I tried, honest I did. Of course, with better than 100 cases listed to support their position, not counting other stuff, and not knowing the background or results of the cases in question, the Microsoft Rebuttal is little more than a hugely legal research paper only comprehensible to lawyers and scholars, and not to most of us. A paper which (AFAICT) basically repeats what has been the Microsoft position all along: "hey, we didn't do anything wrong, and we don't want you government types involved in the software industry... so here's are legalese way of saying that the judge f---ed up his decision... Look at all these examples of case law that we've paid our lawyers $150 an hour to find...
Trouble is, sometimes legalese works to get bad folks off the hook. I hope it doesn't in this case.
Okay, I'll bite. You'll have to trust that I am educated enough or at least judge by me response:
Where, in the Constitution, is the government permitted to seize or otherwise modify the property shareholders in Microsoft own? It's not in the Constitution, and we both know it. However, the Sherman Anti-trust act(s) have been found to be in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, ergo the government has a right to intervene, a la Standard Oil or AT&T.
I ask of all you educated Slashdotters, take a step away from the details and ask: "Who is Janet Reno to decide what a private and voluntary association of owners, employees, customers, and other contractually bound participants can do with their time and effort?"
Well, IIRC Janet Reno is the Attorney General of the US of A, and is charged with seeing that violations of federal law are prosecuted. AKA the Sherman Anti-trust acts under which the DOJ sued Microsoft.
This is software after all - the most insubstantial and ephemeral product in existence. Literally nobody is coerced to or prevented from doing anything with software.
You could just as easily argue that "literally nobody is coerced to or prevented from doing anything with electricity." [aside: too bad most of us live in communities where the local electrical company has a de facto monopoly...] My point is, if company A acts in violation of the law and in the process takes down the profitability and therefore of company B, thus limiting my choices to a quality product which would have otherwise been developed, damage has occurred.
I won't italicize and copy the my most vehement area of disagreement... the part about the suppression of legit businesses, etc. Because Microsoft has used every tactic in the book as clubs to beat new-technology competitors.
Some of those tactics have been found by Judge Jackson to be (findings of fact) horribly and completely beyond the scope of fair business practices and way into the domain of monopoly-protecting stuff that is AFAICT against the law.
Actually, more recently Jon has posted in the discussions, and with good points. Unfortunately I do not have the/. urls for those urls/articles handy (I'm at work), so others will have to track them down and post them (suggestion folks: do it here in the reply).
Other than that, I agree with your excellent points.
It's not the first time owner Alan Detrich has tried to unload the T. rex over the Internet. He offered it on eBay in July, but the auction was canceled after several illegitimate bids by teen-age pranksters. The highest bid during that sale -- $8 million -- was a fake.
So now he tries the same thing via a more legitimate auction site.
Well, twenty four days, five hours to go. I hope he has the same number of bids as he does right now [2:00 p.m. (CST)], that is exactly zero.
Although I can't say that I know how to get it started. That said, I for one would chip in to the bidding process if I could make sure that a) all my money went toward the bid, and b)we could find and agree on a museum which would like to house and display the darn thing.
It's a sad day when science for the rest of us has to take a back seat to bidding just for one of us -- I mean, them, with the them being the gazillionairs who might join in this stupid play for the most unique collectable items
Personally I hope the person(s) who put this thing up for bid don't get any takers at their asking price and have to not only eat crow but work on selling it to a university or museum where it can do some good.
IMHO while this article questioned nearly all of Corel's latest Linux moves, it ignored virtually all of the larger issues which make Corel a good member of the Linux community including such items as:
Backing the StrongArm chip via the Netwinder series. The article briefly mentions the Netwinder, but doesn't do justice to how important Corel was in getting the Linux port onto SA hardware for the rest of us who would like to move away from the 'x86 family.
The free download of Corel's GUI based Word Perfect 8 software.
Adding further US corporate branding and marketing experience to the Linux OS (with Caldera and Red Hat)
IIRC, they also participated against MS in the US DOJ trial, didn'they?
My final point...Corel Draw. I tell ya, if I could buy it for Linux right now, money would be changing hands.
There's probably more things which I would count as postive moves, but in the interest of brevity I'll skip it and say that for me the only redeeming part of the Red Herring article is that it mentioned that folks who report on investment are finally giving Corel a decent break in the news.
Testing a chip such as the Crusoe can be a real pain in the a--, not to mention the brain. Developing an OS for it is even worse. So my speculation is fairly simple. With Linus involved, what better test could there be than to have a fully operational hand held Linux system, complete with cool hardware, a full set of development tools (gcc, egcs, etc.), a browser, etc.?
BTW, having followed Transmeta in the news for quite a while, I agree with some of the various article writers that Transmeta has all of the ingredients it needs for huge success: strong financial backing, partnering with established companies a focused product, a hugely competent technical staff, and enough name recognition to get the media attention required to explode into production.
Hmmm. Interesting thought. I wonder if/. has enough karma points with Linus to get CmdrTaco and Hemos up close and personal on launch day... Think I'll send a message with that suggestion to the good folks in Transmeta's Business Development department. There. Done. BTW, anyone care use the link and make the same suggestion?
Rob, Jeff y'available?
Re: I don't get it.... some contrasts to this post
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New CTO at Red Hat
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Good points throughout your post. Some contrasts here:
"What Red Hat now does will have a major influence on the future of the Open Source movement in more ways than can be counted."
True enough. So far (IMHO) the influence seems to be positive. To wit:
Promotion of Linux certifications. This is important because it allows a wider array of CS support businesses to develop, similar to how Microsoft (MSCE, etc) and Novell (CNE,CNA) used to allow individuals such as myself (Novell CNA) to run profitable small businesses backing the technology.
Reinvesting code/coder support to the Linux OS community: RPMs, support of Gnome, etc.
the assistance in opening the IPO to more than just the large investors, etc.
Providing a smart face to the Linux movement. Bob Young has the ability to explain (i.e., market) Linux to the masses better than say, Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox.
Corporate support: I do not thing that Corel, Caldera, or Suse would have as much market share as they do if RedHat had not led the way. Look at Slackware, Debian, and Stampede, and the various BSD's -- all of these are good distributions (I'm trying to avoid sparking a flame war here), but the for-profit, company backed distributions have far more market share. This translates to more eyeballs seeing and report problems / bugs / security holes to the rest of the community.
Support (all though not 100% yet) for the Linux Standards Board (?)(LSB), which is (IIRC) is trying to achieve a cross-distribution threshhold so that if I release app "X" under my favorite distro "A", you'll be able to use it on your favorite distro "B".
"Since Red Hat's IPO was announced, of the two founders Bob Young gave up the CEO's seat to Matthew Szulik... and now Mark Ewing has been pushed out of the CTO's chair in favour of tech-head Michael Tiemann...
'xuse me? I didn't see anything that says "push out". Having two hard working, hard headed, savvy businessmen who understand how to achieve corporate market penetration for RH (which again, helps Linux in general) is good for the company especially now that IBM is backing Linux, and Tiemann has already proven a friend to the community via all of the GNU tools originated under his leadership at Cygnus.
... we need to maintain a healthy level of scepticism with regard to everything they say...
Probably true. However, even given Linus Torvalds' joke about "total world domination", RedHat is helping deliver it. Joking aside, however, RH Linux is still more about is "total world liberation", because every RH CD I've owned also includes the source code so that if I want to roll my own distro, I can go ahead and do so. I just can't lock up the code afterward.
"They are now motivated by profit. That is why the two tech-heads who founded the company have been sidelined."
I question your choice of words. Bob Young and Marc Ewing are still central to different elements of RH's success. If RH becomes too corporate, developers will abandon them, so Mark Ewing is critical to keeping the doors to the OS community open. So it seems to me that these two "tech-heads" have moved within the structure of the company to where they really want to playe.
For the company to be taken seriously by the big boys, "wiser" heads must be seen to prevail.
Not wiser necessarily. More experienced in addressing the issues that the "big boys" (aka large corporate IT departments) bring to the table. I know -- I've worked in the IT or Network Engineering department at four Fortune 1000 companies (not sure if they were in the top 100 or 500 at the time)
I on the other hand, naive fool that I am, entertain hopes that Red Hat will stay true to its roots....
Hear hear!!!
... steer clear of nonsensical patents etc.
I will probably get flamed for this, but I hope RH actually gets into the patent thing in certain areas that do make sense, similar to how Mercedes Benz did with unibody construction, and several other examples I am aware of in other technology areas where I company patented the techniques, etc. so that no-one else could, then proceeded to essentially give away the rights to use the technnology "because some things are too important to keep inside" (At least, that's how I remember the quote from Mercedes -- forgive me if I quoted badly). I would hope that RH will look at using some of its resources to develop and patent -- then proceed to open the code to the community. That way no-one else can try to lock those techniques/technologies behind closed corporate doors.
Anyway, while I have attempted to provide some contrasts to the thoughts expressed in your post, I agree with the general concerns. Keep up the good work.
So Bill sends his email, company A cuts a special deal, and B fails to maximize profit. So stockholders in B can still sue. Lawyers supoena the emails (like in this DOJ case), and Mr. Bill now risks huge fines and/or jail time.
Well, last time I checked, the DoJ hadn't essentially won a lawsuit against Red Hat. So a different set of rules applies to M$ right now. So yes, I can say that Red Hat can bundle in ways that M$ cannot.
You seem to be the only one, there's sure a lot of apps for it being so difficult.
Nice try, apprentice. Either you are hopelessly naive or trying to be funny. Mozilla has better than sixty developers, large database systems may have anywhere from 10 to 100, many games have 4-6 main coders, so the number I used in my example(ten) is more than reasonable. I didn't even include coders to back check the main code libraries in all of the various api's, (Win 95,98,NT, and now Win2K) or coders involved in legacy system migration, data architects, etc. etc.
So you know, I usually work on a team of 2-4 (ala Extreme Programming) and have deployed a number of large corporate apps and websites. But just between me and you, the MFC sucks compared to other libraries I have used (Rogue Wave, zAPP, etc), but it won because M$ kept changing the API.
One of my better projects in C++ ran memory leak free with over 100 total classes AND WAS 700k SMALLER THAN A SIMILAR MFC APPLICATION. So you can't say I don't know how to do it.
Yes, there are alot of apps out there. Most of which with multiple coders involved, and I'd wager the average is around 8-10. So all your guess about my abilities really says is that you probably haven't done anything overly complex with C++ in Windoze. Because otherwise I don't think you would you wouldn't have tried a cheap shot at a perfectly valid example. So tell me, do you have enough experience to disagree now?
Re:[not a] A Vertical Monopoly
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AOL Nation
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Just for the fun of it, I took your list, added AOL related properties, and compared it to where I've spent money in the last five years. Here's the results:
Books: Little, Brown & Co. Magazines: Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, People (for the wife),Parenting. Cable related: CNN, and occasionally renting a video or going to a movie originally produced for/by or owned by: New Line Cinema, Castle Rock Entertainment, (MGM, RJO, and pre 1950 Warner Bros. Films), Turner Classic Movies, TNT.
Dollar wise, an even split between mags and entertainment, I'd say. But the printing industry gets some of the bucks from the books and mags, and AMC and others get bucks from the entertainment. None of the above get bucks from me for internet related content via AO(HEL)L.
"How the hell do you keep these companies from collaborrating secretly?"
Well, in the early going I would expect them to try, but I would not expect it to last very long. Here's why: in order to collaborate, company A has to sign legal papers with company B. This partnership deal says that A will give b access to the OS-API in return for.... (fill in the blank). Or that A will give b (fill in the blank) in return for the nifty new code developed by the Apps group.
Doesn't seem problematic until you try to fill in the blanks.One way or the other, whatever is being given or traded has to maximize profits for both A and B. Why? because if the agreement doesn't do that, any shareholder of even just one share of either company can sue both for collusion against that shareholder's interest in obtaining a profit on their investment in company stock.
Now can you see how the threat of multiple class action lawsuits might keep this kind of collusion from happening?
I wonder whether this will help control MS' influence in any way.
Others have already competently dealt with most of the issues you bring up, but I'd like to chime in with how the Microsoft breakup relates to IT managers.
The preponderance of M$ software in corporate America has about 80% to do with M$ ability to leverage the desktop and application API(s) to the detriment of every other competitor, and 20% to do with the ability to cut loss-leader deals in one area and then recoup the profit in another. It's called site licensing -- pay a somewhat exorbitant fee for the right to use a CD-ROM to install the same software throughout the company without threat of lawsuit. Buy 10,000 desktop licenses, and we'll cut you a good deal -- and throw in Outlook Express and IE X.X on every desktop!! Buy NT server licenses (which can be very expensive) and M$ throws in the II-S web/application server for free.
Okay, now divide M$ into three companies as previously described (A) Microsoft OS, (B) Microsoft Apps, and (C) Microsoft Internet. Here's what falls out of the instances previously mentioned:
Since e-mail is also an Internet app, Outlook, M$ Mail, or Exchange can't just be thrown in with the OS, because the Internet company has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits, not give away product.
Buy the site licences for the applications, but the profit can't be used to lower/underwrite the cost of the desktop software.
II-S is an Internet application, so it can no longer be bundled with WinNT server (which is an OS). Now II-S has to compete on a dollar for dollar basis with other web servers, including the Open Source ones -- that are free. But since company C (Internet) has to maximize profit, they can't just give it away any more. As a guess -- IIS $1500... Apache -- Free. Hmmmm....company finance guy, what do you think I should choose?
Almost done... drivers: Since drivers are part of the OS company, the specs have to be published under an Open API, so that the Applications group and the Internet group can take advantage of them. For example, if TWAIN32 is part of the OS, then the WinAPI that talks to Twain32 has to be fully open so that the app group folks can use it.
SQL Server: part of the Applications group. ODBC32: part of the OS. II-S: Internet. Each group has to produce it's best work (less bugs hidden by the API's), and in order to maximize profit, each group has to work with "outsider" companies to improve their products, rather than relying on the monopoly to enforce compliance.
I haven't thought this one through, but no more cheating on Java with proprietary WinAPI calls, right?
End result -- choosing M$ in the corporate environment just got alot more costly and harder to justify. Which will increase the speed of movement in the corporate world AWAY from Microsoft.
Next thoughts... "90% of the world's PC will still run on Windows..."Take away the ability to cut deals by using the profit from M$-Office to underwrite the cost of the OS. Also, take away the ability to enforce single OS installation on hardware. Now all of the Comp USA(s), Radio Shacks, Circuit City(s) can sell whatever they want, and since the M$ OS now really costs $120 per machine, and Linux, etc. is by comparison --free... And since M$ tech support now costs more, it becomes cheaper to use other Tech support co's, rather than passing on the cost to M$ (which hid it in the Apps profit, etc.)
Finally, it is a dog to write M$ apps because of the convulted WinAPI. Force the API into the open, and now a company can conceivably develop a code base which can be compiled to be runnable on a larger variety of OS's. For example, if I have 10 WinAPI programmers, and the OpenAPI allows me to use reduce the need to 6, now I can have the other 4 work on porting/debugging the code for other platforms such as Linux, *BSD, BeOS, Mac, etc. So my company's gawsh-this-is-kewl-app runs on a wider variety of platforms. Soon the 90% figure starts to decline, right?
"I'm not getting up my hopes that this will seriously threaten MS's dominant position on the global market." While I admit that it will take longer for the English speaking market to change, separating MS into the companies forces each of them to develop all of their products independently for all of the different languages, and still maintain profit. So I see a cut in M$ support for non-English and non-EU countries. So the worldwide market for Linux, etc. improves, which strengthens Linux, etc. here in the US.
Having just finished reading both documents in Spanish and English (and even Babelfish), it seems that it can be hard to tell the saints from the sinners sometimes.
On the one hand, if what the Uruquayan Linux group is saying is true, it ends up looking like the two men in question are essentially trying to corner and control the Linux distribution market in that country.
The response seems to be that the UY LUG has leading members who are intent on doing the same thing (and have filed for the trademark in more than one class themselves) that are the type of people who would do the same thing, given the chance.
On the surface, I think we would all tend to favor the users group, but having dealt with monopolistic UG's in the past, my personal opinion is to reserve judgement (and flames) until we have more information.
I have emailed, (and suggest/. readers do likewise) the LinuxTech (Uruquay) site mgmt. with a simple English request that the folks who have made the application publicly discuss what they will do with it, and let the UG respond before we all come down in harsh judgment on one side or the other.
is primarily the wires. I don't think that inflated stock prices alone can support both companies as currently staffed, etc., so I would expect that within a relatively short amount of time, if AOL has enough control, they would spin off alot of the areas of the Time Warner empire that just aren't that lucrative anymore.
What I'm wondering is if this actually a good thing in disquise, I mean if a large percentage of the AO (hel)l users end up on their new cable backed bandwidth, would that free up Internet bandwidth for the rest of us?
In a former job life, I was a VAR (value added reseller) doing networks, hardware, etc. One of my better clients had an established (translation:= stable) Netware setup, with DR-DOS on all of the workstations. At the time Windows (3.1.1, definitely not the beta in question) was installed, several of the workstations started going nuts.
After several weeks of sweating bullets due to client anger towards my company and after many hours of intensive research, what we found out was that Windows was relocating code that belonged to one the DR-DOS subsystems, with nary a message in either DOS or Windows to indicate that something very bad was happening behind the scenes.
In addition, at least in the early going (and if I am remembering correctly -- this is four plus years ago now), Windows wouldn't use the DR-DOS based IPX/SPX network card drivers correctly -- you had to use the Windows drivers in order to print via a Windows enabled printer. Which then conveniently locked out the DOS based users from using that printer. (To be fair, this may have been a printer driver problem, not M$ evil intentions).
Still, sounds suspiciciously close to the illegal practice of tying , doesn't it?
Excellent points. I'm still reading, and the things you point out have improved my opinion of the bill somewhat. I certainly wish the darned bill didn't use such convoluted ways of explaining things.
Of course, being written by lawyers, et. al, it's hard to know what else to expect.
One perception still remains as I am reading. Judging by the names and reputations House members who sponsored the bill, I am highly suspicious that there's some special interest influence that I don't get. As you read, let me know what you think.
I haven't finished reading the bill yet, let alone analyzing it completely, and of course, IANAL (I am not a lawyer) so anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt and further analyzed.
My general impression (which hasn't changed (I'm on page 45 of 116) much since I started reading is that this is a bill by lawyers for lawyers.
The first section (17 pages) deals with "invention promoters", and on the surface, looks good because it creates a disclosure requirement and makes it easier for an inventor to end a contract with a promoter. But (rereading now) I didn't see a whole lot of legal teeth other than the right to sue (which we already had) for damages, and if the promoter was guilty of fraud, it was only a misdemeanor offense. Secondarily, if I'm reading correctly, the inventor only has five days to rescind the contract -- which is not long enough to find out whether or not the promoter can even provide value added service to the inventor.
Pg 19 -- has a definition sentence that is one paragraph long, and I'm still not sure I understand the legal ramifications of it. Pg. 20: requires that a process be reduced to "practice" at least a year prior to the filing of a patent in order to be a defense. Seems dangerous. What if I have developed a process in my business, but haven't documented it to a practice -- and some bozo tries to patent that same process and I don't get word of it. Did I just lose my "prior art" defense against infringement? Sure looks like it.
Pg. 20, bottom: correct me if I'm wrong, but current patent law allows infringement defense based on "substantial improvements" to an item, even if the new item was derived from an earlier patented item. My reading of the text is that this clause is ambiguous and could remove that protection. Pg: 21==>Burden of proof: So far my worst finding... It puts the burden of proof for infringment on the "alleged" infringer. 'xcuse me. I thought under US law a person was innocent until proven guilty. Pg:23==>A successful infringement defense does not necessarily invalidate the patent. Oh yeah? Isn't a successful defense somewhat a proof of "prior art".
Well, enough of that. I'll keep reading, but on first look this is bad.
You missed the point. When you fly off to a convention, I assume you take your computer with you (a laptop, presumabaly). While you and others might be in the fractional minority, most home machines are not in that category. For example, I'm temporarily stuck on a WinXX machine at work, and have both a Linux machine and a WinXX machine at home. (gotta take care of wife and little kids, and there's not that much good Linux educational software for seven year olds -- yet.) The Linux machine stays up because it is hosting the site(s). The WinXX machines get shut down at the end of the day or session. But since they are not serving websites they don't count against the uptime average for WinXX machines.
C'mon, folks, this post isn't insightful, IMHO it's just plain off topic. (I think, anyway -- there might be some point I just haven't grasped in there). Uptime is measured for servers -- not home machines, so no, it isn't natural that home machines would lower the average.
Why not? because NOT THAT MANY home machines are hosting websites, because Joe AHU (Average Home User) doesn't have a static IP address -- he's got a dial up connection. So virtually every point made in this post doesn't add up to a lower uptime for windows.
The uptime counter bug mentioned by other posters and the BSOD (blue screen of death or black screen of death) are what accounts for it. That and the fact that most of the Windows operating systems have historically had serious memory leakage problems... [memory leak: when the OS loses track of which RAM has been allocated and/or deallocated to or by a specific program)
Excellent points, one of which I would like to highlight with a couple of examples: All of the sudden - my vote starts to look like it might make a little more of a difference. Just a thought.The two examples are as follows:
Harry S Truman's re-election. The Republican party thought that their candidate was a shoe-in (easy winner), and was very much the candidate of the "elites". The Democratic party machinery (which put Truman in the Vice Presidency in '44, only to have FDR die on them) didn't support Truman very well either. So Truman hops on a train and proceeds to get out the vote of "the ones who didn't matter" to the elites, and wins the Presidency. (IMHO one of our best Presidents, by the way.)
IIRC, John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election in a margin narrower than any other election this century. IIRC the margin was so narrow that if a few thousand voters in the City of Chicago had voted the other way, or even not voted, Nixon would have been President in 1960, not 1968. Now then, I have heard that the Daley political machine may have had an undue (essentially controlling) influence on much of the vote, but if a large number of people had not cast their votes one by one for Kennedy throughout the rest of the State of Illinois, Chicago wouldn't have mattered.
So, as flawed as the system may be, votes count. Especially in shaping the local and state judiciaries and legislatures, which is where the future national leaders come from.
That's why they call it participatory democracy. And BTW, the U.S. isn't actually a democracy, it's a republic with democratically elected officials.
While noting that my own stance against abortion inflates the Republican scores, I was still surprised that John McCain ended up on top of my list. I was going to point out why in geek terms, but the post ended up being too d--- long.
BTW, Nader was so far down the list I didn't even notice his name. So I am very curious as to why so many "geek" posters like the guy so much.
Which leads me to an idea for Rob and the gang... Maybe/. can run a set of polls over a few days with the same questions so we can see how the/. geek voice looks -- then enter the results into the SmartSelector (after all the polls are done) and see how the candidates are ranked accordingly. (Personally I'd have an initial poll which would rate which questions/.'ers found most important, then run the polls in that order. Betcha by the time the polls were done, the whole 'Net media world would be watching for the results. Comments anyone?
IIRC, Checkers has already been essentially solved, at least for Red. I remember reading a number of years ago (and would be interested in commentary either validating or contradicting it) that using branching logic -- at least compared to chess, there are relatively few opening moves -- computer programs had been designed that could not be beaten by "black" no matter what. In other words, the computer didn't need to solve all possibilities to win, just those which were possible and plausible in ordinary play.
The author of the article did not say whether there was any calculable way of using some obscure trap (maybe a sacrifice of several pieces which would open up the board) which would allow black to escape from the computer's move progression that would ultimately leading to a black victory or draw.
I've been watching this particular claim for a couple of years now, with a net result of... nothing significant.To wit, there are several completely independent groups who have offered to test Dr. Mills claims, even with him on site setting up his own equipment, but have not received so much as a speck of a reply.
For those not acquainted with the theory Dr. Mills proposes, it is this: Dr. Mills claims to have invented a method of causing the electrons in hydrogen atoms to drop to a lower energy state, i.e., move to a lower orbit around the nucleus, in the process giving off large amounts of energy. He also claims that this "lower energy hydrogen" is in fact the "black matter" required to unify the other theories in that the amount of matter/energy in the universe which other theories require in order to balance.
Having read all of the data provided on his site, I can say that he makes a compelling case -- however, he doesn't seem in a big hurry to have his claims validated. Which (combined with the lack of responsivenes previously mentioned) inclines me to be extremely skeptical of his claims.
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Trouble is, sometimes legalese works to get bad folks off the hook. I hope it doesn't in this case.
Where, in the Constitution, is the government permitted to seize or otherwise modify the property shareholders in Microsoft own? It's not in the Constitution, and we both know it. However, the Sherman Anti-trust act(s) have been found to be in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, ergo the government has a right to intervene, a la Standard Oil or AT&T.
I ask of all you educated Slashdotters, take a step away from the details and ask: "Who is Janet Reno to decide what a private and voluntary association of owners, employees, customers, and other contractually bound participants can do with their time and effort?"
Well, IIRC Janet Reno is the Attorney General of the US of A, and is charged with seeing that violations of federal law are prosecuted. AKA the Sherman Anti-trust acts under which the DOJ sued Microsoft.
This is software after all - the most insubstantial and ephemeral product in existence. Literally nobody is coerced to or prevented from doing anything with software.
You could just as easily argue that "literally nobody is coerced to or prevented from doing anything with electricity." [aside: too bad most of us live in communities where the local electrical company has a de facto monopoly...] My point is, if company A acts in violation of the law and in the process takes down the profitability and therefore of company B, thus limiting my choices to a quality product which would have otherwise been developed, damage has occurred.
I won't italicize and copy the my most vehement area of disagreement... the part about the suppression of legit businesses, etc. Because Microsoft has used every tactic in the book as clubs to beat new-technology competitors.
Some of those tactics have been found by Judge Jackson to be (findings of fact) horribly and completely beyond the scope of fair business practices and way into the domain of monopoly-protecting stuff that is AFAICT against the law.
Other than that, I agree with your excellent points.
So now he tries the same thing via a more legitimate auction site.
Well, twenty four days, five hours to go. I hope he has the same number of bids as he does right now [2:00 p.m. (CST)], that is exactly zero.
It's a sad day when science for the rest of us has to take a back seat to bidding just for one of us -- I mean, them, with the them being the gazillionairs who might join in this stupid play for the most unique collectable items
Personally I hope the person(s) who put this thing up for bid don't get any takers at their asking price and have to not only eat crow but work on selling it to a university or museum where it can do some good.
- Backing the StrongArm chip via the Netwinder series. The article briefly mentions the Netwinder, but doesn't do justice to how important Corel was in getting the Linux port onto SA hardware for the rest of us who would like to move away from the 'x86 family.
- The free download of Corel's GUI based Word Perfect 8 software.
- Adding further US corporate branding and marketing experience to the Linux OS (with Caldera and Red Hat)
- IIRC, they also participated against MS in the US DOJ trial, didn'they?
- My final point...Corel Draw. I tell ya, if I could buy it for Linux right now, money would be changing hands.
There's probably more things which I would count as postive moves, but in the interest of brevity I'll skip it and say that for me the only redeeming part of the Red Herring article is that it mentioned that folks who report on investment are finally giving Corel a decent break in the news.Well, that's my 2 cents worth.
BTW, having followed Transmeta in the news for quite a while, I agree with some of the various article writers that Transmeta has all of the ingredients it needs for huge success: strong financial backing, partnering with established companies a focused product, a hugely competent technical staff, and enough name recognition to get the media attention required to explode into production.
Hmmm. Interesting thought. I wonder if /. has enough karma points with Linus to get CmdrTaco and Hemos up close and personal on launch day... Think I'll send a message with that suggestion to the good folks in Transmeta's Business Development department. There. Done. BTW, anyone care use the link and make the same suggestion?
Rob, Jeff y'available?
"What Red Hat now does will have a major influence on the future of the Open Source movement in more ways than can be counted."
True enough. So far (IMHO) the influence seems to be positive. To wit:
- Promotion of Linux certifications. This is important because it allows a wider array of CS support businesses to develop, similar to how Microsoft (MSCE, etc) and Novell (CNE,CNA) used to allow individuals such as myself (Novell CNA) to run profitable small businesses backing the technology.
- Reinvesting code/coder support to the Linux OS community: RPMs, support of Gnome, etc.
- the assistance in opening the IPO to more than just the large investors, etc.
- Providing a smart face to the Linux movement. Bob Young has the ability to explain (i.e., market) Linux to the masses better than say, Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox.
- Corporate support: I do not thing that Corel, Caldera, or Suse would have as much market share as they do if RedHat had not led the way. Look at Slackware, Debian, and Stampede, and the various BSD's -- all of these are good distributions (I'm trying to avoid sparking a flame war here), but the for-profit, company backed distributions have far more market share. This translates to more eyeballs seeing and report problems / bugs / security holes to the rest of the community.
- Support (all though not 100% yet) for the Linux Standards Board (?)(LSB), which is (IIRC) is trying to achieve a cross-distribution threshhold so that if I release app "X" under my favorite distro "A", you'll be able to use it on your favorite distro "B".
"Since Red Hat's IPO was announced, of the two founders Bob Young gave up the CEO's seat to Matthew Szulik... and now Mark Ewing has been pushed out of the CTO's chair in favour of tech-head Michael Tiemann...'xuse me? I didn't see anything that says "push out". Having two hard working, hard headed, savvy businessmen who understand how to achieve corporate market penetration for RH (which again, helps Linux in general) is good for the company especially now that IBM is backing Linux, and Tiemann has already proven a friend to the community via all of the GNU tools originated under his leadership at Cygnus.
Probably true. However, even given Linus Torvalds' joke about "total world domination", RedHat is helping deliver it. Joking aside, however, RH Linux is still more about is "total world liberation", because every RH CD I've owned also includes the source code so that if I want to roll my own distro, I can go ahead and do so. I just can't lock up the code afterward.
"They are now motivated by profit. That is why the two tech-heads who founded the company have been sidelined."
I question your choice of words. Bob Young and Marc Ewing are still central to different elements of RH's success. If RH becomes too corporate, developers will abandon them, so Mark Ewing is critical to keeping the doors to the OS community open. So it seems to me that these two "tech-heads" have moved within the structure of the company to where they really want to playe.
For the company to be taken seriously by the big boys, "wiser" heads must be seen to prevail.
Not wiser necessarily. More experienced in addressing the issues that the "big boys" (aka large corporate IT departments) bring to the table. I know -- I've worked in the IT or Network Engineering department at four Fortune 1000 companies (not sure if they were in the top 100 or 500 at the time)
I on the other hand, naive fool that I am, entertain hopes that Red Hat will stay true to its roots....
Hear hear!!!
I will probably get flamed for this, but I hope RH actually gets into the patent thing in certain areas that do make sense, similar to how Mercedes Benz did with unibody construction, and several other examples I am aware of in other technology areas where I company patented the techniques, etc. so that no-one else could, then proceeded to essentially give away the rights to use the technnology "because some things are too important to keep inside" (At least, that's how I remember the quote from Mercedes -- forgive me if I quoted badly). I would hope that RH will look at using some of its resources to develop and patent -- then proceed to open the code to the community. That way no-one else can try to lock those techniques/technologies behind closed corporate doors.
Anyway, while I have attempted to provide some contrasts to the thoughts expressed in your post, I agree with the general concerns. Keep up the good work.
Mighty effective reason not to do so, yes?
Well, last time I checked, the DoJ hadn't essentially won a lawsuit against Red Hat. So a different set of rules applies to M$ right now. So yes, I can say that Red Hat can bundle in ways that M$ cannot.
Nice try, apprentice. Either you are hopelessly naive or trying to be funny. Mozilla has better than sixty developers, large database systems may have anywhere from 10 to 100, many games have 4-6 main coders, so the number I used in my example(ten) is more than reasonable. I didn't even include coders to back check the main code libraries in all of the various api's, (Win 95,98,NT, and now Win2K) or coders involved in legacy system migration, data architects, etc. etc.
So you know, I usually work on a team of 2-4 (ala Extreme Programming) and have deployed a number of large corporate apps and websites. But just between me and you, the MFC sucks compared to other libraries I have used (Rogue Wave, zAPP, etc), but it won because M$ kept changing the API.
One of my better projects in C++ ran memory leak free with over 100 total classes AND WAS 700k SMALLER THAN A SIMILAR MFC APPLICATION. So you can't say I don't know how to do it.
Yes, there are alot of apps out there. Most of which with multiple coders involved, and I'd wager the average is around 8-10. So all your guess about my abilities really says is that you probably haven't done anything overly complex with C++ in Windoze. Because otherwise I don't think you would you wouldn't have tried a cheap shot at a perfectly valid example. So tell me, do you have enough experience to disagree now?
Books: Little, Brown & Co. Magazines: Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, People (for the wife),Parenting. Cable related: CNN, and occasionally renting a video or going to a movie originally produced for/by or owned by: New Line Cinema, Castle Rock Entertainment, (MGM, RJO, and pre 1950 Warner Bros. Films), Turner Classic Movies, TNT.
Dollar wise, an even split between mags and entertainment, I'd say. But the printing industry gets some of the bucks from the books and mags, and AMC and others get bucks from the entertainment. None of the above get bucks from me for internet related content via AO(HEL)L.
Well, in the early going I would expect them to try, but I would not expect it to last very long. Here's why: in order to collaborate, company A has to sign legal papers with company B. This partnership deal says that A will give b access to the OS-API in return for .... (fill in the blank). Or that A will give b (fill in the blank) in return for the nifty new code developed by the Apps group.
Doesn't seem problematic until you try to fill in the blanks.One way or the other, whatever is being given or traded has to maximize profits for both A and B. Why? because if the agreement doesn't do that, any shareholder of even just one share of either company can sue both for collusion against that shareholder's interest in obtaining a profit on their investment in company stock.
Now can you see how the threat of multiple class action lawsuits might keep this kind of collusion from happening?
Others have already competently dealt with most of the issues you bring up, but I'd like to chime in with how the Microsoft breakup relates to IT managers.
The preponderance of M$ software in corporate America has about 80% to do with M$ ability to leverage the desktop and application API(s) to the detriment of every other competitor, and 20% to do with the ability to cut loss-leader deals in one area and then recoup the profit in another. It's called site licensing -- pay a somewhat exorbitant fee for the right to use a CD-ROM to install the same software throughout the company without threat of lawsuit. Buy 10,000 desktop licenses, and we'll cut you a good deal -- and throw in Outlook Express and IE X.X on every desktop!! Buy NT server licenses (which can be very expensive) and M$ throws in the II-S web/application server for free.
Okay, now divide M$ into three companies as previously described (A) Microsoft OS, (B) Microsoft Apps, and (C) Microsoft Internet. Here's what falls out of the instances previously mentioned:
- Since e-mail is also an Internet app, Outlook, M$ Mail, or Exchange can't just be thrown in with the OS, because the Internet company has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits, not give away product.
- Buy the site licences for the applications, but the profit can't be used to lower/underwrite the cost of the desktop software.
- II-S is an Internet application, so it can no longer be bundled with WinNT server (which is an OS). Now II-S has to compete on a dollar for dollar basis with other web servers, including the Open Source ones -- that are free. But since company C (Internet) has to maximize profit, they can't just give it away any more. As a guess -- IIS $1500... Apache -- Free. Hmmmm....company finance guy, what do you think I should choose?
- Almost done... drivers: Since drivers are part of the OS company, the specs have to be published under an Open API, so that the Applications group and the Internet group can take advantage of them. For example, if TWAIN32 is part of the OS, then the WinAPI that talks to Twain32 has to be fully open so that the app group folks can use it.
- SQL Server: part of the Applications group. ODBC32: part of the OS. II-S: Internet. Each group has to produce it's best work (less bugs hidden by the API's), and in order to maximize profit, each group has to work with "outsider" companies to improve their products, rather than relying on the monopoly to enforce compliance.
- I haven't thought this one through, but no more cheating on Java with proprietary WinAPI calls, right?
End result -- choosing M$ in the corporate environment just got alot more costly and harder to justify. Which will increase the speed of movement in the corporate world AWAY from Microsoft.Next thoughts... "90% of the world's PC will still run on Windows..."Take away the ability to cut deals by using the profit from M$-Office to underwrite the cost of the OS. Also, take away the ability to enforce single OS installation on hardware. Now all of the Comp USA(s), Radio Shacks, Circuit City(s) can sell whatever they want, and since the M$ OS now really costs $120 per machine, and Linux, etc. is by comparison --free... And since M$ tech support now costs more, it becomes cheaper to use other Tech support co's, rather than passing on the cost to M$ (which hid it in the Apps profit, etc.)
Finally, it is a dog to write M$ apps because of the convulted WinAPI. Force the API into the open, and now a company can conceivably develop a code base which can be compiled to be runnable on a larger variety of OS's. For example, if I have 10 WinAPI programmers, and the OpenAPI allows me to use reduce the need to 6, now I can have the other 4 work on porting/debugging the code for other platforms such as Linux, *BSD, BeOS, Mac, etc. So my company's gawsh-this-is-kewl-app runs on a wider variety of platforms. Soon the 90% figure starts to decline, right?
"I'm not getting up my hopes that this will seriously threaten MS's dominant position on the global market." While I admit that it will take longer for the English speaking market to change, separating MS into the companies forces each of them to develop all of their products independently for all of the different languages, and still maintain profit. So I see a cut in M$ support for non-English and non-EU countries. So the worldwide market for Linux, etc. improves, which strengthens Linux, etc. here in the US.
Okay, I'm done now.
On the one hand, if what the Uruquayan Linux group is saying is true, it ends up looking like the two men in question are essentially trying to corner and control the Linux distribution market in that country.
The response seems to be that the UY LUG has leading members who are intent on doing the same thing (and have filed for the trademark in more than one class themselves) that are the type of people who would do the same thing, given the chance.
On the surface, I think we would all tend to favor the users group, but having dealt with monopolistic UG's in the past, my personal opinion is to reserve judgement (and flames) until we have more information.
I have emailed, (and suggest /. readers do likewise) the LinuxTech (Uruquay) site mgmt. with a simple English request that the folks who have made the application publicly discuss what they will do with it, and let the UG respond before we all come down in harsh judgment on one side or the other.
What I'm wondering is if this actually a good thing in disquise, I mean if a large percentage of the AO (hel)l users end up on their new cable backed bandwidth, would that free up Internet bandwidth for the rest of us?
In a former job life, I was a VAR (value added reseller) doing networks, hardware, etc. One of my better clients had an established (translation := stable) Netware setup, with DR-DOS on all of the workstations. At the time Windows (3.1.1, definitely not the beta in question) was installed, several of the workstations started going nuts.
After several weeks of sweating bullets due to client anger towards my company and after many hours of intensive research, what we found out was that Windows was relocating code that belonged to one the DR-DOS subsystems, with nary a message in either DOS or Windows to indicate that something very bad was happening behind the scenes.
In addition, at least in the early going (and if I am remembering correctly -- this is four plus years ago now), Windows wouldn't use the DR-DOS based IPX/SPX network card drivers correctly -- you had to use the Windows drivers in order to print via a Windows enabled printer. Which then conveniently locked out the DOS based users from using that printer. (To be fair, this may have been a printer driver problem, not M$ evil intentions).
Still, sounds suspiciciously close to the illegal practice of tying , doesn't it?
Of course, being written by lawyers, et. al, it's hard to know what else to expect.
One perception still remains as I am reading. Judging by the names and reputations House members who sponsored the bill, I am highly suspicious that there's some special interest influence that I don't get. As you read, let me know what you think.
My general impression (which hasn't changed (I'm on page 45 of 116) much since I started reading is that this is a bill by lawyers for lawyers.
The first section (17 pages) deals with "invention promoters", and on the surface, looks good because it creates a disclosure requirement and makes it easier for an inventor to end a contract with a promoter. But (rereading now) I didn't see a whole lot of legal teeth other than the right to sue (which we already had) for damages, and if the promoter was guilty of fraud, it was only a misdemeanor offense. Secondarily, if I'm reading correctly, the inventor only has five days to rescind the contract -- which is not long enough to find out whether or not the promoter can even provide value added service to the inventor.
Pg 19 -- has a definition sentence that is one paragraph long, and I'm still not sure I understand the legal ramifications of it. Pg. 20: requires that a process be reduced to "practice" at least a year prior to the filing of a patent in order to be a defense. Seems dangerous. What if I have developed a process in my business, but haven't documented it to a practice -- and some bozo tries to patent that same process and I don't get word of it. Did I just lose my "prior art" defense against infringement? Sure looks like it.
Pg. 20, bottom: correct me if I'm wrong, but current patent law allows infringement defense based on "substantial improvements" to an item, even if the new item was derived from an earlier patented item. My reading of the text is that this clause is ambiguous and could remove that protection. Pg: 21==>Burden of proof: So far my worst finding... It puts the burden of proof for infringment on the "alleged" infringer. 'xcuse me. I thought under US law a person was innocent until proven guilty. Pg:23==>A successful infringement defense does not necessarily invalidate the patent. Oh yeah? Isn't a successful defense somewhat a proof of "prior art".
Well, enough of that. I'll keep reading, but on first look this is bad.
You missed the point. When you fly off to a convention, I assume you take your computer with you (a laptop, presumabaly). While you and others might be in the fractional minority, most home machines are not in that category. For example, I'm temporarily stuck on a WinXX machine at work, and have both a Linux machine and a WinXX machine at home. (gotta take care of wife and little kids, and there's not that much good Linux educational software for seven year olds -- yet.) The Linux machine stays up because it is hosting the site(s). The WinXX machines get shut down at the end of the day or session. But since they are not serving websites they don't count against the uptime average for WinXX machines.
Why not? because NOT THAT MANY home machines are hosting websites, because Joe AHU (Average Home User) doesn't have a static IP address -- he's got a dial up connection. So virtually every point made in this post doesn't add up to a lower uptime for windows.
The uptime counter bug mentioned by other posters and the BSOD (blue screen of death or black screen of death) are what accounts for it. That and the fact that most of the Windows operating systems have historically had serious memory leakage problems... [memory leak: when the OS loses track of which RAM has been allocated and/or deallocated to or by a specific program)
- Harry S Truman's re-election. The Republican party thought that their candidate was a shoe-in (easy winner), and was very much the candidate of the "elites". The Democratic party machinery (which put Truman in the Vice Presidency in '44, only to have FDR die on them) didn't support Truman very well either. So Truman hops on a train and proceeds to get out the vote of "the ones who didn't matter" to the elites, and wins the Presidency. (IMHO one of our best Presidents, by the way.)
- IIRC, John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election in a margin narrower than any other election this century. IIRC the margin was so narrow that if a few thousand voters in the City of Chicago had voted the other way, or even not voted, Nixon would have been President in 1960, not 1968. Now then, I have heard that the Daley political machine may have had an undue (essentially controlling) influence on much of the vote, but if a large number of people had not cast their votes one by one for Kennedy throughout the rest of the State of Illinois, Chicago wouldn't have mattered.
So, as flawed as the system may be, votes count. Especially in shaping the local and state judiciaries and legislatures, which is where the future national leaders come from.That's why they call it participatory democracy. And BTW, the U.S. isn't actually a democracy, it's a republic with democratically elected officials.
BTW, Nader was so far down the list I didn't even notice his name. So I am very curious as to why so many "geek" posters like the guy so much.
Which leads me to an idea for Rob and the gang... Maybe /. can run a set of polls over a few days with the same questions so we can see how the /. geek voice looks -- then enter the results into the SmartSelector (after all the polls are done) and see how the candidates are ranked accordingly. (Personally I'd have an initial poll which would rate which questions /.'ers found most important, then run the polls in that order. Betcha by the time the polls were done, the whole 'Net media world would be watching for the results. Comments anyone?
The author of the article did not say whether there was any calculable way of using some obscure trap (maybe a sacrifice of several pieces which would open up the board) which would allow black to escape from the computer's move progression that would ultimately leading to a black victory or draw.
For those not acquainted with the theory Dr. Mills proposes, it is this: Dr. Mills claims to have invented a method of causing the electrons in hydrogen atoms to drop to a lower energy state, i.e., move to a lower orbit around the nucleus, in the process giving off large amounts of energy. He also claims that this "lower energy hydrogen" is in fact the "black matter" required to unify the other theories in that the amount of matter/energy in the universe which other theories require in order to balance.
Having read all of the data provided on his site, I can say that he makes a compelling case -- however, he doesn't seem in a big hurry to have his claims validated. Which (combined with the lack of responsivenes previously mentioned) inclines me to be extremely skeptical of his claims.