I'm not saying illegal things don't go on, but you seem to have a misunderstanding of what the laws allow
Do the laws allow Merril Lynch to publish blatantly flawed research prejudicial to a competitor of a company that it and its clients are heavily invested in?
As far as your chinese wall goes, don't make me laugh. Does the wall also cut across the middle of restaurants and bars that employees from both sides frequent?
you should do two things: realize that these people at Merrill Lynch have some of the best connections into every market they care about and therefore, have a lot more inside information than you could dream of.
Oh, so you think Merrill Lynch used information not available to the general public to create a report that might affect the price of stocks that Merrill Lynch most probably is invested in? You realize that Merrill Lynch execs can get jail time for that?
I guess we have narrowed the situation down to two possibilities:
1) Merrill Lynch used inside information
2) Merrill Lynch pulled the whole report out of their collective asses
Either way I would like to see some execs do jail time. Oh wait, sorry, I forgot, the rule of law ended long ago.
The judge could also set aside the jury verdict, since the patents are invalid, but still award huge sums of money to NTP just to punish RIM for lying in court.
It looks to me like the judge is the main fraudster in all of this. Apparently, the judge threw a fit because somebody noticed a 1990's file date in directory where supposedly 1980 software was being run for a prior art demonstration. Wellll, this sort of thing makes great theater, but it does not make sound law when you consider that the 1980's software was in fact able to do exactly what RIM said it would, and as proof of that, the patents have in fact been invalidated via that prior art. Somehow the judge twisted that all into a travesty of due process.
What I'm saying is that Halo/Halo 2 is, hands down, the worst controlling FPS I've ever played, console or PC.
I'm with you there. Aiming is truly lousy, and the vehical control is pure drunken-drive. Go-where-you-look is just an incredibly stupid, awkward way to drive.
> > > The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000. > > > > That line is just classic Gates, the computer time may have been worth $40,000 but Gates never paid for it. Gates and Allen did not even have > > authorization to be using the university machines in question, something Gates himself would probably liken to "theft". > > Actually, the jist of the story is that Gates did his development on machines owned by the U.S. Government and that's what got him kicked out of > Harvard for misuse of federal funds. I assume that efforts of Bill Sr. are what kept him out of jail, why Harvard allows him to say he "dropped out," > and why Harvard doesn't talk about the real circumstances of his leaving. (Well, I'm sure the reason they don't talk about it now starts with $ and > ends in $.) > > Bill started Microsoft based upon theft, and theft has been it's primary business since then. Pardon me if I don't trust his motives in doing charity > work. > > I'm sure Capone did some nice charity work, too.
Not sure why somebody modded your post flamebait, perhaps a Microsoft astroturfer?
> > Running Linux is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time." > > Linux is many things, but "elegant" is not one of them.
"2. Teach your kids Linux. This is the easiest - kids will absorb Linux like little sponges, all you have to do is install it and stand back."
2a) This is a huge disservice, unless your kids already know Windows. They're going to need Windows for school and job skills, not Linux. Sorry.
Rubbish. a) Windows is easy to pick up for anybody familiar with Linux. b) From my experience, Linux knowledge is worth significantly more in the marketplace than Windows knowledge. Windows jobs are mostly McJobs, Linux jobs are mostly career jobs.
I would be very wary about putting too much faith in a service-based economy. A service provider is a lot easier to replace than a manufacturing provider.
The software industry has very little to do with manufacturing.
the Mandriva review states:...an accidental combination of keystrokes -- experimenting around Ctrl-Alt-E to try and get a euro symbol -- crashed the system and dumped us at a $-prompt command line, with no obvious route back to our unsaved work.
Obviously, this is not what a Linux user would call a "system crash". I suppose it's just as well that Windows users would be asked to review Linux distros for the desktop, though. A Linux user might regard this as a minor problem, forgetting that to most people, this is indeed a show-stopper.
Ahem. The reviewer hit a ctrl-alt-FNxx combination while trying random key combinations and got a text console, just as designed. Highly unfair and plain wrong to call that a system crash, all the more so to attribute it to Mandriva.
It talks about FORTRAN... probably the best bit in the whole thing. "Write all your code in FORTRAN." For what it's worth, as much as this is a joke, it does appear to be what a number of government contractors and research scientists do, if they do it to secure their jobs or not I don't know...
Fortran consistently outbenchmarks C in numerical applications. One reason is, the compiler can optimize more aggressively in the absence of pointer aliasing. Fortran doesn't have pointers.
To this day, Fortran does the heavy lifting on supercomputers. C is banned in some numerical shops because it has earned a reputation for resulting in code that engineers can't maintain.
Microsoft is one of those rare companies that turn evil with its founders at the helm. Normally it takes time and considerable turnover in management with beancounter mentality before the evil sets in.
When I worked at Microsoft, I specifically argued *against* getting involved in HPC markets. It isn't really an interesting market. It isn't a big market. And it never will be. If anything it will get smaller rather than bigger.
Well, somebody, I forget who, it was somebody who left Microsoft recently I think, came up with the theory that to beat Linux, Microsoft has to stamp Linux out in every single niche where it has any presence at all. That seems to be the reigning credo at Microsoft, hence this insane investment of resources into what looks to the rest of the world very much like a vanity product.
It's stupid really. Microsoft cannot stamp out Linux any more than it can stamp out the internet. The main effect will be to give some of those ill gotten profits back to the income tax system, I suppose.
isn't the GNU license pretty unattractive for something as closed as a mobile phone?
Besides the other reasons already mentioned, the GPL license only applies to the GPL parts, that is, the kernel including drivers (some drivers might be in the binary-module grey area); utilities; and popular GPL applications. The manufacturer can run as many closed binary programs on the phone as they wish. This is where most of the value add for the phone is, kernel mods are not.
In fact, manufacturers tend to be eager to share their kernel mods because it takes less manpower to maintain that way.
I had an openoffice.org2 release candidate installed and the dist-upgrade choked on overwriting files in it. I just did dpkg --remove for each of the colliding packages, apt-get install -f to take care of the partially installed packages, and apt-get dist-upgrade again to set things on their way. I just thought I'd mention this, because this is a fairly common failure mode of apt. I still love apt, but this kind of common breakage really needs to be handled better.
will Microsoft be able to overcome its own inertia and innovate fast enough to stay in the game? Probably not, but the good news for Microsoft is that it doesn't have to...it just has to acquire a company that can
There are two separate issues. Nobody doubts that, even if its OEM cash cow weakens, Microsoft could use its cash horde to buy its way into other businesses. The real question is, do Microsoft investors trust Microsoft to invest their cash wisely?
If the answer to this question turns out to be "no" then we may see Microsoft shorn of its cash sooner rather than later. And all it would take to scare stockholders into action is for Microsoft to make a few dubious investments right now. Remember, Microsoft will not be able to pick up any company with a gross margin as good as its own, for a price that makes the remotest amount of sense. So any investment Microsoft makes will constitute shareholder dilution. The only possible argument for an acquistion is synergy, where the property is worth more in the hands of the buyer than the seller. But Microsoft has a well established track record of just destroying whatever it acquires. Why should things be any different next time around the mulberry bush?
An earlier article mentioned bundling of MS Office with Windows licenses, thus erecting a barrier to competing office suites. EU probably wants to ensure that OEMS are able to buy Windows licences cheaper than Windows+MSOffice licenses. Microsoft obviously doesn't want this.
"He just doesn't realise that microsoft has to be the way it is to generate those profit margins."
Microsoft's profit margins are falling steadily.
Ah, sorry,that doesn't really answer your comment. Indeed, it was Microsoft's unabashed greed and disrespect for the law that kept its profit levels as high as they have been. And probably the only way to keep them there would be even more of the same. Except it can't. The cost of flagrantly flouting the law has increased steadily, and the effects of greed have largely turned inward, to Microsoft's detriment.
Errm, actually there is a single point in the piece: there are *huge* bugs in the test cases. All other points raised are shown to be consequences of this.
Not entirely. It degenerates into ad hominem attacks ("these people are paid to participate in calls, meetings, get there travels to exotic places financed") that really weaken the argument. Your conclusion is the right one ("better fix the suite"). Somehow Drepper makes the leap from "gee I found a bug" to "remove any claim that the LSB will ensure any additional level of assurance for developers".
If Drepper wants to fix LSB bugs, it sure isn't clear from the screed he posted.
Linus had a license to use BK, but his coworker violated the license, so Larry pulled the it
You do not know that anybody violated a BitKeeper license.
Now Linus is upset because he can't use BK anymore at a time when there aren't any FOSS BK replacements.
Too damn bad. Linus should not have used BitKeeper in the first place. At least Linus now understands the importance of keeping the Linux toolchain free and open, and has set about creating his own source code management tools, with about five other projects moving ahead to do the same in parallel. This should have happened years ago.
I would be upset too. I personally despise anti-reverse-engineering clauses, but you don't practice civil disobedience when it hurts anyone beside yourself.
And let Larry McVoy continue to keep the Linux version history locked up in his proprietary databases, getting more closed all the time as McVoy keeps changing the deal? Forget it. If Linus feels hurt then it's his own fault, for being an idiot about this right from the beginning. Personally, I am not hurt, quite the contrary.
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I'm not saying illegal things don't go on, but you seem to have a misunderstanding of what the laws allow
Do the laws allow Merril Lynch to publish blatantly flawed research prejudicial to a competitor of a company that it and its clients are heavily invested in?
As far as your chinese wall goes, don't make me laugh. Does the wall also cut across the middle of restaurants and bars that employees from both sides frequent?
you should do two things: realize that these people at Merrill Lynch have some of the best connections into every market they care about and therefore, have a lot more inside information than you could dream of.
Oh, so you think Merrill Lynch used information not available to the general public to create a report that might affect the price of stocks that Merrill Lynch most probably is invested in? You realize that Merrill Lynch execs can get jail time for that?
I guess we have narrowed the situation down to two possibilities:
1) Merrill Lynch used inside information
2) Merrill Lynch pulled the whole report out of their collective asses
Either way I would like to see some execs do jail time. Oh wait, sorry, I forgot, the rule of law ended long ago.
The judge could also set aside the jury verdict, since the patents are invalid, but still award huge sums of money to NTP just to punish RIM for lying in court.
It looks to me like the judge is the main fraudster in all of this. Apparently, the judge threw a fit because somebody noticed a 1990's file date in directory where supposedly 1980 software was being run for a prior art demonstration. Wellll, this sort of thing makes great theater, but it does not make sound law when you consider that the 1980's software was in fact able to do exactly what RIM said it would, and as proof of that, the patents have in fact been invalidated via that prior art. Somehow the judge twisted that all into a travesty of due process.
RIM's appeal of the initial case argued that the judge's decision to throw out the demonstration was "an abuse of discretion" since TekNow clearly had software for SAM from the 1980s and that the post-1991 directory dates of the demonstration software "occurred merely because TekNow's license-protection software automatically updates the directory dates with each new installation of the SAM software... RIM was able to successfully run the demonstration after the trial with 1980s software and provide evidence of prior art.
Throw the idiot judge in jail and throw away the key, I say. This judge is a menace to the rule of law.
What I'm saying is that Halo/Halo 2 is, hands down, the worst controlling FPS I've ever played, console or PC.
I'm with you there. Aiming is truly lousy, and the vehical control is pure drunken-drive. Go-where-you-look is just an incredibly stupid, awkward way to drive.
> > > The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
> >
> > That line is just classic Gates, the computer time may have been worth $40,000 but Gates never paid for it. Gates and Allen did not even have
> > authorization to be using the university machines in question, something Gates himself would probably liken to "theft".
>
> Actually, the jist of the story is that Gates did his development on machines owned by the U.S. Government and that's what got him kicked out of
> Harvard for misuse of federal funds. I assume that efforts of Bill Sr. are what kept him out of jail, why Harvard allows him to say he "dropped out,"
> and why Harvard doesn't talk about the real circumstances of his leaving. (Well, I'm sure the reason they don't talk about it now starts with $ and
> ends in $.)
>
> Bill started Microsoft based upon theft, and theft has been it's primary business since then. Pardon me if I don't trust his motives in doing charity
> work.
>
> I'm sure Capone did some nice charity work, too.
Not sure why somebody modded your post flamebait, perhaps a Microsoft astroturfer?
> > Running Linux is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
>
> Linux is many things, but "elegant" is not one of them.
What do you know about it?
"2. Teach your kids Linux. This is the easiest - kids will absorb Linux like little sponges, all you have to do is install it and stand back."
2a) This is a huge disservice, unless your kids already know Windows. They're going to need Windows for school and job skills, not Linux. Sorry.
Rubbish. a) Windows is easy to pick up for anybody familiar with Linux. b) From my experience, Linux knowledge is worth significantly more in the marketplace than Windows knowledge. Windows jobs are mostly McJobs, Linux jobs are mostly career jobs.
What sort of hold does MS have over the UN guys? Why didn't the UN just publish the report as written?
I don't know, but I will speculate that bribes were paid.
I would be very wary about putting too much faith in a service-based economy. A service provider is a lot easier to replace than a manufacturing provider.
The software industry has very little to do with manufacturing.
the Mandriva review states: ...an accidental combination of keystrokes -- experimenting around Ctrl-Alt-E to try and get a euro symbol -- crashed the system and dumped us at a $-prompt command line, with no obvious route back to our unsaved work.
Obviously, this is not what a Linux user would call a "system crash". I suppose it's just as well that Windows users would be asked to review Linux distros for the desktop, though. A Linux user might regard this as a minor problem, forgetting that to most people, this is indeed a show-stopper.
Ahem. The reviewer hit a ctrl-alt-FNxx combination while trying random key combinations and got a text console, just as designed. Highly unfair and plain wrong to call that a system crash, all the more so to attribute it to Mandriva.
You missed the main driver of hard disk transfer speed: density increase.
You mean like my Linksys Wireless router? And that is said to be powered by Linux. Not to troll...
Are you suggesting that saying "not to troll" makes a troll not a troll? My WRT54G is very stable, so was the predecessor 11 Mb/s box it replaced.
It talks about FORTRAN... probably the best bit in the whole thing. "Write all your code in FORTRAN." For what it's worth, as much as this is a joke, it does appear to be what a number of government contractors and research scientists do, if they do it to secure their jobs or not I don't know...
Fortran consistently outbenchmarks C in numerical applications. One reason is, the compiler can optimize more aggressively in the absence of pointer aliasing. Fortran doesn't have pointers.
To this day, Fortran does the heavy lifting on supercomputers. C is banned in some numerical shops because it has earned a reputation for resulting in code that engineers can't maintain.
Microsoft is one of those rare companies that turn evil with its founders at the helm. Normally it takes time and considerable turnover in management with beancounter mentality before the evil sets in.
Bill Gates had a head start.
When I worked at Microsoft, I specifically argued *against* getting involved in HPC markets. It isn't really an interesting market. It isn't a big market. And it never will be. If anything it will get smaller rather than bigger.
Well, somebody, I forget who, it was somebody who left Microsoft recently I think, came up with the theory that to beat Linux, Microsoft has to stamp Linux out in every single niche where it has any presence at all. That seems to be the reigning credo at Microsoft, hence this insane investment of resources into what looks to the rest of the world very much like a vanity product.
It's stupid really. Microsoft cannot stamp out Linux any more than it can stamp out the internet. The main effect will be to give some of those ill gotten profits back to the income tax system, I suppose.
isn't the GNU license pretty unattractive for something as closed as a mobile phone?
Besides the other reasons already mentioned, the GPL license only applies to the GPL parts, that is, the kernel including drivers (some drivers might be in the binary-module grey area); utilities; and popular GPL applications. The manufacturer can run as many closed binary programs on the phone as they wish. This is where most of the value add for the phone is, kernel mods are not.
In fact, manufacturers tend to be eager to share their kernel mods because it takes less manpower to maintain that way.
Perhaps a bit lower latency, but nothing dramatic.
What is not dramatic about 1.3 microseconds half round trip latency?
I had an openoffice.org2 release candidate installed and the dist-upgrade choked on overwriting files in it. I just did dpkg --remove for each of the colliding packages, apt-get install -f to take care of the partially installed packages, and apt-get dist-upgrade again to set things on their way. I just thought I'd mention this, because this is a fairly common failure mode of apt. I still love apt, but this kind of common breakage really needs to be handled better.
I'm a happy Breezy Badger now.
spelled tomorrow tomarrow and Abiword couldn't come up with a suggestion
Oh, tough one. a) Are you sure you have the spell checker installed? b) Are you sure you're telling the truth?
will Microsoft be able to overcome its own inertia and innovate fast enough to stay in the game? Probably not, but the good news for Microsoft is that it doesn't have to...it just has to acquire a company that can
There are two separate issues. Nobody doubts that, even if its OEM cash cow weakens, Microsoft could use its cash horde to buy its way into other businesses. The real question is, do Microsoft investors trust Microsoft to invest their cash wisely?
If the answer to this question turns out to be "no" then we may see Microsoft shorn of its cash sooner rather than later. And all it would take to scare stockholders into action is for Microsoft to make a few dubious investments right now. Remember, Microsoft will not be able to pick up any company with a gross margin as good as its own, for a price that makes the remotest amount of sense. So any investment Microsoft makes will constitute shareholder dilution. The only possible argument for an acquistion is synergy, where the property is worth more in the hands of the buyer than the seller. But Microsoft has a well established track record of just destroying whatever it acquires. Why should things be any different next time around the mulberry bush?
An earlier article mentioned bundling of MS Office with Windows licenses, thus erecting a barrier to competing office suites. EU probably wants to ensure that OEMS are able to buy Windows licences cheaper than Windows+MSOffice licenses. Microsoft obviously doesn't want this.
"He just doesn't realise that microsoft has to be the way it is to generate those profit margins."
Microsoft's profit margins are falling steadily.
Ah, sorry,that doesn't really answer your comment. Indeed, it was Microsoft's unabashed greed and disrespect for the law that kept its profit levels as high as they have been. And probably the only way to keep them there would be even more of the same. Except it can't. The cost of flagrantly flouting the law has increased steadily, and the effects of greed have largely turned inward, to Microsoft's detriment.
"He just doesn't realise that microsoft has to be the way it is to generate those profit margins."
Microsoft's profit margins are falling steadily.
Errm, actually there is a single point in the piece: there are *huge* bugs in the test cases. All other points raised are shown to be consequences of this.
Not entirely. It degenerates into ad hominem attacks ("these people are paid to participate in calls, meetings, get there travels to exotic places financed") that really weaken the argument. Your conclusion is the right one ("better fix the suite"). Somehow Drepper makes the leap from "gee I found a bug" to "remove any claim that the LSB will ensure any additional level of assurance for developers".
If Drepper wants to fix LSB bugs, it sure isn't clear from the screed he posted.
Linus had a license to use BK, but his coworker violated the license, so Larry pulled the it
You do not know that anybody violated a BitKeeper license.
Now Linus is upset because he can't use BK anymore at a time when there aren't any FOSS BK replacements.
Too damn bad. Linus should not have used BitKeeper in the first place. At least Linus now understands the importance of keeping the Linux toolchain free and open, and has set about creating his own source code management tools, with about five other projects moving ahead to do the same in parallel. This should have happened years ago.
I would be upset too. I personally despise anti-reverse-engineering clauses, but you don't practice civil disobedience when it hurts anyone beside yourself.
And let Larry McVoy continue to keep the Linux version history locked up in his proprietary databases, getting more closed all the time as McVoy keeps changing the deal? Forget it. If Linus feels hurt then it's his own fault, for being an idiot about this right from the beginning. Personally, I am not hurt, quite the contrary.