Some systems use microcontrollers with 4K of EPROM, 128 bytes of RAM (including stack) and run at 16 MHZ. If Linux could run on that, I'd be impressed.
"Sure it does. I guess you didn't see the/. story [slashdot.org] about the matchbox size web server running Linux"
Well, that product appears to be a very tiny PC so it's no surprise that it can run Linux (as well as Windows), but what does that prove? There's no OS scaling involved there. If you could build a PC the size of a mainframe would that prove that Windows can scale up?
The real issue on the low end is how few resources are required to run Unix or Windows. Neither can be ported to the most resource-starved embedded systems.
"Does Windows scale from the tiniest embedded platforms all the way up to the most powerful supercomputers? No"
Your right, but Unix can't run on "the tiniest embedded platforms" either. Unless of course, you're talking about some subset of Unix. Once you allow that, just about any OS can claim to run on embedded platforms.
Well, they aren't exactly the same thing, but clearly Linux could not exist without Unix. If one wanted to learn the basics of how to operate Linux, a book on Unix would tell you most of what you needed to know.
Linus accomplished something significant that most programmers will never even attempt, but his task was greatly eased by having a known target to shoot for. All programmers owe a debt for the prior work they're building on, but the debt is greater in some cases than in others.
"In fact, I would say that you're more likely to capture all of these hidden requirements in the code when doing a full rewrite, as opposed to the piecemeal cleanup that he describes. If you do the rewrite all at once, you can take the time to understand the whole system and all of its stored knowledge."
I agree. And the longer you wait to rewrite, the more difficult it will be because the people who understood the original requirements will be increasingly unavailable.
Another advantage to a rewrite is that the design can reflect not only the original requirements, but new requirements that have added since the original design was created.
In addition, you are refreshing the company's expertise in the product. After the rewrite is complete, your current team will a deep understanding of the system and it will take a while for those people to leave the company.
Another factor is that in rewriting the code you can take advantage of new languages. This protects the company from having to look for people with skills in older languages that are hard to find.
This case is, in fact, a civil one. The fact that the government is the plaintiff does not make it a criminal matter necessarily. If it were a criminal case, there could not be a settlement.
I don't think there's much relevance here as to whether or not "Windows" is a non-generic name. The issue is whether a competitor can produce a similiar product that is only 1 letter off from the main word of a registered trademark.
If they wanted a name to suggest Linux and Windows perhaps Winux would have been a better choice. I doubt MS could have objected, although the Linux folks might not like it.
I can accept that. But obviously the point of your original post on MS had nothing to do with physical security, so you might have changed the definition to avoid having to meet my argument head-on.
"Indeed I made a final nervous comment, but read back through your reply to my post, you totally discarded my argument as childish and unfundamented."
That was not my intent. But if you're going to make a general argument and then use it against someone or something, you should be prepared to have that argument applied in ways that you might not like. Thus it seems like a great argument when applied to MS, but you're not so comfortable with it when it is applied to the Internet.
"Hack it, make yourself untraceable, isn't the internet insecure? I'll see you on 8 PM news, you have a few hours to do it."
I have no desire to do so, but are you suggesting that all Internet hackers have been caught?
"The Internet was designed with the sole purpose of being secure, to stand through a massive nuclear attack on US soil and still communicate through alternate routes."
I think you're confusing robustness with security.
"Go back to 101 kid, you have no clue what the internet is."
Ah, the ad hominem argument. If you believe that internet protocols are so secure why don't you give the details instead of insulting me?
I guess the distinctions between embedded and non-embedded systems are disappearing.
Traditionally, embedded systems have a minimal user interface (number pad and 7-segment displays come to mind), minimal ROM and RAM, no mass storage, and hard real-time requirements. For a system like this, Linux (or any desktop, mini, or mainframe OS) seems both inadequate and bloated.
Today's definition of an embedded system seems to be "a portable general purpose computer system". Perhaps we should just call it that rather than use the term embedded system.
"Seriously, if you MS spies or whatever you call yourselves are going to come onto slashdot and post up pro MS drivel in the face of criticism, the least you an do is try to mask it a little bit."
It amazes me how some of the slashdot community flatter themselves by believing that MS gives a damn about what is posted here. Our opinions (pro and con) will no effect on MS's bottom line.
"The problem was that they added nonstandard methods to the standard Java libraries and fooled J++ developers into using them. This made their programs run only on windows."
I think the idea that J++ developers were fooled is a myth. I suspect most J++ developers that used MS's extensions knew exactly what they were doing. Anyone out there who developed an application in J++ and discovered to their surprise after it was finished that it only ran on Windows?
That's what I meant when I said "What a court finds to be legal is what is enforced..". As a practical matter, someone must make a final determination about what is and is not legal and I don't question that. But that doesn't mean their conclusion in any particular case is correct.
Courts have at times drawn completely opposite conclusions from the same law. Therefore, one of the conclusions must have been wrong. Thus there is, in general, a difference between what a law means and what a court finds that it means. This is a matter of logic, not of law.
It guess it would also depend on how long MS would be allowed to take to produce the OS. I can imagine that the judge would have trouble understanding the complexity involved and give them too little time.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot more!
Some systems use microcontrollers with 4K of EPROM, 128 bytes of RAM (including stack) and run at 16 MHZ. If Linux could run on that, I'd be impressed.
"Sure it does. I guess you didn't see the /. story [slashdot.org] about the matchbox size web server running Linux"
Well, that product appears to be a very tiny PC so it's no surprise that it can run Linux (as well as Windows), but what does that prove? There's no OS scaling involved there. If you could build a PC the size of a mainframe would that prove that Windows can scale up?
The real issue on the low end is how few resources are required to run Unix or Windows. Neither can be ported to the most resource-starved embedded systems.
"Does Windows scale from the tiniest embedded platforms all the way up to the most powerful supercomputers? No"
Your right, but Unix can't run on "the tiniest embedded platforms" either. Unless of course, you're talking about some subset of Unix. Once you allow that, just about any OS can claim to run on embedded platforms.
"Linux is not unix"
Well, they aren't exactly the same thing, but clearly Linux could not exist without Unix. If one wanted to learn the basics of how to operate Linux, a book on Unix would tell you most of what you needed to know.
Linus accomplished something significant that most programmers will never even attempt, but his task was greatly eased by having a known target to shoot for. All programmers owe a debt for the prior work they're building on, but the debt is greater in some cases than in others.
Perhaps he has this point of view because the fundamental design of Linux was done by Bell Labs.
"In fact, I would say that you're more likely to capture all of these hidden requirements in the code when doing a full rewrite, as opposed to the piecemeal cleanup that he describes. If you do the rewrite all at once, you can take the time to understand the whole system and all of its stored knowledge."
I agree. And the longer you wait to rewrite, the more difficult it will be because the people who understood the original requirements will be increasingly unavailable.
Another advantage to a rewrite is that the design can reflect not only the original requirements, but new requirements that have added since the original design was created.
In addition, you are refreshing the company's expertise in the product. After the rewrite is complete, your current team will a deep understanding of the system and it will take a while for those people to leave the company.
Another factor is that in rewriting the code you can take advantage of new languages. This protects the company from having to look for people with skills in older languages that are hard to find.
This case is, in fact, a civil one. The fact that the government is the plaintiff does not make it a criminal matter necessarily. If it were a criminal case, there could not be a settlement.
Your use of the word "effectively" suggests that "guilty until proven innocent" is not the real legal standard in a civil case.
If it is, those of us who rent should be suing our landlords to get our deposits back.
"Still, the previous poster seems to forget that Microsoft has already been convicted and sentenced and this is the appeals stage of their case."
Really? What part of my post implies that?
Of course, this is a civil matter so any comparisons to criminals are inappropriate.
Well, Apple fans are more fanatical about the company than they are about any particular product.
I think you're understimating the loyality of Apple fans. Without them, Apple would have died a long time ago.
I don't think there's much relevance here as to whether or not "Windows" is a non-generic name. The issue is whether a competitor can produce a similiar product that is only 1 letter off from the main word of a registered trademark.
If they wanted a name to suggest Linux and Windows perhaps Winux would have been a better choice. I doubt MS could have objected, although the Linux folks might not like it.
"Redundancy is a form of physical security."
I can accept that. But obviously the point of your original post on MS had nothing to do with physical security, so you might have changed the definition to avoid having to meet my argument head-on.
"Indeed I made a final nervous comment, but read back through your reply to my post, you totally discarded my argument as childish and unfundamented."
That was not my intent. But if you're going to make a general argument and then use it against someone or something, you should be prepared to have that argument applied in ways that you might not like. Thus it seems like a great argument when applied to MS, but you're not so comfortable with it when it is applied to the Internet.
"Hack it, make yourself untraceable, isn't the internet insecure? I'll see you on 8 PM news, you have a few hours to do it."
I have no desire to do so, but are you suggesting that all Internet hackers have been caught?
Anyway, thanks for the informative conversation.
"The Internet was designed with the sole purpose of being secure, to stand through a massive nuclear attack on US soil and still communicate through alternate routes."
I think you're confusing robustness with security.
"Go back to 101 kid, you have no clue what the internet is."
Ah, the ad hominem argument. If you believe that internet protocols are so secure why don't you give the details instead of insulting me?
"Security isn't something you suddenly do, it is built from architecture to deployment"
Of course, the Internet itself wasn't designed to be secure, so by your standard we should throw it out and come up with something else.
I guess the distinctions between embedded and non-embedded systems are disappearing.
Traditionally, embedded systems have a minimal user interface (number pad and 7-segment displays come to mind), minimal ROM and RAM, no mass storage, and hard real-time requirements. For a system like this, Linux (or any desktop, mini, or mainframe OS) seems both inadequate and bloated.
Today's definition of an embedded system seems to be "a portable general purpose computer system". Perhaps we should just call it that rather than use the term embedded system.
"Seriously, if you MS spies or whatever you call yourselves are going to come onto slashdot and post up pro MS drivel in the face of criticism, the least you an do is try to mask it a little bit."
It amazes me how some of the slashdot community flatter themselves by believing that MS gives a damn about what is posted here. Our opinions (pro and con) will no effect on MS's bottom line.
"Sun wants M$ to ship Sun's JVM, if they're going to ship _any_ JVM, because Sun's is the "legal" version..."
Correct except for the phrase "if they're going to ship _any_ JVM". Sun doesn't want MS to have the option of not shipping a JVM.
"The problem was that they added nonstandard methods to the standard Java libraries and fooled J++ developers into using them. This made their programs run only on windows."
I think the idea that J++ developers were fooled is a myth. I suspect most J++ developers that used MS's extensions knew exactly what they were doing. Anyone out there who developed an application in J++ and discovered to their surprise after it was finished that it only ran on Windows?
"A monopoly is a well defined term. It means that a company has over 80% of market share."
The problem is that determining the appropriate boundries of a market and calculating the share a particular company has of it are not well defined.
I actually voted for Nader but I don't agree with his position on MS. I think he has been influenced by others on this issue.
That's what I meant when I said "What a court finds to be legal is what is enforced ..". As a practical matter, someone must make a final determination about what is and is not legal and I don't question that. But that doesn't mean their conclusion in any particular case is correct.
Courts have at times drawn completely opposite conclusions from the same law. Therefore, one of the conclusions must have been wrong. Thus there is, in general, a difference between what a law means and what a court finds that it means. This is a matter of logic, not of law.
It guess it would also depend on how long MS would be allowed to take to produce the OS. I can imagine that the judge would have trouble understanding the complexity involved and give them too little time.