Of course they're a threat to Mozilla. The entire point of Mozilla is that it is cross-platform. Avalon and the laughably-useless WinFS might be able to be used by Mozilla without tying it to Windows. But the cheap XUL knockoff known as XAML? Please.
This is clearly a cheap attempt by Microsoft to Embrace and Extend Mozilla's cross-platform capabilities, with the end goal being, of course, "Extinguish".
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
You know, I think they may be onto something...
In all seriousness, this is exactly why it flopped: people didn't want to pay exorbitant pseudo-taxes to a single vendor. Of course, they do it all the time with Microsoft, but maybe there's something different about RAM. I don't know.
Actually, iTunes does support several competing players, and has since well before the iPod's appearance. It's not something they advertise much, but it is there.
The best thing about Free Software is that everyone can use it. The worst thing about Free Software is that everyone can use it. You can't have it both ways; when you start restricting when and how something is used, it ceases to be Free.
This guy is either a hypocrite, or he's very stupid. I doubt he's stupid, which leaves only one option. Opposing the war in Iraq is fine, but I suggest that those who wish to protest it do so in productive ways, rather than hypocritical, meaningless token gestures.
Design is a Good Thing.
on
UML Fever
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
UML and other design tools are Good Things, and they should be used more often. They really do tend to make things easier in the long run.
However, they do have a major weakness: it's possible to become too reliant on design documents, such that one loses the ability to think on one's feet. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it has to be avoided. Otherwise, any design problem -and such problems are inevitable in any project of significant size- become paralyzing.
I'd bet that the CLI is probably easier to learn for a complete newbie to computers in general, but a GUI probably easier to learn for anyone new to a given application.
More intelligence in either interface would certainly be a Good Thing, however.
The only way I can see these things as ethically allowable is if it is mandatory that they be developed in such a way that the user can remove them at will, or failing that, that they can be deactivated at will in such a manner that only the user can reactivate them.
Abuse of these things must be impossible, not just legally but technically, before I could ever bring myself to accept them as anything but a dehumanizing abomination.
I love Ellison's works and all, but if he believes that an ISP is supposed to somehow be responsible for the actions of his users, then I'm afraid I smell a bit of hypocrisy. Has a man who has always championed personal responsibility suddenly gone to the Dark Side?
I hate goat linkers as much as the next person, but jail time for this kind of thing is Just Not Cool. Big fines, yes, but those could frankly be dealt with under current truth-in-advertising laws. We do not need new laws to specially single the Internet out for censorship.
"Cut it out; you're threatening my business model".
No, really; that's what it boils down to. Whether or not someone develops software for free or for money -a situation which is entirely independent of whether or not the source is open- is that person's own prerogative and no one else's.
This guy's just mad because he can't compete on price and doesn't want to compete on features or support.
Another 'liberty-for-safety' mess. What's worse, this will probably pass, because people will talk about all the children who die in DUI cases. It's always about the children, isn't it?
Now, here's what I'd propose instead. On your second DUI conviction, you are automatically required to have the actual device installed, for a period of five years, and you may not drive any vehicle where such a device is not installed without a police escort or special court permission. Removing the device (or driving a vehicle you have not been authorized to drive) extends this penalty from five years to ten; a second removal extends it to life; a third removal revokes your license and bans you for life from getting another one.
Draconian? Yes, I suppose so. But someone who continues to break the law like this has already shown that only a draconian penalty is going to have any effect.
Of course, the big problem with these is that they only test for alcohol. Theoretically devices like this should be made to screen for other intoxicants where possible.
A good stopgap measure, but the fundamental right to privacy needs to be enshrined in a Constitutional amendment. One could say that it already is (the Fourth Amendment has no wording that restricts it solely to the government; that it is interpreted as such is more a tradition than anything else), but evidently some clarification is needed, if acts of treason like PATRIOT can pass muster.
They should have changed the browser name to Suzaku. Last I checked you couldn't trademark mythology, and since Suzaku was supposed to have been a phoenix, they could have kept the phoenix-style logos. No more confusion.
Amazing, to see how low the standards for knighthood have dropped, if they allow ones such as Billy to be knighted now. Methinks many previous monarchs will be spinning in their graves over this one.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's exactly what he's getting at. Revoke all patents on mathematical algorithms, but leave copyrights on code in place.
End result: you still cannot copy another person's code, but you could independently develop competing software..
Not just any user can masquerade. Only a user who has Admin access can.
This would be like using "sudo su - username" in Linux or any other place that sudo is installed. In fact, I have a suspicion that this is exactly what happens behind the scenes.
Is this a security hole? Depends on who you hand Admin accounts to, I guess.
This is not the first time that Apple has offered an app for free and then started charging for it. Hell; this isn't the first time Apple has offered [i]iMovie[/i] for free and then started charging for it.
Very, very uncool. Within their legal rights, I suppose, but 'free' implies a promise that it will remain so.
Frankly, I'm at the point where I consider anything by him to be an attempt at astroturfing, nothing more.
Seriously. Take a look at what the guy's done. He runs not one, but two of the major Windows "enthusiast" sites. Design elements on these two sites are so obviously taken from Microsoft that it's a miracle they haven't sued him... unless he is already on their payroll.
I'd say it's time we stopped taking him seriously, were it not for one thing: he's Microsoft's most successful marketing tool ever, in that he's actually managed to garner some measure of respect. That makes him dangerous enough to watch, even if his arguments can be easily exposed for the marketing bunk that they are.
What you say is true; there are advantages to X which are not yet a part of Quartz (interestingly enough, a remote-hosting infrastructure [i]does[/i] appear to be present, but it's not used for anything at this stage).
However, when you really come down to it, it was GIMP and X-Chat which actually drove XFree's popularity on OSX. The technical benefits are all well and good, but it's these two programs that people wanted.
I won't bother dealing with your anti-proprietary zealotry; while I do prefer an Open-Source solution when it presents itself, I cannot simply ignore something out of hand simply because it's proprietary.
As for your "minor problems", most can be resolved with a single tool called fink, which is basically an apt-get port. Packages exist for your precious GNU tools (which, admittedly, I prefer), Apache, Postfix, and many other popular Unix/Linux tools.
As for the "various oddnesses in setup", would you care to elaborate? I do hope that you're not going to complain about the use of directory names which make actual sense.
If Quartz was so "good", why would Apple need to make it's own (non-free for that matter) version of X11 available as well? Because people wanted to run the GIMP and X-Chat.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they're a threat to Mozilla. The entire point of Mozilla is that it is cross-platform. Avalon and the laughably-useless WinFS might be able to be used by Mozilla without tying it to Windows. But the cheap XUL knockoff known as XAML? Please.
This is clearly a cheap attempt by Microsoft to Embrace and Extend Mozilla's cross-platform capabilities, with the end goal being, of course, "Extinguish".
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
You know, I think they may be onto something...
In all seriousness, this is exactly why it flopped: people didn't want to pay exorbitant pseudo-taxes to a single vendor. Of course, they do it all the time with Microsoft, but maybe there's something different about RAM. I don't know.
Actually, iTunes does support several competing players, and has since well before the iPod's appearance. It's not something they advertise much, but it is there.
...she may demand a Betazoid wedding instead, where no one wears clothing.
The best thing about Free Software is that everyone can use it. The worst thing about Free Software is that everyone can use it. You can't have it both ways; when you start restricting when and how something is used, it ceases to be Free.
This guy is either a hypocrite, or he's very stupid. I doubt he's stupid, which leaves only one option. Opposing the war in Iraq is fine, but I suggest that those who wish to protest it do so in productive ways, rather than hypocritical, meaningless token gestures.
UML and other design tools are Good Things, and they should be used more often. They really do tend to make things easier in the long run.
However, they do have a major weakness: it's possible to become too reliant on design documents, such that one loses the ability to think on one's feet. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it has to be avoided. Otherwise, any design problem -and such problems are inevitable in any project of significant size- become paralyzing.
I'd bet that the CLI is probably easier to learn for a complete newbie to computers in general, but a GUI probably easier to learn for anyone new to a given application.
More intelligence in either interface would certainly be a Good Thing, however.
The only way I can see these things as ethically allowable is if it is mandatory that they be developed in such a way that the user can remove them at will, or failing that, that they can be deactivated at will in such a manner that only the user can reactivate them.
Abuse of these things must be impossible, not just legally but technically, before I could ever bring myself to accept them as anything but a dehumanizing abomination.
I love Ellison's works and all, but if he believes that an ISP is supposed to somehow be responsible for the actions of his users, then I'm afraid I smell a bit of hypocrisy. Has a man who has always championed personal responsibility suddenly gone to the Dark Side?
I hate goat linkers as much as the next person, but jail time for this kind of thing is Just Not Cool. Big fines, yes, but those could frankly be dealt with under current truth-in-advertising laws. We do not need new laws to specially single the Internet out for censorship.
"Cut it out; you're threatening my business model".
No, really; that's what it boils down to. Whether or not someone develops software for free or for money -a situation which is entirely independent of whether or not the source is open- is that person's own prerogative and no one else's.
This guy's just mad because he can't compete on price and doesn't want to compete on features or support.
IE actually makes a damn fine platform if you develop specifically for it, why is that so wrong?
That is what makes it so wrong; you have to develop specifically for it in order to make it do anything half-decent.
Another 'liberty-for-safety' mess. What's worse, this will probably pass, because people will talk about all the children who die in DUI cases. It's always about the children, isn't it?
Now, here's what I'd propose instead. On your second DUI conviction, you are automatically required to have the actual device installed, for a period of five years, and you may not drive any vehicle where such a device is not installed without a police escort or special court permission. Removing the device (or driving a vehicle you have not been authorized to drive) extends this penalty from five years to ten; a second removal extends it to life; a third removal revokes your license and bans you for life from getting another one.
Draconian? Yes, I suppose so. But someone who continues to break the law like this has already shown that only a draconian penalty is going to have any effect.
Of course, the big problem with these is that they only test for alcohol. Theoretically devices like this should be made to screen for other intoxicants where possible.
You wouldn't mean MacSlash.org, would you?
A good stopgap measure, but the fundamental right to privacy needs to be enshrined in a Constitutional amendment. One could say that it already is (the Fourth Amendment has no wording that restricts it solely to the government; that it is interpreted as such is more a tradition than anything else), but evidently some clarification is needed, if acts of treason like PATRIOT can pass muster.
They should have changed the browser name to Suzaku. Last I checked you couldn't trademark mythology, and since Suzaku was supposed to have been a phoenix, they could have kept the phoenix-style logos. No more confusion.
Amazing, to see how low the standards for knighthood have dropped, if they allow ones such as Billy to be knighted now. Methinks many previous monarchs will be spinning in their graves over this one.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's exactly what he's getting at. Revoke all patents on mathematical algorithms, but leave copyrights on code in place.
End result: you still cannot copy another person's code, but you could independently develop competing software..
Not just any user can masquerade. Only a user who has Admin access can.
This would be like using "sudo su - username" in Linux or any other place that sudo is installed. In fact, I have a suspicion that this is exactly what happens behind the scenes.
Is this a security hole? Depends on who you hand Admin accounts to, I guess.
This is not the first time that Apple has offered an app for free and then started charging for it. Hell; this isn't the first time Apple has offered [i]iMovie[/i] for free and then started charging for it.
Very, very uncool. Within their legal rights, I suppose, but 'free' implies a promise that it will remain so.
Frankly, I'm at the point where I consider anything by him to be an attempt at astroturfing, nothing more.
Seriously. Take a look at what the guy's done. He runs not one, but two of the major Windows "enthusiast" sites. Design elements on these two sites are so obviously taken from Microsoft that it's a miracle they haven't sued him... unless he is already on their payroll.
I'd say it's time we stopped taking him seriously, were it not for one thing: he's Microsoft's most successful marketing tool ever, in that he's actually managed to garner some measure of respect. That makes him dangerous enough to watch, even if his arguments can be easily exposed for the marketing bunk that they are.
What you say is true; there are advantages to X which are not yet a part of Quartz (interestingly enough, a remote-hosting infrastructure [i]does[/i] appear to be present, but it's not used for anything at this stage).
However, when you really come down to it, it was GIMP and X-Chat which actually drove XFree's popularity on OSX. The technical benefits are all well and good, but it's these two programs that people wanted.
I won't bother dealing with your anti-proprietary zealotry; while I do prefer an Open-Source solution when it presents itself, I cannot simply ignore something out of hand simply because it's proprietary.
As for your "minor problems", most can be resolved with a single tool called fink, which is basically an apt-get port. Packages exist for your precious GNU tools (which, admittedly, I prefer), Apache, Postfix, and many other popular Unix/Linux tools.
As for the "various oddnesses in setup", would you care to elaborate? I do hope that you're not going to complain about the use of directory names which make actual sense.
That's precisely the sort of thing that Fink is for: easy building and installation of Unix tools on OSX.
Incidentally, it's based on apt-get, that beloved tool of Debian users everywhere.
If Quartz was so "good", why would Apple need to make it's own (non-free for that matter) version of X11 available as well?
Because people wanted to run the GIMP and X-Chat.
Seriously; that's just about it.