It's not clear to me from the material available whether the ruling rests on lack of competition from competing products (such as linux, OS/2, etc) or lack of price competition.
I think that most people would accept that Windows has a de-facto monopoly and that doesn't really condemn Microsoft, people choose the product they want to buy (for whatever reason).
There would be a good case against Microsoft if it denied its dealers the opportunity to discount the product thereby eliminating competition at that stage.
I have been under the illusion for many years that an "operating system" was supposed to be in charge of the machine AND the applications which run under it.
If a few "brain dead applications" can screw up the "security policy", I'd suggest that perhaps the term "security policy" is misleading.
All prior posts were beneath my threshold when I came in here so apologies for duplication, if any.
Commercial software producers have traditionally kept their source code secret. Why? They're scared that, if they release the source, others will steal it, produce competing products and damage their bottom line.
This threat is only a threat if the thief keeps the code secret as well. If the source is available for public scrutiny, breach of copyright would be very easily proven.
The benefit gained from making source available is that it can be very easily and cheaply subjected to peer review. This in turn leads inevitably to better, more secure, more reliable code which will benefit the software producer and everyone else at the same time.
The only other excuse I've heard for keeping it secret is that secret code doesn't expose security flaws thereby keeping out the bad guys. Yeah, right!
Given the number of security breaches exploited in current commercial, secret, code, it's really hard to imagine how publishing the source could make matters worse.
If you nothing to hide, than you have nothing to worry about.
Would you still not be worried if the postman regularly logged your snailmail and the phone company regularly logged your phone calls or maybe the police regularly logged your physical movements?
At the start of the Afghanistan campaign recently I watched a live broadcast by the BBC correspondent John Simpson perched somewhere up a mountain in Afghanistan who was using a satellite video link.
The video was a bit jumpy and flaky and I was initially critical of the quality and thought "why can't the BBC do better?".
A little while later, however, I suddenly realised the significance of what I was seeing:-
Here we have a man, perched on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, in a country with no electricity and being bombed by an overwhelming force, actually making a live broadcast with sound and colour video! I'm sitting in the comfort of my living room witnessing events as they happen several thousand miles away.
Isn't that truly amazing? It's easy to criticize the defects of new technology. Sometimes it needs a real leap of imagination to spot the virtues.
I have encountered lots of code, with and without comments, written by people who have mastered the finer points of their chosen programming language and, more often than not, their code is all but incomprehensible to us mere mortals.
Some languages cope with this better than others. C/C++ lends itself to instant double-dutch in the hands of an "expert" coder whereas VB tends to make sense despite the efforts of the coder.
My rule would be "code for the human reader". The machine will cope with the code however well or badly it's written but humans can be left clueless.
I would also echo the comments above which call for comments denoting *why* you're doing something rather than *what* you're doing. I can almost always figure out the what from the code itself, why is a different matter.
Judging by how little activity there's been on this topic so far, I'd say that moderating as "redundant" my link above to a description of the game merely indicates that the moderator is the only one for whom a description is redundant.
This claim is worthless to me. The claim form says I need receipts. I handled my own system and the only thing I lost was time and access. Why would I bill myself for working on my own computer?
Looking on the bright side, you've avoided a double whammy. If you had billed yourself and kept receipts, thereby enabling a claim against AOL, you would have paid tax on your "income" then and you would have to pay tax on the compensation for that expenditure now
Firstly, we want to thank for the opportunity to him that offered us to always inform to him how we come working in the Country in benefit from the public sector, looking for the best alternatives to obtain the implementation of programs that allow to consolidate the initiatives of modernization and transparency of the State. Indeed, fruit of our meeting today You know our advances international level in the design of new services for the citizen, within the frame of a State model that respects and protects the author rights.
This to drive, as we talked, it is part of a world-wide initiative and nowadays diverse experiences exist that have allowed to collaborate with programs of support to the State and the community in the adoption of the technology like an element strategic to hit in the quality of life of the citizens.
Of another side, as we were in this meeting, we attended the Forum made in the Congress of the Republic the 6 of March, with regard to the project of law that You lead, in where we could listen to the different presentations that today take to us to expose our position in order that You have a ampler panorama of the real situation.
The project establishes the obligatory nature of which all public organism must use free software exclusively, is to say of opened code, which trasgrede the principles of the equality before the law, the one of nondiscrimination and the rights to the free deprived initiative, freedom of protected industry and hiring in the constitution.
The project, when obligatory doing the use of software of opened code, would establish a discriminatory and noncompetitive treatment in the hiring and acquisition of the organisms public having contravened the principles of base of the Law 26850 of Hirings and Acquisitions of the State.
Thus, when forcing to the State to favor a model of businesses that would support exclusively the software of opened code, the project would be only discouraging to the local and international manufacturers that are those that truely they make important investments, create a significant number of positions of direct and indirect uses, besides to contribute to the GIP versus a model of software of open code that tends to have an economic impact every smaller time because it creates jobs mainly in good condition.
The law project imposes the use of software of code opened without considering the dangers that this can entail from the point of view of security, guarantee and possible violation of the rights of intellectual property of third.
The project handles of erroneous way the concepts of software of opened code, that not necessarily implies that it is free software or of cost zero, getting to make ambiguous conclusions on savings for the State, without no sustenance cost benefit that validates the position.
It is mistaken to think that Software de Open Co'digo is gratuitous. Investigations made by Gartner Group (important investigator of the technological market recognized world-wide level) have indicated that the cost of acquisition of software (operating system and applications) is reduced to only 8% of the total of costs that the companies and institutions must assume as a result of the rational and really beneficial use of the technology. Other 92% constitute it: costs of implantation, qualification, support, maintenance, administration and inoperatividad.
One of the arguments that they sustain the law project is the supposed gratuidad of the software of opened code, compared with the costs of the commercial software, without considering that exist modalities of licensing by volume which they can extremely be advantageous for the State, as it has been obtained in other countries.
Additionally, the alternative adopted by the project (i) is clearly more expensive by the high costs that a migration supposes and (ii) puts in risk the compatibility and possibility of interoperability of the computer science platforms within the State, and between the State and the deprived sector, given the hundred of versions that exist of software of code opened in the market.
The software of code opened in its majority does not offer the suitable levels on watch nor the guarantee of recognized manufacturers to obtain greater productivity on the part of the users, which has motivated that different public organizations have backed down in their decision to go by a solution of software of open code and they are using commercial software in his place.
The desincentiva project the creativity of the Peruvian industry of software, that invoices to 40 USS millones/año, exports USS 4 million (10mo. in ranking products of nontraditional export, more than crafts) and is a source of use highly described. With a Law that stimulates the use of software of opened code, the software programmers lose their rights of intellectual property and their main source of repayment.
The software of opened code, to the power to be distributed gratuitously, either does not allow to generate income for its developers by means of the export. Of this form, it is debilitated the multiplying effect of the sale from software to other countries and therefore the growth of this industry, when contrary the norms of a Government must stimulate the local industry.
In the Forum it was discussed on the importance of the use of software of code opened in the education, without commenting the full failure of this initiative in a country like Mexico, in where indeed the civil employees of the State which they based the project, today express that the software of open code did not allow to offer a experience of learning to students in the school, did not tell themselves on the qualification levels national level to give suitable support to the platform, and software did not count and it does not count on the levels of integration for the platform that exist in the schools.
If the software of open code satisfies all the requirements with the organizations of the State because it is required of a Law to adopt it? Would not have to be the market the one that decides freely which are the products that give to more benefits or value him?
I am thankful excessively of the attention lent to the present, we want to reiterate our interest to meet to him with you to be able to expose with more detail our points of view to the project presented/displayed by you, and to put us to its total disposition to share experiences and information that we are safe they will be able to contribute for a better analysis and implementation of an initiative that has by objective the modernization and transparency of the State, in benefit of the citizen.
An awful lot of commercial applications achieved the market share they got/have because they were released in some sort of try before you buy format, shareware, etc
It's a proven business model.
Why would anyone *presume* that it won't work for music?
The author of the EULA can, of course, write whatever he likes into the licence but the more obscure terms may well be judged to be unenforceable when it comes right down to it and this outcome is much more likely if the document itself is written in obscure legalese and presented in an unhelpful format.
The more presentable and easy to understand, the more enforceable.
In the UK, we have laws such as the Unfair Contract Terms Act which outlaw certain types of clause even if they are easy to read but might allow others ONLY if they are easy to understand.
By all means use the GPL as a shining example of the way it should be done, it may actually be used in court to help defeat some of the more ridiculous EULAs.
"debugging" is an unfortunate word, it suggests that when a program is created it *somehow* contains "bugs" or "gremlins" and that these have to be removed.
The bugs don't get there by themselves, in my experience they are usually the result of some (often understandable) assumption on the part of the system designer or programmer.
A trivial example is a subroutine designed to add to integers and return the result failing to check that 1) it was called with *two* parameters and 2) that both parameters contain integers.
The design of the program should incorporate code to positively check that all possible assumptions are true.
The techies can't be responsible for drawing up the complete list of assumptions, the user or customer must be involved in this process also.
If an accountant has told me how to prepare a balance sheet, he must also tell me the complete list of checkable assumptions that must be tested. I'm not an accountant (engineer, architect, whatever), the relevant expert must take responsibility.
Nor can we rely on "experts" (computer or otherwise). All of us practising some skill, sooner or later, start taking things for granted. Not only do we need expert debugging, we need dummy debugging to mind the bits that the experts will take for granted.
Slashdot Mirror
Whichever goon moderated this OffTopic must be completely devoid of understanding of the issues being discussed!
Central to the whole matter is the question of whether or not there was an *illegal* monopoly.
Get with the programme!
It's not clear to me from the material available whether the ruling rests on lack of competition from competing products (such as linux, OS/2, etc) or lack of price competition.
I think that most people would accept that Windows has a de-facto monopoly and that doesn't really condemn Microsoft, people choose the product they want to buy (for whatever reason).
There would be a good case against Microsoft if it denied its dealers the opportunity to discount the product thereby eliminating competition at that stage.
Does anyone have sight of the judgment?
Would it be prudent for the FAA to use software that thousands of unknown programmers have intimate knowledge of for something this critical?
Would it be prudent for the FAA to use software that thousands of [unknown] programmers DO NOT have intimate knowledge of for something this critical?
Am I alone in thinking that, say, 10,000 critics are more likely to uncover the bugs between them than the few full-time employees of the FAA?
Isn't this one of the logical precursors to a global, thinking, machine?
How long will it be before the unused cycles are used to become self-aware? How will the new intelligence defend itself from human interference?
I have been under the illusion for many years that an "operating system" was supposed to be in charge of the machine AND the applications which run under it.
If a few "brain dead applications" can screw up the "security policy", I'd suggest that perhaps the term "security policy" is misleading.
All prior posts were beneath my threshold when I came in here so apologies for duplication, if any.
Commercial software producers have traditionally kept their source code secret. Why? They're scared that, if they release the source, others will steal it, produce competing products and damage their bottom line.
This threat is only a threat if the thief keeps the code secret as well. If the source is available for public scrutiny, breach of copyright would be very easily proven.
The benefit gained from making source available is that it can be very easily and cheaply subjected to peer review. This in turn leads inevitably to better, more secure, more reliable code which will benefit the software producer and everyone else at the same time.
The only other excuse I've heard for keeping it secret is that secret code doesn't expose security flaws thereby keeping out the bad guys. Yeah, right!
Given the number of security breaches exploited in current commercial, secret, code, it's really hard to imagine how publishing the source could make matters worse.
Wouldn't it be nice if all software releases were *only* a week late?
I seem to be first today!
1066 is the only historical date anyone can remember after they leave school.
If you nothing to hide, than you have nothing to worry about.
Would you still not be worried if the postman regularly logged your snailmail and the phone company regularly logged your phone calls or maybe the police regularly logged your physical movements?
At the start of the Afghanistan campaign recently I watched a live broadcast by the BBC correspondent John Simpson perched somewhere up a mountain in Afghanistan who was using a satellite video link.
The video was a bit jumpy and flaky and I was initially critical of the quality and thought "why can't the BBC do better?".
A little while later, however, I suddenly realised the significance of what I was seeing:-
Here we have a man, perched on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, in a country with no electricity and being bombed by an overwhelming force, actually making a live broadcast with sound and colour video! I'm sitting in the comfort of my living room witnessing events as they happen several thousand miles away.
Isn't that truly amazing? It's easy to criticize the defects of new technology. Sometimes it needs a real leap of imagination to spot the virtues.
I have encountered lots of code, with and without comments, written by people who have mastered the finer points of their chosen programming language and, more often than not, their code is all but incomprehensible to us mere mortals.
Some languages cope with this better than others. C/C++ lends itself to instant double-dutch in the hands of an "expert" coder whereas VB tends to make sense despite the efforts of the coder.
My rule would be "code for the human reader". The machine will cope with the code however well or badly it's written but humans can be left clueless.
I would also echo the comments above which call for comments denoting *why* you're doing something rather than *what* you're doing. I can almost always figure out the what from the code itself, why is a different matter.
If I was the only one to have failed to notice that the first time I might consider being embarrassed at redundantly trying to help.
Judging by how little activity there's been on this topic so far, I'd say that moderating as "redundant" my link above to a description of the game merely indicates that the moderator is the only one for whom a description is redundant.
Here's a link to a good description of Shogi, I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't know about the game.
This claim is worthless to me. The claim form says I need receipts. I handled my own system and the only thing I lost was time and access. Why would I bill myself for working on my own computer?
Looking on the bright side, you've avoided a double whammy. If you had billed yourself and kept receipts, thereby enabling a claim against AOL, you would have paid tax on your "income" then and you would have to pay tax on the compensation for that expenditure now
Netscape IS reinstated - haven't you seen the completely wonderful in every way I can think of Mozilla 1.0 (rc2) ?
I used to drive a Ford Prefect.
Is this a record?
Saphena hosted Spanish
San Isidro, 21 of March of 2002
Sir:
Edgar Villanueva Nuñez
Congressman of the Republic
Present. -
Dear Sirs:
Firstly, we want to thank for the opportunity to him that offered us to always inform to him how we come working in the Country in benefit from the public sector, looking for the best alternatives to obtain the implementation of programs that allow to consolidate the initiatives of modernization and transparency of the State. Indeed, fruit of our meeting today You know our advances international level in the design of new services for the citizen, within the frame of a State model that respects and protects the author rights.
This to drive, as we talked, it is part of a world-wide initiative and nowadays diverse experiences exist that have allowed to collaborate with programs of support to the State and the community in the adoption of the technology like an element strategic to hit in the quality of life of the citizens.
Of another side, as we were in this meeting, we attended the Forum made in the Congress of the Republic the 6 of March, with regard to the project of law that You lead, in where we could listen to the different presentations that today take to us to expose our position in order that You have a ampler panorama of the real situation.
The project establishes the obligatory nature of which all public organism must use free software exclusively, is to say of opened code, which trasgrede the principles of the equality before the law, the one of nondiscrimination and the rights to the free deprived initiative, freedom of protected industry and hiring in the constitution.
The project, when obligatory doing the use of software of opened code, would establish a discriminatory and noncompetitive treatment in the hiring and acquisition of the organisms public having contravened the principles of base of the Law 26850 of Hirings and Acquisitions of the State.
Thus, when forcing to the State to favor a model of businesses that would support exclusively the software of opened code, the project would be only discouraging to the local and international manufacturers that are those that truely they make important investments, create a significant number of positions of direct and indirect uses, besides to contribute to the GIP versus a model of software of open code that tends to have an economic impact every smaller time because it creates jobs mainly in good condition.
The law project imposes the use of software of code opened without considering the dangers that this can entail from the point of view of security, guarantee and possible violation of the rights of intellectual property of third.
The project handles of erroneous way the concepts of software of opened code, that not necessarily implies that it is free software or of cost zero, getting to make ambiguous conclusions on savings for the State, without no sustenance cost benefit that validates the position.
It is mistaken to think that Software de Open Co'digo is gratuitous. Investigations made by Gartner Group (important investigator of the technological market recognized world-wide level) have indicated that the cost of acquisition of software (operating system and applications) is reduced to only 8% of the total of costs that the companies and institutions must assume as a result of the rational and really beneficial use of the technology. Other 92% constitute it: costs of implantation, qualification, support, maintenance, administration and inoperatividad.
One of the arguments that they sustain the law project is the supposed gratuidad of the software of opened code, compared with the costs of the commercial software, without considering that exist modalities of licensing by volume which they can extremely be advantageous for the State, as it has been obtained in other countries.
Additionally, the alternative adopted by the project (i) is clearly more expensive by the high costs that a migration supposes and (ii) puts in risk the compatibility and possibility of interoperability of the computer science platforms within the State, and between the State and the deprived sector, given the hundred of versions that exist of software of code opened in the market.
The software of code opened in its majority does not offer the suitable levels on watch nor the guarantee of recognized manufacturers to obtain greater productivity on the part of the users, which has motivated that different public organizations have backed down in their decision to go by a solution of software of open code and they are using commercial software in his place.
The desincentiva project the creativity of the Peruvian industry of software, that invoices to 40 USS millones/año, exports USS 4 million (10mo. in ranking products of nontraditional export, more than crafts) and is a source of use highly described. With a Law that stimulates the use of software of opened code, the software programmers lose their rights of intellectual property and their main source of repayment.
The software of opened code, to the power to be distributed gratuitously, either does not allow to generate income for its developers by means of the export. Of this form, it is debilitated the multiplying effect of the sale from software to other countries and therefore the growth of this industry, when contrary the norms of a Government must stimulate the local industry.
In the Forum it was discussed on the importance of the use of software of code opened in the education, without commenting the full failure of this initiative in a country like Mexico, in where indeed the civil employees of the State which they based the project, today express that the software of open code did not allow to offer a experience of learning to students in the school, did not tell themselves on the qualification levels national level to give suitable support to the platform, and software did not count and it does not count on the levels of integration for the platform that exist in the schools.
If the software of open code satisfies all the requirements with the organizations of the State because it is required of a Law to adopt it? Would not have to be the market the one that decides freely which are the products that give to more benefits or value him?
I am thankful excessively of the attention lent to the present, we want to reiterate our interest to meet to him with you to be able to expose with more detail our points of view to the project presented/displayed by you, and to put us to its total disposition to share experiences and information that we are safe they will be able to contribute for a better analysis and implementation of an initiative that has by objective the modernization and transparency of the State, in benefit of the citizen.
Kindly
Juan Alberto González
General Manager
Microsoft Peru
It's also unclear whether the thing that's "better ..." is the atom, what was found in the atom or the article about the things in the atom.
The article doesn't say who sponsored the prize.
I think we should be told!
An awful lot of commercial applications achieved the market share they got/have because they were released in some sort of try before you buy format, shareware, etc
It's a proven business model.
Why would anyone *presume* that it won't work for music?
The author of the EULA can, of course, write whatever he likes into the licence but the more obscure terms may well be judged to be unenforceable when it comes right down to it and this outcome is much more likely if the document itself is written in obscure legalese and presented in an unhelpful format.
The more presentable and easy to understand, the more enforceable.
In the UK, we have laws such as the Unfair Contract Terms Act which outlaw certain types of clause even if they are easy to read but might allow others ONLY if they are easy to understand.
By all means use the GPL as a shining example of the way it should be done, it may actually be used in court to help defeat some of the more ridiculous EULAs.
"debugging" is an unfortunate word, it suggests that when a program is created it *somehow* contains "bugs" or "gremlins" and that these have to be removed.
The bugs don't get there by themselves, in my experience they are usually the result of some (often understandable) assumption on the part of the system designer or programmer.
A trivial example is a subroutine designed to add to integers and return the result failing to check that 1) it was called with *two* parameters and 2) that both parameters contain integers.
The design of the program should incorporate code to positively check that all possible assumptions are true.
The techies can't be responsible for drawing up the complete list of assumptions, the user or customer must be involved in this process also.
If an accountant has told me how to prepare a balance sheet, he must also tell me the complete list of checkable assumptions that must be tested. I'm not an accountant (engineer, architect, whatever), the relevant expert must take responsibility.
Nor can we rely on "experts" (computer or otherwise). All of us practising some skill, sooner or later, start taking things for granted. Not only do we need expert debugging, we need dummy debugging to mind the bits that the experts will take for granted.