I suppose that the difference is that I don't copy URLs into Netscape. If the URL is in my text editor (Emacs) I simply use the browse-url function and it opens it up in Mozilla for me. If it is in a gnome-terminal I right click on it and slide down to "open in browser."
I can see what you mean, however, and in fact I vaguely remember having a similar problem. It just goes to show you how one becomes used to their preferred environment. I still like being able to cut and paste without touching the keyboard (otherwise I would simply use Emacs), but I can see your point.
My first reaction, before I read the article, was similar to yours. However, when I looked at the article I realized that the information available was not really that intrusive. Personally I think that it should be easy for parents to see if their children are skipping school. And if the child is spending my money, I don't think that it is unreasonable for me to be able to see what they are eating. If they want a snack that I wouldn't approve of, they can certainly earn their own money and pay cash for it. And being able to review your grades online would be cool. I would have really appreciated something like that in highschool. Once again, most parents that give a crap about this type of stuff already know what sort of grades their youngster is getting. This sort of "surveillance" is only useful for those parents that A) give a darn, and B) have dishonest children.
Now if this were some sort of program where the children were forced to wear homing devices and web cams I would agree with you. But all of the information that they are making available has been available forever. I spent some time in Washington when I was growing up, and the school district used to call the parents when a child missed a class, and I am sure that the students grades and menu choices were also available upon request.
As for parents signing up "in droves," I imagine that it's no different from anything else. If this service were offered to me, I would almost certainly sign up, if only so that my children would be less likely to think that they could get away with lying to me. If my kids were to skip school, you can bet that I would want to know about it. Besides, some of the functionality would be pretty useful even if you did trust your kid. The unfortunate part of the equation isn't the few parents that will use the service. Let's face it, if your parents don't trust you then you are screwed. The sad part is that most of the children who actually need someone to check up on them have parents that simply can't be bothered. This is not a student's rights issue, it just sounds like one.
Actually most screwed up kids, statistically speaking, are the result of too little (not too much) parental supervision. Children with two parents that are actively involved in their lives are much more likely to become well adjusted adults than their peers.
My father would not have been interested in something like this monitoring program (for me anyway) simply because he knew that the easiest way to find out what I had for lunch was to ask me. I, on the other hand, knew that the quickest way to lose the privileges and freedoms that I had was to get caught lying to my father. Many children, however, don't see that the only way to have your parents trust you is to be trustworthy. They want to be able to do whatever they want, and still be trusted.
Life just doesn't work that way.
Perhaps someday when your kids (should you choose to raise any) are old enough you will realize the wisdom in the previous poster's quote. Most teenagers are honest enough, but if you end up with one that is consistently dishonest the only choice you have as a parent is to monitor them more closely.
If all you are copying and pasting is text, then the easiest way to do this is with the middle mouse button. Simply highlight what you want to copy, and then place your mouse cursor where you would like it to go and press the middle mouse button. If you don't have a three button mouse then you have to press both the right and left buttons at the same time (this is why it is important to get a three button mouse).
Once you get the hang of cutting and pasting without needing to keyboard you will find that you begin to wish Windows worked this way as well. It is much faster.
Yes, and if XP Home Edition is priced competitively with Windows ME, it might even get installed. Otherwise Windows ME will live on. And while XP has addressed some of the security concerns with Windows, it has opened a whole new can of worms with its new draconian EULA and its adoption of anti-consumer technologies like Secure Audio Path.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can actually sell Windows XP. If they price it competitively I think they have a chance. If they expect end users to pay the premium that they have been paying for Windows NT (and 2000) XP will be stillborn.
The difference, of course, is you can actually check up on the free software hacker. If he lists some free software projects on his resume you could take a quick look at the CVS logs and see how much work he is actually doing. In every free software project I have ever seen it was pretty obvious who was doing what. You can even troll through the mailing list archives and get an idea as to the interpersonal skills of the developer in question. Is he patient with the other developers? Does he work well with others?
It is far too easy for your "normal" applicants to bullshit you about what they have accomplished and how hard they work. You aren't ever going to see their previous work, and they know it. You can ask them riddles to see if they are clever, and you can test their knowledge of algorithims. You can crack a joke and see if their sense of humor works, and you can question them about their motivation. But you can't really see what kind of work they do until it is too late and they are on your payroll.
Free Software developers work in a fishbowl and their talents and weaknesses are much more apparent than most "normal" developers.
I give up. In the future I suppose I am going to have to use examples from popular science fiction. Although I suppose some people would also get offended if I characterized the Vogons as "bad" as well.
Anyone who thought that Linux was some sort of communist type class revolution clearly needs to do some re-thinking. This isn't about wealth, power, or fame, it's about source code availability.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Personally I am glad to see Linux being used by the rich and the powerful. You see, I like using Linux, but I enjoy getting paid as well. The rich and powerful tend to be able to pay for expert services.
Of course "bad" generally depends on your perspective. It is a very subjective monikker. In fact, many people believe that good and bad are always entirely relative (I personally believe that there is such a thing as an absolute Bad, and an absolute Good, but that's neither here nor there).
I was fishing around for a couple of things that I figured that anyone soft-headed enough to feel that Linux should only be used for medical research would see as "bad." Although, I think that even many Chinese nationals would agree that giving the people in charge of their country supercomputers is not a good thing. America certainly has its share of heavy-handed government, but it is nothing compared to what happens in China.
My point is that Linux is going to be used for all sorts of things, and that can't really be controlled. However, with Linux there is at least the potential that the newest software patch might come as a result of the work of someone you see as "bad." (whomever that might be). That doesn't make the patch less useful, and it might help your causes just as much as it helped whoever wrote the patch.
As for the oil companies using Linux. I personally say "good for them." I happen to think that digging up oil is a useful activity (once again I was just fishing for examples of industries that the original poster might find objectionable).
The folks at Caldera are just upset because they had the opportunity to be where RedHat is now (market leader), but instead they tried to tie their customers to their release with proprietary software. Now they have got a second (or third) tier Linux distribution, and the aging and decrepit bones of SCO's proprietary Unix, and they are starting to wish they had never gotten into the Linux business.
They realize that as long as the Linux community stands by the GPL that RedHat has the most to gain (as market leader), but if they can trick us into using their proprietary add-ons (volution, NDS, etc.) then Caldera will be in control. Unfortunately for them it isn't going to work. Linux users aren't interested in basing their businesses on someone else's proprietary code, and are more inclined to hack a piece of free software to do what they need than to purchase a piece of proprietary software. Caldera's proprietary offerings have generally been pretty nice, but they haven't been so amazing as to be irreplaceable.
Yes, it takes more than merely being able to produce the movie, you need to market it as well. However, modern technology has a cure for that as well. The Internet is the perfect way to inexpensively distribute digital art of any kind. For example, how many of us here on/. have seen CmdrTaco's "Hamster Havoc" (or whatever it is called), and it was certainly not Hollywood material. If your movie didn't have a huge budget, it wouldn't need a huge audience to be successful either. Word of mouth coupled with a web site could easily be enough of a market. You probably won't see something like this in movie theaters anytime soon, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
Most independent movies right now are actually hoping to be bought out by an MPAA member so that they can break into the big time. With inexpensive professional special effects and an inexpensive way to market and distribute the work it might be possible to bypass the MPAA altogether.
Actually, the movie industry has sponsored at least some work on Linux. I know that Bruce Perens used to work for Pixar. That's the reason that all of the Debian Linux releases have names like Hamm, Woody, Buzz, or Sid (characters from Toy Story).
The fact of the matter is that Linux is useful enough that it is going to get used for all kinds of bad stuff. The Chinese will probably use Linux to build supercomputers, the oil companies are already using Linux to look for oil, terrorists will probably use Linux to encrypt their secret communications. Linux is a tool, and as such it doesn't have any power to say how it is used.
The good news is that the same things that make Linux useful for terrorists also make Linux useful for medical research, and whatever else you feel to be a "good" field of endeavor. The newest patch to improve networking might come from a skinhead neo-Nazi that wanted his hate web site to run a little faster, but it will help your Linux boxes just as much as it helped his.
Yes, but on the bright side Linux is guaranteeing that the tools used to make professional movies become less and less expensive. Pretty soon it will be possible to really break the MPAA by making it possible for struggling artists to produce and distribute their works inexpensively.
When it is all said and done this is the only way to break the MPAA. As long as making a movie is as expensive as it is today the MPAA will control the destiny of entertainment (because they will be the only ones able to produce it). Trying to "steal" their works after they have created them is a losing proposition.
Fah, I need to triple check before submitting, because I agree 100% with what you have said. If Guido would have taken care of the licensing issues before he started work on Python then the whole problem wouldn't have happened.
This is one of the things that the FSF does right. They get all of the legal ducks in a row before they start hacking.
My point was that Python's license is a BSD style license (and not even GPL compatible there for a bit), so it wasn't his software or license that was under attack. He had no need to pitch in with the rest of the GPL advocates. His software is part of the BSD style crowd that Microsoft seems to approve of. He could have done what Ransom Love did and say that perhaps the GPL isn't such a good idea after all. The fact that he didn't do that is heartening, and shows that the rift between GPL advocates and BSD advocates isn't as big as the flamewars on Usenet make them out to be.
Thanks again for your hard work Bruce. Keep it up.
Yes but GvR has no reason to love the GPL (the current Python license isn't GPL compatible) and he still signed his name to the article. I would have liked to have seen a prominent BSDer on the list, but that's probably a little over the top. After all, a lot of those guys agree with Mundie's criticisms of the GPL (they would disagree with most of his other points, however).
Mundie's remarks have definitely backfired. Mundie got to speak to one small room of people, and the rebuttals have been seen everywhere. News agencies are falling all over themselves to print lucid, well-written, and oftentimes very biting replies to Mundie's remarks.
It has long been known that GNU/Linux is basically immune to being bought, bankrupted, or stolen, but now it appears that GNU/Linux is immune to FUD as well.
Eazel burned through millions of dollars, in about a year, creating a file manager. This is not generally the sort of thing that the government or a charitable organization tend to sponsor.
This doesn't mean that it isn't a good idea for charitable organizations or the government to sponsor Free Software. After all, both of these groups need inexpensive software too. The difference is that the developers working on a project for either the government or a charitable foundation don't normally drive fancy sports cars, or have offices in Silicon valley. Eazel raised a fair amount of cash for their idea, and then they proceeded to spend the money on marketing, office space, etc. before they had a saleable product.
At the time they probably figured that they would be able to attract more venture capital. They were wrong, and now Eazel is no more (but Nautilus will live on).
The individual hackers will be fine, the folks that invested in Eazel, however, are not likely to ever invest in a Free Software venture again. Not that it matters. I personally am not convinced that it takes that type of money to develop a quality product. KDE seems to be progressing quite well without that sort of capital, and most of the software I use everyday operates with a much lower budget than the folks at Eazel.
While Microsoft got pulled into the whirlwind of bizarre valuations of a little over a year ago, their stock has gone through remarkably well. In fact given that this is a company that has a massive federal judgement against them and countless other legal issues on the docket, I'd say their $68+ stock price is remarkably good.
Uh... That's almost precisely what I meant. So far Microsoft has mostly been immune to the current stock market tech devaluations. They still have a very high Price/Earnings ratio, and they are still using stock options as a primary employee incentive. Maintaining their stock price in an era where PC sales are down (and where their premier OS has had lackluster sales) is quite a feat. My hat is off to them.
In the South American countries that I lived in they referred to US Citizens as "norteamericanos" or "North Americans." I always found this to be quite interesting in that technically Canadians and Mexicans are North Americans as well.
The funny thing about language is that words are important. People have strange attachment to specific words, and an equally strange dislike for others. That's why some folks on this site don't mind being referred to as "geeks," but balk at being labeled a "nerd." That is why it is always best to try and use the word that your audience expects, and not the word that you personally feel is the best fit. It's just good politics.
In this case while the original poster felt that USians was a proper way to address US Citizens most US Citizens would disagree. We prefer Americans, but will admit that US Citizen is probably a more accurate monniker. Arguing that "USian" is a better term with an American is a lot like arguing with someone from Japan about the term "Jap" or "Nip."
In a nutshell, if someone takes offense at the label that you have put on them, it makes sense to simply agree and call them whatever they prefer (within reason, of course). You can call them whatever you want behind their back.
IBM is not really interested in Linux as a desktop (yet). They are willing to help Apache, and they are very willing to make sure that Linux on their big iron has all of the enterprise features that it needs (journaling filesystem, etc.), but so far they have only improved Linux in areas where it already was being used.
In short, IBM is using Linux mostly as a weapon against Sun, and not Microsoft. They have got much better uses for their $1 Billion than trying to save a file manager (that will probably do just fine without the help).
Microsoft is too busy trying to keep their stock from collapsing to care much about one single company that employed a handful of hackers. Especially since these hackers have already managed to release their source code under the GPL. Ninety percent of all new businesses fail. That's why it's called "venture" capital.
Free software was alive and well long before the corporations had any interest, and it takes a lot less money to sustain a Free Software project than it does to build a proprietary one. Especially when your customers are feeling the pinch of a recession and are deciding that perhaps now is not the time to upgrade.
Actually, these types of things tend to work the other way around. Every time Microsoft has pointed out weaknesses in Linux, especially legitimate problems, the Linux community has rallied and corrected the problems. For example, the Mindcraft benchmarks were nothing more than Microsoft sponsored R&D for the Linux kernel team. If anything Mundie's inane have served as advertisements Linux. His most damaging criticisms have been rebuffed over and over again, by Linuxers and non-Linuxers alike.
This announcement only goes to show why it is that Microsoft's ambitions will be foiled in the long run. Microsoft may be the biggest software company on the planet, but they aren't big enough to take on the entire rest of the industry. They have back-stabbed so many of their allies that there is no one left to watch their back, and their competitors are showing that they are more than willing to cooperate if it means denying Microsoft control of yet another market. The OS and Office suite markets will become commodity markets eventually, and Microsoft is going to be hard pressed to find some other market that they can dominate as completely as they have dominated the desktop.
Neither Linux nor Apache has ever had a security problem that was intentional. This particular problem wasn't a bug, it was a backdoor. Some clever coder at Microsoft even used a joke password.
At least with Linux or Apache there is some chance that someone else is going to catch something this idiotic. With Microsoft the problem apparently can remain unreported to the general public for years. Clearly there is a difference between some random buffer exploit and a backdoor that was specifically placed there by an employee and that was somehow "missed" in the code review.
The fact of the matter is that, short of releasing source code, there is no way that your customers can be sure that there aren't any backdoors. For example, it would be much easier for your Dev team to insert a method called PayEntireDevTeam() than for one member to insert the mythical PayTim() method. For Tim to get away with the insertion of his method he would have to be more clever than all of the reviewers. But if all of the auditors were in on the backdoor then there is no defense.
I would like to think that Microsoft would be trustworthy on this account. But this is the same company that released a spreadsheet that doubled as a flight simulator. Quite frankly, I doubt that a whole lot of auditing actually occurs. And if you can convince a group of Microsoft employees that a flight simulator is an important feature of a spreadsheet, then inserting a backdoor should be child's play.
Considering the amount of money spent on Windows 2000 development, and the anemic rate of adoption, I can guarantee you that Microsoft doesn't share your feelings. Microsoft is trying to find some way of maintaining double digit growth, and Windows 2000 is not helping. Windows 2000 is good software, but it hasn't been a very good investment for Microsoft, and it certainly hasn't stopped the growing acceptance of Windows alternatives.
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I suppose that the difference is that I don't copy URLs into Netscape. If the URL is in my text editor (Emacs) I simply use the browse-url function and it opens it up in Mozilla for me. If it is in a gnome-terminal I right click on it and slide down to "open in browser."
I can see what you mean, however, and in fact I vaguely remember having a similar problem. It just goes to show you how one becomes used to their preferred environment. I still like being able to cut and paste without touching the keyboard (otherwise I would simply use Emacs), but I can see your point.
My first reaction, before I read the article, was similar to yours. However, when I looked at the article I realized that the information available was not really that intrusive. Personally I think that it should be easy for parents to see if their children are skipping school. And if the child is spending my money, I don't think that it is unreasonable for me to be able to see what they are eating. If they want a snack that I wouldn't approve of, they can certainly earn their own money and pay cash for it. And being able to review your grades online would be cool. I would have really appreciated something like that in highschool. Once again, most parents that give a crap about this type of stuff already know what sort of grades their youngster is getting. This sort of "surveillance" is only useful for those parents that A) give a darn, and B) have dishonest children.
Now if this were some sort of program where the children were forced to wear homing devices and web cams I would agree with you. But all of the information that they are making available has been available forever. I spent some time in Washington when I was growing up, and the school district used to call the parents when a child missed a class, and I am sure that the students grades and menu choices were also available upon request. As for parents signing up "in droves," I imagine that it's no different from anything else. If this service were offered to me, I would almost certainly sign up, if only so that my children would be less likely to think that they could get away with lying to me. If my kids were to skip school, you can bet that I would want to know about it. Besides, some of the functionality would be pretty useful even if you did trust your kid. The unfortunate part of the equation isn't the few parents that will use the service. Let's face it, if your parents don't trust you then you are screwed. The sad part is that most of the children who actually need someone to check up on them have parents that simply can't be bothered. This is not a student's rights issue, it just sounds like one.
Actually most screwed up kids, statistically speaking, are the result of too little (not too much) parental supervision. Children with two parents that are actively involved in their lives are much more likely to become well adjusted adults than their peers.
My father would not have been interested in something like this monitoring program (for me anyway) simply because he knew that the easiest way to find out what I had for lunch was to ask me. I, on the other hand, knew that the quickest way to lose the privileges and freedoms that I had was to get caught lying to my father. Many children, however, don't see that the only way to have your parents trust you is to be trustworthy. They want to be able to do whatever they want, and still be trusted.
Life just doesn't work that way.
Perhaps someday when your kids (should you choose to raise any) are old enough you will realize the wisdom in the previous poster's quote. Most teenagers are honest enough, but if you end up with one that is consistently dishonest the only choice you have as a parent is to monitor them more closely.
If all you are copying and pasting is text, then the easiest way to do this is with the middle mouse button. Simply highlight what you want to copy, and then place your mouse cursor where you would like it to go and press the middle mouse button. If you don't have a three button mouse then you have to press both the right and left buttons at the same time (this is why it is important to get a three button mouse).
Once you get the hang of cutting and pasting without needing to keyboard you will find that you begin to wish Windows worked this way as well. It is much faster.
Hope that helps.
Yes, and if XP Home Edition is priced competitively with Windows ME, it might even get installed. Otherwise Windows ME will live on. And while XP has addressed some of the security concerns with Windows, it has opened a whole new can of worms with its new draconian EULA and its adoption of anti-consumer technologies like Secure Audio Path.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can actually sell Windows XP. If they price it competitively I think they have a chance. If they expect end users to pay the premium that they have been paying for Windows NT (and 2000) XP will be stillborn.
The difference, of course, is you can actually check up on the free software hacker. If he lists some free software projects on his resume you could take a quick look at the CVS logs and see how much work he is actually doing. In every free software project I have ever seen it was pretty obvious who was doing what. You can even troll through the mailing list archives and get an idea as to the interpersonal skills of the developer in question. Is he patient with the other developers? Does he work well with others?
It is far too easy for your "normal" applicants to bullshit you about what they have accomplished and how hard they work. You aren't ever going to see their previous work, and they know it. You can ask them riddles to see if they are clever, and you can test their knowledge of algorithims. You can crack a joke and see if their sense of humor works, and you can question them about their motivation. But you can't really see what kind of work they do until it is too late and they are on your payroll.
Free Software developers work in a fishbowl and their talents and weaknesses are much more apparent than most "normal" developers.
LOL.
I give up. In the future I suppose I am going to have to use examples from popular science fiction. Although I suppose some people would also get offended if I characterized the Vogons as "bad" as well.
What a fscked up world we live in.
Anyone who thought that Linux was some sort of communist type class revolution clearly needs to do some re-thinking. This isn't about wealth, power, or fame, it's about source code availability.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Personally I am glad to see Linux being used by the rich and the powerful. You see, I like using Linux, but I enjoy getting paid as well. The rich and powerful tend to be able to pay for expert services.
Of course "bad" generally depends on your perspective. It is a very subjective monikker. In fact, many people believe that good and bad are always entirely relative (I personally believe that there is such a thing as an absolute Bad, and an absolute Good, but that's neither here nor there).
I was fishing around for a couple of things that I figured that anyone soft-headed enough to feel that Linux should only be used for medical research would see as "bad." Although, I think that even many Chinese nationals would agree that giving the people in charge of their country supercomputers is not a good thing. America certainly has its share of heavy-handed government, but it is nothing compared to what happens in China.
My point is that Linux is going to be used for all sorts of things, and that can't really be controlled. However, with Linux there is at least the potential that the newest software patch might come as a result of the work of someone you see as "bad." (whomever that might be). That doesn't make the patch less useful, and it might help your causes just as much as it helped whoever wrote the patch.
As for the oil companies using Linux. I personally say "good for them." I happen to think that digging up oil is a useful activity (once again I was just fishing for examples of industries that the original poster might find objectionable).
The folks at Caldera are just upset because they had the opportunity to be where RedHat is now (market leader), but instead they tried to tie their customers to their release with proprietary software. Now they have got a second (or third) tier Linux distribution, and the aging and decrepit bones of SCO's proprietary Unix, and they are starting to wish they had never gotten into the Linux business.
They realize that as long as the Linux community stands by the GPL that RedHat has the most to gain (as market leader), but if they can trick us into using their proprietary add-ons (volution, NDS, etc.) then Caldera will be in control. Unfortunately for them it isn't going to work. Linux users aren't interested in basing their businesses on someone else's proprietary code, and are more inclined to hack a piece of free software to do what they need than to purchase a piece of proprietary software. Caldera's proprietary offerings have generally been pretty nice, but they haven't been so amazing as to be irreplaceable.
Yes, it takes more than merely being able to produce the movie, you need to market it as well. However, modern technology has a cure for that as well. The Internet is the perfect way to inexpensively distribute digital art of any kind. For example, how many of us here on /. have seen CmdrTaco's "Hamster Havoc" (or whatever it is called), and it was certainly not Hollywood material. If your movie didn't have a huge budget, it wouldn't need a huge audience to be successful either. Word of mouth coupled with a web site could easily be enough of a market. You probably won't see something like this in movie theaters anytime soon, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
Most independent movies right now are actually hoping to be bought out by an MPAA member so that they can break into the big time. With inexpensive professional special effects and an inexpensive way to market and distribute the work it might be possible to bypass the MPAA altogether.
Actually, the movie industry has sponsored at least some work on Linux. I know that Bruce Perens used to work for Pixar. That's the reason that all of the Debian Linux releases have names like Hamm, Woody, Buzz, or Sid (characters from Toy Story).
The fact of the matter is that Linux is useful enough that it is going to get used for all kinds of bad stuff. The Chinese will probably use Linux to build supercomputers, the oil companies are already using Linux to look for oil, terrorists will probably use Linux to encrypt their secret communications. Linux is a tool, and as such it doesn't have any power to say how it is used.
The good news is that the same things that make Linux useful for terrorists also make Linux useful for medical research, and whatever else you feel to be a "good" field of endeavor. The newest patch to improve networking might come from a skinhead neo-Nazi that wanted his hate web site to run a little faster, but it will help your Linux boxes just as much as it helped his.
Yes, but on the bright side Linux is guaranteeing that the tools used to make professional movies become less and less expensive. Pretty soon it will be possible to really break the MPAA by making it possible for struggling artists to produce and distribute their works inexpensively.
When it is all said and done this is the only way to break the MPAA. As long as making a movie is as expensive as it is today the MPAA will control the destiny of entertainment (because they will be the only ones able to produce it). Trying to "steal" their works after they have created them is a losing proposition.
Fah, I need to triple check before submitting, because I agree 100% with what you have said. If Guido would have taken care of the licensing issues before he started work on Python then the whole problem wouldn't have happened.
This is one of the things that the FSF does right. They get all of the legal ducks in a row before they start hacking.
My point was that Python's license is a BSD style license (and not even GPL compatible there for a bit), so it wasn't his software or license that was under attack. He had no need to pitch in with the rest of the GPL advocates. His software is part of the BSD style crowd that Microsoft seems to approve of. He could have done what Ransom Love did and say that perhaps the GPL isn't such a good idea after all. The fact that he didn't do that is heartening, and shows that the rift between GPL advocates and BSD advocates isn't as big as the flamewars on Usenet make them out to be.
Thanks again for your hard work Bruce. Keep it up.
Yes but GvR has no reason to love the GPL (the current Python license isn't GPL compatible) and he still signed his name to the article. I would have liked to have seen a prominent BSDer on the list, but that's probably a little over the top. After all, a lot of those guys agree with Mundie's criticisms of the GPL (they would disagree with most of his other points, however).
Mundie's remarks have definitely backfired. Mundie got to speak to one small room of people, and the rebuttals have been seen everywhere. News agencies are falling all over themselves to print lucid, well-written, and oftentimes very biting replies to Mundie's remarks.
It has long been known that GNU/Linux is basically immune to being bought, bankrupted, or stolen, but now it appears that GNU/Linux is immune to FUD as well.
Eazel burned through millions of dollars, in about a year, creating a file manager. This is not generally the sort of thing that the government or a charitable organization tend to sponsor.
This doesn't mean that it isn't a good idea for charitable organizations or the government to sponsor Free Software. After all, both of these groups need inexpensive software too. The difference is that the developers working on a project for either the government or a charitable foundation don't normally drive fancy sports cars, or have offices in Silicon valley. Eazel raised a fair amount of cash for their idea, and then they proceeded to spend the money on marketing, office space, etc. before they had a saleable product.
At the time they probably figured that they would be able to attract more venture capital. They were wrong, and now Eazel is no more (but Nautilus will live on).
The individual hackers will be fine, the folks that invested in Eazel, however, are not likely to ever invest in a Free Software venture again. Not that it matters. I personally am not convinced that it takes that type of money to develop a quality product. KDE seems to be progressing quite well without that sort of capital, and most of the software I use everyday operates with a much lower budget than the folks at Eazel.
Uh... That's almost precisely what I meant. So far Microsoft has mostly been immune to the current stock market tech devaluations. They still have a very high Price/Earnings ratio, and they are still using stock options as a primary employee incentive. Maintaining their stock price in an era where PC sales are down (and where their premier OS has had lackluster sales) is quite a feat. My hat is off to them.
In the South American countries that I lived in they referred to US Citizens as "norteamericanos" or "North Americans." I always found this to be quite interesting in that technically Canadians and Mexicans are North Americans as well.
The funny thing about language is that words are important. People have strange attachment to specific words, and an equally strange dislike for others. That's why some folks on this site don't mind being referred to as "geeks," but balk at being labeled a "nerd." That is why it is always best to try and use the word that your audience expects, and not the word that you personally feel is the best fit. It's just good politics.
In this case while the original poster felt that USians was a proper way to address US Citizens most US Citizens would disagree. We prefer Americans, but will admit that US Citizen is probably a more accurate monniker. Arguing that "USian" is a better term with an American is a lot like arguing with someone from Japan about the term "Jap" or "Nip."
In a nutshell, if someone takes offense at the label that you have put on them, it makes sense to simply agree and call them whatever they prefer (within reason, of course). You can call them whatever you want behind their back.
IBM is not really interested in Linux as a desktop (yet). They are willing to help Apache, and they are very willing to make sure that Linux on their big iron has all of the enterprise features that it needs (journaling filesystem, etc.), but so far they have only improved Linux in areas where it already was being used.
In short, IBM is using Linux mostly as a weapon against Sun, and not Microsoft. They have got much better uses for their $1 Billion than trying to save a file manager (that will probably do just fine without the help).
Microsoft is too busy trying to keep their stock from collapsing to care much about one single company that employed a handful of hackers. Especially since these hackers have already managed to release their source code under the GPL. Ninety percent of all new businesses fail. That's why it's called "venture" capital.
Free software was alive and well long before the corporations had any interest, and it takes a lot less money to sustain a Free Software project than it does to build a proprietary one. Especially when your customers are feeling the pinch of a recession and are deciding that perhaps now is not the time to upgrade.
Actually, these types of things tend to work the other way around. Every time Microsoft has pointed out weaknesses in Linux, especially legitimate problems, the Linux community has rallied and corrected the problems. For example, the Mindcraft benchmarks were nothing more than Microsoft sponsored R&D for the Linux kernel team. If anything Mundie's inane have served as advertisements Linux. His most damaging criticisms have been rebuffed over and over again, by Linuxers and non-Linuxers alike.
This announcement only goes to show why it is that Microsoft's ambitions will be foiled in the long run. Microsoft may be the biggest software company on the planet, but they aren't big enough to take on the entire rest of the industry. They have back-stabbed so many of their allies that there is no one left to watch their back, and their competitors are showing that they are more than willing to cooperate if it means denying Microsoft control of yet another market. The OS and Office suite markets will become commodity markets eventually, and Microsoft is going to be hard pressed to find some other market that they can dominate as completely as they have dominated the desktop.
Neither Linux nor Apache has ever had a security problem that was intentional. This particular problem wasn't a bug, it was a backdoor. Some clever coder at Microsoft even used a joke password.
At least with Linux or Apache there is some chance that someone else is going to catch something this idiotic. With Microsoft the problem apparently can remain unreported to the general public for years. Clearly there is a difference between some random buffer exploit and a backdoor that was specifically placed there by an employee and that was somehow "missed" in the code review.
The fact of the matter is that, short of releasing source code, there is no way that your customers can be sure that there aren't any backdoors. For example, it would be much easier for your Dev team to insert a method called PayEntireDevTeam() than for one member to insert the mythical PayTim() method. For Tim to get away with the insertion of his method he would have to be more clever than all of the reviewers. But if all of the auditors were in on the backdoor then there is no defense.
I would like to think that Microsoft would be trustworthy on this account. But this is the same company that released a spreadsheet that doubled as a flight simulator. Quite frankly, I doubt that a whole lot of auditing actually occurs. And if you can convince a group of Microsoft employees that a flight simulator is an important feature of a spreadsheet, then inserting a backdoor should be child's play.
Considering the amount of money spent on Windows 2000 development, and the anemic rate of adoption, I can guarantee you that Microsoft doesn't share your feelings. Microsoft is trying to find some way of maintaining double digit growth, and Windows 2000 is not helping. Windows 2000 is good software, but it hasn't been a very good investment for Microsoft, and it certainly hasn't stopped the growing acceptance of Windows alternatives.