So? I said nothing about the litigation, and admit full-well to not being fully versed in this. You have avoided my central point that applets are for the most part historical relics.
Further, your use of the phrase "J2EE and other irrelevant bits" convinces me that you are -- as happens so frequently in these kinds of dicussions -- attempting to knock Java in lieu of your favorite technology. Judging by the history of your posts I'm not too far off the mark.
But this thread is about the litigation, and Sun may lose points here when MS appeals. When I said "J2EE and irrelevant bits", I mean that J2EE and other server-side technologies are irrelevant to the case. The only thing Java has to do with a desktop OS and IE are applets, regardless whether they are historical relics or not. Period. Sun's lawsuit forces MS to bundle its own JRE, with its own problems, like poor client-side performance. How does that help server-side stuff, which is Java's strong point, when server admins often install their favorite JREs already?
Judge whatever you want, but you are far off mark, which is usual in this sort of discussions. When it comes to webapps, I avoid MS technologies, I use mainly JSP+Struts and Linux.
I hate to sound trite, but the fact that you place so much importance on applets (they are, after all, the only example of the technology that you imply exists) leads me to believe you're not really versed in the current trends in Java. The simple fact is that no one use's applets anymore; certainly there is no new development going on in that area. Most Java applications are written for the J2EE platform.
Have you read about the litigation? The antitrust stuff, you know. It talks about leveraging *DESKTOP* monopoly. Everything goes around IE and the only Java technology you can run in IE is applets. Don't throw J2EE and any other irrelevant bits to me.
What is the point of Sun accusing Microsoft of not bundling the JVM, if all that the Microsoft's JVM can do is to run applets or antique Java apps? MS JVM is not for servers anyway. Admins install the JVMs they want, from Sun or anybody else. Bundling with Sun's JRE doesn't help a single bit. And that's my original point.
Microsoft departments have to use their own beta products. Its internally called "dog fooding."
This guy uses the expression "eats its own dog food.". A google search reveals that it is quite popular. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the submission came from MS.
This smells bad. Sun have been forcing the monopoly thing down microsofts throat for so long, and now there they are victim of themselves again.
This boils to the question: is it a good thing to force the bundling of the Sun's JRE in Windows? MS's JVM is not particularly bright, but I don't think JRE is better in terms of performance.
Anyway, regardless of the JVM, applets are only applets. Its security model prevents it from doing anything useful than pretty animation and fancy UIs. But for fancy UIs, we have Flash, which is definitely faster and easier to program.
When is the last time you looked at OpenOffice? It already has good macro capabilities and supports OLE automation via the UNO [openoffice.org] inteface. You are probably thinking of the old StarOffice 5.2 which is a whole different story.
I wouldn't say that they are good unless there is plenty of documentation. All I can see now is plenty of draft API documentation, subject to change from api.openoffice.org. On the contrary, the MS Office API is more or less well defined and has a good macro recorder to create programs by example. Many people have simply used the Access VBA to build full-featured, commercial apps. I have yet to see something similar from OpenOffice.
Anyway, it's too early to tell. Time will prove whether it is a good competitor or not.
OpenOffice does almost anything MS Office can do and it is not more difficult to upgrade from Office97 to OpenOffice than it is to upgrade to OfficeXP. - But a lot cheaper.
Far from almost anything before it has good macro capabilities and supports features like OLE automation, which are crucial to the integration of custom apps. Yeah, they are virus-prone, but the problems do not displace their usefulness. You cannot say that guns are bad because they have been used to kill people.
In any case, since Office XP, the whole suite is rather paranoid when it comes to macros and the number of macro viruses has decreased considerably nowadays.
Which only work if a) you actually have software installation enabled in your preferences, b) have write access to the location where mozilla is installed and c) will prompt you BEFORE it installs the software, giving the web server and the package being installed.
All of these are also available in IE. You can choose to disable downloading ANY ActiveX control (signed or not) and you'll be fine. That's what I do, after I installed the ActiveX controls I want: QuickTime and Flash.
The basic problem is that it is easy and tempting to press "Yes" to every dialog, whether it is Mozilla or IE.
Anybody asking "What happens to our software if we use GPL-software as base" is either:
An idiot still not understanding the GPL, the difference between GPL and LGPL and in this case also not understanding licneses in general
First, not everything is licensed under LGPL. Period. Even with LGPL, people cannot statically link their applications to the libraries. Also, RMS is now advocating that everything be licensed ONLY via GPL and not even LGPL.
Second, by caling people with concerns with GPL as idiots, you're actually helping MS to spread FUD. It is this kind of elitist attitude that scares many people away. If not for IBM, the credibility of GPL would have gone down from the hills pretty quickly, because of people like you, and not because of GPL per se.
I doubt it, it comes down to the non-disclosure agreement between them. If the contractor is using the program only for work for that company (as they should) there is no reason the company has to give up their right not to 'distribute', as it's still that company [legally a person] using the program to their own ends. IANAL, of course, so this could be debated endlessly, but I think the real important part is that a corporation is legally an individual, and a contractor doing work for that 'individual' is part of that individual when serving in that capacity, and doesn't have the right to distribute their works if they don't say so. if the company says the contractor can distribute it, then they have to give them the source too, but otherwise I think the rights still lie with teh corporation.
The contractor may not be allowed to redistribute the binary again, but GPL may force the corporation to give out the source code to the contractor.
As you said, this can be debated endlessly. Being in a rather gray area, large corporations may avoid GPL even when they have lawyers and attorneys dancing around all the day.This doesn't mean that GPL is the problem, but certainly is a concern.
To avoid hassles, they simply turn to non-GPL software (including BSD).
Big difference between distribution within a company and distributing to anyone who wants to download it. Since corporations are legally treated as an individual person, there is no difference between everyone in a corporation using the modified code (in binary form) and not distributing it at all.
What about consultants or other external contractors? What if they need to install certain in-house apps in their own computers for interoperability? If these apps use GPL libraries, the corporation would be forced to give out the source code to these consultants/contractors too.
The general concern of large corporations is more or less like this: what if I am an employee of a large corporation and the IT staff used GPL libraries to develop in-house apps? Can I request the source code since I got the binaries? But wouldn't this cause havoc with the internal IT policies, as usually the source code can only be revealed on a need-to-know basis?
Suppose that the copyright lifetime has never been extended and remained at 14 years. Linus created Linux circa 1991 and its copyright will expire in 2005. Since GPL is based heavily on copyright to function, when the copyright expires, it will fall back automatically to BSD-style license (I guess, IANAL). That is, the source code protection can no longer be enforced. Is this what Linus wants? What about other GPL'ed programs like GNU Emacs, which was created in late 80s? What's RMS opinion about this?
According to the article, she paid less than usual during the 14 months of service. Yeah, the ISP was stupid to have raised this error, but doesn't mean that she doesn't owe the ISP that $214. She is still obligated to pay, but somehow things got messy starting from this point.
A telco cuts someone's telephone line because she didn't pay, then she sued the telco, claiming that she missed an important phone call costing her tons of money. Is this reasonable?
Anything anyone else would 'miss' from the Office Suite?
OLE Automation and Macros. Yeah, Open Office is surely a good candidate for replacing Office at home (but most of MS office@home is pirated anyway - so not much income for MS in this segment). But corporations usually have one or two apps that make use of OLE interfaces and macros for office automation.
Tetris is only NP-hard when you try to maximize!
on
Tetris Is Hard: NP-Hard
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
There is a difference between a solution and an optimal solution. The fact that you don't lose doesn't mean that you're getting the best score. Finding the best way to fit a "T" block, for example, is simply much harder than just finding a place to place it.
These stories (Cox's above and this current issue) are perfect examples of things to send over to that committee collecting comments on the DMCA. Here are software authors who are scared to publish vulnerability details about their own products!
Now I got it. Microsoft consistently refuses to disclose vulnerability details about its own products because many people are IIS and other secure and high-quality MS products as a "copy protection device"!
The AI was rather impressive, although the creatures didn't seem to have the ability to prioritize tasks very effectively. Their actions were rather random, which meant that you had to go and do all the real work.
But this portrays very well the typical day of a slashdotter.
But the headline pretends that only Hotmail has this problem. This is not new as *ANY* http transmission that is not encrypted via SSL is prone to this problem, since all the boss needs to do is to setup the proxy server/firewall to dump everything passing through, even without this particular software.
Additionally, that e-Blaster software even traps and logs the keystrokes of the workstation: not even SSH or any other software that requires typing your password will help you here. If you're using your company's computer, and you are subject to their rules. ***END OF THE STORY***
The only way I've found to close these is by ctrl-alt-del'ing (sorry I use W2K:) ). It's a good thing companies are getting wise to how annoying these are though. Good stuff...
You probably forgot CAD's friend, ALT+F4, which does the job nicely. Rapid fire them and you can close 'em all!
Do you check the packages downloaded from sites that you usually do not have problems with? Like from redhat.com, debian.org and in this case openbsd.org?
Also, how many people do read the makefiles before running them on your machine? And when installing binaries require root access?
If this story is really true, how much safer is open-source programs, when compared with closed source programs? Notice that even with closed source programs, *some* people will eventually discover that they are trojan or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Judge whatever you want, but you are far off mark, which is usual in this sort of discussions. When it comes to webapps, I avoid MS technologies, I use mainly JSP+Struts and Linux.
What is the point of Sun accusing Microsoft of not bundling the JVM, if all that the Microsoft's JVM can do is to run applets or antique Java apps? MS JVM is not for servers anyway. Admins install the JVMs they want, from Sun or anybody else. Bundling with Sun's JRE doesn't help a single bit. And that's my original point.
Anyway, regardless of the JVM, applets are only applets. Its security model prevents it from doing anything useful than pretty animation and fancy UIs. But for fancy UIs, we have Flash, which is definitely faster and easier to program.
I wouldn't say that they are good unless there is plenty of documentation. All I can see now is plenty of draft API documentation, subject to change from api.openoffice.org. On the contrary, the MS Office API is more or less well defined and has a good macro recorder to create programs by example. Many people have simply used the Access VBA to build full-featured, commercial apps. I have yet to see something similar from OpenOffice.
Anyway, it's too early to tell. Time will prove whether it is a good competitor or not.
In any case, since Office XP, the whole suite is rather paranoid when it comes to macros and the number of macro viruses has decreased considerably nowadays.
The basic problem is that it is easy and tempting to press "Yes" to every dialog, whether it is Mozilla or IE.
Second, by caling people with concerns with GPL as idiots, you're actually helping MS to spread FUD. It is this kind of elitist attitude that scares many people away. If not for IBM, the credibility of GPL would have gone down from the hills pretty quickly, because of people like you, and not because of GPL per se.
The general concern of large corporations is more or less like this: what if I am an employee of a large corporation and the IT staff used GPL libraries to develop in-house apps? Can I request the source code since I got the binaries? But wouldn't this cause havoc with the internal IT policies, as usually the source code can only be revealed on a need-to-know basis?
Suppose that the copyright lifetime has never been extended and remained at 14 years. Linus created Linux circa 1991 and its copyright will expire in 2005. Since GPL is based heavily on copyright to function, when the copyright expires, it will fall back automatically to BSD-style license (I guess, IANAL). That is, the source code protection can no longer be enforced. Is this what Linus wants? What about other GPL'ed programs like GNU Emacs, which was created in late 80s? What's RMS opinion about this?
According to the article, she paid less than usual during the 14 months of service. Yeah, the ISP was stupid to have raised this error, but doesn't mean that she doesn't owe the ISP that $214. She is still obligated to pay, but somehow things got messy starting from this point.
You know, some ISPs refuse to bounce email back to fight spam (it confirms the existence of a certain account).
A telco cuts someone's telephone line because she didn't pay, then she sued the telco, claiming that she missed an important phone call costing her tons of money. Is this reasonable?
There is a difference between a solution and an optimal solution. The fact that you don't lose doesn't mean that you're getting the best score. Finding the best way to fit a "T" block, for example, is simply much harder than just finding a place to place it.
It is simply not what others is claiming: <?xml version="1.0"><data>blahblah</data>
From the home page, it seems that the development environment runs on Windows, but nowhere does it imply that the actual thing runs on Windows.
Use . Used for arabic and middle-east languages.
Additionally, that e-Blaster software even traps and logs the keystrokes of the workstation: not even SSH or any other software that requires typing your password will help you here. If you're using your company's computer, and you are subject to their rules. ***END OF THE STORY***
Also, how many people do read the makefiles before running them on your machine? And when installing binaries require root access?
If this story is really true, how much safer is open-source programs, when compared with closed source programs? Notice that even with closed source programs, *some* people will eventually discover that they are trojan or not.