Hm, do we have no discovery process since Abramoff plead guilty? In that case we may never know what he was talking about. But he was working for Gates. Did he take a bullet for his boss by pleaing guilty?
It seems to me that, based on the amount of money spent on lobbying by Microsoft (some $360,000) they didn't hire abramhoff for much. They're well below average for abramhoff's clients, even though they were the #1 contributor to campaign funds.
Microsoft learned back in the 90's that if you don't contribute to politicians funds, you have almost no voice on capital hill. Since then, they've been pretty strong in contributing to various campaigns, but of a largely bi-partison nature.
Given the small amount of money spent on abramhoff, it seems unlikely that they hired him for much of anything serious.
It might be hard to compell them to pay for return shipping (assuming you bought it online), since that's not really required by the law. However, you could certainly make the case that you shouldn't have to pay a restocking fee or have the initial shipping fees subtracted from your refund (which is typically the case with Dell and the like if you return a PC), so long as you explicitly state you're returning it because you don't agree with the terms of the software license.
This is very true. But there is a reason for this "carefully worded" requirments. All too often, vendors lie about their specs. "Sure, we're section 508 compliant" and in reality all it means is that they have alt tags on their images.
So, what happens, is you specify all your requirements, and in reality, only a few vendors meet those requirements, but a dozen or so "cheaper" vendors who meet the specs on paper end up winning the contract, and then we're stuck with crap.
This has lead to requirements being VERY specific, so that you don't end up with something that barely does what it claims to.
First, ProCD v. Zeidenberg is the appropriate case law that ruled that agreements after the purchase are legal, so long as you have the ability to return the product later if you don't agree to the terms.
Second, You can return the software, but you must return the PC it came with at the same time, since they're licensed together. It would be like trying to return the car stereo from the car you bought, because you don't want it. You can return the car, and you can order a car without the stereo, but you can't return just the stereo for a refund.
And, again, I don't agree with these... but that's the way it is.
"However, the Microsoft Volume Licensing program does not offer the full version of Microsoft Windows® desktop operating system licenses. The Microsoft Windows desktop operating system should be licensed either pre-installed through the OEM, or as FPP retail product. A volume licensing customer can use their volume licensing media to re-image their Microsoft Windows desktop operating system from an OEM provided that it is the same version and product type as that on the Certificate of Authenticity label that came with the PC."
"Operating System License Requirements: Initial Operating System and Transfer of License
Customers must first have a full desktop operating system installed on their machine before they are eligible to acquire an upgrade license for the Microsoft Windows desktop operating system via Microsoft's volume licensing programs. Customers cannot acquire full Microsoft Windows desktop operating system licenses through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs, only upgrade licenses."
That's a different deal, and this basically gives you a "full retail" license (rather than an OEM license that is restricted to a specific machine). The only real reason to do this is to upgrade an older version of Windows, or to install on a machine you've built yourself.
Further, you can buy machines with FreeDOS or Linux instead of Windows. you just can't buy it without ANY OS.
Actually, the reason they say it's a risk to their customers is that many of them have volume license agreements, and they mistakenly believe their license allows them to buy naked PC's and install their volume license. The volume license requires the purchase of an OEM license. Thus, the risk is encouraging customers to violate their licenses. Don't believe customers don't know their license? Look how many people in this thread (and even the article itself) mention volume licenses as a reason to buy Naked PC's.
I'm not saying I like that policy either, but that's just the way it is.
You should really read your licensing agreement with Microsoft. Your volume license agreement is dependant upon you buying an OEM license for the product, in effect "upgrading" your OEM licenses to volume licenses.
What that means is that you can't (legally) buy a PC wihtout an OS and install a volume license.
It should be pointed out that Microsoft doesn't seem to be urging their OEM's to sell all PC's with Windows. They're urging them not to sell "Naked" PC's. Dropping on a copy of FreeDOS makes it no longer Naked, or Linux.
This is nothing new. Dell has been shipping systems with FreeDOS for years to get around the "Naked PC" issue.
Microsoft is concerned that people are buying PC's to violate their OEM license by installing their old OEM copy on their new PC. And frankly, let's be honest, that's likely the largest percentage of people that buy "Naked" PC's. Although nothing stops them from buying their PC's with FreeDOS and then wiping it and replacing it with an illegal copy either, so the whole issue is rather silly.
The GPL would not have helped them at all. The GPL only enforces freedom of the code. It does not ensure compensation for your work. OpenBSD's problems are financial, not Freedom based.
I think you seriously overestimate the Mac compatibility. Every major release of MacOS (7, 8, 9, etc..) have broken some compatibility with the previous versions. The move to PowerPC broke a *LOT* of stuff. The move to x86 also breaks a lot of stuff, particualarly os 9 and earlier compatibility.
Windows *ALREADY* supports their legacy OS in VM form. Windows 3.x is handled by a VM layer called WOW, or Windows On Windows. This is part of the problem the articles are referring to.
However, that's only part of the problem. Binary compatibility is one thing, SOURCE compatibility is another. Many of the 32 bit apps that were originally written for Windows 3.x were just recompiled Win16 apps with some tweaks where things broke. It's not simply a matter of emulation.
Oh, and emulation sucks. That's why Itanium's never took off.
While I agree with you about Vista's borders (I don't like them either), I don't think it's as bad as you make out. I don't have any issue reading the titles. The white glow provides contrast against the background.
Also, very little has actually been chopped out of Vista. Really only WinFS, and arguably Monad (it was never really all that solidly a feature of Vista to begin with). Indigo, Avalon, and a whole host of other stuff will be there when it ships, though it apparently won't be installed by default. This was apparently a concession to those that don't want to use those frameworks and want the OS to be just the OS. Also, seperating the frameworks from the OS made it possible to develop for both XP and Vista. WinFX is still very much alive and kicking.
Vista really is a lot more than just XP SP3. There's certainly a lot more new than there was between NT4 and 2000. Hell there's more new than there was between NT4 and XP.
While certainly, many of the "gee whiz" demo's we see of the eye candy are largely useless, and could even be considered a detriment to productivity, there are a number of more subtle side-effects of this eye candy which are and can be very useful and a benefit to productivity.
A good example is the window shadows in OS X. These are created through compositing, which is part of the "eye candy" layer. The drop shadows help define the edge of the window without having to have a thick and useless window border. OS X windows are borderless, which improves screen usage, and the shadows allow you to clearly define the edge.
Another example is Expose. This is handled by the compositing system as well, to resize, scale, and reposition the windows
Translucency is another benefit in certain areas, such as with overlays.
While all these things can be done without a fancy eye candy layer or 3D acceleration, they suck up CPU power. We'll eventually see the 'gee whiz' stuff go away, but the real productivity boosts will stick around.
Also, there's the argument that "Hey, i have all this power, why should I just let it go to waste doing nothing" has some merit as well.
The biggest problem with this solution is that it's all client side. Outlook is a combination of client side and server side functionality. For example, if I accept a meeting request, put it on my calendar, and then go home. I can access my calendar from anywhere and see what my schedule is without having to connect to my desktop machine.
Now, sure, there are various workarounds. You could use a VPN and store all your calendar information on an smb share or nfs drive, but that's pretty slow, not to mention that it requires a great deal of configuration to set up.
Outlook/Exchange work very well for what they do, even if they suck in many other ways. The end user experience is largely "it just works" for every condition they might want.
As in communicating that I am holding a meeting next tuesday, and would like you and 20 others to attend, and you communicataing back that you will or won't be there, and possibly me having to reschedule that meeting to a different time, and you agreeing or disagreeing to be there, all without having to open up a calendar program and retype all the details?
No, I guess I don't see how email and calendaring might be related.
Of course there are problems today that allow that kind of thing to happen, but that's not what this thread is about. This thread is saying that even IF you are able to completely remove every avenue for spyware to get on your machine without your permission, it can't stop you from installing it WITH your permission.
This sounds like you're confusing the difference between default style sheets and the box model.
CSS doesn't define what the default paddings and margins are, thus each browser is left to their own devices to define what those are for their own application. If you don't set your own defaults, then you're at the mercy of whatever the browser vendor defines, all without violating any standard.
It's certainly true that Microsoft sat on their ass for 4 years, but nothing can change that now.
I think the LAST thing we want Microsoft to do is simply throw bodies at the problem. You want people with experience, and passion for developing web browsers, not some guy who's spent his last 2 years working on Office thrown in to help.
The fact of the matter is, even for Microsoft, they don't have unlimited resources. They are bound by the same kinds of talent shortages you find everywhere. I'm not saying they couldn't find a few more bodies if they wanted to, but sometimes a gelled team is much better than constantly adding more people.
You also seem to make the same mistake lots of other people do. They complain that MS is busy creating shiny graphics, but this ignores the fact that the graphic designers are not programmers, and you couldn't put them on tasks like implementing CSS features. The people working on their SVG and Flash alternatives are not web browser programmers, most likely, but graphics programmers. It's a different skill set. Also, those projects are used in more than just the browser, so they have exposure in Office, the OS, Development Toools, etc...
Oh, and Visual Studio 2005 is XHTML and CSS oriented, so that should give you some kind of idea of the committment Microsoft has to these technologies.
My guess is that you're NOT actually using strict mode. Simply using a strict doctype is not enough, there's lots of things that will put IE6 into quirksmode, like using an XML declaration, or having *ANYTHING* (including a blank line) before the doctype.
Your other problem is called the "peek-a-boo" bug, and is well known (google for it). This is fixed in IE7, by the way.
IE7's box model is fully compliant in strict mode. In fact, IE6's box model is fully compliant when in strict mode as well. Of course many people assume otherwise because they don't know they're running in quirks mode.
I've no doubt that both Apple and Opera have deliberately focused their CSS implementation on passing ACID, but they're still way ahead of IE7, and at least have a commitment to implementing CSS standards, rather than 'implementing the bits we can be bothered to, and thus force web developers everywhere only to use what works on IE'.
The IE team has said they're committed to standards support, and they're working pretty heavily with the WaSP project to get there. Rome wasn't built in a day, though, and IE7 is just the first step to standards compliance.
rant on:
I get pretty sick of hearing people say stuff like "Why can't they just make it standards compliant"? This ignores the fact that making something standards compliant isn't an easy task. In fact, NO browser is fully standards compliant yet, and that should be testament enough to how difficult it is.
Would you rather they wait another 5 years to release a fully compliant IE than release one in a decent timeframe that addresses the largest number of common issues? Yes, yes, you can complain all you like about how they sat on their ass for 5 years, but that doesn't change the fact that they're working their asses off now, and all they get is crap like this.
Tabs are MDI. MDI stands for Multiple Document Interface. If you are using a single application that allows multiple documents to be open simultaneously and switched between, it's MDI, whether it uses tabs or any other mechanism.
It's amazingly simple to determine if MFC is being used statically in an application. Look for the teltale signs in the Windows classes with Spy++ or dump the executables and find the symbols.
Ok, just fired up spy++ and took a look at Outlook and guess what? One of the windows under the root window is AfxWndW, MFC finger prints right there.
Not really true. All of the things you mention can be done by simply exporting the configuration to a text file and then using the exact same tools you use for apache to diff, patch, or whatever. And it's the same on each version of IIS (though obviously the entries in the file will have differences).
Slashdot Mirror
Hm, do we have no discovery process since Abramoff plead guilty? In that case we may never know what he was talking about. But he was working for Gates. Did he take a bullet for his boss by pleaing guilty?
It seems to me that, based on the amount of money spent on lobbying by Microsoft (some $360,000) they didn't hire abramhoff for much. They're well below average for abramhoff's clients, even though they were the #1 contributor to campaign funds.
Microsoft learned back in the 90's that if you don't contribute to politicians funds, you have almost no voice on capital hill. Since then, they've been pretty strong in contributing to various campaigns, but of a largely bi-partison nature.
Given the small amount of money spent on abramhoff, it seems unlikely that they hired him for much of anything serious.
It might be hard to compell them to pay for return shipping (assuming you bought it online), since that's not really required by the law. However, you could certainly make the case that you shouldn't have to pay a restocking fee or have the initial shipping fees subtracted from your refund (which is typically the case with Dell and the like if you return a PC), so long as you explicitly state you're returning it because you don't agree with the terms of the software license.
This is very true. But there is a reason for this "carefully worded" requirments. All too often, vendors lie about their specs. "Sure, we're section 508 compliant" and in reality all it means is that they have alt tags on their images.
So, what happens, is you specify all your requirements, and in reality, only a few vendors meet those requirements, but a dozen or so "cheaper" vendors who meet the specs on paper end up winning the contract, and then we're stuck with crap.
This has lead to requirements being VERY specific, so that you don't end up with something that barely does what it claims to.
No. This is a common misconception.
First, ProCD v. Zeidenberg is the appropriate case law that ruled that agreements after the purchase are legal, so long as you have the ability to return the product later if you don't agree to the terms.
Second, You can return the software, but you must return the PC it came with at the same time, since they're licensed together. It would be like trying to return the car stereo from the car you bought, because you don't want it. You can return the car, and you can order a car without the stereo, but you can't return just the stereo for a refund.
And, again, I don't agree with these... but that's the way it is.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/6/7/067ff 52c-a552-4f6e-852c-03d086b41f68/reimaging.doc
r ief.mspx
"However, the Microsoft Volume Licensing program does not offer the full version of Microsoft Windows® desktop operating system licenses. The Microsoft Windows desktop operating system should be licensed either pre-installed through the OEM, or as FPP retail product. A volume licensing customer can use their volume licensing media to re-image their Microsoft Windows desktop operating system from an OEM provided that it is the same version and product type as that on the Certificate of Authenticity label that came with the PC."
also:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/volb
"Operating System License Requirements: Initial Operating System and Transfer of License
Customers must first have a full desktop operating system installed on their machine before they are eligible to acquire an upgrade license for the Microsoft Windows desktop operating system via Microsoft's volume licensing programs. Customers cannot acquire full Microsoft Windows desktop operating system licenses through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs, only upgrade licenses."
That's a different deal, and this basically gives you a "full retail" license (rather than an OEM license that is restricted to a specific machine). The only real reason to do this is to upgrade an older version of Windows, or to install on a machine you've built yourself.
Further, you can buy machines with FreeDOS or Linux instead of Windows. you just can't buy it without ANY OS.
Actually, the reason they say it's a risk to their customers is that many of them have volume license agreements, and they mistakenly believe their license allows them to buy naked PC's and install their volume license. The volume license requires the purchase of an OEM license. Thus, the risk is encouraging customers to violate their licenses. Don't believe customers don't know their license? Look how many people in this thread (and even the article itself) mention volume licenses as a reason to buy Naked PC's.
I'm not saying I like that policy either, but that's just the way it is.
You should really read your licensing agreement with Microsoft. Your volume license agreement is dependant upon you buying an OEM license for the product, in effect "upgrading" your OEM licenses to volume licenses.
What that means is that you can't (legally) buy a PC wihtout an OS and install a volume license.
It should be pointed out that Microsoft doesn't seem to be urging their OEM's to sell all PC's with Windows. They're urging them not to sell "Naked" PC's. Dropping on a copy of FreeDOS makes it no longer Naked, or Linux.
This is nothing new. Dell has been shipping systems with FreeDOS for years to get around the "Naked PC" issue.
Microsoft is concerned that people are buying PC's to violate their OEM license by installing their old OEM copy on their new PC. And frankly, let's be honest, that's likely the largest percentage of people that buy "Naked" PC's. Although nothing stops them from buying their PC's with FreeDOS and then wiping it and replacing it with an illegal copy either, so the whole issue is rather silly.
Yeah, except that you can't seek within songs.
The GPL would not have helped them at all. The GPL only enforces freedom of the code. It does not ensure compensation for your work. OpenBSD's problems are financial, not Freedom based.
I think you seriously overestimate the Mac compatibility. Every major release of MacOS (7, 8, 9, etc..) have broken some compatibility with the previous versions. The move to PowerPC broke a *LOT* of stuff. The move to x86 also breaks a lot of stuff, particualarly os 9 and earlier compatibility.
Windows *ALREADY* supports their legacy OS in VM form. Windows 3.x is handled by a VM layer called WOW, or Windows On Windows. This is part of the problem the articles are referring to.
However, that's only part of the problem. Binary compatibility is one thing, SOURCE compatibility is another. Many of the 32 bit apps that were originally written for Windows 3.x were just recompiled Win16 apps with some tweaks where things broke. It's not simply a matter of emulation.
Oh, and emulation sucks. That's why Itanium's never took off.
While I agree with you about Vista's borders (I don't like them either), I don't think it's as bad as you make out. I don't have any issue reading the titles. The white glow provides contrast against the background.
Also, very little has actually been chopped out of Vista. Really only WinFS, and arguably Monad (it was never really all that solidly a feature of Vista to begin with). Indigo, Avalon, and a whole host of other stuff will be there when it ships, though it apparently won't be installed by default. This was apparently a concession to those that don't want to use those frameworks and want the OS to be just the OS. Also, seperating the frameworks from the OS made it possible to develop for both XP and Vista. WinFX is still very much alive and kicking.
Vista really is a lot more than just XP SP3. There's certainly a lot more new than there was between NT4 and 2000. Hell there's more new than there was between NT4 and XP.
While certainly, many of the "gee whiz" demo's we see of the eye candy are largely useless, and could even be considered a detriment to productivity, there are a number of more subtle side-effects of this eye candy which are and can be very useful and a benefit to productivity.
A good example is the window shadows in OS X. These are created through compositing, which is part of the "eye candy" layer. The drop shadows help define the edge of the window without having to have a thick and useless window border. OS X windows are borderless, which improves screen usage, and the shadows allow you to clearly define the edge.
Another example is Expose. This is handled by the compositing system as well, to resize, scale, and reposition the windows
Translucency is another benefit in certain areas, such as with overlays.
While all these things can be done without a fancy eye candy layer or 3D acceleration, they suck up CPU power. We'll eventually see the 'gee whiz' stuff go away, but the real productivity boosts will stick around.
Also, there's the argument that "Hey, i have all this power, why should I just let it go to waste doing nothing" has some merit as well.
The biggest problem with this solution is that it's all client side. Outlook is a combination of client side and server side functionality. For example, if I accept a meeting request, put it on my calendar, and then go home. I can access my calendar from anywhere and see what my schedule is without having to connect to my desktop machine.
Now, sure, there are various workarounds. You could use a VPN and store all your calendar information on an smb share or nfs drive, but that's pretty slow, not to mention that it requires a great deal of configuration to set up.
Outlook/Exchange work very well for what they do, even if they suck in many other ways. The end user experience is largely "it just works" for every condition they might want.
As in communicating that I am holding a meeting next tuesday, and would like you and 20 others to attend, and you communicataing back that you will or won't be there, and possibly me having to reschedule that meeting to a different time, and you agreeing or disagreeing to be there, all without having to open up a calendar program and retype all the details?
No, I guess I don't see how email and calendaring might be related.
Of course there are problems today that allow that kind of thing to happen, but that's not what this thread is about. This thread is saying that even IF you are able to completely remove every avenue for spyware to get on your machine without your permission, it can't stop you from installing it WITH your permission.
This sounds like you're confusing the difference between default style sheets and the box model.
CSS doesn't define what the default paddings and margins are, thus each browser is left to their own devices to define what those are for their own application. If you don't set your own defaults, then you're at the mercy of whatever the browser vendor defines, all without violating any standard.
It's certainly true that Microsoft sat on their ass for 4 years, but nothing can change that now.
I think the LAST thing we want Microsoft to do is simply throw bodies at the problem. You want people with experience, and passion for developing web browsers, not some guy who's spent his last 2 years working on Office thrown in to help.
The fact of the matter is, even for Microsoft, they don't have unlimited resources. They are bound by the same kinds of talent shortages you find everywhere. I'm not saying they couldn't find a few more bodies if they wanted to, but sometimes a gelled team is much better than constantly adding more people.
You also seem to make the same mistake lots of other people do. They complain that MS is busy creating shiny graphics, but this ignores the fact that the graphic designers are not programmers, and you couldn't put them on tasks like implementing CSS features. The people working on their SVG and Flash alternatives are not web browser programmers, most likely, but graphics programmers. It's a different skill set. Also, those projects are used in more than just the browser, so they have exposure in Office, the OS, Development Toools, etc...
Oh, and Visual Studio 2005 is XHTML and CSS oriented, so that should give you some kind of idea of the committment Microsoft has to these technologies.
My guess is that you're NOT actually using strict mode. Simply using a strict doctype is not enough, there's lots of things that will put IE6 into quirksmode, like using an XML declaration, or having *ANYTHING* (including a blank line) before the doctype.
Your other problem is called the "peek-a-boo" bug, and is well known (google for it). This is fixed in IE7, by the way.
You heard wrong.
IE7's box model is fully compliant in strict mode. In fact, IE6's box model is fully compliant when in strict mode as well. Of course many people assume otherwise because they don't know they're running in quirks mode.
I've no doubt that both Apple and Opera have deliberately focused their CSS implementation on passing ACID, but they're still way ahead of IE7, and at least have a commitment to implementing CSS standards, rather than 'implementing the bits we can be bothered to, and thus force web developers everywhere only to use what works on IE'.
The IE team has said they're committed to standards support, and they're working pretty heavily with the WaSP project to get there. Rome wasn't built in a day, though, and IE7 is just the first step to standards compliance.
rant on:
I get pretty sick of hearing people say stuff like "Why can't they just make it standards compliant"? This ignores the fact that making something standards compliant isn't an easy task. In fact, NO browser is fully standards compliant yet, and that should be testament enough to how difficult it is.
Would you rather they wait another 5 years to release a fully compliant IE than release one in a decent timeframe that addresses the largest number of common issues? Yes, yes, you can complain all you like about how they sat on their ass for 5 years, but that doesn't change the fact that they're working their asses off now, and all they get is crap like this.
Ok, rant over.
Tabs are MDI. MDI stands for Multiple Document Interface. If you are using a single application that allows multiple documents to be open simultaneously and switched between, it's MDI, whether it uses tabs or any other mechanism.
Dude, you've never heard of static linking?
It's amazingly simple to determine if MFC is being used statically in an application. Look for the teltale signs in the Windows classes with Spy++ or dump the executables and find the symbols.
Ok, just fired up spy++ and took a look at Outlook and guess what? One of the windows under the root window is AfxWndW, MFC finger prints right there.
Not really true. All of the things you mention can be done by simply exporting the configuration to a text file and then using the exact same tools you use for apache to diff, patch, or whatever. And it's the same on each version of IIS (though obviously the entries in the file will have differences).
But still, that's really beside the point.