DOS reserves five special file handles for use by itself and applications programs. They are:
0000h STDIN Standard Input Device 0001h STDOUT Standard Output Device 0002h STDERR Standard Error Output Device 0003h STDAUX Standard Auxiliary Device 0004h STDPRN Standard Printer Device
These handles are predefined by DOS and can be used by an application program. They do not need to be opened by a program, although a program can close these handles. STDIN should be treated as a read-only file, and STDOUT and STDERR should be treated as write-only files. STDIN and STDOUT can be redirected. All handles inherited by a process can be redirected, but not at the command line.
These handles are very useful for doing I/O to and from the console device. For example, you could read input from the keyboard using the read (3Fh) function call and file handle 0000h STDIN), and write output to the console screen with the write function call (40h) and file handle 0001h (STDOUT). If you wanted an output that could not be redirected, you could output it using file handle 0002h (STDERR). This is very useful for error messages that must be seen by a user.
8 bits is more than enough for standard english text. It's even enough to include many foreign letters. The problem is, people have developed different "dialects" of ASCII. For example, the carriage return / line feed schism.
Too bad in China you can be executed for petty crimes or political offenses. And in Russia, you have the ever-popular Right To Be Bumped Off by The Mafia.
But feel free to exercise your right to Be Totally Clueless and Whiny, a popular right among slashdot readers.
Nothing will substitute for good programmers and a good design. If you have some other "secret recipe," then please tell us what it is. And you can turn off the +1 posting bonus for this-- I can read your comments just fine.
Good point. The state of software security is incredibly bad.
It is entirely possible that new laws could improve this. However, it needs to be done carefully to avoid depressing the economy even more. The record of the boys on capitol hill (let's see, they proposed the DMCA, SSCA, and other bills) does not fill me with confidence.
It also might be a good idea to have a "standard" operating system, developed by ANSI or somebody. An OS is a standard, and should not be proprietary. And sorry, linux folks, it also shouldn't be stiched together out of 30-year old bits and pieces by anonymous hackers. There's a reason why X-windows sucks, and it's not microsloth's fault.
And while we're at it, we need a better language than C for systems programming (or at least new libraries for the C language that cut down on buffer overflows.)
Yes, Lotus is still around, but their main product, Lotus Notes, has mostly been supplanted. Novell is also still kicking. Netscape is a burned-out shell-- more than 90% of the market for browsers belongs to Microsoft. AOL bought them primarily to acquire their "own" browser for cheap-- all the talent was most likely gone by then.
I should have found better examples, like whichever companies developed Visicalc and Wordperfect (I don't remember their names, but they're definitely dead now.) In any case, the point here is not that it is impossible to avoid Microsoft (although it is extremely hard, especially for sucessful companies), but rather that software is a business that moves very fast. Today's hot new software titles are tomorrow's trash. You can't expect to keep re-selling old technology-- even if you're microsoft.
Re:We need more disciplines like this
on
Security Engineering
·
· Score: 2, Informative
To get a good program (virtually bug-free and good security...realize that these are one and the same) the structure must be quite rigid. We can't all go off coding as we wish, and just throwing the design and QA portions together on the fly.
Oh, wow. It's another "structured programming guru." And like all the others, he knows nothing about programming.
Good programming is not accomplished by managers or business structures, useful as those are. Good programming is done by good programmers, using a language that allows them to express themselves elegantly.
In case you were wondering, programmers generally use the term "bugs" to refer to flaws in the implementation of a program, not flaws in the design of a program. For example, the fact that Mac OS 7 had no multi-user mode was not a security "bug"-- it was never designed with multi-user mode in mind. The fact that Windows 95 had memory leaks WAS a bug, because it represented an incorrect implementation of the design specification.
It is possibly for a program to be buggy, but secure. For example, an FTP server can be immune to exploits, but still have memory leaks and random crashes. It is also possible for a program to be free of bugs, but insecure. If your FTP server is rock-solid stable, but never asks anyone for a password, you are in this situation. If you think, "but nobody could be stupid enough to ignore security in their product design!"... well, like I said, you haven't been in this business long.
There are a lot of things programmers can do to improve security:
1) Don't use C for networking software. All at once, buffer overflows (as well as faulty pointer arithmatic) become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, there are very few languages that can replace C for systems-level and speed-critical software. But even if you do end up using C, DON'T use the C string functions.
2) Think about your design BEFORE you implement it. It doesn't matter who the CEO of the company is, or how many managers are on the Managerial Board, if the programmers can't think for themselves. For example, can you think of situations where having your email program automatically download and run.exe attachments would be a bad idea? Apparently the folks at microsoft-- or at least the ones making decisions-- can't.
In my opinion, the best programming teams are small, focused teams of individuals, who can work with little interference from management. Trying to squeeze software development into "top-heavy" business models has never worked very well (*cough*, IBM, *cough*, OS/2). And finally, before you convince yourself that you know how to manage programmers-- try programming.
Yeah, selling software is great... from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the business. First you have to employ programmers, who are known to be independent-minded and "difficult." Secondly, the cost to enter the market may low, but the chances of success are low (most software titles are NOT "hits," and you have to be willing to suffer a few duds.) For every Warcraft II, there are dozens of mediocre games that barely allow the software companies to break even. Thirdly, software is easy to pirate, and there is a substantial community of users who feel morally justified in doing so (somehow?) Oh, and did I mention, there are thousands of simple freeware games, utilities, and other programs circulating on the internet. If you product is not better than these, you might as well not even bother trying to sell it. For example, who would pay for a compression program these days?
And if you manage to survive all that, well, there's Microsoft to steal your technology and shut you down. Anyone remember Lotus, Novell, and Netscape?
By the way, there are reasons for the different requirements and privileges associated with intellectual property as opposed to physical property. For example, no spark plug company needs to put a disclaimer on its products forbidding the users to duplicate them electronically. It just wouldn't make sense. But with software, EULAs almost always specify the number of users who can use the product in question at once.
Now... should software companies be liable for damages from bugs? I think it depends on the intended use of the product and the seriousness of the bug. Medical, military, and government software should at least be well-tested and well-written. But a bug that wipes out a user's save files for Bobo the Monkey III should not even be legally actionable.
Idiots like you are the reason for the dot-com collapse. No, really.
How the hell could you say software doesn't deserve to be an industry? Software companies are "appropriate" because they provide written documentation, product testing, customer service and legacy support. And let's not forget... economic security for the programmers! Not everyone wants to take a "day job." Some people enjoy what they are doing, and want to have a career.
I'd be willing to bet you're a student now. Well, get smart. You can't spend the rest of your life in your parents' basement. "Companies" that sell nothing, like VA software, are on their way out. Welcome to the new millenium.
You are missing the whole point. The poster pointed out that legacy support often involves performance compromises. The common practice of distributing binaries optimized for the 386, a decade-old chip, does not help!
x86 is x86...
How about you read a little bit about the history of microarchitechtures, instead of making inane generalizations. The cpu core of a 286 and a pentium pro are almost completely different, even though the ISA is the same. In many cases, optimizations for the older chip will hurt performance on the newer one! Even when the chips in question are new, optimization is still dependant on the computer architechture. Optimizations for an AMD chip may hurt performance on a Pentium 4, and vice versa.
The CPU architecture hides most of these details from us, but if you are doing kernal-level development, you need to think about them. And that means knowing what the fuck you're talking about.
Your arguments are based entirely on the idea that humans are no better than animals. Quote:
There's no real reason I shouldn't shoot you in the face and eat your tasty flesh. Out of courtesy, I choose not to...
Perhaps this indifference to humanitity is the real reason you get "hostility" from other people?
Examine it carefully, and you will see that the rest of your argument consists entirely of childish appeals to sentiment, and a willful blindness to the cruelty of nature. Nature, red in tooth and claw, has maimed, poisoned, plagued, and eventually killed more animals than humanity will ever know. A millenium ago, a faith in the "natural balance" may have been understandable. Today, modern science has revealed nature for the monster it truly is.
Another central tenet of your faith is the primacy of the individual. Quote:
The population means nothing. Shooting an individual means everything to that individual. Deer, like most animals, self regulate their populations to food supply... Solution, do nothing.
So even if my actions to save one individual cost the lives of countless others, it is still acceptable? When deer overbreed, the ones who can't find food die. And it's not simply a matter of not finding a mate... we're talking actual starvation.
Here's a better example. Suppose everyone thought the way you did. Among other things, they would stop buying meat products and drinking milk. The result would be a mass extinction of farm animals such as chickens, pigs, and cows. "Genocide" isn't a very pretty word, is it? Neither is "hypocrisy."
If you remember nothing else in your life, remember this: animals can experience pleasure or pain, but man is the only "animal" that can be cruel or kind. By putting yourself on the same plane as a cow, you demean your humanity and put unreasonable expectations on the animals. By the way, the idea that humans are no better than animals was a central tenet of Nazism. If the human spirit is valueless, if the human body is worth no more than that of a pig, there really is no reason not to shoot your neighbor in the face, as you put it. And no objections to the quest to breed a "superior Germanic race" through selective breeding and mass murder.
Having said all this, I do think the conditions some farm animals are forced to live in is appalling. As soon as we are able, we should move to a better system (tissue cultures, anyone?) But you, sir, need to rethink your assumptions.
My point is simply that feelings are deceptive, and not to be regarded as anything but propaganda unless the source has some credentials...
Having credentials does not necessarily make a source more or less impartial. But it might make a source more reliable under certain circumstances.
Better yet, provide credentials or references to credible sources, if you want to provide an executive summary (very useful) rather than raw data.
Your argument boils down to "I don't believe you." Couldn't you have said that in fewer words?
Finally, I would point out that the number of
MySQL installations probably outstrips the number
of PGSQL instalations by an order of magnitude.
Why? One suspects an evolutionary element at
work here.
The number of windows installations outstrips the number of linux installations. Do you suspect an evolutionary element at work there, too?
You criticize someone for offering their opinion about a piece of software, but then go on to make a highly subjective, completely unverifiable claim about "evolution." You can do better.
Here we go again. It's the good old "3rd-world guilt trip" troll.
The problems facing the third world are cultural problems. They were not created by us, and they won't be solved by us.
Think about some of the problems you described. What are the root causes? Scientific misunderstandings? Of course not. For example, war is brought on by political turmoil. Drought and famine are a result of overbreeding. (Families with more than 5 kids are still irresponsible, even if you're not an american!) Pestilence is a result of poor sanitation. Endemic poverty and squalor are the result of economic and social structures stuck in the last millenium.
I believe we should try to help poor nations. We can do this by continuing to provide educational and financial support. But I don't believe we are responsible for all of their problems, and I don't believe their problems (or ours!) will be solved any time in the near future.
By the way, your ad hominem attacks against scientists serve only to identify you as a crackpot. Physics and math majors are some of the least racist and classist people I know. If what you want is to help the poor, get involved in a charity group like the salvation army. Trolling slashdot only makes you look like a fool.
I'd like to add one more argument. Even if scientific research had no practical benefits at all, it would still be worth doing. Everybody dies eventually, but knowledge and culture live on.
It's true, there are obstacles standing in the way of true "artificial birth," but I agree--this will be done eventually. It's scary how advanced medical science is becoming.
The "problem of having too many people" is not really a problem, at least in America. Our birthrate has been hovering around 2 children per woman since the middle of the 20th century.
The nations which do have a problem with this issue, have many other cultural problems, which medical science is unlikely to fix.
Um... how is saying Postgres is more reliable than mySQL "blathering propaganda"? If the parent really used both, and thought one felt more stable, who are you to argue? Just because he used the word "feel" instead of "analyze" or "examine" makes no difference here.
You use analogies from physics, but you would do well to remember that physics (and all science) involves observation as well as deduction. Sometimes, you have to draw inferences.
By the way, Data, the best benchmarks for a program are derived from simply using the program under normal conditions.
Wine is not an emulator. It will not run on playstation hardware. And the dreamcast port of snes9x is slow enough on an actual Dreamcast, that to run it under several layers of evolution would be excruciating.
Um, I'm not sure what you mean by "sonically varied," but if having long periods of quiet followed by loud crescendoes counts, Rach is definitely in.
I think you're letting your biases show here. Just because you like (insert composer here) doesn't mean his music is more difficult to compress than Rachmaninoff's. You sound more like a wannabe "audiophile" than anything else. Putting down people for expressing their opinions about how ogg sounds, while including your own highly subjective judgments about what composers are good, does not help your case.
I think the idea of doing a double-blind test is great. But it should also measure performance at 128 kbit/s as well as at higher rates. And until you can put some substance behind your pretentious claims, please refrain from posting.
Yes, any theory that assumes that Netscape was primarily responsible for their own fate is "inane", but any theory that assumes MS was primarily responsible for Netscape's fate is considered logical.
Um... yeah. Is there an argument somewhere here?
I don't think any objective observer familiar with the industry could dispute the fact that microsoft killed netscape. The fact that microsoft deliberately "cut off their air supply" (their words, not mine-- look it up) is NOT in dispute. Microsoft put vast teams of programmers on the project of destroying netscape. They distributed internet explorer at a loss. In fact, they gave it away for free, so that netscape couldn't make money selling their browser any more.
The only pro-MS argument you could make here is that Netscape threatened Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop, and so were "competitors." But in retrospect, that argument looks pretty silly. There's no good reason to believe netscape would have been in a position to challenge the windows monopoly had it survived.
When corporations from Japan use government subsidies to drive down prices and put U.S. manufacturers out of business, it is rightly considered "dumping." But when microsoft uses their core monopoly to drown their competitors in a sea of cash, it's somehow more difficult to understand. Research before you post and stop making poorly informed comments.
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Clear enough? Now go find legitimate reasons to criticise your government, not cheap shots like "they're just like Mussolini and Hitler!!"
Let me run that through the teenage-angst resolver script. [WORKING . . . . ..]
Ah, much better. Here's the plaintext.
1) I hate the government. Everyone's older than me, and they must be really oppressive or something. And that FBI warning on videocassetes? That's fucking fascist. Duuuuude.
2) Let's soak the rich. I'm not a communist, but let's kill those capitalist dogs. I'm a comfortable middle class liberal, so I think all people should be like me. Death is too good for the rich; life is too precious to be wasted on the poor. But I will make some token gestures of pity, even while trashing the economy that they, most of all, depend on to live.
3) If you disagree with me, you're a censor.
Since I use computers, I feel that society is a giant machine that can be "FIXED" and that problems are only the result of evil and greed, not of fundamental flaws in human nature.
Hmm... well, all I can really suggest for a case this bad is that you go read a book. Any book.
Slashdot Mirror
DOS reserves five special file handles for use by itself and applications programs. They are:
0000h STDIN Standard Input Device
0001h STDOUT Standard Output Device
0002h STDERR Standard Error Output Device
0003h STDAUX Standard Auxiliary Device
0004h STDPRN Standard Printer Device
These handles are predefined by DOS and can be used by an application program. They do not need to be opened by a program, although a program can close these handles. STDIN should be treated as a read-only file, and STDOUT and STDERR should be treated as write-only files. STDIN and STDOUT can be redirected. All handles inherited by a process can be redirected, but not at the command line.
These handles are very useful for doing I/O to and from the console device. For example, you could read input from the keyboard using the read (3Fh) function call and file handle 0000h STDIN), and write output to the console screen with the write function call (40h) and file handle 0001h (STDOUT). If you wanted an output that could not be redirected, you could output it using file handle 0002h (STDERR). This is very useful for error messages that must be seen by a user.
But feel free to exercise your right to Be Totally Clueless and Whiny, a popular right among slashdot readers.
It is entirely possible that new laws could improve this. However, it needs to be done carefully to avoid depressing the economy even more. The record of the boys on capitol hill (let's see, they proposed the DMCA, SSCA, and other bills) does not fill me with confidence.
It also might be a good idea to have a "standard" operating system, developed by ANSI or somebody. An OS is a standard, and should not be proprietary. And sorry, linux folks, it also shouldn't be stiched together out of 30-year old bits and pieces by anonymous hackers. There's a reason why X-windows sucks, and it's not microsloth's fault.
And while we're at it, we need a better language than C for systems programming (or at least new libraries for the C language that cut down on buffer overflows.)
I should have found better examples, like whichever companies developed Visicalc and Wordperfect (I don't remember their names, but they're definitely dead now.) In any case, the point here is not that it is impossible to avoid Microsoft (although it is extremely hard, especially for sucessful companies), but rather that software is a business that moves very fast. Today's hot new software titles are tomorrow's trash. You can't expect to keep re-selling old technology-- even if you're microsoft.
Oh, wow. It's another "structured programming guru." And like all the others, he knows nothing about programming.
Good programming is not accomplished by managers or business structures, useful as those are. Good programming is done by good programmers, using a language that allows them to express themselves elegantly.
In case you were wondering, programmers generally use the term "bugs" to refer to flaws in the implementation of a program, not flaws in the design of a program. For example, the fact that Mac OS 7 had no multi-user mode was not a security "bug"-- it was never designed with multi-user mode in mind. The fact that Windows 95 had memory leaks WAS a bug, because it represented an incorrect implementation of the design specification.
It is possibly for a program to be buggy, but secure. For example, an FTP server can be immune to exploits, but still have memory leaks and random crashes. It is also possible for a program to be free of bugs, but insecure. If your FTP server is rock-solid stable, but never asks anyone for a password, you are in this situation. If you think, "but nobody could be stupid enough to ignore security in their product design!"... well, like I said, you haven't been in this business long.
There are a lot of things programmers can do to improve security:
1) Don't use C for networking software. All at once, buffer overflows (as well as faulty pointer arithmatic) become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, there are very few languages that can replace C for systems-level and speed-critical software. But even if you do end up using C, DON'T use the C string functions.
2) Think about your design BEFORE you implement it. It doesn't matter who the CEO of the company is, or how many managers are on the Managerial Board, if the programmers can't think for themselves. For example, can you think of situations where having your email program automatically download and run
In my opinion, the best programming teams are small, focused teams of individuals, who can work with little interference from management. Trying to squeeze software development into "top-heavy" business models has never worked very well (*cough*, IBM, *cough*, OS/2). And finally, before you convince yourself that you know how to manage programmers-- try programming.
And if you manage to survive all that, well, there's Microsoft to steal your technology and shut you down. Anyone remember Lotus, Novell, and Netscape?
By the way, there are reasons for the different requirements and privileges associated with intellectual property as opposed to physical property. For example, no spark plug company needs to put a disclaimer on its products forbidding the users to duplicate them electronically. It just wouldn't make sense. But with software, EULAs almost always specify the number of users who can use the product in question at once.
Now... should software companies be liable for damages from bugs? I think it depends on the intended use of the product and the seriousness of the bug. Medical, military, and government software should at least be well-tested and well-written. But a bug that wipes out a user's save files for Bobo the Monkey III should not even be legally actionable.
How the hell could you say software doesn't deserve to be an industry? Software companies are "appropriate" because they provide written documentation, product testing, customer service and legacy support. And let's not forget... economic security for the programmers! Not everyone wants to take a "day job." Some people enjoy what they are doing, and want to have a career.
I'd be willing to bet you're a student now. Well, get smart. You can't spend the rest of your life in your parents' basement. "Companies" that sell nothing, like VA software, are on their way out. Welcome to the new millenium.
x86 is x86...
How about you read a little bit about the history of microarchitechtures, instead of making inane generalizations. The cpu core of a 286 and a pentium pro are almost completely different, even though the ISA is the same. In many cases, optimizations for the older chip will hurt performance on the newer one! Even when the chips in question are new, optimization is still dependant on the computer architechture. Optimizations for an AMD chip may hurt performance on a Pentium 4, and vice versa.
The CPU architecture hides most of these details from us, but if you are doing kernal-level development, you need to think about them. And that means knowing what the fuck you're talking about.
There's no real reason I shouldn't shoot you in the face and eat your tasty flesh. Out of courtesy, I choose not to...
Perhaps this indifference to humanitity is the real reason you get "hostility" from other people?
Examine it carefully, and you will see that the rest of your argument consists entirely of childish appeals to sentiment, and a willful blindness to the cruelty of nature. Nature, red in tooth and claw, has maimed, poisoned, plagued, and eventually killed more animals than humanity will ever know. A millenium ago, a faith in the "natural balance" may have been understandable. Today, modern science has revealed nature for the monster it truly is.
Another central tenet of your faith is the primacy of the individual. Quote:
The population means nothing. Shooting an individual means everything to that individual. Deer, like most animals, self regulate their populations to food supply... Solution, do nothing.
So even if my actions to save one individual cost the lives of countless others, it is still acceptable? When deer overbreed, the ones who can't find food die. And it's not simply a matter of not finding a mate... we're talking actual starvation.
Here's a better example. Suppose everyone thought the way you did. Among other things, they would stop buying meat products and drinking milk. The result would be a mass extinction of farm animals such as chickens, pigs, and cows. "Genocide" isn't a very pretty word, is it? Neither is "hypocrisy."
If you remember nothing else in your life, remember this: animals can experience pleasure or pain, but man is the only "animal" that can be cruel or kind. By putting yourself on the same plane as a cow, you demean your humanity and put unreasonable expectations on the animals. By the way, the idea that humans are no better than animals was a central tenet of Nazism. If the human spirit is valueless, if the human body is worth no more than that of a pig, there really is no reason not to shoot your neighbor in the face, as you put it. And no objections to the quest to breed a "superior Germanic race" through selective breeding and mass murder.
Having said all this, I do think the conditions some farm animals are forced to live in is appalling. As soon as we are able, we should move to a better system (tissue cultures, anyone?) But you, sir, need to rethink your assumptions.
Look in the mirror. What do you see?
Having credentials does not necessarily make a source more or less impartial. But it might make a source more reliable under certain circumstances.
Better yet, provide credentials or references to credible sources, if you want to provide an executive summary (very useful) rather than raw data.
Your argument boils down to "I don't believe you." Couldn't you have said that in fewer words?
Finally, I would point out that the number of
MySQL installations probably outstrips the number
of PGSQL instalations by an order of magnitude.
Why? One suspects an evolutionary element at
work here.
The number of windows installations outstrips the number of linux installations. Do you suspect an evolutionary element at work there, too?
You criticize someone for offering their opinion about a piece of software, but then go on to make a highly subjective, completely unverifiable claim about "evolution." You can do better.
The problems facing the third world are cultural problems. They were not created by us, and they won't be solved by us.
Think about some of the problems you described. What are the root causes? Scientific misunderstandings? Of course not. For example, war is brought on by political turmoil. Drought and famine are a result of overbreeding. (Families with more than 5 kids are still irresponsible, even if you're not an american!) Pestilence is a result of poor sanitation. Endemic poverty and squalor are the result of economic and social structures stuck in the last millenium.
I believe we should try to help poor nations. We can do this by continuing to provide educational and financial support. But I don't believe we are responsible for all of their problems, and I don't believe their problems (or ours!) will be solved any time in the near future.
By the way, your ad hominem attacks against scientists serve only to identify you as a crackpot. Physics and math majors are some of the least racist and classist people I know. If what you want is to help the poor, get involved in a charity group like the salvation army. Trolling slashdot only makes you look like a fool.
I'd like to add one more argument. Even if scientific research had no practical benefits at all, it would still be worth doing. Everybody dies eventually, but knowledge and culture live on.
The nations which do have a problem with this issue, have many other cultural problems, which medical science is unlikely to fix.
You use analogies from physics, but you would do well to remember that physics (and all science) involves observation as well as deduction. Sometimes, you have to draw inferences.
By the way, Data, the best benchmarks for a program are derived from simply using the program under normal conditions.
I think you're letting your biases show here. Just because you like (insert composer here) doesn't mean his music is more difficult to compress than Rachmaninoff's. You sound more like a wannabe "audiophile" than anything else. Putting down people for expressing their opinions about how ogg sounds, while including your own highly subjective judgments about what composers are good, does not help your case.
I think the idea of doing a double-blind test is great. But it should also measure performance at 128 kbit/s as well as at higher rates. And until you can put some substance behind your pretentious claims, please refrain from posting.
Um... yeah. Is there an argument somewhere here?
I don't think any objective observer familiar with the industry could dispute the fact that microsoft killed netscape. The fact that microsoft deliberately "cut off their air supply" (their words, not mine-- look it up) is NOT in dispute. Microsoft put vast teams of programmers on the project of destroying netscape. They distributed internet explorer at a loss. In fact, they gave it away for free, so that netscape couldn't make money selling their browser any more.
The only pro-MS argument you could make here is that Netscape threatened Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop, and so were "competitors." But in retrospect, that argument looks pretty silly. There's no good reason to believe netscape would have been in a position to challenge the windows monopoly had it survived.
When corporations from Japan use government subsidies to drive down prices and put U.S. manufacturers out of business, it is rightly considered "dumping." But when microsoft uses their core monopoly to drown their competitors in a sea of cash, it's somehow more difficult to understand. Research before you post and stop making poorly informed comments.
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Clear enough? Now go find legitimate reasons to criticise your government, not cheap shots like "they're just like Mussolini and Hitler!!"
Ah, much better. Here's the plaintext.
1) I hate the government. Everyone's older than me, and they must be really oppressive or something. And that FBI warning on videocassetes? That's fucking fascist. Duuuuude.
2) Let's soak the rich. I'm not a communist, but let's kill those capitalist dogs. I'm a comfortable middle class liberal, so I think all people should be like me. Death is too good for the rich; life is too precious to be wasted on the poor. But I will make some token gestures of pity, even while trashing the economy that they, most of all, depend on to live.
3) If you disagree with me, you're a censor.
Since I use computers, I feel that society is a giant machine that can be "FIXED" and that problems are only the result of evil and greed, not of fundamental flaws in human nature.
Hmm... well, all I can really suggest for a case this bad is that you go read a book. Any book.