Here's another good question. What if you're under 18 and you buy some software and click through the EULA.
... and another question along these lines.
What is it that actualy protects software from piracy? Is it the EULA or copyright law? If it is the later, how is it that the GPL works?
If it is because of the EULA, does that mean that a 12 year old can purchase the software, click through the EULA and make/sell copies of the software under the protection of the EULA being void due to his age?
The government already regulates real estate leases in New York. And because of that the housing is notoriously expensive and of low quality
So if a landlord is allowed to increase rents whenever he wants, discriminates against minories, never fix a broken hot water system all without goverment regulations do you think they won't? Of course they will!
If car manufactores were allowed to build shit/dangerious cars without regulation, would they? Of course they would!
If software compaines were allowed to put whatever they want in the EULA would they? they do already!
For me, BSD is not an alternative, the same way that living under a bridge is not an alternative to a rental property. (nothing against BSD).
Computers have gotten to the point that they are an essentual service, and as such, the unfair conditions the compaines like MS and McAfee put in their EULA's should be regulated.
All of MS's software says that you need to agree to the EULA before using, and if you don't agree to the EULA you should return the software for a full refund.
I remember buying a copy of MS Office 97 developer, opening the box and not likeing the license, taking the software back to where I got it from. The manager was not happy, but I just showed him the part on the box saying I could return it, and he had no other choice.
If the box says you can return the software, then under.au consumer law, you can. (don't know about how this works in the US tho)
...an article about how McAfee is suing a Network Administrator for telling a friend to purchase Symantec's AV software insted of McAfee's because Symantec's works better.
In.au, the goverment regulates Lease Agreements for housing, home building contracts, home buying contacts, finance contracts all to protect the consumer and give them a minumum set of rights.
Why don't the goverment do the same thing with software EULAs?
Do you keep every single receipt? Remember what the article said, the box is not enough. The license often gets tossed out and only the manuals and maybe the box kept. And the receipt gets thrown out after some time.
Do _I_ keep every recept, no, I'm actually quite bad at that, BUT - my company keeps every receipt for everything they purchase.
It has to! Software purchases can be used to offset a companies tax obligations, and do to that I am required to keep every receipt.
Do you think the tax office would accept a box as proof that I purchased the software?
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg.
Hang5 whilst I change my default gateway to one of the 5 other IP links comming into this building... DONE! Suckers
PLEASE do not ever used software RAID on a production file server! Esp. Win2k's implimentation of software RAID!
We use to run a software RAID on a file server (serving only 10 macs mind you!) - Both using 4x9 gig SCSI drives (a while ago); and 4 x 30gig IDE drives
Everything runs OK until you need to replace one of the drives; then the performance whilst rebuilding absolutly sucks!
I've seen the system take over 12 hours of production time to rebuild a 90 gig software RAID; all time performance for network users absolutly sucked!
The solution; good quality hardware RAID; we now run a compaq 5200 hardware RAID card; and all compaq drives: I can pull a HDD out right now; put a new one in and have the RAID re-built without any network user noticing....
I see you as wanting an Application Framework rather than an Operating System. An Application Framework could be made portable to other Operating Systems (and has) rather than tying it to a particular Operating System and or underlying hardware architecture.
Totally agree with you, exept the application framework would have to given away free with the 'OS', so everyone had it.
As you say, it should also be extensable, EG; someone should be able to replace the inbuilt HTML renderer with something like Geko that even supported PDF rendering (aka Quartz)
The free-UNIX world is one of mix-and-match to your hearts desire, and no one will force upon you a fixed set of software offerings like Micro$oft's.
EXACTLY; When the software is FREE this model works well, but if I had to pay for my Win2k Kernel, my Service For Mac, my IIS, my browser, my File Sharing services etc, etc it simply would not work! No one would buy windows
I wish people stop trying to apply the free software distribution model to windows software.
Very vauge. What does "related" mean in the context of your statement? My whole idea was to attempt to precisely define each component and level of operation.
I'm sorry I did not express myself clearly. First of all, I love the way windows is distrubuted because I am one of the ones that actually use IIS, services for mac, etc, etc in Win2k Server (I use IIS for HTML print managment/HTML mail as well as serving ASP pages: all internally). If IIS might add around $5 to each copy of Win2k server, but if I had to purchase it seperatly is might cost a few hundred or even thousand dollars per copy. (look at site server)
BUT, I do also see your point about being forced to purchase these items.
My original point (which I did not express very well) was that maybe an OS should be defined as a set of underlying services upon which other companies could compete against.
For example, Windows could include all the DLLS nessasery to render Word files (not just the subset that word provides); maybe a decent quality RDBMS like MSDE (cut down sql server); a HTML rendering engine (not a browser); a SMTP server; a IIS type server.
MS would then be required to document all of these underlying services; A company could then create a full blown web browser using the inbuilt Windows HTML rendering engine.
Another company could create a accounting packing that uses the RDBMS for storage (insted of JET)
As part of my job I need to create some VB apps/utilities. When I need to render HTML, all I do is drop the Microsoft HTML rendering engine active X control into my app, and all HTML rendering is taken care of for me! Therefor I can concentrate on making my app work, not rewriting HTML rendering compoents.
What I am saying is that this concept should be taken one step further; Allowing a finance package developer to use the inbuild RDBMS not having to worry about ADO or JET versions, but just knowing that a RDBMS will be there and working.
I think you will then very quickly see an entire industry based on taking the OS's engines and adding front ends to them. (How easy would it be to create tabbed browsing when the HTML rendering is included!)
Re:More of the same anti-competitive practices.
on
A Quick Peek at Longhorn
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Define an Operating System as a kernel i.e. that single piece of code that has ultimate programmatic control over the machine and is not preemptable by any other piece of code. The running level of the kernel is to be deemed kernelspace
My definition of an OS is slightly different:
Define an OS as a kernel and set of related code that provides a set of base level services which application developers can leverage as they need.
For example; web serving; RDBMS; SMTP service; HTML rendering engine. (note; not nessaseraly a web browser; just a set of DLLS that provide standards based HTML rendering; a third party application that leverage this rendering engine to make a complete browser; like Quatz is for Mac OSx)
By your definition, to get the same features that I get out of my $300 copy of WIn2k Server, I would have to purchase; A Kernel (os); a window manager; a dhcp server; a wins server; a web server; a mac server; a file sharing server; a print server; a web browser... and the list goes on!
...and would I be forced to purchase these from seperate companies? How does this affect distributions liek RedHat?
Ahh, now I see. I can just see the high-ups at Microsoft, "Hey, we can't make an RDBMS as good as Oracle or IBM's, so let's make our OS one, then when people run SQL Server on it it will be like 10 times faster, and SQL Server will capture the high-end database market."
Actually, I think windows _NEEDS_ a decent database at the OS level.
At the moment, just about all MS products that need a database (DHCP, WINS, etc) uses a JET.mdb format (I beleive even exchange 5.5 used a JET based format?); As well as that, there are a ton of third party appliations that make use of JET based databases.
Anyone that's delt with large JET based databases will know that they suck!
IMO it would be much better to have a good quality RDBMs provided as a service by the O/S, insted of all these shitty little JET databases distributed across your computer.
After all, isn't this what an OS is all about? Providing underlying system services
it's not a bug with the Athlon processor, but with the motherboard
I somehow wonder if this is related! I had a P3 system, with Gforce 2head card everything was working fine, I replaced the motherboard for an ASUS P4B, and a intel P4 chip. Ever since I intermitently get a BSOD, (bad pool caller).
Point is, isn't this very similar to the problems that AMD were reported on Win2k system without the patch?
They basicly re-sell telstra's ADSL service (they run their own routers, telstra routes my ADSL service from the local loop to their data center)
The speed is 1.5meg down and 256 up. I pay around $au120/month for this, and I can run as many servers as I want, and hog all the bandwidth that I want. No real AUP.
I have to pay per meg over my bandwidth allowance, but I rearly go over that.
You mean I'll finally be able to install a Windows file/print server without having IIS installed with it?:)...[SNIP]..."It's a good server, but it basically forces me to install this drek..."
You have HAVE to install IIS on a WIn2k/NT4 server. It's only selected by default. The first thing I do after an install of Win2k for a file/print server is remove IIS (and a whole lot of other crap!)
Maybe it's Compaq SmartStart and the unattended setup file they create, but IIS is installed by default with Windows 2000 on compaq servers
IFAIK Compaq Smart Start is for setting up SERVERS, there is no option on Smart Start to install Win2k Pro (or NT4 WS for that matter), and SmartStart 5.20 (latest release available in.AU does not have any options to install any version of XP.
No one is denying that IIS isn't installed by default on Win2k SERVER (because it is); the argument is about IIS on Win2k Pro.
Re:Having worked with both...
on
Apache 2.0 vs. IIS
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Try having the web server go down DAILY. This is an e-commerce site we're talking about here
Did anyone ever TRY to fix it? I mean you obviously know that there are MANY IIS implimentations running out there without going down daily.
Maybe it was running some dodgie ASP script (do until rs.eof; rs.loop; [without the rs.movenext]) will obviously make IIS crack the shits by putting it in an endless loop.
Anyway, point being,/. seems to be full of incompatent systems administrators; If I was running the site, it would NOT be going down every day. I would work day and night until I had a fix. Did you ever try MS support; I've used them for problems before, and they are execellent.
...and don't give me that crap about having to PAY for support, its an e-commerce site for god's sake!
Are there providers in the US that supply ADSL at an unrestricted speed, with no time or download limits, which let you host your own servers if you like; but charge a nominal fee per MB downloaded?
It seems to me that every time/. posts an artical about ADSL/Cable, people start complaining about not being able to host content, or having uplink speed restrictions.
Well how about a simple user pays system? You can do whatever you like with the connection but you have to pay for what you do?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's another good question. What if you're under 18 and you buy some software and click through the EULA.
... and another question along these lines.
What is it that actualy protects software from piracy? Is it the EULA or copyright law? If it is the later, how is it that the GPL works?
If it is because of the EULA, does that mean that a 12 year old can purchase the software, click through the EULA and make/sell copies of the software under the protection of the EULA being void due to his age?
I don't agree. Granted I don't live in NYC, but
The government already regulates real estate leases in New York. And because of that the housing is notoriously expensive and of low quality
So if a landlord is allowed to increase rents whenever he wants, discriminates against minories, never fix a broken hot water system all without goverment regulations do you think they won't? Of course they will!
If car manufactores were allowed to build shit/dangerious cars without regulation, would they? Of course they would!
If software compaines were allowed to put whatever they want in the EULA would they? they do already!
For me, BSD is not an alternative, the same way that living under a bridge is not an alternative to a rental property. (nothing against BSD).
Computers have gotten to the point that they are an essentual service, and as such, the unfair conditions the compaines like MS and McAfee put in their EULA's should be regulated.
All of MS's software says that you need to agree to the EULA before using, and if you don't agree to the EULA you should return the software for a full refund.
.au consumer law, you can. (don't know about how this works in the US tho)
I remember buying a copy of MS Office 97 developer, opening the box and not likeing the license, taking the software back to where I got it from. The manager was not happy, but I just showed him the part on the box saying I could return it, and he had no other choice.
If the box says you can return the software, then under
...an article about how McAfee is suing a Network Administrator for telling a friend to purchase Symantec's AV software insted of McAfee's because Symantec's works better.
In .au, the goverment regulates Lease Agreements for housing, home building contracts, home buying contacts, finance contracts all to protect the consumer and give them a minumum set of rights.
Why don't the goverment do the same thing with software EULAs?
Do you keep every single receipt? Remember what the article said, the box is not enough. The license often gets tossed out and only the manuals and maybe the box kept. And the receipt gets thrown out after some time.
Do _I_ keep every recept, no, I'm actually quite bad at that, BUT - my company keeps every receipt for everything they purchase.
It has to! Software purchases can be used to offset a companies tax obligations, and do to that I am required to keep every receipt.
Do you think the tax office would accept a box as proof that I purchased the software?
I just wanted to say: Moderation Totals: Offtopic=377, Flamebait=4, Troll=27, Redundant=5, Insightful=98, Interesting=205, Informative=49, Funny=12, Overrated=11, Underrated=63, Total=851.
For those of us that are sick and tired of men's gaping anuses here is a women doing the same thing!
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg.
Hang5 whilst I change my default gateway to one of the 5 other IP links comming into this building... DONE! Suckers
and if you use software RAID via win2k
PLEASE do not ever used software RAID on a production file server! Esp. Win2k's implimentation of software RAID!
We use to run a software RAID on a file server (serving only 10 macs mind you!) - Both using 4x9 gig SCSI drives (a while ago); and 4 x 30gig IDE drives
Everything runs OK until you need to replace one of the drives; then the performance whilst rebuilding absolutly sucks!
I've seen the system take over 12 hours of production time to rebuild a 90 gig software RAID; all time performance for network users absolutly sucked!
The solution; good quality hardware RAID; we now run a compaq 5200 hardware RAID card; and all compaq drives: I can pull a HDD out right now; put a new one in and have the RAID re-built without any network user noticing....
I see you as wanting an Application Framework rather than an Operating System. An Application Framework could be made portable to other Operating Systems (and has) rather than tying it to a particular Operating System and or underlying hardware architecture.
Totally agree with you, exept the application framework would have to given away free with the 'OS', so everyone had it.
As you say, it should also be extensable, EG; someone should be able to replace the inbuilt HTML renderer with something like Geko that even supported PDF rendering (aka Quartz)
Now if only we can convence Microsoft!
The free-UNIX world is one of mix-and-match to your hearts desire, and no one will force upon you a fixed set of software offerings like Micro$oft's.
EXACTLY; When the software is FREE this model works well, but if I had to pay for my Win2k Kernel, my Service For Mac, my IIS, my browser, my File Sharing services etc, etc it simply would not work! No one would buy windows
I wish people stop trying to apply the free software distribution model to windows software.
Very vauge. What does "related" mean in the context of your statement? My whole idea was to attempt to precisely define each component and level of operation.
I'm sorry I did not express myself clearly. First of all, I love the way windows is distrubuted because I am one of the ones that actually use IIS, services for mac, etc, etc in Win2k Server (I use IIS for HTML print managment/HTML mail as well as serving ASP pages: all internally). If IIS might add around $5 to each copy of Win2k server, but if I had to purchase it seperatly is might cost a few hundred or even thousand dollars per copy. (look at site server)
BUT, I do also see your point about being forced to purchase these items.
My original point (which I did not express very well) was that maybe an OS should be defined as a set of underlying services upon which other companies could compete against.
For example, Windows could include all the DLLS nessasery to render Word files (not just the subset that word provides); maybe a decent quality RDBMS like MSDE (cut down sql server); a HTML rendering engine (not a browser); a SMTP server; a IIS type server.
MS would then be required to document all of these underlying services; A company could then create a full blown web browser using the inbuilt Windows HTML rendering engine.
Another company could create a accounting packing that uses the RDBMS for storage (insted of JET)
As part of my job I need to create some VB apps/utilities. When I need to render HTML, all I do is drop the Microsoft HTML rendering engine active X control into my app, and all HTML rendering is taken care of for me! Therefor I can concentrate on making my app work, not rewriting HTML rendering compoents.
What I am saying is that this concept should be taken one step further; Allowing a finance package developer to use the inbuild RDBMS not having to worry about ADO or JET versions, but just knowing that a RDBMS will be there and working.
I think you will then very quickly see an entire industry based on taking the OS's engines and adding front ends to them. (How easy would it be to create tabbed browsing when the HTML rendering is included!)
Define an Operating System as a kernel i.e. that single piece of code that has ultimate programmatic control over the machine and is not preemptable by any other piece of code. The running level of the kernel is to be deemed kernelspace
My definition of an OS is slightly different:
Define an OS as a kernel and set of related code that provides a set of base level services which application developers can leverage as they need.
For example; web serving; RDBMS; SMTP service; HTML rendering engine. (note; not nessaseraly a web browser; just a set of DLLS that provide standards based HTML rendering; a third party application that leverage this rendering engine to make a complete browser; like Quatz is for Mac OSx)
By your definition, to get the same features that I get out of my $300 copy of WIn2k Server, I would have to purchase; A Kernel (os); a window manager; a dhcp server; a wins server; a web server; a mac server; a file sharing server; a print server; a web browser... and the list goes on!
...and would I be forced to purchase these from seperate companies? How does this affect distributions liek RedHat?
Keep in mind that all these goodies are only "free" until the competition is dead--after that, Microsoft will make you pay
Can you give any examples of this? IE is still FREE, and for all intents and purposes, Netscape is dead.
Ahh, now I see. I can just see the high-ups at Microsoft, "Hey, we can't make an RDBMS as good as Oracle or IBM's, so let's make our OS one, then when people run SQL Server on it it will be like 10 times faster, and SQL Server will capture the high-end database market."
Actually, I think windows _NEEDS_ a decent database at the OS level.
At the moment, just about all MS products that need a database (DHCP, WINS, etc) uses a JET .mdb format (I beleive even exchange 5.5 used a JET based format?); As well as that, there are a ton of third party appliations that make use of JET based databases.
Anyone that's delt with large JET based databases will know that they suck!
IMO it would be much better to have a good quality RDBMs provided as a service by the O/S, insted of all these shitty little JET databases distributed across your computer.
After all, isn't this what an OS is all about? Providing underlying system services
it's not a bug with the Athlon processor, but with the motherboard
I somehow wonder if this is related! I had a P3 system, with Gforce 2head card everything was working fine, I replaced the motherboard for an ASUS P4B, and a intel P4 chip. Ever since I intermitently get a BSOD, (bad pool caller).
Point is, isn't this very similar to the problems that AMD were reported on Win2k system without the patch?
Writing a DoS tool is not a crime. Using it on someone else is. What's so hard to understand?
How about writing a DoS tool and releasing it to all these script kiddies?
How about giving a mass-murderer a machine gun?
How about creating a nuclear weapon and giving it to Osama-Bin-Laden?
But Sir, I only created the nuclear weapon, Bin Ladan was the one that aimed it at the USA....
...but I just pay per meg over that...
I'm from .au; and my ISP is connexus
They basicly re-sell telstra's ADSL service (they run their own routers, telstra routes my ADSL service from the local loop to their data center)
The speed is 1.5meg down and 256 up. I pay around $au120/month for this, and I can run as many servers as I want, and hog all the bandwidth that I want. No real AUP.
I have to pay per meg over my bandwidth allowance, but I rearly go over that.
? (In other words, where can I obtain docs about the IE DOM?)
Right here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/
You had better hurry up and bitchslap it down again before anyone gets to read it
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=52, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=10, Interesting=36, Informative=10, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=4, Total=122
You have one server that hosts the patches and you configure your IIS servers to periodically check that server to update themselves.
This reminds my, why don't MS release patches in a .MSI or .MSP format to make is easy to deploy through AD.
This is my main gripe about MS's patches, they have this awsome AD technology to make deployment easy, but you need to create your own MSI for them!
You mean I'll finally be able to install a Windows file/print server without having IIS installed with it? :) ...[SNIP]..."It's a good server, but it basically forces me to install this drek..."
You have HAVE to install IIS on a WIn2k/NT4 server. It's only selected by default. The first thing I do after an install of Win2k for a file/print server is remove IIS (and a whole lot of other crap!)
Maybe it's Compaq SmartStart and the unattended setup file they create, but IIS is installed by default with Windows 2000 on compaq servers
IFAIK Compaq Smart Start is for setting up SERVERS, there is no option on Smart Start to install Win2k Pro (or NT4 WS for that matter), and SmartStart 5.20 (latest release available in .AU does not have any options to install any version of XP.
No one is denying that IIS isn't installed by default on Win2k SERVER (because it is); the argument is about IIS on Win2k Pro.
Try having the web server go down DAILY. This is an e-commerce site we're talking about here
Did anyone ever TRY to fix it? I mean you obviously know that there are MANY IIS implimentations running out there without going down daily.
Maybe it was running some dodgie ASP script (do until rs.eof; rs.loop; [without the rs.movenext]) will obviously make IIS crack the shits by putting it in an endless loop.
Anyway, point being, /. seems to be full of incompatent systems administrators; If I was running the site, it would NOT be going down every day. I would work day and night until I had a fix. Did you ever try MS support; I've used them for problems before, and they are execellent.
...and don't give me that crap about having to PAY for support, its an e-commerce site for god's sake!
Are there providers in the US that supply ADSL at an unrestricted speed, with no time or download limits, which let you host your own servers if you like; but charge a nominal fee per MB downloaded?
It seems to me that every time /. posts an artical about ADSL/Cable, people start complaining about not being able to host content, or having uplink speed restrictions.
Well how about a simple user pays system? You can do whatever you like with the connection but you have to pay for what you do?