I'd be surprised if it was some sort of upper class conspiracy; that would require a degree of organisation and collusion that I have a hard time believing.
Now, as for spending too much money on other stuff, I think you may be right there...
Because this is slashdot, and part of the process of geting an article submission accepted is to get it noticed by an editor. That requires (in part) an eye-catching headline; true or not hadly seems to matter these days.
Read all the front-page articles for a while, and you'll see that a fair percentage have a lot of highly moderated comments refuting the article as posted, sometimes even demonstrating that it's not representative of the article it's about!
You want objective news? Go somewhere else. You want some cool techy stuff and a large dollop of anti-MS/anti-Linux/anti-Java/anti-C/anti-$foo zealotry? Step right up.
These computing resources were being placed in the public domain.
So if I go out for the day and accidently leave my front door open, have I placed all my possessions in the public domain?
I've said it before, and it looks like I'm going to have to keep on saying it - just because you *can* do something doesn't mean that you *should* or that you're *allowed* to.
If it's the hydrogen you want, and you consider the chemical it's part of to be essentially a container for it, then water would presumably be the largest source; 70% of the planet's surface is covered with the stuff, and that's ignoring all the ice.
So this isn't a copyright issue or a licensing issue. It's a breach-of-contract issue, and it's entirely between Connolly and his developer.
Mmmmm, tricky one. IANAL of course, but what if the contract between the two parties specifically turned over ownership of the copyright of the code to Connolly/his company? (My employment contract certainly does similar, although with a "anythign you do on your own time with your own resources is yours" clause, thankfully)
Then the developer has no right to distribute copies of it as far as copyright law is concerned, as it's not his to distribute. Also, while the GPL clearly allows for redistribution of code that you receive, I'd be willing to bet that technically he didn't *receive* it, as he *wrote* it; it's certainly not been given to him in the usual sense of the word.
I think a decent lawyer could probably make a very strong case for this being copyright infringement as well as breach of contract. I've no idea how that would impact the Mambo project or its users, though; I'd like to think that they'd be in the clear. Again, IANAL, etc.
All of which has to be performed whether the machine is handling spam or not, unless you're laying on extra hardware to take the extra load caused by the spam...
Can I ask WHY you aren't using a Corporate Key for your copy of XP?
Perhaps because he believes that software should be paid for? (If the author is charging, of course)
Not everyone on here is hypocritcal enough ("must obey the GPL, but stuff MS's EULAs") or anti-MS enough ("they've got enough money, besides Windoze sux0zr lolololol") to rip them off just because they can.
ok don't let the computer make more than 5 simultaneous connections
That's not what it's doing at all, you can still have as many simultaneous connections as you want. What you can't have is more than 20 connections waiting to completely open; any more than 20 get queued until some of those 20 have completed (or failed).
Sure, sucks if you run apps that regularly open up a whole bunch of connections to hosts that may or may not be answering right now, but having checked my logs it's only happened to me a handful of times since I installed SP 2, despite running p2p apps while web browsing or playing online games, so it's really not that big a deal for "normal" users.
I've been running various versions of Windows for 7 years now, and have not been exploited once. Sure, there are exploits in there, but they only catch the incautious and foolish. Avoiding them is *easy*, with a little computer literacy.
poor programming decisions
I can't comment on that, and nor can you, unless you've been privvy to some of those decisions. I'll agree that some of the *design* decisions are curious to say the least, but that may well have been marketing-driven.
and heavy handed activation tactics
Install XP Pro. Activate - two, maybe three clicks. A year later, after futzing around with my hardware, I need to reactivate. Two, maybe three clicks later, it's reactivated. Total impact to me: 30 seconds? "Heavy handed"? Only if you're constantly swapping hardware around, or trying to use a pirated copy.
inconsistent UI
The *Windows* UI is consistent. *Office*, on the other hand...
predatory business practices
I'll give you that one, but temper it by pointing out that most (large) companies are as predatory as they think they can get away with being. At least MS isn't purposely draining pension funds, or flouting environmental laws, etc.
FUD-filled marketing
I'll give you that one too, but again, there's an awful lot of anti-MS FUD being pushed by sites such as this one. Two wrongs do not make a right.
the push to DRM lock in
I see that as accepting the inevitable. The *IAs are pushing hard for legally-mandated technological restrictions, and rather than wasting time and money on a fight MS might well lose, they're just doing what so many/.ers wish teh *IAs would do - working to embrace a technology-driven change. I dare say that lots of large meetings full of MS big-wigs have taken place, in which they've decided that it's best *for MS* to create the technology, rather than try to fight it. Sure, it'd be nice if they'd fight for our rights, but that's not what corporations are for, unfortunately.
every user of Windows pays. Through the nose.
Well, that's your opinion, but I can't say I see things the same way. All I see is a stable, largely hassle-free OS that gets out of my way and lets me get on with using my PC. Even after 5 years of using Linux, including 2 of using it as my primary OS at work, I couldn't say the same about that. OS X may well be the Second Coming of the perfect OS, but it doesn't run on my hardware.
*Distribution* updates, no, I don't believe so. KDE got some updates that made it run faster, but of course that did nothing for the speed of the rest of the system, and it could be argued that they were fixing problems, rather than eking out an extra bit of speed.
New versions of operating systems almost by definition add new features; new features require more code, and more code requires more resourcs to run. The only way more code can run quicker than less, all other things being equal*, is to run it on bigger, faster hardware.
* by that I mean assuming that the old code wasn't horribly inefficient, which can certainly be the case
Well, if he wrote the code that needs to handle the null, then he need to know how it should be handled. If he's inexperienced/junior enough to not be able to decide himself, he should speak to someone who can make that decision for him.
Think of it as insurance. You pay insurance companies money every month to insure your house, belongings, car, life, etc - companies (in the UK at least) are required to buy various liability insurances.
When was the last time you saw any numbers for the costs of all those various insurances, versus the likely losses? How do you know that not paying the money and taking the hit if you do get burgled wouldn't be cheaper in the long run? (In fact, as insurance companies make a profit, *it is*, on average)
Same thing here. The potential losses are imagined to be large enough that the much smaller but constant trickle of costs are deemed worth it. Besides which, no-one wants to be the one to have to say "I authorised it" should the shit hit the fan...
but if you've got a corporate copy (which most pirated releases are anyway) and a valid key there's no way to tell, surely.
That's probably true now, but if they suddenly start seeing a lot of a few of these licences showing up on a wide variety of subnets, they may start to wonder just how much IP address space the relevant companies have.
They can't tell today, but in a few months, they may well have enough data to say "these ones *must* have been leaked".
"Open source is great, but where do we get support?".
Seriously - for the project I'm on now the client has insisted we use Weblogic, even though all we're using is the servlet container. Resin or tomcat would have done the job just as well for a fraction of the cost, but they want the big-name backing and support contract.
(Yes, I realise that that's often a false sense of security - don't tell me, tell the client.)
On the one hand, open protocols and formats are in "mankind's best interest" - with the interchange stuff open, anyone can write software to interface to it. That's good for everyone except someone trying to get rich by being the only person who can write such software.
On the other hand, I believe in freedom, and that includes the freedom to not open a goddamn thing if you don't want to.
I'm getting pragmatic in my old(ish) age - I'll choose "closed but functional and adequate" over "open but flaky and not exactly what I need" any day. Of course, I'll take "open and functional and sufficient" in preference, but that's often not available.
Although, there's the matter of printer cartridges, which the courts haven't seemed to have issued a similar slap-down on...
I may well be mistaken, but wasn't part of the point of the printer cartridge fiasco that the manufacturer retained some claim to ownership of the cartridge? Hence you were supposed to return them to them for refilling/refurbishment, rather than refilling them yourself.
(Yes, I know it's a money-grabbing scheme, and I for one will never buy another Lexmark product; just sayin' what I seem to remember)
You do realise that in order to get a patent on something, you must provide full details of that something, such that an expert in the field would be able to create it, don't you?
In other words, if it's patented, it's already available for public inspection, and a) is a non-issue by definition.
the school can't afford the NDA
A minor nit, but you don't pay to sign an NDA, that'll be a condition of a licence that you do pay for. I'm under an NDA about the project I'm working on at the moment, hasn't cost me or my employers anything.
they'll set up windows to only run code generated by their development kit which will cost eleventy-two bajillion dollars
The.NET SDK is free, and includes everything required to write.NET code (including compiler, linker, interactive debugger, etc). Ditto the DirectX SDK; while that doesn't include a compiler, there's a Managed version that works just fine with the.NET SDK, or you're free to use whatever third-party IDE/compiler you like. There's no reason to suppose that MS will ever do something so guaranteed to alienate developers (especially hobbiests) as to make it financially impossible to code for Windows unless you're a (corporate) employee.
The general purpose computer is under a lot of attack nowadays.
That's true, but they're just too damned useful for the public to give them up now. Email, web-surfing, spread sheets, word processing, printing, media stuff - the list of stuff that Joe Average uses a computer for is growing. No-one is going to want to buy specific devices for each task, especially not while other fields are undergoing convergence (eg phones that have cameras and pda functionality, and built-in mp3 players and/or radios, etc).
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter all that much what the media companies want; if they cripple the PC too much, people won't buy them, and the hardware manufacturers aren't going to cut their own throats like that.
It's _kind_ of like the Froenhofer(sp?) MP3 licensing...did you notice it when you bought your mp3 player?
Well, I bought an iRiver... what I noticed in the price was the (utterly cool) remote and the (nearly as cool) ogg support, plus stuff like built-in FM radio, etc.
I don't have the exact figures, but Fraunhoffer's licencing fees are pennies per unit. That all ads up to a large chunk of cash for them, but very, very little to the end user. Hell, it's more expensive to add hardware ogg support, because the chips aren't produced in anything like the quantities.
As for buying stuff over and over, that's the primary tennet of 'planned obsolecense' economics.
That's true enough, but stuff does unavoidably break as well. The push for ever cheaper prices has lowed quality to the point where it happens more quickly than perhaps it should, but it would happen to everything eventually anyway.
to beable to talk to the hardware you'll need to license the protocol or something from microsoft, which will lock out open source/free solutions.
While I agree that that's likely, it's not necessarily so. There's nothing preventing the holder of a patent from granting a fee-free licence to anyone who asks.
That may make the resulting code GPL-incompatible, but the GPL is not the only open source licence.
The Dell PC I have at work, which was bought less than 6 months ago, has a floppy drive. 3.5" floppies are alive and kicking, which was the OP's point.
That's true, but this isn't just anyone. Look at it this way - who would you trust more, some random guy on the street who just happens to be able to operate a PC, or one of the most well-known computer scientists working today?
It's not about qualifications, it's about reputation, and this guy is staking at least part of his on this. *That* is what he's being paid for.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be surprised if it was some sort of upper class conspiracy; that would require a degree of organisation and collusion that I have a hard time believing.
Now, as for spending too much money on other stuff, I think you may be right there...
Because this is slashdot, and part of the process of geting an article submission accepted is to get it noticed by an editor. That requires (in part) an eye-catching headline; true or not hadly seems to matter these days.
Read all the front-page articles for a while, and you'll see that a fair percentage have a lot of highly moderated comments refuting the article as posted, sometimes even demonstrating that it's not representative of the article it's about!
You want objective news? Go somewhere else. You want some cool techy stuff and a large dollop of anti-MS/anti-Linux/anti-Java/anti-C/anti-$foo zealotry? Step right up.
That may well be true, but two wrongs don't make a right, at least in the eyes of the law.
These computing resources were being placed in the public domain.
So if I go out for the day and accidently leave my front door open, have I placed all my possessions in the public domain?
I've said it before, and it looks like I'm going to have to keep on saying it - just because you *can* do something doesn't mean that you *should* or that you're *allowed* to.
If it's the hydrogen you want, and you consider the chemical it's part of to be essentially a container for it, then water would presumably be the largest source; 70% of the planet's surface is covered with the stuff, and that's ignoring all the ice.
So this isn't a copyright issue or a licensing issue. It's a breach-of-contract issue, and it's entirely between Connolly and his developer.
Mmmmm, tricky one. IANAL of course, but what if the contract between the two parties specifically turned over ownership of the copyright of the code to Connolly/his company? (My employment contract certainly does similar, although with a "anythign you do on your own time with your own resources is yours" clause, thankfully)
Then the developer has no right to distribute copies of it as far as copyright law is concerned, as it's not his to distribute. Also, while the GPL clearly allows for redistribution of code that you receive, I'd be willing to bet that technically he didn't *receive* it, as he *wrote* it; it's certainly not been given to him in the usual sense of the word.
I think a decent lawyer could probably make a very strong case for this being copyright infringement as well as breach of contract. I've no idea how that would impact the Mambo project or its users, though; I'd like to think that they'd be in the clear. Again, IANAL, etc.
According to the guy who wrote the code
Who is hardly likely to say "Yup, that's right, I said I wouldn't distribute then I did anyway. Who should I make the cheque for the damages out to?"
Not saying he's not telling the truth, just that what he said cannot necessarily be taken at face value either.
All of which has to be performed whether the machine is handling spam or not, unless you're laying on extra hardware to take the extra load caused by the spam...
Can I ask WHY you aren't using a Corporate Key for your copy of XP?
Perhaps because he believes that software should be paid for? (If the author is charging, of course)
Not everyone on here is hypocritcal enough ("must obey the GPL, but stuff MS's EULAs") or anti-MS enough ("they've got enough money, besides Windoze sux0zr lolololol") to rip them off just because they can.
ok don't let the computer make more than 5 simultaneous connections
That's not what it's doing at all, you can still have as many simultaneous connections as you want. What you can't have is more than 20 connections waiting to completely open; any more than 20 get queued until some of those 20 have completed (or failed).
Sure, sucks if you run apps that regularly open up a whole bunch of connections to hosts that may or may not be answering right now, but having checked my logs it's only happened to me a handful of times since I installed SP 2, despite running p2p apps while web browsing or playing online games, so it's really not that big a deal for "normal" users.
Christ, *why*? I'm just reaching the start of year 2 for this install, and everything is fine...
What do you do to your poor system that hoses it so frequently?
Oh, bull.
/.ers wish teh *IAs would do - working to embrace a technology-driven change. I dare say that lots of large meetings full of MS big-wigs have taken place, in which they've decided that it's best *for MS* to create the technology, rather than try to fight it. Sure, it'd be nice if they'd fight for our rights, but that's not what corporations are for, unfortunately.
with their exploit ridden code
I've been running various versions of Windows for 7 years now, and have not been exploited once. Sure, there are exploits in there, but they only catch the incautious and foolish. Avoiding them is *easy*, with a little computer literacy.
poor programming decisions
I can't comment on that, and nor can you, unless you've been privvy to some of those decisions. I'll agree that some of the *design* decisions are curious to say the least, but that may well have been marketing-driven.
and heavy handed activation tactics
Install XP Pro. Activate - two, maybe three clicks. A year later, after futzing around with my hardware, I need to reactivate. Two, maybe three clicks later, it's reactivated. Total impact to me: 30 seconds? "Heavy handed"? Only if you're constantly swapping hardware around, or trying to use a pirated copy.
inconsistent UI
The *Windows* UI is consistent. *Office*, on the other hand...
predatory business practices
I'll give you that one, but temper it by pointing out that most (large) companies are as predatory as they think they can get away with being. At least MS isn't purposely draining pension funds, or flouting environmental laws, etc.
FUD-filled marketing
I'll give you that one too, but again, there's an awful lot of anti-MS FUD being pushed by sites such as this one. Two wrongs do not make a right.
the push to DRM lock in
I see that as accepting the inevitable. The *IAs are pushing hard for legally-mandated technological restrictions, and rather than wasting time and money on a fight MS might well lose, they're just doing what so many
every user of Windows pays. Through the nose.
Well, that's your opinion, but I can't say I see things the same way. All I see is a stable, largely hassle-free OS that gets out of my way and lets me get on with using my PC. Even after 5 years of using Linux, including 2 of using it as my primary OS at work, I couldn't say the same about that. OS X may well be the Second Coming of the perfect OS, but it doesn't run on my hardware.
*Distribution* updates, no, I don't believe so. KDE got some updates that made it run faster, but of course that did nothing for the speed of the rest of the system, and it could be argued that they were fixing problems, rather than eking out an extra bit of speed.
New versions of operating systems almost by definition add new features; new features require more code, and more code requires more resourcs to run. The only way more code can run quicker than less, all other things being equal*, is to run it on bigger, faster hardware.
* by that I mean assuming that the old code wasn't horribly inefficient, which can certainly be the case
How should he know how a NULL is handled?
Well, if he wrote the code that needs to handle the null, then he need to know how it should be handled. If he's inexperienced/junior enough to not be able to decide himself, he should speak to someone who can make that decision for him.
Think of it as insurance. You pay insurance companies money every month to insure your house, belongings, car, life, etc - companies (in the UK at least) are required to buy various liability insurances.
When was the last time you saw any numbers for the costs of all those various insurances, versus the likely losses? How do you know that not paying the money and taking the hit if you do get burgled wouldn't be cheaper in the long run? (In fact, as insurance companies make a profit, *it is*, on average)
Same thing here. The potential losses are imagined to be large enough that the much smaller but constant trickle of costs are deemed worth it. Besides which, no-one wants to be the one to have to say "I authorised it" should the shit hit the fan...
The average computer, when it is in standby mode, uses 35W or less.
That's good to know, but what use is a server if it's in standby mode?
The guy said he wants something on 24/7 - that to me implies accessible, especially as he mentions using it as a mail server.
but if you've got a corporate copy (which most pirated releases are anyway) and a valid key there's no way to tell, surely.
That's probably true now, but if they suddenly start seeing a lot of a few of these licences showing up on a wide variety of subnets, they may start to wonder just how much IP address space the relevant companies have.
They can't tell today, but in a few months, they may well have enough data to say "these ones *must* have been leaked".
"Open source is great, but where do we get support?".
Seriously - for the project I'm on now the client has insisted we use Weblogic, even though all we're using is the servlet container. Resin or tomcat would have done the job just as well for a fraction of the cost, but they want the big-name backing and support contract.
(Yes, I realise that that's often a false sense of security - don't tell me, tell the client.)
On the one hand, open protocols and formats are in "mankind's best interest" - with the interchange stuff open, anyone can write software to interface to it. That's good for everyone except someone trying to get rich by being the only person who can write such software.
On the other hand, I believe in freedom, and that includes the freedom to not open a goddamn thing if you don't want to.
I'm getting pragmatic in my old(ish) age - I'll choose "closed but functional and adequate" over "open but flaky and not exactly what I need" any day. Of course, I'll take "open and functional and sufficient" in preference, but that's often not available.
Although, there's the matter of printer cartridges, which the courts haven't seemed to have issued a similar slap-down on...
I may well be mistaken, but wasn't part of the point of the printer cartridge fiasco that the manufacturer retained some claim to ownership of the cartridge? Hence you were supposed to return them to them for refilling/refurbishment, rather than refilling them yourself.
(Yes, I know it's a money-grabbing scheme, and I for one will never buy another Lexmark product; just sayin' what I seem to remember)
someone could a) see something that is patended
.NET SDK is free, and includes everything required to write .NET code (including compiler, linker, interactive debugger, etc). Ditto the DirectX SDK; while that doesn't include a compiler, there's a Managed version that works just fine with the .NET SDK, or you're free to use whatever third-party IDE/compiler you like. There's no reason to suppose that MS will ever do something so guaranteed to alienate developers (especially hobbiests) as to make it financially impossible to code for Windows unless you're a (corporate) employee.
You do realise that in order to get a patent on something, you must provide full details of that something, such that an expert in the field would be able to create it, don't you?
In other words, if it's patented, it's already available for public inspection, and a) is a non-issue by definition.
the school can't afford the NDA
A minor nit, but you don't pay to sign an NDA, that'll be a condition of a licence that you do pay for. I'm under an NDA about the project I'm working on at the moment, hasn't cost me or my employers anything.
they'll set up windows to only run code generated by their development kit which will cost eleventy-two bajillion dollars
The
The general purpose computer is under a lot of attack nowadays.
That's true, but they're just too damned useful for the public to give them up now. Email, web-surfing, spread sheets, word processing, printing, media stuff - the list of stuff that Joe Average uses a computer for is growing. No-one is going to want to buy specific devices for each task, especially not while other fields are undergoing convergence (eg phones that have cameras and pda functionality, and built-in mp3 players and/or radios, etc).
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter all that much what the media companies want; if they cripple the PC too much, people won't buy them, and the hardware manufacturers aren't going to cut their own throats like that.
It's _kind_ of like the Froenhofer(sp?) MP3 licensing...did you notice it when you bought your mp3 player?
Well, I bought an iRiver... what I noticed in the price was the (utterly cool) remote and the (nearly as cool) ogg support, plus stuff like built-in FM radio, etc.
I don't have the exact figures, but Fraunhoffer's licencing fees are pennies per unit. That all ads up to a large chunk of cash for them, but very, very little to the end user. Hell, it's more expensive to add hardware ogg support, because the chips aren't produced in anything like the quantities.
As for buying stuff over and over, that's the primary tennet of 'planned obsolecense' economics.
That's true enough, but stuff does unavoidably break as well. The push for ever cheaper prices has lowed quality to the point where it happens more quickly than perhaps it should, but it would happen to everything eventually anyway.
to beable to talk to the hardware you'll need to license the protocol or something from microsoft, which will lock out open source/free solutions.
While I agree that that's likely, it's not necessarily so. There's nothing preventing the holder of a patent from granting a fee-free licence to anyone who asks.
That may make the resulting code GPL-incompatible, but the GPL is not the only open source licence.
Disappear?
The Dell PC I have at work, which was bought less than 6 months ago, has a floppy drive. 3.5" floppies are alive and kicking, which was the OP's point.
Anyone who can operate a computer can do that.
That's true, but this isn't just anyone. Look at it this way - who would you trust more, some random guy on the street who just happens to be able to operate a PC, or one of the most well-known computer scientists working today?
It's not about qualifications, it's about reputation, and this guy is staking at least part of his on this. *That* is what he's being paid for.