technically, i was incorrect. he cannot be disbarred in florida because he's not formally licensed to practise law there. He wouldn't be disbarred, but he could be banned from practising law in florida (which seems to me to be basically the same thing).
1> Microsoft Anti-Trust ("won" even though MS is still a monopoly and abusing it's power more than ever, and the settlement was a weak blow off at best)
to be fair, the failure of the department of justice to pursue effective remedies after the conviction of Microsoft isnt really Boies' fault.
Also, you are forgetting about the disbarment threat he's under in Miami as a result of legal shennanigans over litigation involving his girlfriend's landscaping company.
i dont remember him saying that in the first matrix movie.
i had forgotten about him saying it in the second movie, but it's possible he meant it's happening like in the first movie. (they fight, neo runs, eventually smith kills him, but this time there's a bunch of smiths). It's a stretch, i know.
My favorite counter example is this: why is Agent Smith desperatly seeking the access codes to the Zion Mainframe in M1 when he should know full well (what with the 6 versions and all) that Zion will be overrun by sentinels anyways?
he doesnt know. he's a tool with a job to do. When the matrix reset, he'd be destroyed and replaced. He has no idea that there is a larger plan.
Hence, I think that, in concordance with Hokam's Razor, M1 was a standalone.
>Why was Smith such a threat? The machines didn't look that bothered. Why was it left to Neo to fix?
Because he was Neo's opposite, but also his equal in power. Smith was gradually consuming everyone in the Matrix, as is evidenced by the crowd in the last Neo/Smith fight. Smith wanted to destroy everything because he believed the only purpose for life was to end. He found a way out of the Matrix once, he could find more. Inside the Matrix he could consume and destroy all of the humans, thus killing the machines' primary power source. Had he been able to take over other machines outside the Matrix...
i think you missed the core point to why smith was such a threat. Smith didn't need to find a way out of the matrix to destroy the machines. He already had one. Once he took the trainman, he had control of a direct conduit from the matrix to the center of the machine world.
I don't see how the phrase "it is more productive" can be considered an "absolute statement"... the "more" is a quantifier. If I had said "it is always more productive" then I could see this. I was never imagined I needed to add a qualifier like "it is (sometimes | often) more productive".
without the qualifier, i assumed you meant always.
Of course, I agree 100% with that statement. I thought I even said so in my reply but just to be sure I'll agree with that again.
you may have and i just missed it or forgot about it when replying. It was late when i posted that.
You mean like this one?;) Actually, this isn't pure noise, just off-topic but I think a fairly worthy debate on the process that is slashdot.
yeah. i considered that when i was replying, but decided the off-topicness of it was mitigated by the fact that it's a constructive conversation.
And while I would agree that a lack of any content would be better than 100% noise threads, I never advocated noise threads. Surely asking for "thoughtful opinions" can be seen as asking for replies that are useful and not "noise"?
well, from the point of view of a potential moderater, it might be more useful for them to moderate existing thoughtless threads than to post a thoughtful one. I agree that you werent advocating posting noise. However, I took your statement to be in the context of the behaviour of the potential moderator and not to imply that other posters would also only be providing thoughtful opinions.
With the limited number of characters in a/. signature (and it's just a dang signature for everyone's sake) there is no way to capture this entire train of thought... but surely the language is subtle enough that it should need to be spelled out in detail.
yeah, it's just a sig, but it's a more entertaining topic than the other posts in this thread were at the time (and it was late at night). I'd prefer the sig files be longer, personally, but that is also a place where people abuse the system and ruin it for the rest of us.
Unfortunately for all the people who are wasting mod points and time on this thread I'm having to work late for a deadline and this is proving a useful mind-break in between edits... otherwise I swear I'd let it die... probably will after this one since if anyone reading this feels I haven't made proper counter-points by now, they probably never will.
hey, at least it is proving to be useful in some context. that's better than a lot of what gets posted to slashdot:)
I think we actually agree but i was reading your sig in a way that wasnt intended. I can certainly agree that if people only posted thoughful comments, the moderation system would be unnecessary.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
well, i'll disagree with this statement as an absolute statement.
There are plenty of replies that do not add anything new to the topical conversation (off topic posts, flames, etc). Moderation, at least some of the time, reduces this "noise" and increases the value of the topical posts.
So i would say that moderation, when used for it's intended purpose, is arguably more valuable than replies.
I do agree that posting opinions is important, but i think it's better to have no replies than 100% noise threads that waste everyone's time.
I suppose. Every new development has its bugs, and the internet might just be the biggest development ever. But if the current Windows-using population never got to the net would it now be so prominent in the minds of virtually everyone on the planet?
Yes. the internet was inevitable. Plenty of windows users were on the internet long before microsoft woke up and realized it existed. They did this through third party applications.
You might notice those third parties no longer exist (for the most part). That is the legacy of microsoft's involvement in the internet.
probably because of advertising. Having a box on store shelves grabs the people who dont read gaming mags and gaming sites. They are browsing in CompUSA or Best Buy and see it on the shelf and buy it. If they instituted a system where you could use a friend's cds and buy a new key, they'd cannibalize their store sales.
That wouldnt be a big deal for the company, except that if they cannibalize their in store sales, the stores wont like it. They run the risk of pissing off their distribution channels and that could have a significant negative effect on the company's other games' abilities to reach their markets.
that's just a guess. i dont really know what's going on behind the scenes, but i figure they did it with E&B because their sales were so poor in their regular distribution channels, it didnt matter. They were trying to save a failing game.
For example, make it wild-westish. Killing a man in cold blood is illegal and actually punished, but duelling is fair, and may be to death or to first blood or whatever.
actually, in the american old west dueling was illegal.
Also, outside of one incident with Wild Bill Hickock, i cannot think of any actual duel in the american old west that involved a showdown in the streets (as is always portrayed). I guess you could include the OK Corral, but that wasnt a duel.
Personally, i'm absolutely in favour of permadeath. I'm also absolutely in favour of harsh penalties for murderers. I dont expect to see it in a MMORPG anytime soon though.
Alternately, give the player some feasible explanation for resurrection
this is one thing Star Wars Galaxies does. Some people dont like them using cloning to explain resurrection, but i cant think of a better way to do it in a Star Wars game.
Either that or give away more than one free month with the box. If there were, say, three free months added in, it wouldn't be that big of a deal - it would end up working out about the same anyway.
Of course, all that the people at the company see is, "but we'll be losing out on [2 months of subscription fees|$50 / box]!"
what they see is that doing this would probably bankrupt the game. If they sell the box with 3 free months, they are actually selling it at a loss and cannot expect revenue for 3 months for that customer (if at all). This, combined with the churn rate for players in MMORPGs would probably kill the game outright.
they can do that because $5 - $10 is about the profit they are making from the initial box sale anyway. After they cover the duplication costs, box costs, free month, and shelf fees for the stores, they are making about $6 on the box you bought.
This way, they avoid all those costs and get the profit directly from the customer (and the fee for the first month). So, it acutally reduces their costs and saves them money for you to use a friend's cd and purchase a new serial number.
The second guy said he was overpriced and the standard price everywhere else was $12. = "You corporate whore!"
except that
"The second guy said he was overpriced and the standard price everywhere else was $12."
!=
"You corporate whore!"
being overpriced has nothing to do with being a corporate whore. the two are completely independent situations. One can be a corporate whore with reasonable prices, and one can sell products that have no corporate ties at all for way too much money.
so again, i say that nobody called the indie store owner a corporate whore.
the claim made against the original respondent was a baseless attack.
No, he's making a sarcastic remark. It goes like this (mostly paraphrased for others' amusement):
>> "As an indie, I'm getting a 100% markup! I'm rich! Rich like astronauts!" > "You corporate whore!" "ah yes, to be sufficiently indie you have to sell everything at a loss, how could we forget."
The last comment (about selling at a loss) is actually meant to sublty flame the "corporate whore" comment.
Get it now?
oh, i understood what he was doing when he did it. It doesnt change the fact that what you are describing is not what was said and that his flame was still based on a total fabrication.
the indie store owner said he buys product for about $6 and sells it for $15. The second guy said he was overpriced and the standard price everywhere else was $12. the flamer then made the accusation that he was implying if the indie store owner was truly indie, he should sell everything at a loss.
Nobody called the indie store owner a corporate whore. Buying at $6 and selling at $12 would not be selling at a loss.
there was no subtle flame about a corporate whore comment because there was no corporate whore comment. It was an unsubtle flame based on a deliberate misrepresentation of the information presented.
Yes, Ximian launched mono to create an open source implementation of.NET. How does that contradict what I said? How does the reason for which Ximian launched Mono have anything to do with where the project is going, how people are using it, or what control Microsoft has over it?
I dont think the parent intended it as a contradiction of what you said. I think the point was that if people have an inaccurate understanding of what Mono is or how it relates to.NET, it's because the overview information from the mono project is misleading.
I think the point was that if you think it is an inaccurate view, maybe you should get the mono people to rewrite their documentation to reflect more accurately where the project is and where it's going.
Note, this is just my understanding of what the post you are responding to intended to convey. I dont necessarily agree or disagree with it. (personally, i haven't kept up with Mono or.NET enough to have a strong opinion right now)
that's a problem in the implementation of the web app. the programmer doing the backend work doesnt need to know how to build a pretty web interface that is standards compliant. However, the person building the pretty web interface that is standards compliant does need to know how to do it. They dont have to be the same person. If the business logic is done right, it should work independently of the interface. Then it's up to an interface guy to build the interface and plug the results from the logic into it.
my experience is that this doesnt happen because it's more expensive and takes longer. The right way to do something always seems to be ignored in favour of the short term time and cost savings of hacking something together that's "good enough".
Also, everyone should prefer receiving code under the BSD license, you can do practically anything with it.
can i GPL it? (joking)
It's distributing under the BSD that companies may not like, but if they are using BSD licenses, they can do pretty much anything they damn well please.
Companies can do whatever they damn well please with GPL software too...as long as they dont distribute it.
I'm not entirely sure why they would not like distributing under the BSD license, though.
First they got a contract with IBM for DOS because they had an operating system to sell when others did not (or were unwilling).
no they didnt. They got a contract with IBM because IBM didnt know they didnt have an operating system to sell. they bought dos after they got the contract.
After that point, they rode the Intel x86 evolutional wave, improving their OS to basically keep up with Intel (with a sizable lag).
that's being a little generous.
No marketing was required: killer apps were written (Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect come to mind), and history was made.
yes, third party developers created killer apps that ran under windows due to it's ubiquity. (which by the way was created as a combination of compatibility with an IBM branded product and a low target price as a result of Compaq's cloning efforts.) Once those third party apps made DOS dominant, Microsoft undermined them via their OS control to create the opportunity for their own in house products to supplant them.
Their historical products achieved success through luck (the IBM contract), brand recognition of IBM, the hard work of 3rd party developers (who they later crushed), underhanded business tactics, and (later) abusing a dominant market position.
I might have been more impressed with NT if it's system requirements hadn't been rediculous.
First off, it's the SCO executives that are causing all of these problems, not their lawyers.
for the most part, this is a fair point. I shouldnt hold their lawyers accountable for the company's press releases. However, if they do actually try to use this tactic in court, that is all on the lawyers.
Also, it is not entirely SCO execs saying this stuff. The misrepresentation of copyright law from a couple weeks ago came from Mark Heise who is an associate at the law firm representing SCO. That is all on him (and by extension, his law firm).
Lawyers are bound by their code of ethics to advance the interests of their clients to the greatest extent allowed by the law.
lawyers can also drop a client when they have irreconcilable ethical problems with them. Of course, the only lawyer trying to drop their client i can think of right now is Leslie Abramson, who tried to drop the Menendez brothers after causing a mistrial in their first trial. (Interestingly, her ethical dilemma with their case coincided with the point at which they ran out of money. (the judge did not allow her to remove herself as their lawyer and she ended up having to represent them for free from that point on, if i recall correctly)) (that btw was just an aside and not necessarilly relevant. i should probably delete it, but i'll leave it in just for fun.)
Furthermore, as I understand the way the legal system works, SCO's lawyers can't be sued for filing a frivolous lawsuit on SCO's behalf.
as i understand the law, that is correct but not relevant. a lawyer who brings a frivolous suit to court can be punished by the court and the bar association. This is what i was referring to. I never said anything about lawyers being sued for bringing a case to court.
If you think about it, you'll agree that this is a key component to a working legal system. If (for example) the Mechanized Frog Corporation cuts off my arm and I want to sue them because, hey, I don't have an arm then I need to be able to find a laywer to represent me. If the MFC can just use their lawyers to sue any lawyer I hire out of business then I effectively have no legal protections, which is bad.
i absolutely agree that that would be bad. however, it is not what i was suggesting.
They claim the right to use and distribute that code without regard to the GPL because all code vaguely associated with an operating system is derived from the UNIX sources and is therefore their property.
In my opinion, the lawyers involved on SCO's side should all be disbarred at the end of the case. They are either incompetent, or knowingly grossly misrepresenting copyright and contract law. Either should result in them never being allowed to practise law in the United States again. (that's just my opinion, i could be wrong)
Paper beats rock. Rock beats Scissors Scissors beats paper.
This is what your IBM rock and SCO paper would create
Rock Beats Paper Paper Beats ?? Scissors Beats Paper
well, considering we're talking about SCO's legal case here, i think it does make sense. if SCO = Paper, and Paper beats nothing, that sounds about right to me.
I'm going to respectfully disagree. I believe children need to be told once, twice, however many times it takes for it to sink in. It's not immediately obvious to a kid that guns kill permanently.
Not including retarded people, I think it is immediately obvious to a 16 year old that guns kill permanently. I've never met a 16 year old (of sound mind) who didnt understand that.
:: The gun murder rate in the USA is the world largest. The gun murder rate in the UK is one of the worlds smallest.
You would be correct. See here. This site lists gun murder rates per capita... you'll notice Britain is right at the bottom of this list, while the United States is number eight (out of 32 nations listed).
How is he correct? you just proved he is incorrect.
If the United States is number 8 on the list, there are 7 countries with higher gun murder rates. That proves the U.S. does not have the largest gun murder rate in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
technically, i was incorrect. he cannot be disbarred in florida because he's not formally licensed to practise law there. He wouldn't be disbarred, but he could be banned from practising law in florida (which seems to me to be basically the same thing).
1> Microsoft Anti-Trust ("won" even though MS is still a monopoly and abusing it's power more than ever, and the settlement was a weak blow off at best)
to be fair, the failure of the department of justice to pursue effective remedies after the conviction of Microsoft isnt really Boies' fault.
Also, you are forgetting about the disbarment threat he's under in Miami as a result of legal shennanigans over litigation involving his girlfriend's landscaping company.
i dont remember him saying that in the first matrix movie.
i had forgotten about him saying it in the second movie, but it's possible he meant it's happening like in the first movie. (they fight, neo runs, eventually smith kills him, but this time there's a bunch of smiths). It's a stretch, i know.
My favorite counter example is this: why is Agent Smith desperatly seeking the access codes to the Zion Mainframe in M1 when he should know full well (what with the 6 versions and all) that Zion will be overrun by sentinels anyways?
he doesnt know.
he's a tool with a job to do. When the matrix reset, he'd be destroyed and replaced. He has no idea that there is a larger plan.
Hence, I think that, in concordance with Hokam's Razor, M1 was a standalone.
i think you mean Occam's Razor.
>Why was Smith such a threat? The machines didn't look that bothered. Why was it left to Neo to fix?
Because he was Neo's opposite, but also his equal in power. Smith was gradually consuming everyone in the Matrix, as is evidenced by the crowd in the last Neo/Smith fight. Smith wanted to destroy everything because he believed the only purpose for life was to end. He found a way out of the Matrix once, he could find more. Inside the Matrix he could consume and destroy all of the humans, thus killing the machines' primary power source. Had he been able to take over other machines outside the Matrix...
i think you missed the core point to why smith was such a threat. Smith didn't need to find a way out of the matrix to destroy the machines. He already had one. Once he took the trainman, he had control of a direct conduit from the matrix to the center of the machine world.
I don't see how the phrase "it is more productive" can be considered an "absolute statement" ... the "more" is a quantifier. If I had said "it is always more productive" then I could see this. I was never imagined I needed to add a qualifier like "it is (sometimes | often) more productive".
;) Actually, this isn't pure noise, just off-topic but I think a fairly worthy debate on the process that is slashdot.
/. signature (and it's just a dang signature for everyone's sake) there is no way to capture this entire train of thought ... but surely the language is subtle enough that it should need to be spelled out in detail.
... otherwise I swear I'd let it die ... probably will after this one since if anyone reading this feels I haven't made proper counter-points by now, they probably never will.
:)
without the qualifier, i assumed you meant always.
Of course, I agree 100% with that statement. I thought I even said so in my reply but just to be sure I'll agree with that again.
you may have and i just missed it or forgot about it when replying. It was late when i posted that.
You mean like this one?
yeah. i considered that when i was replying, but decided the off-topicness of it was mitigated by the fact that it's a constructive conversation.
And while I would agree that a lack of any content would be better than 100% noise threads, I never advocated noise threads. Surely asking for "thoughtful opinions" can be seen as asking for replies that are useful and not "noise"?
well, from the point of view of a potential moderater, it might be more useful for them to moderate existing thoughtless threads than to post a thoughtful one. I agree that you werent advocating posting noise. However, I took your statement to be in the context of the behaviour of the potential moderator and not to imply that other posters would also only be providing thoughtful opinions.
With the limited number of characters in a
yeah, it's just a sig, but it's a more entertaining topic than the other posts in this thread were at the time (and it was late at night). I'd prefer the sig files be longer, personally, but that is also a place where people abuse the system and ruin it for the rest of us.
Unfortunately for all the people who are wasting mod points and time on this thread I'm having to work late for a deadline and this is proving a useful mind-break in between edits
hey, at least it is proving to be useful in some context. that's better than a lot of what gets posted to slashdot
I think we actually agree but i was reading your sig in a way that wasnt intended. I can certainly agree that if people only posted thoughful comments, the moderation system would be unnecessary.
I also agree that we should let it die now.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
well, i'll disagree with this statement as an absolute statement.
There are plenty of replies that do not add anything new to the topical conversation (off topic posts, flames, etc). Moderation, at least some of the time, reduces this "noise" and increases the value of the topical posts.
So i would say that moderation, when used for it's intended purpose, is arguably more valuable than replies.
I do agree that posting opinions is important, but i think it's better to have no replies than 100% noise threads that waste everyone's time.
I suppose. Every new development has its bugs, and the internet might just be the biggest development ever. But if the current Windows-using population never got to the net would it now be so prominent in the minds of virtually everyone on the planet?
Yes. the internet was inevitable.
Plenty of windows users were on the internet long before microsoft woke up and realized it existed. They did this through third party applications.
You might notice those third parties no longer exist (for the most part).
That is the legacy of microsoft's involvement in the internet.
probably because of advertising. Having a box on store shelves grabs the people who dont read gaming mags and gaming sites. They are browsing in CompUSA or Best Buy and see it on the shelf and buy it. If they instituted a system where you could use a friend's cds and buy a new key, they'd cannibalize their store sales.
That wouldnt be a big deal for the company, except that if they cannibalize their in store sales, the stores wont like it. They run the risk of pissing off their distribution channels and that could have a significant negative effect on the company's other games' abilities to reach their markets.
that's just a guess. i dont really know what's going on behind the scenes, but i figure they did it with E&B because their sales were so poor in their regular distribution channels, it didnt matter. They were trying to save a failing game.
For example, make it wild-westish. Killing a man in cold blood is illegal and actually punished, but duelling is fair, and may be to death or to first blood or whatever.
actually, in the american old west dueling was illegal.
Also, outside of one incident with Wild Bill Hickock, i cannot think of any actual duel in the american old west that involved a showdown in the streets (as is always portrayed). I guess you could include the OK Corral, but that wasnt a duel.
Personally, i'm absolutely in favour of permadeath. I'm also absolutely in favour of harsh penalties for murderers.
I dont expect to see it in a MMORPG anytime soon though.
Alternately, give the player some feasible explanation for resurrection
this is one thing Star Wars Galaxies does. Some people dont like them using cloning to explain resurrection, but i cant think of a better way to do it in a Star Wars game.
Either that or give away more than one free month with the box. If there were, say, three free months added in, it wouldn't be that big of a deal - it would end up working out about the same anyway.
Of course, all that the people at the company see is, "but we'll be losing out on [2 months of subscription fees|$50 / box]!"
what they see is that doing this would probably bankrupt the game.
If they sell the box with 3 free months, they are actually selling it at a loss and cannot expect revenue for 3 months for that customer (if at all). This, combined with the churn rate for players in MMORPGs would probably kill the game outright.
they can do that because $5 - $10 is about the profit they are making from the initial box sale anyway. After they cover the duplication costs, box costs, free month, and shelf fees for the stores, they are making about $6 on the box you bought.
This way, they avoid all those costs and get the profit directly from the customer (and the fee for the first month). So, it acutally reduces their costs and saves them money for you to use a friend's cd and purchase a new serial number.
The second guy said he was overpriced and the standard price everywhere else was $12.
=
"You corporate whore!"
except that
"The second guy said he was overpriced and the standard price everywhere else was $12."
!=
"You corporate whore!"
being overpriced has nothing to do with being a corporate whore. the two are completely independent situations. One can be a corporate whore with reasonable prices, and one can sell products that have no corporate ties at all for way too much money.
so again, i say that nobody called the indie store owner a corporate whore.
the claim made against the original respondent was a baseless attack.
No, he's making a sarcastic remark. It goes like this (mostly paraphrased for others' amusement):
>> "As an indie, I'm getting a 100% markup! I'm rich! Rich like astronauts!"
> "You corporate whore!"
"ah yes, to be sufficiently indie you have to sell everything at a loss, how could we forget."
The last comment (about selling at a loss) is actually meant to sublty flame the "corporate whore" comment.
Get it now?
oh, i understood what he was doing when he did it. It doesnt change the fact that what you are describing is not what was said and that his flame was still based on a total fabrication.
the indie store owner said he buys product for about $6 and sells it for $15.
The second guy said he was overpriced and the standard price everywhere else was $12.
the flamer then made the accusation that he was implying if the indie store owner was truly indie, he should sell everything at a loss.
Nobody called the indie store owner a corporate whore.
Buying at $6 and selling at $12 would not be selling at a loss.
there was no subtle flame about a corporate whore comment because there was no corporate whore comment. It was an unsubtle flame based on a deliberate misrepresentation of the information presented.
Get it now?
ah yes, to be sufficiently indie you have to sell everything at a loss, how could we forget.
how is buying your inventory at about $6 and selling at $12 selling at a loss?
or is the point to make a personal attack on the parent, even if it requires you to fabricate a foundation for it?
Yes, Ximian launched mono to create an open source implementation of .NET. How does that contradict what I said? How does the reason for which Ximian launched Mono have anything to do with where the project is going, how people are using it, or what control Microsoft has over it?
.NET, it's because the overview information from the mono project is misleading.
.NET enough to have a strong opinion right now)
I dont think the parent intended it as a contradiction of what you said. I think the point was that if people have an inaccurate understanding of what Mono is or how it relates to
I think the point was that if you think it is an inaccurate view, maybe you should get the mono people to rewrite their documentation to reflect more accurately where the project is and where it's going.
Note, this is just my understanding of what the post you are responding to intended to convey. I dont necessarily agree or disagree with it. (personally, i haven't kept up with Mono or
that's a problem in the implementation of the web app. the programmer doing the backend work doesnt need to know how to build a pretty web interface that is standards compliant. However, the person building the pretty web interface that is standards compliant does need to know how to do it. They dont have to be the same person. If the business logic is done right, it should work independently of the interface. Then it's up to an interface guy to build the interface and plug the results from the logic into it.
my experience is that this doesnt happen because it's more expensive and takes longer. The right way to do something always seems to be ignored in favour of the short term time and cost savings of hacking something together that's "good enough".
Also, everyone should prefer receiving code under the BSD license, you can do practically anything with it.
can i GPL it? (joking)
It's distributing under the BSD that companies may not like, but if they are using BSD licenses, they can do pretty much anything they damn well please.
Companies can do whatever they damn well please with GPL software too...as long as they dont distribute it.
I'm not entirely sure why they would not like distributing under the BSD license, though.
First they got a contract with IBM for DOS because they had an operating system to sell when others did not (or were unwilling).
no they didnt. They got a contract with IBM because IBM didnt know they didnt have an operating system to sell. they bought dos after they got the contract.
After that point, they rode the Intel x86 evolutional wave, improving their OS to basically keep up with Intel (with a sizable lag).
that's being a little generous.
No marketing was required: killer apps were written (Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect come to mind), and history was made.
yes, third party developers created killer apps that ran under windows due to it's ubiquity. (which by the way was created as a combination of compatibility with an IBM branded product and a low target price as a result of Compaq's cloning efforts.)
Once those third party apps made DOS dominant, Microsoft undermined them via their OS control to create the opportunity for their own in house products to supplant them.
Their historical products achieved success through luck (the IBM contract), brand recognition of IBM, the hard work of 3rd party developers (who they later crushed), underhanded business tactics, and (later) abusing a dominant market position.
I might have been more impressed with NT if it's system requirements hadn't been rediculous.
First off, it's the SCO executives that are causing all of these problems, not their lawyers.
for the most part, this is a fair point. I shouldnt hold their lawyers accountable for the company's press releases. However, if they do actually try to use this tactic in court, that is all on the lawyers.
Also, it is not entirely SCO execs saying this stuff. The misrepresentation of copyright law from a couple weeks ago came from Mark Heise who is an associate at the law firm representing SCO. That is all on him (and by extension, his law firm).
Lawyers are bound by their code of ethics to advance the interests of their clients to the greatest extent allowed by the law.
lawyers can also drop a client when they have irreconcilable ethical problems with them. Of course, the only lawyer trying to drop their client i can think of right now is Leslie Abramson, who tried to drop the Menendez brothers after causing a mistrial in their first trial. (Interestingly, her ethical dilemma with their case coincided with the point at which they ran out of money. (the judge did not allow her to remove herself as their lawyer and she ended up having to represent them for free from that point on, if i recall correctly))
(that btw was just an aside and not necessarilly relevant. i should probably delete it, but i'll leave it in just for fun.)
Furthermore, as I understand the way the legal system works, SCO's lawyers can't be sued for filing a frivolous lawsuit on SCO's behalf.
as i understand the law, that is correct but not relevant. a lawyer who brings a frivolous suit to court can be punished by the court and the bar association. This is what i was referring to. I never said anything about lawyers being sued for bringing a case to court.
If you think about it, you'll agree that this is a key component to a working legal system. If (for example) the Mechanized Frog Corporation cuts off my arm and I want to sue them because, hey, I don't have an arm then I need to be able to find a laywer to represent me. If the MFC can just use their lawyers to sue any lawyer I hire out of business then I effectively have no legal protections, which is bad.
i absolutely agree that that would be bad. however, it is not what i was suggesting.
Maybe if engineers could communicate, they would be so ignored.
you have to love the irony of someone saying exactly the opposite of what they mean when criticizing someone else's communication skills.
except that SCO went with option c)
They claim the right to use and distribute that code without regard to the GPL because all code vaguely associated with an operating system is derived from the UNIX sources and is therefore their property.
In my opinion, the lawyers involved on SCO's side should all be disbarred at the end of the case. They are either incompetent, or knowingly grossly misrepresenting copyright and contract law. Either should result in them never being allowed to practise law in the United States again.
(that's just my opinion, i could be wrong)
Paper beats rock.
Rock beats Scissors
Scissors beats paper.
This is what your IBM rock and SCO paper would create
Rock Beats Paper
Paper Beats ??
Scissors Beats Paper
well, considering we're talking about SCO's legal case here, i think it does make sense.
if SCO = Paper, and Paper beats nothing, that sounds about right to me.
I'm going to respectfully disagree. I believe children need to be told once, twice, however many times it takes for it to sink in. It's not immediately obvious to a kid that guns kill permanently.
Not including retarded people, I think it is immediately obvious to a 16 year old that guns kill permanently.
I've never met a 16 year old (of sound mind) who didnt understand that.
:: The gun murder rate in the USA is the world largest. The gun murder rate in the UK is one of the worlds smallest.
You would be correct. See here. This site lists gun murder rates per capita... you'll notice Britain is right at the bottom of this list, while the United States is number eight (out of 32 nations listed).
How is he correct? you just proved he is incorrect.
If the United States is number 8 on the list, there are 7 countries with higher gun murder rates. That proves the U.S. does not have the largest gun murder rate in the world.