"Neomagic, however, eventually learned the folly of having an anti-Linux policy, and were forced to leave the Laptop chipset market altogether; I am sure that the various laptop makers did not appreciate all of the returns from people who wanted to use Linux. "
No. It was ATI and nVidia making mobile editions of their chipsets that pushed NeoMagic out the door.
Linux is far less relevant than you desire it to be.
Thank you! When I opened up this news story I was worried for a minute that I didn't see any sterotypical anti-MS attacks.
Thank you for not allowing me to be disappointed.
Re:I remember Netrek...
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 3, Informative
A lot has changed since '96.
First of all, I agree that the game was pretty elitist back then. We were having a lot of problems with the eject command on the server being abused driving away new players.
Several of us lobbied to change that, and now eject is non-existant from most public servers. This has improved the atmosphere tremendously.
Another change occured in '97 when I began to actively maintain and improve a client for Windows. There had been a client in the past originally created by Jonathan Shekter and later modified by Shawn Collenberg, but it had numerous bugs. (some which would kick you out of the game if abused by other players which was occuring in '97)
You no longer need Linux/Unix to play, in fact something like 80-90% of the player base use Windows today. I'd suggest checking it out again as I think things have changed. My client is on my website, and Trent Piepho mentioned his Linux client(Paradise 2000) in another message elsewhere.
Re:actually the best windows client is sheldon's
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 2
Sorry. I was just notified the RAID array on my webserver failed, and they are moving the files over to new equipment.
They said 30 minutes to fix it, but that was 3 hours ago.:(
Re:Overview of Netrek
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's not purposeful, but more of a lack of programming effort.
Every time this comes up I say... I should do something about that. I spend about an hour, end up playing games and then forget about it for another six months until someone else mentions it.:(
I'm going to try again to see what I can do tomorrow.:)
I'll just throw in a quick plug for my Windows client... NetrekXP(sort of a play on words, which I'll probably get sued for) available at http://www.sodablue.org/netrek.
I've been doing some work with it recently trying to address known bugs, and finish some of my todo items. This will probably be the last time I work on it, and if someone is interested in maintaining it... I'm trying to finish build instructions and wrap up the source to put up for download.
But yes, maintenance of the game code has been sidetracked by real jobs, Starcraft and recently Return to Castle Wolfenstein.:)
If this was really true, the article wouldn't be discussing choices and how they could move over to them. It also wouldn't explain why Microsoft appears to be very afraid any time someone suggest moving away from Windows.
Think about it... Or don't. I really could care less.
"I think we are already in that situation. That is where the problem has been pushed down to already."
No, this is the problem that Microsoft has been trying to address since Win2k/Me and has achieved a fairly good result with XP.
"I hold that Windows is ALREADY modular, and they already cannot test all possible configurations of Windows+Applications. "
This is a fallacious argument.
Because you cannot achieve 100% test coverage today, does not mean it is an acceptable risk to increase the complexity of your test cases by introducing further variation. You obviously know nothing about testing and risk management.
Answer: it doesn't. You can completely remove bash, csh, ksh and all the other shells from your Linux install and the kernel will still boot up fine.
*You* as the user won't be able to do much, but hey that's not my problem. If you want to define the OS as being without a user interface then be my guest.
I want to know why the state's didn't submit this as evidence right from the beginning. Or why they didn't call this person as a witness during their phase of the trial.
Why would they wait until the last minute?
I don't think there was any dirty tricks. From what I've seen the States lawyers have just not been very well prepared because they keep forgetting things and wanting to bring them up later.
Gates never claimed that it could not be done. Madnick(the Prof from MIT) never said it could not be done.
Their argument the entire time was that it was infeasible to be done. Basically the argument was that it would substantially increase the cost of the OS because of the amount of additional testing that would need to be performed. Not just to Microsoft, but also to the OEMs, or otherwise the problems of stuff not working would be pushed down onto Consumers, which would not make anybody happy.
Now the question the states have to answer is whether or not this extra cost is justified. i.e. does the benefits offered to increased competition outweigh the costs pushed onto MS, OEMs and consumers as a result of this.
It's not exactly clear to me how you can be dishonest about that since it is a value judgement, loosely based on opinion. But if you disagree, which I'm sure you do, I would highly encourage you to provide some quotations from the trial transcript which substantiates your claim that Microsoft was not honest in court.
I'm sure the fact that consumers stopped using disk compression because the price of harddrives had dropped substantially had nothing to do with Stacker's loss of business.
BTW, before claiming stac went out of business, you might want to check www.stac.com.
Actually it does apply with the myriad "flavours" of Linux. That's what the whole Linux Standards Body thing has been about, and why major software packages such as Oracle only certify it to run on certain versions of certain distributions.
Imagine if you will a package which requires KDE. Can you install this and make it work on a system that only has Gnome? No.
I believe that is exactly what the state's are suggesting.
On the one hand it does create an interestingly compelling argument. Gateway could differentiate their Windows PCs such that they looked more like a Macintosh than current Windows. In that sense it may provide for considerable innovation. It would certain allow PC makers to promote themselves out of the commodity market and into boutique computing.
The downside is that within a rather short time period, the various OEMs would have differentiated themselves to the point that software that installs on a Dell won't on a Gateway(as an example). It'll be like we were back in the 1980's again(anybody remember TI's aborted attempt to create a DOS compatible computer? It required DOS software compiled for the TI and never really sold well as a result.)
I guess the question is, do the positives outweigh the negatives? I suppose we could say it should be up to the customer to decide.
But what if the consumers reject this new model and instead choose compatibility over differentiation? Will the skeptics be happy, or will they believe it was manipulation on Microsoft's part and come back in to readjust the rules?
Can anyone tell me why this parent isn't at 0 or -1 for whining about a link he obviously didn't check to see what it was?
hint: I linked to the trial transcripts. If you know of a better link, then post it. moderation should be based on value of the message, not whether or not it mentions Microsoft or not.
The product we are talking about isn't really defective. It works exactly as designed and advertised, but now you want additional new functionality like auto-downloading of patches and so forth.
The alternative I suppose is to pay much more for software up front so you get free upgrades for life. The point is you need to get beyond the "everything should be free to me" mentality.
We'll see. K-K has been tough and fair. She certainly has not been the pushover for the states that Jackson was. She's taking the time to understand the technical issues, she isn't falling asleep in court like Jackson did.
From reading the testimony, it's pretty clear the states remedy proposal won't be adopted as it's just too full of holes. You can never really interpret the actions of a fair and impartial judge, because sometimes they ask counter questions just to try to help enforce a point on the record, rather than really questioning it.
But I suspect the end result of this trial will be much closer to the DOJ settlement than the anti-MS contingent would like. Which probably means another round of appeals.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/legal/nonsett li ng.asp
I've noticed a lot of the reporting has been pretty bizarre, taking points out of context and so forth. When you actually read the full testimony you see it within the context. The lawyers are often trying to press a point, and it may take them 10 questions to lead into it. Often the witness may seem to be playing dumb, but really it's because they have to be very careful and answer tightly worded questions with pertinent answers. Generally a witness is only brought in to testify on a very specific subset of information, and questions outside of those bounds are not allowed. It's a cat & mouse game because the lawyers are always trying to set up the witness, and I find it quite fun to watch.
Points 1 and 2 are part of the DOJ settlement. Most of the anti-MS points on slashbot seem to ignore that.
For some reason point 3 is not part of any settlement, it's not part of the state's remedy proposal either. I cannot figure this out, but the states would rather force Microsoft to release the source to Office than just have them document a bloody file format, yet the file format would be far more useful to existing applications. Releasing source would only further entrench an Office monopoly.
My theory is that since the MS competitors wrote the state's proposal that they were looking for a way to get a leg up without having to do much work. Getting the source makes their job easy, writing import/export support for a file format spec is hard work.
As far as point #5. I would have requested a Chinese Wall between OS and Apps&Services group, similar to what now exists within Financial companies between Venture Capital and Investment groups. i.e. the OS team cannot tell the Apps team anything that isn't already available off the public MSDN website. The Apps team has to submit requests in the same manner as any other group would.
"And what happens when someone figures out how to hack Windows Update, sending out a virus to thousands upon thousands of machines?"
If the updates are digitally signed, wouldn't the hacker need the RSA private key? How would they go about obtaining that?
If they had access to that, as well as easy access to the site, then you have an internal leak within the company. At this point it's not a technical security problem, but one of physical and administrative access.
"Oh yes it is. There is so much wasted time and resources out there because of Microsoft. They must be held responsible for it. Pleading ignorance is not a defense."
It's always easy to sit and take pot shots when you are ignorant of the circumstances.
So basically you are suggesting that Microsoft rewrite Windows such that it only runs software written in.NET.
This would cause 80,000+ applications to cease functioning, the net effect being not a single user would buy this new OS and use it because none of there existing software works.
Microsoft, even with their monopoly, could not force this down users throats.
Your solution is completely unworkable and shows a strong disconnect with reality.
Slashdot Mirror
"Neomagic, however, eventually learned the folly of having an anti-Linux policy, and were forced to leave the Laptop chipset market altogether; I am sure that the various laptop makers did not appreciate all of the returns from people who wanted to use Linux. "
No. It was ATI and nVidia making mobile editions of their chipsets that pushed NeoMagic out the door.
Linux is far less relevant than you desire it to be.
Thank you! When I opened up this news story I was worried for a minute that I didn't see any sterotypical anti-MS attacks.
Thank you for not allowing me to be disappointed.
A lot has changed since '96.
First of all, I agree that the game was pretty elitist back then. We were having a lot of problems with the eject command on the server being abused driving away new players.
Several of us lobbied to change that, and now eject is non-existant from most public servers. This has improved the atmosphere tremendously.
Another change occured in '97 when I began to actively maintain and improve a client for Windows. There had been a client in the past originally created by Jonathan Shekter and later modified by Shawn Collenberg, but it had numerous bugs. (some which would kick you out of the game if abused by other players which was occuring in '97)
You no longer need Linux/Unix to play, in fact something like 80-90% of the player base use Windows today. I'd suggest checking it out again as I think things have changed. My client is on my website, and Trent Piepho mentioned his Linux client(Paradise 2000) in another message elsewhere.
Sorry. I was just notified the RAID array on my webserver failed, and they are moving the files over to new equipment.
:(
They said 30 minutes to fix it, but that was 3 hours ago.
It's not purposeful, but more of a lack of programming effort.
:(
:)
Every time this comes up I say... I should do something about that. I spend about an hour, end up playing games and then forget about it for another six months until someone else mentions it.
I'm going to try again to see what I can do tomorrow.
I'll just throw in a quick plug for my Windows client... NetrekXP(sort of a play on words, which I'll probably get sued for) available at http://www.sodablue.org/netrek.
:)
I've been doing some work with it recently trying to address known bugs, and finish some of my todo items. This will probably be the last time I work on it, and if someone is interested in maintaining it... I'm trying to finish build instructions and wrap up the source to put up for download.
But yes, maintenance of the game code has been sidetracked by real jobs, Starcraft and recently Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
If this was really true, the article wouldn't be discussing choices and how they could move over to them. It also wouldn't explain why Microsoft appears to be very afraid any time someone suggest moving away from Windows.
Think about it... Or don't. I really could care less.
"I think we are already in that situation. That is where the problem has been pushed down to already."
No, this is the problem that Microsoft has been trying to address since Win2k/Me and has achieved a fairly good result with XP.
"I hold that Windows is ALREADY modular, and they already cannot test all possible configurations of Windows+Applications. "
This is a fallacious argument.
Because you cannot achieve 100% test coverage today, does not mean it is an acceptable risk to increase the complexity of your test cases by introducing further variation. You obviously know nothing about testing and risk management.
Microsoft has never agreed to unbundle IE with Windows.
Jackson tried to issue a court injunction forcing this, but it was overturned by the Appeals court.
Why would an OS *NEED* a shell to function?
Answer: it doesn't. You can completely remove bash, csh, ksh and all the other shells from your Linux install and the kernel will still boot up fine.
*You* as the user won't be able to do much, but hey that's not my problem. If you want to define the OS as being without a user interface then be my guest.
I want to know why the state's didn't submit this as evidence right from the beginning. Or why they didn't call this person as a witness during their phase of the trial.
Why would they wait until the last minute?
I don't think there was any dirty tricks. From what I've seen the States lawyers have just not been very well prepared because they keep forgetting things and wanting to bring them up later.
Gates never claimed that it could not be done. Madnick(the Prof from MIT) never said it could not be done.
Their argument the entire time was that it was infeasible to be done. Basically the argument was that it would substantially increase the cost of the OS because of the amount of additional testing that would need to be performed. Not just to Microsoft, but also to the OEMs, or otherwise the problems of stuff not working would be pushed down onto Consumers, which would not make anybody happy.
Now the question the states have to answer is whether or not this extra cost is justified. i.e. does the benefits offered to increased competition outweigh the costs pushed onto MS, OEMs and consumers as a result of this.
It's not exactly clear to me how you can be dishonest about that since it is a value judgement, loosely based on opinion. But if you disagree, which I'm sure you do, I would highly encourage you to provide some quotations from the trial transcript which substantiates your claim that Microsoft was not honest in court.
I'm sure the fact that consumers stopped using disk compression because the price of harddrives had dropped substantially had nothing to do with Stacker's loss of business.
BTW, before claiming stac went out of business, you might want to check www.stac.com.
Please explain to me exactly how court transcripts can be misrepresented in any way?
Until you do, you have no point to miss.
Actually it does apply with the myriad "flavours" of Linux. That's what the whole Linux Standards Body thing has been about, and why major software packages such as Oracle only certify it to run on certain versions of certain distributions.
Imagine if you will a package which requires KDE. Can you install this and make it work on a system that only has Gnome? No.
I believe that is exactly what the state's are suggesting.
On the one hand it does create an interestingly compelling argument. Gateway could differentiate their Windows PCs such that they looked more like a Macintosh than current Windows. In that sense it may provide for considerable innovation. It would certain allow PC makers to promote themselves out of the commodity market and into boutique computing.
The downside is that within a rather short time period, the various OEMs would have differentiated themselves to the point that software that installs on a Dell won't on a Gateway(as an example). It'll be like we were back in the 1980's again(anybody remember TI's aborted attempt to create a DOS compatible computer? It required DOS software compiled for the TI and never really sold well as a result.)
I guess the question is, do the positives outweigh the negatives? I suppose we could say it should be up to the customer to decide.
But what if the consumers reject this new model and instead choose compatibility over differentiation? Will the skeptics be happy, or will they believe it was manipulation on Microsoft's part and come back in to readjust the rules?
That's the question I want answered.
Can anyone tell me why this parent isn't at 0 or -1 for whining about a link he obviously didn't check to see what it was?
hint: I linked to the trial transcripts. If you know of a better link, then post it. moderation should be based on value of the message, not whether or not it mentions Microsoft or not.
Could you point out which section this is in? I can't find it.
1 1- 06revised-annotated.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/nov01/
licensing is covered under III.B
The product we are talking about isn't really defective. It works exactly as designed and advertised, but now you want additional new functionality like auto-downloading of patches and so forth.
The alternative I suppose is to pay much more for software up front so you get free upgrades for life. The point is you need to get beyond the "everything should be free to me" mentality.
We'll see. K-K has been tough and fair. She certainly has not been the pushover for the states that Jackson was. She's taking the time to understand the technical issues, she isn't falling asleep in court like Jackson did.
From reading the testimony, it's pretty clear the states remedy proposal won't be adopted as it's just too full of holes. You can never really interpret the actions of a fair and impartial judge, because sometimes they ask counter questions just to try to help enforce a point on the record, rather than really questioning it.
But I suspect the end result of this trial will be much closer to the DOJ settlement than the anti-MS contingent would like. Which probably means another round of appeals.
Read the trial transcripts yourself:
t li ng.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/legal/nonset
I've noticed a lot of the reporting has been pretty bizarre, taking points out of context and so forth. When you actually read the full testimony you see it within the context. The lawyers are often trying to press a point, and it may take them 10 questions to lead into it. Often the witness may seem to be playing dumb, but really it's because they have to be very careful and answer tightly worded questions with pertinent answers. Generally a witness is only brought in to testify on a very specific subset of information, and questions outside of those bounds are not allowed. It's a cat & mouse game because the lawyers are always trying to set up the witness, and I find it quite fun to watch.
Points 1 and 2 are part of the DOJ settlement. Most of the anti-MS points on slashbot seem to ignore that.
For some reason point 3 is not part of any settlement, it's not part of the state's remedy proposal either. I cannot figure this out, but the states would rather force Microsoft to release the source to Office than just have them document a bloody file format, yet the file format would be far more useful to existing applications. Releasing source would only further entrench an Office monopoly.
My theory is that since the MS competitors wrote the state's proposal that they were looking for a way to get a leg up without having to do much work. Getting the source makes their job easy, writing import/export support for a file format spec is hard work.
As far as point #5. I would have requested a Chinese Wall between OS and Apps&Services group, similar to what now exists within Financial companies between Venture Capital and Investment groups. i.e. the OS team cannot tell the Apps team anything that isn't already available off the public MSDN website. The Apps team has to submit requests in the same manner as any other group would.
"And what happens when someone figures out how to hack Windows Update, sending out a virus to thousands upon thousands of machines?"
If the updates are digitally signed, wouldn't the hacker need the RSA private key? How would they go about obtaining that?
If they had access to that, as well as easy access to the site, then you have an internal leak within the company. At this point it's not a technical security problem, but one of physical and administrative access.
"Oh yes it is. There is so much wasted time and resources out there because of Microsoft. They must be held responsible for it. Pleading ignorance is not a defense."
It's always easy to sit and take pot shots when you are ignorant of the circumstances.
Interesting. I'm curious why you think everything should be free.
BTW the unix/windows thing is an apples to oranges comparison. The issues here have nothing to do with the OS but rather the usage patterns.
So basically you are suggesting that Microsoft rewrite Windows such that it only runs software written in .NET.
This would cause 80,000+ applications to cease functioning, the net effect being not a single user would buy this new OS and use it because none of there existing software works.
Microsoft, even with their monopoly, could not force this down users throats.
Your solution is completely unworkable and shows a strong disconnect with reality.