And yet it was NOT administratively impossible for them to verify that said patents were being infringed upon? Does ANYONE actually think that makes any sense whatsoever? The beauty of is that FUD, it doesn't have to make sense once you stop to think and do some research. FUD just has to be plausible enough at first glance to scare the uninformed. Microsoft's excuses don't have to make sense either, who cares now that the damage is done?
As the percentage of the people who espouse these beliefs rises within the UK population, they are going to feel increasingly empowered, both by the virtue of their numbers, as well as due to the apparent utter impotence of the British in the face of their assault. That could double as a pretty good description of the rise of Fascism in the 1930s.
Even if you realized that in such a low tech setting they can't know _everything_, you didn't know exactly _what_ they know, and exactly _what_ and _when_ they'll use it against you. Maybe they'll do nothing. Maybe they'll send you to Siberia. Maybe you just won't be allowed to travel abroad any more. Maybe your kid won't ever get a high paying job because his dumbass father got drunk once and complained about the party. I can't speak about Soviet Russa but I do know a bit about Nazi Germany from people who lived through that time and basically the same was true there. You kept your mouth shut because there was a very good chance of even a single moment of carelessness biting you in the ass sooner or later with dire consequences. Even though everybody knew that the State couldn't know everything they still kept their mouth shut because:
The Gestapo offered quite handsome bounties for tips on people who exhibited treasonous or regime critical behavior or uttered any derogatory comments about the 'Führer' the party or it's policies.
Even if the Gestapo didn't get tipped off by one of it's professional informers they would probably eventually learn about any such details the moment they shook somebody down for some minor infraction and that person named you and a couple of dozen others to save his own skin. These tips could range from subversive activities, such as being a communist or social democrat to having once been seen reading a communist leaflet or having been overheard telling a treasonous joke.
Basically the Nazi system wasn't all that dissimilar in it's inner workings to the tactics employed by Senator McCarthy and his goons except it went much further. Those who got named weren't merely socially ostracized as they were in the USA, in Nazi Germany and the cooupied territories they got sent to a camp and executed. There was actually a group of people both in Germany it self and the occupied countries who made a tidy business out of regularly informing on anybody that acted even mildly suspiciously. Once the Gestapo did lock in on you they were practically guaranteed to find _something_ to hang you with. Believe it or not, purely out of fear of a Gestapo visit, people both Germans and non Germans sorted the scrap paper they used on the toilet in case it contained any leaflets or other printed material from politically unreliable elements or, god forbid, contained a picture of Adolf him self. People today may find that funny but there were actually people who did long stretches in KZ camps or even died there for the simple offence of insulting the visage or persona of the 'Führer'.
His logic is absurd. Assuming these web apps are standards compliant, they are the death knell of Windows hegemony. The only question is whether Microsoft can somehow manage to make their apps only work (or at least only work fully) on IE/Windows. Ok, I have put on my tinfoil hat so here comes my daily conspiracy theory: I think he's talking about Web services (UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc...) and not just simple web apps. What experience has taught one to expect Microsoft to do in situations like this is to ensure that their own development toolkits for developing web service clients are fully compatible only with services that are developed with Microsoft tools and systems and deployed on Microsoft platforms. The traditional way they have done this is by leveraging their dominant position to embrace, extend and eventually appropriate (or alternatively, destroy) standards and protocols like UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc... When developing web services, especially if you are using automated "turn knob" development tools like the ones this dude talks about that don't require you to understand the underlying technologies, it's really easy to get into a situation where any Microsoft-only proprietary extensions to web service standards result in you creating a web service that's only 100% compatible with Microsoft's products. Furthermore, becasue you have no cule about how UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc.. work, all you can say when a Java developer using JAXWS, Axis2 or XFire complans that these Microsoft-only proprietery extensions are giving him a migrane is: "Well... uh... that Sun/Java based crap you are using must be broken. It all works perfectly with.NET?!?". If Microsoft is allowed to break things like UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc... by adding their own proprietary extensions to them, provide these extensions in their own web service products and then denying others the chance to make their competing web service products compatible with these proprietary extensions Microsoft will have succeeded yet again in defending their monopoly. So unless Microsoft has changed it's ways it only remains to be seen if they will get away with it or rather, whether they will be allowed to get away with it. If we are lucky they will throw a chair at some angry juggernaut that is even bigger, more stubborn and ruthless than they are them selves, like... well... the EU for example and get the solid-oak living room table thrown back at them. It doesn't seem likely but one can always hope.....
Microsoft should now list exactly which patents it is referring to, and how the Linux kernel infringes upon them. At worst, the Linux team can then rewrite the offending code so that it no longer infringes. How about issuing a formal challenge to Microsoft for them to list the offending patents and stop SCO'ing around? Of course some of those patents could be real blockers that one can't write around...
That explains the timing of Microsoft Saber rattling Bah... A real/. reader would know that Microsoft has long since moved beyond mere saber rattling. A Microsoft Ninja will pick up a chair and handle it, weighing it, carefully checking it's balance with an expert eye that makes it obvious that he will throw it at you the instant you fall out of line. Be especially careful of Microsoft Ninjas who have risen above MCSD rank, they always score clean headshots.
....so why look a gift horse in the mouth (even if it is one of the four horses of the apocalypse)? Because it probably has apocalyptically bad breath?
Push that button in the upper right corner of the keyboard, the one with the circle and a vertical line -- then the screen lights up again, and you get the happy Mac face. If you stare at that button for a while you will realize that the circle-and-vertical-line symbol looks a bit like a hand that is flipping you a bird. This realization becomes especially irritating right after you have just lost a significant amount of work or to a kernel panic or a crashed window manager.
I do believe that is the goal. It's the Russian embrace of western capitalism. The Russians are looking to attract (and protect) the type of web site entrepreneurs who would be in violation of the stricter U.S. laws. Periodically you will see news items where U.S. authorities crack down on web site operators whose servers are hosted in Russia but the persons behind the operations reside in the United States. Are you sure you aren't reading way to much into what is probably no more than perfectly normal bout of good, old fashioned, Russian paranoia?
That's why it's a good idea for them. Sounds to me like they're having genuine problems, if they moved to Windows Server 2003 complete with a crowing from Microsoft Headquarters, that might be something to worry about, but I doubt IBM has anything to gain from them moving from Linux to AIX, both of which they have a substantial amount of investment in. I doubt IBM has anything to gain from them moving from Linux to AIX I'm sure that IBM makes more selling AIX licences then Linux licenses. IBM hardware for AIX is probably more expensive then x86 Linux hardware too. Greater costs shouldn't surprise anybody. I know from experience that AIX is significantly more stable than Linux, it costs to IBM money achieve that stability and it requires the customer to use higher quality hardware. In the case of AIX it's 'obsolescence' (If you can call it that, I prefer to think of it as a mature product) is an advantage. Linux is a low to medium end server OS and it does a good job in that market segment. The beauty of Linux is that it is relatively easily interchangeable with any of a number of high end *NIX OS'es if you need super high stability. For somebody like an airline this is a huge advantage, they can use Linux for the less mission critical systems but have a clear and relatively easy migration/upgrade path to a selection of more stable *NIX dialects if their stability requirements for the system in question change. Another point is that you don't get this with Windows if you need more stability or suffer from critical bugs that Microsoft hasn't addressed in months or even years but that are making your life a misery you can't switch to a competing Windows compatible OS that has fixed these issues, there aren't any. As for money, you forgot to mention retraining, but even if you take that and all other cost factors into account money really isn't an object here. It costs them less to throw money at the problem and go with AIX than to put up with the business and customer confidence they are losing because of stability problems with things like their ticket booking systems.
What has Linux got that's anywhere near as dangerous?:-) Perl.... it will jump on you neck and bite through your spike you if you show even the slightest hint of fear.
Exactly. Particularly when the printer is $150, and not some $20 piece of garbage that's just a holder for the $40 or $50 cartridge. Nobody cares really about messing up their printer, when you can just get a new one practically for free -- but when the printer is a significant investment, and the replacement cartridges are cheap, who's going to do that? It's penny-wise and pound-foolish at that point to cut corners. That is a very good and logically sound argument but don't underestimate the stupidifying effect that frugality has on some people. I'll fix myself or use third party supplies and parts but when the value of an object reaches a certain point I'm not going to risk ruining something that cost me of 1-2 months wages or more, such as a laptop for example, to save a few cents on running costs and upgrades. Not everybody agrees with this of course, it is simply amazing how many people will spend a dollar to save a cent.
Forget the fact that the entire process is a blatant example of socialism... Do you even know what socialism is? What Socialism is depends on where in the world you are. For most of the world it is a spectrum of political denominations that advocate a social-economic system where property and the distribution of wealth is controlled by the community or the state. These can range from the moderate Social democrats, who simply advocate borrowing certain aspects of this model and integrating them into modern democratic systems, to the more radical Communists, Bolsheviks, Stalinists, etc... who advocate the complete abolishment of private property and total state control of all aspects of the economy. In the USA, however, the meaning of the word 'Socialist' is somewhat different due to the almost complete absence of a political left wing (as the rest of the world defines it) in US politics. Here 'Socialist' seems to be a pejorative applied without any regard to it's true meaning to anybody whose political affiliations lie to the left of the extreme right wing of politics including both genuine Socialists as well as people with more moderate right wing affiliations.
I find the state of business quite sad. There are too many companies who try to get away with dubious deeds just to make a buck. Dubious business practices have been going on since the first few cave men/women invented commerce.
So... Why did they suddenly decide to go after Apple now when Mozilla has been in, urm, flagrant violation of this supposed patent for much longer than Apple? Apple's got money. Apple also has a high profile and a loyal customer following that borders on being a fan-base which ensures that this will be publicized by every Apple centric website and patent abolishment preaching nerd site on the net. This in turn will ensure that the main stream media will eventually pick up on it and bring it to the attention of the target audience which is the rest of the Software industry thus ensuring they get their FUD into the widest possible circulation completely free of charge.
I haven't used an Intel mac yet though, or vista, so can't comment on the current state. While I still had a G4 Mac I really didn't get the feeling OS.X was more resource intensive than Windows XP. When I upgraded to an Intel Mac I had 2Gb of memory installed on it for future proofing when I picked it up at the Apple Store. I only started really needing those 2Gb of memory on my Intel Mac when I decided to run Eclipse, Parallels, Safari, Firefox, usually two MS Office app (Under Rosetta) and Photoshop simultaneously but even then OS.X remains quite snappy so I suppose I haven't reached the breaking point yet. The only thing that makes my Mac stutter is playing WMV files under Flip4Mac which is probably due more to shortcomings in Flip4Mac than any shortcomings in OS.X. I also had some problems with memory in Eclipse which turned out to be a known issue on more platforms than OS.X and was solved by modifying the JVM settings. Basically you need at least 1Gb of RAM in your Intel Mac if you intend to use Parallels while doing something memory intensive with both native OS.X apps and Parallels at the same time. Having the dual core CPU also helps. If you don't want to use Parallels or any RAM hungry king sized Java Apps like Eclipse you can get away with a lot less RAM even on an Intel Mac. That's my experience anyway.... your milage may vary...
You heard wrong. There is supposed to be a "Red Screen of Death" too which is for more 'critical' errors. As if a BSOD wasn't bad enough?! I've seen quite a few Vista BSODs already. Spysweeper is good at crashing Vista for one. So the RSOD==BSOD now? This brings back warm and fuzzy memories of Windows 98 doesn't it? Instablilty was the primary reason why I dumped Windows some eight years ago.
Irrelevant? No. Limited in its appeal to mobile corporate users? Yes. Without the ability to install custom apps on it, the chance that the iPhone will be a popular choice for mobile corporate users does seem pretty slim. That being said, I hardly think Apple cares, it's not their target market anyway. I'm not so sure the iPhone would be a leper in the corporate world, it has potential. While I'm not in a position to judge how realistic this suggestion is it still seems to me that if Nokia and Ericsson can ship Blackberry clients with their phones what's to stop Apple from licensing RIM technology and shipping a Blackberry client with the iPhone? Perhaps Blackberry has some sort of corporate alliance or contractual obligations to Nokia/Ericsson or somebody else that precludes this? Microsoft fanbois often assume it to be an axiom that is chiseled in stone somewhere that everybody uses Exchange but there are more products out there than Microsoft's. Blackberry integration alone would change the business relevance of the iPhone a lot. Another popular iPhone feature IMHO would be integration with Lotus Notes. Then there is also Oracle Collaboration Suite. I don't know how popular it is but Oracle is apparently aiming it straight at MS Exchange so they might enjoy irritating MS by offering iPhone support, they do offer Mac support for numerous other Oracle products. Perhaps Microsoft is simply scared that the iPhone will eat into Windows Mobile's market share more aggressively than it will eat into the market share of those devices using Symbian and other Mobile OS'es? It will certainly be interesting to see who Apple turns out to be targeting most fiercely with the iPhone.
Cloned foods allow them to slaughter a cow, check the quality of the meat and then clone it to make more cows like that one. That's just the point. Clones created with current technology are not exact copies. They get diseases more easily, have shorter life-spans and suffer from all sorts of weird conditions like organs that grow at freakish speeds which results in hideous deformities. Nobody seems to know why and yet the biotech industry feels quite confident that eating cloned meat will have no detrimental effect on my health what so ever!?! Having watched several scientific documentaries on the subject of cloning I'll live a long and happy life without ever eating a single mouthful of cloned meat and if that means coming accross a less than optimally tender steak once in a while that's a price I'm more than willing to pay.
I really wasn't trying to turn it into one. The M16 is a decent weapon, so is the AK47. Which is "better" will depend entirely on the mission. We would actually dismount our M2s sometimes. Now that's a heavy pig to carry, even with three guys. (barrel, ammo, housing/tripod) Although I've toted some heavier firepower. I agree and I didn't mean to suggest that you were. I was simply ranting on about the futility of the whole M-16 vs. AK-47 debate. If I was equipping an army today, unless I was getting US defense aid which kind of locks you in on US products, I think I'd still take the hit in accuracy and go with the AK-47 or AK-74 simply because it's cheaper, easier to get and it's more robust. If I had the choice to go for anything I wanted I'd drop them both and go on a tour of the worlds firearms laboratories looking for something totally new that combined the accuracy of the M-16 and the tree trunk shattering ability of the AK-47. Of course it would still have to weigh practically nothing and work after I drive my truck over it;-)
Clones AREN'T exact copies. At least with our current technology. Clones tend to die a lot quicker than the real things and develop more diseases. I agree... The way I see it there are diseases that are caused by some pretty unexpected mechanisms and not just viruses or bacteria so, basically, I'd rather be safe than sorry. Now, I know prion diseases have little or nothing to do with cloning but if such a thing as infectious proteins is possible I'm open to the possibility that GM foods may be harmful to humans in ways that have yet to manifest them selves. I'm normally quite quick to adopt new technologies but if they have the potential to shorten my life-span I'm simply not interested. Another point is that these GM/Cloned food stuffs offer no real advantages that I can see over the old fashioned food stuffs and so I will keep away from anything made from GELFs for the foreseeable future. If GM/Cloned food labeling hurts some soulless corporation's profit margin by reducing their ability to market their GM foods products then.... well..... I really don't give a f*ck. I still want GM foods to be labeled, period!.
You'd be surprised how much a few oz feels like it weighs after 20 or so miles through brush. The M16 is a decent weapon today.
Most of the high tech crap is just one more thing that breaks when it counts though. One could turn that argument around couldn't one? You'd be surprised how little you mind a few extra grams when it means your AK-47 bullet can shoot through things an that will stop an M16 bullet. Comparing the AK and the M16 is really a bit like comparing a lynx with a dog, they are both predators but fit into somewhat different niches. The M16 has more accuracy, is more ergonomic, it's slightly lighter and kicks less. The AK has more penetrating power due to it's larger bullet, it's harder to fire from a prone position and it's less accurate but it will fire after you have filled it with mudy water and driven a truck over it (i've seen that done). Out in the open the M16 is better due to being more effective at long range, in any other situation I would pick the AK and there are AK variants with considerably better accuracy than the mass made early Soviet stuff (let's not even get into the frighteningly badly made Chinese knockoffs). I have read a number of AK-47 vs. M16 pissing contests. M16 fans argue it's lack of power doesn't matter because that's what squad machine guns and vehicle mounted.50 cals are for. Well, you could make the same argument about the AK, squad guns and opposing vehicle mounted guns (14.5 mm KPV?) although the AK's inferior long range performance is obviously goning to hurt you in non CQC situations. One final advantage of carrying an AK-47 is that you can get them very easily on the black market and you are much more likely to run into an opponent that also uses the AK than you are to run into an opponent that carries the M16 so using the AK increases the odds of you being able to recycle captured ammunition and even captured weapons. That may not matter the the US Army which sometimes seems to have unlimited financial resources but it matters to many other armies. I do agree with your opinion of high tech crap even if it can be useful when it's working properly which is not as often as the Pentagon would have us believe.
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Basically the Nazi system wasn't all that dissimilar in it's inner workings to the tactics employed by Senator McCarthy and his goons except it went much further. Those who got named weren't merely socially ostracized as they were in the USA, in Nazi Germany and the cooupied territories they got sent to a camp and executed. There was actually a group of people both in Germany it self and the occupied countries who made a tidy business out of regularly informing on anybody that acted even mildly suspiciously. Once the Gestapo did lock in on you they were practically guaranteed to find _something_ to hang you with. Believe it or not, purely out of fear of a Gestapo visit, people both Germans and non Germans sorted the scrap paper they used on the toilet in case it contained any leaflets or other printed material from politically unreliable elements or, god forbid, contained a picture of Adolf him self. People today may find that funny but there were actually people who did long stretches in KZ camps or even died there for the simple offence of insulting the visage or persona of the 'Führer'.
I think he's talking about Web services (UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc...) and not just simple web apps. What experience has taught one to expect Microsoft to do in situations like this is to ensure that their own development toolkits for developing web service clients are fully compatible only with services that are developed with Microsoft tools and systems and deployed on Microsoft platforms. The traditional way they have done this is by leveraging their dominant position to embrace, extend and eventually appropriate (or alternatively, destroy) standards and protocols like UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc... When developing web services, especially if you are using automated "turn knob" development tools like the ones this dude talks about that don't require you to understand the underlying technologies, it's really easy to get into a situation where any Microsoft-only proprietary extensions to web service standards result in you creating a web service that's only 100% compatible with Microsoft's products. Furthermore, becasue you have no cule about how UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc.. work, all you can say when a Java developer using JAXWS, Axis2 or XFire complans that these Microsoft-only proprietery extensions are giving him a migrane is: "Well... uh... that Sun/Java based crap you are using must be broken. It all works perfectly with
....so why look a gift horse in the mouth (even if it is one of the four horses of the apocalypse)? Because it probably has apocalyptically bad breath?And that concludes my conspiracy theory...
Our calculations show that you are no longer necessary.
Sincerely
Steven Hawking
Most of the high tech crap is just one more thing that breaks when it counts though. One could turn that argument around couldn't one? You'd be surprised how little you mind a few extra grams when it means your AK-47 bullet can shoot through things an that will stop an M16 bullet. Comparing the AK and the M16 is really a bit like comparing a lynx with a dog, they are both predators but fit into somewhat different niches. The M16 has more accuracy, is more ergonomic, it's slightly lighter and kicks less. The AK has more penetrating power due to it's larger bullet, it's harder to fire from a prone position and it's less accurate but it will fire after you have filled it with mudy water and driven a truck over it (i've seen that done). Out in the open the M16 is better due to being more effective at long range, in any other situation I would pick the AK and there are AK variants with considerably better accuracy than the mass made early Soviet stuff (let's not even get into the frighteningly badly made Chinese knockoffs). I have read a number of AK-47 vs. M16 pissing contests. M16 fans argue it's lack of power doesn't matter because that's what squad machine guns and vehicle mounted