And where would I get a similar compatibility kit to check for standards compliance on, say, a C++ compiler? Oh yeah, despite being a standard, C++ does not have a compliance kit, nor does it have any way to enforce adherance to a standard.
Are there membership fees for ECMA? IEEE? Of course there are, if for nothing else but to pay for some of the costs of these organizations.
Even the so-called independent standards bodies are not impartial. Every company that sends a representative has an agenda, and it isn't always for the greater good of the community.
Another example is enhancements to RMI for security. Sun was the proposer, and the proposal was rejected, mostly by J2EE vendors who didn't want to have to change their products to comply with the proposed changes. If Sun really had complete control, they could have rammed it through over the objections of the other committee members.
The point you should care about is that the means to interact with a government e-services system should not be proprietary and owned by one company, but be standardized so that many different clients can be used to interact with it. Otherwise they are dictating that people who use other OS's and clients must use MS products for interaction. If they do go with a system of this sort, they need to put it into the contract that all the API's and information on how to interact with the service are public, and that there are no IP claims that would prevent the license-free implementation of a compatible client.
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
The primary benefit will be if they can shift more people off of IE, thus motivating web site authors not to use IE-specific features. If they are able to do this, then all the browsers used under Linux will work across more web sites. This is a huge benefit!!!
The Clinton administration had no particular gusto with which it pursued Microsoft.
Huh? Did you fall asleep in 1995 and just wake up? The DOJ (under Clinton) pursued MS very strongly (with their hired gun, David Boies), did a good job of proving their case, and were pressing strongly for the breakup remedy. I would say that they had learned the lessons of the earlier consent decree, and its failure, well; they had extreme doubts over whether a consent decree would work (this time), and so were pushing for a significant structural remedy. The Bushies come into the White House and suddenly the possibility of a breakup is taken off the table, even though it would have been a tremendous bargaining chip, and then they settle for something that has tons of loopholes.
This is a big change in attitude toward the MS case.
I think its even worse for the record companies than you say. People are gradually coming to the realization that musicians don't really need the record companies in order to get their record (CD) recorded. If many bands don't make their money off CD's, but off touring, the important thing for them is to get their CD's out there so that a lot of people will want to see them in concert. It is not the case now, but it may be in the future that the internet is just as effective as radio stations at getting a band well known, and it may be easier for unknown bands to get known, since they don't have to get discovered by a record producer first. THIS scares the record companies because it endangers the sweet deal they've got going. They may actually have to work for a living!
I actually think if they play fairly and honestly standerdize the full package, and the run improvments through the standardization process folks will be able to keep up surprisingly well.
Isn't this expecting a bit much from MS? A framework (.Net) plus applications (My Services) that only MS can provide enhances MS's revenue through per transation payments. If they build a framework standard that anyone can implement, then there will be competition for those services, as well as the size of the payments. This decreases MS's future revenue. Do you really think that they will do that?
Anyone who thinks that McNealy or Ellison would not do the same things that Gates has done is very Naieve.
I hear this often and find it ridiculous. If someone has commited a crime, should I not punish him because someone else, in the same circumstance, might do the same thing? No. When someone has commited a crime (or abused their monopoly position) they should be punished. The speculation that someone else put in the same position MIGHT do the same thing is irrelevant.
Do any of these issues change the testimony in the anti-trust trial that:
- MS threatened Compaq with withheld licenses if they didn't remove Netscape from their computers going out the door.
- MS threatened Intel management over Intel's work on multimedia software.
These are but two examples of the way MS abused their monopoly power. The fact that there might be competition on the horizon (a speculative, not certain, assertion) does not change what has occured one bit. If I robbed a bank, should I be spared a penalty because I myself might be robbed sometime in the future? I don't think so!!!
Your logic here seems to say: I've seen this system fail in some instances, therefore it must fail in all instances.
Isn't it possible that many parents use the rating system as an effective means to decide what is and isn't appropriate to buy for their children? Just because some parents are idiots doesn't mean that all are.
(2) Microsoft defeated Netscape simply because they had the cash, the resources, and the time to copy every one of Netscape's most important products feature-for-feature, and give it away for free. They rarely got things right on the first try, but by bundling browsers and servers in with Windows and by releasing subsequent versions with more features, it was inevitable that they would eventually match Netscape's quality -- and then it was inevitable that customers would choose the free solution over Netscape's. Many of Netscape's customers still remained loyal, and purchased Netscape software rather using Microsoft's give-aways, but still, Netscape was doomed from the very start.
You are forgetting a couple of important facts.
First, you could download Netscape for free, and were supposed to pay for it later, which few did. However, OEM computer manufacturers, as a rule, used to ship with Netscape installed, and they paid Netscape for this privilege.
Second, Microsoft started forcing the OEMS to not ship their computers with Netscape, even though, at the time, it was the preferred browser. This had two primary effects: it reduced Netscape revenues from the OEMs, and it started to drastically reduce Netscape's market share.
After considering the many issues of portability, effeciency and development time
My experience has been that Java wins in terms of portability (MUCH better than C++ for anything that uses a library, as Java libraries are standard across platforms) and development time (big win here), and for efficiency, can probably hit 80% of speed for non-GUI code. It's always possible that there are requirements that you haven't told us about (like footprint, Java likely has a larger footprint), but I wouldn't dismiss Java as easily as you (or, apparently your customers) do.
Hmm, you seem to assume that we've gone through nearly 100 years of aviation while only exploring a single path of technology; this is not true, and most of the suggestions you give are seriously flawed:
For example - there are parachutes, built for jet airliners, capable of safely bringing even a 747 or 757 to a safe(ish) landing, assuming enough altitude to slow the monster down.
If you could build a parachute to safely lower an A300, it would likely need lots of altitude to unfurl and work, especially if you had to design it for high-speed deployment. In this case, you would need a drogue chute that could withstand high-speed, that would slow the vehicle before deploying either a larger drogue or the main chute. Also, as is stated elsewhere in the talkbacks, you would need either one extremely large chute, and a number of smaller ones.
Another example - if a package holding eggs can be dropped from the top of the Empire State Building, and have the eggs intact at the bottom, you can figure that we know a lot about air resistance with various topologies, and that we know how to make a decent bubble-wrap. It should be possible to design an aircraft skin capable of absorbing significant amounts of energy, in the event of an impact.
If its not the crushing of the airplane fuselage that kills passengers, it is the sudden deceleration. An egg can be dropped from a great height if you put large amounts of deformable material around it. This material deforms on impact so that the egg sees less deceleration. However, the higher the speed, the more deformable material you need to control the amount of deceleration. At a speed of 300-500 mph for an airplane, you would need a LOT of deformable material. This is VERY impractical.
Let's try some calculations. Say the aircraft is travelling at 300 mph, which is 440 feet/sec. Let's assume that the maximum survivable deceleration (by 99% of the population) is 20 g's, or 644 feet/sec/sec, and that the aircraft will delerate at a constant rate. At this deceleration, it would take the aircraft 0.68 seconds to slow from 300 mph to 0. In this time, the aircraft will have travelled 150 feet. In other words, you would 150 feet of material that could provide constant deceleration (which is itself is difficult to provide). If you wrapped the entire aircraft in this material, the fuselage would be 300 feet in diameter, and you would add 300 feet to its length! Let's not even get into what this would do to the aerodynamics of the craft, both in terms of new lift requirements and the substantial added drag.
So when (not if) they violate the terms of this agreement, we go through another 5 year trial, during which MS is unabated, and more companies are forced out of busiess, and more companies with good product ideas say, 'Thanks, but no thanks, I've got a good idea for a product, but I'll never get it past MS'.
Why would anyone want to bother reading M$N sites anyway?
I have a reason. At home, I tend to use Linux probably 95% of the time, so I normally couldn't care less about MSN. However, my DSL/ISP is Qwest, and they are 'transitioning' (i.e. selling) their ISP customers to MSN. If I were passive and just allowed this to happen, I would then need to access MSN to administer my account. This would mean that I would have to log into windows and access the admin page with IE. Also, as discussed a couple of weeks ago on Slashdot, in order to read my mail, I would have to use MS Outlook, since MS is somehow restricting POP3 to only work with MS clients.
I will not be passive in this, however, but will have to change ISP's (while probably keeping Qwest as the the DSL provider). I have talked to a couple of other Qwest DSL customers at work, and they are switching ISP's, and someone at my wife's work told her that they are switching for the same reason. Maybe we can get a mass migration going.
In the meantime, does anyone know of an ISP in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area that works with Qwest's DSL?
If WinXP was JUST an OS, I would agree with you. However, MS has been found to be guilty of using their monopoly position in operating systems to protect themselves from competition, and to force their products on consumers in place of competitors' products. The instrument they use is the OS, and WinXP is a continuation of the things they have been found guilty of. In order to force MS to play nice, it may be necessary to make MS change WinXP before they ship it. If the govt. cannot do this, then anti-trust law has absolutely no teeth in this area.
Whether you are supporting MS depends on how it is priced and how you use it. If they are selling it at a loss and you are immediately converting it to a Linux box, then they are subsidizing your linux box. Cool!
How would a break-up of Microsoft lead to a recession? Wouldn't the people who were going to buy Windows or Office still do so? Why would it matter that they were now 2 different companies?
If it did have the affect of eventually introducing more competition, prices for these types of products would go down, companies that had to buy these product would be able to pay less, and their ratio of profits to cost, i.e. productivity, would go up. This is good for the economy!
Hear, hear. To support your statement about where the problem lies, I'll tell you about a study conducted a few years back in Minneapolis, where I live. Minnesota has a basic standards test that everyone must pass to graduate. It tests at an 8th grade level, and students first take it in 8th grade. If they fail, they take it in subsequent years until they pass.
The inner city schools have been getting only 60% passing levels for 8th graders taking the test, so everyone likes to pile on the schools, talking about how bad they are. However, the Minneapolis school district did a study in which they tallied the results if all the students that had missed a large number of school days (like 15 or 20 over the school year) were excluded from the results. The passing rate went up to like 85%.
The lesson? You can't easily teach students if their parents don't sent them to school, well-fed, and well-rested, no matter what the quality of the teacher.
I think that you are extrapolating a great deal here. As I understand it, MS has only submitted a small part of.Net to the ECMA. Many API's, such as WinForms, would not be standardized and would be controlled directly by MS. This means that if Mono wanted to support WinForms, they would have to reverse engineer it. Or, they would have to build their own cross-platform libraries. Either way, the capabilities you are describing are not as easily achievable as you seem to think.
The number of existing OEM customers that are dependant on Java (through web browsing, whether they realize it or not) is huge. The number of customers dependant on cygwin is miniscule.
Slashdot Mirror
And where would I get a similar compatibility kit to check for standards compliance on, say, a C++ compiler? Oh yeah, despite being a standard, C++ does not have a compliance kit, nor does it have any way to enforce adherance to a standard.
Are there membership fees for ECMA? IEEE? Of course there are, if for nothing else but to pay for some of the costs of these organizations.
Even the so-called independent standards bodies are not impartial. Every company that sends a representative has an agenda, and it isn't always for the greater good of the community.
Another example is enhancements to RMI for security. Sun was the proposer, and the proposal was rejected, mostly by J2EE vendors who didn't want to have to change their products to comply with the proposed changes. If Sun really had complete control, they could have rammed it through over the objections of the other committee members.
Did he use words like "We need to cut off GPL's air supply"?
The point you should care about is that the means to interact with a government e-services system should not be proprietary and owned by one company, but be standardized so that many different clients can be used to interact with it. Otherwise they are dictating that people who use other OS's and clients must use MS products for interaction. If they do go with a system of this sort, they need to put it into the contract that all the API's and information on how to interact with the service are public, and that there are no IP claims that would prevent the license-free implementation of a compatible client.
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
The primary benefit will be if they can shift more people off of IE, thus motivating web site authors not to use IE-specific features. If they are able to do this, then all the browsers used under Linux will work across more web sites. This is a huge benefit!!!
The Clinton administration had no particular gusto with which it pursued Microsoft.
Huh? Did you fall asleep in 1995 and just wake up? The DOJ (under Clinton) pursued MS very strongly (with their hired gun, David Boies), did a good job of proving their case, and were pressing strongly for the breakup remedy. I would say that they had learned the lessons of the earlier consent decree, and its failure, well; they had extreme doubts over whether a consent decree would work (this time), and so were pushing for a significant structural remedy. The Bushies come into the White House and suddenly the possibility of a breakup is taken off the table, even though it would have been a tremendous bargaining chip, and then they settle for something that has tons of loopholes.
This is a big change in attitude toward the MS case.
I think its even worse for the record companies than you say. People are gradually coming to the realization that musicians don't really need the record companies in order to get their record (CD) recorded. If many bands don't make their money off CD's, but off touring, the important thing for them is to get their CD's out there so that a lot of people will want to see them in concert. It is not the case now, but it may be in the future that the internet is just as effective as radio stations at getting a band well known, and it may be easier for unknown bands to get known, since they don't have to get discovered by a record producer first. THIS scares the record companies because it endangers the sweet deal they've got going. They may actually have to work for a living!
Thank you for your uninformed opinion.
Seriously, you tell us you've never used it, but you don't like the look of it? How useful is that?
I actually think if they play fairly and honestly standerdize the full package, and the run improvments through the standardization process folks will be able to keep up surprisingly well.
Isn't this expecting a bit much from MS? A framework (.Net) plus applications (My Services) that only MS can provide enhances MS's revenue through per transation payments. If they build a framework standard that anyone can implement, then there will be competition for those services, as well as the size of the payments. This decreases MS's future revenue. Do you really think that they will do that?
Anyone who thinks that McNealy or Ellison would not do the same things that Gates has done is very Naieve.
I hear this often and find it ridiculous. If someone has commited a crime, should I not punish him because someone else, in the same circumstance, might do the same thing? No. When someone has commited a crime (or abused their monopoly position) they should be punished. The speculation that someone else put in the same position MIGHT do the same thing is irrelevant.
Do any of these issues change the testimony in the anti-trust trial that:
- MS threatened Compaq with withheld licenses if they didn't remove Netscape from their computers going out the door.
- MS threatened Intel management over Intel's work on multimedia software.
These are but two examples of the way MS abused their monopoly power. The fact that there might be competition on the horizon (a speculative, not certain, assertion) does not change what has occured one bit. If I robbed a bank, should I be spared a penalty because I myself might be robbed sometime in the future? I don't think so!!!
Your logic here seems to say: I've seen this system fail in some instances, therefore it must fail in all instances.
Isn't it possible that many parents use the rating system as an effective means to decide what is and isn't appropriate to buy for their children? Just because some parents are idiots doesn't mean that all are.
(2) Microsoft defeated Netscape simply because they had the cash, the resources, and the time to copy every one of Netscape's most important products feature-for-feature, and give it away for free. They rarely got things right on the first try, but by bundling browsers and servers in with Windows and by releasing subsequent versions with more features, it was inevitable that they would eventually match Netscape's quality -- and then it was inevitable that customers would choose the free solution over Netscape's. Many of Netscape's customers still remained loyal, and purchased Netscape software rather using Microsoft's give-aways, but still, Netscape was doomed from the very start.
You are forgetting a couple of important facts.
First, you could download Netscape for free, and were supposed to pay for it later, which few did. However, OEM computer manufacturers, as a rule, used to ship with Netscape installed, and they paid Netscape for this privilege.
Second, Microsoft started forcing the OEMS to not ship their computers with Netscape, even though, at the time, it was the preferred browser. This had two primary effects: it reduced Netscape revenues from the OEMs, and it started to drastically reduce Netscape's market share.
These are two issues that must not be forgotten.
After considering the many issues of portability, effeciency and development time
My experience has been that Java wins in terms of portability (MUCH better than C++ for anything that uses a library, as Java libraries are standard across platforms) and development time (big win here), and for efficiency, can probably hit 80% of speed for non-GUI code. It's always possible that there are requirements that you haven't told us about (like footprint, Java likely has a larger footprint), but I wouldn't dismiss Java as easily as you (or, apparently your customers) do.
For example - there are parachutes, built for jet airliners, capable of safely bringing even a 747 or 757 to a safe(ish) landing, assuming enough altitude to slow the monster down.
If you could build a parachute to safely lower an A300, it would likely need lots of altitude to unfurl and work, especially if you had to design it for high-speed deployment. In this case, you would need a drogue chute that could withstand high-speed, that would slow the vehicle before deploying either a larger drogue or the main chute. Also, as is stated elsewhere in the talkbacks, you would need either one extremely large chute, and a number of smaller ones.
Another example - if a package holding eggs can be dropped from the top of the Empire State Building, and have the eggs intact at the bottom, you can figure that we know a lot about air resistance with various topologies, and that we know how to make a decent bubble-wrap. It should be possible to design an aircraft skin capable of absorbing significant amounts of energy, in the event of an impact.
If its not the crushing of the airplane fuselage that kills passengers, it is the sudden deceleration. An egg can be dropped from a great height if you put large amounts of deformable material around it. This material deforms on impact so that the egg sees less deceleration. However, the higher the speed, the more deformable material you need to control the amount of deceleration. At a speed of 300-500 mph for an airplane, you would need a LOT of deformable material. This is VERY impractical.
Let's try some calculations. Say the aircraft is travelling at 300 mph, which is 440 feet/sec. Let's assume that the maximum survivable deceleration (by 99% of the population) is 20 g's, or 644 feet/sec/sec, and that the aircraft will delerate at a constant rate. At this deceleration, it would take the aircraft 0.68 seconds to slow from 300 mph to 0. In this time, the aircraft will have travelled 150 feet. In other words, you would 150 feet of material that could provide constant deceleration (which is itself is difficult to provide). If you wrapped the entire aircraft in this material, the fuselage would be 300 feet in diameter, and you would add 300 feet to its length! Let's not even get into what this would do to the aerodynamics of the craft, both in terms of new lift requirements and the substantial added drag.
So when (not if) they violate the terms of this agreement, we go through another 5 year trial, during which MS is unabated, and more companies are forced out of busiess, and more companies with good product ideas say, 'Thanks, but no thanks, I've got a good idea for a product, but I'll never get it past MS'.
or (b) will boot with more than one Operating System
Perhaps it can dual boot DR-DOS (on a small partition) and Linux.
Why would anyone want to bother reading M$N sites anyway?
I have a reason. At home, I tend to use Linux probably 95% of the time, so I normally couldn't care less about MSN. However, my DSL/ISP is Qwest, and they are 'transitioning' (i.e. selling) their ISP customers to MSN. If I were passive and just allowed this to happen, I would then need to access MSN to administer my account. This would mean that I would have to log into windows and access the admin page with IE. Also, as discussed a couple of weeks ago on Slashdot, in order to read my mail, I would have to use MS Outlook, since MS is somehow restricting POP3 to only work with MS clients.
I will not be passive in this, however, but will have to change ISP's (while probably keeping Qwest as the the DSL provider). I have talked to a couple of other Qwest DSL customers at work, and they are switching ISP's, and someone at my wife's work told her that they are switching for the same reason. Maybe we can get a mass migration going.
In the meantime, does anyone know of an ISP in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area that works with Qwest's DSL?
If WinXP was JUST an OS, I would agree with you. However, MS has been found to be guilty of using their monopoly position in operating systems to protect themselves from competition, and to force their products on consumers in place of competitors' products. The instrument they use is the OS, and WinXP is a continuation of the things they have been found guilty of. In order to force MS to play nice, it may be necessary to make MS change WinXP before they ship it. If the govt. cannot do this, then anti-trust law has absolutely no teeth in this area.
Whether you are supporting MS depends on how it is priced and how you use it. If they are selling it at a loss and you are immediately converting it to a Linux box, then they are subsidizing your linux box. Cool!
How would a break-up of Microsoft lead to a recession? Wouldn't the people who were going to buy Windows or Office still do so? Why would it matter that they were now 2 different companies?
If it did have the affect of eventually introducing more competition, prices for these types of products would go down, companies that had to buy these product would be able to pay less, and their ratio of profits to cost, i.e. productivity, would go up. This is good for the economy!
Hear, hear. To support your statement about where the problem lies, I'll tell you about a study conducted a few years back in Minneapolis, where I live. Minnesota has a basic standards test that everyone must pass to graduate. It tests at an 8th grade level, and students first take it in 8th grade. If they fail, they take it in subsequent years until they pass.
The inner city schools have been getting only 60% passing levels for 8th graders taking the test, so everyone likes to pile on the schools, talking about how bad they are. However, the Minneapolis school district did a study in which they tallied the results if all the students that had missed a large number of school days (like 15 or 20 over the school year) were excluded from the results. The passing rate went up to like 85%.
The lesson? You can't easily teach students if their parents don't sent them to school, well-fed, and well-rested, no matter what the quality of the teacher.
I think that you are extrapolating a great deal here. As I understand it, MS has only submitted a small part of .Net to the ECMA. Many API's, such as WinForms, would not be standardized and would be controlled directly by MS. This means that if Mono wanted to support WinForms, they would have to reverse engineer it. Or, they would have to build their own cross-platform libraries. Either way, the capabilities you are describing are not as easily achievable as you seem to think.
The number of existing OEM customers that are dependant on Java (through web browsing, whether they realize it or not) is huge. The number of customers dependant on cygwin is miniscule.