I'll always wonder how Gates could hate the 286 so much but still allow OS/2 to be written in Intel 286 Assembler when he knew for a fact C would be better
The 286 target of OS/2 was purely an IBM requirement (they had promised a fancypants OS for the AT computer). Microsoft did figure out how it to do it, but they were acting pretty much as a outsource shop for IBM.
Re:Spam is *not* free speech!
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 1
Open relays matter because most spammers use crap client-side software and not real MTAs. If, in some magical future, all open relays were closed, spammers would switch to direct delivery, but it would raise the bar of entry a bit.
I also get spam through strange Korean (etc) relays that mung the headers. That makes it pretty much impossible to trace.
Re:"Anarchist Golfing Association"?
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
I read in Sports Illustrated back in the 80s that the average income of an American golfer is below the average income of an American bowler. (Take that for what it's worth.)
This holds up when you consider that in most parts of the country there's plenty of open land for golf courses, not to mention publically subsidized courses (building golf courses was a standard part of 'greenbelt' land planning in the old days). Meanwhile bowling is the most popular in industrialized areas of the midwest that have traditionally had higher incomes.
Kinda reminds me of those bullshit commercials with the happy staff-free server farm and the smarmy voice-over "Enterprise Software, from Microsoft". Anyway, the machines have a cool LED taskman-like CPU graph on the faceplace. I would love one of those things if available.
Re:The Neverending wave of criticism of slackware.
on
Slackware 8.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
That's why I said it's a namespace issue.
A package should require or optionally use some abstract key such as "Netscape Icon" or "libfoo > 1.08". Then you, the SA can decide that "MyCoolNutscrapeIcon" or "mydistro_libfoo1.09_1a_beta" meets those abstract requirements.
But maybe it already works that way, I dunno because for what little I bother, I follow the single vendor route. It just seems that people bitch about specific version requirements and naming issues.
Re:The only thing that helps is taxes
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 2
There's other, worse, examples -- The infamous (Slashdot) PT Crusier which is legally considered a truck even though it's based on a Dodge Neon.
Also, the Honda CRV was previously marketed as a Civic Wagon and now mysteriously has become officially a truck.
I agree with the intent of the original law -- give farmers and other rural road types an exemption. However, I can't help to worry that driving up to your ski lodge in Tahoe will some how be categorized as "rural road" use.
Re:The Neverending wave of criticism of slackware.
on
Slackware 8.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
The problem there is mixing packages from two independent, non-cooperating vendors, not packaging per se.
It's actually a namespace problem with packaging schemes per se. If you can't mix packages reliably, throw "free software" out the window because you're bordering on single-vendor lock-in.
There should be a way for the Netscape package to say "I optionally need an icon package associated with Netscape, doesn't matter what it's called" without the whole thing blowing up. (Maybe there is, and this is an issue that can easily be resolved.)
It's pretty likely that his 486 had a non-functional Turbo button. I think he brought it up because do-nothing Turbo buttons and little LEDs that told you the CPU speed are classic bits of old skool PC cheeze.
(They way they normally worked was ON = normal speed OFF = XT or AT speed. Think back to a world where "99% Compatible" was more important than CPU speed.)
Intel has contracts which require "second source" for their technology. That's how AMD became a licenced producer of Intel tech to begin with, and agreement that continues even today.
The IBM thing is a salient point, however I don't think it went down the way you said.
IBM was getting Windows 3.1 for $11/copy, an amount substantially less than other big OEMs were paying for it. They were also getting DOS for free, of course, both the result of the 1991 IBM-MS "Divorce" which gave both companies rights to all OS products up to that point.
When Windows 95 was released, Microsoft wanted to put IBM on a similar price schedule as Dell or Compaq. IBM balked because they were used to getting Windows on the cheap, and maybe rightly so because they did have ownership of the old Windows code still in 95. This lead all the way up to the Win95 launch party with no OEM agreement signed between IBM and MS.
Microsoft offered to continue a substantial price break if IBM de-emphisized OS/2 (something they probably had already made the internal decision to do anyway -- for example they stopped pre-loading it on all business systems in 1994).
So, a fishy deal, but more of a pay-off on Microsoft's part than a punishment, and a little bit of hard-ball on both companies' parts.
You shouldn't have posted AC -- hopefully the mods will allow people to see it.
1) Netscape 4 sucked so people switched browsers.
2) IE had a greater marketshare than Netscape before Win98 shipped
One thing you neglect is Microsoft's bundling agreements with ISPs and with third party application vendors. There was lots of contractual arm-twisting going on even back in the IE3 days, and it sounds like the appeals court rightly upheld this conduct as illegal.
The fighting games were sort of the last hurrah for arcade gaming. They did so well for a while, that they practically obliterated all other forms of games (except driving). Now the arcades are stuck with em even though it seems like their day has come and gone.
Ironically, the arcade I go to now and then seems to survive on their old beat up classic game collection -- Centipede, Rampage, and Mr Do seem to suck quarters there, while the fancy fighting games stand empty. Unfortunately, about half the classic games have had broken controls, and no effort is being made to restore them. I think they really make their money from the pool tables and -ahhem-, but it will be interesting to see how much longer they last.
Many large corporations have had their primary systems outsourced since the 1960s. Heard of EDS? Got it's start essentially as an ASP for the government.
Yes, it's a risk. But so is doing your own hosting. Really, which decision is "penny-wise and pound-foolish" depends on running the numbers and seeing how they turn out.
Even if the IT group implements a fantastic security model with near perfect permissions and group heirarchy, the company will get burnt by this tool.
I think you bring up an excellent point. However, right now the general problem on corporate networks is not too much information leaking, but too little -- data is locked up in thousands of word and excel files floating around on people's hard drives. Million dollar "knowledge management", document management, portals, groupware, and hell even fileserver solutions are attempts in trying to correct this, but for the most part, they only work as well as the users do.
This tool seems to take the underhanded approach of "Hell, if IT can't teach the lusers how to use their 'S:' drive or Outlook, why not go to the source and suck the files right off their hard drives." But, that begs the question that if users can't figure out how to use a shared drive, how will they understand a private/public directory setup on their local drive?
Not to mention the common HR attitude that IT can't be trusted to secure their personnel files, so they stay right on the computer locked in their office.
Limiting posting time would only benefit the karma whores who *still* wouldn't read the article, but instead compose a 1000 word post commenting on it.
I do agree that moderation should be locked for a few hours after posting. Nothing is more depressing than seeing an inaccurate or stupid or troll post modded up to 4 within the first 5 minutes, drowning out much of the intellegant conversation on the article. Of course the "Troll HOWTO" and "Karma Whore HOWTO" have been around for many years and Taco et al must have read them.
Well, when you consider that W2K is really installing the same amount as NT4 plus the Option Pack, it's not slower.
IIRC, they removed the option to quickformat from the installer (seems to be back in XP), but I usually chose the long type anyway.
One nice thing about the W2K installer is that it won't run from DOS unless you have smartdrive running. This helps me because I've forgotten that step many times with previous verions of NT which makes for a verrry slllooooww install.
I'm sorry; if the default installation routine is too clumsy and cumbersome, it's Microsoft's fault, and Microsoft should fix it. End of story
I just tried out XP Beta 2, and found it sorta humorous that this "easier, flashy" version has pretty much the same damn installer as NT 3.50.
Which is OK, because I rather like it (the disk partitioning is nice and easy). Still, Microsoft's marketroids have to be itching to "improve" it in the same dubious way as their other new GUIs - especially when *even Linux* has a graphical installer while MS still has a DOS 6-style blooscreen.
* The Slashdot readership has begun to lose its anti-MSFT focus as can be seen by the number of highly moderated posts which say "MSFT isn't all that bad" that have become common over the last few months
I wouldn't say that Slashdot isn't so much a Pro-Linux or Anti-Microsoft site anymore. It's more of a safe frustration outlet for dissident Windows users.
There was the TRS-80 Model I (my first computer!) - 4K, and a Z-80. It wasn't really a business computer -- that was the much more pricey Model II, which I think ran
Then there was the Tandy Color Computer Model I - Much later and with a 6809 and entirely incompatible with the original Trash-80s.
That doesn't matter in the long run because we aren't fighting in the right places.
So why was Microsoft fighting in the right places when they grassrooted the OS/2 people in the forums many moons ago? My answer is that they weren't, but the subsequent reaction certainly didn't help OS/2, both market-wise and product-wise (because it created an ideological group of advocates surrounding a product that was sorta lame. OS/2 always had more abusers than users.)
Now, shock trooping developers against IBM certainly wasn't hard. Microsoft happily spams developers with free copies of everything, while if you wanted anything out of IBM in the old days, you had to have your account number ready, your FRU number ready, and a pliers to ready to pull some teeth with. It was all such a fantasic clusterfuck on IBM's part that it's almost hard to give MS any credit at all.
But that's not to say that MS doesn't partake in some very nasty tactics. Work at a large MS site, and somewhere you'll find a guy who Microsoft pays to sit there and whisper anything from standard marketing crap to outright lies in people's ears. Show up at any MS conference or anywhere supposedly full of 'freindlies' and you'll here the same kind of stuff.
The key thing to realize here is that MS is playing right out of the Slashdot playbook. How do you attack a product that's free? Attack it ideologically. Where do you get ideological arguments? Slashdot has the same argument over "Free Software" every day. Just twist and release as marketing, and Boom! The impotant little flamebots on Slashdot suddenly sound like the OS/2 Windows-hating loony fringe from so many years ago. People listen to the flamebots and it becomes a self-reinforcing trenchwar loop where the product never changes direction towards broader acceptance.
Actually, IBM is either the or one of the worlds largest software companies. They may sell hardware on paper, but maintenance software and server software are a huge revenue stream for them. (For example, if you want a text editor on the AS/400, it's extra $$!)
So, Linux is a caculated risk for IBM. If Linux cannibalizes AIX or OS/400 sales, it's not good and they'll drop Linux like a hot rock. However, IBM feels that certain Linux hardware bundles (x86 servers and S/390 clusters) can help them steal market from Sun in particular.
The way I got a hold of OpenStep 4.2 + developer software:
1) Bought a cube:)
2) Dug around Apple's site until I found a Y2K upgrade form. Filled out serial number and requested OpenStep 4.2 and faxed it in.
3) OpenStep for Mach and Intel showed up at my door 2 days later.
So, if you have any old NeXT stuff (or just the serialz), better get your Y2K upgrade today.
This is about surface vs. subsurface rights. It doesn't matter weither it's an actual lease or easement or whatever.
That's what the article implied, but it's ZDNet, not a law journal. Some railroads were built on an easement to run a railroad (much as with your arrangement with the power co). Since neither of us know, and some companies have actually settled, I think the safe assumption is that there's a case.
No, because they don't own it. That's one of the reasons you cannot refuse to grant/sell right-of-way.)
The reason you can't stop the government from building a road has nothing to do with ROW versus outright purchase - it's because the state uses eminent domain. I can tell you that there's 1000s of miles of highway land owned outright by the government, and my guess is that a ROW grant is the more unusual of the situations, but it probably depends on the state.
And if the DOT is selling ROW access on your land for things other than roads, you probably have a case, unless the easement allows it.
The actual people "wronged" will walk away with next to nothing. (Remember the Iomega suit? After years, all the complaintants get is a rebate for more useless Iomega crap, and the lawyers get millions.)
True, but in the case referenced, they got 75%. Not bad for a contingency case.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll always wonder how Gates could hate the 286 so much but still allow OS/2 to be written in Intel 286 Assembler when he knew for a fact C would be better
The 286 target of OS/2 was purely an IBM requirement (they had promised a fancypants OS for the AT computer). Microsoft did figure out how it to do it, but they were acting pretty much as a outsource shop for IBM.
Open relays matter because most spammers use crap client-side software and not real MTAs. If, in some magical future, all open relays were closed, spammers would switch to direct delivery, but it would raise the bar of entry a bit.
I also get spam through strange Korean (etc) relays that mung the headers. That makes it pretty much impossible to trace.
I read in Sports Illustrated back in the 80s that the average income of an American golfer is below the average income of an American bowler. (Take that for what it's worth.)
This holds up when you consider that in most parts of the country there's plenty of open land for golf courses, not to mention publically subsidized courses (building golf courses was a standard part of 'greenbelt' land planning in the old days). Meanwhile bowling is the most popular in industrialized areas of the midwest that have traditionally had higher incomes.
Kinda reminds me of those bullshit commercials with the happy staff-free server farm and the smarmy voice-over "Enterprise Software, from Microsoft". Anyway, the machines have a cool LED taskman-like CPU graph on the faceplace. I would love one of those things if available.
That's why I said it's a namespace issue.
A package should require or optionally use some abstract key such as "Netscape Icon" or "libfoo > 1.08". Then you, the SA can decide that "MyCoolNutscrapeIcon" or "mydistro_libfoo1.09_1a_beta" meets those abstract requirements.
But maybe it already works that way, I dunno because for what little I bother, I follow the single vendor route. It just seems that people bitch about specific version requirements and naming issues.
There's other, worse, examples -- The infamous (Slashdot) PT Crusier which is legally considered a truck even though it's based on a Dodge Neon.
Also, the Honda CRV was previously marketed as a Civic Wagon and now mysteriously has become officially a truck.
I agree with the intent of the original law -- give farmers and other rural road types an exemption. However, I can't help to worry that driving up to your ski lodge in Tahoe will some how be categorized as "rural road" use.
The problem there is mixing packages from two independent, non-cooperating vendors, not packaging per se.
It's actually a namespace problem with packaging schemes per se. If you can't mix packages reliably, throw "free software" out the window because you're bordering on single-vendor lock-in.
There should be a way for the Netscape package to say "I optionally need an icon package associated with Netscape, doesn't matter what it's called" without the whole thing blowing up. (Maybe there is, and this is an issue that can easily be resolved.)
It's pretty likely that his 486 had a non-functional Turbo button. I think he brought it up because do-nothing Turbo buttons and little LEDs that told you the CPU speed are classic bits of old skool PC cheeze.
(They way they normally worked was ON = normal speed OFF = XT or AT speed. Think back to a world where "99% Compatible" was more important than CPU speed.)
Intel has contracts which require "second source" for their technology. That's how AMD became a licenced producer of Intel tech to begin with, and agreement that continues even today.
The IBM thing is a salient point, however I don't think it went down the way you said.
IBM was getting Windows 3.1 for $11/copy, an amount substantially less than other big OEMs were paying for it. They were also getting DOS for free, of course, both the result of the 1991 IBM-MS "Divorce" which gave both companies rights to all OS products up to that point.
When Windows 95 was released, Microsoft wanted to put IBM on a similar price schedule as Dell or Compaq. IBM balked because they were used to getting Windows on the cheap, and maybe rightly so because they did have ownership of the old Windows code still in 95. This lead all the way up to the Win95 launch party with no OEM agreement signed between IBM and MS.
Microsoft offered to continue a substantial price break if IBM de-emphisized OS/2 (something they probably had already made the internal decision to do anyway -- for example they stopped pre-loading it on all business systems in 1994).
So, a fishy deal, but more of a pay-off on Microsoft's part than a punishment, and a little bit of hard-ball on both companies' parts.
You shouldn't have posted AC -- hopefully the mods will allow people to see it.
1) Netscape 4 sucked so people switched browsers.
2) IE had a greater marketshare than Netscape before Win98 shipped
One thing you neglect is Microsoft's bundling agreements with ISPs and with third party application vendors. There was lots of contractual arm-twisting going on even back in the IE3 days, and it sounds like the appeals court rightly upheld this conduct as illegal.
The fighting games were sort of the last hurrah for arcade gaming. They did so well for a while, that they practically obliterated all other forms of games (except driving). Now the arcades are stuck with em even though it seems like their day has come and gone.
Ironically, the arcade I go to now and then seems to survive on their old beat up classic game collection -- Centipede, Rampage, and Mr Do seem to suck quarters there, while the fancy fighting games stand empty. Unfortunately, about half the classic games have had broken controls, and no effort is being made to restore them. I think they really make their money from the pool tables and -ahhem-, but it will be interesting to see how much longer they last.
Many large corporations have had their primary systems outsourced since the 1960s. Heard of EDS? Got it's start essentially as an ASP for the government.
Yes, it's a risk. But so is doing your own hosting. Really, which decision is "penny-wise and pound-foolish" depends on running the numbers and seeing how they turn out.
Even if the IT group implements a fantastic security model with near perfect permissions and group heirarchy, the company will get burnt by this tool.
I think you bring up an excellent point. However, right now the general problem on corporate networks is not too much information leaking, but too little -- data is locked up in thousands of word and excel files floating around on people's hard drives. Million dollar "knowledge management", document management, portals, groupware, and hell even fileserver solutions are attempts in trying to correct this, but for the most part, they only work as well as the users do.
This tool seems to take the underhanded approach of "Hell, if IT can't teach the lusers how to use their 'S:' drive or Outlook, why not go to the source and suck the files right off their hard drives." But, that begs the question that if users can't figure out how to use a shared drive, how will they understand a private/public directory setup on their local drive?
Not to mention the common HR attitude that IT can't be trusted to secure their personnel files, so they stay right on the computer locked in their office.
Limiting posting time would only benefit the karma whores who *still* wouldn't read the article, but instead compose a 1000 word post commenting on it.
I do agree that moderation should be locked for a few hours after posting. Nothing is more depressing than seeing an inaccurate or stupid or troll post modded up to 4 within the first 5 minutes, drowning out much of the intellegant conversation on the article. Of course the "Troll HOWTO" and "Karma Whore HOWTO" have been around for many years and Taco et al must have read them.
Well, when you consider that W2K is really installing the same amount as NT4 plus the Option Pack, it's not slower.
IIRC, they removed the option to quickformat from the installer (seems to be back in XP), but I usually chose the long type anyway.
One nice thing about the W2K installer is that it won't run from DOS unless you have smartdrive running. This helps me because I've forgotten that step many times with previous verions of NT which makes for a verrry slllooooww install.
I'm sorry; if the default installation routine is too clumsy and cumbersome, it's Microsoft's fault, and Microsoft should fix it. End of story
I just tried out XP Beta 2, and found it sorta humorous that this "easier, flashy" version has pretty much the same damn installer as NT 3.50.
Which is OK, because I rather like it (the disk partitioning is nice and easy). Still, Microsoft's marketroids have to be itching to "improve" it in the same dubious way as their other new GUIs - especially when *even Linux* has a graphical installer while MS still has a DOS 6-style blooscreen.
* The Slashdot readership has begun to lose its anti-MSFT focus as can be seen by the number of highly moderated posts which say "MSFT isn't all that bad" that have become common over the last few months
I wouldn't say that Slashdot isn't so much a Pro-Linux or Anti-Microsoft site anymore. It's more of a safe frustration outlet for dissident Windows users.
There was the TRS-80 Model I (my first computer!) - 4K, and a Z-80. It wasn't really a business computer -- that was the much more pricey Model II, which I think ran
Then there was the Tandy Color Computer Model I - Much later and with a 6809 and entirely incompatible with the original Trash-80s.
That doesn't matter in the long run because we aren't fighting in the right places.
So why was Microsoft fighting in the right places when they grassrooted the OS/2 people in the forums many moons ago? My answer is that they weren't, but the subsequent reaction certainly didn't help OS/2, both market-wise and product-wise (because it created an ideological group of advocates surrounding a product that was sorta lame. OS/2 always had more abusers than users.)
Now, shock trooping developers against IBM certainly wasn't hard. Microsoft happily spams developers with free copies of everything, while if you wanted anything out of IBM in the old days, you had to have your account number ready, your FRU number ready, and a pliers to ready to pull some teeth with. It was all such a fantasic clusterfuck on IBM's part that it's almost hard to give MS any credit at all.
But that's not to say that MS doesn't partake in some very nasty tactics. Work at a large MS site, and somewhere you'll find a guy who Microsoft pays to sit there and whisper anything from standard marketing crap to outright lies in people's ears. Show up at any MS conference or anywhere supposedly full of 'freindlies' and you'll here the same kind of stuff.
The key thing to realize here is that MS is playing right out of the Slashdot playbook. How do you attack a product that's free? Attack it ideologically. Where do you get ideological arguments? Slashdot has the same argument over "Free Software" every day. Just twist and release as marketing, and Boom! The impotant little flamebots on Slashdot suddenly sound like the OS/2 Windows-hating loony fringe from so many years ago. People listen to the flamebots and it becomes a self-reinforcing trenchwar loop where the product never changes direction towards broader acceptance.
Unlike Netscape who just stole Mosaic outright.
Actually, IBM is either the or one of the worlds largest software companies. They may sell hardware on paper, but maintenance software and server software are a huge revenue stream for them. (For example, if you want a text editor on the AS/400, it's extra $$!)
So, Linux is a caculated risk for IBM. If Linux cannibalizes AIX or OS/400 sales, it's not good and they'll drop Linux like a hot rock. However, IBM feels that certain Linux hardware bundles (x86 servers and S/390 clusters) can help them steal market from Sun in particular.
I figured as much. I got my software last November, but it was still technically Y2K then.
The way I got a hold of OpenStep 4.2 + developer software:
:)
1) Bought a cube
2) Dug around Apple's site until I found a Y2K upgrade form. Filled out serial number and requested OpenStep 4.2 and faxed it in.
3) OpenStep for Mach and Intel showed up at my door 2 days later.
So, if you have any old NeXT stuff (or just the serialz), better get your Y2K upgrade today.
This is about surface vs. subsurface rights. It doesn't matter weither it's an actual lease or easement or whatever.
That's what the article implied, but it's ZDNet, not a law journal. Some railroads were built on an easement to run a railroad (much as with your arrangement with the power co). Since neither of us know, and some companies have actually settled, I think the safe assumption is that there's a case.
No, because they don't own it. That's one of the reasons you cannot refuse to grant/sell right-of-way.)
The reason you can't stop the government from building a road has nothing to do with ROW versus outright purchase - it's because the state uses eminent domain. I can tell you that there's 1000s of miles of highway land owned outright by the government, and my guess is that a ROW grant is the more unusual of the situations, but it probably depends on the state.
And if the DOT is selling ROW access on your land for things other than roads, you probably have a case, unless the easement allows it.
The actual people "wronged" will walk away with next to nothing. (Remember the Iomega suit? After years, all the complaintants get is a rebate for more useless Iomega crap, and the lawyers get millions.)
True, but in the case referenced, they got 75%. Not bad for a contingency case.