The MS EULA has not been tested but the recent court ruling on the Adobe EULA for bundled software in CA once more showed that courts will take the line that a "Licence" that has no renewal cost or schedule is not a licence and that an "Aggrement" that you didn't sign is no aggrement.
The LWN coverage is here. The ruling contains the interesting phrase " the Court finds that there is only assent on
the part of the consumer, if at all, when the consumer loads the
Adobe program" (my stress).
You missunderstand the purpose of full-disclosure. It is not intended to make life easy for skiddies, it has two reasons:
To force the programmers of the faulty code to fix it by giving them a deadline by which the exploit will be published. This in turn is because the black-hats will be passing the info around and the rest of us living in ignorance will lead to rooted systems eventually, even if the exploit is not disclosed. So there has to be a deadline to make sure the bug gets fixed quickly.
To test the manufacturer's claim that they've fixed the problem. It does happen that patches occasionally don't work.
The idea that full-disclosure means "immediate disclosure" is simply not true.
All the people here who've seen it and are saying its so good: why are the ads for it so laughably bad, then? I haven't seen it and based on the trailers I wasn't going to bother. Does the film itself actually have bits from the book in it (unlike the trailers)?
1) There is no integrated development environment and toolchain for general purpose C/C++ coding for Linux that is comparable in integration and featureset to something like MSVC on Win32,
"Comparable" is subjective; MS said there was none
2a) if slashdotters wobble about these things being WMs or Environments, how are potentially inexperienced developers supposed to figure it out in a reasonable amount of time ?
This is a non-issue. You write the code and the window manager manages the window. It's the same under Windows.
Case in point - write a configuration for a window manager. Now convert it for use with a different one.
I'm starting to wonder if I just don't get what you're talking about. What do you mean by "a configuration for a window manager"? Do you mean a configureation program or a program configured for a particular window manager? In the latter case it's your own fault if you paint yourself into a corner by working to a specific WM. There is simply no reason to do this.
3) You cant say XP isn't proven, and then later say XP is just NT all over again.
I never even mentioned NT!
XP has _10 years_ of OS development behind it.
Development is change. Certainly parts of the Win32 code have remained for 10 years, but there is a lot of new CODE in XP and it's code that crashes, not experience.
but its still a bit of a stretch to call the guts of XP "unproven" in the same breath as saying "its really just W2k with some extra gui bits".
Maybe that's why I didn't say it.
but I know for a fact MS internally has a toolchain which gives statistical test coverage assurances based on deltas between binaries. Guess thats what happens when you have a group like MSResearch at your disposal.
Guess that's why they produce buggy shit like Outlook, IIS and IE. If you didn't test the final build you didn't test the product. "Not directly tested" is marketing bullshit for "test this for us, please".
There may very well be things that are demonstrably false in what MS has released. You haven't mentioned any of them, if there are.
Clearly you would say that if MS had said that the sky is pink with orange polka-dots and I quoted them.
Common slashdotter tactics used in your message include:
- "I am an Armchair legal expert"
Yes, slander and libel are little-known technical areas of the law, aren't they?
"I get to have it both ways" (its a WM, its an environment, what is it ?)
I never mentioned environments. It's a WM. KDE and Gnome come with their own WM but I don't use or need either, but everyone has a window manager. You can define environment any way you like but it's got nothing to do with the WM.
"Your test isn't good enough for me" (because it doesn't say what I want it to say)
Your test isn't good enough because it didn't test the product. They even SAID they didn't test the product.
Well, that was a breath-taking bit of denial. I particularly enjoyed the bit where you made up bit that I had said. And the bit where you claimed that MS saying they hadn't tested the program meant that they have. Stunning. I hope Bill gives you that promotion you're obviously looking for.
No, it's fraud and misrepresentation. They're both illegal. I take it you think libel and slander are just "FUCKIN MARKETING" too?
if you want to say that MS actually lied in its whitepaper, you show me one point in that press release
"Linux lacks an integrated tool set, so OS and applications development time is slowed"
This is not true, there are several. Go to Trolltech's site (www.trolltech.com) to see one.
"For example, there are at least five different window managers and at least four competing browsers, increasing programming complexity and reducing the pool of available developers."
There is no reason why this should increase the complexity of development; the WM makes no impact on the code; there may be several browers (it's called choice) but there's only one HTML spec. Since these have no effect on the code the second part is also false.
"There is no common integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux. OS development is command-line driven and applications development requires a new set of tools for each device. Developers must either build their own tool-chain from piecing together Open Source tools or opt for a specific vendor's costly toolset."
This is bollocks from start to finish; most of it was true in 1998, though.
"Comprehensive OS foundation with proven performance and reliability"
This can't be true since XP has not been out long enough to be "proven" as reliable.
Then there's a bunch of benchmarks followed by "Note: WindowsXP Embedded was not tested directly. Internal Microsoft testing indicates that WindowsXP Embedded exhibited similar or better reliability and performance characteristics than WindowsXP Professional."
'Not tested directly' is the same as 'Not tested'.
"Linux looks to Java as a distributed applications development environment."
Linux has never done this; Linux looks to source code as a distributed application environment, in general.
"Open Source does not an ecosystem make"
Making this claim raises the question of is it true? I can't see any reasonable way to describe the millions of programmers supporting Open Source and the newsgroups and mailing lists where they can be contacted as anything other than an "ecosystem" in the sense MS is using.
"The Red Hat Worldwide Technical Support Guidelines and Definitions document states that Red Hat will not support any modifications made to their distribution of Linux that are not approved or recommended by them."
The lie here is only implied but is a lie all the same, it is that MS will do this. Try modifying Windows XPE's code (assuming you have it) and see if MS will help you debug it.
The distortions in the rest of the piece may indeed be marketing but if you said them of me I'd be laughing all the way to the bank with the damages award.
It would simply not make sense to re-train them to use Linux.
Then put KDE on the machines and just re-train them for the accounts package.
I can't stand KDE for the same reason it would solve your objection: it's so like Windows that users frequently can't tell the difference. I've had several temps in here using Star Office under KDE that have never realised that they were using anything other than Windows 98.
I don't want it to be absolutly true to the book. I've read enough William Goldman and seen enough good adaptations to know that things have to be changed.
What worries me is the quality of the changes I saw in the trailer. The bit on the dock is just cheap thrills, the bit with the ford is, assuming it is THE ford, covered well and dramatically in the book by the white horses and doesn't need fiddling with, and the bit with the well is one of the creepiest bits in Moria while the trailer version is just crap slap-stick.
Characters have to be removed and amalgamated and parts of the story are going to be skipped altogether in any sensible-length film of LotR, but if you add material, it had better be good.
Anyone know how many extra bits have made their way into the film? The trailors have had enough crap-looking not-in-the-book moments to put me off seeing the film (Nazgul chasing hobbits on a dock, some bint with a bow challenging the Riders at a ford, and a complete fuck-up of the creepy Moria tapper-in-the-well scene).
Now the world at large at least takes free software seriously
Serious enough to stop trying to patent code? Serious enough to ensure that all software comes with source on disc? Serious enough that you or I can have access to the language codes which drive our printers?
The world has moved backwards in respect of free software. Ironically this is largely RMS's fault, AFAICS. His irritating manner has almost totally destroyed any respect for his ideas on free software, ideas which are valuable.
The world hasn't stopped needing RMS's vision, it just really needs a new RMS.
Apple didn't steal from Xerox -- they hired Jeff Raskin who himself brought the technology to Xerox. They got his brain along with it.
So paying a designer some money and saying "Just do what you did for Xerox" is different from paying a different designer money and saying "Just do what Jeff did for Xerox"?
Flame away, I guess, but I still have to ask who has been harmed?
Every programmer in the world. We have all had the right to write programs for money removed from us. Basically, any programmer who comes up with a good, popular, program can have that program copied by MS and see it given away as part of Windows and there is nothing they can do about it because MS can run them through the courts until they're broke.
Microsoft is a big (relatively speaking)
Yes, relative to all other companies.
big companies are easy to hate.
This is a classic cop-out by MS apologists. Big companies are hated because they treat everyone like shit. It's not the bigness which people hate, it's the treatment.
Big companies can not, even if they want to, treat their customers well. The best they can do is treat the important customers well and everyone else has to lump it. In MS's case, they are so big that NO single customer is important and they can treat everyone like shit.
You're jealous of Bill Gates because he made a lot of money.
I am jealous of Gates because he has been given a lot of money while I'm stuck here having to earn it. I didn't have a million dollar gift from my granddad when I was born and IBM never gave me a licence to print money. The government has never said to me "the last version of your software failed and crashed, was late arriving and didn't do what you said it would; could we have another million copies, please?".
Gates has sponged of the rest of us while destroying other companies (Netscape being the best known) for years. Why should anyone innovate in the face of that? If you thought of a new way to browse the web, would you spend time working on it knowing that if it works it'll just appear in IE7?
And just as a bonus...for everyone who rails at companies who (mis)use US patent laws to protect their patently obvious software developments, remember that the antitrust laws that Microsoft was accused of violating were put in place to combat the excesses of the railroad barons of the 19th century...just as poor an application of the law to the Microsoft situation as the application of patent law to software and "methods". Read your history!
This didn't make sense. What are you talking about? Are you saying that only railway companies can be monoplies?
From a cost perspective, it simply was too expensive to delete Windows from our configurations and create a special process for the small number of orders that required no OS.
I think you're lying. It doesn't cost 40 dollars to not install Windows on every tenth computer. Uninstalling it would be stupid.
Anyway, the phrase "Windows Tax" disguises what it really is: blackmail and extortion. Your company may have not wanted to remove Windows from its machines but, if it had, it would have quickly found out that it didn't have the option. MS simply would have stopped providing you with Windows and there sure as hell ain't enough of a non-Windows market to support a large OEM with no OS to pre-install.
This is the biggest abuse of the monopoly position: forcing OEM's to pay protection money in order to stay "in the game".
Theiving, pathetic scoundrel technologies such as M$ Windows, and PC makers who now have "pretty cases" are nothing but parasites, leeching off of the superior technology that sustains them.
You've never heard of Xerox then? Or is it just okay when Apple does the theiving and leeching?
Overlapping windows were a pretty brain-dead idea to begin with. This is increasingly being realized by developers who add sidebars and "panels" to their applications which can be moved and resized (knode [sf.net], the KDE newsreader, implements this quite fully, although it's a bit awkward to use).
All of which shit I turn off. Overlapping windows are far better than having all your windows cluttered up with that sort of crap.
I do agree with everything you say about transparent windows, however. The elightenment people (or "wankers") really started this trend off and it's just a big waste of processor and developer time.
Slashdot Mirror
The LWN coverage is here. The ruling contains the interesting phrase " the Court finds that there is only assent on the part of the consumer, if at all, when the consumer loads the Adobe program" (my stress).
TWW
How do you know there hasn't already been one. After all, security through obscurity means not telling users how bad things really are.
TWW
The idea that full-disclosure means "immediate disclosure" is simply not true.
TWW
Sorry, fell asleep at line 3.
TWW
You are joking, right? Milton's ideas were in the same league but the execution is dire; I love Azimov but LotR is far beyond his best single work.
I would never claim JRRT is the best writer in the world but the Lord of the Rings is a terrific work.
If LOTR is your idea of great literature, go take a comp lit class or something,
The funny thing is, it's always people that had to go to univeristy to be told what to like in Eng Lit that come out with this "LotR is crap" stuff.
The rest of the book-reading world, however, continues to like and know good work when it sees it.
TWW
That was an "in" joke. I didn't mean it; I've never even seen a Dreamcast.
"Comparable" is subjective; MS said there was none
2a) if slashdotters wobble about these things being WMs or Environments, how are potentially inexperienced developers supposed to figure it out in a reasonable amount of time ?
This is a non-issue. You write the code and the window manager manages the window. It's the same under Windows.
Case in point - write a configuration for a window manager. Now convert it for use with a different one.
I'm starting to wonder if I just don't get what you're talking about. What do you mean by "a configuration for a window manager"? Do you mean a configureation program or a program configured for a particular window manager? In the latter case it's your own fault if you paint yourself into a corner by working to a specific WM. There is simply no reason to do this.
3) You cant say XP isn't proven, and then later say XP is just NT all over again.
I never even mentioned NT!
XP has _10 years_ of OS development behind it.
Development is change. Certainly parts of the Win32 code have remained for 10 years, but there is a lot of new CODE in XP and it's code that crashes, not experience.
but its still a bit of a stretch to call the guts of XP "unproven" in the same breath as saying "its really just W2k with some extra gui bits".
Maybe that's why I didn't say it.
but I know for a fact MS internally has a toolchain which gives statistical test coverage assurances based on deltas between binaries. Guess thats what happens when you have a group like MSResearch at your disposal.
Guess that's why they produce buggy shit like Outlook, IIS and IE. If you didn't test the final build you didn't test the product. "Not directly tested" is marketing bullshit for "test this for us, please".
There may very well be things that are demonstrably false in what MS has released. You haven't mentioned any of them, if there are.
Clearly you would say that if MS had said that the sky is pink with orange polka-dots and I quoted them.
Common slashdotter tactics used in your message include: - "I am an Armchair legal expert"
Yes, slander and libel are little-known technical areas of the law, aren't they?
"I get to have it both ways" (its a WM, its an environment, what is it ?)
I never mentioned environments. It's a WM. KDE and Gnome come with their own WM but I don't use or need either, but everyone has a window manager. You can define environment any way you like but it's got nothing to do with the WM.
"Your test isn't good enough for me" (because it doesn't say what I want it to say)
Your test isn't good enough because it didn't test the product. They even SAID they didn't test the product.
Well, that was a breath-taking bit of denial. I particularly enjoyed the bit where you made up bit that I had said. And the bit where you claimed that MS saying they hadn't tested the program meant that they have. Stunning. I hope Bill gives you that promotion you're obviously looking for.
BTW, the Dreamcast was a Windows-box.
TWW
TWW
No, it's fraud and misrepresentation. They're both illegal. I take it you think libel and slander are just "FUCKIN MARKETING" too?
if you want to say that MS actually lied in its whitepaper, you show me one point in that press release
"Linux lacks an integrated tool set, so OS and applications development time is slowed"
This is not true, there are several. Go to Trolltech's site (www.trolltech.com) to see one.
"For example, there are at least five different window managers and at least four competing browsers, increasing programming complexity and reducing the pool of available developers."
There is no reason why this should increase the complexity of development; the WM makes no impact on the code; there may be several browers (it's called choice) but there's only one HTML spec. Since these have no effect on the code the second part is also false.
"There is no common integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux. OS development is command-line driven and applications development requires a new set of tools for each device. Developers must either build their own tool-chain from piecing together Open Source tools or opt for a specific vendor's costly toolset."
This is bollocks from start to finish; most of it was true in 1998, though.
"Comprehensive OS foundation with proven performance and reliability"
This can't be true since XP has not been out long enough to be "proven" as reliable.
Then there's a bunch of benchmarks followed by "Note: WindowsXP Embedded was not tested directly. Internal Microsoft testing indicates that WindowsXP Embedded exhibited similar or better reliability and performance characteristics than WindowsXP Professional."
'Not tested directly' is the same as 'Not tested'.
"Linux looks to Java as a distributed applications development environment."
Linux has never done this; Linux looks to source code as a distributed application environment, in general.
"Open Source does not an ecosystem make"
Making this claim raises the question of is it true? I can't see any reasonable way to describe the millions of programmers supporting Open Source and the newsgroups and mailing lists where they can be contacted as anything other than an "ecosystem" in the sense MS is using.
"The Red Hat Worldwide Technical Support Guidelines and Definitions document states that Red Hat will not support any modifications made to their distribution of Linux that are not approved or recommended by them."
The lie here is only implied but is a lie all the same, it is that MS will do this. Try modifying Windows XPE's code (assuming you have it) and see if MS will help you debug it.
The distortions in the rest of the piece may indeed be marketing but if you said them of me I'd be laughing all the way to the bank with the damages award.
TWW
Then put KDE on the machines and just re-train them for the accounts package.
I can't stand KDE for the same reason it would solve your objection: it's so like Windows that users frequently can't tell the difference. I've had several temps in here using Star Office under KDE that have never realised that they were using anything other than Windows 98.
TWW
Is there a Linux version on the cards? Our accountant uses it and he HATES Windows.
TWW
I find it a constant pain; my concept of a filesystem is nothing like my concept of the web.
My filesystem is much more like Gopher than WWW.
TWW
What worries me is the quality of the changes I saw in the trailer. The bit on the dock is just cheap thrills, the bit with the ford is, assuming it is THE ford, covered well and dramatically in the book by the white horses and doesn't need fiddling with, and the bit with the well is one of the creepiest bits in Moria while the trailer version is just crap slap-stick.
Characters have to be removed and amalgamated and parts of the story are going to be skipped altogether in any sensible-length film of LotR, but if you add material, it had better be good.
TWW
TWW
No, it's like saying you don't like racing games.
TWW
no
Serious enough to stop trying to patent code? Serious enough to ensure that all software comes with source on disc? Serious enough that you or I can have access to the language codes which drive our printers?
The world has moved backwards in respect of free software. Ironically this is largely RMS's fault, AFAICS. His irritating manner has almost totally destroyed any respect for his ideas on free software, ideas which are valuable.
The world hasn't stopped needing RMS's vision, it just really needs a new RMS.
TWW
So paying a designer some money and saying "Just do what you did for Xerox" is different from paying a different designer money and saying "Just do what Jeff did for Xerox"?
You should be a lawyer.
TWW
Every programmer in the world. We have all had the right to write programs for money removed from us. Basically, any programmer who comes up with a good, popular, program can have that program copied by MS and see it given away as part of Windows and there is nothing they can do about it because MS can run them through the courts until they're broke.
Microsoft is a big (relatively speaking)
Yes, relative to all other companies.
big companies are easy to hate.
This is a classic cop-out by MS apologists. Big companies are hated because they treat everyone like shit. It's not the bigness which people hate, it's the treatment.
Big companies can not, even if they want to, treat their customers well. The best they can do is treat the important customers well and everyone else has to lump it. In MS's case, they are so big that NO single customer is important and they can treat everyone like shit.
You're jealous of Bill Gates because he made a lot of money.
I am jealous of Gates because he has been given a lot of money while I'm stuck here having to earn it. I didn't have a million dollar gift from my granddad when I was born and IBM never gave me a licence to print money. The government has never said to me "the last version of your software failed and crashed, was late arriving and didn't do what you said it would; could we have another million copies, please?".
Gates has sponged of the rest of us while destroying other companies (Netscape being the best known) for years. Why should anyone innovate in the face of that? If you thought of a new way to browse the web, would you spend time working on it knowing that if it works it'll just appear in IE7?
And just as a bonus...for everyone who rails at companies who (mis)use US patent laws to protect their patently obvious software developments, remember that the antitrust laws that Microsoft was accused of violating were put in place to combat the excesses of the railroad barons of the 19th century...just as poor an application of the law to the Microsoft situation as the application of patent law to software and "methods". Read your history!
This didn't make sense. What are you talking about? Are you saying that only railway companies can be monoplies?
From a cost perspective, it simply was too expensive to delete Windows from our configurations and create a special process for the small number of orders that required no OS.
I think you're lying. It doesn't cost 40 dollars to not install Windows on every tenth computer. Uninstalling it would be stupid.
Anyway, the phrase "Windows Tax" disguises what it really is: blackmail and extortion. Your company may have not wanted to remove Windows from its machines but, if it had, it would have quickly found out that it didn't have the option. MS simply would have stopped providing you with Windows and there sure as hell ain't enough of a non-Windows market to support a large OEM with no OS to pre-install.
This is the biggest abuse of the monopoly position: forcing OEM's to pay protection money in order to stay "in the game".
TWW
You've never heard of Xerox then? Or is it just okay when Apple does the theiving and leeching?
TWW
Since MS forces OEMs to install Windows it's hard to see how the OEMs could then be held responsible for the cost of the OS.
TWW
That's plenty.
TWW
TWW
Overlapping windows were a pretty brain-dead idea to begin with. This is increasingly being realized by developers who add sidebars and "panels" to their applications which can be moved and resized (knode [sf.net], the KDE newsreader, implements this quite fully, although it's a bit awkward to use).
All of which shit I turn off. Overlapping windows are far better than having all your windows cluttered up with that sort of crap.
I do agree with everything you say about transparent windows, however. The elightenment people (or "wankers") really started this trend off and it's just a big waste of processor and developer time.
TWW