Well, ever heard of MS-DOS? That DID make the PC-clones ubiquitous.
Well MS-DOS itself was not a break through reason, it was actually a pretty lousy CP/M clone. It was originally called QDOS Quick & Dirty Operating System, and was actually not even developed by billy's microsoft. IBM wanted microsoft to write a UNIX clone since MSDOS 1.0 they itched long enough so ms wrote MSDOS 2.0 more UNIX like. With standard file handles, pipes, etc. They continued and continued to itch microsoft to write a UNIX OS for their platform, but did they ever get it? So it's no surprise IBM chooses today linux for their servers, it's like a christmas present, they suddendly get for free what they've invested millions into ms before.
My personal opinion is that one of the main reasons the PC broke through beside all it's competitors is the fact the software and hardware was provided by different compinies. You're not forced to a special software if buying a PC, that's what the people liked about the PC, people choose the freedom. From my theory the second main reason is the ISA bus, also a new freedom brought to people which they grasped fast. If you buy a computer from company A it has a standard bus allowing you to but extentions from other companies into it. That times by far not so self evident freedom we're used to today.
The only difference is that Windows developers don't get religious about it. They develop software for MS. Period. There's no need for grassroots support for the largest software company in the world.
Oh they do, they just usually don't hang around at places like this. I know people developing under with MSVC++, Visual Basic, J++, and they always very pestered by the fact that I've choosen to use linux. They fear it, because they do not know it, or want to learn, at every opinion they nitpick on linux, and also tell things about unix/linux that were true maybe 1995, but by far no longer today. I do not pick on them or suggest them to switch, (Okay I just snicker every time they're hit by email virus again, or sit togehter and complain about the win API, about stability, about wrong documentation, etc.... )
nitpicking tip 1:
Generally do not use the 0 is zero everything else is true if avoidable. We all now how it works, but it makes stuff harder to read/understand/maintain for coders beside yourself.
nitpicking tip 2:
use assert, it's easier / less to type:
assert(infile != NULL && "infile is NULL.");
The platform indendant standard does it. Altough windows is one of the few systems that doesn't complain it, you can get by using cygwin:
http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/
(I know Windows NT got the POSIX Certifacte, but only because they implemented just enough to pass the preknown tests, that does by far not mean that it will function)
If you programm in the cygwin environment using exclusivly the cygwin library interface your code should run pretty well on all other POSIX platforms. (including linux, solaris, *bsd, etc.)
That is a difficult point, yes for my main project I'm working now I guess I would pay 50$ a year without a tear.
But the other hand in the past I used to work on another project, I've deserted it as my interests moved, I do no longer work on it, or am interested in maintaining it, I've offered in the past to people to take it over if they want, but nobody was interested. Yet I heared from some folks working on similiar things that the web side contains some usefull information, also the free (GPL) source code gives some usefull hints. I would not pay for that side, but is it then fair to remove it because of this?
Also the price, is it fixed for all projects? What about a project like mine having an approximate hit rate like 10 random hits a week, sometimes one month or two complete development freeze dependant on my personal situations. On the other hand having huge projects generating a lot of traffic? Who would pay, the registrar primary? or all the admin(s)? the users that actually generate the traffic?
Nope you mix up to things, first the market value of the share has nothing to do with the capital (or assets) you got. Microsoft has far less capital than IBM, but that alone does not dictate the market value of their shares. (I got that info from an article I once read that exactly compared exacctly these both companies in the name of the stock market.) Second is how much money you've actively on the flow. The invested money brings you pure revenue without touching your business, without increasing your volume of sales wihtout doing any hipe and is generally not quickly cacheable if you need it fast, but it brings money in.
IBM is actually not a good point to show a good business model. Many forget how immensely wealthy IBM is still, they've far more money on their hands than microsoft could dream of. I learned to know somehow who worked for IBM's local accounting here. She said that they make such a lot revenue just by the invested capital the technics could never spend that much. After all in my eyses they're today more a bank with a great technical department than an IT company.
I'm running a SF hosted projected for nearly a year now, and I can say that tech support has largely dropped the last months. I'm waiting already since june to be able to create my projectname-cvs mailling list, I've already downloaded their PHP source and pointed them at the bug line... no success:( However one cannot really complain about a free service.
But after all it's still fantastic, a free web server, a CVS server, mailling lists, forums, bug trackers, with CRON jobs! Additionally it's the only free service I know of that allows me to upload and execute CGI scripts on their servers. Even if setting this all up at your home machine with a (very week) permanent connection would take you weeks. Beside I like to turn of my machine in the night because of the noise. Not to mention what a dedicated server would cost, then free programming is suddendly an expensive hobby.
From my past experience in industry one somehow smells struggling demises. How the hell should the change in the name to Source.NET bring anything? just anything? This just reminds me of dilberts pointy-hair bosses.
Because nothing what microsoft could do would suddendly make Linus, Alan and the rest of the linux gang think, "Yes, they right after all, let's stop hacking on this thing, buy an XP system and just play DOOM all the time."
Microsoft can theoretically take away the market from linux, but in contrast to ms the linux kernel hacking group is not dependant on it to survive. And honestly I also have played the poor little software bug victim long enough, theres just the day when you say damm all these Dr. Watsons, periodic reinstallations, pseudo auto "intelligence" pains and completly pestered days, I just wanted to stand up and do something different.
Well somehow I expected such an answer, first with some time more robust cpu's would "evolve", some where it doesn't matter too much if an error is inside. And isn't it with life the same? Sometimes things get better, sometimes they get worse, it's just things are moving very slowly in evolution. You donnot need to make an error at every machine, but just say in example at every 10th. In the beginning only unnecessary wires may be added upon here and there (some having just 1 connection, or connecting things with have already equal potential etc.), after ~10000 years maybe some of the unnecessary wires become general backup systems. Than after random some of the created machines add a higher error rate (through a copy error), say a small error at already nearly every 2nd machine, 5000 years later they get more robust due to this since they adapt faster than the 10th error machines.
Note the time frames I've added on purpose, it's not as fast as human designed machines would go. Or that it has any particular usefullness.
In this matter it's only an philosophic discussion, and I say as soon you've a machine that can reproduce itself only by finding natural materials around it, you've already openend the pandora's box of artifical life.
because I don't own XP and I donnot want to pay the (now also raised) price for it.
I agree and I even said it the comparasion is not truely fair of win95 and linux today. But fact is that linux is far better than win95 was, and a clear sign that it is taking up, and a lot of people used win95 and were capable to so, so they are also capable to use linux if they want.
The problem where most things come down is that people treat commercial software like windows or ms office like free software (not paying for it) and then compare it to truely free software. I personally have no problem with people paying for windows and all the utilities and be happy with. I've a problem with people robbing it, and then to claim that it is better than the real free software, letting the robed commercially pieces take all place of truely free things and thus taken their chance.
Well compare win95 install with a redhat or suse linux 7.2 installation, okay not quite fair since there are 5 years difference between the software releases. Linux installs today like by really just hitting ENTER all the time, hardware autodection, auto partitioning, etc.
I created a dualboot with win95 and linux on some boxes. On all of them linux was installed within minutes, without any complications. For win95 I hard to manually specify/install and pester around with nearly every device.
I cannot talk about XP since I have never touched it myself, but I can tell one thing for sure: that linux today is far better in installation and use than windows 95.
Go reread copyright and patents laws/FAW's. API are not -copyrighted- as also ideas are not, protocols are not, GUI's are not. They can be -patented- altough which is a complete different story. (And there is also the possiblity to interfere with -trademark- laws. But reverse engineering -is- -legal-.
Question: Why shouldn't it? Laws should be for the community of the people filling a state. And I don't see how a law that forbids reverse engineering would we of wealth for people.
If you're a programmer or interested in software issues I highly recommend this link:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_95/journal/ vo l4/hml/report.html
It should clearify how softare laws are really, in contrast to what of your personal understaing of justice.
een security vulnerabilities in Windows®, Linux, and Solaris®,...
btw: actually the Linux is also trademarked hold by torvalds. (has a long story, but some other german guy who simply trademarked it, and then was convinced to transfer it to linux.
But take in example Linux, linux is copyrighted by an huge number of individuals, is Linus Torvalds the original author? What about Alan Cox? He also coded plenty of it, what about subsystems that were completly coded by someone else?
Giving it to a friend is private or public?
Giving your girlfriend access on your computer with the modifed application, private/public?
A teacher giving it to his pubils. private/public?
There is nowhere yet any difference between priavte and public use.
And honestly the basic idea behind all this send to the original author does not work. You'll have to try to read actually what copyright laws say. If you're maintaining a OpenSource project under the GPL, and somebody submits you a patch, then -HE- is the actuall author of the patch, and still -HE- "owns" all the stuff he made, he only enables you (the "original" author) to use his patches under the terms of the GPL, or else he would not have been allowed to at it at all, a give and take.
Now if your license had an addon that required people to send the defs to the 'original' author, it would actually also per-se mean he would have to sent it to -all- authors.
I know in the case of FSF projects facts are a little different, since the FSF takes over copyright-transfer agreements, but actually today this is the exception not the rule.
I think one of unwritten basic GPL principles is that the project starter (the one you think of the "original" author) does not have any special rights than any other 2nd level project maintainer or any hobby code contributer.
however i remember my windows 3.1 installation with Netscape (guess 3.0 or so) and internet explorer 3, and every time internet explorer startet out of some reason, who do you think had the.html after that? No question, nothing silently stole the extension, however that this was 'fixed' with IE 4. At least Nescape asked me every time it started that some other browser took the html extension, and if I want netscape as default browser again (+ an never check again box)
Well it are some years ago, but that times I was pretty angry about IE and ms, and how they fought the browser war.
Slashdot Mirror
Look who is talking! First learn how to spell grammar :o)
I'm just wondering why people post something like this. Why? Are you scared by Linux that much? Or are you just so bored?
Well, ever heard of MS-DOS? That DID make the PC-clones ubiquitous.
Well MS-DOS itself was not a break through reason, it was actually a pretty lousy CP/M clone. It was originally called QDOS Quick & Dirty Operating System, and was actually not even developed by billy's microsoft. IBM wanted microsoft to write a UNIX clone since MSDOS 1.0 they itched long enough so ms wrote MSDOS 2.0 more UNIX like. With standard file handles, pipes, etc. They continued and continued to itch microsoft to write a UNIX OS for their platform, but did they ever get it? So it's no surprise IBM chooses today linux for their servers, it's like a christmas present, they suddendly get for free what they've invested millions into ms before.
My personal opinion is that one of the main reasons the PC broke through beside all it's competitors is the fact the software and hardware was provided by different compinies. You're not forced to a special software if buying a PC, that's what the people liked about the PC, people choose the freedom. From my theory the second main reason is the ISA bus, also a new freedom brought to people which they grasped fast. If you buy a computer from company A it has a standard bus allowing you to but extentions from other companies into it. That times by far not so self evident freedom we're used to today.
The only difference is that Windows developers don't get religious about it. They develop software for MS. Period. There's no need for grassroots support for the largest software company in the world.
Oh they do, they just usually don't hang around at places like this. I know people developing under with MSVC++, Visual Basic, J++, and they always very pestered by the fact that I've choosen to use linux. They fear it, because they do not know it, or want to learn, at every opinion they nitpick on linux, and also tell things about unix/linux that were true maybe 1995, but by far no longer today. I do not pick on them or suggest them to switch, (Okay I just snicker every time they're hit by email virus again, or sit togehter and complain about the win API, about stability, about wrong documentation, etc.... )
nitpicking tip 1:
Generally do not use the 0 is zero everything else is true if avoidable. We all now how it works, but it makes stuff harder to read/understand/maintain for coders beside yourself.
nitpicking tip 2:
use assert, it's easier / less to type:
assert(infile != NULL && "infile is NULL.");
The platform indendant standard does it. Altough windows is one of the few systems that doesn't complain it, you can get by using cygwin:
http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/
(I know Windows NT got the POSIX Certifacte, but only because they implemented just enough to pass the preknown tests, that does by far not mean that it will function)
If you programm in the cygwin environment using exclusivly the cygwin library interface your code should run pretty well on all other POSIX platforms. (including linux, solaris, *bsd, etc.)
That is a difficult point, yes for my main project I'm working now I guess I would pay 50$ a year without a tear.
But the other hand in the past I used to work on another project, I've deserted it as my interests moved, I do no longer work on it, or am interested in maintaining it, I've offered in the past to people to take it over if they want, but nobody was interested. Yet I heared from some folks working on similiar things that the web side contains some usefull information, also the free (GPL) source code gives some usefull hints. I would not pay for that side, but is it then fair to remove it because of this?
Also the price, is it fixed for all projects? What about a project like mine having an approximate hit rate like 10 random hits a week, sometimes one month or two complete development freeze dependant on my personal situations. On the other hand having huge projects generating a lot of traffic? Who would pay, the registrar primary? or all the admin(s)? the users that actually generate the traffic?
Nope you mix up to things, first the market value of the share has nothing to do with the capital (or assets) you got. Microsoft has far less capital than IBM, but that alone does not dictate the market value of their shares. (I got that info from an article I once read that exactly compared exacctly these both companies in the name of the stock market.) Second is how much money you've actively on the flow. The invested money brings you pure revenue without touching your business, without increasing your volume of sales wihtout doing any hipe and is generally not quickly cacheable if you need it fast, but it brings money in.
I guess the main difference we talked about is what the produced machines do.... I thought about a machine that does nothing but reproduce itself...
IBM is actually not a good point to show a good business model. Many forget how immensely wealthy IBM is still, they've far more money on their hands than microsoft could dream of. I learned to know somehow who worked for IBM's local accounting here. She said that they make such a lot revenue just by the invested capital the technics could never spend that much. After all in my eyses they're today more a bank with a great technical department than an IT company.
I'm running a SF hosted projected for nearly a year now, and I can say that tech support has largely dropped the last months. I'm waiting already since june to be able to create my projectname-cvs mailling list, I've already downloaded their PHP source and pointed them at the bug line... no success :( However one cannot really complain about a free service.
But after all it's still fantastic, a free web server, a CVS server, mailling lists, forums, bug trackers, with CRON jobs! Additionally it's the only free service I know of that allows me to upload and execute CGI scripts on their servers. Even if setting this all up at your home machine with a (very week) permanent connection would take you weeks. Beside I like to turn of my machine in the night because of the noise. Not to mention what a dedicated server would cost, then free programming is suddendly an expensive hobby.
From my past experience in industry one somehow smells struggling demises. How the hell should the change in the name to Source.NET bring anything? just anything? This just reminds me of dilberts pointy-hair bosses.
Is Microsoft *the* threat to Linux?
No,
Because nothing what microsoft could do would suddendly make Linus, Alan and the rest of the linux gang think, "Yes, they right after all, let's stop hacking on this thing, buy an XP system and just play DOOM all the time."
Microsoft can theoretically take away the market from linux, but in contrast to ms the linux kernel hacking group is not dependant on it to survive. And honestly I also have played the poor little software bug victim long enough, theres just the day when you say damm all these Dr. Watsons, periodic reinstallations, pseudo auto "intelligence" pains and completly pestered days, I just wanted to stand up and do something different.
Well somehow I expected such an answer, first with some time more robust cpu's would "evolve", some where it doesn't matter too much if an error is inside. And isn't it with life the same? Sometimes things get better, sometimes they get worse, it's just things are moving very slowly in evolution. You donnot need to make an error at every machine, but just say in example at every 10th. In the beginning only unnecessary wires may be added upon here and there (some having just 1 connection, or connecting things with have already equal potential etc.), after ~10000 years maybe some of the unnecessary wires become general backup systems. Than after random some of the created machines add a higher error rate (through a copy error), say a small error at already nearly every 2nd machine, 5000 years later they get more robust due to this since they adapt faster than the 10th error machines.
Note the time frames I've added on purpose, it's not as fast as human designed machines would go. Or that it has any particular usefullness.
In this matter it's only an philosophic discussion, and I say as soon you've a machine that can reproduce itself only by finding natural materials around it, you've already openend the pandora's box of artifical life.
Programming the thing to make a random modification every 100000000 produced wire is not a difficult step to take....
"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is one of the OpenSource bibles:a za ar/cathedral-bazaar/
link:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-b
At least it was exactly this paper which has converted me some years ago...
because I don't own XP and I donnot want to pay the (now also raised) price for it.
I agree and I even said it the comparasion is not truely fair of win95 and linux today. But fact is that linux is far better than win95 was, and a clear sign that it is taking up, and a lot of people used win95 and were capable to so, so they are also capable to use linux if they want.
The problem where most things come down is that people treat commercial software like windows or ms office like free software (not paying for it) and then compare it to truely free software. I personally have no problem with people paying for windows and all the utilities and be happy with. I've a problem with people robbing it, and then to claim that it is better than the real free software, letting the robed commercially pieces take all place of truely free things and thus taken their chance.
Well compare win95 install with a redhat or suse linux 7.2 installation, okay not quite fair since there are 5 years difference between the software releases. Linux installs today like by really just hitting ENTER all the time, hardware autodection, auto partitioning, etc.
I created a dualboot with win95 and linux on some boxes. On all of them linux was installed within minutes, without any complications. For win95 I hard to manually specify/install and pester around with nearly every device.
I cannot talk about XP since I have never touched it myself, but I can tell one thing for sure: that linux today is far better in installation and use than windows 95.
and done before you know it during the install.
I hope you didn't meen this too serious.... (You know what one could interpret into this?)
Maybe I'm bad at math's but isn't a million terabytes not far more than an peda byte?
a peda is 10^15.
1 tera is 10^12 * a million is 10^6 = together are 10^18 (exa) far more than a peda.
Really? whats actually the "big" difference in the point of using BSD licensed products?
Go reread copyright and patents laws/FAW's. API are not -copyrighted- as also ideas are not, protocols are not, GUI's are not. They can be -patented- altough which is a complete different story. (And there is also the possiblity to interfere with -trademark- laws. But reverse engineering -is- -legal-.
/ vo l4/hml/report.html
Question: Why shouldn't it? Laws should be for the community of the people filling a state. And I don't see how a law that forbids reverse engineering would we of wealth for people.
If you're a programmer or interested in software issues I highly recommend this link:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_95/journal
It should clearify how softare laws are really, in contrast to what of your personal understaing of justice.
Unfortunally: Justice != Law
een security vulnerabilities in Windows®, Linux, and Solaris®, ...
btw: actually the Linux is also trademarked hold by torvalds. (has a long story, but some other german guy who simply trademarked it, and then was convinced to transfer it to linux.
But take in example Linux, linux is copyrighted by an huge number of individuals, is Linus Torvalds the original author? What about Alan Cox? He also coded plenty of it, what about subsystems that were completly coded by someone else?
Define 'public'.
Giving it to a friend is private or public?
Giving your girlfriend access on your computer with the modifed application, private/public?
A teacher giving it to his pubils. private/public?
There is nowhere yet any difference between priavte and public use.
And honestly the basic idea behind all this send to the original author does not work. You'll have to try to read actually what copyright laws say. If you're maintaining a OpenSource project under the GPL, and somebody submits you a patch, then -HE- is the actuall author of the patch, and still -HE- "owns" all the stuff he made, he only enables you (the "original" author) to use his patches under the terms of the GPL, or else he would not have been allowed to at it at all, a give and take.
Now if your license had an addon that required people to send the defs to the 'original' author, it would actually also per-se mean he would have to sent it to -all- authors.
I know in the case of FSF projects facts are a little different, since the FSF takes over copyright-transfer agreements, but actually today this is the exception not the rule.
I think one of unwritten basic GPL principles is that the project starter (the one you think of the "original" author) does not have any special rights than any other 2nd level project maintainer or any hobby code contributer.
you're right,
.html after that? No question, nothing silently stole the extension, however that this was 'fixed' with IE 4. At least Nescape asked me every time it started that some other browser took the html extension, and if I want netscape as default browser again (+ an never check again box)
however i remember my windows 3.1 installation with Netscape (guess 3.0 or so) and internet explorer 3, and every time internet explorer startet out of some reason, who do you think had the
Well it are some years ago, but that times I was pretty angry about IE and ms, and how they fought the browser war.
Ohmy I just reread my post and excuse myself for the bad typing, when beeing so tired one should not post on slashdot :/