Not only that, but they were duped into distributing the "stolen" code themselves. Oops!
"Damn," Darl is saying..."where were the lawyers then. They should have warned us that distributing our own source code under the GPL might have some unintended consequenses!"
"We weren't really expected to know what that source code was, were we?"
"I never read contracts either - I'm not supposed to right?"
The REAL problem will be that 400 years from now, the telco's will still be charging for it.
Just like DTMF dialing, the telco's want to suck it up and dine on the pocket-books of their customers far longer than needed. So, far from just covering costs, it becomes it's own profit center.
If local telco's were more honest about the charges needed and ceased charging when it wasn't required, we'd not fight tooth and nail to keep them from charging when needed. But since they do everything they can to take advantage of us, we obviously learn to play the game and try to screw them back.
Not productive, but it seems, the only way to play the game.
If SCO has infringing code and knew it, then they wouldn't have said anything, IMHO.
Perhaps they're so stupid, that when they found the infringing code, they simply assumed without any due dilligence that the infringement was from SCO to linux, but that streches the imagination.
But, it seems like someone stealing your stuff out of your garage, and then selling them next door for $100 a bag.
I offer you a few, for free, and you sell them yourself for $100, and then try to charge the buyer of your bags for possession of stolen property.
A judge would be fairly incredulous that you hadn't even looked inside the bags to determine what you were selling, and would generally hold harmless anyone who bought your bags (of your own stolen stuff).
That might not make the code GPL'd, but it would make it very difficult to convince a judge to hold anyone else responsible for the theft than the neighbor. It's likely there would be provisions to "assist" those who had unknowingly participated in the event.
If the "review" of the product released by SCO was too lax, then I can see a judge simply saying: "SCO, you should have known better, and checked better. Since you didn't, it would be reasonable for anyone to rely on your professions of GPL release and thus, even though you didn't intend, your lack of due dilligence compels the court to consider your release a GPL'd release."
Clearly, this is for a Judge to decide.
But these things only apply if code that IS SCO's is found in the the kernel, which I doubt will happen.
So, in the best case for SCO, some code is found, and a judge allows for that code to be removed with no penalty.
Middle case: SCO's code is found in kernel, but SCO loses rights to the code and it's declared as GPL'd.
Worst case: No offending code is found, SCO is slashed and bashed in counter by IBM and every SCO shareholder loses 100% of their equity investment.
Doesn't look like a good possible case to me for SCO.
"Microsoft just have a more clueful business model, if you look into the pricing of the systems you will quickly see the smart move to make."
--- But might not this show EXACTLY the type of behavior a monopolist might use to move into other markets. They can afford to lose huge sums of money to give away cheap (or "free") the software until no competitor exists and then raise the price. This is exactly what is happening in IE. It's not going to be available for Mac anymore, and you won't get updates for anything other than XP and future OS's. So, they raise the price of the OS and recoup the costs.
So, Real and Apple have to try to gain more money from the client and server markets. They can't afford the huge losses.
Just because other competitors are doing dumb things, don't assume it's simply a better product. Part of the cause of those dumb responses is the pressure of competing against a vendor who uses massive leverage in the market to extend their monopoly.
I don't like Real any better than you do, and I'd not shed a single tear if they dissapeared into a black hole this instant. But that doesn't excuse MS's behavior either.
Oh, technically it was the truth, just like Bill Clinton "didn't have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
(Never mind that the British won't share their source for the documents. It's really the truth, I just can't show you. Remind you of anyone lately? SCO anyone?! Never mind that we reviewed the documents themselves and found them to be crude forgeries. Never mind that UNSCOM did the same, and came to the same conclusion.)
But only a moron would think that Bill Clinton didn't have sex, given what he DID do.
Only a moron would think that GWB didn't have the information that showed that the British info was wrong. (I'll even go one further, and say that we likely had the information that the British were going to claim this, and knew even before they claimed it, that it was wrong.)
Even if he didn't get that memo from Cheney, which he should have gotten from the State Department, then the only excuse is GWB and his appoited staff are total bumbling idiots.
(Not to mention the fact the the CIA had already warned GWB off the story once. One would think that one embarrassing retraction from a speech would be enough to make it stick in your memory.)
(If GWB was managing the local Wallmart, I'd not be too worried. But in case anyone hadn't noticed, somehow he woodwinked himself into the Whitehouse.)
It was a "white" lie. Sure, technically the British did say that. But GWB knew from independant sources it wasn't right, and used that statement knowing someday, if someone found out the truth, he could say "Technically it was true."
It was a lie, an intential lie and definitly intended to mislead.
Bush lies in the State of the Union speech about matters of life and death.
"The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
From - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3056626.stm
A lie is a lie, but the repercussions of a lie to a deposition in a civil case, vs. a lie to the American public about a war - I know which I'd rank higher.
All presidents lie. If you believe that GWB is somehow better than Clinton, you're a crack smoking kook.
It will be the sequel to the movie of the same name.
In short, the story is about the fall of the Shaw of Iran, how the Iranians took Americans hostage, and over time, the US decided Saddam Hussain was a great guy because he was willing to gas the Iranians, and generally act as a water-boy for the US.
(Unfortunatly, the outcome isn't nearly as satisfying as in the newer sequel. Probably the only time in history, the sequel is better.)
If they had ten times as many people working on the OS, how come it took them forever to get v2 out. Which never happened, even though they supposedly had been working on it for a long time. IBM then got cranky for the long long long time it had waited for v2, and did it themselves. And, btw, added windows support pretty quickly too.
Even then, I can put thousands of people to "work" on something, but make sure they never accomplish much.
My friend who actually worked on that project says he thinks it started in 1988, and that it shipped somewhere around 1992. And he confirmed what I told you: after the "divorce" IBM took over all development, and Microsoft put all the hundreds of OS/2 developers on other projects.
OS/2 2.X was supposed to build on all the lessons learned from 1.x and make much of what appeared in Windows then. v2 was stalled (the OS, I'm not talking about apps) for a very long time. I believe Win 3.1 shipped before IBM took over OS development.
Windows basically didn't exist before V3 - it did, but no one used it. If OS/2 had been developed correctly and in a timely manner, there wouldn't have been any need to "port" apps from Windows to OS/2. Moot point.
You may think MS thought OS/2 was the future, but I believe that MS's heart from the TOP (Gates et al.) and never really intended to make OS/2 good. It wasn't MS's product, and they didn't want to raise someone elses child.
There was the fact that Windows came out just as graphic stations became widely available, and memory was available in amounts that make it possible too. In short, I understand some of this was timing, but I think that MS "helped" too.
As far as the Windows compatability in OS/2 2.x and WARP, it was VERY good. Way better than Win 3.1/3.11. Perhaps you never used it. I did. I also wrote a bunch of batch language to create Windows folders, and icons to put apps on desktops when users logged into the network. Very nifty stuff.
I'm tired of typing. My point still stands that I think MS didn't have much interest in seeing OS/2 succeed and didn't put much effort in making it fly. (I know you'll disagree, but I guess that's how it goes.)
There will always be morons that can't build bridges without problems. There will always be extra-ordinary circumstances too. (You can bet the engineers that signed off on things had big questions to answer too. Planes fall from the sky occasionally too, but we examine those defects very carefully and fix them where we can. If we did airplanes like we do software, we'd just build them willy-nilly and fix them only after they had plummeted from the sky.)
But, if more bridges collapsed than stayed up, as in software, I think we'd all say there was a problem.
The problems we accept in software are and would be unacceptable in any other industry.
Why people have put up with garbage for so long, I don't know. Hopefully it changes soon.
It's like trying to get accurate info about sucecssful hack attemts. Impossible.
WEP hacks is even worse. Those that use WEP probably couldn't tell if they were hacked if BO was loaded on their machine, much less packet monitor and notice there was a new station on the network.
WEP may not get hacked often, but frankly, I like deterministic approaches, rather than "no one will hack me, it's just too much work."
I want to know, if I do things right, it's nearly impossible to hack me unless you're the NSA or something.
I have an AP in my house, and I don't allow any traffic at all unless it's running under IPSec VPN.
It's wide open, but firewalled off all by it's lonesome. No bother even doing WEP, IMHO.
'Course, I'm way paranoid.
I'm still waiting for a serious scientific review of WPA, though this actually makes me feel a bit better. It just means I'll share keys via disk or something that will hold a 256 byte mostly random key.
So, from lack of proper maintainance, the bridges collapse?
Would you consider than an engineering defect?
Can I have the crack you're smoking - it must be good!
Software engineering can be a much more exact science. The argument usually is: It will be too expensive.
Well, factor in the costs borne by the entire Windows user world, and it wouldn't matter if Windows cost 3 times what it does now, it would still be cheaper than the mess we're in now.
Designing secure and bug-free software is a tedious process, but do-able. Go ream Minasi's "Software Conspiracy." It will open your eyes.
You gloss over the fact that IBM left OS/2 in microsoft's hands, and nothing got done.
Eventually, IBM yanked the project away from MS because nothing was getting done.
Yet, by the time this happened, it was too late. OS/2 couldn't bridge the gap.
(OS/2 was years ahead of Windows in functionality and stability. Many of Windows 3.1 programmers used the OS/2 platform because it was more stable and productive to write apps on.)
I think MS's plan became - hold OS/2, develop windows. Make sure we have Windows apps ready to go. Don't spend much time on OS/2. Clearly, MS bit the hand that fed them. Sadly, IBM was too distracted and uninterested in the PC market to actually do anything about it.
One question... Do you know how long the OS/2 v2 upgrade programming project was underway? I suspect it was long underway before Windows 3.0 shipped. I'd have to go back and look, but OS/2 2.0 was under MS development for more than five years before IBM yanked it.
Everyone was convinced by Microsoft that OS/2 was going to be the next big thing.
Then MS stabbed IBM in the heart, dumped OS/2 development, poured it on Windows, and got Windows 3.0 out the door, just as memory and VGA based stations were getting out there in mass.
So, WordPerfect and everyone else had apps ready to go on OS/2, and Microsoft had apps ready to run on Windows. Still, Word sucked, and Excel wasn't much better.
So, next move in the monopoly game...bundle.
MS bundled Office Pro with every station coming from Gateway, Dell, Northgate etc. Office went from 20% of the market to 90%+ in a few years. This was the final nail in WP/Lotus/Corel et. al.
When MS had near complete domanance in Office suites, suddenly, Office Pro wasn't bundled any more. Then you got Small business. Then SB light. Look at the cost of MS Office over the years. It's lots more expensive than it was.
Sure, it was cheap for a while, but that's usually how a monopoloy works. Sell at a loss to drive the competition to sell or leave. When they're gone, crank up the price and recoup your losses and more.
The market will eventually prevail. It's just VERY slow, and can be manipulated for long periods of time. The sad part is the endless string of bodies left behind. For some of us, protection from ruthless monopolists like MS is more than reason enough to short-circuit the "market."
Perhaps few people are still rolling out Netware installations, as such seems to be much of the public demand. But I must say, Netware is much more stable than Windows in vitually every situation I've deployed either in.
A small medical office I did an installation for had the Netware 3.12 box stay up, for around 1260 days. (Nearly *four* years without a single reboot.) It went down the time before that, only because of a four+ hour power outage that the UPS couldn't outlive. It has been up for like 500 days prior to that. So, total unrebooted uptime, was more than five years. Not a single unplanned outage caused by software failure, and no planned outages/crashes either.
Heck, in 1992-1993 I'd have killed for a Windows box that could file serve for that long without constant prodding and TLC - along with at least weekly reboots.
Novell's eDirectory is much more mature, IMHO than AD, and their ability to produce a product that simply works well is light years ahead.
Finally, Novell, perhaps to their harm always was the kind of company that left lots of space for others to develop products along side them. They made a core product, and let others fill in and provide apps around them. This kind of community is crucial IMHO, and the Novell culture, at least in the past, was good at allowing it.
This really isn't a problem if all projects are mandated to be open source.
Frankly, for the verification and transparancy of election systems process NOT to be open seems like a "kick me" sign for trouble.
Until now, the voting system and how votes were tabulated and kept were open. You could see the machines, the process and review it all.
The new electronic systems just presenent you with a total in essence, with no real transparancy in the system.
If this is the result of reform, I'd much rather pay 10X's as much per election, and go to scantron forms for the entire country.
Transparancy and open-ness is a REQUIREMENT for voting systems. Perhaps there are other ways to accomplish this without opensource software, but I doubt it.
Did you ever consider that the economy is like a herd of sheep.
Get then running in a direction and the whole flock goes.
Perhaps Regan and Bill Clinton gave the appearance of confidence and skill to the markets. The economy and thus, the people, felt good about things. The economic times went up.
Carter, Bush I and Bush II can't inspire like Regan and Clinton did, and the economy largely tanks.
Sure, it's nothing they did techincally, but it is the confidence they build in the population, along with not making too many mistakes and a bit o' good luck.
I believe that Clinton and Regan did have something to do with the economic properity they presided over, just not in the technical sense.
Troll, Idiot, Flamebait. Frankly, they're much the same to me.
I understand your point, but the GParent poster was going far out on a limb making assumptions on the choices made when they knew 1% of the facts and situation. That's stupidity - or trolling or flaimbait or just plain being an ass.
The GParent poster than wailed foul when someone called him a troll. Acted as if he couldn't understand how that might happen.
So, technically, I agree with your minor quibble. The major thrust of what I pointed out still stands.
Freedom doesn't include my *taking* what's not mine, but yours. (At least not in any world/society that works.)
So, you decide to give something you have to me. I can trade you for it. I can give you money, time, or your promise that if you decide to give it to others, you have to also include any changes you make to it that you are also giving away (or selling).
So, yes, it does force you to "trade" something for the right to "accept" it, but it doesn't make you any less free.
It's kind of like my saying - I'll pick you up, Mr. Hitch-hiker, but in exchange, I'd like you not to smoke in my car. You have not lost any freedom, unless you accept something you didn't have before. You can accept my gift - a ride, and not smoke. You can smoke, and not accept my gift. But you can't choose both.
That places no restrictions on your freedom - unless you accept something that wasn't yours, thus expanding your freedoms, and requiring a trade.
The "acceptees" need to determine for themselves if the bargain is worth it. If not, keep the freedom you already have and decline my gift.
So the U.S. supported Iraq in attacking Iran, not without reason, but that's no excuse.
We were pissed at Iran because they took hostages at the Iranian Embassy.
Hmmm... Why did they do that?
Could the overthrow of a democratic Iranian gvmt in 1959 have anything to do with it? How about our support and aid of the Shaw of Iran who was nearly the despot that Saddam was have anything to do with it?
America seems to come again and again and again across the problems IT CREATED ITSELF. BinLaden, Saddam Hussain, Iran, Noriega, Marcos etc etc etc.
We have such amazing skill when it comes to pointing the gun at our foot (or forehead depending) and pulling the trigger.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that, but they were duped into distributing the "stolen" code themselves. Oops!
..."where were the lawyers then. They should have warned us that distributing our own source code under the GPL might have some unintended consequenses!"
"Damn," Darl is saying
"We weren't really expected to know what that source code was, were we?"
"I never read contracts either - I'm not supposed to right?"
Sheesh!
The REAL problem will be that 400 years from now, the telco's will still be charging for it.
Just like DTMF dialing, the telco's want to suck it up and dine on the pocket-books of their customers far longer than needed. So, far from just covering costs, it becomes it's own profit center.
If local telco's were more honest about the charges needed and ceased charging when it wasn't required, we'd not fight tooth and nail to keep them from charging when needed. But since they do everything they can to take advantage of us, we obviously learn to play the game and try to screw them back.
Not productive, but it seems, the only way to play the game.
Cheers,
Greg
No, if he uses a condom, he has a much reduced risk of catching AIDS and dying.
Frankly, I'd rather he caught AIDS. (And Ebola and...)
Perhaps, but then why squeal in the first place?
If SCO has infringing code and knew it, then they wouldn't have said anything, IMHO.
Perhaps they're so stupid, that when they found the infringing code, they simply assumed without any due dilligence that the infringement was from SCO to linux, but that streches the imagination.
We'll see I guess.
Greg
A judge would have to adudicate these things...
But, it seems like someone stealing your stuff out of your garage, and then selling them next door for $100 a bag.
I offer you a few, for free, and you sell them yourself for $100, and then try to charge the buyer of your bags for possession of stolen property.
A judge would be fairly incredulous that you hadn't even looked inside the bags to determine what you were selling, and would generally hold harmless anyone who bought your bags (of your own stolen stuff).
That might not make the code GPL'd, but it would make it very difficult to convince a judge to hold anyone else responsible for the theft than the neighbor. It's likely there would be provisions to "assist" those who had unknowingly participated in the event.
If the "review" of the product released by SCO was too lax, then I can see a judge simply saying: "SCO, you should have known better, and checked better. Since you didn't, it would be reasonable for anyone to rely on your professions of GPL release and thus, even though you didn't intend, your lack of due dilligence compels the court to consider your release a GPL'd release."
Clearly, this is for a Judge to decide.
But these things only apply if code that IS SCO's is found in the the kernel, which I doubt will happen.
So, in the best case for SCO, some code is found, and a judge allows for that code to be removed with no penalty.
Middle case: SCO's code is found in kernel, but SCO loses rights to the code and it's declared as GPL'd.
Worst case: No offending code is found, SCO is slashed and bashed in counter by IBM and every SCO shareholder loses 100% of their equity investment.
Doesn't look like a good possible case to me for SCO.
Cheers,
Greg
"Microsoft just have a more clueful business model, if you look into the pricing of the systems you will quickly see the smart move to make."
---
But might not this show EXACTLY the type of behavior a monopolist might use to move into other markets. They can afford to lose huge sums of money to give away cheap (or "free") the software until no competitor exists and then raise the price. This is exactly what is happening in IE. It's not going to be available for Mac anymore, and you won't get updates for anything other than XP and future OS's. So, they raise the price of the OS and recoup the costs.
So, Real and Apple have to try to gain more money from the client and server markets. They can't afford the huge losses.
Just because other competitors are doing dumb things, don't assume it's simply a better product. Part of the cause of those dumb responses is the pressure of competing against a vendor who uses massive leverage in the market to extend their monopoly.
I don't like Real any better than you do, and I'd not shed a single tear if they dissapeared into a black hole this instant. But that doesn't excuse MS's behavior either.
Cheers,
Greg
*Any* action that *lessens* competition (removes or weakens competitors) is generally considered not legal for a found monopolist.
Oh, technically it was the truth, just like Bill Clinton "didn't have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
(Never mind that the British won't share their source for the documents. It's really the truth, I just can't show you. Remind you of anyone lately? SCO anyone?! Never mind that we reviewed the documents themselves and found them to be crude forgeries. Never mind that UNSCOM did the same, and came to the same conclusion.)
But only a moron would think that Bill Clinton didn't have sex, given what he DID do.
Only a moron would think that GWB didn't have the information that showed that the British info was wrong. (I'll even go one further, and say that we likely had the information that the British were going to claim this, and knew even before they claimed it, that it was wrong.)
Even if he didn't get that memo from Cheney, which he should have gotten from the State Department, then the only excuse is GWB and his appoited staff are total bumbling idiots.
(Not to mention the fact the the CIA had already warned GWB off the story once. One would think that one embarrassing retraction from a speech would be enough to make it stick in your memory.)
(If GWB was managing the local Wallmart, I'd not be too worried. But in case anyone hadn't noticed, somehow he woodwinked himself into the Whitehouse.)
It was a "white" lie. Sure, technically the British did say that. But GWB knew from independant sources it wasn't right, and used that statement knowing someday, if someone found out the truth, he could say "Technically it was true."
It was a lie, an intential lie and definitly intended to mislead.
Cheers,
Greg
Hmmm...
Bush lies in the State of the Union speech about matters of life and death.
"The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
From - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3056626.stm
A lie is a lie, but the repercussions of a lie to a deposition in a civil case, vs. a lie to the American public about a war - I know which I'd rank higher.
All presidents lie. If you believe that GWB is somehow better than Clinton, you're a crack smoking kook.
Cheers,
Greg
It will be the sequel to the movie of the same name.
In short, the story is about the fall of the Shaw of Iran, how the Iranians took Americans hostage, and over time, the US decided Saddam Hussain was a great guy because he was willing to gas the Iranians, and generally act as a water-boy for the US.
(Unfortunatly, the outcome isn't nearly as satisfying as in the newer sequel. Probably the only time in history, the sequel is better.)
Cheers,
Greg
re: 10X as many people
OS/2 the OS or OS/2 Apps?
If they had ten times as many people working on the OS, how come it took them forever to get v2 out. Which never happened, even though they supposedly had been working on it for a long time. IBM then got cranky for the long long long time it had waited for v2, and did it themselves. And, btw, added windows support pretty quickly too.
Even then, I can put thousands of people to "work" on something, but make sure they never accomplish much.
Cheers,
Greg
My friend who actually worked on that project says he thinks it started in 1988, and that it shipped somewhere around 1992. And he confirmed what I told you: after the "divorce" IBM took over all development, and Microsoft put all the hundreds of OS/2 developers on other projects.
OS/2 2.X was supposed to build on all the lessons learned from 1.x and make much of what appeared in Windows then. v2 was stalled (the OS, I'm not talking about apps) for a very long time. I believe Win 3.1 shipped before IBM took over OS development.
Windows basically didn't exist before V3 - it did, but no one used it. If OS/2 had been developed correctly and in a timely manner, there wouldn't have been any need to "port" apps from Windows to OS/2. Moot point.
You may think MS thought OS/2 was the future, but I believe that MS's heart from the TOP (Gates et al.) and never really intended to make OS/2 good. It wasn't MS's product, and they didn't want to raise someone elses child.
There was the fact that Windows came out just as graphic stations became widely available, and memory was available in amounts that make it possible too. In short, I understand some of this was timing, but I think that MS "helped" too.
As far as the Windows compatability in OS/2 2.x and WARP, it was VERY good. Way better than Win 3.1/3.11. Perhaps you never used it. I did. I also wrote a bunch of batch language to create Windows folders, and icons to put apps on desktops when users logged into the network. Very nifty stuff.
I'm tired of typing. My point still stands that I think MS didn't have much interest in seeing OS/2 succeed and didn't put much effort in making it fly. (I know you'll disagree, but I guess that's how it goes.)
Cheers,
Greg
There will always be morons that can't build bridges without problems. There will always be extra-ordinary circumstances too. (You can bet the engineers that signed off on things had big questions to answer too. Planes fall from the sky occasionally too, but we examine those defects very carefully and fix them where we can. If we did airplanes like we do software, we'd just build them willy-nilly and fix them only after they had plummeted from the sky.)
But, if more bridges collapsed than stayed up, as in software, I think we'd all say there was a problem.
The problems we accept in software are and would be unacceptable in any other industry.
Why people have put up with garbage for so long, I don't know. Hopefully it changes soon.
Cheers,
Greg
It's like trying to get accurate info about sucecssful hack attemts. Impossible.
WEP hacks is even worse. Those that use WEP probably couldn't tell if they were hacked if BO was loaded on their machine, much less packet monitor and notice there was a new station on the network.
WEP may not get hacked often, but frankly, I like deterministic approaches, rather than "no one will hack me, it's just too much work."
I want to know, if I do things right, it's nearly impossible to hack me unless you're the NSA or something.
Cheers,
Greg
I have an AP in my house, and I don't allow any traffic at all unless it's running under IPSec VPN.
It's wide open, but firewalled off all by it's lonesome. No bother even doing WEP, IMHO.
'Course, I'm way paranoid.
I'm still waiting for a serious scientific review of WPA, though this actually makes me feel a bit better. It just means I'll share keys via disk or something that will hold a 256 byte mostly random key.
Cheers,
Greg
deterioration problem
So, from lack of proper maintainance, the bridges collapse?
Would you consider than an engineering defect?
Can I have the crack you're smoking - it must be good!
Software engineering can be a much more exact science. The argument usually is: It will be too expensive.
Well, factor in the costs borne by the entire Windows user world, and it wouldn't matter if Windows cost 3 times what it does now, it would still be cheaper than the mess we're in now.
Designing secure and bug-free software is a tedious process, but do-able. Go ream Minasi's "Software Conspiracy." It will open your eyes.
Cheers,
Greg
You gloss over the fact that IBM left OS/2 in microsoft's hands, and nothing got done.
Eventually, IBM yanked the project away from MS because nothing was getting done.
Yet, by the time this happened, it was too late. OS/2 couldn't bridge the gap.
(OS/2 was years ahead of Windows in functionality and stability. Many of Windows 3.1 programmers used the OS/2 platform because it was more stable and productive to write apps on.)
I think MS's plan became - hold OS/2, develop windows. Make sure we have Windows apps ready to go. Don't spend much time on OS/2. Clearly, MS bit the hand that fed them. Sadly, IBM was too distracted and uninterested in the PC market to actually do anything about it.
One question... Do you know how long the OS/2 v2 upgrade programming project was underway? I suspect it was long underway before Windows 3.0 shipped. I'd have to go back and look, but OS/2 2.0 was under MS development for more than five years before IBM yanked it.
Cheers,
Greg
Strange thing this...
Everyone was convinced by Microsoft that OS/2 was going to be the next big thing.
Then MS stabbed IBM in the heart, dumped OS/2 development, poured it on Windows, and got Windows 3.0 out the door, just as memory and VGA based stations were getting out there in mass.
So, WordPerfect and everyone else had apps ready to go on OS/2, and Microsoft had apps ready to run on Windows. Still, Word sucked, and Excel wasn't much better.
So, next move in the monopoly game...bundle.
MS bundled Office Pro with every station coming from Gateway, Dell, Northgate etc. Office went from 20% of the market to 90%+ in a few years. This was the final nail in WP/Lotus/Corel et. al.
When MS had near complete domanance in Office suites, suddenly, Office Pro wasn't bundled any more. Then you got Small business. Then SB light. Look at the cost of MS Office over the years. It's lots more expensive than it was.
Sure, it was cheap for a while, but that's usually how a monopoloy works. Sell at a loss to drive the competition to sell or leave. When they're gone, crank up the price and recoup your losses and more.
The market will eventually prevail. It's just VERY slow, and can be manipulated for long periods of time. The sad part is the endless string of bodies left behind. For some of us, protection from ruthless monopolists like MS is more than reason enough to short-circuit the "market."
Cheers,
Greg
I meant...
and no planned outages/patches either
Perhaps few people are still rolling out Netware installations, as such seems to be much of the public demand. But I must say, Netware is much more stable than Windows in vitually every situation I've deployed either in.
A small medical office I did an installation for had the Netware 3.12 box stay up, for around 1260 days. (Nearly *four* years without a single reboot.) It went down the time before that, only because of a four+ hour power outage that the UPS couldn't outlive. It has been up for like 500 days prior to that. So, total unrebooted uptime, was more than five years. Not a single unplanned outage caused by software failure, and no planned outages/crashes either.
Heck, in 1992-1993 I'd have killed for a Windows box that could file serve for that long without constant prodding and TLC - along with at least weekly reboots.
Novell's eDirectory is much more mature, IMHO than AD, and their ability to produce a product that simply works well is light years ahead.
Finally, Novell, perhaps to their harm always was the kind of company that left lots of space for others to develop products along side them. They made a core product, and let others fill in and provide apps around them. This kind of community is crucial IMHO, and the Novell culture, at least in the past, was good at allowing it.
I think this may be a great match.
Cheers,
Greg
This really isn't a problem if all projects are mandated to be open source.
Frankly, for the verification and transparancy of election systems process NOT to be open seems like a "kick me" sign for trouble.
Until now, the voting system and how votes were tabulated and kept were open. You could see the machines, the process and review it all.
The new electronic systems just presenent you with a total in essence, with no real transparancy in the system.
If this is the result of reform, I'd much rather pay 10X's as much per election, and go to scantron forms for the entire country.
Transparancy and open-ness is a REQUIREMENT for voting systems. Perhaps there are other ways to accomplish this without opensource software, but I doubt it.
Cheers,
Greg
Did you ever consider that the economy is like a herd of sheep.
Get then running in a direction and the whole flock goes.
Perhaps Regan and Bill Clinton gave the appearance of confidence and skill to the markets. The economy and thus, the people, felt good about things. The economic times went up.
Carter, Bush I and Bush II can't inspire like Regan and Clinton did, and the economy largely tanks.
Sure, it's nothing they did techincally, but it is the confidence they build in the population, along with not making too many mistakes and a bit o' good luck.
I believe that Clinton and Regan did have something to do with the economic properity they presided over, just not in the technical sense.
Cheers,
Greg
Troll, Idiot, Flamebait. Frankly, they're much the same to me.
I understand your point, but the GParent poster was going far out on a limb making assumptions on the choices made when they knew 1% of the facts and situation. That's stupidity - or trolling or flaimbait or just plain being an ass.
The GParent poster than wailed foul when someone called him a troll. Acted as if he couldn't understand how that might happen.
So, technically, I agree with your minor quibble. The major thrust of what I pointed out still stands.
Cheers,
Greg
You have not taken anyone's freedom.
Freedom doesn't include my *taking* what's not mine, but yours. (At least not in any world/society that works.)
So, you decide to give something you have to me. I can trade you for it. I can give you money, time, or your promise that if you decide to give it to others, you have to also include any changes you make to it that you are also giving away (or selling).
So, yes, it does force you to "trade" something for the right to "accept" it, but it doesn't make you any less free.
It's kind of like my saying - I'll pick you up, Mr. Hitch-hiker, but in exchange, I'd like you not to smoke in my car. You have not lost any freedom, unless you accept something you didn't have before. You can accept my gift - a ride, and not smoke. You can smoke, and not accept my gift. But you can't choose both.
That places no restrictions on your freedom - unless you accept something that wasn't yours, thus expanding your freedoms, and requiring a trade.
The "acceptees" need to determine for themselves if the bargain is worth it. If not, keep the freedom you already have and decline my gift.
Cheers,
Greg
So the U.S. supported Iraq in attacking Iran, not without reason, but that's no excuse.
We were pissed at Iran because they took hostages at the Iranian Embassy.
Hmmm... Why did they do that?
Could the overthrow of a democratic Iranian gvmt in 1959 have anything to do with it? How about our support and aid of the Shaw of Iran who was nearly the despot that Saddam was have anything to do with it?
America seems to come again and again and again across the problems IT CREATED ITSELF. BinLaden, Saddam Hussain, Iran, Noriega, Marcos etc etc etc.
We have such amazing skill when it comes to pointing the gun at our foot (or forehead depending) and pulling the trigger.
Goodness.