When Apple's $300 OSX box
comes out, I'll be first in line
to buy one. Until then, I'm afraid
JQP is stuck with commodity HW
and free SW. Guess he'll survive somehow.
Yeah, for earning
the respect of the general public
for an august organization like
the EFF, there's nothing quite
like making up a song that mocks
those who disagree.
If that doesn't work, maybe
we can shoot Disney execs with
spitwads or give them atomic wedgies.
I spent 15 years as a system administrator
in industry and academia,
and now am a college CS prof, so I think I
might have some insight here.
First, never say "I'm not going
to college." The most to say is "I'm not
going to college right now." That
said, the danger is that the more involved
you become in the world of work, the less
likely you are to go back.
There are a couple of reasons for you to
go to college right now. First off, any reasonable
institution will give you opportunities to
acquire more and better sysadmin skills while
going to school. Some of the best folks in industry completed their training in college.
Second, it's important to develop non-computing
skills up front, such as the ability to write
a scholarly paper, the ability to research an
intellectual issue, the ability to give a
scholarly presentation. Third, employers will
have much more respect for someone with a college
degree (regardless of subject): it shows that
they can voluntarily put together four years of
structured work.
For someone like you, I would recommend a
hard science major of some kind rather than
CS. (I got my undergraduate degree in Physics.)
You'll get plenty of opportunities to do CS
on the side. That said, you don't
really have to commit to a major up front;
go to school, and pick after a year or two.
Figure out whether you're the
kind of person who would be happiest in a
small private school or a large state school,
and choose accordingly.
If you decide not to attend college right now,
make sure your employer understands up front that you are
a short-timer who is going back to school soon.
Taking community college classes on the side is
an excellent way to reinforce this and build up
some credit.
The bottom line is that you want to have
credentials and options. Sysadmin certificates
are not very impressive credentials, and leave
you without career options. At this stage in
your career, I wouldn't bother. The world
values smart guys with general skills much more
than guys with just sysadmin skills.
Develop a repertoire of abilities while you
have the luxury of youth.
There is a serious effort underway
to remove all Athena dependencies from the
sample X apps,
and not to replace those dependencies with
Gnome or KDE dependencies. But it'll be
a while before this happens: the replacement
has to be designed and built first.
Font support is being improved as we
speak. Distro vendors can certainly help.
The KDE and Gnome groups are helping.
I'm using anti-aliasing on most every font
on my screen now, and although it
was decidedly non-trivial I didn't actually have to stand
on my head to do it.
IMHO the configuration situation,
while bad, is not as
bad as you describe. Certainly the only
viable way to configure X is to run "XFree86 -configure" on a 4.2 server and edit the output.
But the edits aren't that hard any more. As
you note, card detection is automatic, and
usually works. The VESA bits make modern
monitor
detection also automatic, eliminating that
source of confusion. Mostly it's input
devices that are a continuing source
of grief. Keith Packard finally rewrote the
mouse protocol autodetect fairly recently:
XFree86 now successfully autodetects your mouse
type the first time you move the mouse
around. (This, BTW, was
surprisingly hard.)
The default XF86Config
file format may be moving to XML. This would
help a lot with newbies being able to
use sensible tools to edit their configuration. In particular, XML editors are pretty good
at not messing with parts of the file they don't understand...
The DVD player thing is a special case,
since there are folks in the world actively
trying to make it hard:-). But if you run
Debian, you can very easily install
usable XFree86
bits, a usable kernel, and the current
Xine bits. It's then just a question of
finding a.deb for the Xine CSS plugin, and
you should be able to watch movies---I can.
The DRM/DRI support for 3D has stabilized
to the point that it mostly just works. As
you suggest, if
it doesn't, you are probably out of luck unless
you have direct access to a guru.
This is true in Windows-land as well. The
traditional solution there is to buy new
hardware to make your software work. Buying
a modern Nvidia card means you automatically
get usable Linux drivers and some tech support,
so this is always an option.
I agree that there are some things that still require
some expert help, and that this is too bad.
But all of this has gotten pretty off topic.
If you check out the 3D and video HW support
of the competition to
XFree86 (e.g. Cosmoe [which is apparently
going to call its initial
distribution potatoe:-)]) you'll find it
to be far inferior, to say the least. X may
not be perfect, but it's tremendously good.
Help out or just be patient, and it will get even
better.
As many of the responses to your post
illustrate, folks just don't get the idea that
XFree86 is a highly modular system.
They don't get the idea that the fastest
path to a high-quality GUI desktop for
their favorite OS is
to start with the existing XFree86 server, extend
it as necessary,
and layer atop it with a decent client side.
Yes, Xlib's time has come and gone, and
Xt has always been pretty hopeless.
So use something like XCB
as a base, and design the GUI API of your
dreams atop it.
Also note that many of the XFree86 features
you mention are either brand-new or
not-quite-there-yet. For example, decent font
support has only been solid for about
a year now, and is still evolving a bit. Server-side affine transformations
have been specified but not yet implemented.
The spec for proper anti-aliasing of polygons was just finalized
last week: it was implemented
this week. (That's how fast XFree86 is moving
these days with Keith Packard working on it full time.
Keith has repeatedly demonstrated that it's pretty easy
to add the "missing" functionality you want as an
X extension.) As folks get used to the Render
and FontConfig APIs, I expect to see correspondingly
less interest in building window systems from
scratch.
IMHO, the "visceral dislike" comes from
several factors, including outdated ideas about what
X is and how well it works (the performance claims
I see around here sometimes crack me up),
insufficient appreciation of the difficulty of
what X does, and NIH syndrome.
The good news
is that all the carping isn't slowing down the
clueful folks any. KDE 3 is nice enough that
for the first time since the mid-80s I'm not running
twm as my window manager any more.
I expect things to only get better from here.
I'm wondering how it could possibly cost $100K to renovate a little teeny geodesic dome like that one? I mean, it's presumably built out of inexpensive materials: where does that kind of money go on this project? Couldn't someone find a couple of college students willing to do it for $15K ea + materials over a summer? For that matter, wouldn't someone donate the materials?
Yeah, that's why I wrote "apparently". There was a triable issue of fact, so no certainty that the court would reach the conclusion you suggest. But it seems pretty likely to me also.
It is interesting to read the whole decision
in Ellison v. AOL. IANAL, but apparently the
issue of contributory copyright infringement (as opposed to direct infringement and vicarious infringement, which starts to explain why IANAL) would have gone to trial but for the fact that AOL met one of the "safe-harbor" provisions of the DMCA.
So Usenet is apparently saved by the DMCA.
Depending on how you feel about Usenet,
this is either an ironic victory or yet another reason to curse the day the DMCA was enacted.
From the Time article: ...high-toned philosophy borrowed from sources as diverse as Plato, the Bible and Snow White.
Yeah, it's hard to beat the high-toned philosophy of Snow White. At any rate, I suspect they meant Alice In Wonderland, but hey: Carroll, Disney, what's the diff?
Face it people: the movies are a lot of fun, but they aren't especially deep. Most of the ideas are drawn directly from classic fantasy, Golden Age sci-fi and cyberpunk. For a different
and in some ways superior treatment of the idea that the world we're living in is just a shadow of the real one, for example, I'd recommend Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.
Whatever. Once you have the basic file drawer/folder/tab idea, there are all sorts of obvious improvements that can be made in the computer version. The keyword being obvious: you aren't in principle allowed to patent small changes to an existing idea. But principle doesn't seem to get one very far in the patent game these days...
As you can see... this patent is about multiple tool dialogs (palettes) which dock together to form tabbed panels within a single dialog. Suddenly the idea is not so obvious anymore. Dockable components which overlap to save space...? That's not a universal GUI concept; showing and hiding tool windows or popping up dialogs in a stack is a traditional means to handle this problem. Arguably Adobe DID innovate in this instance.
You're joking, right? No, you're claiming that Adobe invented the...wait for it...file drawer! Look carefully at those little tabs on top of the palette. Now look around your office. Gee, what might have inspired the idea of putting little labeled tabs on top of records that are obscured by other records so that they can be quickly indexed? But the idea of having a file
drawer simulated in software: now that's innovation! Dockable components that overlap to share space indeed...
The FAQ mentions a unique method that allows tabs within palettes to be customized, separated and reorganized by users. Who could have thought up such a
crazy innovation? [Shuffles through file drawer, reorganizing and relabeling files.]
Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation.
Unfortunately for this argument, much of the development cost of many drugs is paid for with public monies. AIDS drugs, in particular, disproportionately result from large-scale publically-funded research.
Thus, the patents do not actually subsidize the cost of innovation per se. They do help to subsidize the cost of the development of that innovation (FDA testing, etc.).
Sadly, the revenue and spending patterns of
drug companies (as documented, for example,
in this Families USA report) suggest that
the system is broken. Patents on life-giving substances are just too powerful, and a 20-year wait for these substances to become public is just too long.
Back in the day, ^H^H^H (a sequence
of ASCII BS (08H) chars) was what you'd
get inserted into your text if you had your
backspace key misconfigured and tried to
back over something. The best part was
that the editor text would often then display overstruck: i.e., the stuff you tried to backspace over was still there, but invisible until some app
(typically a mail reader) rendered the backspace
chars as ^H^H^H revealing all your "deleted" typos.
Made for some embarrassing moments. These days, with editing typically done in some GUI tool, it's almost impossible to have a misconfigured backspace key, and if you do, the editor is usually really obviously borken...
At first I thought this guy was crazy, considering the administrative nightmare of determining which products should be taxed. But then I realized something - this tax would make those who are most interested in space the primary source of space development funding.
"But then I thought about the administrative nightmare some more, and I realized something - I was right the first time. My mistake, sorry."
The core X Protocol is a wonderful way for application and display server to talk. XLib is painful, but you can abstract it and still live with it reasonably.
For an Xlib alternative in its early stages, check
out XCB, a lightweight, transparent X protocol C Binding.
One of the beauties of the X protocol is that
sticking a new (and hopefully "better") API on top of it is relatively straightforward.
Seems like Vivendi's lawyers are really screwing up here...
I don't see it. It's very inexpensive for Vivendi to file a suit, and the threat might get bnetd to make substantial concessions. If the threat fails, it's easy enough to withdraw or amend the suit at the 11th hour.
The only possible negative for Vivendi I can see is the bad publicity, but I seriously doubt it's going to impact their sales much. At least negatively: when it comes to
publicity, one must always remember Barnum's Adage...
It was a pleasure for me, as an AI prof. who does games-related research, to read this interview. IMHO Dr. Davis gave a brief but extremely accurate and informative sketch of the relationship between industrial AI and AI research. I wish that every "expert" publically commenting about AI could be as insightful and honest.
If Microsoft doesn't want to kill Linux, why
is it running ads attacking UNIX, spreading FUD about the GPL, etc.?
First, MS does want to kill for-profit UNIX servers, and UNIX-derived MacOS X. These companies represent competition in the for-profit market, and have carved out niches difficult for MS to penetrate even given their desktop monopoly.
In this modern era, however, it is important to maintain a duopoly, to avoid the appearance of monopoly. Traditionally this has been a weaker commercial competitor that is dominated but protected from destruction: think Apple, AMD, or Pepsi.
One danger of this approach, as all three of the aforementioned companies have illustrated, is that it is hard to keep this balance: companies tend to consistently lose (Apple) or gain (AMD, Pepsi) market share in ways hard for a competitor to regulate.
Enter Linux, a revolutionary new duopoly opportunity! Now Microsoft's "competitor" is a non-profit volunteer organization: very hard to kill, and yet very unlikely (at least in the estimation of Microsoft) to gain dominance. Better yet, this is an organization supported by major corporate players such as IBM that give the appearance of being competitors without actually attempting to directly compete.
Granting this analysis, Microsoft's best course in dealing with Linux is clear: sufficient repression to prevent dominance, but not sufficient to marginalize the "competitor". Indeed, all of Microsoft's actions to this point have been in line with this behavior.
All that is left now is to see how this new strategy will play out...
Now what we need is...
on
SedSokoban
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Consider the case of Andreas Junghanns, who wrote Rolling Stone, the world's top machine Sokoban solver, in C. I'm sure that even as you read this he is working on rewriting it in the Sokoban-friendly language sed.
The root cause of all this, IMHO, is the
"expert" advice to "never write down your password". What nonsense! Real security experts
understand that there are about 3 things that
can be used as authenticators for you: something
you know, something you have, something you are.
The problem is that a ton of cognitive research
and computing experience over twenty years has failed to demonstrate that you can know something complicated enough to serve by itself as a secure password!
Much more sensible is to randomly generate a password (using as much of the keyspace as reasonably possible), write it down, and stick it in your wallet or purse. Now it is something you have: a perfectly good authenticator that is as secure as the keys to your home and car.
Insufficient security? Combine it with something you know by not writing down the last four randomly-generated characters: you can probably remember those, and a hundred thousand combinations to try will at least force the person who stole your password to
have a means of rapidly checking alternatives.
Alternatively, what I do is store the passwords on my PalmOS PDA, with a free app that lets me protect them with a "master password". Again, the master password is insecure, as it needs to be memorized, but it can be fairly strong, since it is all I need to memorize, and in any case it is only the second line of defense. In a more security-serious environment, you could combine this with the previous scheme.
Note that you will eventually memorize frequently-used randomly-generated passwords:
these can then be thrown away.
Note also that the conventional advice to "change your password often" is a contributor to the problem here: it virtually guarantees that weak passwords will be chosen or that passwords will be written in too-convenient places. If your system is reasonably secured, there is no reason to ever change a password. Finally, if you do need to change a password for some reason, the
"something you have" scheme described above works
much better than memorization.
It's more complicated than the MS argument
("Amazon and Apple") makes it appear. In particular, "Amazon" and "Apple" are not terms
of art in their respective fields (books and computers or music). There's a rule of trademark law that says that I can't trademark the term "car" for my brand of automobiles, even though it is a perfectly legitimate tradmark for my brand of apparel or somesuch.
The term "window" was used by the Xerox PARC folks to describe their rectangular onscreen viewports well before Microsoft had any thoughts of trademarking it. The X Window System folks made a big deal of not calling their system "X Windows" back in the day to avoid getting sued by MS: they certainly would have called it that otherwise. In fact, there were T-shirts printed back in the day with the slogan "It's a window system called X, not a system called X Windows"
precisely for this reason.
XFree86 4 supports sub-pixel anti-aliasing (aka ClearType). You just need to put match edit rgba=rgb; in XftConfig.
Ah, how intuitive... how many hours of reading manpages, HOWTOs and FAQs did it take to figure that one out?
Be patient. Keith Packard is pretty well done with his design and implementation of a new font selection configuration mechanism currently known as "fontconfig". Fontconfig separates the font selection from the rest of Xft, allowing other applications such as printer drivers to select fonts using the same mechanism and policy as X applications.
In the process, fontconfig replaces the arcane Xft configuration language with an XML DTD. This should allow easier hand-editing of this configuration. More importantly, it should allow GUI toolkits such as KDE and Gnome to easily put a GUI interface on font selection configuration. Hopefully, in a few months you'll be able to just click a button to get sub-pixel font rendering with Xft.
Slashdot Mirror
When Apple's $300 OSX box comes out, I'll be first in line to buy one. Until then, I'm afraid JQP is stuck with commodity HW and free SW. Guess he'll survive somehow.
In a weird coincidence, I just spent a half-hour last night lecturing about Daniel Egnor's Iocaine Powder , winner of the First International RoShamBo Programming Competition. Credit this guy with two award-winning pieces of extreme programming cleverness!
Yeah, for earning the respect of the general public for an august organization like the EFF, there's nothing quite like making up a song that mocks those who disagree.
If that doesn't work, maybe we can shoot Disney execs with spitwads or give them atomic wedgies.
I spent 15 years as a system administrator in industry and academia, and now am a college CS prof, so I think I might have some insight here.
First, never say "I'm not going to college." The most to say is "I'm not going to college right now." That said, the danger is that the more involved you become in the world of work, the less likely you are to go back.
There are a couple of reasons for you to go to college right now. First off, any reasonable institution will give you opportunities to acquire more and better sysadmin skills while going to school. Some of the best folks in industry completed their training in college. Second, it's important to develop non-computing skills up front, such as the ability to write a scholarly paper, the ability to research an intellectual issue, the ability to give a scholarly presentation. Third, employers will have much more respect for someone with a college degree (regardless of subject): it shows that they can voluntarily put together four years of structured work.
For someone like you, I would recommend a hard science major of some kind rather than CS. (I got my undergraduate degree in Physics.) You'll get plenty of opportunities to do CS on the side. That said, you don't really have to commit to a major up front; go to school, and pick after a year or two. Figure out whether you're the kind of person who would be happiest in a small private school or a large state school, and choose accordingly.
If you decide not to attend college right now, make sure your employer understands up front that you are a short-timer who is going back to school soon. Taking community college classes on the side is an excellent way to reinforce this and build up some credit.
The bottom line is that you want to have credentials and options. Sysadmin certificates are not very impressive credentials, and leave you without career options. At this stage in your career, I wouldn't bother. The world values smart guys with general skills much more than guys with just sysadmin skills. Develop a repertoire of abilities while you have the luxury of youth.
Your points are mostly well-taken.
The default XF86Config file format may be moving to XML. This would help a lot with newbies being able to use sensible tools to edit their configuration. In particular, XML editors are pretty good at not messing with parts of the file they don't understand...
The DVD player thing is a special case, since there are folks in the world actively trying to make it hard :-). But if you run
Debian, you can very easily install
usable XFree86
bits, a usable kernel, and the current
Xine bits. It's then just a question of
finding a .deb for the Xine CSS plugin, and
you should be able to watch movies---I can.
The DRM/DRI support for 3D has stabilized to the point that it mostly just works. As you suggest, if it doesn't, you are probably out of luck unless you have direct access to a guru. This is true in Windows-land as well. The traditional solution there is to buy new hardware to make your software work. Buying a modern Nvidia card means you automatically get usable Linux drivers and some tech support, so this is always an option.
I agree that there are some things that still require some expert help, and that this is too bad. But all of this has gotten pretty off topic. If you check out the 3D and video HW support of the competition to XFree86 (e.g. Cosmoe [which is apparently going to call its initial distribution potatoe :-)]) you'll find it
to be far inferior, to say the least. X may
not be perfect, but it's tremendously good.
Help out or just be patient, and it will get even
better.
As many of the responses to your post illustrate, folks just don't get the idea that XFree86 is a highly modular system. They don't get the idea that the fastest path to a high-quality GUI desktop for their favorite OS is to start with the existing XFree86 server, extend it as necessary, and layer atop it with a decent client side. Yes, Xlib's time has come and gone, and Xt has always been pretty hopeless. So use something like XCB as a base, and design the GUI API of your dreams atop it.
Also note that many of the XFree86 features you mention are either brand-new or not-quite-there-yet. For example, decent font support has only been solid for about a year now, and is still evolving a bit. Server-side affine transformations have been specified but not yet implemented. The spec for proper anti-aliasing of polygons was just finalized last week: it was implemented this week. (That's how fast XFree86 is moving these days with Keith Packard working on it full time. Keith has repeatedly demonstrated that it's pretty easy to add the "missing" functionality you want as an X extension.) As folks get used to the Render and FontConfig APIs, I expect to see correspondingly less interest in building window systems from scratch.
IMHO, the "visceral dislike" comes from several factors, including outdated ideas about what X is and how well it works (the performance claims I see around here sometimes crack me up), insufficient appreciation of the difficulty of what X does, and NIH syndrome.
The good news is that all the carping isn't slowing down the clueful folks any. KDE 3 is nice enough that for the first time since the mid-80s I'm not running twm as my window manager any more. I expect things to only get better from here.
I'm wondering how it could possibly cost $100K to renovate a little teeny geodesic dome like that one? I mean, it's presumably built out of inexpensive materials: where does that kind of money go on this project? Couldn't someone find a couple of college students willing to do it for $15K ea + materials over a summer? For that matter, wouldn't someone donate the materials?
Yeah, that's why I wrote "apparently". There was a triable issue of fact, so no certainty that the court would reach the conclusion you suggest. But it seems pretty likely to me also.
It is interesting to read the whole decision in Ellison v. AOL. IANAL, but apparently the issue of contributory copyright infringement (as opposed to direct infringement and vicarious infringement, which starts to explain why IANAL) would have gone to trial but for the fact that AOL met one of the "safe-harbor" provisions of the DMCA.
So Usenet is apparently saved by the DMCA. Depending on how you feel about Usenet, this is either an ironic victory or yet another reason to curse the day the DMCA was enacted.
From the Time article:
...high-toned philosophy borrowed from sources as diverse as Plato, the Bible and Snow White.
Yeah, it's hard to beat the high-toned philosophy of Snow White. At any rate, I suspect they meant Alice In Wonderland, but hey: Carroll, Disney, what's the diff?
Face it people: the movies are a lot of fun, but they aren't especially deep. Most of the ideas are drawn directly from classic fantasy, Golden Age sci-fi and cyberpunk. For a different and in some ways superior treatment of the idea that the world we're living in is just a shadow of the real one, for example, I'd recommend Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.
Whatever. Once you have the basic file drawer/folder/tab idea, there are all sorts of obvious improvements that can be made in the computer version. The keyword being obvious: you aren't in principle allowed to patent small changes to an existing idea. But principle doesn't seem to get one very far in the patent game these days...
As you can see ... this patent is about multiple tool dialogs (palettes) which dock together to form tabbed panels within a single dialog. Suddenly the idea is not so obvious anymore. Dockable components which overlap to save space ...? That's not a universal GUI concept; showing and hiding tool windows or popping up dialogs in a stack is a traditional means to handle this problem. Arguably Adobe DID innovate in this instance.
You're joking, right? No, you're claiming that Adobe invented the...wait for it...file drawer! Look carefully at those little tabs on top of the palette. Now look around your office. Gee, what might have inspired the idea of putting little labeled tabs on top of records that are obscured by other records so that they can be quickly indexed? But the idea of having a file drawer simulated in software: now that's innovation! Dockable components that overlap to share space indeed...
The FAQ mentions a unique method that allows tabs within palettes to be customized, separated and reorganized by users. Who could have thought up such a crazy innovation? [Shuffles through file drawer, reorganizing and relabeling files.]
Sheesh.
Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation.
Unfortunately for this argument, much of the development cost of many drugs is paid for with public monies. AIDS drugs, in particular, disproportionately result from large-scale publically-funded research.
Thus, the patents do not actually subsidize the cost of innovation per se. They do help to subsidize the cost of the development of that innovation (FDA testing, etc.).
Sadly, the revenue and spending patterns of drug companies (as documented, for example, in this Families USA report) suggest that the system is broken. Patents on life-giving substances are just too powerful, and a 20-year wait for these substances to become public is just too long.
OK, so I'm old.
Back in the day, ^H^H^H (a sequence of ASCII BS (08H) chars) was what you'd get inserted into your text if you had your backspace key misconfigured and tried to back over something. The best part was that the editor text would often then display overstruck: i.e., the stuff you tried to backspace over was still there, but invisible until some app (typically a mail reader) rendered the backspace chars as ^H^H^H revealing all your "deleted" typos.
Made for some embarrassing moments. These days, with editing typically done in some GUI tool, it's almost impossible to have a misconfigured backspace key, and if you do, the editor is usually really obviously borken...
At first I thought this guy was crazy, considering the administrative nightmare of determining which products should be taxed. But then I realized something - this tax would make those who are most interested in space the primary source of space development funding.
"But then I thought about the administrative nightmare some more, and I realized something - I was right the first time. My mistake, sorry."
The core X Protocol is a wonderful way for application and display server to talk. XLib is painful, but you can abstract it and still live with it reasonably.
For an Xlib alternative in its early stages, check out XCB, a lightweight, transparent X protocol C Binding. One of the beauties of the X protocol is that sticking a new (and hopefully "better") API on top of it is relatively straightforward.
My favorite reference for "Cold Fusion" in particular and bad science in general is
It certainly has all the detail one could ever want on the topic, and provides some nice insight into how these things go.Seems like Vivendi's lawyers are really screwing up here...
I don't see it. It's very inexpensive for Vivendi to file a suit, and the threat might get bnetd to make substantial concessions. If the threat fails, it's easy enough to withdraw or amend the suit at the 11th hour.
The only possible negative for Vivendi I can see is the bad publicity, but I seriously doubt it's going to impact their sales much. At least negatively: when it comes to publicity, one must always remember Barnum's Adage...
It was a pleasure for me, as an AI prof. who does games-related research, to read this interview. IMHO Dr. Davis gave a brief but extremely accurate and informative sketch of the relationship between industrial AI and AI research. I wish that every "expert" publically commenting about AI could be as insightful and honest.
If Microsoft doesn't want to kill Linux, why is it running ads attacking UNIX, spreading FUD about the GPL, etc.?
First, MS does want to kill for-profit UNIX servers, and UNIX-derived MacOS X. These companies represent competition in the for-profit market, and have carved out niches difficult for MS to penetrate even given their desktop monopoly.
In this modern era, however, it is important to maintain a duopoly, to avoid the appearance of monopoly. Traditionally this has been a weaker commercial competitor that is dominated but protected from destruction: think Apple, AMD, or Pepsi. One danger of this approach, as all three of the aforementioned companies have illustrated, is that it is hard to keep this balance: companies tend to consistently lose (Apple) or gain (AMD, Pepsi) market share in ways hard for a competitor to regulate.
Enter Linux, a revolutionary new duopoly opportunity! Now Microsoft's "competitor" is a non-profit volunteer organization: very hard to kill, and yet very unlikely (at least in the estimation of Microsoft) to gain dominance. Better yet, this is an organization supported by major corporate players such as IBM that give the appearance of being competitors without actually attempting to directly compete.
Granting this analysis, Microsoft's best course in dealing with Linux is clear: sufficient repression to prevent dominance, but not sufficient to marginalize the "competitor". Indeed, all of Microsoft's actions to this point have been in line with this behavior.
All that is left now is to see how this new strategy will play out...
Consider the case of Andreas Junghanns, who wrote Rolling Stone, the world's top machine Sokoban solver, in C. I'm sure that even as you read this he is working on rewriting it in the Sokoban-friendly language sed.
Or not.
The root cause of all this, IMHO, is the "expert" advice to "never write down your password". What nonsense! Real security experts understand that there are about 3 things that can be used as authenticators for you: something you know, something you have, something you are. The problem is that a ton of cognitive research and computing experience over twenty years has failed to demonstrate that you can know something complicated enough to serve by itself as a secure password!
Much more sensible is to randomly generate a password (using as much of the keyspace as reasonably possible), write it down, and stick it in your wallet or purse. Now it is something you have: a perfectly good authenticator that is as secure as the keys to your home and car.
Insufficient security? Combine it with something you know by not writing down the last four randomly-generated characters: you can probably remember those, and a hundred thousand combinations to try will at least force the person who stole your password to have a means of rapidly checking alternatives.
Alternatively, what I do is store the passwords on my PalmOS PDA, with a free app that lets me protect them with a "master password". Again, the master password is insecure, as it needs to be memorized, but it can be fairly strong, since it is all I need to memorize, and in any case it is only the second line of defense. In a more security-serious environment, you could combine this with the previous scheme.
Note that you will eventually memorize frequently-used randomly-generated passwords: these can then be thrown away.
Note also that the conventional advice to "change your password often" is a contributor to the problem here: it virtually guarantees that weak passwords will be chosen or that passwords will be written in too-convenient places. If your system is reasonably secured, there is no reason to ever change a password. Finally, if you do need to change a password for some reason, the "something you have" scheme described above works much better than memorization.
It's more complicated than the MS argument ("Amazon and Apple") makes it appear. In particular, "Amazon" and "Apple" are not terms of art in their respective fields (books and computers or music). There's a rule of trademark law that says that I can't trademark the term "car" for my brand of automobiles, even though it is a perfectly legitimate tradmark for my brand of apparel or somesuch.
The term "window" was used by the Xerox PARC folks to describe their rectangular onscreen viewports well before Microsoft had any thoughts of trademarking it. The X Window System folks made a big deal of not calling their system "X Windows" back in the day to avoid getting sued by MS: they certainly would have called it that otherwise. In fact, there were T-shirts printed back in the day with the slogan "It's a window system called X, not a system called X Windows" precisely for this reason.
Check out this odd story about incarcerated Browns. The summarizer could apparently still use some manual supervision.
XFree86 4 supports sub-pixel anti-aliasing (aka ClearType). You just need to put match edit rgba=rgb; in XftConfig.
Be patient. Keith Packard is pretty well done with his design and implementation of a new font selection configuration mechanism currently known as "fontconfig". Fontconfig separates the font selection from the rest of Xft, allowing other applications such as printer drivers to select fonts using the same mechanism and policy as X applications.
In the process, fontconfig replaces the arcane Xft configuration language with an XML DTD. This should allow easier hand-editing of this configuration. More importantly, it should allow GUI toolkits such as KDE and Gnome to easily put a GUI interface on font selection configuration. Hopefully, in a few months you'll be able to just click a button to get sub-pixel font rendering with Xft.