If you read the article, they plan to eventually release the 1.0 code under the GPL.
This, of course, is yet to be seen, but if they follow through, it appears that they are just trying a very similar open source business model to the one Aladdin has used with Ghostscript, yet with Ghostscript there doesn't seem to be a huge groundswell of negative reaction.
Aladdin keeps the current version of ghostscript under a restrictive license (albeit still open source), and relicences under the GPL when it is a version or two old. This way, they can make money from the current version but let old versions be used for the "public good". I personally wish more software vendors would do this with their older code.
Granted, there are differences, such as closing the source and holding off on releasing the Linux version until an OEM partner is found, but at least give them a chance to follow through on their asperations of OEM deals and see how well they deliver on the open source follow-ups before slamming them into the wall.
I can't answer the question about where the logs are on a FreeBSD system, but there are definitely SSH clients for Windows, so if you replace telnet with SSH, you should have no trouble accessing it from a Windows machine. Sorry I don't have any links or names of programs, but a Google search for Windows SSH clients will probably turn up what you need.
MS cuts the rope. Making propiertary API changes to explicitly *not work* with any competitors.
Well, this is always a possibility, except in this case the portions of.NET that are being implemented by the open source project are (or will be) ECMA standards. Now, Microsoft can, of course, attempt to muck with the standards, but their changes will have to be open and incorporated back into the standard. They could also make their own implementation non-standard, but since it is their standard, they will probably think twice about doing this since they would take a LOT of heat for it (not that they haven't taken heat before, of course).
we as a community should be innovating new alternatives to.NET
This has been suggested many times, but I think it is doomed to failure. Competing head-on with MS on their turf with a late-coming alternative supported by a small open source project would probably be extremely difficult, especially since it is the PHBs in the corporate community that must be sold on it. Heck, Even Microsoft realizes that there are some areas where even they can't compete head-on with with the leaders in certain areas, so instead they are making their products work easily as access points to these other services. Besides, if we wanted to take this approach, why wouldn't we strengthen an existing technology like Java by adding the.NET features that are missing rather than starting yet a third alternative from scratch just because we don't like MS? The problem here, of course, is that large segments of the free software community balk at Java as well because of its "half-free" license (I disagree with this, by the way, I use Java frequently).
In any case, as I mentioned previously, implementing.NET on Linux does have a chance of failure, just like any other undertaking, but its probably better than doing nothing and just hoping that the whole of.NET will fail in the marketplace.
This FAQ suggests using the built-in Linux PS/2 mouse drivers for the trackpoints on IBM Thinkpad laptops. You could do this of course, but there is a
much better open source driver that allows you to take advantage of some of the enhanced capabilities of the trackpoint, such as the hardware sensitivity control and z-axis control. If you have a thinkpad, you might want to check out this driver if you haven't already.
Nick Petrely has some good things to say from time to time, and I read his column, but take what he says with a grain of salt.
If you look at his past connections, it seems that he is really much more anti-MS than pro-open source. He also tends to be somewhat alarmist. Five or Six years ago, he was a HUGE OS/2 booster; OS/2 is as far from open source as is Windows. Then, when OS/2 was going down the tubes, he became an advocate of network computers (anyone remember NCWorldMag.com?), also a tad bit removed from open source. Then, when network computer related mags stopped bringing in the dough, he finally became an open source and Linux fan.
Clearly, his selection of things to support show much more of a tendency to be the currently hot anti-Microsoft technology du jour than any consistent track record of open source championship.
Finally, in the last year or two, Nick has been on a heavy anti-GNOME campaign. He obviously doesn't value competetion, having said that all of the GNOME developers should have given up and jumped over to KDE as soon as QT became GPL. Whether you like KDE or GNOME (or XFce or Windowmaker or [...] for that matter), most people feel that choice is good and both projects have benefitted from the generally friendly competion.
Like another poster said, take a deep breath, and take it with a grain of salt. If open source dies, its demise will not have been because of Ximian and Mono.
The strategy of producing a competing technology has been brought up a hundred times, but it would not work. Competing head-on with Microsoft on their own turf would almost surely be suicide. Hell, even Microsoft realizes that there are some areas where even they can't compete head-on with the current market leaders. So they are working at the periphery, making sure that their products provide easy access to these other technologies.
I have no idea whether.NET (or Mono) will be successful or not, and I will stay neutral and not firm up my opinion about Ximian Mono until I see further how things are going to play out in the.NET landscape. I'm not saying for certain that.NET is the right place, but perhaps Microsoft in fact needs a dose of their own "embrace and extend".
Linux has seen a lot of success in the server and net services marketplace over the past few years. Do you really want to see that cool off if.NET becomes a popular platform for net services and it is not available on Linux?
So many of the posts here seem to be manifestations of peoples' anti-MS, anti-Ximian, and anti-GNOME sentiments when the underlying issue should really be "Should Linux hedge its bets against loosing server market share to MS if.NET turns out to be a popular web services platform by having an implementation available?"
So many of the posts here seem to be manifestations of peoples' anti-MS, anti-Ximian, anti-Miguel, and anti-GNOME sentiments when the underlying issue should really be: "In case.NET turns out to be a popular web services platform, should Linux hedge its bets against loosing server market share to MS by having an implementation of.Net available?"
Forget that it's Ximian doing it. Forget that it might have some applicability to GNOME. These facts just bring out peoples' emotions that have nothing to do with the real issue. Consider the underlying question.
Linux has seen a lot of success in the server and net services marketplace over the past few years. Do you really want to see that cool off if.NET becomes a popular platform for net services and it is only available on MS server platforms and not on Linux?
I have no idea whether.NET (or Mono) will be successful or not, but if it doesn't pan out, Ximian will have lost some money. Big deal. But, OTOH, if.NET is successful and it's not available on Linux, MS will certainly gain server market share at the expense of Linux.
Some of what you say is true, but the following comment:
Add *that* to the fact that all most no open-source developer would even consider using Gnome...
is pure bunk. You might want to check out the size of the Gnome application database before you make ignorant comments like this one. Many people like to think that just because they don't like something means that it's not popular, but unfortunately this is not always the case.
Your last paragraph sums it up as to why the Sherman act was passed in the first place.
In the case of monopolies, especially monopolies in so-called increasing returns markets (markets where large market share tends to lead to even larger market share despite the existance of higher quality products), there are really two choices - you can let them use that monopoly to leverage other monopolies essentially without competetion, or you can restrict them from doing so.
I do sort of agree with you that in the long run, the effects may actually be the same. In the unrestricted case, the monopolist will obtain even more monopolies because he can leverage his existing ones, monopoly prices will rise, but people will continue to pay them because they are heavily "locked in". Superior products will languish because they don't interoperate with the monopolist's products. But at some point, prices will rise so much and the quality of their products will be so poor compared to the competition's that eventually (hopefully) people will begin buying into the competition even though it is a painful transition.
In the restricted case, a monopolist is restricted only to monopolies he obtains through competetion, as opposed to monopoly leverage. There will still be lock-in and rising prices, but only in that one market (if the restriction is enforced).
The difference is that in the partially restricted system, the "swings" in price and quality should be less and competetion should be greater and more consistent because the number of monopolies is limited and they can only be obtained by putting out a superior product and competing with others.
Is anyone really surprised that the number of active net users is dropping slightly? We are in the middle of an economic slowdown (at least here in the US), many web pages that were aimed at consumers or the mass public in general have gone under, and people have now realized that the internet isn't going to cure cancer and end world hunger. Also, though us geeks use it extensively, there are probably many people who signed on in the midst of all the hype and are now disappointed at what their $20 per month is getting them.
Once the economic conditions turn around, however, people will begin signing on again once the extra
$20 or so per month is no longer a strain on the budget, and people will begin using the net for what it is - a facilitator of information exchange - rather than expecting it to solve all the world's problems. I think any downturn is temporary.
The point is not that they require registration as part of support, it's that they specifically require you to use another one of their products to gain that support. Normally that's not a problem, but if you're a Monopoly, it is.
One of the major points of the Sherman act is that you can't use a legally obtained monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage (and hence, most likely another monopoly) in another.
Apple (or any other non-monopoly) can get away with bundling other software and services and it would not be deemed anticompetitive because they only have 5% of the market for the original product.
The fact is that the rules are different for a monopoly because of the Serman act. A monopoly must be much more careful what they bundle than a non-mononopoly.
The wierd thing is that although there is no great groundswell of support for repealing the Sherman act, yet many people want to let Microsoft off the hook as some kind of "benevolent" monopoly. The problem is that you can't (or at least shouldn't) apply the law selectively.
is that sooner or later, somone is going to use this replication method to write a worm that does some REAL damage, and the door is wide open because of all of the Windows machines (and even poorly configured Linux machines) which are online at any given time and not protected by a good firewall. It's not just cable and DSL either -- at any given instant, there are millions of unprotected machines attached to the internet via dial-up. Any of these machines that happen to be running a susceptable version of Microsoft's personal web server are vulnerable. Many people are probably running it unknowingly - they have 30+ gig hard drives and just clicked "install everything" when they installed Windows.
From earlier reports, a lot of the machines infected were personal Windows PCs running Microsoft's personal web server, which is apparently a stripped down version of IIS. Most of these people will never apply patches. Hell, many of them probably don't even know they are running it, they just clicked "install everything" when they installed Windows.
The whole bundling issue comes from the fact that the Antitrust Act says that you can't use a legally obtained monopoly in one market to leverage a monopoly (unfairly, without competition) in another market. This is why, back in the '70s or there about, the government wouldn't let Kodak bundle processing (a market in which they did not have a huge presence) with their film (which was a monopoly at the time).
The fact is that the rules are different for monopolies than for non-monopolies. Monopolies have to be careful what they bundle so as to not leverage one monopoly, which may have been legally obtained through competition, to unfairly gain another. Non-monopolies don't have this concern.
Moves by Apple to bundle extra software would probably not be seen as anticompetitive because they only have 5% of the market. The same goes for Linux which has even less (of the desktop market anyway).
Sorry, but Ximian is not using Microsoft's technology, they are implementing an ECMA standard by writing it *from scratch*. Microsoft may be spearheading the standard, but Ximians implementation will be their own (and open source) and will not incorporate any MS "technology" other than the standard itself.
if I were tasked with developing your typical n-tier application on.NET that needed things like database drivers, a web server, and maybe a RAD-built GUI client, I would end up with something that was tied to Windows...
You make a good point. Java already has these things. Perhaps Sun could make a preemtive strike by producing an implementation of the entire Java API (not just the language) that targets the.NET CLI. This way, all of the current Java APIs (Swing, database, etc.) would be available to people developing in.NET, and this would immediately give developers a way of making multi-tier.NET applications that don't need to use Microsoft specific layers for these things. For example, a GUI client could be done using Swing instead of VB.NET (or whatever). If something like this could be ready by the time.NET starts becoming used more heavily, then third party developers would have options for creating portable multi-tier applications.
There may be technical reasons why this couldn't work, it's just a thought.
I assume you work for IBM. Mr. Handy mentioned several times that IBM was pushing Linux primarily on the server side, and this fact is obvious from their various announcements of products and support.
You, however, (and presumably others) use it as a desktop OS within IBM.
How about a grass roots effort from users within IBM to get the corporate powers-that-be to consider a bigger effort to push Linux onto the desktop as well. Granted, Handy mentions that there isn't much demand yet from customers. IBM is a big industry mover, however, and a bit of unilateral movement in that directoy might help CREATE a bigger market. Classic chicken-and-egg problem.
Take Notes for example. In my own case, and in the case of many posters I've seen, the notes client is the last thing keeping me from making a complete switch to Linux. If IBM were to start with this one application, they might be surprised at the level of demand that would be generated.
I used OS/2 for several years, and I purchased SmartSuite for OS/2 (for $99, cheap by Office standards) as soon as it came out. All of the apps were WELL behind their counterparts in the Windows version, both in features and stability. Several of them felt like very poor, sluggish ports (similar to the way a WINE port feels on Linux). With that kind of effort, it was no wonder that it never became a killer app for OS/2. There were other, more responsive apps like DeScribe (WP) and Ahena (spreadsheet), and athough they weren't as widely know as SmartSuite, they worked better on OS/2.
Now, I agree that a GOOD port of SmartSuite, and particularly Notes client, would help bolster Linux as a desktop OS in corporate environments, but it would have to be done correctly, as a high quality native port of the CURRENT versions of the Windows applications, and it would be an uphill battle, since by now SmartSuite is off most PHB's radar screens.
Unfortunately, as Mr. Handy said outright, IBM has little interest in pushing Linux onto the desktop anyway.
very few real world.NET apps will run on platforms other than Windows without significant extra reverse engineering
You mean very few *MS designed*.NET apps. The main thrust of.NET (and Mono) is to provide competetion to Java for writing net services. Third party net services developers are not restricted to coding massive amounts of Win32 dependencies in their applications.
The whole.NET thing could be flop, but do you want to bet your future on that happening? The good thing about Linux getting on board and being ready for.NET early is that Linux can hedge its bets in case.NET ends up being a popular platform for writing net services. If that happens, there will be many more companies than just MS writing those applications, and Linux will at least have a stab at being a platform of choice, just as it currently is for java based net services apps. After all, there are plenty of companies besides just Sun writing Java apps.
Embracing.NET (through Mono) is definitely a gamble -- Microsoft could start mucking with the standards specifications mid-stream,.Net could end up not going anywhere -- but the worst cost is wasted time. If Linux is left out and.NET is successful, the cost would be much higher as Linux would then not be viable server platform for developing and running.NET-based web services applications, resulting in a huge opening for Windows.
There are a lot of posts here to the effect of "MS Office is already dominant, and it's pretty good as well, so why bother with a competing product?"
Do most of you Mac users really feel this way? Perhaps Mac users have had only one office suite for so long that they have forgotten the improvements that can be had by competition.
No realistic person thinks that OpenOffice will overtake MS Office any time soon even if it is as good or better feature for feature. But the presence of two full featured office suites will cause both of them to improve through competition. Remember how bad Word 6 was on the Mac? Microsoft did improve it later, but had they had competition, it probably would have never been that bad in the first place, and Mac users wouldn't have had to suffer through several years of a bad word processor because there was no other viable alternative.
The Mac market is small, and perhaps that's why there are several areas where most of the players except the dominant one have dropped out, but if the Mac platform is to grow as Apple would like, it will need to once again have competition among applications.
OpenOffice is a good way to reintroduce competition, because being an open source product, it does not need to have large market share at first since it does not need to bring in revenue.
"2.There are better models under consideration. A better system is settlements. Like the current TelCo model, peers pay each other for the imbalance of traffic across their peering points. The concensus opinion on how to do it is to pass the charge toward the people consuming bandwidth away from the people providing it. This would ultimately drop the cost of being on the Internet for the people who are providing content. One of the chief reasons this hasn't happened yet was PSINet's refusal to go along with it (reason they offered free peering.) Now their failing and turning off peers. "
This idea is good, but just lowering the access cost for content providers may not always be good enough. In addition to access costs, it cost money to run the servers, pay sysadmins, obtain content, and manage a site. Some sites may not be able to stay up unless they can have enough of a positive cash flow to cover these things as well.
Taking on Microsoft on their own turf would be suicide. The only reason Linux is succeeding (at least in the server area) is because it is *not* taking on Microsoft head-on (proprietary OS promoted by a single company). Microsoft hasn't known how to fight Linux because Linux is not just one company that can be attacked. They are just finally learning what to attack (the process, the GPL), but it is an uphill battle for them.
Heck, even Microsoft realizes that there some markets where even *they* have trouble competing head-on with the market leaders.
At this point, Microsoft has such a lock on the intel desktop that it would be nearly impossible for a single commercial company to compete head-on (remember OS/2, BeOS, etc.). At this point in time, virtually the only hope for reducing their monopoly lies with open source software because it's a diffuse enough target that Microsoft is having trouble attacking it. Even so, it will be difficult unless Microsoft makes a HUGE mistake at some point in the future.
I believe the Codeweavers Netscape Windows plug-in bridge (also Wine-based) allows the use of Quicktime plug-ins. I tried to check on this but the Codeweavers web site seems to be down right now. This would probably be a safer and more secure way than using an ActiveX control
"Intent is, or should be, only an issue if a crime has been committed".
This seems to make sense, but if you follow this rigorously, then *no* object or thing could ever be illegal, and I'm not sure I would want to go that far. The primary intent we think of is intent of the user, which is what you are referring to. But there is also intended use of the object itself (i.e., why am I manufacturing this, what is the main intended use for this object?) which must be considered.
Perhaps guns were a bad example. Let's go to the extreme, and take, say, a nuclear weapon. Not many people explode nuclear weapons in their backyard for fun. They are clearly designed for only one purpose - to decimate large amounts of people and property at once, and are extremely dangerous. There is no ambiguity here. Should It be legal for me to have one in my closet and leave the assessment of intent until after I use it on downtown Manhattan? Probably not. at least in my humble opinion.
Now, I'm not saying that this should apply to all cracking tools. Many such tools have valid uses (testing security, etc.) and they should be considered on a case-by-case basis. I just wanted to make the point that there are some things for which the intent is already clear in the manufacture.
The argument about the hammer being illegal is an old one, and the flaw with the argument is that it doesn't take intent into account. The law can never be completely objective because humans have intent, and intent is a subjective thing.
Virtually any object in the world can be used as a weapon, but we obviously can't outlaw all physical objects, can we?
That being said, there are gray areas, such as guns. Guns are clearly designed to be a lethal weapon; however, there are many non-lethal and justifiable uses for guns, so regulation is contraversial.
I suspect the same can be said of cracking tools; there are clearly some that are designed to be primarily malicious, and some are designed to be useful, but could be used maliciosly in the wrong hands, much like a gun. It seems that these types of tools will have to be considered on a case by case basis
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the article, they plan to eventually release the 1.0 code under the GPL.
This, of course, is yet to be seen, but if they follow through, it appears that they are just trying a very similar open source business model to the one Aladdin has used with Ghostscript, yet with Ghostscript there doesn't seem to be a huge groundswell of negative reaction.
Aladdin keeps the current version of ghostscript under a restrictive license (albeit still open source), and relicences under the GPL when it is a version or two old. This way, they can make money from the current version but let old versions be used for the "public good". I personally wish more software vendors would do this with their older code.
Granted, there are differences, such as closing the source and holding off on releasing the Linux version until an OEM partner is found, but at least give them a chance to follow through on their asperations of OEM deals and see how well they deliver on the open source follow-ups before slamming them into the wall.
I can't answer the question about where the logs are on a FreeBSD system, but there are definitely SSH clients for Windows, so if you replace telnet with SSH, you should have no trouble accessing it from a Windows machine. Sorry I don't have any links or names of programs, but a Google search for Windows SSH clients will probably turn up what you need.
MS cuts the rope. Making propiertary API changes to explicitly *not work* with any competitors.
.NET that are being implemented by the open source project are (or will be) ECMA standards. Now, Microsoft can, of course, attempt to muck with the standards, but their changes will have to be open and incorporated back into the standard. They could also make their own implementation non-standard, but since it is their standard, they will probably think twice about doing this since they would take a LOT of heat for it (not that they haven't taken heat before, of course).
.NET
.NET features that are missing rather than starting yet a third alternative from scratch just because we don't like MS? The problem here, of course, is that large segments of the free software community balk at Java as well because of its "half-free" license (I disagree with this, by the way, I use Java frequently).
.NET on Linux does have a chance of failure, just like any other undertaking, but its probably better than doing nothing and just hoping that the whole of .NET will fail in the marketplace.
Well, this is always a possibility, except in this case the portions of
we as a community should be innovating new alternatives to
This has been suggested many times, but I think it is doomed to failure. Competing head-on with MS on their turf with a late-coming alternative supported by a small open source project would probably be extremely difficult, especially since it is the PHBs in the corporate community that must be sold on it. Heck, Even Microsoft realizes that there are some areas where even they can't compete head-on with with the leaders in certain areas, so instead they are making their products work easily as access points to these other services. Besides, if we wanted to take this approach, why wouldn't we strengthen an existing technology like Java by adding the
In any case, as I mentioned previously, implementing
This FAQ suggests using the built-in Linux PS/2 mouse drivers for the trackpoints on IBM Thinkpad laptops. You could do this of course, but there is a much better open source driver that allows you to take advantage of some of the enhanced capabilities of the trackpoint, such as the hardware sensitivity control and z-axis control. If you have a thinkpad, you might want to check out this driver if you haven't already.
Nick Petrely has some good things to say from time to time, and I read his column, but take what he says with a grain of salt.
If you look at his past connections, it seems that he is really much more anti-MS than pro-open source. He also tends to be somewhat alarmist. Five or Six years ago, he was a HUGE OS/2 booster; OS/2 is as far from open source as is Windows. Then, when OS/2 was going down the tubes, he became an advocate of network computers (anyone remember NCWorldMag.com?), also a tad bit removed from open source. Then, when network computer related mags stopped bringing in the dough, he finally became an open source and Linux fan.
Clearly, his selection of things to support show much more of a tendency to be the currently hot anti-Microsoft technology du jour than any consistent track record of open source championship.
Finally, in the last year or two, Nick has been on a heavy anti-GNOME campaign. He obviously doesn't value competetion, having said that all of the GNOME developers should have given up and jumped over to KDE as soon as QT became GPL. Whether you like KDE or GNOME (or XFce or Windowmaker or [...] for that matter), most people feel that choice is good and both projects have benefitted from the generally friendly competion.
Like another poster said, take a deep breath, and take it with a grain of salt. If open source dies, its demise will not have been because of Ximian and Mono.
The strategy of producing a competing technology has been brought up a hundred times, but it would not work. Competing head-on with Microsoft on their own turf would almost surely be suicide. Hell, even Microsoft realizes that there are some areas where even they can't compete head-on with the current market leaders. So they are working at the periphery, making sure that their products provide easy access to these other technologies.
.NET (or Mono) will be successful or not, and I will stay neutral and not firm up my opinion about Ximian Mono until I see further how things are going to play out in the .NET landscape. I'm not saying for certain that .NET is the right place, but perhaps Microsoft in fact needs a dose of their own "embrace and extend".
.NET becomes a popular platform for net services and it is not available on Linux?
.NET turns out to be a popular web services platform by having an implementation available?"
I have no idea whether
Linux has seen a lot of success in the server and net services marketplace over the past few years. Do you really want to see that cool off if
So many of the posts here seem to be manifestations of peoples' anti-MS, anti-Ximian, and anti-GNOME sentiments when the underlying issue should really be "Should Linux hedge its bets against loosing server market share to MS if
So many of the posts here seem to be manifestations of peoples' anti-MS, anti-Ximian, anti-Miguel, and anti-GNOME sentiments when the underlying issue should really be: "In case .NET turns out to be a popular web services platform, should Linux hedge its bets against loosing server market share to MS by having an implementation of .Net available?"
.NET becomes a popular platform for net services and it is only available on MS server platforms and not on Linux?
.NET (or Mono) will be successful or not, but if it doesn't pan out, Ximian will have lost some money. Big deal. But, OTOH, if .NET is successful and it's not available on Linux, MS will certainly gain server market share at the expense of Linux.
Forget that it's Ximian doing it. Forget that it might have some applicability to GNOME. These facts just bring out peoples' emotions that have nothing to do with the real issue. Consider the underlying question.
Linux has seen a lot of success in the server and net services marketplace over the past few years. Do you really want to see that cool off if
I have no idea whether
Some of what you say is true, but the following comment:
Add *that* to the fact that all most no open-source developer would even consider using Gnome...
is pure bunk. You might want to check out the size of the
Gnome application database before you make ignorant comments like this one. Many people like to think that just because they don't like something means that it's not popular, but unfortunately this is not always the case.
Your last paragraph sums it up as to why the Sherman act was passed in the first place.
In the case of monopolies, especially monopolies in so-called increasing returns markets (markets where large market share tends to lead to even larger market share despite the existance of higher quality products), there are really two choices - you can let them use that monopoly to leverage other monopolies essentially without competetion, or you can restrict them from doing so.
I do sort of agree with you that in the long run, the effects may actually be the same. In the unrestricted case, the monopolist will obtain even more monopolies because he can leverage his existing ones, monopoly prices will rise, but people will continue to pay them because they are heavily "locked in". Superior products will languish because they don't interoperate with the monopolist's products. But at some point, prices will rise so much and the quality of their products will be so poor compared to the competition's that eventually (hopefully) people will begin buying into the competition even though it is a painful transition.
In the restricted case, a monopolist is restricted only to monopolies he obtains through competetion, as opposed to monopoly leverage. There will still be lock-in and rising prices, but only in that one market (if the restriction is enforced).
The difference is that in the partially restricted system, the "swings" in price and quality should be less and competetion should be greater and more consistent because the number of monopolies is limited and they can only be obtained by putting out a superior product and competing with others.
Is anyone really surprised that the number of active net users is dropping slightly? We are in the middle of an economic slowdown (at least here in the US), many web pages that were aimed at consumers or the mass public in general have gone under, and people have now realized that the internet isn't going to cure cancer and end world hunger. Also, though us geeks use it extensively, there are probably many people who signed on in the midst of all the hype and are now disappointed at what their $20 per month is getting them.
Once the economic conditions turn around, however, people will begin signing on again once the extra
$20 or so per month is no longer a strain on the budget, and people will begin using the net for what it is - a facilitator of information exchange - rather than expecting it to solve all the world's problems. I think any downturn is temporary.
The point is not that they require registration as part of support, it's that they specifically require you to use another one of their products to gain that support. Normally that's not a problem, but if you're a Monopoly, it is.
One of the major points of the Sherman act is that you can't use a legally obtained monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage (and hence, most likely another monopoly) in another.
Apple (or any other non-monopoly) can get away with bundling other software and services and it would not be deemed anticompetitive because they only have 5% of the market for the original product.
The fact is that the rules are different for a monopoly because of the Serman act. A monopoly must be much more careful what they bundle than a non-mononopoly.
The wierd thing is that although there is no great groundswell of support for repealing the Sherman act, yet many people want to let Microsoft off the hook as some kind of "benevolent" monopoly. The problem is that you can't (or at least shouldn't) apply the law selectively.
is that sooner or later, somone is going to use this replication method to write a worm that does some REAL damage, and the door is wide open because of all of the Windows machines (and even poorly configured Linux machines) which are online at any given time and not protected by a good firewall. It's not just cable and DSL either -- at any given instant, there are millions of unprotected machines attached to the internet via dial-up. Any of these machines that happen to be running a susceptable version of Microsoft's personal web server are vulnerable. Many people are probably running it unknowingly - they have 30+ gig hard drives and just clicked "install everything" when they installed Windows.
From earlier reports, a lot of the machines infected were personal Windows PCs running Microsoft's personal web server, which is apparently a stripped down version of IIS. Most of these people will never apply patches. Hell, many of them probably don't even know they are running it, they just clicked "install everything" when they installed Windows.
The whole bundling issue comes from the fact that the Antitrust Act says that you can't use a legally obtained monopoly in one market to leverage a monopoly (unfairly, without competition) in another market. This is why, back in the '70s or there about, the government wouldn't let Kodak bundle processing (a market in which they did not have a huge presence) with their film (which was a monopoly at the time).
The fact is that the rules are different for monopolies than for non-monopolies. Monopolies have to be careful what they bundle so as to not leverage one monopoly, which may have been legally obtained through competition, to unfairly gain another. Non-monopolies don't have this concern.
Moves by Apple to bundle extra software would probably not be seen as anticompetitive because they only have 5% of the market. The same goes for Linux which has even less (of the desktop market anyway).
Sorry, but Ximian is not using Microsoft's technology, they are implementing an ECMA standard by writing it *from scratch*. Microsoft may be spearheading the standard, but Ximians implementation will be their own (and open source) and will not incorporate any MS "technology" other than the standard itself.
if I were tasked with developing your typical n-tier application on .NET that needed things like database drivers, a web server, and maybe a RAD-built GUI client, I would end up with something that was tied to Windows...
.NET CLI. This way, all of the current Java APIs (Swing, database, etc.) would be available to people developing in .NET, and this would immediately give developers a way of making multi-tier .NET applications that don't need to use Microsoft specific layers for these things. For example, a GUI client could be done using Swing instead of VB.NET (or whatever). If something like this could be ready by the time .NET starts becoming used more heavily, then third party developers would have options for creating portable multi-tier applications.
You make a good point. Java already has these things. Perhaps Sun could make a preemtive strike by producing an implementation of the entire Java API (not just the language) that targets the
There may be technical reasons why this couldn't work, it's just a thought.
I assume you work for IBM. Mr. Handy mentioned several times that IBM was pushing Linux primarily on the server side, and this fact is obvious from their various announcements of products and support.
You, however, (and presumably others) use it as a desktop OS within IBM.
How about a grass roots effort from users within IBM to get the corporate powers-that-be to consider a bigger effort to push Linux onto the desktop as well. Granted, Handy mentions that there isn't much demand yet from customers. IBM is a big industry mover, however, and a bit of unilateral movement in that directoy might help CREATE a bigger market. Classic chicken-and-egg problem.
Take Notes for example. In my own case, and in the case of many posters I've seen, the notes client is the last thing keeping me from making a complete switch to Linux. If IBM were to start with this one application, they might be surprised at the level of demand that would be generated.
I used OS/2 for several years, and I purchased SmartSuite for OS/2 (for $99, cheap by Office standards) as soon as it came out. All of the apps were WELL behind their counterparts in the Windows version, both in features and stability. Several of them felt like very poor, sluggish ports (similar to the way a WINE port feels on Linux). With that kind of effort, it was no wonder that it never became a killer app for OS/2. There were other, more responsive apps like DeScribe (WP) and Ahena (spreadsheet), and athough they weren't as widely know as SmartSuite, they worked better on OS/2.
Now, I agree that a GOOD port of SmartSuite, and particularly Notes client, would help bolster Linux as a desktop OS in corporate environments, but it would have to be done correctly, as a high quality native port of the CURRENT versions of the Windows applications, and it would be an uphill battle, since by now SmartSuite is off most PHB's radar screens.
Unfortunately, as Mr. Handy said outright, IBM has little interest in pushing Linux onto the desktop anyway.
very few real world .NET apps will run on platforms other than Windows without significant extra reverse engineering
.NET apps. The main thrust of .NET (and Mono) is to provide competetion to Java for writing net services. Third party net services developers are not restricted to coding massive amounts of Win32 dependencies in their applications.
.NET thing could be flop, but do you want to bet your future on that happening? The good thing about Linux getting on board and being ready for .NET early is that Linux can hedge its bets in case .NET ends up being a popular platform for writing net services. If that happens, there will be many more companies than just MS writing those applications, and Linux will at least have a stab at being a platform of choice, just as it currently is for java based net services apps. After all, there are plenty of companies besides just Sun writing Java apps.
.NET (through Mono) is definitely a gamble -- Microsoft could start mucking with the standards specifications mid-stream, .Net could end up not going anywhere -- but the worst cost is wasted time. If Linux is left out and .NET is successful, the cost would be much higher as Linux would then not be viable server platform for developing and running .NET-based web services applications, resulting in a huge opening for Windows.
You mean very few *MS designed*
The whole
Embracing
There are a lot of posts here to the effect of "MS Office is already dominant, and it's pretty good as well, so why bother with a competing product?"
Do most of you Mac users really feel this way? Perhaps Mac users have had only one office suite for so long that they have forgotten the improvements that can be had by competition.
No realistic person thinks that OpenOffice will overtake MS Office any time soon even if it is as good or better feature for feature. But the presence of two full featured office suites will cause both of them to improve through competition. Remember how bad Word 6 was on the Mac? Microsoft did improve it later, but had they had competition, it probably would have never been that bad in the first place, and Mac users wouldn't have had to suffer through several years of a bad word processor because there was no other viable alternative.
The Mac market is small, and perhaps that's why there are several areas where most of the players except the dominant one have dropped out, but if the Mac platform is to grow as Apple would like, it will need to once again have competition among applications.
OpenOffice is a good way to reintroduce competition, because being an open source product, it does not need to have large market share at first since it does not need to bring in revenue.
"2.There are better models under consideration. A better system is settlements. Like the current TelCo model, peers pay each other for the imbalance of traffic across their peering points. The concensus opinion on how to do it is to pass the charge toward the people consuming bandwidth away from the people providing it. This would ultimately drop the cost of being on the Internet for the people who are providing content. One of the chief reasons this hasn't happened yet was PSINet's refusal to go along with it (reason they offered free peering.) Now their failing and turning off peers. "
This idea is good, but just lowering the access cost for content providers may not always be good enough. In addition to access costs, it cost money to run the servers, pay sysadmins, obtain content, and manage a site. Some sites may not be able to stay up unless they can have enough of a positive cash flow to cover these things as well.
Taking on Microsoft on their own turf would be suicide. The only reason Linux is succeeding (at least in the server area) is because it is *not* taking on Microsoft head-on (proprietary OS promoted by a single company). Microsoft hasn't known how to fight Linux because Linux is not just one company that can be attacked. They are just finally learning what to attack (the process, the GPL), but it is an uphill battle for them.
Heck, even Microsoft realizes that there some markets where even *they* have trouble competing head-on with the market leaders.
At this point, Microsoft has such a lock on the intel desktop that it would be nearly impossible for a single commercial company to compete head-on (remember OS/2, BeOS, etc.). At this point in time, virtually the only hope for reducing their monopoly lies with open source software because it's a diffuse enough target that Microsoft is having trouble attacking it. Even so, it will be difficult unless Microsoft makes a HUGE mistake at some point in the future.
I believe the Codeweavers Netscape Windows plug-in bridge (also Wine-based) allows the use of Quicktime plug-ins. I tried to check on this but the Codeweavers web site seems to be down right now. This would probably be a safer and more secure way than using an ActiveX control
"Intent is, or should be, only an issue if a crime has been committed".
This seems to make sense, but if you follow this rigorously, then *no* object or thing could ever be illegal, and I'm not sure I would want to go that far. The primary intent we think of is intent of the user, which is what you are referring to. But there is also intended use of the object itself (i.e., why am I manufacturing this, what is the main intended use for this object?) which must be considered.
Perhaps guns were a bad example. Let's go to the extreme, and take, say, a nuclear weapon. Not many people explode nuclear weapons in their backyard for fun. They are clearly designed for only one purpose - to decimate large amounts of people and property at once, and are extremely dangerous. There is no ambiguity here. Should It be legal for me to have one in my closet and leave the assessment of intent until after I use it on downtown Manhattan? Probably not. at least in my humble opinion.
Now, I'm not saying that this should apply to all cracking tools. Many such tools have valid uses (testing security, etc.) and they should be considered on a case-by-case basis. I just wanted to make the point that there are some things for which the intent is already clear in the manufacture.
The argument about the hammer being illegal is an old one, and the flaw with the argument is that it doesn't take intent into account. The law can never be completely objective because humans have intent, and intent is a subjective thing.
Virtually any object in the world can be used as a weapon, but we obviously can't outlaw all physical objects, can we?
That being said, there are gray areas, such as guns. Guns are clearly designed to be a lethal weapon; however, there are many non-lethal and justifiable uses for guns, so regulation is contraversial.
I suspect the same can be said of cracking tools; there are clearly some that are designed to be primarily malicious, and some are designed to be useful, but could be used maliciosly in the wrong hands, much like a gun. It seems that these types of tools will have to be considered on a case by case basis