My guess is that the threat from Linux would large go away if Microsoft's prices dropped to 25% of current levels (this would still provide Microsoft with a healthy 10% profit margin).
Not really, because Linux is faster, more stable and more versatile than Windows.
Whichever way you look at it, Microsoft is doomed.
This will not suck any money from Microsoft. They are selling a copy of Windows that they otherwise would not have sold and are still making a profit.
Sure it will suck money from Microsoft, they are selling a copy of XP to someone who would have bought it anyway for 1/4 the price. And you can always resell the thing in Germany, where it's legal. For a profit;)
What really freaks me out, though, is the number of teenagers who have probably never tied shoelaces. Young kids wear slip-ons and shoes with velcro straps. Older kids have coiled elastic laces. Then there's the floppy-skateboard-shoe stage where the shoes have laces but they are permanently knotted loose enough to just slip on and off. Now basketball shoes come with zippers and skates all use cantilever or ratchet fittings. I guess they'll get Mom to tie their dress shoes when they graduate from college....:-P
Can you tie a tie? Incidently, you need to know more than one kind of knot to get by.
To be fair, I can't tie a bowtie. But then I don't think I've ever seen one that wasn't already permanently tied.
So if the kids are stuck in a power outage and need to leave a message for someone, how exactly do you propose they do it?
Print it. This article is talking about the decline of cursive script, i.e., writing. Writing is stupid anyway, it's often totally illegible to everybody but the author. There's no longer any advantage to writing - it's going the way of the buggy whip, and good riddance, in my humble opinion.
If you're a McGuiver type or running a small business on a very tight budget, go for the consumer package. You'll have to do some fiddling, but you can install pretty much everything the enterprise edition has.
If you want corporate warm n fuzzies and a bunch of extras already set up so you can just sit in it and drive away, go for the enterprise version. I suppose most business customers will do the latter, simply because it makes it a little easier to get started.
GIFs are limited to 8-bit colour depth, no alpha layer etc. etc. PNG is a standardised, open format with support for lossless encoding of full colour graphics with transparencies.
Saying that GIF becoming patent unencumbered is going to reduce use of PNG is like implying that when the original patents ran out on horses & carriages people gave up their cars and reverted. Ain't gonna happen:)
Yep. Whether Microsoft's crappy PNG support is actually a conspiracy or just more incompetence is immaterial to me, as I do not care about PNG's on the web. Instead, I use PNG for saving image frames when generating animations, and I normally save in RGBA, which lets me use all kinds of nice compositing techniques. Really, any time I need to save an image and I need it to be lossless, PNG is my choice.
By the way, Mozilla's PNG support isn't perfect either, which you can test for yourself by going here. It's not as grossly deficient as MS, but it's not the quality you'd expect from an OS project either. At least, last time I checked, things may have improved since then.
The best reason to use bluetooth is to link your cellphone with your PDA or laptop. 802.11 is total overkill for that. Your batteries will die in 20 minutes trying to power a 2-foot link.
This is pretty much what Bluetooth boosters like to claim, yes, but I doubt there's any substance to it. Run 802.11 at lower power and power consumption will be similar to Bluetooth. So it really comes down to other factors, such as: which is simpler? Seems to me 802.11 wins this one by a wide margin. Which is more widely deployed? 802.11 again. Which costs less? Which has less IP encumbrance? And so on.
Since I have no mod points, I'll just post an "Amen".
The whole root-user argument is completely irrelevant when you're talking about a consumer (read: single-user) install. In many ways I think it might even be a worse situation than Windows on the desktop because obviously it lulls certain people who don't think about the situation deeply enough into a false sense of security.
Who gives a flying crap if your/etc directory remains untouched when ~ (where the irreplacable files are) has been wiped out?
You'd have to be pretty clueless to lose your stuff that way. I run an rsync to another machine where all my home data is stored under a different password and kept up to date automatically. This is easy to do in Linux. There are lots of other ways to secure your files, that's just the one I use.
Anyway, root priviledge separation *does* help keep your home data safe as well. Normally somebody will need to get root priviledge before they can change any files in your home directory. Unless you do something really stupid like email your account password to a list of people you met on AOL, in which case, you probably need some pain applied to you, just to get your attention.
Follow the story. Sendo is another rape victim of Microsoft. As I understand it, Microsoft contracted with Sendo to develop the Microsoft Smartphone[tm], and slipped a clause into the contract that said if Sendo goes bankrupt, Microsoft gets the IP. Microsoft then proceeded to try to drive Sendo into bankruptcy. It didn't work, but Microsoft had access to the designs and software, and handed the hardware design off to another company, Orange, to manufacture the phone. And obviously, to have less of a share in it than Sendo would have. Sendo was understandably upset.
All the above is as I understand the story, from the bits that have leaked out. Seems to fit the pattern though. I must say, I'm not at all unhappy to see Microsoft's phone come under a cloud of questionable IP ownership, given the cynical way they're supporting SCO's evil attack on Linux. And also given the likelyhood that Microsoft would attempt to leverage its desktop OS monopoly to establish itself in the phone market. And also the likelyhood that Microsoft's phones will be buggy.
Longhorn will break everything, which is a feature they'll have a real problem selling to end-users without an enormous helping of new value somewhere (and possibly even then). By which time, the Linus Torvalds World Domination Programme will have caught up with them. (-:
Excuse me, but we caught up some time ago. The only question is, will they still be able to see Linus's taillights at that point?
Actually, Beowulf clusters of 800-1,000 machines running Linux can be competitive with supercomputers.
News for you: Linux clusters are the new supercomputers. Not just Blue Gene, but probably Ascii Purple as well, which is supposed to be the fastest supercomputer ever.
Are there asshole lawyers? Sure. But there are assholes in every profession - why single lawyers out?
Because nearly all of them are assholes. This is based on experience.
Clients are the ones who file the suits...
Yeah, yeah, that is called "rationalization". It's the lawyers who egg the clients on, and it's the lawyers who have iteratively "improved" the system so that nearly every little dispute ends up at least going to discovery. Usually, things only wind down when one of the parties runs out of money, in which case that party's lawyer gets very interested in settling.
You don't like the way people think about lawyers? Tough. Lawyers earned themselves that reputation. If you want respect, do something else with your brains and energy.
I'm so tired of this "let's blame the lawyers" crap. Remember that it's the actual parties who file the lawsuits; lawyers are merely advocates for their clients.
Have you ever dealt with a lawyer? No? I have. Plenty. In my experience, the vast majority of lawyers are in fact immoral slimeballs, just as the common wisdom says. Comparing to used car salesmen does a disservice to the salesmen. Basically, the advice you will get from a lawyer is normally designed to maximize the lawyer's billings, with scant concern for your own financial well being. And believe me, these guys are hungry for billings.
There are exceptions - Eben Moglen and Larry Rosen immediately spring to mind - but they are few and far between.
Keep this in mind: the U.S. legal system was designed and maintained by lawyers. Mainly, it's been designed to be good for lawyers. Does it work well for the general public? No. You know that, I know that, we all know that.
Well, the "you're wrong" part is wrong, because I didn't realize right away the author was presenting a list of alternatives, and stopped reading at the "wrong" first one.
You're wrong, Nullsoft are the copyright holders, or were at the time of the release. Nullsoft is owned by AOL, but is nonetheless a separate legal entity.
It all comes down to whether Justin had the right to release the code under the GPL, and from the sounds of things, he does. We shall see.
/*
WASTE - main.cpp (Windows main entry point and a lot of code:)
Copyright (C) 2003 Nullsoft, Inc.
WASTE is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
WASTE is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with WASTE; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA */
daniel@starship:/src/waste$ tree | grep cpp | wc
28 56 435 daniel@starship:/src/waste$ grep "under the terms of the GNU General Public License" *cpp -r | wc
28 392 2395
Translation to English: each cpp file has a GPL license declaration in it.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that the threat from Linux would large go away if Microsoft's prices dropped to 25% of current levels (this would still provide Microsoft with a healthy 10% profit margin).
Not really, because Linux is faster, more stable and more versatile than Windows.
Whichever way you look at it, Microsoft is doomed.
This will not suck any money from Microsoft. They are selling a copy of Windows that they otherwise would not have sold and are still making a profit.
;)
Sure it will suck money from Microsoft, they are selling a copy of XP to someone who would have bought it anyway for 1/4 the price. And you can always resell the thing in Germany, where it's legal. For a profit
What really freaks me out, though, is the number of teenagers who have probably never tied shoelaces. Young kids wear slip-ons and shoes with velcro straps. Older kids have coiled elastic laces. Then there's the floppy-skateboard-shoe stage where the shoes have laces but they are permanently knotted loose enough to just slip on and off. Now basketball shoes come with zippers and skates all use cantilever or ratchet fittings. I guess they'll get Mom to tie their dress shoes when they graduate from college.... :-P
Can you tie a tie? Incidently, you need to know more than one kind of knot to get by.
To be fair, I can't tie a bowtie. But then I don't think I've ever seen one that wasn't already permanently tied.
So if the kids are stuck in a power outage and need to leave a message for someone, how exactly do you propose they do it?
Print it. This article is talking about the decline of cursive script, i.e., writing. Writing is stupid anyway, it's often totally illegible to everybody but the author. There's no longer any advantage to writing - it's going the way of the buggy whip, and good riddance, in my humble opinion.
If you're a McGuiver type or running a small business on a very tight budget, go for the consumer package. You'll have to do some fiddling, but you can install pretty much everything the enterprise edition has.
If you want corporate warm n fuzzies and a bunch of extras already set up so you can just sit in it and drive away, go for the enterprise version. I suppose most business customers will do the latter, simply because it makes it a little easier to get started.
Price dumping implies Microsoft is selling it below cost. It costs far less than $50 to produce a WindowsXP CD.
You're right, the actual name for this is predatory marketing, and it too is illegal.
Not that we should expect the Bush administration to care.
If you had bought a Lindows system, why would you wanna buy XP. You've obviously made a choice not to buy windows.
Or you've decided to take advantage of billg's generosity, and get XP for $149 total, including a copy of Lindows. Dual boot on a beer budget!
Everybody buy this, I say. (And help get another money suck going, much like XBox.)
GIFs are limited to 8-bit colour depth, no alpha layer etc. etc. PNG is a standardised, open format with support for lossless encoding of full colour graphics with transparencies.
:)
Saying that GIF becoming patent unencumbered is going to reduce use of PNG is like implying that when the original patents ran out on horses & carriages people gave up their cars and reverted. Ain't gonna happen
Yep. Whether Microsoft's crappy PNG support is actually a conspiracy or just more incompetence is immaterial to me, as I do not care about PNG's on the web. Instead, I use PNG for saving image frames when generating animations, and I normally save in RGBA, which lets me use all kinds of nice compositing techniques. Really, any time I need to save an image and I need it to be lossless, PNG is my choice.
By the way, Mozilla's PNG support isn't perfect either, which you can test for yourself by going here. It's not as grossly deficient as MS, but it's not the quality you'd expect from an OS project either. At least, last time I checked, things may have improved since then.
The best reason to use bluetooth is to link your cellphone with your PDA or laptop. 802.11 is total overkill for that. Your batteries will die in 20 minutes trying to power a 2-foot link.
This is pretty much what Bluetooth boosters like to claim, yes, but I doubt there's any substance to it. Run 802.11 at lower power and power consumption will be similar to Bluetooth. So it really comes down to other factors, such as: which is simpler? Seems to me 802.11 wins this one by a wide margin. Which is more widely deployed? 802.11 again. Which costs less? Which has less IP encumbrance? And so on.
I say, bury Bluetooth now and let's move forward.
Since I have no mod points, I'll just post an "Amen".
/etc directory remains untouched when ~ (where the irreplacable files are) has been wiped out?
The whole root-user argument is completely irrelevant when you're talking about a consumer (read: single-user) install. In many ways I think it might even be a worse situation than Windows on the desktop because obviously it lulls certain people who don't think about the situation deeply enough into a false sense of security.
Who gives a flying crap if your
You'd have to be pretty clueless to lose your stuff that way. I run an rsync to another machine where all my home data is stored under a different password and kept up to date automatically. This is easy to do in Linux. There are lots of other ways to secure your files, that's just the one I use.
Anyway, root priviledge separation *does* help keep your home data safe as well. Normally somebody will need to get root priviledge before they can change any files in your home directory. Unless you do something really stupid like email your account password to a list of people you met on AOL, in which case, you probably need some pain applied to you, just to get your attention.
Sendo *must* be a subsidiary of SCO...
Follow the story. Sendo is another rape victim of Microsoft. As I understand it, Microsoft contracted with Sendo to develop the Microsoft Smartphone[tm], and slipped a clause into the contract that said if Sendo goes bankrupt, Microsoft gets the IP. Microsoft then proceeded to try to drive Sendo into bankruptcy. It didn't work, but Microsoft had access to the designs and software, and handed the hardware design off to another company, Orange, to manufacture the phone. And obviously, to have less of a share in it than Sendo would have. Sendo was understandably upset.
All the above is as I understand the story, from the bits that have leaked out. Seems to fit the pattern though. I must say, I'm not at all unhappy to see Microsoft's phone come under a cloud of questionable IP ownership, given the cynical way they're supporting SCO's evil attack on Linux. And also given the likelyhood that Microsoft would attempt to leverage its desktop OS monopoly to establish itself in the phone market. And also the likelyhood that Microsoft's phones will be buggy.
So I say: go Sendo.
"Death Spiral" is absurdly optimistic when speaking of a company that has $40B on tap.
That could disappear in a flash if a future administration decides that Microsoft should be punished for breaking the law, after all.
Longhorn will break everything, which is a feature they'll have a real problem selling to end-users without an enormous helping of new value somewhere (and possibly even then). By which time, the Linus Torvalds World Domination Programme will have caught up with them. (-:
Excuse me, but we caught up some time ago. The only question is, will they still be able to see Linus's taillights at that point?
If you work for almost any software development company, the stuff you write is (C)The Company and not (C)Joe Programmer.
It depends what your contract says. I suspect Justin's isn't the standard, evil boilerplate.
Actually, Beowulf clusters of 800-1,000 machines running Linux can be competitive with supercomputers.
News for you: Linux clusters are the new supercomputers. Not just Blue Gene, but probably Ascii Purple as well, which is supposed to be the fastest supercomputer ever.
Are there asshole lawyers? Sure. But there are assholes in every profession - why single lawyers out?
Because nearly all of them are assholes. This is based on experience.
Clients are the ones who file the suits...
Yeah, yeah, that is called "rationalization". It's the lawyers who egg the clients on, and it's the lawyers who have iteratively "improved" the system so that nearly every little dispute ends up at least going to discovery. Usually, things only wind down when one of the parties runs out of money, in which case that party's lawyer gets very interested in settling.
You don't like the way people think about lawyers? Tough. Lawyers earned themselves that reputation. If you want respect, do something else with your brains and energy.
How about patenting the concept of porting a way of auctioning things over the internet from IPV4 to IPV6?
Or bidding via a cell phone instead of a computer.
I'm so tired of this "let's blame the lawyers" crap. Remember that it's the actual parties who file the lawsuits; lawyers are merely advocates for their clients.
Have you ever dealt with a lawyer? No? I have. Plenty. In my experience, the vast majority of lawyers are in fact immoral slimeballs, just as the common wisdom says. Comparing to used car salesmen does a disservice to the salesmen. Basically, the advice you will get from a lawyer is normally designed to maximize the lawyer's billings, with scant concern for your own financial well being. And believe me, these guys are hungry for billings.
There are exceptions - Eben Moglen and Larry Rosen immediately spring to mind - but they are few and far between.
Keep this in mind: the U.S. legal system was designed and maintained by lawyers. Mainly, it's been designed to be good for lawyers. Does it work well for the general public? No. You know that, I know that, we all know that.
The patent system is the same.
LUFS only works with OpenSSH. When using commercial SSH, it fails miserably.
Or commercial SSH fails miserably.
This post shouldn't be modded offtopic...
Well, the "you're wrong" part is wrong, because I didn't realize right away the author was presenting a list of alternatives, and stopped reading at the "wrong" first one.
Other than that, it still seems pretty accurate.
Sure, when MS saw the lawsuit, they were filled with glee and they went out and bought a license...
The day after SCO sent out the letters...
But that doesn't mean that they created the situation, that they planned it.
It doesn't prove it, no, but it does make it seem highly probable.
I can't even get people to agree to deploy Apache to replace our aging iPlanet webserver deployments...
Dust off your resume and get out of there fast.
1. AOL are the copyright holders...
/* :)
You're wrong, Nullsoft are the copyright holders, or were at the time of the release. Nullsoft is owned by AOL, but is nonetheless a separate legal entity.
It all comes down to whether Justin had the right to release the code under the GPL, and from the sounds of things, he does. We shall see.
WASTE - main.cpp (Windows main entry point and a lot of code
Copyright (C) 2003 Nullsoft, Inc.
WASTE is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
WASTE is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with WASTE; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
*/
daniel@starship:/src/waste$ tree | grep cpp | wc
28 56 435
daniel@starship:/src/waste$ grep "under the terms of the GNU General Public License" *cpp -r | wc
28 392 2395
Translation to English: each cpp file has a GPL license declaration in it.
If IIS was written in managed .NET code running in an isolated .NET VM, then many of its current security problems would disappear.
:)
And new ones would appear. Meanwhile, Microsoft would tell everybody it's perfectly secure because the old bugs are gone. Then the fun starts