However little you think of VB (especially VBScript) MS has provided a huge number of tools to make development easy and painless - and the results are often decent. I remember being able to put together *simple* VB data collection forms back in 94-95 without having too much idea what the hell I was actually doing. There STILL nothing like that for Java. - Go ahead, flame away. I'm not a hardcore Java guy, but someone else here at the office is, and we constantly see shortcomings. That's not to say there's not strengths too, but still shortcomings. Open sourcing Java *MIGHT* help overcome many of those shortcomings (especially in the GUI toolkit area).
Yeah, as a result VB is the number one favorite coding vehicle for worm and virus writers. Great recommendation BTW. WHen is VB gign to be open-soruce along with all the tied-in Windows APIs? (never of course). LOL I keep repeating this on various boards - if Sun was serious about getting Java to the masses, they'd carpet bomb the hell out of the US with CDs ala AOL with the latest JVM for multiple platforms. That they DON'T do this speaks volumes. Better yet - get AOL to bundle it on their CDs and have an installer with lots of nice Java packages - an 'intro to Java' for the common man. Explain the cross-platform benefits, etc. - something my mom could understand.
Yeah right. That's how C, C++ and Lisp became popular huh? Lame.
Anyone notice the rapid incrase of M$ supporters on/. now that M$ thinks Open Source and Linux is a threat? Apparently they are starting a "simulated" grass-roots campaign on/. I wonder how much these shills are getting paid? Based on their poor analogy, logic, and reasoning skills I hope not much. Ignorance and sophistry should not be lucrative.
With all the publicity in this forum about their tactics, you'd buy their product just because it's cheap further encouraging such behavior? Hypocites. Then you'd all wring your hands and vent on slash. Man, you'll sell your morals, ethics, and soul cheap--for a stick of RDRAM. Pathetic.
As an unintended consequence the free KFC Chicken would improve the nutrition of geeks everywhere. And for those of you who point out that he's dead with no soul left, I say: 1) Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have no souls either, but M$ still puts out code and 2) since when was having a life a criterion to be a geek anyway?
Ohh...that's *Colonel* Sanders?...well that's different. Never mind.
Step right up get your TacoTroll(TM) right here!
on
CPAN Shifts Focus
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· Score: 1
One of these great bonus prizes in every Slash-dot "Perl is Genius Stick Your Head in the Sand Happy Meal compelte with KoolAide(TM): Larry Wall figurine, Guido van Rossum voodoo doll, secret CommanderTaco Perl obfuscator ( while { print;}), FAQ on the Parrot language entitled "Bastardizing the language of the Gods into an OOP language that's readable by mere mortals", and a "Duke" or James Gosling dart board cover. Hurry--collect 'em all!.
A few hundred years ago when the nation was young and life much more simple, a few freedom-minded thinkers could get together, dress up like Native Americans and dump some tea into Boston Harbor to make a point...and it was heard across an ocean. Fast forward to one of the wealthiest, consumption-obsessed, apathetic, self-absorbed societies on the planet where conspicuous consumption of music fads is a life-style and consider the futility of such a gesture. King George had no spin-meisters, no advertising budget and no teams of lawyers let alone hordes of non-discriminating consuemrs with cash to burn. If every slashdot reader stopped buying CD music, the RIAA would consider the statisitcal impact as sampling noise. Campaign finance reform doesn't kick in for some time and with Enron gone, a big election financier needs to write "donation" checks...the RIAA & MPAA are waiting for such a chance, their coffers fed daily by CD buyers and theater-goers. The best government money can by and a consuming public to fund it.
PC laptop FW has major flaw ...no power pins
on
iPod on Windows
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· Score: 1
The iPod charges from the Firewire power pins and SONY (and other Wintel laptopvendors) removed the power pins in an all-time stupid move therefore rendering Firewire diificult to use for anything other than video cameras. Windows users will have to lug around an extra power supply for every device. I hope more vendors "get it" and start allowing the consolidation of all those "wall warts". Imagine charging you r PDA, Cell phone, camera and MP3 player from you laptop. Apple is truly innovative in that sense alone.
>> Dear Junior, because we can't force you to play >> nice, we assume you'll play nasty.
>> Oh yeah, great message. Add in the >> MPAA/RIAA's "You're all thieves and liars that >> need to be controlled" and we've arrived at a >> really enlightened society where everyone you >> don't have a strangehold on is assumed guilty.
That isn't their movtivation at all and, furthermore, the analogy to the RIAA/MPAA is poor. You need to understand this: he is a minor so no contract with him is enforceable including licenses like the BSD and GPL since licenses are contracts governing use and other rights one consents to give up for the consideration of using the code. Now imagine what happens to Darwin if the young man's code "poisons the well" so to speak because of a tainted license?
They could work around this if a person of leagl age checks-in the code and takes responsibility. Any of you whiners ready to put your responsibility where your/. mouth is? Ha! I didn't think so.
what a load of BS, Enron did far more damage but sicne *they* gave money to Republicans, Fox calls them Boy Scouts compared to Entertainment Industry. As far as I can tell, the ET hasn't been shredding documents, wiping out retirements accounts, pleading the Fifth, and holding secret metings with the Vice President. What balanced objective reproting--NOT!
The real reason it seesm Phillips is going after them is that they are making region-independent DVD players which doesn't hurt Phillips patents but the Motion Picture Industry cartel's efforts to shackle users fari use. Yet another use of the IP infrastructure to squeeze money from consuemr--not by adding value but by limiting choice. Greedy drones.
What it *should* be about is security. Code which uses pointers and other potenitlaly indirection and derefrencing constructs should never come from anonymously the network, but should only put on the system by the user or administrator as a concious act. Period. Native Java is just as potentialy harmful as C# UNSAFE code. The real discussion here should be on the security of the Dot-Net environment. How secure is the run-time security? The Java solution, to allow noneperiod, is safest but limits the power of the language for native uses. Java is very frustrating if used as a general purpose language. SO in that repsect C# has potential. It is incumbent upon Microsoft to prove that in allowing indirection in C# they did not weaken security on Dot-Net. The burden of proof is on Microsoft--not C#. Given Microsoft's track record, I suspect it leaks like a sieve. But that is a suspicion. Let's hear from Microsoft and let some hackers have at it.
Miguel is navigating dangerous waters that have wrecked other ships befoe him but he thinks himself a better captain. I have news for him: they were better than he thinks. As I see it, all of Miguel's arguments are sound and lull one into actually wanting to believe lions will lie down with lambs. Who can fault peace, love, and understanding after all? However, the real problem is not his logic but an underlying naieve assumption: that Microsoft has changed and will allow.Net to be cross platform when deployment volume becomes significant. When.Net starts to gain significant market share, they will do what they always do, add patent-protected feature that kills the cross-platform nature of their framework. It is in fact it is a deviously clever strategy--worthy of a Borgia Prince coached by Machiavelli himself. Give hope and encouragement to a large component of the open source developers which are givng Microsoft heartburn and let them devote an ever larger slice of their creative bandwidth and energy both feuding internally and developing to adopt.Net. Encourage them to do it--even help them walk deep into it and tie all their code to it inextricably. Allow.Net to change their architecture, setting the hook deeper. Then after the distraction has divided the open source community long enough and defocused Gnome, Mono and ensnared other open source projects, drop in a patented-feature that kills its cross-platform nature. They did it with Kerberos, then Samba, and lately NetApp using CIFS. I have absolutely no doubt they have not had a change of heart of strategy and will do it to Mono/.Net. It is only a matter of time. Voila--Victory Microsoft style. Miguel and Mono will be roadkill.
more creative, more interesting characters, better acted, better plot and allegory, uses technology to enhance the story instead of technology *being* most of the story.
Watch Star Wars again and youll see that even it was cheesy and sucky--it just sucked less that most Hollywood drivel.
Me, I'll wait for the DVD on Netflix like I do for most dogs. LOTR was worth a trip to the theater.
Taking the "importnatce of being found" concept further: of what value will free speech be in Microsft's world dominant authentication/smart-tag-controlled scheme? Free speech is only as effective as the openess and pervasiveness of the medium. In the original thirteen colonies, street corners and town meetings were fairly pervasive media. Many individuals (except women;-) had access. Many people hoped the internet would be that analog. Hailstorm will ensure it will not BTW, I for one. believe that is why msart tags will not be in Europe--privacy and media dominance issue, not localization. The EU is much less tolerant on M$ hegemony that the materialistic, "what's-good-for-business-is-good-for-the-country" US tone of late.
It is liable if he speeds and injures someone. It is only a matter of time before some plantiff's attorney comes up with the "brilliant" idea that Acme should have prevented the speeding in the Acme rental car that injured their client, and is therefore liable.
Further in response:
1. "inadequate disclosure" - no, read the contracts you enter.
2. "no appeals process" - it was not a legal proceeding and therefore none is required. It is a business transaction--jsut the same as if you damagged the car and they charged you. The recourse is a civil suit. Period.
3. "GPS "jumping" as you switch satelites" - Again civil suit, prove it and you get your money back. Otherwise, if you read teh contract you could decline the GPS vehicle. Free country--free choice. No likey, no renty.
4. "no notification before the money is withdrawn from your account" - don't recall any mention that the contract he signed required notice. Does the bank give you notice every time they exact fees BEFORE they do? Does any business if you entered an agreement to let them charge you? No.
5. "how much should be withdrawn is solely up to the judgement of the rental agency" - how much every busienss charges for Windows is wholly up to the business unless it is regulated in that area. You against free markets now?
Microsoft makes plenty of buggy, crash-inducing software all on their own. But your protests regarding the stability of a clean and pristine Windows NT are pointless. The real issue is the stability of systems configured to do real day-to-day work. When that is considered, Windows is much less stable than several alternatives. Period. The truth will out.
The price would have been portability. Propeitary IO calls would have had to used instead of POSIX-compliant ones. I am nto the first to notice this. A nice side effect of this benchmark is to point out that Microsoft deliberately encourages the use of non-portable code in order to get performance: a text book lock-in technique.
PocketPC isn't that bad but one fatal flaw...
on
Palm In Trouble?
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· Score: 2
...Only Windows OSs and Apps can link to it. When Billy "shared Source" Gates opens up the soruce for even the conduits, maybe I'll be able to link Mac OSX to it and might buy one. 'Til then, "all your PDA belong to us--NOT!"
M$ claims to support market choice...
on
Mundie Responds
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· Score: 1
So every issue they have with the GPL and Open Source will be decided by the market. If the GPL and OpenSource are bad a model as they say while their model produces superior customrr value, the market will migrate to the products with the superior value. Therefore if they are not dissembling and truly believe what they say, why the propaganda war? Live by the marekt--die by the market. So why are they threatened? The truth is Open Source scares them. Several Open Source products,Apache, Bind, and SendMail for example, are more successful than their products. M$ knows this could be because they deliver superior value to the market. SO rallying to the attack with propaganda instead o innovation or competition, M$ spin meisters have chosen to redefine their rules of innovation, intellectual property, and market behavior but only for Open Source. They are hoping we don't notice the specious and hypocritical nature their double standard. Linus noticed and pronouonced their logical inconsistencies as "crap". Wish I could be so concise;-) M$ only supports market choice when the choice can be made by a monopoly--i.e. when there is little threat (to them) by choice.
Linux versus Mac OS X BSD/Mach on the Desktop
on
Ask Robert Young
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· Score: 1
Linux desktops have been struggling to gain acceptance: even basic graphics support is hard to install on many laptops. In addition, good applications to match those on the Windows platform are scarce. Now Apple is poised to become the number one shipper of Unix desktops in the world and their GUI is awesome in appearance and power with real applications starting to come out (Macromedia Freehand next month). Mac OS X could easily become the dominant professional and consumer Unix desktop. What is Red Hat's plan for the desktop? What are your plans to convince us to buy a Windows laptop and install Red Hat instead a Mac G4 Titanium laptop for about the same price?
...that many of you with elitist (not everyone deservse Linux) or selfish (hey, *I* run it that's all that matters) perspectives are missing. If Linux can get the volume up and stay open it will benefit the Linux community far more than if it stays an arcane, elitist mostly-server platform. And if Linux market share increases so will the spread of Open Source philosophy and veondor independence. M$ is as powerful as it is today because of deployment volume, period. M$ is opening up just enough with SOAP and other initiatives that if Linux doesn't start building midnshare, it risks being marginalized: democracy could lose to autocracy.
Red Carpet is not a complete platform installation updater, but rather only for one version of the GUIs supported. M$, inspite of my intense dislike for them, deserves credit here: their updater updates most of the platform in one updater: quite slick and very time- and error-saving. Now if it just compiled from source each time;-) When is the Linux vendor community going to quit their package wars and band together to help make Linux easier to install. HINT: start with XFree86!
If afreeware product came first and was well-known in the industry, a commercial company's application to register a similar mark would most likely be denied on those grounds. Applicants can appeal, but I have seen applications that have been denied for this very reason. There are many marks, the Cathoic Church for an example, that are not trademarked and are not owned by a commercial entity (yeah okay that's debateable but not by me and not here;-) yet no commercial enitity could register because of prior use. In the case at hand though, the mark was already commercially registered--different fact pattern.
All entities have a right ot listen to public speech about any topic including themselves. So what. What they do not have a right to do is harrass you about, intimidate you about it or otherwise try to slience you...unless they wish to sue you for making material and libelous statements (a popposed to opinions and statements of fact), disclosing confidential information, or violating a contractual obligation to remain silent. barring that, tell them off.
Slashdot Mirror
However little you think of VB (especially VBScript) MS has provided a huge number of tools to make development easy and painless - and the results are often decent. I remember being able to put together *simple* VB data collection forms back in 94-95 without having too much idea what the hell I was actually doing. There STILL nothing like that for Java. - Go ahead, flame away. I'm not a hardcore Java guy, but someone else here at the office is, and we constantly see shortcomings. That's not to say there's not strengths too, but still shortcomings. Open sourcing Java *MIGHT* help overcome many of those shortcomings (especially in the GUI toolkit area).
/. now that M$ thinks Open Source and Linux is a threat? Apparently they are starting a "simulated" grass-roots campaign on /. I wonder how much these shills are getting paid? Based on their poor analogy, logic, and reasoning skills I hope not much. Ignorance and sophistry should not be lucrative.
Yeah, as a result VB is the number one favorite coding vehicle for worm and virus writers. Great recommendation BTW. WHen is VB gign to be open-soruce along with all the tied-in Windows APIs? (never of course). LOL
I keep repeating this on various boards - if Sun was serious about getting Java to the masses, they'd carpet bomb the hell out of the US with CDs ala AOL with the latest JVM for multiple platforms. That they DON'T do this speaks volumes. Better yet - get AOL to bundle it on their CDs and have an installer with lots of nice Java packages - an 'intro to Java' for the common man. Explain the cross-platform benefits, etc. - something my mom could understand.
Yeah right. That's how C, C++ and Lisp became popular huh? Lame.
Anyone notice the rapid incrase of M$ supporters on
Are you a real weener, or are you just playing one on /.?
With all the publicity in this forum about their tactics, you'd buy their product just because it's cheap further encouraging such behavior? Hypocites. Then you'd all wring your hands and vent on slash. Man, you'll sell your morals, ethics, and soul cheap--for a stick of RDRAM. Pathetic.
As an unintended consequence the free KFC Chicken would improve the nutrition of geeks everywhere. And for those of you who point out that he's dead with no soul left, I say: 1) Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have no souls either, but M$ still puts out code and 2) since when was having a life a criterion to be a geek anyway?
Ohh...that's *Colonel* Sanders?...well that's different. Never mind.
One of these great bonus prizes in every Slash-dot "Perl is Genius Stick Your Head in the Sand Happy Meal compelte with KoolAide(TM): Larry Wall figurine, Guido van Rossum voodoo doll, secret CommanderTaco Perl obfuscator ( while { print;}), FAQ on the Parrot language entitled "Bastardizing the language of the Gods into an OOP language that's readable by mere mortals", and a "Duke" or James Gosling dart board cover. Hurry--collect 'em all!.
A few hundred years ago when the nation was young and life much more simple, a few freedom-minded thinkers could get together, dress up like Native Americans and dump some tea into Boston Harbor to make a point...and it was heard across an ocean. Fast forward to one of the wealthiest, consumption-obsessed, apathetic, self-absorbed societies on the planet where conspicuous consumption of music fads is a life-style and consider the futility of such a gesture. King George had no spin-meisters, no advertising budget and no teams of lawyers let alone hordes of non-discriminating consuemrs with cash to burn. If every slashdot reader stopped buying CD music, the RIAA would consider the statisitcal impact as sampling noise. Campaign finance reform doesn't kick in for some time and with Enron gone, a big election financier needs to write "donation" checks...the RIAA & MPAA are waiting for such a chance, their coffers fed daily by CD buyers and theater-goers. The best government money can by and a consuming public to fund it.
The iPod charges from the Firewire power pins and SONY (and other Wintel laptopvendors) removed the power pins in an all-time stupid move therefore rendering Firewire diificult to use for anything other than video cameras. Windows users will have to lug around an extra power supply for every device. I hope more vendors "get it" and start allowing the consolidation of all those "wall warts". Imagine charging you r PDA, Cell phone, camera and MP3 player from you laptop. Apple is truly innovative in that sense alone.
>> Dear Junior, because we can't force you to play
/. mouth is? Ha! I didn't think so.
>> nice, we assume you'll play nasty.
>> Oh yeah, great message. Add in the
>> MPAA/RIAA's "You're all thieves and liars that >> need to be controlled" and we've arrived at a >> really enlightened society where everyone you
>> don't have a strangehold on is assumed guilty.
That isn't their movtivation at all and, furthermore, the analogy to the RIAA/MPAA is poor. You need to understand this: he is a minor so no contract with him is enforceable including licenses like the BSD and GPL since licenses are contracts governing use and other rights one consents to give up for the consideration of using the code. Now imagine what happens to Darwin if the young man's code "poisons the well" so to speak because of a tainted license?
They could work around this if a person of leagl age checks-in the code and takes responsibility. Any of you whiners ready to put your responsibility where your
what a load of BS, Enron did far more damage but sicne *they* gave money to Republicans, Fox calls them Boy Scouts compared to Entertainment Industry. As far as I can tell, the ET hasn't been shredding documents, wiping out retirements accounts, pleading the Fifth, and holding secret metings with the Vice President. What balanced objective reproting--NOT!
The real reason it seesm Phillips is going after them is that they are making region-independent DVD players which doesn't hurt Phillips patents but the Motion Picture Industry cartel's efforts to shackle users fari use. Yet another use of the IP infrastructure to squeeze money from consuemr--not by adding value but by limiting choice. Greedy drones.
but this is the first I've seen i na long whiel on /.
What it *should* be about is security. Code which uses pointers and other potenitlaly indirection and derefrencing constructs should never come from anonymously the network, but should only put on the system by the user or administrator as a concious act. Period. Native Java is just as potentialy harmful as C# UNSAFE code. The real discussion here should be on the security of the Dot-Net environment. How secure is the run-time security? The Java solution, to allow noneperiod, is safest but limits the power of the language for native uses. Java is very frustrating if used as a general purpose language. SO in that repsect C# has potential. It is incumbent upon Microsoft to prove that in allowing indirection in C# they did not weaken security on Dot-Net. The burden of proof is on Microsoft--not C#. Given Microsoft's track record, I suspect it leaks like a sieve. But that is a suspicion. Let's hear from Microsoft and let some hackers have at it.
Miguel is navigating dangerous waters that have wrecked other ships befoe him but he thinks himself a better captain. I have news for him: they were better than he thinks. As I see it, all of Miguel's arguments are sound and lull one into actually wanting to believe lions will lie down with lambs. Who can fault peace, love, and understanding after all? However, the real problem is not his logic but an underlying naieve assumption: that Microsoft has changed and will allow .Net to be cross platform when deployment volume becomes significant. When .Net starts to gain significant market share, they will do what they always do, add patent-protected feature that kills the cross-platform nature of their framework. It is in fact it is a deviously clever strategy--worthy of a Borgia Prince coached by Machiavelli himself. Give hope and encouragement to a large component of the open source developers which are givng Microsoft heartburn and let them devote an ever larger slice of their creative bandwidth and energy both feuding internally and developing to adopt .Net. Encourage them to do it--even help them walk deep into it and tie all their code to it inextricably. Allow .Net to change their architecture, setting the hook deeper. Then after the distraction has divided the open source community long enough and defocused Gnome, Mono and ensnared other open source projects, drop in a patented-feature that kills its cross-platform nature. They did it with Kerberos, then Samba, and lately NetApp using CIFS. I have absolutely no doubt they have not had a change of heart of strategy and will do it to Mono/.Net. It is only a matter of time. Voila--Victory Microsoft style. Miguel and Mono will be roadkill.
more creative, more interesting characters, better acted, better plot and allegory, uses technology to enhance the story instead of technology *being* most of the story.
Watch Star Wars again and youll see that even it was cheesy and sucky--it just sucked less that most Hollywood drivel.
Me, I'll wait for the DVD on Netflix like I do for most dogs. LOTR was worth a trip to the theater.
Taking the "importnatce of being found" concept further: of what value will free speech be in Microsft's world dominant authentication/smart-tag-controlled scheme? Free speech is only as effective as the openess and pervasiveness of the medium. In the original thirteen colonies, street corners and town meetings were fairly pervasive media. Many individuals (except women ;-) had access. Many people hoped the internet would be that analog. Hailstorm will ensure it will not BTW, I for one. believe that is why msart tags will not be in Europe--privacy and media dominance issue, not localization. The EU is much less tolerant on M$ hegemony that the materialistic, "what's-good-for-business-is-good-for-the-country" US tone of late.
It is liable if he speeds and injures someone. It is only a matter of time before some plantiff's attorney comes up with the "brilliant" idea that Acme should have prevented the speeding in the Acme rental car that injured their client, and is therefore liable. Further in response: 1. "inadequate disclosure" - no, read the contracts you enter. 2. "no appeals process" - it was not a legal proceeding and therefore none is required. It is a business transaction--jsut the same as if you damagged the car and they charged you. The recourse is a civil suit. Period. 3. "GPS "jumping" as you switch satelites" - Again civil suit, prove it and you get your money back. Otherwise, if you read teh contract you could decline the GPS vehicle. Free country--free choice. No likey, no renty. 4. "no notification before the money is withdrawn from your account" - don't recall any mention that the contract he signed required notice. Does the bank give you notice every time they exact fees BEFORE they do? Does any business if you entered an agreement to let them charge you? No. 5. "how much should be withdrawn is solely up to the judgement of the rental agency" - how much every busienss charges for Windows is wholly up to the business unless it is regulated in that area. You against free markets now?
Microsoft makes plenty of buggy, crash-inducing software all on their own. But your protests regarding the stability of a clean and pristine Windows NT are pointless. The real issue is the stability of systems configured to do real day-to-day work. When that is considered, Windows is much less stable than several alternatives. Period. The truth will out.
The price would have been portability. Propeitary IO calls would have had to used instead of POSIX-compliant ones. I am nto the first to notice this. A nice side effect of this benchmark is to point out that Microsoft deliberately encourages the use of non-portable code in order to get performance: a text book lock-in technique.
...Only Windows OSs and Apps can link to it. When Billy "shared Source" Gates opens up the soruce for even the conduits, maybe I'll be able to link Mac OSX to it and might buy one. 'Til then, "all your PDA belong to us--NOT!"
So every issue they have with the GPL and Open Source will be decided by the market. If the GPL and OpenSource are bad a model as they say while their model produces superior customrr value, the market will migrate to the products with the superior value. Therefore if they are not dissembling and truly believe what they say, why the propaganda war? Live by the marekt--die by the market. So why are they threatened? The truth is Open Source scares them. Several Open Source products,Apache, Bind, and SendMail for example, are more successful than their products. M$ knows this could be because they deliver superior value to the market. SO rallying to the attack with propaganda instead o innovation or competition, M$ spin meisters have chosen to redefine their rules of innovation, intellectual property, and market behavior but only for Open Source. They are hoping we don't notice the specious and hypocritical nature their double standard. Linus noticed and pronouonced their logical inconsistencies as "crap". Wish I could be so concise ;-) M$ only supports market choice when the choice can be made by a monopoly--i.e. when there is little threat (to them) by choice.
Linux desktops have been struggling to gain acceptance: even basic graphics support is hard to install on many laptops. In addition, good applications to match those on the Windows platform are scarce. Now Apple is poised to become the number one shipper of Unix desktops in the world and their GUI is awesome in appearance and power with real applications starting to come out (Macromedia Freehand next month). Mac OS X could easily become the dominant professional and consumer Unix desktop. What is Red Hat's plan for the desktop? What are your plans to convince us to buy a Windows laptop and install Red Hat instead a Mac G4 Titanium laptop for about the same price?
...that many of you with elitist (not everyone deservse Linux) or selfish (hey, *I* run it that's all that matters) perspectives are missing. If Linux can get the volume up and stay open it will benefit the Linux community far more than if it stays an arcane, elitist mostly-server platform. And if Linux market share increases so will the spread of Open Source philosophy and veondor independence. M$ is as powerful as it is today because of deployment volume, period. M$ is opening up just enough with SOAP and other initiatives that if Linux doesn't start building midnshare, it risks being marginalized: democracy could lose to autocracy.
Red Carpet is not a complete platform installation updater, but rather only for one version of the GUIs supported. M$, inspite of my intense dislike for them, deserves credit here: their updater updates most of the platform in one updater: quite slick and very time- and error-saving. Now if it just compiled from source each time ;-) When is the Linux vendor community going to quit their package wars and band together to help make Linux easier to install. HINT: start with XFree86!
If afreeware product came first and was well-known in the industry, a commercial company's application to register a similar mark would most likely be denied on those grounds. Applicants can appeal, but I have seen applications that have been denied for this very reason. There are many marks, the Cathoic Church for an example, that are not trademarked and are not owned by a commercial entity (yeah okay that's debateable but not by me and not here ;-) yet no commercial enitity could register because of prior use. In the case at hand though, the mark was already commercially registered--different fact pattern.
All entities have a right ot listen to public speech about any topic including themselves. So what. What they do not have a right to do is harrass you about, intimidate you about it or otherwise try to slience you...unless they wish to sue you for making material and libelous statements (a popposed to opinions and statements of fact), disclosing confidential information, or violating a contractual obligation to remain silent. barring that, tell them off.