If Google bundled its software solely as a Google product it would be the same as what MS does. The complaint is that Google software is hidden in downloads for other non-Google products.
This is the same old Slashdot wishful thinking. The extent to which antitrust officials can regulate a monopoly is limited by law and the courts. Around here you'd think MS could be broken up by the government on the basis that Ballmer broke-up some chairs he threw.
Granting a short-term monopoly is exactly what a patent does. "Protecting the rights of the inventor" would be meaningless if it didn't translate into "making a living" for the inventor. That livelihood comes from selling products in the marketplace.
"When the ideas were formed to protect copyright and patents, never was it thought to be used for market leverage."
Of course it was. The market might have been much smaller then but the principle is the same. There would be zero patents applied for if they didn't give the patent holder a short-term monopoly.
So which company with a monopoly similar in scope to MS's had laws enforced on them more rigorously than MS? Certainly not AT&T who had a monopoly that was both vertically and horizontally much more pervasive than MS's. Certainly not IBM who's abusive monopoly was never punished at all due to a decade of lobbying the government and outspending it in court.
So I guess you're saying that both you and MS can't substantiate your arguments?
In any case, it's much harder to avoid violating a patent than violating copyright. You can violate a patent quite innocently, but it's hard to violate copyright accidentally.
BTW, I didn't suggest that open source programs aren't good. Just that there was little that was so original and difficult to implement that MS would be inclined to copy them line by line.
"Linuzzz does not sound like Linux... you really seem to love M$"
I think "Linuzzz" has the same value as "M$". That is, none.
"Incidentally, show me all the programs/sites in the world using Silverlight. Now show me all the sites in the world using LAMP. Oh, thanks.)"
I make no predictions about how well adopted Silverlight will be vs. LAMP in the future, but SilverLight has been available how long - maybe two months. What was the installed base of Linux in it's first two months? You could at least pretend to be objective by waiting a year to pass judgment.
It's arrogant and disrespectful to assume that people disagree with you simply because they don't understand your position and if they would just read manifesto X, they would change their mind. I think it quite likely that most people reading Slashdot understand the GNU philosophy very well. Nevertheless, not everyone who understands it agrees with it.
The US government has to follow the law with respect to anti-trust. That doesn't mean that everything a monopolist company does that competitors (or FOSS advocates) don't like is automatically illegal. It isn't the "pressure" of being sued that is driving companies to sign these agreements, it's cold, hard cash. You know, that thing that the most Linux vendors find hard to come by since their "product" can be downloaded for free.
What do you base this on? What GPL'd code is so incredibly good that MS would risk their billion-dollar ass to copy it line for line? Remember, you can freely steal ideas from GPL'd code without violating the license (assuming there are truly original ideas to steal).
I think the x86 is more appropriate for "vanity" systems than embedded systems. Vanity systems have about the same form-factor and hardware complement as a PC but with a higher price and the the bragging rights to say "we designed it ourselves".
Of course, true embedded systems aren't general purpose computers with a smaller form-factor, they're special purpose systems targeted to implement a specific function. In these systems, an X86 doesn't integrate enough hardware to be very useful and some X86 features like virtual memory aren't relevant in some cases.
The way I look at it, the heavy lifting was being done in the appropriate place. In order for Intel's customers to pay good money for a new processor, that processor should make their legacy applications run faster. If transistors are being shifted from making a fast single core to making slower multicores, legacy applications may run slower. Hardly a good reason to upgrade.
It will be interesting to see the extent to which software developers will add the necessary value to multicore processors to make them succeed in the marketplace. Clearly, what Intel and AMD should be working very hard on is new technology to allow them to continue to improve their hardware performance rather than repackage the old technology that is reaching its limits.
If that day comes, we may look back and laugh at the over-threaded mess we created to try to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of a failed technology.
I think we can safely say that, in general, doubling the number of transistors doesn't double performance. It's not as if we've seen a 16X increase in performance since 1999.
Re:Jobs is a gaping quivering asshole
on
The Apple II At 30
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· Score: 1
Actually, Jobs proves your theory wrong. He is an asshole who started a company and then got driven out.
You're confusing copyright with trade secrets or patents. There has to be common lines of code for copyright infringement to occur. It isn't enough that the code performs the same function.
But as I said, what's to stop someone from examining the freely available extensions, coding them in a slightly different manner to avoid copyright infringement and incorporating them into a GPLv2 version? Seems pretty trivial to me.
Slashdot Mirror
"Despite a court ruling to the contrary"
Actually, the government eventually lost on the bundling issue. That's the reason they can still do it.
"Since Microsoft has an effective monopoly on operating systems for commodity hardware, they have to play under different, more restrictive, rules."
OK, I'll bite. Please provide a link to these more restrictive rules MS has to follow (other than those the court has degreed, which are a given).
If Google bundled its software solely as a Google product it would be the same as what MS does. The complaint is that Google software is hidden in downloads for other non-Google products.
This is the same old Slashdot wishful thinking. The extent to which antitrust officials can regulate a monopoly is limited by law and the courts. Around here you'd think MS could be broken up by the government on the basis that Ballmer broke-up some chairs he threw.
Granting a short-term monopoly is exactly what a patent does. "Protecting the rights of the inventor" would be meaningless if it didn't translate into "making a living" for the inventor. That livelihood comes from selling products in the marketplace.
"When the ideas were formed to protect copyright and patents, never was it thought to be used for market leverage."
Of course it was. The market might have been much smaller then but the principle is the same. There would be zero patents applied for if they didn't give the patent holder a short-term monopoly.
A moderation of "Redundant" means somebody must be agreeing with me by posting the same thing! Please show yourself my comrade in arms!
So which company with a monopoly similar in scope to MS's had laws enforced on them more rigorously than MS? Certainly not AT&T who had a monopoly that was both vertically and horizontally much more pervasive than MS's. Certainly not IBM who's abusive monopoly was never punished at all due to a decade of lobbying the government and outspending it in court.
So I guess you're saying that both you and MS can't substantiate your arguments?
In any case, it's much harder to avoid violating a patent than violating copyright. You can violate a patent quite innocently, but it's hard to violate copyright accidentally.
BTW, I didn't suggest that open source programs aren't good. Just that there was little that was so original and difficult to implement that MS would be inclined to copy them line by line.
"Linuzzz does not sound like Linux ... you really seem to love M$"
I think "Linuzzz" has the same value as "M$". That is, none.
"Incidentally, show me all the programs/sites in the world using Silverlight. Now show me all the sites in the world using LAMP. Oh, thanks.)"
I make no predictions about how well adopted Silverlight will be vs. LAMP in the future, but SilverLight has been available how long - maybe two months. What was the installed base of Linux in it's first two months? You could at least pretend to be objective by waiting a year to pass judgment.
It's arrogant and disrespectful to assume that people disagree with you simply because they don't understand your position and if they would just read manifesto X, they would change their mind. I think it quite likely that most people reading Slashdot understand the GNU philosophy very well. Nevertheless, not everyone who understands it agrees with it.
The US government has to follow the law with respect to anti-trust. That doesn't mean that everything a monopolist company does that competitors (or FOSS advocates) don't like is automatically illegal. It isn't the "pressure" of being sued that is driving companies to sign these agreements, it's cold, hard cash. You know, that thing that the most Linux vendors find hard to come by since their "product" can be downloaded for free.
What do you base this on? What GPL'd code is so incredibly good that MS would risk their billion-dollar ass to copy it line for line? Remember, you can freely steal ideas from GPL'd code without violating the license (assuming there are truly original ideas to steal).
I think the x86 is more appropriate for "vanity" systems than embedded systems. Vanity systems have about the same form-factor and hardware complement as a PC but with a higher price and the the bragging rights to say "we designed it ourselves".
Of course, true embedded systems aren't general purpose computers with a smaller form-factor, they're special purpose systems targeted to implement a specific function. In these systems, an X86 doesn't integrate enough hardware to be very useful and some X86 features like virtual memory aren't relevant in some cases.
that is written from the ground up in Java to blow away IE 4.0?
The way I look at it, the heavy lifting was being done in the appropriate place. In order for Intel's customers to pay good money for a new processor, that processor should make their legacy applications run faster. If transistors are being shifted from making a fast single core to making slower multicores, legacy applications may run slower. Hardly a good reason to upgrade.
It will be interesting to see the extent to which software developers will add the necessary value to multicore processors to make them succeed in the marketplace. Clearly, what Intel and AMD should be working very hard on is new technology to allow them to continue to improve their hardware performance rather than repackage the old technology that is reaching its limits.
If that day comes, we may look back and laugh at the over-threaded mess we created to try to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of a failed technology.
I think we can safely say that, in general, doubling the number of transistors doesn't double performance. It's not as if we've seen a 16X increase in performance since 1999.
Actually, Jobs proves your theory wrong. He is an asshole who started a company and then got driven out.
A man's got to know his limitations.
You've never heard of the concept that the later in the process you discover a bug, the more expensive it is to fix?
You're confusing copyright with trade secrets or patents. There has to be common lines of code for copyright infringement to occur. It isn't enough that the code performs the same function.
But as I said, what's to stop someone from examining the freely available extensions, coding them in a slightly different manner to avoid copyright infringement and incorporating them into a GPLv2 version? Seems pretty trivial to me.
OK, so what are the "must have" future features of the Linux kernel (assuming it ever uses GPLv3) that Tivo might lose out on?
Wow. First you quote me as evidence for your claim and then you explain why the fact that the quote doesn't support your claim doesn't matter.
This is in the context of Tivo. What non-GNU software does Tivo use?