such an offering means very little. I have exactly two options for 'Net connectivity: satellite (cost-prohibitive at this point, and unreliable in winter), and dialup (too slow to be workable; I typically get data rates of *gasp* 26.4k on the copper). BPL is an available option for some, but limited deployment and reportedly poor performance, not to mention the uproar from the amateur radio sector, restricts that option as well. So marketing such things to us is a waste of advertising dollars.
In short...I'd pay exactly zero, since that's how much use I would get out of such an offering. YMMV.
This is one of those things that makes me wonder...which "side" is pushing the technological envelope further and faster, the {spammers | malware slimers | virus breeders} or those who develop to defeat them?
Since it's generally agreed that history is written by the winners of a given conflict, I guess we won't have an answer to that until the war's over.
This comment generously brought to you by a severe lack of caffeine.
While it's possible that it could just be PR to make us watch the left hand while the right is up to no, good, it is also quite possible that Hilf is genuine in his approach to technology.
Strangely enough, I have to agree with this position. Hilf's responses and comments, sanitized though they may be, come across as clueful at the very worst. And yes, I did catch the "co-opetition" codeword, but I'm not especially put off by it at this point.
[soapbox] MSFT did some bad things in the past, and has accomplished more to piss off and marginalize a fairly large and intelligent IT community than any other company I can think of (and I'm including SCOX in that, btw). Does that mean we should continue to vilify MSFT as a whole? Speaking solely for myself, I don't think so. My stance is that the selection of an OS and associated apps is a matter of "the right tool for the job" more than a matter of brand loyalty. If there's a specific task to accomplish using a computer, and a COTS app that handles that task, and a justification for the expense of the COTS app instead of developing from scratch, then go with the COTS app, no matter what hardware or OS is needed. Otherwise, write and implement the app using whatever OS makes more sense for the end-user of that app. The end result will matter a lot more to the users, and the PHBs those users report to, than the means used to reach that end.
[/soapbox]
Just adding my two cents...eventually we'll have enough to buy a root beer or something.
The idea isn't exactly new...refereed and peer-reviewed professional journals have been doing something along these lines for decades. Google, as I read it, is attempting to apply some basic scholarly principles to their listings.
Now the bad news...I don't think it will work as described. Counting "number of bureaux cited" or hops from originator isn't exactly going to keep faked articles off their listings; as someone else already pointed out, it may be a matter of shucking out the cash for a domain that suddenly gets listed as "high trust level." Then that domain can be used to post pretty much whatever they want to make people think is accurate journalism.
Sorry...I like the concept of automating the tedious task of fact-checking, but until Google can get their clusters' AI well beyond the Turing-test phase, it's not going to happen. Humans will still need to examine articles and references and make decisions as to whether a particular submission is, in fact, valid and accurate.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...
Ok... can you name one specialised application not written by MS or their cronies that runs stably and reliably on Windows?
Actually, yes, I can. Sony's Vegas 6 video nonlinear editing software. I've put many hours into its use under WinXP, and have only had a problem due to either hardware failure (a bad 1394 cable) or operator headspace error. (Unless, of course, a case can be made that Sony is a MSFT "crony"...a distinct possibility considering corporate intertwining in the US today. But I digress.)
Admittedly, adding two more would be difficult. But I am a business-level MSFT user and student programmer/analyst/developer (who proudly refuses to pony up for any MSFT cert), so I don't lay claim to an all-encompassing knowledge of available, COTS apps for niche markets like medicine or science.
Please also note that I said "reasonable job"...MSFT, like all others (please debate that!), is not computing perfection, as I believe I pointed out earlier.
(I don't mean any of this to come across as trolling or an attempt at a flamewar...I'm merely stating my observations, which admittedly may be in error.)
On this, we're agreed...MSFT's biggest error was trying not only to design Windows as the perfect platform for all things computer, but then market it as such. Society, as a whole, demands specialization, and specialization is one major place where Windows, as an OS, fails (IMHO).
[soapbox] No single OS can fill the bill for all needs. Windows actually does a reasonable job for the casual home user, many business tasks, and even a handful of specialized scientific and medical applications. (Please don't ask me to name three.) Other applications need the capabilities of other OSs, whether it be Solaris, Linux, OS X, AS/400 or VMS. Choose the tool that does the job best, even if it requires some work to determine what that right tool is. [/soapbox]
Microsoft originally created the Windows interface, not for computer-savvy users, but for managers...people who decided, for whatever reason, they needed a certain amount of computer power to do their jobs but didn't want to have to go through learning all the arcane CLI incantations to get the machine to do what they want. The computer-savvy users (a comparatively small population at the time) were happily typing in commands and writing.bat files to take care of all their needs, but got force-fed the GUI because -- wait for it -- Microsoft made lots of money by selling to the aforementioned managers, more than they did to the computer-savvy users.
Now we're at the logical outcome of that marketing exercise...much of the business-computing world uses a Windows variant as its primary {GUI | OS}, with all the arcana buried deep within.dlls where most of us don't bother digging around. To even access a command-line in anything after Win98 requires that the user know exactly what they're looking for. Again, this is a logical "feature" meant to keep managers from doing damage to their systems. (Think what happens if you don't have a user chrooted and they do something really n00bishly inane like the infamous "rm -rf". Sometimes security through obscurity does work.)
I'm not trying to play favorites here...I like the raw power I get on my home "play" box using a term window, or just plain booting to runlevel 3, and I can accomplish 90% of all the tasks that I employ a computer for using just that. But I'm the rare one in the house; everyone else would be completely lost without their GUI, and whether anyone likes the idea or not, MSFT successfully markets the prevalent GUI in use. Combined with what has become "commodity" hardware, it outsells the nearest rival by a goodly amount, whether or not that rival is actually a better platform.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...
I don't know what the European specs are, but the (US) FAA "standard person", which is what most aircraft designs use, is (IIRC) 5'10" and 170 pounds. (I'm sure of the 170 pounds, just not about the 5'10" height.)
Gives the term "flying boxcar" a whole new meaning...
True, but the "average user" in my place of employment doesn't do printer setup either. That's reserved for the hardware techs, or "gurus." And while most "average users" at home expect to be able to plug the printer into the appropriate ports and have it work (face it, that's something where Windows users have the advantage), I'm not familiar with that many "average users" who use *nix (read: any platform where CUPS would normally be found or put to use). Face it, they're a rare breed in the overall home-computing world, however much we might wish otherwise.
As far as printer setup for the average *nix box admin, CUPS may have something of a learning curve, but it beats writing/etc/printcap recipes by hand. As laziness is a lauded virtue of the sysadmin, I'm for anything that decreases the amount of time I'm beating the box into submission, and CUPS certainly fills the bill for that. If effectively using CUPS means I bury myself in a book for a span of time, so be it.
Not long ago, there was a Slashdot review of a certain book, which included a chapter on CUPS that can be downloaded for free (can't beat that price!). It seems to demystify the entire process of administering CUPS.
Five cents, please...(that's about all my opinion is worth these days)
Just a couple of nits I want to pick, even though I'm very much in agreement with you.
I don't even look at the timelines for major MSFT projects like Longhorn, because MSFT has fallen prey to the dubious wonders of feature creep and similar development problems. As you say, they've lost control of the process. I'm described as a "competent user" by some, and I'm on the educational path to becoming a developer, so I'm familiar with such problems in the development process. Meanwhile, I look at the end result, not the predictions (including time) for the release. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from W3.1, because it was a solid, functional GUI. In the Commodore days (remember those?), I was a die-hard GEOS fan, even with the minor irritation of the disks locking themselves to the hardware (which made it all but inoperable if I had to replace a failed drive or something). I like using Linux on my play box at home just to try and learn what I can do with it that can't be done cheaply on my MSFT box (Octave and gnuplot saved my bacon on a class project twice...I don't want to know what I would have shelled out for a full copy of Matlab or Mathematica).
I think what it's really going to boil down to is a) who can deliver what the user wants and b) how steep the learning curve is. Marketroid-babble notwithstanding, MSFT's products are very popular because they were originally designed for managers, not techies. They provided a reasonably simple and easy-to-learn GUI and hid all the compu-arcana behind the curtain. Linux can do exactly the same under X and a good WM, but some of the more powerful tools still require CLI usage. That might be why Linux, taken colloquially as a full OS package, is slow to gain general-public acceptance.
Again, this is just my two cents' worth (and I'm still waiting for my morning cuppa to kick in). Let me know how much change is due, and I'll credit someone's karma account accordingly.
I think you're close, especially in the last part, but there are a couple of pieces of the puzzle that aren't quite fitting in.
Commoditization of the core market isn't anything new. I'd be willing to say that MSFT made tremendous strides since the release of W3.1 in capturing the market share they did. Yes, they're struggling now to hold the market share they have, especially with Linux proving to be a more secure {server | router | firewall | etc. } when properly administered. This is mostly due to the glut of crackers and script kiddies who insist on attacking the most prominent target; it's likely that if OS/2 were the big player on the desktop market, they'd be attacking that instead of MSFT. A simple matter of "big targets make big noises when they crash." The remainder - fill in your own percentage - doesn't focus on MS products; it's bad system and network administration, no matter the OS or platform.
IMHO MSFT is going to wind up collapsing under its own ponderous weight, between the continuing attacks of said crackers and script kiddies who keep finding more vulnerabilities to exploit, their ongoing legal woes in the EU, and their loss of market share elsewhere in the developing world. It may be Linux that fills the void; it may not. At this point, a timeline isn't very easily predicted, but based on what I'm seeing they're putting a great many of their eggs in the basket that is Longhorn. The next two years may well tell the tale, either of MSFT's recovery or ultimate downfall.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Several smartcards IC's have EAL 5+ certification.
There's a big difference between smart cards and an entire OS. A smart card carries data and the means to encrypt/decrypt it. An OS makes the entire box work the way it's designed to (theoretically, anyway).
Maybe gaining EAL4 doesn't open the floodgates. But it certainly puts a foot in the door.
IANAL, but there is such a thing as suing for malicious prosecution. Granted, that refers to a criminal trial action, but I don't see why it can't be used in a civil action as well.
Little wonder we don't hear a lot from IBM's attorneys...they're trying to figure out how to enter into a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent, and try to drag it out long enough to make sure SCO's meager coffers are sucked dry no sooner than halfway through.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a new floppy drive or something.
SCO needs to be destroyed. No bought or settled with, but crushed, utterly and completely. What they have done is unethical, immoral and (hopefully) completely without legal base.
Your wish is most likely granted, and it's going to be by SCO's own hand. Someone called them "the 800-pound gorilla" a while back, when I mentioned that they should be bought up. They may still be an 800-pound gorilla, but gorillas don't fare very well against a well-trained sharpshooter (read: IBM).
What's going to destroy them? Simple. IBM, and anyone else who wanders along and wants to buy in, will happily dedicate the financial resources needed to tie SCO's suit up in court for years. SCO will simply go broke from litigation costs. I doubt even MSFT is going to stand by them, no matter the appearances of MSFT's recent purchase of a license from SCO. This, of course, is predicated on the court not tossing the whole thing out in the first two weeks as a frivolous lawsuit.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a banana split or something.
If the stories were hitting WSJ or Forbes with the same frequency as they do on Slashdot, you might have a valid point. As far as they're concerned, though, Slashdot is just a well-known soapbox for a mix of clueful people and "my OS is better than your OS" ranters.
The only thing that's going to choke off their oxygen supply is for the people who control the purse strings to take their business elsewhere. With Microsoft dumping a transfusion of ready cash into their coffers "to buy a license", that just might be enough to keep their lawyers on the job a little while longer.
The best possible option IMO is for IBM to buy SCO out, in as hostile a takeover bid as possible, thereby tying up the funding that SCO would otherwise put to use pursuing this IP idiocy.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose we'll never have to worry about seeing a Broadband Unification Board, will we?
Enforcement is going to be the pain here...are they going to go after hosting services that aren't located in any EU country? Or just after the originator of the material? Or the person holding the domain registration?
Unenforceable laws do nothing but weaken the entire legal system, and it doesn't matter what nation or group of nations sets the law up. My advice, unasked: don't bother. 'Nuff said.
Squeak is actually a Smalltalk derivative.
[/pedant]
Here's the full text of the Frederick v. Morse case...typical legalese, but it also provides links to the cases which set the precedents. IANAL, but my impression after reading the case decision all the way through is that Frederick's speech was considered protected under the 1st and 14th Amendments based on its political (albeit dumb-humor and ill-timed) message...a message which Morse took umbrage to because of who he was and where he was at the time.
I don't think the courts will use the Frederick case as a precedent, but I'm pretty certain the kid's attorney will use Tinker and its precedents to support the case.
If nothing else comes of this, though, I do hope the school unbends enough to shuck out for the kid's therapy. After this, he's definitely gonna need it, whether he needed it or not beforehand.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...
This is potentially a very small website. I mean, about 98% of all its entries can probably be summed up by one word, so why not just put that word up and leave it there, sort of like Something.com?
Oh, almost forgot to mention the word that they could use to replace all those entries.
CRIMETHINK.
No color profiler in Elements 3, at least...and I've heard enough negative about Elements 4 not to "upgrade" to it to find out if there's one included.
I'm puzzled over something. How, exactly, does a woman donate an egg without anyone else knowing about it?
Sperm donations are easy to figure out (I'll leave the visuals to the reader's deranged imagination). But women? Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the extraction of a viable egg is a surgical procedure, and no matter how good Waldos have gotten over the years, I haven't heard of one sophisticated enough yet to allow a woman to perform that procedure on herself. So the question is, who performed the procedure, and who assisted?
"Three can keep a secret if two are dead." So goes the cliche. It's been proven accurate with this minor scandal. Unfortunately for the researcher, the gory details got out before he was able to either bring them forward himself or develop a solid-enough cover. But rather than looking to the surreptitious donors, I'd be looking for whoever did the egg extractions, and asking why they outed the mess. No publication credit? Money? Personality clash? Something I haven't thought of?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled slashdotting intellectual discussion, already in progress...
For those of us who live on the outskirts of Far South BFE, such an offering means very little. I have exactly two options for 'Net connectivity: satellite (cost-prohibitive at this point, and unreliable in winter), and dialup (too slow to be workable; I typically get data rates of *gasp* 26.4k on the copper). BPL is an available option for some, but limited deployment and reportedly poor performance, not to mention the uproar from the amateur radio sector, restricts that option as well. So marketing such things to us is a waste of advertising dollars.
In short...I'd pay exactly zero, since that's how much use I would get out of such an offering. YMMV.
'Sure a woman can block pop ups, all she has to do is giggle.'
Giggling, by itself, won't block popups. Giggling in conjunction with pointing, however...
A sidenote...LWM is down indefinitely. See the note on the site.
This is one of those things that makes me wonder...which "side" is pushing the technological envelope further and faster, the {spammers | malware slimers | virus breeders} or those who develop to defeat them?
Since it's generally agreed that history is written by the winners of a given conflict, I guess we won't have an answer to that until the war's over.
This comment generously brought to you by a severe lack of caffeine.
While it's possible that it could just be PR to make us watch the left hand while the right is up to no, good, it is also quite possible that Hilf is genuine in his approach to technology.
Strangely enough, I have to agree with this position. Hilf's responses and comments, sanitized though they may be, come across as clueful at the very worst. And yes, I did catch the "co-opetition" codeword, but I'm not especially put off by it at this point.
[soapbox]
MSFT did some bad things in the past, and has accomplished more to piss off and marginalize a fairly large and intelligent IT community than any other company I can think of (and I'm including SCOX in that, btw). Does that mean we should continue to vilify MSFT as a whole? Speaking solely for myself, I don't think so. My stance is that the selection of an OS and associated apps is a matter of "the right tool for the job" more than a matter of brand loyalty. If there's a specific task to accomplish using a computer, and a COTS app that handles that task, and a justification for the expense of the COTS app instead of developing from scratch, then go with the COTS app, no matter what hardware or OS is needed. Otherwise, write and implement the app using whatever OS makes more sense for the end-user of that app. The end result will matter a lot more to the users, and the PHBs those users report to, than the means used to reach that end. [/soapbox]
Just adding my two cents...eventually we'll have enough to buy a root beer or something.
The idea isn't exactly new...refereed and peer-reviewed professional journals have been doing something along these lines for decades. Google, as I read it, is attempting to apply some basic scholarly principles to their listings.
Now the bad news...I don't think it will work as described. Counting "number of bureaux cited" or hops from originator isn't exactly going to keep faked articles off their listings; as someone else already pointed out, it may be a matter of shucking out the cash for a domain that suddenly gets listed as "high trust level." Then that domain can be used to post pretty much whatever they want to make people think is accurate journalism.
Sorry...I like the concept of automating the tedious task of fact-checking, but until Google can get their clusters' AI well beyond the Turing-test phase, it's not going to happen. Humans will still need to examine articles and references and make decisions as to whether a particular submission is, in fact, valid and accurate.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...
Ok... can you name one specialised application not written by MS or their cronies that runs stably and reliably on Windows?
Actually, yes, I can. Sony's Vegas 6 video nonlinear editing software. I've put many hours into its use under WinXP, and have only had a problem due to either hardware failure (a bad 1394 cable) or operator headspace error. (Unless, of course, a case can be made that Sony is a MSFT "crony"...a distinct possibility considering corporate intertwining in the US today. But I digress.)
Admittedly, adding two more would be difficult. But I am a business-level MSFT user and student programmer/analyst/developer (who proudly refuses to pony up for any MSFT cert), so I don't lay claim to an all-encompassing knowledge of available, COTS apps for niche markets like medicine or science.
Please also note that I said "reasonable job"...MSFT, like all others (please debate that!), is not computing perfection, as I believe I pointed out earlier.
(I don't mean any of this to come across as trolling or an attempt at a flamewar...I'm merely stating my observations, which admittedly may be in error.)
On this, we're agreed...MSFT's biggest error was trying not only to design Windows as the perfect platform for all things computer, but then market it as such. Society, as a whole, demands specialization, and specialization is one major place where Windows, as an OS, fails (IMHO).
[soapbox]
No single OS can fill the bill for all needs. Windows actually does a reasonable job for the casual home user, many business tasks, and even a handful of specialized scientific and medical applications. (Please don't ask me to name three.) Other applications need the capabilities of other OSs, whether it be Solaris, Linux, OS X, AS/400 or VMS. Choose the tool that does the job best, even if it requires some work to determine what that right tool is.
[/soapbox]
Microsoft originally created the Windows interface, not for computer-savvy users, but for managers...people who decided, for whatever reason, they needed a certain amount of computer power to do their jobs but didn't want to have to go through learning all the arcane CLI incantations to get the machine to do what they want. The computer-savvy users (a comparatively small population at the time) were happily typing in commands and writing .bat files to take care of all their needs, but got force-fed the GUI because -- wait for it -- Microsoft made lots of money by selling to the aforementioned managers, more than they did to the computer-savvy users.
Now we're at the logical outcome of that marketing exercise...much of the business-computing world uses a Windows variant as its primary {GUI | OS}, with all the arcana buried deep within .dlls where most of us don't bother digging around. To even access a command-line in anything after Win98 requires that the user know exactly what they're looking for. Again, this is a logical "feature" meant to keep managers from doing damage to their systems. (Think what happens if you don't have a user chrooted and they do something really n00bishly inane like the infamous "rm -rf". Sometimes security through obscurity does work.)
I'm not trying to play favorites here...I like the raw power I get on my home "play" box using a term window, or just plain booting to runlevel 3, and I can accomplish 90% of all the tasks that I employ a computer for using just that. But I'm the rare one in the house; everyone else would be completely lost without their GUI, and whether anyone likes the idea or not, MSFT successfully markets the prevalent GUI in use. Combined with what has become "commodity" hardware, it outsells the nearest rival by a goodly amount, whether or not that rival is actually a better platform.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...
I don't know what the European specs are, but the (US) FAA "standard person", which is what most aircraft designs use, is (IIRC) 5'10" and 170 pounds. (I'm sure of the 170 pounds, just not about the 5'10" height.)
Gives the term "flying boxcar" a whole new meaning...
True, but the "average user" in my place of employment doesn't do printer setup either. That's reserved for the hardware techs, or "gurus." And while most "average users" at home expect to be able to plug the printer into the appropriate ports and have it work (face it, that's something where Windows users have the advantage), I'm not familiar with that many "average users" who use *nix (read: any platform where CUPS would normally be found or put to use). Face it, they're a rare breed in the overall home-computing world, however much we might wish otherwise.
As far as printer setup for the average *nix box admin, CUPS may have something of a learning curve, but it beats writing /etc/printcap recipes by hand. As laziness is a lauded virtue of the sysadmin, I'm for anything that decreases the amount of time I'm beating the box into submission, and CUPS certainly fills the bill for that. If effectively using CUPS means I bury myself in a book for a span of time, so be it.
Not long ago, there was a Slashdot review of a certain book, which included a chapter on CUPS that can be downloaded for free (can't beat that price!). It seems to demystify the entire process of administering CUPS.
Five cents, please...(that's about all my opinion is worth these days)
Just a couple of nits I want to pick, even though I'm very much in agreement with you.
I don't even look at the timelines for major MSFT projects like Longhorn, because MSFT has fallen prey to the dubious wonders of feature creep and similar development problems. As you say, they've lost control of the process. I'm described as a "competent user" by some, and I'm on the educational path to becoming a developer, so I'm familiar with such problems in the development process. Meanwhile, I look at the end result, not the predictions (including time) for the release. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from W3.1, because it was a solid, functional GUI. In the Commodore days (remember those?), I was a die-hard GEOS fan, even with the minor irritation of the disks locking themselves to the hardware (which made it all but inoperable if I had to replace a failed drive or something). I like using Linux on my play box at home just to try and learn what I can do with it that can't be done cheaply on my MSFT box (Octave and gnuplot saved my bacon on a class project twice...I don't want to know what I would have shelled out for a full copy of Matlab or Mathematica).
I think what it's really going to boil down to is a) who can deliver what the user wants and b) how steep the learning curve is. Marketroid-babble notwithstanding, MSFT's products are very popular because they were originally designed for managers, not techies. They provided a reasonably simple and easy-to-learn GUI and hid all the compu-arcana behind the curtain. Linux can do exactly the same under X and a good WM, but some of the more powerful tools still require CLI usage. That might be why Linux, taken colloquially as a full OS package, is slow to gain general-public acceptance.
Again, this is just my two cents' worth (and I'm still waiting for my morning cuppa to kick in). Let me know how much change is due, and I'll credit someone's karma account accordingly.
I think you're close, especially in the last part, but there are a couple of pieces of the puzzle that aren't quite fitting in.
Commoditization of the core market isn't anything new. I'd be willing to say that MSFT made tremendous strides since the release of W3.1 in capturing the market share they did. Yes, they're struggling now to hold the market share they have, especially with Linux proving to be a more secure {server | router | firewall | etc. } when properly administered. This is mostly due to the glut of crackers and script kiddies who insist on attacking the most prominent target; it's likely that if OS/2 were the big player on the desktop market, they'd be attacking that instead of MSFT. A simple matter of "big targets make big noises when they crash." The remainder - fill in your own percentage - doesn't focus on MS products; it's bad system and network administration, no matter the OS or platform.
IMHO MSFT is going to wind up collapsing under its own ponderous weight, between the continuing attacks of said crackers and script kiddies who keep finding more vulnerabilities to exploit, their ongoing legal woes in the EU, and their loss of market share elsewhere in the developing world. It may be Linux that fills the void; it may not. At this point, a timeline isn't very easily predicted, but based on what I'm seeing they're putting a great many of their eggs in the basket that is Longhorn. The next two years may well tell the tale, either of MSFT's recovery or ultimate downfall.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Several smartcards IC's have EAL 5+ certification.
There's a big difference between smart cards and an entire OS. A smart card carries data and the means to encrypt/decrypt it. An OS makes the entire box work the way it's designed to (theoretically, anyway).
Maybe gaining EAL4 doesn't open the floodgates. But it certainly puts a foot in the door.
IANAL, but there is such a thing as suing for malicious prosecution. Granted, that refers to a criminal trial action, but I don't see why it can't be used in a civil action as well.
Little wonder we don't hear a lot from IBM's attorneys...they're trying to figure out how to enter into a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent, and try to drag it out long enough to make sure SCO's meager coffers are sucked dry no sooner than halfway through.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a new floppy drive or something.
SCO needs to be destroyed. No bought or settled with, but crushed, utterly and completely. What they have done is unethical, immoral and (hopefully) completely without legal base.
Your wish is most likely granted, and it's going to be by SCO's own hand. Someone called them "the 800-pound gorilla" a while back, when I mentioned that they should be bought up. They may still be an 800-pound gorilla, but gorillas don't fare very well against a well-trained sharpshooter (read: IBM).
What's going to destroy them? Simple. IBM, and anyone else who wanders along and wants to buy in, will happily dedicate the financial resources needed to tie SCO's suit up in court for years. SCO will simply go broke from litigation costs. I doubt even MSFT is going to stand by them, no matter the appearances of MSFT's recent purchase of a license from SCO. This, of course, is predicated on the court not tossing the whole thing out in the first two weeks as a frivolous lawsuit.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a banana split or something.
If the stories were hitting WSJ or Forbes with the same frequency as they do on Slashdot, you might have a valid point. As far as they're concerned, though, Slashdot is just a well-known soapbox for a mix of clueful people and "my OS is better than your OS" ranters.
The only thing that's going to choke off their oxygen supply is for the people who control the purse strings to take their business elsewhere. With Microsoft dumping a transfusion of ready cash into their coffers "to buy a license", that just might be enough to keep their lawyers on the job a little while longer.
The best possible option IMO is for IBM to buy SCO out, in as hostile a takeover bid as possible, thereby tying up the funding that SCO would otherwise put to use pursuing this IP idiocy.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.