And what parts are those, precisely? How much code is involved? Do you know? I don't, but I do know that there's at least three separate projects that have replaced "everything else" without a heroic effort: Nokia, and the two open-source efforts.
The idea is that you can't just take what Apple's done and fork it. You have to take what Apple's done and write a new application around it.
You mean, like Apple took KHTML and wrote a new application around it? KHTML is itself a library, not a complete application.
But it's still a very different dynamic than the GPL offers.
It's a matter of degree, not kind. I've taken GPLed code and had to expend a huge effort to port it to a new platform, particularly when we started using the Alpha and Tru64 and there wasn't much code ported to it. Some of that work was at least as much effort as writing a decent Cocoa "shell" around a library.
At this point, in any case, we are in the EXACT situation that we'd be in if Safari and not just Webkit was open-sourced. You can take Webkit, tweak it, take Shiira, tweak it, and you're doing the same thing as if it were Safari that was being tweaked. We got to this place by a different route, but the situation is exactly what it would have been... so the difference between the GPL and the LGPL has turned out irrelevant.
the GPL kept Apple from legally sucking up source code and not releasing it per the license
The GPL did no such thing. You can't say "this license or law stopped X, Y, or Z" unless there's a likelihood of X, Y, or Z happening. There's a law against my pulling out a gun and shooting my boss, but you can't say "the law kept me from shooting my boss" unless you had reason to believe that I would have done that if the law didn't stop me.
Yes, there are companies for which this is true. There are, for example, companies that have taken BSDL code and not released their changes. But there are companies that have taken BSDL code and have released their changes. Apple is one of them, and given that they have released the source to their entire kernel and just about every other part of OS X below the GUI and big chunks above it as well, I find it hard to believe that the license KHTML is under would have made much if any difference to what Apple released.
Apple is not just paying lip service to open source. They're making open source part of their business model. Because open source works better for them. And that's what ESR is pointing out here, that companies are seeing that open source works better than going it alone, even if you're Apple. Yes, the license has now and then prevented some bad actors from releasing proprietary versions of open source tools, but it's pretty rare that the resulting code has been more effective than the open source version.
I mean, look at Windows NT. The use of the BSD TCP stack in Windows NT (however much debate there might be over HOW MUCH was used in the kernel, or how much remains, they definitely used BSD code) is the poster boy for how Big Bad Companies use BSDL code and don't give back to the community. Is Microsoft's code superior to the open source version? If you had the choice, would you pick Microsoft's TCP and socket library? There's no question but that Microsoft's TCP implementation is one of the least flexible around and the fact theat their socket library doesn't use file handles is a major shortcoming.
Do you think Microsoft would be better or worse off if they had completely open-sourced their TCP implementation? If it was possible for me to go in and fix stuff, and improve NT's networking? To give it the kind of NATting and packet filtering that BSD and Linux TCP has had for years? To fix the socket library so you could implement a superserver like inetd?
Hell yes, they'd be better off if it was open sourced. No matter HOW big they are, they'd still have a better product.
THAT is the point that ESR's making. That when you're using open source software, the people most hurt by fighting it and only begrudgingly doing what the law allows... are the code hoarders. And THAT is what companies are catching on to.
No, and I don't have the source to Interix either, even though the Interix distribution includes both LGPL and GPL code and so Microsoft has to release at least part of the code base. I'm sure they do, but they don't need to release enough of it to make it worthwhile even looking it up.
But I do have the source to the entire Mac OS X kernel, even though it's primarily based on BSDL rather than GPL or LGPL code and this they are legally entitled to hoard almost all of it.
Microsoft does not want to be part of the open source community, so they use open source code but give away no more than they absolutely have to.
Apple wants to be part of the open source community, so they use open source code and give away far more than they have to.
THAT is the big difference. The attitude of the companies involved, not the license you put on your code.
it still wouldn't at all stand up to Safari due to the value added by the parts of Safari which remain proprietary.
What parts are those, precisely? I don't know of any parts of Safari which remain proprietary that are any kind of barrier to competition, or that are technically difficult to implement. Safari is a very thin shell around Webkit, and there are at least two open-source replacement shells (Sunrise Browser and Shiira).
use of the LGPL in this case has still created an effective barrier to the open source product being as useful or successful as the commercial project which is using its code.
I'm completely unable to understand how you would come to this conclusion. Safari itself only uses standard Mac OS X APIs, so Apple could have open-sourced all of Safari (and Dashboard, but that came later) without open-sourcing any other part of OS X, no matter what open-source license KHTML or Webkit was released under.
About all that placing KHTML (and thus Webkit itself) under the GPL instead of the LGPL might have done would be to keep Apple from using Webkit in Mail in Tiger, and make some third party products on OS X use one of the other HTML rendering packages instead. The only program I can think of that I use, that uses Webkit, is Adium. And that's already GPLed.
So, Apple has in fact released all the code that is needed for a third party (be that the KHTML team or Nokia) to duplicate "the commercial project which is using its code", just as they would as if KHTML had been released under the GPL. Apple could have created the kind of barrier that you're talking about, but they chose not to.
Unless there's some magic Safari goodness that programs like Shiira are missing (and I doubt that, Shiira already does more than Safari) I'm completely at a loss to understand what you're getting at here.
I think part of the reason they did open it was they realised that legally, they didn't have a leg to stand on if they didn't.
Apple had absolutely no legal requirement to do anything that they weren't already doing. None. They didn't even, legally, need to send patches! Just dumping a tarball of what they'd produced on an FTP site somewhere would have satisfied the letter of the GPL. Apple has continually so far exceeded any legal requirements for the use of the open source software that they have been employing that claiming they opened up CVS out of any concern, however remote, that they would be subject to litigation is downright offensive.
What it means is that when someone's malicious software directs you to a competitor's site, that's no worse than having that software on board in the first place.
This could actually be good, because it may help when companies try and use similar law to deflect criticism and commentary.
We don't don't need the GPL no more Saw the light and walked right out the door We don't live in GNU's house It's more fun in old Chuck's house We don't need the GPL no more.
And one of the reasons is that the FSF, and specifically RMS pull the strings on much GNU software.
And some of the RMS interpretations of the GPL are indistinguishable from interface copyrights. In particular, if you use a package that's only available in an FSF-owned GPL-ed version, you have to be damn careful how you interact with it. Even if you never distribute any GPLed code, if you depend on GPLed code they can claim your code is covered.
I understand why they do this, because without it there's no substantial difference between the GPL and the LGPL. That's the end that justifies these means. But these means are so toxic I can't see how the LPF could have come from a man willing to use any end to justify them.
I predict that there will be at least one followup to this message trying to devise some kind of doublethink that
Yes, do, because this is a great example of where the GPL doesn't make any difference. Apple effectively forked KHTML (as near as I can tell, accidentally), but it was legal to do so under the GPL... they didn't need to do anything more than release the source code. Instead, in response, they opened up the CVS and the bug database. Not because the GPL forced them to, but because the chose to.
If KHTML had been under the BSDL, would Apple have taken it away completely? Legally, they could have, but they haven't done that for other open source components in Mac OS X... the source trees at opensource.apple.com and opendarwin.org include code under BSDL, APSL, GPL, and more.
AT&T took BSD code and forked it, and nobody cared until USL tried to shut down the open-source BSD... and that BSD code turned out to be just the lever that Berkeley needed to bring USL to heel.
Microsoft's using GPL code and BSD code in Interix, and that has neither let them "outperform" Cygwin nor forced Microsoft to open Interix one skerrick more. Microsoft's been using BSD code in Windows for years, but that same code was re-implemented in Linux... if the code had been GPLed, would Linux somehow be more outperforming BSD in the market, would NT have been less successful? Personally, I wish Microsoft had used more of the BSD stack rather than mostly borrowing userland tools, it would have made socket programming in Windows a lot easier... and more compatible.
So, over and over again, we see that it's not the license that matters, it's the attitude of the people using it.
The GPL doesn't stop you from forking the code base. The GPL doesn't stop different open source groups from forking the code base. The GPL doesn't stop groups using the same code base from developing functionally equivalent packages on top of that GPLed code. Heck, sometimes the only way to bring a code base forward is to fork and switch, and Nokia at least seems to think that's a great idea...
If they could truly go their own ways without Apple showing anything they did but KDE showing everything, I think it's pretty clear Apple could run ahead of KDE.
But instead, Apple is voluntarily choosing to take part on the open market of ideas to a far greater degree than any license commits them to. They could easily pull a Sveasoft and release source code grudgingly enough that KHTML would forever remain the junior fork.
What ESR's saying now is what BSD advocates have been saying for years. Companies that are interested in being productive partners will be productive partners no matter what license you use, and companies that aren't will find ways to stick to the letter of the license while completely gutting its spirit.
1993 or 1994, I think. Before Internet Explorer and before Canter and Seigel. Back when the "GOOD TIMES" worm was still a joke, the biggest problem with email was sendmail.cf, and the biggest problem on Usenet was whether you could call voting twice for a group "fraud" or not.
"Look at phishing and spam, and zombies, and all this crap," said Clark. "Show me how six incremental changes are going to make them go away."
I can do it in two incremental changes.
Ban any application that explicitly provides a mechanism for automatically executing native code or unrestricted scripts received from an untrusted source. With or without a "Do you really want to do something stupid" dialog.
No ActiveX, no "open safe files after download", no "click here to install XPI", nothing.
Ban any operating system that, after a normal install, has any network servers listening for routed protocols without explicit action by an actual human being.
No sendmail/apache/NFS, no Lan Manager/Windows Networking, nothing.
Without these changes, no changes at the network level will do anything to solve the problem he's trying to solve. With them, you limit attackers to social engineering... and it is possible to learn not to be socially engineerable.
Hah! First job I worked after college we had 3 developers sharing a Polyforth development system running multiuser in 12K of RAM with no memory protection. When you dropped out of the editor to test something you yelled "save your buffers"... because Polyforth didn't even use stack sentinels so just about any syntax error meant the system crashed and had to be rebooted.
The problem is the government was trying to put them out of business.
Don't be silly. Monopoly is a horribly inefficient way for a business to operate. Breaking up a monopoly usually ends up with the resulting companies, after the shake-out, being worth more in total than the original company did. That's been the case all the way back to US Steel.
In the case of Microsoft, they have for years been deliberately crippling their own products to make them serve the purpose of promoting the Windows monopoly (which has now topped out, they've got nowhere left to grow in the US... all they can do is try and convince people to buy Windows over again with Longhorn) instead of making them as effective as they can be in their own right. They're still acting like a start-up with one product, instead of spreading out and taking on new markets using whatever tools Microsoft Research can come up with, they're trying to figure out how to tweak a competent if mediocre desktop OS into doing the job.
Microsoft, split up, wouldn't be worrying about the challenge from Linux, they'd be USING Linux to take on IBM, or Walmart...
This isn't news. This isn't the big shock. The big shock is that this apparently is news to a lot of Microsoft apologists. Or, at least the ones who were denying that Microsoft bought their way out of the antitrust case.
You're unhappy with the "free" phone given you by your service
No. Absolutely not. You are making things up or you are putting someone else's words in my mouth, because I have at NO TIME said anything that should have even suggested that I am using the cheapest (so-called free) phone.
You believe the more expensive ones are even worse
Based on both manufacturers specs and reviews, the more expensive phones have a shorter battery life. That is an absolute deal killer for me.
The phone you want exists, but you don't have it and won't go find it.
I already owned the phone I wanted, I could not continue to use it because it's not compatible after the service change.
The "design" we're talking about is the menu structure of the user interface. That's something you only have to do once, that you can use on the cheapest phones you make just as easily as on the most expensive ones you make, and that can be changed literally with a tap of the button.
You're talking about "design" as if it's something that costs ten dollars a phone. It's not.
Isn't as good as what?
Any phone with a longer battery life.
Seeing as how the phone you want (and we're talking about phones here, not iPods) doesn't exist
The phone I want does exist. It's just been dropped from the selection of phones available to me, because the carrier is the one who decides what phones are available... not the manufacturer.
My advice is: put some money into a better phone or quit bitching.
The more money I put into the phone, the more features it has, and the shorter its battery life is. Putting more money into the phone won't get me a better phone, it will get me a worse one.
Often, the things that are better designed and easier to use cost more.
And often they don't. I bought an iPod Mini and when I went to the store to get an iPod Shuffle for my daughter... I decided I'd bought the wrong iPod, gave *her* the Mini, and "settled" for the Shuffle.
And the Shuffle actually cost less than any of the other flash MP3 players in the store, even the ones with no more memory (hell, even the ones with less memory).
How can this be?
Because features inherently cost money. They cost money to pay for a faster processor, they cost money to pay for extra hardware, they cost money to pay for more RAM, they cost money to pay for a more powerful and larger battery (or they cost money by using up a smaller batter faster so it doesn't last as long) because the faster processor and extra RAM uses up power faster. And these costs go into every phone, they're fixed per-unit costs, not sunk costs.
The shuffle does one thing. It plays music. That's it. It doesn't even TRY to do more. It just does what it does as well as it can.
That's the kind of phone I want. And I don't see why I should have to pay for features I don't want just to get something that isn't as good, doesn't last as long, and is inevitably harder to use (no matter how it's designed), just because there's no market (in the snse of a free and competitive one) for cellphones.
I wrote: the third bloody world generally has better cellphone service than the US.
You wrote: I live in Tanzania, which is pretty certainly "third world," and mobile phone service here is MUCH better than in the US.
I think we pretty much agree on that.
Why do Americans put up with these overpriced, low-quality carriers, with ridiculous monthly plans, restrictive contracts, and very limited coverage?
Because Americans are so bloody proud of having their beady eyes on the traditional home of generally and specifically oppressive buttheads and having "government under control" that they neglected to consider that the problem is said buttheads and not the arena they're operating from... so instead of nurturing a population of government buttheads to counter private sector buttheads, they let the private sector buttheads run wild. They've even granted collections of buttheads some of the same right as individuals, so they can go around excersizing those rights without the buttheads that are actually responsible for whatever it is they're doing being held accountable for any of the resulting messes.
I'm glad the cell phone companies don't listen to only you.
Brother, you have it backwards. They don't listen to us at all. For that matter, you're not listening either. When someone says "I want to buy a smple phone", you apparently hear "I want everyone to be stuck with a simple phone".
I'd much rather have a device that does something I don't need, then have a device that doesn't do what I need.
I need a phone that I can carry for a long weekend without having to keep track of where the recharging cable is, or even bother packing it for a weekend trip.
Features I don't use, and the extra memory and faster processor that goes along with them, keep me from having that phone.
I know I, my family, and many of my friends, do not need these super tricked out computers. We do not need games, high quality audio, video playback, cameras and image support, or mp3 players in our computers.
Absolutely. Luckily for you and your family older computers still work just as well as they ever did, because unlike cellphones they haven't been obsoleted by new protocols, incompatible battery packs, and carrier lock-outs.
In addition, there are hundreds of models of specialised computers you can buy that just do one thing well. As well as the handheld or set-top game computers and music players, these include the stand-alone email stations and word processors you're loking for. You can buy them in most large office supply stores, and I've even seen them on sale in pharmacies and grocery stores, from companies like Brother and Pocketmail.
(as in, if a full-on computer is bloated to you, you can save time and money and buy just the features you want... and these gadgets have been on the market since long before you could play MP3s or video on computers. Just because there's a market for feature-ridden phones doesn't mean there's no place for simple ones either)
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What parts are those, precisely?
"Everything else".
And what parts are those, precisely? How much code is involved? Do you know? I don't, but I do know that there's at least three separate projects that have replaced "everything else" without a heroic effort: Nokia, and the two open-source efforts.
The idea is that you can't just take what Apple's done and fork it. You have to take what Apple's done and write a new application around it.
You mean, like Apple took KHTML and wrote a new application around it? KHTML is itself a library, not a complete application.
But it's still a very different dynamic than the GPL offers.
It's a matter of degree, not kind. I've taken GPLed code and had to expend a huge effort to port it to a new platform, particularly when we started using the Alpha and Tru64 and there wasn't much code ported to it. Some of that work was at least as much effort as writing a decent Cocoa "shell" around a library.
At this point, in any case, we are in the EXACT situation that we'd be in if Safari and not just Webkit was open-sourced. You can take Webkit, tweak it, take Shiira, tweak it, and you're doing the same thing as if it were Safari that was being tweaked. We got to this place by a different route, but the situation is exactly what it would have been... so the difference between the GPL and the LGPL has turned out irrelevant.
the GPL kept Apple from legally sucking up source code and not releasing it per the license
The GPL did no such thing. You can't say "this license or law stopped X, Y, or Z" unless there's a likelihood of X, Y, or Z happening. There's a law against my pulling out a gun and shooting my boss, but you can't say "the law kept me from shooting my boss" unless you had reason to believe that I would have done that if the law didn't stop me.
Yes, there are companies for which this is true. There are, for example, companies that have taken BSDL code and not released their changes. But there are companies that have taken BSDL code and have released their changes. Apple is one of them, and given that they have released the source to their entire kernel and just about every other part of OS X below the GUI and big chunks above it as well, I find it hard to believe that the license KHTML is under would have made much if any difference to what Apple released.
Apple is not just paying lip service to open source. They're making open source part of their business model. Because open source works better for them. And that's what ESR is pointing out here, that companies are seeing that open source works better than going it alone, even if you're Apple. Yes, the license has now and then prevented some bad actors from releasing proprietary versions of open source tools, but it's pretty rare that the resulting code has been more effective than the open source version.
I mean, look at Windows NT. The use of the BSD TCP stack in Windows NT (however much debate there might be over HOW MUCH was used in the kernel, or how much remains, they definitely used BSD code) is the poster boy for how Big Bad Companies use BSDL code and don't give back to the community. Is Microsoft's code superior to the open source version? If you had the choice, would you pick Microsoft's TCP and socket library? There's no question but that Microsoft's TCP implementation is one of the least flexible around and the fact theat their socket library doesn't use file handles is a major shortcoming.
Do you think Microsoft would be better or worse off if they had completely open-sourced their TCP implementation? If it was possible for me to go in and fix stuff, and improve NT's networking? To give it the kind of NATting and packet filtering that BSD and Linux TCP has had for years? To fix the socket library so you could implement a superserver like inetd?
Hell yes, they'd be better off if it was open sourced. No matter HOW big they are, they'd still have a better product.
THAT is the point that ESR's making. That when you're using open source software, the people most hurt by fighting it and only begrudgingly doing what the law allows... are the code hoarders. And THAT is what companies are catching on to.
Do you have the source of W2k tcp stack?
No, and I don't have the source to Interix either, even though the Interix distribution includes both LGPL and GPL code and so Microsoft has to release at least part of the code base. I'm sure they do, but they don't need to release enough of it to make it worthwhile even looking it up.
But I do have the source to the entire Mac OS X kernel, even though it's primarily based on BSDL rather than GPL or LGPL code and this they are legally entitled to hoard almost all of it.
Microsoft does not want to be part of the open source community, so they use open source code but give away no more than they absolutely have to.
Apple wants to be part of the open source community, so they use open source code and give away far more than they have to.
THAT is the big difference. The attitude of the companies involved, not the license you put on your code.
it still wouldn't at all stand up to Safari due to the value added by the parts of Safari which remain proprietary.
What parts are those, precisely? I don't know of any parts of Safari which remain proprietary that are any kind of barrier to competition, or that are technically difficult to implement. Safari is a very thin shell around Webkit, and there are at least two open-source replacement shells (Sunrise Browser and Shiira).
use of the LGPL in this case has still created an effective barrier to the open source product being as useful or successful as the commercial project which is using its code.
I'm completely unable to understand how you would come to this conclusion. Safari itself only uses standard Mac OS X APIs, so Apple could have open-sourced all of Safari (and Dashboard, but that came later) without open-sourcing any other part of OS X, no matter what open-source license KHTML or Webkit was released under.
About all that placing KHTML (and thus Webkit itself) under the GPL instead of the LGPL might have done would be to keep Apple from using Webkit in Mail in Tiger, and make some third party products on OS X use one of the other HTML rendering packages instead. The only program I can think of that I use, that uses Webkit, is Adium. And that's already GPLed.
So, Apple has in fact released all the code that is needed for a third party (be that the KHTML team or Nokia) to duplicate "the commercial project which is using its code", just as they would as if KHTML had been released under the GPL. Apple could have created the kind of barrier that you're talking about, but they chose not to.
Unless there's some magic Safari goodness that programs like Shiira are missing (and I doubt that, Shiira already does more than Safari) I'm completely at a loss to understand what you're getting at here.
I think part of the reason they did open it was they realised that legally, they didn't have a leg to stand on if they didn't.
Apple had absolutely no legal requirement to do anything that they weren't already doing. None. They didn't even, legally, need to send patches! Just dumping a tarball of what they'd produced on an FTP site somewhere would have satisfied the letter of the GPL. Apple has continually so far exceeded any legal requirements for the use of the open source software that they have been employing that claiming they opened up CVS out of any concern, however remote, that they would be subject to litigation is downright offensive.
What it means is that when someone's malicious software directs you to a competitor's site, that's no worse than having that software on board in the first place.
This could actually be good, because it may help when companies try and use similar law to deflect criticism and commentary.
We don't don't need the GPL no more
Saw the light and walked right out the door
We don't live in GNU's house
It's more fun in old Chuck's house
We don't need the GPL no more.
(apologies to Chumbawamba)
And one of the reasons is that the FSF, and specifically RMS pull the strings on much GNU software.
And some of the RMS interpretations of the GPL are indistinguishable from interface copyrights. In particular, if you use a package that's only available in an FSF-owned GPL-ed version, you have to be damn careful how you interact with it. Even if you never distribute any GPLed code, if you depend on GPLed code they can claim your code is covered.
I understand why they do this, because without it there's no substantial difference between the GPL and the LGPL. That's the end that justifies these means. But these means are so toxic I can't see how the LPF could have come from a man willing to use any end to justify them.
I predict that there will be at least one followup to this message trying to devise some kind of doublethink that
just look at the KHTML/Apple situation
Yes, do, because this is a great example of where the GPL doesn't make any difference. Apple effectively forked KHTML (as near as I can tell, accidentally), but it was legal to do so under the GPL... they didn't need to do anything more than release the source code. Instead, in response, they opened up the CVS and the bug database. Not because the GPL forced them to, but because the chose to.
If KHTML had been under the BSDL, would Apple have taken it away completely? Legally, they could have, but they haven't done that for other open source components in Mac OS X... the source trees at opensource.apple.com and opendarwin.org include code under BSDL, APSL, GPL, and more.
AT&T took BSD code and forked it, and nobody cared until USL tried to shut down the open-source BSD... and that BSD code turned out to be just the lever that Berkeley needed to bring USL to heel.
Microsoft's using GPL code and BSD code in Interix, and that has neither let them "outperform" Cygwin nor forced Microsoft to open Interix one skerrick more. Microsoft's been using BSD code in Windows for years, but that same code was re-implemented in Linux... if the code had been GPLed, would Linux somehow be more outperforming BSD in the market, would NT have been less successful? Personally, I wish Microsoft had used more of the BSD stack rather than mostly borrowing userland tools, it would have made socket programming in Windows a lot easier... and more compatible.
So, over and over again, we see that it's not the license that matters, it's the attitude of the people using it.
The GPL doesn't stop you from forking the code base. The GPL doesn't stop different open source groups from forking the code base. The GPL doesn't stop groups using the same code base from developing functionally equivalent packages on top of that GPLed code. Heck, sometimes the only way to bring a code base forward is to fork and switch, and Nokia at least seems to think that's a great idea...
If they could truly go their own ways without Apple showing anything they did but KDE showing everything, I think it's pretty clear Apple could run ahead of KDE.
But instead, Apple is voluntarily choosing to take part on the open market of ideas to a far greater degree than any license commits them to. They could easily pull a Sveasoft and release source code grudgingly enough that KHTML would forever remain the junior fork.
What ESR's saying now is what BSD advocates have been saying for years. Companies that are interested in being productive partners will be productive partners no matter what license you use, and companies that aren't will find ways to stick to the letter of the license while completely gutting its spirit.
just where do we want to be?
1993 or 1994, I think. Before Internet Explorer and before Canter and Seigel. Back when the "GOOD TIMES" worm was still a joke, the biggest problem with email was sendmail.cf, and the biggest problem on Usenet was whether you could call voting twice for a group "fraud" or not.
if you don't have a routable IP address you can't talk to anyone except your neighbour
Apart from my colo box and my firewalls, I don't think a single system I use has a routable IP address.
What is the internet, if not the systems hooked up to it?
That question answers itself: it's what those systems are hooked up to.
When you see the QOS needed for VOIP, Video-conference and live TV feed
Funny, I don't seem to need QOS for any of that. Are you sure you're using the same network as everyone else?
After all the (theorical) OSI standards did exist
I was using OSI stack networking protocols back then.
Be glad they didn't take off. Oh, my god, be so very very glad they didn't take off.
"Look at phishing and spam, and zombies, and all this crap," said Clark. "Show me how six incremental changes are going to make them go away."
I can do it in two incremental changes.
Ban any application that explicitly provides a mechanism for automatically executing native code or unrestricted scripts received from an untrusted source. With or without a "Do you really want to do something stupid" dialog.
No ActiveX, no "open safe files after download", no "click here to install XPI", nothing.
Ban any operating system that, after a normal install, has any network servers listening for routed protocols without explicit action by an actual human being.
No sendmail/apache/NFS, no Lan Manager/Windows Networking, nothing.
Without these changes, no changes at the network level will do anything to solve the problem he's trying to solve. With them, you limit attackers to social engineering... and it is possible to learn not to be socially engineerable.
Was that a real roman abacus? I've got a 10-column suanpan with 56 beads, and a 21-column soroban with 126 beads.
I've never played live Frogger. We were too poor to afford the alligators, you swish bastid.
Hah! First job I worked after college we had 3 developers sharing a Polyforth development system running multiuser in 12K of RAM with no memory protection. When you dropped out of the editor to test something you yelled "save your buffers"... because Polyforth didn't even use stack sentinels so just about any syntax error meant the system crashed and had to be rebooted.
Ok, you win, I'm not cynical enough.
The problem is the government was trying to put them out of business.
Don't be silly. Monopoly is a horribly inefficient way for a business to operate. Breaking up a monopoly usually ends up with the resulting companies, after the shake-out, being worth more in total than the original company did. That's been the case all the way back to US Steel.
In the case of Microsoft, they have for years been deliberately crippling their own products to make them serve the purpose of promoting the Windows monopoly (which has now topped out, they've got nowhere left to grow in the US... all they can do is try and convince people to buy Windows over again with Longhorn) instead of making them as effective as they can be in their own right. They're still acting like a start-up with one product, instead of spreading out and taking on new markets using whatever tools Microsoft Research can come up with, they're trying to figure out how to tweak a competent if mediocre desktop OS into doing the job.
Microsoft, split up, wouldn't be worrying about the challenge from Linux, they'd be USING Linux to take on IBM, or Walmart...
This isn't news. This isn't the big shock. The big shock is that this apparently is news to a lot of Microsoft apologists. Or, at least the ones who were denying that Microsoft bought their way out of the antitrust case.
You're unhappy with the "free" phone given you by your service
No. Absolutely not. You are making things up or you are putting someone else's words in my mouth, because I have at NO TIME said anything that should have even suggested that I am using the cheapest (so-called free) phone.
You believe the more expensive ones are even worse
Based on both manufacturers specs and reviews, the more expensive phones have a shorter battery life. That is an absolute deal killer for me.
The phone you want exists, but you don't have it and won't go find it.
I already owned the phone I wanted, I could not continue to use it because it's not compatible after the service change.
I'm saying that design costs money as well.
The "design" we're talking about is the menu structure of the user interface. That's something you only have to do once, that you can use on the cheapest phones you make just as easily as on the most expensive ones you make, and that can be changed literally with a tap of the button.
You're talking about "design" as if it's something that costs ten dollars a phone. It's not.
Isn't as good as what?
Any phone with a longer battery life.
Seeing as how the phone you want (and we're talking about phones here, not iPods) doesn't exist
The phone I want does exist. It's just been dropped from the selection of phones available to me, because the carrier is the one who decides what phones are available... not the manufacturer.
My advice is: put some money into a better phone or quit bitching.
The more money I put into the phone, the more features it has, and the shorter its battery life is. Putting more money into the phone won't get me a better phone, it will get me a worse one.
Often, the things that are better designed and easier to use cost more.
And often they don't. I bought an iPod Mini and when I went to the store to get an iPod Shuffle for my daughter... I decided I'd bought the wrong iPod, gave *her* the Mini, and "settled" for the Shuffle.
And the Shuffle actually cost less than any of the other flash MP3 players in the store, even the ones with no more memory (hell, even the ones with less memory).
How can this be?
Because features inherently cost money. They cost money to pay for a faster processor, they cost money to pay for extra hardware, they cost money to pay for more RAM, they cost money to pay for a more powerful and larger battery (or they cost money by using up a smaller batter faster so it doesn't last as long) because the faster processor and extra RAM uses up power faster. And these costs go into every phone, they're fixed per-unit costs, not sunk costs.
The shuffle does one thing. It plays music. That's it. It doesn't even TRY to do more. It just does what it does as well as it can.
That's the kind of phone I want. And I don't see why I should have to pay for features I don't want just to get something that isn't as good, doesn't last as long, and is inevitably harder to use (no matter how it's designed), just because there's no market (in the snse of a free and competitive one) for cellphones.
I wrote: the third bloody world generally has better cellphone service than the US.
You wrote: I live in Tanzania, which is pretty certainly "third world," and mobile phone service here is MUCH better than in the US.
I think we pretty much agree on that.
Why do Americans put up with these overpriced, low-quality carriers, with ridiculous monthly plans, restrictive contracts, and very limited coverage?
Because Americans are so bloody proud of having their beady eyes on the traditional home of generally and specifically oppressive buttheads and having "government under control" that they neglected to consider that the problem is said buttheads and not the arena they're operating from... so instead of nurturing a population of government buttheads to counter private sector buttheads, they let the private sector buttheads run wild. They've even granted collections of buttheads some of the same right as individuals, so they can go around excersizing those rights without the buttheads that are actually responsible for whatever it is they're doing being held accountable for any of the resulting messes.
If you do more digging online, you can find the PEBL phone... it's going to be a clamshell. Google for it.
I'm glad the cell phone companies don't listen to only you.
Brother, you have it backwards. They don't listen to us at all. For that matter, you're not listening either. When someone says "I want to buy a smple phone", you apparently hear "I want everyone to be stuck with a simple phone".
I'd much rather have a device that does something I don't need, then have a device that doesn't do what I need.
I need a phone that I can carry for a long weekend without having to keep track of where the recharging cable is, or even bother packing it for a weekend trip.
Features I don't use, and the extra memory and faster processor that goes along with them, keep me from having that phone.
I know I, my family, and many of my friends, do not need these super tricked out computers. We do not need games, high quality audio, video playback, cameras and image support, or mp3 players in our computers.
Absolutely. Luckily for you and your family older computers still work just as well as they ever did, because unlike cellphones they haven't been obsoleted by new protocols, incompatible battery packs, and carrier lock-outs.
In addition, there are hundreds of models of specialised computers you can buy that just do one thing well. As well as the handheld or set-top game computers and music players, these include the stand-alone email stations and word processors you're loking for. You can buy them in most large office supply stores, and I've even seen them on sale in pharmacies and grocery stores, from companies like Brother and Pocketmail.
(as in, if a full-on computer is bloated to you, you can save time and money and buy just the features you want... and these gadgets have been on the market since long before you could play MP3s or video on computers. Just because there's a market for feature-ridden phones doesn't mean there's no place for simple ones either)