"It doesn't really make it easier or harder to code stuff on windows"
Actually, it does make it easier in some cases. As noted in another message, it makes it easier to create a program made up of components in different languages.
Perhaps MS made a mistake by lumping a lot of different technologies under one name.
This seems to me to be no less legal or reasonable than the GPL. All the pro-GPL arguments I read here about "nobody is forced to use..." should apply to this license as well.
Slashdot always portrays Bill Gates as a Borg, well I guess he's assimilated the GPL weapon. Better start rotating shield frequencies.
Actually, I was trying to be funny, but if you want to get technical about it, I was referring to irradiance (Radiant power per unit area incident upon a surface) not flux (Rate of transfer of radiant energy).
One quarter does not a profitable company make
on
Red Hat In The Black
·
· Score: 1
To be in the Black, your assets must exceed your debt. They have to pay off all their back debt before they will be profitable.
"The inevitable has happened -- bootlegged DVDs have emerged from Hong Kong, land of the media pirates. Illegal copies of all three films have been pilfered and pressed onto discs, and are now being sold on all of the major auction sites (eBay/Yahoo/Amazon).
Reportedly, these unofficial discs are nothing more than a straight dub of the long-ago released LaserDiscs with Chinese subtitles and no extra features."
Someone should tell Lucas about this. He seems to be afraid that the Star Wars films will be pirated if they're released on DVD, but that fact is that most people who use pirated materials don't care much about quality. If someone made a bootleg Star Wars DVD copied from a VHS tape, people would buy it if it were cheap enough.
"But staring at a fluorescent bulb in the office would likely be more dangerous. Company engineers say that their retinal-scanning displays produce light levels much lower than nationally accepted standards"
Yeah, it's well below the 32 watts of the fluorescent bulbs in my office. Of course, the energy density is bit higher when all the light is focused on a point smaller than a human hair.
I think the problem is with the definition of "Open Source". There's no consensus on what it means. But I think the BSD people knew very well that MS was talking about GPLed code, not about BSD code. If they want to boost the GPL to their own detriment, that's their business.
This sub-thread is not exclusively talking about cell phones, but embedded systems in general.
Although some high-end cell phones do have a lot of resources, it's not clear if these phones have been successful due to their higher cost. Companies like Nokia may have many different models, but the question is how many different processors they use. It is the need to use different processors that makes "write once, run anywhere" attractive. Of course, I have no idea what percentage of Nokia's phones actually use Java.
It's not surprising that companies see the advantage of not having to pay license fees to Microsoft. But so what? If this initiative is successful, it will mean more profit for the companies involved. It won't mean that you'll pay any less for your cable box or cable services. I'm sure the companies will appreciate all the free work that Linux developers do for them. It sure beats hiring programmers.
"...Of course, virtually all cell phones are moving towards Java currently. I can't imagine the rest of the embedded industry being very far behind."
I can't image why. High volume embedded systems are the most cost constrained electronic products made. They would be better off using "C" or in extreme cases assembly so they could use a less expensive processor and less memory. I know all the arguments about "write once, run anywhere", but how many different processors is one vender really going to use for a line of products?
"And i could lead into the slashdot mantra of if all programs were opensource, we wouldn't need somethng as sloppy as an emulator anyhow... "
So the user just obtains development tools and recomplies the program for their system. OS issues aside, this is not a good solution for most users. Let the vendor do the cross-compiling, that's what we pay them for.
"If they released Office for Linux (or BSD) then they wouldn't have the same "tightly integrated development relationship" with the OS developers. They would be forced to compete with others on a much more equal playing field."
Well, MS Office is the dominant office package on the Mac even though they don't make the operating system, so the "can't compete" argument doesn't hold up.
How many Linux users would be willing to pay for MS Office if it were available? The answer to that question explains why MS hasn't made Office for Linux.
The Atari 2600 was particularly disadvantaged when implementing a game it wasn't specifically designed for. There were no large bitmaps available, just the following:
two 8x1 bit "high resolution" "players"
four low resolution "missiles"
two low resolution 8x1 background registers
one low resolution 4x1 background registers
6507 processor
128 bytes of System RAM
1 timer chip
0 Interrupts
0 Bytes of System ROM
Graphics registers had to be reloaded each scan line in real-time if you wanted to get the maximum resolution. Various options existed for the contents of the registers to be redisplayed on the current scan line.
If you think about it, you can understand why the 2600 version of Pacman was so bad. Only two independent "high resolution" players could be on a single scan line at the same time. So the programmer time-multiplexed the players whenever more than two appeared on the same line.
Compare this with Pitfall. In Pitfall the "player" representing the hero can move anywhere, but the attacking "players" are restricted to their own level. So the programmer didn't have to perform time-multiplexing and the result looked much better.
I'd tell you about the challenge of horizontal positioning, but this is already sounding like an "I had to walk two miles to school through the snow" story.
Slashdot Mirror
"It doesn't really make it easier or harder to code stuff on windows"
Actually, it does make it easier in some cases. As noted in another message, it makes it easier to create a program made up of components in different languages.
Perhaps MS made a mistake by lumping a lot of different technologies under one name.
This seems to me to be no less legal or reasonable than the GPL. All the pro-GPL arguments I read here about "nobody is forced to use ..." should apply to this license as well.
Slashdot always portrays Bill Gates as a Borg, well I guess he's assimilated the GPL weapon. Better start rotating shield frequencies.
Actually, I was trying to be funny, but if you want to get technical about it, I was referring to irradiance (Radiant power per unit area incident upon a surface) not flux (Rate of transfer of radiant energy).
To be in the Black, your assets must exceed your debt. They have to pay off all their back debt before they will be profitable.
From your BTTF link
"The inevitable has happened -- bootlegged DVDs have emerged from Hong Kong, land of the media pirates. Illegal copies of all three films have been pilfered and pressed onto discs, and are now being sold on all of the major auction sites (eBay/Yahoo/Amazon).
Reportedly, these unofficial discs are nothing more than a straight dub of the long-ago released LaserDiscs with Chinese subtitles and no extra features."
Someone should tell Lucas about this. He seems to be afraid that the Star Wars films will be pirated if they're released on DVD, but that fact is that most people who use pirated materials don't care much about quality. If someone made a bootleg Star Wars DVD copied from a VHS tape, people would buy it if it were cheap enough.
"But staring at a fluorescent bulb in the office would likely be more dangerous. Company engineers say that their retinal-scanning displays produce light levels much lower than nationally accepted standards"
Yeah, it's well below the 32 watts of the fluorescent bulbs in my office. Of course, the energy density is bit higher when all the light is focused on a point smaller than a human hair.
"Videogames passed films in revenue last year for the first time ..."
Actually, video games passed film revenue back in the early '80s as well.
I think the problem is with the definition of "Open Source". There's no consensus on what it means. But I think the BSD people knew very well that MS was talking about GPLed code, not about BSD code. If they want to boost the GPL to their own detriment, that's their business.
"Keep in mind that Boeing isn't a tech company"
Yeah, there's no technology involved in airplanes. Or do you mean "tech" as in Amazon?
This sub-thread is not exclusively talking about cell phones, but embedded systems in general.
Although some high-end cell phones do have a lot of resources, it's not clear if these phones have been successful due to their higher cost. Companies like Nokia may have many different models, but the question is how many different processors they use. It is the need to use different processors that makes "write once, run anywhere" attractive. Of course, I have no idea what percentage of Nokia's phones actually use Java.
It's not surprising that companies see the advantage of not having to pay license fees to Microsoft. But so what? If this initiative is successful, it will mean more profit for the companies involved. It won't mean that you'll pay any less for your cable box or cable services. I'm sure the companies will appreciate all the free work that Linux developers do for them. It sure beats hiring programmers.
"...Of course, virtually all cell phones are moving towards Java currently. I can't imagine the rest of the embedded industry being very far behind."
I can't image why. High volume embedded systems are the most cost constrained electronic products made. They would be better off using "C" or in extreme cases assembly so they could use a less expensive processor and less memory. I know all the arguments about "write once, run anywhere", but how many different processors is one vender really going to use for a line of products?
What about Generalissimo Francisco Franco?
"And i could lead into the slashdot mantra of if all programs were opensource, we wouldn't need somethng as sloppy as an emulator anyhow... "
So the user just obtains development tools and recomplies the program for their system. OS issues aside, this is not a good solution for most users. Let the vendor do the cross-compiling, that's what we pay them for.
"If they released Office for Linux (or BSD) then they wouldn't have the same "tightly integrated development relationship" with the OS developers. They would be forced to compete with others on a much more equal playing field."
Well, MS Office is the dominant office package on the Mac even though they don't make the operating system, so the "can't compete" argument doesn't hold up.
How many Linux users would be willing to pay for MS Office if it were available? The answer to that question explains why MS hasn't made Office for Linux.
At some Mobils you now have to enter a PIN number with your Speed Pass, thus making it slower than using a credit card.
"So let's say you are using an NT4 environment. Horrible tcpip stack, no firewall bundled, daily reboots just to keep it running at peak performance."
Daily reboots? I only reboot NT4 after a rolling blackout.
Actually, in some countries North and South America are considered one continent.
Perhaps there should be term or frequency limits for posters.
"But just because a company considers suing someone doesn't make their position any more favorable or justified."
If Xerox wasn't justified in suing Apple, certainly Apple wasn't justified in suing MS.
The Atari 2600 was particularly disadvantaged when implementing a game it wasn't specifically designed for. There were no large bitmaps available, just the following:
two 8x1 bit "high resolution" "players"
four low resolution "missiles"
two low resolution 8x1 background registers
one low resolution 4x1 background registers
6507 processor
128 bytes of System RAM
1 timer chip
0 Interrupts
0 Bytes of System ROM
Graphics registers had to be reloaded each scan line in real-time if you wanted to get the maximum resolution. Various options existed for the contents of the registers to be redisplayed on the current scan line.
If you think about it, you can understand why the 2600 version of Pacman was so bad. Only two independent "high resolution" players could be on a single scan line at the same time. So the programmer time-multiplexed the players whenever more than two appeared on the same line.
Compare this with Pitfall. In Pitfall the "player" representing the hero can move anywhere, but the attacking "players" are restricted to their own level. So the programmer didn't have to perform time-multiplexing and the result looked much better.
I'd tell you about the challenge of horizontal positioning, but this is already sounding like an "I had to walk two miles to school through the snow" story.
"Um, Xerox knowingly and willingly gave away their GUI to Apple."
This is not true. Xerox actually considered taking legal action against Apple.
"Clearly opensource developers' intents are noble."
Give me a break. In what way are open source developers more noble than other developers?
"The GPL protects the freedom of the software, not the freedom of the author or users."
Does that mean the software can sue you if you violate the GPL?
It's not politically correct to make money selling software, but I guess it's OK to cash in on whatever fame being an open source guru brings you.