He calls this an honest representation of customer demand?! When I got linked to by Slashdot, I got 28,000 hits. And that was a Sunday morning. Say bye-bye to any sort of reasonable cross-section of Dell users.
Thousands of potential customers is thousands of potential customers whether they come from Slashdot or anywhere else. Translates to millions of dollars of potential sales by the way.
Based on a reading of the email offered as 'evidence' of this transgression, it occurred in 1992, 10 years before the settlement! So this is old evidence of a 'transgression' that allegedly occurred before the settlement. It is NOT evidence of a transgression that occurred AFTER the settlement.
Amazing, you got access to the evidence when nobody else did, I am impressed.
The article is more credible than some random Pay Pal, or you for that matter, since I know from personal experience that Pay Pal engages in exactly the described conduct.
I'm not convinced that it was Paypal's mistake to begin with.
I find the story completely credible, since I have personally experienced being treated exactly like this by Pay Pal, with Pay Pal not having a shred of a reason for doing it, nor any explanation, apology, reparation or attempt at problem resolution. And of course, no repayment of interest earned by Pay Pal while holding my hard earned money for months. It feels like a racket to me.
90% or more of the potential audience will be able to view it, and from the producer's perspective, it doesn't suck that much. That's why WMV is popular.
And that is why a monopoly abuser like Microsoft must be regulated. The only correct solution to this WMV problem is for the EU to impose mandatory royalty free licensing.
Being a member of the LaTeX core team and being involved in development and maintenance of several high-profile TeX tools, I know what code quality is -- our code runs with very few errors, and obvious problems are resolved before release time, not after.
Sorry for impugning your open source credentials, however you invited that by first throwing mud at some projects then failing to back up your point. The sin of criticizing somebody else's voluntary project. You know the answer to that: if you think the code is bad then why do you complain about it instead of fixing it?
Have you looked at the source of some Open Source projects lately? I cannot count how often I see error messages or assert failures with GNOME applications -- well, I start them on the command line and not in some window manager, so other folks don't seem to see them. KDE applications are not much better either; to wit the junk messages I just got from starting amarok:
QLayout "unnamed" added to QVBox "unnamed", which already has a layout
QLayout: Adding KToolBar/mainToolBar (child of QVBox/unnamed) to layout for PlaylistWindow/PlaylistWindow
First you talk about looking at source code then you show some assertion output to illustrate you point, which makes it sound as if you have never looked at any source code. Hardly gives you the credibility you need to go scoffing at anybody's software quality.
But let's consider your proposition: you seem to claim that assertion output (which you would only see if you run the app from a console) is some kind of indicator of software quality. Let me tell you what happens in a commercial development shop. The assertions never go into the code because such work is invisible and won't get the coder promoted. Who cares if some QVBox already has a message as long as the program doesn't crash when it runs? Answer: open sourcers do. Commercial developers tend to just want to bury the bad news and wait until it turns into bug reports. After all, closing bugs gets you promoted.
The assertion output you mistakenly characterize as proof of poor source code is actually part of the open source development process. Obviously, the first step in fixing a bug is to admit you have one.
Look at pen computing: since the late 80's many companies (other than Microsoft) tried to push for pen computing and failed utterly, whereas Microsoft decided to take a crack at it and was very successful with the Tablet PC.
Drinking too much of that there Koolaid seems to have rotted your brain enough to miss the rather obvious trend in tablet PCs, a market that just lies there perfecting its pining parrot imitation.
Remember Loki? Ported games that worked. But not enough "Linux gamers" (an oxymoron) bought them.
Loki was brought down by high flying management, not by lack of demand. Linux Game Publishing and Transgaming manage to get by in spite of all the barriers Microsoft erects.
No kidding. These are the same people that had the OS and a good PC (aka Windows at the time, Linux wasn't much of a gaming option then) gaming market, then decided they wanted more dough. So they used their monopoly power by muscling their way into consoles and cooperatives with hardware manufactures, then abused their monopoly ill gains to to buy up a slew of PC game companies to make Xbox exclusive titles.
And now they want us back?
They made the Windows game market split, and now they want to pretend to incorporate PCs into their console world? Hell no. MS alienated the involved but not hardcore PC gamers, and now they want back in? Stay. Away. The PC game market had my money before; they haven't for awhile, and all of that budget went to non-MS consoles.
Sorry MS. I'd rather run Ubuntu even with the problems that is Edgy (and do) and buy a Wii even with its stupid name (when I can get my hands on one). Hell, given your track record, I'd even buy overpriced Apple hardware and a PS3 than another OS of yours or an Xbox360; I may spend more money, but I *know* that I'm more likely to get what I want upfront than buying something and finding some hitch (by bug or design) in the MS design. I don't want this "feature" in your product anymore.
-1, troll? Maybe we need a "-1, critical of Microsoft" to make things even easier for Microsoft astroturfers.
he doesn't need to kill his enemies. They pose him no threat, politically. Nothing they can say or do is going to remove popular support or his power
What utter rubbish. Viktor Yushchenko for one was in the process of displacing a pro-Russia regime in Ukraine at the time he was poisoned by dioxin. In what way did losing control of Ukraine pose no threat to Putin's power?
How is that any different than the state of Open Source Software?
not trolling either...
Nice troll. The difference is that open source software is a not-for-profit meritocracy. When some open source project goes off in a useless direction, it simply dies and doesn't go onto some politically-motivated life support. For the most part.
Another difference is, with vastly more active contributors than Microsoft's relatively small nucleus of developers, open source can afford to pursue a breath-first search of a problem space.
This kind of thing doesn't even have a chance until broadband is as ubiquitous and as reliable as electricity.
Power has been out 6 times in the last 12 months, twice for over 20 minutes. Broadband has been out for a total of about 15 minutes in the same period. Major US metropolis. Draw your own conclusions.
I think what the guy has realised is that a cheap laptop is certainly not going to be some silver bullet in the heart of bad education.
You're being generous. A cynic might suggest that this guy is trading away the technological future of his country's children at the behest of a well heeled international corporation.
BECAUSE, NAT, WE'VE GOT A FUCKING LAWSUIT THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR OVER THREE FUCKING YEARS ASSERTING THAT THERE IS FUCKING INFRINGING IP IN LINUX AND IT HAS BEEN NOTHING MORE THAN VACUOUS STATEMENTS BACKED UP BY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SINCE FUCKING 2003! AND NOW YOU IDIOTS SIGNED A FUCKING CONTRACT THAT IS BEING SPUN BY MICROSOFT THAT THERE ARE PROBLEMS WITH INFRINGING IP IN LINUX! WELL, FUCK YOU! WHERE THE FUCK HAS NOVELL BEEN FOR THE PAST THREE AND A HALF YEARS? I FUCKING SWEAR THAT HOVESEPIAN CAN FUCKING MESS UP MAKING A FUCKING PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH!
Well said, my sentiments exactly. To be honest, Nat Friedman's dodging makes me ill.
copyright on source code is pointless too. Here's one of those unspoken ideas: take random open source project that is under a license you don't like. Study it. Once you understand it, think of 20 ways you could improve it. Rewrite it from scratch... Whenever you run into one of those annoying problems that take ages to solve the first time you're writing a piece of software, just look at the original work. So long as you're not copying the text, just the ideas, copyright doesn't apply.
There is indeed nothing wrong with this, quite the contrary. However, this process only works for software at a very local scale. As soon as you get into complete systems with massive internal dependencies, copyright becomes a very effective protection. After all...
That... ip filter was rewritten in under a week. How the hell can you do that? Well it really aint hard, you just gotta work.
Exactly. People are allergic to work, that is what makes copyright on source code so effective. Do you feel like rewriting GCC just to skirt the copyright?
Slashdot Mirror
He calls this an honest representation of customer demand?! When I got linked to by Slashdot, I got 28,000 hits. And that was a Sunday morning. Say bye-bye to any sort of reasonable cross-section of Dell users.
Thousands of potential customers is thousands of potential customers whether they come from Slashdot or anywhere else. Translates to millions of dollars of potential sales by the way.
Based on a reading of the email offered as 'evidence' of this transgression, it occurred in 1992, 10 years before the settlement! So this is old evidence of a 'transgression' that allegedly occurred before the settlement. It is NOT evidence of a transgression that occurred AFTER the settlement.
Amazing, you got access to the evidence when nobody else did, I am impressed.
How do you know that exactly? Oh, the article.
The article is more credible than some random Pay Pal, or you for that matter, since I know from personal experience that Pay Pal engages in exactly the described conduct.
They told Paypal they were a charity when they are not. It's a clear and simple violation of Paypal's terms of service.
Did you read the article? It says Pay Pal set up the account as if for a charity without being asked to do so.
By the way, I'm glad I'm not you.
I'm not convinced that it was Paypal's mistake to begin with.
I find the story completely credible, since I have personally experienced being treated exactly like this by Pay Pal, with Pay Pal not having a shred of a reason for doing it, nor any explanation, apology, reparation or attempt at problem resolution. And of course, no repayment of interest earned by Pay Pal while holding my hard earned money for months. It feels like a racket to me.
Yes, this is my real name.
Linux, 0.37%
Your numbers are suspect. According to the market research company IDC, 25% of servers and 2.8% of desktop computers ran Linux as of 2004. This is consistent with the 3.3% share of web hits that w3schools measures as of last month.
"why WMV"
90% or more of the potential audience will be able to view it, and from the producer's perspective, it doesn't suck that much. That's why WMV is popular.
And that is why a monopoly abuser like Microsoft must be regulated. The only correct solution to this WMV problem is for the EU to impose mandatory royalty free licensing.
Debian is having internal infighting.
What makes you think Redhat doesn't have internal infighting?
Being a member of the LaTeX core team and being involved in development and maintenance of several high-profile TeX tools, I know what code quality is -- our code runs with very few errors, and obvious problems are resolved before release time, not after.
Sorry for impugning your open source credentials, however you invited that by first throwing mud at some projects then failing to back up your point. The sin of criticizing somebody else's voluntary project. You know the answer to that: if you think the code is bad then why do you complain about it instead of fixing it?
First you talk about looking at source code then you show some assertion output to illustrate you point, which makes it sound as if you have never looked at any source code. Hardly gives you the credibility you need to go scoffing at anybody's software quality.
But let's consider your proposition: you seem to claim that assertion output (which you would only see if you run the app from a console) is some kind of indicator of software quality. Let me tell you what happens in a commercial development shop. The assertions never go into the code because such work is invisible and won't get the coder promoted. Who cares if some QVBox already has a message as long as the program doesn't crash when it runs? Answer: open sourcers do. Commercial developers tend to just want to bury the bad news and wait until it turns into bug reports. After all, closing bugs gets you promoted.
The assertion output you mistakenly characterize as proof of poor source code is actually part of the open source development process. Obviously, the first step in fixing a bug is to admit you have one.
Look at pen computing: since the late 80's many companies (other than Microsoft) tried to push for pen computing and failed utterly, whereas Microsoft decided to take a crack at it and was very successful with the Tablet PC.
Drinking too much of that there Koolaid seems to have rotted your brain enough to miss the rather obvious trend in tablet PCs, a market that just lies there perfecting its pining parrot imitation.
Remember Loki? Ported games that worked. But not enough "Linux gamers" (an oxymoron) bought them.
Loki was brought down by high flying management, not by lack of demand. Linux Game Publishing and Transgaming manage to get by in spite of all the barriers Microsoft erects.
No kidding. These are the same people that had the OS and a good PC (aka Windows at the time, Linux wasn't much of a gaming option then) gaming market, then decided they wanted more dough. So they used their monopoly power by muscling their way into consoles and cooperatives with hardware manufactures, then abused their monopoly ill gains to to buy up a slew of PC game companies to make Xbox exclusive titles.
And now they want us back?
They made the Windows game market split, and now they want to pretend to incorporate PCs into their console world? Hell no. MS alienated the involved but not hardcore PC gamers, and now they want back in? Stay. Away. The PC game market had my money before; they haven't for awhile, and all of that budget went to non-MS consoles.
Sorry MS. I'd rather run Ubuntu even with the problems that is Edgy (and do) and buy a Wii even with its stupid name (when I can get my hands on one). Hell, given your track record, I'd even buy overpriced Apple hardware and a PS3 than another OS of yours or an Xbox360; I may spend more money, but I *know* that I'm more likely to get what I want upfront than buying something and finding some hitch (by bug or design) in the MS design. I don't want this "feature" in your product anymore.
-1, troll? Maybe we need a "-1, critical of Microsoft" to make things even easier for
Microsoft astroturfers.
he doesn't need to kill his enemies. They pose him no threat, politically. Nothing they can say or do is going to remove popular support or his power
What utter rubbish. Viktor Yushchenko for one was in the process of displacing a pro-Russia regime in Ukraine at the time he was poisoned by dioxin. In what way did losing control of Ukraine pose no threat to Putin's power?
Can anyone thing of an instance where he took a blatantly stupid position on something?
Bitkeeper. Linus is capable of the occasional misstep just like any mere mortal.
How is that any different than the state of Open Source Software?
not trolling either...
Nice troll. The difference is that open source software is a not-for-profit meritocracy. When some open source project goes off in a useless direction, it simply dies and doesn't go onto some politically-motivated life support. For the most part.
Another difference is, with vastly more active contributors than Microsoft's relatively small nucleus of developers, open source can afford to pursue a breath-first search of a problem space.
This kind of thing doesn't even have a chance until broadband is as ubiquitous and as reliable as electricity.
Power has been out 6 times in the last 12 months, twice for over 20 minutes. Broadband has been out for a total of about 15 minutes in the same period. Major US metropolis. Draw your own conclusions.
Google has almost 73% world market share
What is that, new math? Add up your own figures, troll.
The really interesting thing is that Wikipedia beat Microsoft in "spreadsheet".
Any company that claims to "Do No Harm" is obviously the most evil vile company of them all
Microsoft astroturfers out in force tonight?
I think what the guy has realised is that a cheap laptop is certainly not going to be some silver bullet in the heart of bad education.
You're being generous. A cynic might suggest that this guy is trading away the technological future of his country's children at the behest of a well heeled international corporation.
Unlike robbing someone, suing someone is a perfectly valid legal process.
Extortion, however, is not.
BECAUSE, NAT, WE'VE GOT A FUCKING LAWSUIT THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR OVER THREE FUCKING YEARS ASSERTING THAT THERE IS FUCKING INFRINGING IP IN LINUX AND IT HAS BEEN NOTHING MORE THAN VACUOUS STATEMENTS BACKED UP BY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SINCE FUCKING 2003! AND NOW YOU IDIOTS SIGNED A FUCKING CONTRACT THAT IS BEING SPUN BY MICROSOFT THAT THERE ARE PROBLEMS WITH INFRINGING IP IN LINUX! WELL, FUCK YOU! WHERE THE FUCK HAS NOVELL BEEN FOR THE PAST THREE AND A HALF YEARS? I FUCKING SWEAR THAT HOVESEPIAN CAN FUCKING MESS UP MAKING A FUCKING PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH!
Well said, my sentiments exactly. To be honest, Nat Friedman's dodging makes me ill.
copyright on source code is pointless too. Here's one of those unspoken ideas: take random open source project that is under a license you don't like. Study it. Once you understand it, think of 20 ways you could improve it. Rewrite it from scratch... Whenever you run into one of those annoying problems that take ages to solve the first time you're writing a piece of software, just look at the original work. So long as you're not copying the text, just the ideas, copyright doesn't apply.
... ip filter was rewritten in under a week. How the hell can you do that? Well it really aint hard, you just gotta work.
There is indeed nothing wrong with this, quite the contrary. However, this process only works for software at a very local scale. As soon as you get into complete systems with massive internal dependencies, copyright becomes a very effective protection. After all...
That
Exactly. People are allergic to work, that is what makes copyright on source code so effective. Do you feel like rewriting GCC just to skirt the copyright?
Posting it on another project's developer mailing list is trolling.
Oh, like when Linus posted about Linux on the Minix list?