Hmm. Would we suddenly see all sorts of mysterious deaths of authors directly after they publish their works, if the copyright on their works would immediately end?
No. Why would we ? Who would derive enough benefit to be willing to trade off the punishment for (and stigma of) a pre-meditated murder conviction ?
Digital, as they say in their very first point, is not really different fundamentally than any other publishing medium, and therefore the rights extended to non-digital content should also be extended to digital content.
Yes, it is, because digital reproduction is both a) instant and b) free.
IMHO, the fact that digital reproduction *is* fundamentally different, is what it has taken to demonstrate how broken the whole idea of copyright is.
IOW, one for each year that they have existed. As it is, I doubt that you could come up with 5 that others do not point to and show that it came from elsewhere.
I doubt you could come up with 25 "brilliant ideas" in the entire history of civilisation that you can't point at and go "it came from elsewhere" (with a bit of improvement).
How can you trust the person on the other end of the connection to see to it that all your child's mistakes on the internet are minor, lesson learning experiences?
You can't. Just like you can't trust every person they interact with off-line for the rest of their lives will see to it your child's mistakes are minor, lesson learning experiences.
Yep. It got destroyed by Excel because it didn't improve,
Oh, and what about Stacker? Why, yes, Microsoft stole Stacker's technology, called it DoubleSpace, and drove Stacker out of business despite Stacker's winning their patent infringement lawsuit.
Funny how software patents are evil right up until they hurt Microsoft...
Stacker went out of business because hard disks got so cheap, no-one was interested in fragile, slow, on-the-fly file compression.
They're trying, but most of the mud they try to kick up doesn't stick because Mac OS X was designed as a much more forward-thinking system than Windows. At least as importantly, it also isn't saddled with hideous mounds of backwards compatibility issues, which also contribute tremendously to the chinks in Windows' armor. Security on Mac OS has generally been superior to what's existed on Windows/DOS for at least the last fifteen years; the cottage industry providing security for Microsoft's products didn't take hold on the Mac side in the same way because it generally wasn't needed.
Rubbish.
The lack of malware on OS X is due to a lack of interest, plain and simple.
Well the funny thing is that alot of these security concepts existed prior to Microsoft in the UNIX operating system but Microsoft either decided to deviate from a standard or was ignorant of it. In both cases, they created their own problem and have never chosen to fix it. Maybe Vista is a step towards fixing this but they still have a LONG way to go.
Windows NT has *vastly* superior security design and infrastructure to traditional UNIX.
That said, when Microsoft first chiseled out Windows there was plenty of secure OS features and controls already out in the field and they *chose* not to implement them (or disable, hide or bastardise them) in favour of dumbing down the user experience for the desktop and workplace.
Something McAfee, Symantec and all other anti-virus/anti-spyware/firewall/spam-filter companies should bear in mind, if operating systems, applications and other software had been properly designed in the beginning these companies wouldn't exist.
Yes, they would. AV software doesn't protect the user from OS flaws, it protects the user from himself.
I can see executables, but DLL's, why the hell shouldn't I see those easily?
For the same reason your car engine isn't transparent.
Anything running on my computer should be visible, how else can I tell if there's something there which shouldn't be?
You can, *if you're looking*. The point of hiding things like system files is so that they don't confuse people who have no interest in them, or knowledge of what they are. Ie: the vast, vast majority of customers.
I didn't even have "unrestricted and unmonitored dialup BBS access" growing up. Sure, the monitoring technology was limited to my parents walking up and looking at what I was doing (the only computer with a modem in the house being in the living room for most of childhood helped here), and sometimes I would get on when they weren't home (and once got in rather lots of trouble for a month where I racked up a several-hundred-dollar phone bill that way), but certainly I had no expectation of privacy "online".
The "monitoring" you experienced and the "monitoring" you are currently imposing on your children, are not even *remotely* similar.
There is a vast gulf of difference between "my parents are watching everything I do, all the time" and "I might get caught looking at naughty pictures, but only if I'm unlucky".
The former - while excellent indoctrination into the 24/7/365 government-monitored society of the near future - does not allow a child to think for themselves, make mistakes and learn from them. It is you *dictating* how they should live their lives, rather than letting them work it out for themselves.
I'm all for parents taking an active interest in their children's lives. But it should not take the form of tapping their phones, reading their chat logs and implanting GPS locators in their skulls. This is taking it to the other extreme.
Sweden also have amongst the highest HDI (Human Development Index) in the world. HDI is basically the U.N.'s measure of wuality of life based on Health, Education, lack of Crime, lack of poverty etc. Sweden and it's North European neighbours are always jostling for the top spot.
Completely OT, but very cool to see Australia is sitting at #3:).
And there's the rub. Captial can flow much more freely than labor. If capital and labor were free to flow from country to country then you may have a true free market. But labor and immigration laws make this impossible. Hence you cannot really follow the jobs over seas, even if you wanted to.
Immigration laws are only half the story. For the vast majority of people, relocating - even relatively small distances - is simply not an option. Even ignoring the social aspects, it's very expensive.
You your claim is that vista is GENERALLY bug for bug compatible with MS-DOS 2.0 right?
I didn't write the post you are referring to (although I agree with its sentiments).
So I am wrong because Vista is indeed GENERALLY bug for bug compatible with MS-DOS 2.0. Is that your assertion?
No, you are wrong because your whole flamefest hinges on the assertion that someone claimed Vista was "100% bug for bug compatible", when no-one (except you) said anything of the sort.
Is this one of those things where it's all going to depend on what definition of GENERALLY means?
Yes.
Kind of like how Bush redefines torture and then claims we don't torture people? I bet it will!.
Since I'm not American, your pitiful attempts at political trolling are even more of a waste of time than they would otherwise be.
What is your definition of GENERALLY such that vista is GENERALLY BUG FOR BUG COMPATIBLE WITH IT?
Read the thread. One of the astro turfers said that. They said that the reason vista was the largest software development in himan history was because MS had to keep compatibility for everything from dos 2.0 to XP. That was a lie.
Possible answer: Vista has to generally remain bug-for-bug compatible with every piece of software written for the overall Microsoft platform since MS-DOS 2.0. Apple and Linus both are willing to break developer's applications if the loss of backwards compatibility is worth the gain in speed/size/abstraction/whatever.
How would you rate Mac OS X on its multiprocessor handling?
Average. Probably at about the same level NT 4.0 and Linux 2.2 were in their day.
OTOH, with the read availability of multiprocessor machines today, it will (and has) likely improve a lot quicker than they did. I would expect it to be comparable to Windows and Linux at either the next major release, or the one after that.
That makes no functional difference to the user and no difference at all to the courts. You see this cheese isn't being bundles with your electrical service, it is an integral part of the electric-cheese experience.
This argument would be more convincing (and relevant) if you weren't using such ridiculously disparate products and services as examples.
There's no argument to justify why an electrical service should come bundled with a piece of cheese. There are, however, strong arguments as to why an Operating System should be able to output data into a standard, portable file format.
OS's have certainly done just fine without portable document creation tools being built into them, however so it is bundling.
This argument is only convincing if you believe the definition of "OS" has remained static over time. To use but one example, consumer OSes "did fine" without networking in the past, but to suggest one today shouldn't come with a network stack is ridiculous.
It isn't about my defining anything. Is another company currently selling and making money delivering portable document tools? Yes. That is called a market.
So we're back to Microsoft being unable to improve anything in Windows, because someone else - somewhere - will have written some program that provides the same functionality.
Actually, they do provide the functionality, Windows just doesn't use it.
They don't as far as I am aware - and they *certainly* didn't back when IE was componentised and other parts of Windows redesigned to use those components.
No, it encourages modularity so that pieces can be sold separately.
No, it doesn't, because the OS can no longer "bundle" functionality as a shared component if that functionality is already present in some piece of third party software. Thus, if Microsoft wanted to do something like allow already-bundled programs (eg: Notepad and IE) to "print to a PDF" (or their equivalent of a PDF) then than functionality - by your argument - must be implemented individually in each program, because providing it as a shared component is an anti-trust violation (arguably - according to you, anyway - providing such functionality *at all*, regardless of implementation or purpose, is an antitrust violation).
It encourages good, clean, documented APIs which would fix a lot of MS's security woes. Note, anti-trust only covers functionality currently being sold into a market. So they need only pay attention to libraries being currently offered.
There's not a lot new that can be offered in the software world. Nor has there been for some time.
So what?
So that's important. You can't just rip it out and drop in an alternative overnight at the whim of some random Slashdot poster who thinks Firefox is a better web browser. Software doesn't work like that.
Are you arguing that capitalism should reward the first company to create a good product, not the currently best one?
No, I'm pointing out that change of that magnitude doesn't happen overnight.
That is a recipe for exactly the stagnation and lack of innovation we've seen in IE over the last 8 years.
8 years ? Please. Your bias is showing.
I never mentioned trade secrets at all.
Sorry, but better functionality that just happens to be proprietry "[...] MS only Websites and corrupted standards" is pretty much the definition of a trade secret.
No merely anything that gives one product an advantage based upon the fact that that company has a monopoly on a different product.
IE's advantage when it captured the market came from its better functionality. That's why its biggest market growth came in the period of time when it was better than Netscape Navigator, but still only available via download.
Actually, no I don't. I simply have to ask impartial users which is better, the currently most popular product (bundled) or any other product on t
If you want to argue abstract functionality, then the grounds for calling Microsoft a monopoly are even thinner.
Most consumers never buy a car engine by itself, they buy a car. Tell me again how that is relevant to antitrust actions against a company with a monopoly on car engines, which it sells to auto makers?
Because if the end result is that the engines in the vast majority of cars can't be improved - even in ways consumers demand 0 because doing so would be an antitrust violation, everybody loses.
Apple does sell OS's by themselves (even if the x86 version has not yet hit the market, it will with leopard).
But running them on anything except Apple hardware is illegal. Therefore, by definition, they do *not* sell OSes by themselves, because you need an Apple computer to run them on.
Apple sell *upgrades* to their existing OSes, not standalone OSes. Every version of MacOS you can buy, is an upgrade.
However, their share of that market is too small to make a difference. The majority of their sales is in the computer system market.
All their sales are in the computer system market. You can't use one without paying for the other.
No it isn't because individuals make up a small portion of the buyers in the desktop operating system market. Most OS's are purchased by OEMs.
My point here is that people buy PCs *because they run Windows* (more accurately, Windows applications). People *buy Windows*, it's just some of them buy a PC at the same time.
Yes it does.
No, it doesn't, because people aren't buying "computer systems", they're buying "Windows PCs". Just like they're buying "Macs" or "Linux PCs". The defining feature is the OS, not the hardware.
Even if MS bundles some other inferior product with it, that is still true. Thus, they bundle some inferior product and end users lose because they get some inferior product instead of the best product. IE is a good example. It has happened. It is happening in the real world.
No, it's not a good example because when IE was "bundled" it *was* the best product.
Not to mention, the "bundling" of IE is not an obstacle for computer resellers additionally including alternatives themselves.
Sigh. Once again. A Gateway is an alternative to a Mac, because I can go and buy either and, based upon the quality give my money to the better option. Windows is not an Alternative to OS X because Gateway can't buy either to pre-install on Gateway computers.
But this is because Apple won't license it, not because of any action on Microsoft's part.
Apple is in the first market, mostly actual consumers. Microsoft is in the second market, selling mostly to OEMs like Gateway. If Apple started selling OS X to Gateway and Dell and the like, then they would be entering that market and if they proved to be a real option, then MS would no longer have a monopoly on it.
*To the consumer*, the options are OS X and Windows. Not a Mac vs a Dell or a Mac vs a Gateway.
And that accounts for 30% of their sales on desktops, not servers?
Why should it matter ? The important issue is that choice exists, not that choices are made in specific proportions.
Dell does not have any realistic choice for most of their sales.
Yes, but that's because "no-one" wants a PC that isn't running Windows or isn't a Mac, not because Microsoft is stopping Dell from selling PCs that aren't running Windows.
MS has dominated the market to such an extent that no economist I've ever even read has disagreed that they are a monopoly in it. I'm sorry you can't understand what a monopoly is. I did not think it was so hard a concept. I think you just don't want to understand because it is not what you want it to be.
I want it to be logical. Logic dicates that if a monopoly exists, then I do not I have options to choose between or I am prevented from making choices because they are impractical. However, I *do* have choices. Nothing stops me from buying a Mac or a Linux PC to fulfil my needs for arbitrary, abstract functionality like web browsing or word processing. Therefore, there is no monopoly.
Correct, but with lots of windows open it can take some scrolling with alt+tab, and in a crowded taskbar there might be only the icon visible for the window, so it is not always easy to tell whether it's the correct one. Of course you can go through those windows one at a time, but that does take more time than spotting the right one straight away.
These problems are also present with Expose once you get more than a trivial number of windows.
In addition, you need to have the correct folder open already, as Windows Explorer doesn't seem to support spring-loaded folders (or I just can't find the correct setting), but that's a Finder feature, not an Exposé one.
You need to be using the Folder tree+File list view of Explorer. The file-only view doesn't do it (strictly speaking this is probably a fault, but since I never use the file-only view for file management because of its clumsiness, it's never actually bothered me).
My original point was that Exposé is useful not only for finding windows, but you can use it for fast drag & drop operations as well. It is true indeed that you can mostly achieve the same end result in Windows as well, but I personally find the drag & drop with Exposé faster and more convenient. YMMV.
And it does:). I find them both fairly quick & easy to use.
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No. Why would we ? Who would derive enough benefit to be willing to trade off the punishment for (and stigma of) a pre-meditated murder conviction ?
Yes, it is, because digital reproduction is both a) instant and b) free.
IMHO, the fact that digital reproduction *is* fundamentally different, is what it has taken to demonstrate how broken the whole idea of copyright is.
Microsoft infringed on a Stac *software patent*. Rather big difference to "stole the Stac compression modules".
I doubt you could come up with 25 "brilliant ideas" in the entire history of civilisation that you can't point at and go "it came from elsewhere" (with a bit of improvement).
You can't. Just like you can't trust every person they interact with off-line for the rest of their lives will see to it your child's mistakes are minor, lesson learning experiences.
It is not Microsoft's fault the copyright system is broken.
Yep. It got destroyed by Excel because it didn't improve,
Oh, and what about Stacker? Why, yes, Microsoft stole Stacker's technology, called it DoubleSpace, and drove Stacker out of business despite Stacker's winning their patent infringement lawsuit.
Funny how software patents are evil right up until they hurt Microsoft...
Stacker went out of business because hard disks got so cheap, no-one was interested in fragile, slow, on-the-fly file compression.
Rubbish.
The lack of malware on OS X is due to a lack of interest, plain and simple.
Which is *exactly* what Microsoft has done...
Windows NT has *vastly* superior security design and infrastructure to traditional UNIX.
Like what ?
No, they don't.
Yes, they would. AV software doesn't protect the user from OS flaws, it protects the user from himself.
I can see executables, but DLL's, why the hell shouldn't I see those easily?
For the same reason your car engine isn't transparent.
Anything running on my computer should be visible, how else can I tell if there's something there which shouldn't be?
You can, *if you're looking*. The point of hiding things like system files is so that they don't confuse people who have no interest in them, or knowledge of what they are. Ie: the vast, vast majority of customers.
The "monitoring" you experienced and the "monitoring" you are currently imposing on your children, are not even *remotely* similar.
There is a vast gulf of difference between "my parents are watching everything I do, all the time" and "I might get caught looking at naughty pictures, but only if I'm unlucky".
The former - while excellent indoctrination into the 24/7/365 government-monitored society of the near future - does not allow a child to think for themselves, make mistakes and learn from them. It is you *dictating* how they should live their lives, rather than letting them work it out for themselves.
I'm all for parents taking an active interest in their children's lives. But it should not take the form of tapping their phones, reading their chat logs and implanting GPS locators in their skulls. This is taking it to the other extreme.
Completely OT, but very cool to see Australia is sitting at #3 :).
Can't say I'd disagree...
Immigration laws are only half the story. For the vast majority of people, relocating - even relatively small distances - is simply not an option. Even ignoring the social aspects, it's very expensive.
I didn't write the post you are referring to (although I agree with its sentiments).
So I am wrong because Vista is indeed GENERALLY bug for bug compatible with MS-DOS 2.0. Is that your assertion?
No, you are wrong because your whole flamefest hinges on the assertion that someone claimed Vista was "100% bug for bug compatible", when no-one (except you) said anything of the sort.
Is this one of those things where it's all going to depend on what definition of GENERALLY means?
Yes.
Kind of like how Bush redefines torture and then claims we don't torture people? I bet it will!.
Since I'm not American, your pitiful attempts at political trolling are even more of a waste of time than they would otherwise be.
What is your definition of GENERALLY such that vista is GENERALLY BUG FOR BUG COMPATIBLE WITH IT?
This will do.
No wonder you yanks have so much trouble with the decimal system !
(I couldn't decide if your post was naive conviction or masterful satire, so I flipped a coin. Conviction won).
Not as long as those people are the ones running the show, it won't.
Presumably you are referring to this post.
You are wrong.
s/developers/employees/
Average. Probably at about the same level NT 4.0 and Linux 2.2 were in their day.
OTOH, with the read availability of multiprocessor machines today, it will (and has) likely improve a lot quicker than they did. I would expect it to be comparable to Windows and Linux at either the next major release, or the one after that.
This argument would be more convincing (and relevant) if you weren't using such ridiculously disparate products and services as examples.
There's no argument to justify why an electrical service should come bundled with a piece of cheese. There are, however, strong arguments as to why an Operating System should be able to output data into a standard, portable file format.
OS's have certainly done just fine without portable document creation tools being built into them, however so it is bundling.
This argument is only convincing if you believe the definition of "OS" has remained static over time. To use but one example, consumer OSes "did fine" without networking in the past, but to suggest one today shouldn't come with a network stack is ridiculous.
It isn't about my defining anything. Is another company currently selling and making money delivering portable document tools? Yes. That is called a market.
So we're back to Microsoft being unable to improve anything in Windows, because someone else - somewhere - will have written some program that provides the same functionality.
Actually, they do provide the functionality, Windows just doesn't use it.
They don't as far as I am aware - and they *certainly* didn't back when IE was componentised and other parts of Windows redesigned to use those components.
No, it encourages modularity so that pieces can be sold separately.
No, it doesn't, because the OS can no longer "bundle" functionality as a shared component if that functionality is already present in some piece of third party software. Thus, if Microsoft wanted to do something like allow already-bundled programs (eg: Notepad and IE) to "print to a PDF" (or their equivalent of a PDF) then than functionality - by your argument - must be implemented individually in each program, because providing it as a shared component is an anti-trust violation (arguably - according to you, anyway - providing such functionality *at all*, regardless of implementation or purpose, is an antitrust violation).
It encourages good, clean, documented APIs which would fix a lot of MS's security woes. Note, anti-trust only covers functionality currently being sold into a market. So they need only pay attention to libraries being currently offered.
There's not a lot new that can be offered in the software world. Nor has there been for some time.
So what?
So that's important. You can't just rip it out and drop in an alternative overnight at the whim of some random Slashdot poster who thinks Firefox is a better web browser. Software doesn't work like that.
Are you arguing that capitalism should reward the first company to create a good product, not the currently best one?
No, I'm pointing out that change of that magnitude doesn't happen overnight.
That is a recipe for exactly the stagnation and lack of innovation we've seen in IE over the last 8 years.
8 years ? Please. Your bias is showing.
I never mentioned trade secrets at all.
Sorry, but better functionality that just happens to be proprietry "[...] MS only Websites and corrupted standards" is pretty much the definition of a trade secret.
No merely anything that gives one product an advantage based upon the fact that that company has a monopoly on a different product.
IE's advantage when it captured the market came from its better functionality. That's why its biggest market growth came in the period of time when it was better than Netscape Navigator, but still only available via download.
Actually, no I don't. I simply have to ask impartial users which is better, the currently most popular product (bundled) or any other product on t
If you want to argue abstract functionality, then the grounds for calling Microsoft a monopoly are even thinner.
Most consumers never buy a car engine by itself, they buy a car. Tell me again how that is relevant to antitrust actions against a company with a monopoly on car engines, which it sells to auto makers?
Because if the end result is that the engines in the vast majority of cars can't be improved - even in ways consumers demand 0 because doing so would be an antitrust violation, everybody loses.
Apple does sell OS's by themselves (even if the x86 version has not yet hit the market, it will with leopard).
But running them on anything except Apple hardware is illegal. Therefore, by definition, they do *not* sell OSes by themselves, because you need an Apple computer to run them on.
Apple sell *upgrades* to their existing OSes, not standalone OSes. Every version of MacOS you can buy, is an upgrade.
However, their share of that market is too small to make a difference. The majority of their sales is in the computer system market.
All their sales are in the computer system market. You can't use one without paying for the other.
No it isn't because individuals make up a small portion of the buyers in the desktop operating system market. Most OS's are purchased by OEMs.
My point here is that people buy PCs *because they run Windows* (more accurately, Windows applications). People *buy Windows*, it's just some of them buy a PC at the same time.
Yes it does.
No, it doesn't, because people aren't buying "computer systems", they're buying "Windows PCs". Just like they're buying "Macs" or "Linux PCs". The defining feature is the OS, not the hardware.
Even if MS bundles some other inferior product with it, that is still true. Thus, they bundle some inferior product and end users lose because they get some inferior product instead of the best product. IE is a good example. It has happened. It is happening in the real world.
No, it's not a good example because when IE was "bundled" it *was* the best product.
Not to mention, the "bundling" of IE is not an obstacle for computer resellers additionally including alternatives themselves.
Sigh. Once again. A Gateway is an alternative to a Mac, because I can go and buy either and, based upon the quality give my money to the better option. Windows is not an Alternative to OS X because Gateway can't buy either to pre-install on Gateway computers.
But this is because Apple won't license it, not because of any action on Microsoft's part.
Apple is in the first market, mostly actual consumers. Microsoft is in the second market, selling mostly to OEMs like Gateway. If Apple started selling OS X to Gateway and Dell and the like, then they would be entering that market and if they proved to be a real option, then MS would no longer have a monopoly on it.
*To the consumer*, the options are OS X and Windows. Not a Mac vs a Dell or a Mac vs a Gateway.
And that accounts for 30% of their sales on desktops, not servers?
Why should it matter ? The important issue is that choice exists, not that choices are made in specific proportions.
Dell does not have any realistic choice for most of their sales.
Yes, but that's because "no-one" wants a PC that isn't running Windows or isn't a Mac, not because Microsoft is stopping Dell from selling PCs that aren't running Windows.
MS has dominated the market to such an extent that no economist I've ever even read has disagreed that they are a monopoly in it. I'm sorry you can't understand what a monopoly is. I did not think it was so hard a concept. I think you just don't want to understand because it is not what you want it to be.
I want it to be logical. Logic dicates that if a monopoly exists, then I do not I have options to choose between or I am prevented from making choices because they are impractical. However, I *do* have choices. Nothing stops me from buying a Mac or a Linux PC to fulfil my needs for arbitrary, abstract functionality like web browsing or word processing. Therefore, there is no monopoly.
These problems are also present with Expose once you get more than a trivial number of windows.
In addition, you need to have the correct folder open already, as Windows Explorer doesn't seem to support spring-loaded folders (or I just can't find the correct setting), but that's a Finder feature, not an Exposé one.
You need to be using the Folder tree+File list view of Explorer. The file-only view doesn't do it (strictly speaking this is probably a fault, but since I never use the file-only view for file management because of its clumsiness, it's never actually bothered me).
My original point was that Exposé is useful not only for finding windows, but you can use it for fast drag & drop operations as well. It is true indeed that you can mostly achieve the same end result in Windows as well, but I personally find the drag & drop with Exposé faster and more convenient. YMMV.
And it does :). I find them both fairly quick & easy to use.