He is right. Apple only now just started paying a dividend. If you buy monopoly money you wont gain a dime unless someone is willing to pay you more than what you paid for it. Its gambling as shares with no dividends are useless pieces of paper.
The goal of a company is always to raise the stock price. Not make a profit for this reason.
Now if you pay dividends then its actually worth something.
The proper procedure is to tell the CEO in a business like way that his infrastructure is old and not competitive in today's encironment. I can get it to run on your IPAD as well as modern desktops and Andriod phones if we spend X to upgrade our POS intranet apps and deploy Windows 7 and IE 9.
In return security will improve and the risk of the company's infrastructure failing will greatly be reduced.
It is good the CEO sees how arcane and ancient it is. He has no clue at all how bad it is and that no one uses XP anymore outside of work and nursing homes. This will be a great opportunity to finely go around the PHBs and bean counters. He can then enjoy his new IPAD.
I was going to add that outsourcing depends on your business processes as efficiency takes a HUGE nose dive and the cheap labor costs have to outweigh this. You hit the nail for me.
Unless you have a hug office and team like if you are IBM, Home Depot, or some other large corporation with large staff that is there with the programmers it will be a waste of money and a big risk.
His company is small and without business processes and oversight it is doomed to fail. India and China do not function like the US. People steal your ideas, sell your product at counterfeit places, employees leave, and they do not give a damn about a deadline like Americans do. All these do not work in your favor unless you can enforce it with a large internal presence already located over there.
Yikes, Netscape's CSS support made IE 6 look like a compliant saint.
Webmasters back then made sites that looked liked Craigslist and stuck with tables and HTML because Netscape blew so bad. I eventually switched to IE 6 in 2002 and couldn't believe the difference and how much better it was and faster. It sucked goatballs of course but back then what choice did you have? Netscape 4.7 came out in 1998 was already 4 years old! Just a minor improvement over Netscape 4.5 which came out in 1997.
By 2001 Netscape was becoming obsolete fast and was worse than IE 6 if you can believe anything was worse. It wasn't until Firefox that anything was even better.
I am beginning to resent them greatly. Accountants are also making critical medical decisions and ordering doctors on what to do if you have a crappy HMO as well. Accountants are the ones making almost every business decision and who are becoming the next CEOs.
They are great at reducing costs and that is it. Of course the accountants have Office 2010 they are a profit center and unlike you and I are very important people. But IT, UGH go back to putting out fires, we have real work to take care of etc.
Meanwhile they are dumbfounded when the network goes down and when customers go to competitors due to the low quality brought by excessive cost cutting. Accountants should make accounting decisions and it is ruining business for the last 10 years.
Shoot IE 8 just supported 1998 CSS 2.1 standards. The frustrating thing is all the other browsers are cutting edge now. IE 9 is ok, but that long lapse shouldn't be an excuse. Ms should be ostracized for it!
Imagine a world where we had to still support gcc 2.95 and VC++ 5, but it also had to compile in GCC 4.6 and VS 2010, and made sure all our code would compile flawlessly without error between those 2 versions? The changes in C++/C are huge with STL support and so on.
The whole point of switching to intranet apps was to avoid a nightmarish scenario like this. They were promised that it was write once, no need to deploy, anywhere forever. It turns out it is easy to upgrade legacy desktop apps then it is for intranet sites.
The reasoning for this is they need to be certified for medical use. It takes *YEARS* to be certified. Once certified hospitals like to keep their investment around for a long time at least 5 years.
I upgrades a hospital last year and they just got certified to run IE 7! IE 8 was still being tested. Hospitals have many legacy devices that all send things like PDFs of xrays, lab reports, and other things accessible by IE and Exchange 2003. They do not integrate well with modern standards. Not to mention are very very expensive so why upgrade?
Biomedical equipment can't crash as lives would be at stake.
IE 6 is not just a decade old. Its DOM is different, its box model is different, the way it wraps text when a box is full is different, its javascript is different, and I could go on and on.
I am learning IE 6 now and let me tell you I can't make a site look as good. Sure I can get a butt ugly basic site with no floating css or shadows or any graphical animations in CSS 3 and use hacks like CSSPIE which slow IE 6 down to glacial speeds. This does not count the bugs.
I see the bean counters view it just works but until you stop supporting IE 6 they will see your site and say AH HA its fine! That billy gates was wrong saying IE 6 is a PITA. Other web browsers sucked too and were not standards compliant in those years including Opera and old Firefox.
Don't support them. Opera is not that great and not used outside of Russia and not worth the hassle to support in the US. I am only learning IE 6 because my business idea supports enterprise users. I will support FF 3.6 as many still use that but nothing older. Next year these corporations will finally be upgrading to IE 10 and getting ready for the EOL. I will finally cancel all support for FF 3.6 and IE 6 & 7 as these are legacy images.
The problem is it is not broken at all to the accountants.
CNN, MSNBC, and all the corporate websites that people use at work all work fine with it. Why upgrade to something we already have? Until these sites stop working the PHBs and the finance people will demand users stay on IE 6 so the share price can keep going up some more.
Trust me to these people we *would* still be running Windows 98 until the end of time and *never* upgrade ever. That costs money after all and we are in the x business. Not an I.T. company so its all a cost center anyway that ads no value etc.
Google is making steps. I fired up my IE 6 in a VM and noticed a couldn't even check my gmail anymore. I hate the new style but I give a bravo to Google for forcing these users and giving them a reason to upgrade crying and screaming like a todler. Unfortunately, these coompanies will just use Office265 and cancel Google Docs so they can keep IE 6 and XP just a little longer sign.
If you read Hall of Fame stories on slashdot there is one called what keeps you on Windows? IE 6 and how great a browser it is was a top response. Compared to Netscape IE 6 was years ahead with this new thing called CSS.
There was no Firefox, Safari, or Chrome back then. People were betting on standards and it was easily assumed that the MS box model and VBscript would be used today just like people view Windows. Shamefully, after reading about how great IE 6 was on slashdot I started using it too in 2002 - 2004 before Firefox.7(phoenix).
People tend to remember the past differently based on the present and its thinking XP is the best OS ever today after encountering Vista, to the oppose with IE 6 which is a piece of crap in 2012.
Don't blame the contractors as betting IE 6 was the logically thing to do until about 2007 are so when Firefox appeared it could actually compete and not be a fringe geek thing. Many websites too only worked on IE 6 or complain that you were running Netscape and used tables and no CSS at all if you used early Firefox or Mozilla until about 2008.
If I were Balmer I would port IE 6 for the enteprise version of Windows 8 to give it a competitive advantage in corporate America as well as include the usual modern IE 10.
Without the tie in with ancient compatibility why buy a Windows 8 mobile device or phone? IPhones already have this functionality and once these ancient web apps are upgraded they will work on your top man's IPAD. Then what? No more Microsoft needed.
Worse they are porting Office to the IPAD which is another mistake.
Since IE is now released on an annual basis it would mean more forced upgrades for customers who want to be secure. It is a great benefit to have the app not work and check the version number on startup or during a connect.
Whats the point if the customer pays for it and never upgrades again? You go out of business.
Sounds like something is corrupt on your desktop. I would re-image it as there should be no logical reason that would happen unless the pro version is 64-bit and the MMC apps are 3rd party which are only 64 bit as well.
I have seen FAR more bugs in Linux than any MS desktop. RHES, SuSE Enterprise, and Debian stable are the exceptions but desktop distros are not known for their bugfree reliability compared to their server counterparts.
Those will not configure it and set it up. Just puts the files on the hard drive and that is it. Ubuntu had something like (been a few years) like apt-get lamp which would install the packages andconfigure them. I thought it was sweet. Obviously not good for a server but fine for a developer who wants something configured but doesn't need it finely tuned and secured. I was wondering if Mint had that meta package too?
I am aware there is XAMP for Linux as well. But if I am doing a reinstallation I do not want to spend a weekend configuring text files and services.
> IN early 2011 I left Linux and went back to Windows because of issues with Gnome 3/Unity
That's really hilarious considering what's going on with Metro.
I know and I am not pleased.
It is a shame since it boots quicker and has some awesome kernel level changes and features. It just has a crappy GUI and a crippled desktop. When I decided to give up with advice from the EX, there was no Metro.
I do not like MacOSX that much but may consider it when this one dies. Windows 7 sadly will be the new XP and will be supported for many years. I hate running obsolete software and being the PHBs who love XP and IE 6 until 2014 meanwhile helpdesk if fighting malware and SSDs are dying left and right due to the lack of TRIM in XP. Idiots being pennywise but dollar dumb. God help me if I am running Windows 7 in 2019 when it turns 10 years old!
Anyway, I bought this machine with the goal of waiting until the fall of 2015 before it gets replaced as a 5 year life span with a minor upgrade in between is a good policy for a serious computer user. If I can get use to clicking the menu constantly and getting used to the Mac gui, I guess it will be MacOSX assuming it is still around. Or who knows, maybe Gnome wont suck anymore either by 2015? Whichever comes first.
It does not look like its ready nor officially supported by Fedora. The comments showed it has some issues. However, it is cool you can do a yum install dropbox* now.:-)
Linux Mint uses it from what I read as the main gui so I except it will work better in that platform.
I think for now I will stick with Windows 7 as it just works and keep CentOS with old gnome 2.8 in my VM for now. I would like some official stacks that are present and require little extra work like what Ubuntu has besides a consistent GUI.
If Gnome repents and goes back to sanity you can bet Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and others will include its UI by default. Sure there is cinnamon, but it took years to get Gnome 2.8 the way it was all polished and pretty. It will take years to re invent the same wheel in Gnome shell so I am cautious. Then by 2016 it may be just as good as Gnome 2 was in 2010.
I used to love Linux and the fact that I am even debating and talking about this makes me angry as it was killed by us and not MS. What a change from 12 years ago right before XP came out where Linux was stable, secure, and was better in almost every way. If I make enough money perhaps my next machine will be a mac and Windows 7 is good enough just like other PC shitware that people simply accept. Thanks
Wine is not really an option. Unless it drastically improved in the years since I dared touch it WOW has many issues with it. It is a very complex program. If you do serious raiding you also need team-speak program such as Ventrillo, another program to load your add ons and so on.
If you hate MS and direct X a Mac is the next best thing as it supports Wow, Vent, and a few add on programs are available for that platform.
Linus himself said if you need Windows then run Windows as he uses PowerPoint when he worked at Trans-media a lot and didn't bother to try to get it to work on wine or use OpenOffice.
IN early 2011 I left Linux and went back to Windows because of issues with Gnome 3/Unity, Firefox 4, and other issues as it appeared Linux was going off the deep end.
Mate, much improved Firefox and Chrome on GNU/Linux, and Mint taking over looks like it may be redeeming the platform.
Is there a Linux Mint package for setting up LAMP or a LAPP (postgresql) stack? How easy is it to add codecs, background pictures, and other desktop oriented features similiar to FedoraPlus or medibuntu?
DirectX was designed from the getgo for vendor lock in.
It is really a whole engine that is already finished instead of creating your own from scratch. Developers just make calls to it, but can overide some of it too for customization. This is why its nearly impossible to port unlike OpenGL which is the framework to make your own engine.
I really wish OpenGL stayed more popular as many games such as Star Wars the Old Republic are losing out on 20 - 25% of the market of young players who own Macs.
When I was a contractor at a famous game company (dough stupid ninja lawyers forbid me to name) years ago there was a way you could run it with OpenGL in Windows but the performance was terrible and not tuned. I kind of wished different vendors could put down their flamethrowers and lawyers and work together to create standards like they did in the old days.
An OpenGL version of directX that could run on MacOSX, Linux, Andriod, and Windows would be really nice. Of course all the vendors would rather be greedy and fight each other while handing the monopoly over to MS instead. Someone or an organization would have to port it to Windows as of course MS has a vested interest to see only crappy games on non Windows devices.
I couldn't agree with you more. As someone learning web development I love IE 6.
Did I fail to mention it says in my contract that I get paid double overtime? Keep it up and demand Windows 2000 and IE 5.5 support and I can get a new car!
Thats how its always been. Microsoft set the legal precedence going after pirates and defending itself against' IBM. Anything that is licensed is not sold PERIOD.
It is a copy and not the real product. A copy has less rights and this means the first sale doctrine does not apply.
You do not purchase the software. You purchase a copy of the software and that the real isn't for sale at Apple. Actually you do not even purchase a copy.
If you read the EULA carefully it refers to a "copy" of it. Therefore, it can be licensed and not sold as a copyrighted work since the real one is at Apple. DMCA or not this was how Microsoft defined it and the courts agreed.
There is a distinct legal difference between a copy and the real thing. Since it is licensed you need to follow Apple's terms. If you disagree you can take your business elsewhere. The EULAs job is to take away the rights since it is a contract. First Sale only applies for the real thing (not copy) and if there is no license or contract.
Apple is well within its rights in any court of law as judges refer to other rulings from Microsoft and others to interpret the case.
Just because Apple does it too does not make it right.
If you were here on slashdot 10 years ago everyone and their brother were foaming at the mouth with TCPA/Pallidium (EFI uses this), and Windows Vista, and the DMCA because of what would happen to computers by 2012 is that they would turn into cable box appliances. It is happening.
I refused smart phones for years as I thought it was ludicrous to pay $5 for a crappy midi file for a ringtone and all sorts of controls, DRM, and other garbage on a device I am SUPPOSED to OWN. Apple freed users in 2007 and told the carriers to take a hike and fought for the consumer being hte good guys.
Now it is coming true. Apple is slowly turning into everyone else and MS wants in on the action by sucking up to the carriers on their own walled garden. We have been conditioned to hand out our rights and as the desktop fades away we will be stuck paying for $5 for a.mp3 intro, only apps the cell phone provider and OS maker approves, and other non sense that we do not have to put up with on Windows 7 today.
This is dangerous and the fact that we are even debating that is it ok for a monopolist to force to use one browser on things we buy is outrageous. Linux will be done for if tablets start to take over before you know it.
Windows RT should not be for everyone but MS to use. The other browsers at the iStore are just skins on top of Safari as Apple holds the keys for javascript access.
Many banks merge and do SOX works and do not want to get hit with a scandal. They use internal tools and many banks get bought up and their assets sold in complex financial products. That counts as redistribution.
BSD is just friendly and you can do whatever you like with it.
Slashdot Mirror
He is right. Apple only now just started paying a dividend. If you buy monopoly money you wont gain a dime unless someone is willing to pay you more than what you paid for it. Its gambling as shares with no dividends are useless pieces of paper.
The goal of a company is always to raise the stock price. Not make a profit for this reason.
Now if you pay dividends then its actually worth something.
No that is not fine.
The proper procedure is to tell the CEO in a business like way that his infrastructure is old and not competitive in today's encironment. I can get it to run on your IPAD as well as modern desktops and Andriod phones if we spend X to upgrade our POS intranet apps and deploy Windows 7 and IE 9.
In return security will improve and the risk of the company's infrastructure failing will greatly be reduced.
It is good the CEO sees how arcane and ancient it is. He has no clue at all how bad it is and that no one uses XP anymore outside of work and nursing homes. This will be a great opportunity to finely go around the PHBs and bean counters. He can then enjoy his new IPAD.
Whats the website?
The statistics I see tell Ie 6 having 1% of all users in the US.
I was going to add that outsourcing depends on your business processes as efficiency takes a HUGE nose dive and the cheap labor costs have to outweigh this. You hit the nail for me.
Unless you have a hug office and team like if you are IBM, Home Depot, or some other large corporation with large staff that is there with the programmers it will be a waste of money and a big risk.
His company is small and without business processes and oversight it is doomed to fail. India and China do not function like the US. People steal your ideas, sell your product at counterfeit places, employees leave, and they do not give a damn about a deadline like Americans do. All these do not work in your favor unless you can enforce it with a large internal presence already located over there.
Yikes, Netscape's CSS support made IE 6 look like a compliant saint.
Webmasters back then made sites that looked liked Craigslist and stuck with tables and HTML because Netscape blew so bad. I eventually switched to IE 6 in 2002 and couldn't believe the difference and how much better it was and faster. It sucked goatballs of course but back then what choice did you have? Netscape 4.7 came out in 1998 was already 4 years old! Just a minor improvement over Netscape 4.5 which came out in 1997.
By 2001 Netscape was becoming obsolete fast and was worse than IE 6 if you can believe anything was worse. It wasn't until Firefox that anything was even better.
I am beginning to resent them greatly. Accountants are also making critical medical decisions and ordering doctors on what to do if you have a crappy HMO as well. Accountants are the ones making almost every business decision and who are becoming the next CEOs.
They are great at reducing costs and that is it. Of course the accountants have Office 2010 they are a profit center and unlike you and I are very important people. But IT, UGH go back to putting out fires, we have real work to take care of etc.
Meanwhile they are dumbfounded when the network goes down and when customers go to competitors due to the low quality brought by excessive cost cutting. Accountants should make accounting decisions and it is ruining business for the last 10 years.
Shoot IE 8 just supported 1998 CSS 2.1 standards. The frustrating thing is all the other browsers are cutting edge now. IE 9 is ok, but that long lapse shouldn't be an excuse. Ms should be ostracized for it!
Imagine a world where we had to still support gcc 2.95 and VC++ 5, but it also had to compile in GCC 4.6 and VS 2010, and made sure all our code would compile flawlessly without error between those 2 versions? The changes in C++/C are huge with STL support and so on.
The whole point of switching to intranet apps was to avoid a nightmarish scenario like this. They were promised that it was write once, no need to deploy, anywhere forever. It turns out it is easy to upgrade legacy desktop apps then it is for intranet sites.
The reasoning for this is they need to be certified for medical use. It takes *YEARS* to be certified. Once certified hospitals like to keep their investment around for a long time at least 5 years.
I upgrades a hospital last year and they just got certified to run IE 7! IE 8 was still being tested. Hospitals have many legacy devices that all send things like PDFs of xrays, lab reports, and other things accessible by IE and Exchange 2003. They do not integrate well with modern standards. Not to mention are very very expensive so why upgrade?
Biomedical equipment can't crash as lives would be at stake.
Are you crazy?
IE 6 is not just a decade old. Its DOM is different, its box model is different, the way it wraps text when a box is full is different, its javascript is different, and I could go on and on.
I am learning IE 6 now and let me tell you I can't make a site look as good. Sure I can get a butt ugly basic site with no floating css or shadows or any graphical animations in CSS 3 and use hacks like CSSPIE which slow IE 6 down to glacial speeds. This does not count the bugs.
I see the bean counters view it just works but until you stop supporting IE 6 they will see your site and say AH HA its fine! That billy gates was wrong saying IE 6 is a PITA. Other web browsers sucked too and were not standards compliant in those years including Opera and old Firefox.
Don't support them. Opera is not that great and not used outside of Russia and not worth the hassle to support in the US. I am only learning IE 6 because my business idea supports enterprise users. I will support FF 3.6 as many still use that but nothing older. Next year these corporations will finally be upgrading to IE 10 and getting ready for the EOL. I will finally cancel all support for FF 3.6 and IE 6 & 7 as these are legacy images.
The problem is it is not broken at all to the accountants.
CNN, MSNBC, and all the corporate websites that people use at work all work fine with it. Why upgrade to something we already have? Until these sites stop working the PHBs and the finance people will demand users stay on IE 6 so the share price can keep going up some more.
Trust me to these people we *would* still be running Windows 98 until the end of time and *never* upgrade ever. That costs money after all and we are in the x business. Not an I.T. company so its all a cost center anyway that ads no value etc.
Google is making steps. I fired up my IE 6 in a VM and noticed a couldn't even check my gmail anymore. I hate the new style but I give a bravo to Google for forcing these users and giving them a reason to upgrade crying and screaming like a todler. Unfortunately, these coompanies will just use Office265 and cancel Google Docs so they can keep IE 6 and XP just a little longer sign.
IE 6 was a great bet to make in 2003.
If you read Hall of Fame stories on slashdot there is one called what keeps you on Windows? IE 6 and how great a browser it is was a top response. Compared to Netscape IE 6 was years ahead with this new thing called CSS.
There was no Firefox, Safari, or Chrome back then. People were betting on standards and it was easily assumed that the MS box model and VBscript would be used today just like people view Windows. Shamefully, after reading about how great IE 6 was on slashdot I started using it too in 2002 - 2004 before Firefox .7(phoenix).
People tend to remember the past differently based on the present and its thinking XP is the best OS ever today after encountering Vista, to the oppose with IE 6 which is a piece of crap in 2012.
Don't blame the contractors as betting IE 6 was the logically thing to do until about 2007 are so when Firefox appeared it could actually compete and not be a fringe geek thing. Many websites too only worked on IE 6 or complain that you were running Netscape and used tables and no CSS at all if you used early Firefox or Mozilla until about 2008.
If I were Balmer I would port IE 6 for the enteprise version of Windows 8 to give it a competitive advantage in corporate America as well as include the usual modern IE 10.
Without the tie in with ancient compatibility why buy a Windows 8 mobile device or phone? IPhones already have this functionality and once these ancient web apps are upgraded they will work on your top man's IPAD. Then what? No more Microsoft needed.
Worse they are porting Office to the IPAD which is another mistake.
Its more profitable to target just one browser.
Since IE is now released on an annual basis it would mean more forced upgrades for customers who want to be secure. It is a great benefit to have the app not work and check the version number on startup or during a connect.
Whats the point if the customer pays for it and never upgrades again? You go out of business.
Sounds like something is corrupt on your desktop. I would re-image it as there should be no logical reason that would happen unless the pro version is 64-bit and the MMC apps are 3rd party which are only 64 bit as well.
I have seen FAR more bugs in Linux than any MS desktop. RHES, SuSE Enterprise, and Debian stable are the exceptions but desktop distros are not known for their bugfree reliability compared to their server counterparts.
Those will not configure it and set it up. Just puts the files on the hard drive and that is it. Ubuntu had something like (been a few years) like apt-get lamp which would install the packages andconfigure them. I thought it was sweet. Obviously not good for a server but fine for a developer who wants something configured but doesn't need it finely tuned and secured. I was wondering if Mint had that meta package too?
I am aware there is XAMP for Linux as well. But if I am doing a reinstallation I do not want to spend a weekend configuring text files and services.
> IN early 2011 I left Linux and went back to Windows because of issues with Gnome 3/Unity
That's really hilarious considering what's going on with Metro.
I know and I am not pleased.
It is a shame since it boots quicker and has some awesome kernel level changes and features. It just has a crappy GUI and a crippled desktop. When I decided to give up with advice from the EX, there was no Metro.
I do not like MacOSX that much but may consider it when this one dies. Windows 7 sadly will be the new XP and will be supported for many years. I hate running obsolete software and being the PHBs who love XP and IE 6 until 2014 meanwhile helpdesk if fighting malware and SSDs are dying left and right due to the lack of TRIM in XP. Idiots being pennywise but dollar dumb. God help me if I am running Windows 7 in 2019 when it turns 10 years old!
Anyway, I bought this machine with the goal of waiting until the fall of 2015 before it gets replaced as a 5 year life span with a minor upgrade in between is a good policy for a serious computer user. If I can get use to clicking the menu constantly and getting used to the Mac gui, I guess it will be MacOSX assuming it is still around. Or who knows, maybe Gnome wont suck anymore either by 2015? Whichever comes first.
It does not look like its ready nor officially supported by Fedora. The comments showed it has some issues. However, it is cool you can do a yum install dropbox* now. :-)
Linux Mint uses it from what I read as the main gui so I except it will work better in that platform.
I think for now I will stick with Windows 7 as it just works and keep CentOS with old gnome 2.8 in my VM for now. I would like some official stacks that are present and require little extra work like what Ubuntu has besides a consistent GUI.
If Gnome repents and goes back to sanity you can bet Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and others will include its UI by default. Sure there is cinnamon, but it took years to get Gnome 2.8 the way it was all polished and pretty. It will take years to re invent the same wheel in Gnome shell so I am cautious. Then by 2016 it may be just as good as Gnome 2 was in 2010.
I used to love Linux and the fact that I am even debating and talking about this makes me angry as it was killed by us and not MS. What a change from 12 years ago right before XP came out where Linux was stable, secure, and was better in almost every way. If I make enough money perhaps my next machine will be a mac and Windows 7 is good enough just like other PC shitware that people simply accept. Thanks
Wine is not really an option. Unless it drastically improved in the years since I dared touch it WOW has many issues with it. It is a very complex program. If you do serious raiding you also need team-speak program such as Ventrillo, another program to load your add ons and so on.
If you hate MS and direct X a Mac is the next best thing as it supports Wow, Vent, and a few add on programs are available for that platform.
Linus himself said if you need Windows then run Windows as he uses PowerPoint when he worked at Trans-media a lot and didn't bother to try to get it to work on wine or use OpenOffice.
IN early 2011 I left Linux and went back to Windows because of issues with Gnome 3/Unity, Firefox 4, and other issues as it appeared Linux was going off the deep end.
Mate, much improved Firefox and Chrome on GNU/Linux, and Mint taking over looks like it may be redeeming the platform.
Is there a Linux Mint package for setting up LAMP or a LAPP (postgresql) stack? How easy is it to add codecs, background pictures, and other desktop oriented features similiar to FedoraPlus or medibuntu?
DirectX was designed from the getgo for vendor lock in.
It is really a whole engine that is already finished instead of creating your own from scratch. Developers just make calls to it, but can overide some of it too for customization. This is why its nearly impossible to port unlike OpenGL which is the framework to make your own engine.
I really wish OpenGL stayed more popular as many games such as Star Wars the Old Republic are losing out on 20 - 25% of the market of young players who own Macs.
When I was a contractor at a famous game company (dough stupid ninja lawyers forbid me to name) years ago there was a way you could run it with OpenGL in Windows but the performance was terrible and not tuned. I kind of wished different vendors could put down their flamethrowers and lawyers and work together to create standards like they did in the old days.
An OpenGL version of directX that could run on MacOSX, Linux, Andriod, and Windows would be really nice. Of course all the vendors would rather be greedy and fight each other while handing the monopoly over to MS instead. Someone or an organization would have to port it to Windows as of course MS has a vested interest to see only crappy games on non Windows devices.
I couldn't agree with you more. As someone learning web development I love IE 6.
Did I fail to mention it says in my contract that I get paid double overtime? Keep it up and demand Windows 2000 and IE 5.5 support and I can get a new car!
Thats how its always been. Microsoft set the legal precedence going after pirates and defending itself against' IBM. Anything that is licensed is not sold PERIOD.
It is a copy and not the real product. A copy has less rights and this means the first sale doctrine does not apply.
You do not purchase the software. You purchase a copy of the software and that the real isn't for sale at Apple. Actually you do not even purchase a copy.
If you read the EULA carefully it refers to a "copy" of it. Therefore, it can be licensed and not sold as a copyrighted work since the real one is at Apple. DMCA or not this was how Microsoft defined it and the courts agreed.
There is a distinct legal difference between a copy and the real thing. Since it is licensed you need to follow Apple's terms. If you disagree you can take your business elsewhere. The EULAs job is to take away the rights since it is a contract. First Sale only applies for the real thing (not copy) and if there is no license or contract.
Apple is well within its rights in any court of law as judges refer to other rulings from Microsoft and others to interpret the case.
Just because Apple does it too does not make it right.
If you were here on slashdot 10 years ago everyone and their brother were foaming at the mouth with TCPA/Pallidium (EFI uses this), and Windows Vista, and the DMCA because of what would happen to computers by 2012 is that they would turn into cable box appliances. It is happening.
I refused smart phones for years as I thought it was ludicrous to pay $5 for a crappy midi file for a ringtone and all sorts of controls, DRM, and other garbage on a device I am SUPPOSED to OWN. Apple freed users in 2007 and told the carriers to take a hike and fought for the consumer being hte good guys.
Now it is coming true. Apple is slowly turning into everyone else and MS wants in on the action by sucking up to the carriers on their own walled garden. We have been conditioned to hand out our rights and as the desktop fades away we will be stuck paying for $5 for a .mp3 intro, only apps the cell phone provider and OS maker approves, and other non sense that we do not have to put up with on Windows 7 today.
This is dangerous and the fact that we are even debating that is it ok for a monopolist to force to use one browser on things we buy is outrageous. Linux will be done for if tablets start to take over before you know it.
Windows RT should not be for everyone but MS to use. The other browsers at the iStore are just skins on top of Safari as Apple holds the keys for javascript access.
Any major bank.
Many banks merge and do SOX works and do not want to get hit with a scandal. They use internal tools and many banks get bought up and their assets sold in complex financial products. That counts as redistribution.
BSD is just friendly and you can do whatever you like with it.