Sigh. Please go re-read your history and economics texts. There never was any time in the U.S. when you could only buy steel or oil from just one company, although there were times when just one company controlled the vast majority of both. However, when a U.S. Federal court finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under U.S. law.
U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, and now Microsoft have all been found to have such a legal monopoly. U.S. Steel and Standard Oil were both forced to break up. Microsoft avoided that particular hazard only because Judge Jackson screwed up and talked to the press.
When the European Commission finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under European law. So, now that Microsoft has been found to have a legal monopoly under the laws covering roughly 2/3rds of the world's economy, I'd say it's safe to say that they're pretty much forced to operate as if they did have a globally defined legal monopoly.:)
P.S. Yes, Microsoft does demonstrably have pricing power in the OS market. If they don't, then please explain to me why the retail shelf price for XP and Vista hovers between $250 and $500 in the U.S. and Europe, and about $3 in China. Heck, explain to me why it's between $50 and $150 for the top tier OEMs who have been forced to accept Microsoft's demand that they prominently display the "XXX Vendor recommends (the most expensive versions of) Windows Vista® (Home or Business edition, depending upon which section of their Website that you're on)", yet still only charge $3 for the exact same software in China! Tell me again that Microsoft doesn't have pricing power. Please. I'd like another bitter laugh.:(
What is the functional purpose of said feature? How could that feature posssibly (sic) make for better game play?
The same functional purpose that has already been stated over and over in this thread; to allow for killing unresponsive/bloated extensions without killing the whole environment. It doesn't matter if it's for the base OS, a big thick client app like WoW or a browser, or a small script. Any time such an application allows for running third party plug-ins, there should, no, must be a way available to control them. It may be as simple as a means of loading and unloading, but it must be there.
At this point, I think we're only arguing about how much control is provided. You contend very little. Most of us seem to disagreeing with you. We want as much control as is humanly possible.
Question: I'm an outdoorsman who likes to be able to tow a boat, camper, or trailer on a fairly regular basis. I get into the back country a fair amount, so 4x4 or all wheel drive is a must have. The vehicle format that I've found that best meets my requirements is a 1/2 ton, 4x4, extended cab, short bed pickup.
Also, I prefer a manual transmission over an automatic. MUCH better control over both acceleration and deceleration (critical when driving on snow). Apparently unlike most people today, I actually know how to use a clutch, so manual transmissions are becoming hard to find on new 1/2 ton trucks.
(Aside: I've got nearly 250,000 miles on the originally installed clutch in my current truck. I realise that's fairly unusual. I've had people tell me that they honestly believed that you couldn't get more than 50,000 miles out of a clutch. Still, it should be easy for anyone to get 100,000 to 150,000 miles out of a clutch with a little practice.)
However, I'm not aware of any hybrids that are being sold with automatic transmissions. I assume that there are good reasons for that, so I'd be willing to at least consider giving up my beloved manual if I had to.
Are you aware of any 1/2 ton frame hybrid pickups on the drawing boards from any manufacturer?
Boy, I can tell you haven't had to support it in a big enterprise. Typical Microsoft engineering. Can't scale worth a damn. Does only one thing, share documents, sorta half-assed as well as a half dozen competitors. Oversold as a work process/collaboration engine/content management system/web portal by Microsoft sales drones to every department head who thinks his/her IT group is full of idiots who long for the good old days when computers were kept in glass walled temples and the priests wore white lab coats.
I f'ing HATE Sharepoint. Not because it's bad at what it does. It's an OK document management system. It sucks at everything else. No, I hate Sharepoint for a much better reason; Sharepoint's sole reason for existence is to protect and maintain Microsoft Office's lock-in.
Don't believe me? Then try this test: Try to integrate anyone else's office suite with it. Then, try to integrate MS Office with any other document or content management system.
BTW: You did know that Logitech makes Microsoft's mice and keyboards, didn't you?
Once the genie is out of the bottle it's hard to put it back in. It took 5 minutes to hunt down an alternate source for the 3.10 source code release you decided to pull. If you opt to engage in crippleware source code releases, you will ultimately find yourself competing against your own work as others will take over where you left off.
Playing catch up to one's own efforts can become a daunting task when faced with a team of capable and motivated developers. It's far less damaging to let the slouches have their brief stay in the spotlight.
To which Rick Brewster replied:
Mario - Then I guess I'll have to keep on innovating while not releasing the source code for the stuff that I want to keep real ownership of.
Comparisons to the relative success of individual closed source and FOSS solutions are clearly dependent upon the talents of the programmers involved. Therefore, Rick probably figures that keeping up with one or two other programmers won't be all that tough. However, what Rick forgets is that if enough developers do get interested in a particular FOSS project, he'll never be able to keep up. Examples abound of successful forks, after all. So, why try?
On another note and as someone else noted in the comments of the original story, why isn't he just sending DMCA takedown notices to this guy's ISP and to places like download.com? He could choke this off so quick it'd make that guy's head spin. I would also be truly poetic justice.:)
You explain/exactly/ why my first stop for Windows "freeware" solutions is SourceForge, my second stop is Freshmeat, and my third is Google to look for an original author's site. Heck, I haven't even looked at Tucows in a couple of years. Problem solved.:)
Just out of curiosity, what rock have you been living under? To begin with, Microsoft has been found both in the U.S. and EU courts to have a legally defined monopoly for OS and office productivity suite software. In both cases, having such a monopoly in and of itself is not considered to be illegal. However, once such a legal finding has been upheld, the company holding such a monopoly finds itself under _very_ different rules regarding its behavior. For example, it is certainly illegal in the U.S. to leverage one's monopoly position to seize control of another market. Merging the browser into the OS is/exactly/ what the original court case in the U.S. accused them of doing. You might remember that they lost that case.
In addition, anyone who has worked in IT for more than 5 years has seen the kind of crap that Microsoft has pulled routinely. I've watched them since they first released MS Basic (which some contend was developed at least partially on stolen computer time at Harvard). You want to talk about unethical, immoral, illegal behavior? Microsoft is the current, repeating, and undisputed champ! They've lost so many egregious court cases that simply cataloging them all takes far more time than I have to devote to this post.
It's gotten to the point that I automatically assume Microsoft's guilt whenever I hear of another court case. It's a very rare day when they win any other way than wearing down their opponent.
Well, the argument can be made that Stalin essentially invented the concept of "cult of personality." In that sense, you could further argue that Stalin was the top dog (god?) of a theocracy.:)
As an aside, does anyone know why there isn't more investment in tidal power in the UK? I know that the reliability of the wind is one of the reasons given by the no to windmill group but tidal power is totally reliable (King Canut aside)
Hey, I may be just an ignorant American, but even I know that his name is normally spelt Canute these days, and that the whole "stopping the tides" thing was a brilliant demonstration to a faction of his nobles that a king does not have absolute authority over everything in his realm. IMNSHO, his demonstration was a prime reason why English royalty didn't follow the Sun King's example several centuries later. By then, the concept of limited regal authority was so deeply embedded in the English psyche that his statement that "L'Etat, c'est moi" was seen as almost blasphemous.
The need to examine witnesses occurred because SCO was attempting to prove their fantasy by getting a bunch of people with only marginal knowledge of the deal in the witness stand. What? Novell should simply let SCO produce their witnesses with no attempt to show just how off their rocker they were? No rebuttal witnesses at all? On what planet would you think that was a good idea?
Hey, Eben Moglen settles GPL violations like that all the time. If it works for him and the FSF, maybe the author of the module in question will be OK with that approach, too.:)
I can't recall where I saw it, but I read a review that did say that the case was pretty much empty. Apparently, someone decided that Walmart customers would equate "big" with "powerful." They even had one photo showing that you could look right _through_ the case.
In addition to the other comment, there's another issue. The plugin to access Gmail through the personalized Google page only allows for http:/// access. https:/// isn't even an option. Unfortunately, this fact isn't clearly displayed, meaning millions of Gmail users are exposing their password every day and don't know it. HUGE security flaw IMO.
Nope. From that classic, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer:
Grandma got run over by a reindeer.
Walking home from our house Christmas eve.
You can say there's no such thing as Santa,
but as for me and grandpa we believe. Ya gotta be born and raised in the Great North Woods (as opposed to the Great White North) to get that joke, I suppose.:)
I was thinking of the peer to peer communications network that one of those two Scandinavian countries pioneered for use by their fighters. It was copied by the other Scandinavian country almost immediately while the rest of Europe and the U.S. farted around with more traditional, hierarchical communications networks. Guess who used to win all the joint wargames?:)
It's all about knowing where to point the guns. The U.S. military, the Swedish and Norwegian Air Forces, etc. don't obsess over 3C (Command, Control, and Communications) for nothing.:)
The thing is, this debate is not particularly relevant. It's latched onto by Slashdotters in part, I think, to assuage their guilt for pirating music and prove how the RIAA is composed of nothing but greedy, self-serving bastards.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the union of the sets of Slasdotters and those who pirate music isn't exactly one to one. Many here have posted at one time or another that they don't DL music at all, either legally or otherwise. I fall into this category. Many others have said that they only use legal services of one sort or another. How large that total fraction is I have no way of telling, of course. However, based upon the number of comments that I've read in the past I'd say it's at least a sizable minority.
Besides, the Slashdot readership is tiny compared to the numbers who do pirate music. Even if every single active Slashdot reader was doing that, we'd still wouldn't even show up as a major subset of those who pirate music.
So, can we please stop conflating the two? Thank you.
At that point, and assuming that your friend had hung on to all of the rights and had not actually misread her contract with her publisher, it sounds to me as if she's got a case that any copyright attorney would drool over. So, has she contacted any attorneys yet?
For example, I can't incorporate GPL 3 licensed code into my proprietary code without consequence.
Sigh. I am so tired of this particular whine from lazy sods who just want to take someone else's work without compensation.
Tell you what: When you can re-use code from Microsoft, Apple, Computer Associates, IBM, Oracle, or Joe's Bait Shop and Software Company that is only available under a standard commercial license in your proprietary code without consequence, then and only then can you complain about not being able to use GPL 3 licensed code in your proprietary code without consequence. Until then, why don't you go study a little copyright law and a little history? Maybe you'll figure out why misappropriating anyone's work is illegal, unethical, and downright immoral.
Oh? Now I KNOW you haven't bothered to read it! For heaven's sake, do I have to spoon feed you? Here it is again, with the link embedded that you couldn't be bothered to look for in Gutmann's paper, RIGHT where I told you to look:
An excellent analysis from one of the hardware vendors involved in this comes from ATI, in the form of Digital Media Content Protection from WinHEC. This points out (in the form of PowerPoint bullet-points) the manifold problems associated with Vista's content-protection measures, with repeated mention of increased development costs, degraded performance and the phrase "increased costs passed on to consumers" pervading the entire presentation like a mantra.
It's right there. It's even hosted on Microsoft's site! How much more of an authoritative source do you need? You can see it yourself if you just go to the "Sources" subsection of Gutmann's paper.
Now, quit acting like a four year old. Pull your fingers out of your ears and quit singing "Lalalalala I can't hear you lalalalala." Next time, do some honest research before shooting off your mouth.
Slashdot Mirror
and more like waldos. Or am I missing something obvious?
Sigh. Please go re-read your history and economics texts. There never was any time in the U.S. when you could only buy steel or oil from just one company, although there were times when just one company controlled the vast majority of both. However, when a U.S. Federal court finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under U.S. law.
:)
:(
U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, and now Microsoft have all been found to have such a legal monopoly. U.S. Steel and Standard Oil were both forced to break up. Microsoft avoided that particular hazard only because Judge Jackson screwed up and talked to the press.
When the European Commission finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under European law. So, now that Microsoft has been found to have a legal monopoly under the laws covering roughly 2/3rds of the world's economy, I'd say it's safe to say that they're pretty much forced to operate as if they did have a globally defined legal monopoly.
P.S. Yes, Microsoft does demonstrably have pricing power in the OS market. If they don't, then please explain to me why the retail shelf price for XP and Vista hovers between $250 and $500 in the U.S. and Europe, and about $3 in China. Heck, explain to me why it's between $50 and $150 for the top tier OEMs who have been forced to accept Microsoft's demand that they prominently display the "XXX Vendor recommends (the most expensive versions of) Windows Vista® (Home or Business edition, depending upon which section of their Website that you're on)", yet still only charge $3 for the exact same software in China! Tell me again that Microsoft doesn't have pricing power. Please. I'd like another bitter laugh.
Not necessarily. The dimensions, as given, would seem to indicate a vertical cylinder. Think of it as looking vaguely like a short silo.
The same functional purpose that has already been stated over and over in this thread; to allow for killing unresponsive/bloated extensions without killing the whole environment. It doesn't matter if it's for the base OS, a big thick client app like WoW or a browser, or a small script. Any time such an application allows for running third party plug-ins, there should, no, must be a way available to control them. It may be as simple as a means of loading and unloading, but it must be there.
At this point, I think we're only arguing about how much control is provided. You contend very little. Most of us seem to disagreeing with you. We want as much control as is humanly possible.
A very decent analysis, all in all. Thank you.
Question: I'm an outdoorsman who likes to be able to tow a boat, camper, or trailer on a fairly regular basis. I get into the back country a fair amount, so 4x4 or all wheel drive is a must have. The vehicle format that I've found that best meets my requirements is a 1/2 ton, 4x4, extended cab, short bed pickup.
Also, I prefer a manual transmission over an automatic. MUCH better control over both acceleration and deceleration (critical when driving on snow). Apparently unlike most people today, I actually know how to use a clutch, so manual transmissions are becoming hard to find on new 1/2 ton trucks.
(Aside: I've got nearly 250,000 miles on the originally installed clutch in my current truck. I realise that's fairly unusual. I've had people tell me that they honestly believed that you couldn't get more than 50,000 miles out of a clutch. Still, it should be easy for anyone to get 100,000 to 150,000 miles out of a clutch with a little practice.)
However, I'm not aware of any hybrids that are being sold with automatic transmissions. I assume that there are good reasons for that, so I'd be willing to at least consider giving up my beloved manual if I had to.
Are you aware of any 1/2 ton frame hybrid pickups on the drawing boards from any manufacturer?
TIA
Sharepoint?? SHAREPOINT????
Boy, I can tell you haven't had to support it in a big enterprise. Typical Microsoft engineering. Can't scale worth a damn. Does only one thing, share documents, sorta half-assed as well as a half dozen competitors. Oversold as a work process/collaboration engine/content management system/web portal by Microsoft sales drones to every department head who thinks his/her IT group is full of idiots who long for the good old days when computers were kept in glass walled temples and the priests wore white lab coats.
I f'ing HATE Sharepoint. Not because it's bad at what it does. It's an OK document management system. It sucks at everything else. No, I hate Sharepoint for a much better reason; Sharepoint's sole reason for existence is to protect and maintain Microsoft Office's lock-in.
Don't believe me? Then try this test: Try to integrate anyone else's office suite with it. Then, try to integrate MS Office with any other document or content management system.
BTW: You did know that Logitech makes Microsoft's mice and keyboards, didn't you?
To which Rick Brewster replied:
Comparisons to the relative success of individual closed source and FOSS solutions are clearly dependent upon the talents of the programmers involved. Therefore, Rick probably figures that keeping up with one or two other programmers won't be all that tough. However, what Rick forgets is that if enough developers do get interested in a particular FOSS project, he'll never be able to keep up. Examples abound of successful forks, after all. So, why try?
On another note and as someone else noted in the comments of the original story, why isn't he just sending DMCA takedown notices to this guy's ISP and to places like download.com? He could choke this off so quick it'd make that guy's head spin. I would also be truly poetic justice. :)
You explain /exactly/ why my first stop for Windows "freeware" solutions is SourceForge, my second stop is Freshmeat, and my third is Google to look for an original author's site. Heck, I haven't even looked at Tucows in a couple of years. Problem solved. :)
Just out of curiosity, what rock have you been living under? To begin with, Microsoft has been found both in the U.S. and EU courts to have a legally defined monopoly for OS and office productivity suite software. In both cases, having such a monopoly in and of itself is not considered to be illegal. However, once such a legal finding has been upheld, the company holding such a monopoly finds itself under _very_ different rules regarding its behavior. For example, it is certainly illegal in the U.S. to leverage one's monopoly position to seize control of another market. Merging the browser into the OS is /exactly/ what the original court case in the U.S. accused them of doing. You might remember that they lost that case.
In addition, anyone who has worked in IT for more than 5 years has seen the kind of crap that Microsoft has pulled routinely. I've watched them since they first released MS Basic (which some contend was developed at least partially on stolen computer time at Harvard). You want to talk about unethical, immoral, illegal behavior? Microsoft is the current, repeating, and undisputed champ! They've lost so many egregious court cases that simply cataloging them all takes far more time than I have to devote to this post.
It's gotten to the point that I automatically assume Microsoft's guilt whenever I hear of another court case. It's a very rare day when they win any other way than wearing down their opponent.
I TOLD you it was deeply embedded in your psyche! lol My family had left England (every branch that I know about, anyway) by 1638, so we missed it. ;)
Well, the argument can be made that Stalin essentially invented the concept of "cult of personality." In that sense, you could further argue that Stalin was the top dog (god?) of a theocracy. :)
Hey, I may be just an ignorant American, but even I know that his name is normally spelt Canute these days, and that the whole "stopping the tides" thing was a brilliant demonstration to a faction of his nobles that a king does not have absolute authority over everything in his realm. IMNSHO, his demonstration was a prime reason why English royalty didn't follow the Sun King's example several centuries later. By then, the concept of limited regal authority was so deeply embedded in the English psyche that his statement that "L'Etat, c'est moi" was seen as almost blasphemous.
The need to examine witnesses occurred because SCO was attempting to prove their fantasy by getting a bunch of people with only marginal knowledge of the deal in the witness stand. What? Novell should simply let SCO produce their witnesses with no attempt to show just how off their rocker they were? No rebuttal witnesses at all? On what planet would you think that was a good idea?
Hey, Eben Moglen settles GPL violations like that all the time. If it works for him and the FSF, maybe the author of the module in question will be OK with that approach, too. :)
I can't recall where I saw it, but I read a review that did say that the case was pretty much empty. Apparently, someone decided that Walmart customers would equate "big" with "powerful." They even had one photo showing that you could look right _through_ the case.
In addition to the other comment, there's another issue. The plugin to access Gmail through the personalized Google page only allows for http:/// access. https:/// isn't even an option. Unfortunately, this fact isn't clearly displayed, meaning millions of Gmail users are exposing their password every day and don't know it. HUGE security flaw IMO.
Walking home from our house Christmas eve.
You can say there's no such thing as Santa,
but as for me and grandpa we believe. Ya gotta be born and raised in the Great North Woods (as opposed to the Great White North) to get that joke, I suppose.
I was thinking of the peer to peer communications network that one of those two Scandinavian countries pioneered for use by their fighters. It was copied by the other Scandinavian country almost immediately while the rest of Europe and the U.S. farted around with more traditional, hierarchical communications networks. Guess who used to win all the joint wargames? :)
It's all about knowing where to point the guns. The U.S. military, the Swedish and Norwegian Air Forces, etc. don't obsess over 3C (Command, Control, and Communications) for nothing. :)
Oh? Care to give some figures (with cites, please) that we can then use to compare to other sources?
Sorry to disappoint you, but the union of the sets of Slasdotters and those who pirate music isn't exactly one to one. Many here have posted at one time or another that they don't DL music at all, either legally or otherwise. I fall into this category. Many others have said that they only use legal services of one sort or another. How large that total fraction is I have no way of telling, of course. However, based upon the number of comments that I've read in the past I'd say it's at least a sizable minority.
Besides, the Slashdot readership is tiny compared to the numbers who do pirate music. Even if every single active Slashdot reader was doing that, we'd still wouldn't even show up as a major subset of those who pirate music.
So, can we please stop conflating the two? Thank you.
At that point, and assuming that your friend had hung on to all of the rights and had not actually misread her contract with her publisher, it sounds to me as if she's got a case that any copyright attorney would drool over. So, has she contacted any attorneys yet?
Sigh. I am so tired of this particular whine from lazy sods who just want to take someone else's work without compensation.
Tell you what: When you can re-use code from Microsoft, Apple, Computer Associates, IBM, Oracle, or Joe's Bait Shop and Software Company that is only available under a standard commercial license in your proprietary code without consequence, then and only then can you complain about not being able to use GPL 3 licensed code in your proprietary code without consequence. Until then, why don't you go study a little copyright law and a little history? Maybe you'll figure out why misappropriating anyone's work is illegal, unethical, and downright immoral.
Yep. Instead, VMWare gets bad press that's read by about 1.5 million geeks instead. Good thinking, there.
Oh? Now I KNOW you haven't bothered to read it! For heaven's sake, do I have to spoon feed you? Here it is again, with the link embedded that you couldn't be bothered to look for in Gutmann's paper, RIGHT where I told you to look:
It's right there. It's even hosted on Microsoft's site! How much more of an authoritative source do you need? You can see it yourself if you just go to the "Sources" subsection of Gutmann's paper.
Now, quit acting like a four year old. Pull your fingers out of your ears and quit singing "Lalalalala I can't hear you lalalalala." Next time, do some honest research before shooting off your mouth.