5. NIS support. sure windows has it, but have you ever checked how well it performs. it sucks.
When did Windows get NIS support, it was part of the third party PCNFS package, but that was DOS based.
6. user friendlyness, have you ever tryed installing windows in a disk that was not the primary IDE without getting the boot records destroyed. Linux can be installed in any partition with easyness.
Installing any OS really should not be treated as a user task. Whilst this is a point in favour of Linux the term "user friendlyness" dosn't apply. You'd need something more like "not having a strange box called Domain: which needs to be set correctly in order to log in", "being able to copy and paste using only the mouse", etc.
1. SMB is integrated into Linux about as much as it is under Windows (the service is called smbd or server in each OS, turn it on, and go).
"Integrated" in the Microsoft sense presumably means tightly tied into the OS kernel. As with IIS it's arguing about technical trivia.
3. Scalability does not mean the ability to run on massively parallel x86 boxes.
Though that appears to be the only meaning Microsoft understand.
12.
* If you want to program an app for Linux, and don't wish to Open Source your application, simply write your own code. You don't even get this choice with Windows 200 SAK - you MUST write your own code.
Microsoft's complaints about "viral licencing" appear to be an attempt to draw attention away from the viral conditions in their own licences.
My favorite..."The GPL is nasty and dangerous and can force you to give away all your secrets."
Only applicable if your business is selling proprietary software in the first place. If a business modifies a GPL app to do something specific for they business they don't have to give it away. If they use a GPL wordprocessor for writing internal documents they are under no special obligation to publish those memos. If their accounts are stored in a GPL data base then those accounts don't suddenly become public information. Etc etc.
First off the GPL is easy to understand, and very consistent. You get quite a lot for a simple price, "our changes to the code are to be made public with your codes binary release."
For many people that price is nothing, since they don't distribute software to third parties in the first place. Also the obligation to distribute the source only applies to a third party you distribute to. It's simply a condition of what you must do when you distribute, not an obligation to distribute.
I think the GPL is pretty damn clear. If you redistribute the code, you have to license under the GPL.
The GPL is written in fairly easy to understand language. Also "redistribute" in this context only applies to distributing it outside your orgainsation. Distributing it within your own organisation is unrestricted. (Only likely to directly be an issue for something like Enron, with it's interlocking matrix of holding companies.)
And if you don't like it, you can choose to completely ignore the GPL (thus falling back to copyright law).
Even if you disagree with the GPL you can still use the software. Most entities which want to use software simply arn't in the business of distributing software in the first place.
Microsoft's "licenses" (which may change during the next upgrade, and even change randomly depending on the version of the product
It's quite possible for a company to upgrade Microsoft stuff, then discover that something previously ok (by the licence) is no longer ok. So not only do they have the cost of ungrading the software they also have the cost of changing how they do their business.
They do not allow you to use the product you bought any way you like (even though this may not be enforcable, they assert it anyway).
This is probably the the major difference the EULAs (goodness knows how they make any sense at all where the software is owned by corporate entity A, installed and configured by person B and actually used by person C) perport to control how the software is used. Which IMHO isn't "copyright" it's "useright".
C'mon Microsoft, nobody except a few PHB's are buying this intellectual property cancer unAmerican anti-GPL crap, so GIVE UP!
You can reasonably easily relate the GPL to the IP clause in the US constitution. Try that with an EULA...
OEM sales are poor and still declining and manufacturers seem to be stating that they haven't hit the bottom yet. This means that Microsoft's primary source of income has been diminishing and will only rebound a quarter or two after equipment sales rebounds.
Is OEM Windows Microsoft's primary income source? I though they made more money from selling office.
Since before the down turn, MS has been unprofitable enough to have to use creative bookkeeping [economist.com] including such as withholding dividends, avoiding taxes and cost shifting.
The way things are going it'll only be news when a large US corporation is found to have uncooked books...
Further, as their stock values plumment, they'll have to compensate employees with real cash...
Possible positive feedback for Microsoft. Assuming that Microsoft executives don't simply asset strip and abscond.
Looking at that microsoft comparison page, its amazing how most of the Linux features and such that they chose to dog on, are the ones that were implemented in order to be compatible with M$ operating systems.
Quite a few of the critisisms translate to "Linux dosn't do things the same way as Windows" or even "Linux dosn't use the same jargon as Windows". Whilst Windows 2000 may support NFS, AFAIK it does not support NIS. Does Win2k support PAM either?
23 pages for this patent? How did they do that? Just look at that language, they must have been purposefully trying to write something so incredibly verbose they knew the patent office wouldn't bother reading all the way through.
This really should condem the application to the wastepaper basket. However there appears to be a problem that difficult to understand gets interpreted as "innovation" rather than "waste of time".
Nonexclusive rights to copyright is absolutely REQUIRED if copyright is to serve the interest of the artistic community ever again.
Or maybe a system which only addresses copying of actual works. Rather than arbitrary parts of works such as characters and settings. Which would also eliminate the whole "Micky Mouse" problem. Indeed this is the way copyright used to work in the UK...
People seem to have forgotten that copyright was written to combat exclusive publishing deals given to the publishers in the 1600s. Now that copyright is again a commodity, and can be licenced exclusively,
Not only that a large amount of copyright is in the hands of publishers. Especially, music and motion pictures.
it is no different than the pre-copyright age which the current copyright proponants are selling as the dystopic vision of a world without _modern_ copyright law.
Modern copyright law is different from that of even a few decades ago, let alone that of 3 centuries. There also tends to be the false dicotomy of either no copyright or the kind of copyright we have now.
That would sensibly be covered by existing murder and man-slaughter laws.
The term to cover this kind of legislation is "supercriminalisation". Such laws are redundant before they are even passed. Typically done to make politicans appear to be "doing something", especially if there is a lobby group needing to be appeased. You could also look at it as a way of politicans avoiding doing their jobs whilst appearing to do so.
Windownium (element 286) also includes elements 47 (silver), 78 (platinum), 79 (gold), and 92 (uranium), as well as a few other elements, SO there will no longer be a need to aquire those elements from 3rd party distributors.
Created by a patented process known as "Microsoft fusion".
It's entirely possible that element 119, which will theoretically be an alkali metal with properties similar to cesium, will have a half life long enough to allow it to take place in non-nuclear chemical reactions.
Every space in the Periodic Table should have a corresponding element. However, these elements may not occur in nature (eg. Technetium) or may have infinitesimally short half-lives (eg. most atomic numbers > about 100).
Relative to the age of the Earth these elements have short half lives. Which is why they don't tend to be found on Earth. There is no reason why supernova explosions would not create all elements (up to some limit probably rather higher than 92). AFIAK transuranics end up joining one of the "natural" decay chains at some point or other.
However, you can have gaps between stable (or almost-stable) elements, with only very-unstable elements in between. That's the whole idea of the "magic island of stability" mentioned in the articles
You don't even have to look at transuranics to see this. Most obvious would be francium which is very much less stable than either radon or radium. Or technetium...
Even-numbered heavy elements also tend to be more stable than odd-numbered elements (as even-numbered nuclei tend to be more energetically favourable, and there's an easy decay path that turns odd nuclei into even ones [beta decay]).
Alpha decay will leave an odd element as odd and even as even.
My Chem 101 prof gave us a problem to determine how much francium (element 87) you would have to buy in order to make a complete investigation of its chemical properties, assuming you could do it by working continuously for two weeks and would have to have at least one milligram left at the end of the procedure. Considering that the half-life of francium is 21 minutes, it worked out to around one million kilograms. Not that you would really order the full load up front, but it made a good illustration of why you don't find these elements lying around...
The Earth is something like 4.5 billion years old. You don't find any transuranics laying around. Even those such as plutonium which has been produced in large quantities in the last few decades.
Then - assuming any stability can be achieved past 120 - we'll get the superactinides around 122...
"Stability" in this context would mean having a half life measured in something longer than fractions of a second. Since such an element does not exist on Earth now, if it ever was there it must have decayed completely. As with any transuranics and technetium which might have been present when the Earth was formed.
More accurately, property owners said I don't care if my house got burned down, this is still my land. If you think that you can drive a nice wide avenue through it, you can piss right off.>
Once you get lots of property owners building and street plans can remain for centuries. Because of this kind of thing.
They have this already. Its called "red diesel". Its tax free so its something like 20p a litre. Its coloured with a red die, so if you use it on the road the police can easily tell from the plume of red smoke behind you.
The dye shows up in the fuel system, not the exhaust. Otherwise every farm and construction site would be covered in red smoke.
Shall we put a road-use tax on the gas that goes into your lawn mower? How about the generators, cranes and earthmovers at the local construction site? What about the fuel in Joe Farmer's tractor?
In the UK diesel is sold as "white diesel" (also called "derv") which is taxed and "red diesel" which isn't. The red version contains a dye which will will be obvious in the fuel system for some time. Agricultural and construction machines tend to use red diesel.
My only complaint is that it's not terribly obvious to out-of-towners just how the toll issue is worked out, or the charges. We were in a U-Haul, and AFTER dropping the truck off, we found out just how high the charge would have been.
How is it handled for rented vehicles? Does the rental company hold onto the deposit for a month or somthing like that...
And lemme tell you, having taken the TGV from Laussaune, Switzerland to Paris, France, it was one hell of a ride. It just keeps accelerating for the longest time.. and it's an even more comfortable ride the faster it goes. I truly wish one would be built in the US.
The important technology isn't just in the trains it's also in the track and the monitoring and control systems on the network. Similarly with the Japanese Shinkanshen. Whilst these trains could run on regular track, indeed a Shinkanshen was run on a section of British track and the Eurostar regually does so, they can only do so at well below their regular speed.
You seem to be forgetting the Tupolev TU-144 [www.bird.ch], dubbed Concordski in the west due to its uncanny resemblence to Concorde.
Apparently Tupolev copied some aspects of the design. Yet there are differences such as engine placement and the retractable cannards. In terms of speed, payload and range the TU-144 is a superior aircraft.
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5. NIS support. sure windows has it, but have you ever checked how well it performs. it sucks.
When did Windows get NIS support, it was part of the third party PCNFS package, but that was DOS based.
6. user friendlyness, have you ever tryed installing windows in a disk that was not the primary IDE without getting the boot records destroyed. Linux can be installed in any partition with easyness.
Installing any OS really should not be treated as a user task. Whilst this is a point in favour of Linux the term "user friendlyness" dosn't apply. You'd need something more like "not having a strange box called Domain: which needs to be set correctly in order to log in", "being able to copy and paste using only the mouse", etc.
1. SMB is integrated into Linux about as much as it is under Windows (the service is called smbd or server in each OS, turn it on, and go).
"Integrated" in the Microsoft sense presumably means tightly tied into the OS kernel. As with IIS it's arguing about technical trivia.
3. Scalability does not mean the ability to run on massively parallel x86 boxes.
Though that appears to be the only meaning Microsoft understand.
12. * If you want to program an app for Linux, and don't wish to Open Source your application, simply write your own code. You don't even get this choice with Windows 200 SAK - you MUST write your own code.
Microsoft's complaints about "viral licencing" appear to be an attempt to draw attention away from the viral conditions in their own licences.
My favorite..."The GPL is nasty and dangerous and can force you to give away all your secrets."
Only applicable if your business is selling proprietary software in the first place. If a business modifies a GPL app to do something specific for they business they don't have to give it away. If they use a GPL wordprocessor for writing internal documents they are under no special obligation to publish those memos. If their accounts are stored in a GPL data base then those accounts don't suddenly become public information. Etc etc.
First off the GPL is easy to understand, and very consistent. You get quite a lot for a simple price, "our changes to the code are to be made public with your codes binary release."
For many people that price is nothing, since they don't distribute software to third parties in the first place. Also the obligation to distribute the source only applies to a third party you distribute to. It's simply a condition of what you must do when you distribute, not an obligation to distribute.
The problem is that (as far as I know, someone with more experience, please correct me) if it was compiled with gcc, it's GPL software.
No if you write original code and compile it with gcc you as the copyright holder can lience it however you like.
I think the GPL is pretty damn clear. If you redistribute the code, you have to license under the GPL.
The GPL is written in fairly easy to understand language. Also "redistribute" in this context only applies to distributing it outside your orgainsation. Distributing it within your own organisation is unrestricted. (Only likely to directly be an issue for something like Enron, with it's interlocking matrix of holding companies.)
And if you don't like it, you can choose to completely ignore the GPL (thus falling back to copyright law).
Even if you disagree with the GPL you can still use the software. Most entities which want to use software simply arn't in the business of distributing software in the first place.
Microsoft's "licenses" (which may change during the next upgrade, and even change randomly depending on the version of the product
It's quite possible for a company to upgrade Microsoft stuff, then discover that something previously ok (by the licence) is no longer ok. So not only do they have the cost of ungrading the software they also have the cost of changing how they do their business.
They do not allow you to use the product you bought any way you like (even though this may not be enforcable, they assert it anyway).
This is probably the the major difference the EULAs (goodness knows how they make any sense at all where the software is owned by corporate entity A, installed and configured by person B and actually used by person C) perport to control how the software is used. Which IMHO isn't "copyright" it's "useright".
C'mon Microsoft, nobody except a few PHB's are buying this intellectual property cancer unAmerican anti-GPL crap, so GIVE UP!
You can reasonably easily relate the GPL to the IP clause in the US constitution. Try that with an EULA...
OEM sales are poor and still declining and manufacturers seem to be stating that they haven't hit the bottom yet. This means that Microsoft's primary source of income has been diminishing and will only rebound a quarter or two after equipment sales rebounds.
Is OEM Windows Microsoft's primary income source? I though they made more money from selling office.
Since before the down turn, MS has been unprofitable enough to have to use creative bookkeeping [economist.com] including such as withholding dividends, avoiding taxes and cost shifting.
The way things are going it'll only be news when a large US corporation is found to have uncooked books...
Further, as their stock values plumment, they'll have to compensate employees with real cash...
Possible positive feedback for Microsoft. Assuming that Microsoft executives don't simply asset strip and abscond.
Looking at that microsoft comparison page, its amazing how most of the Linux features and such that they chose to dog on, are the ones that were implemented in order to be compatible with M$ operating systems.
Quite a few of the critisisms translate to "Linux dosn't do things the same way as Windows" or even "Linux dosn't use the same jargon as Windows".
Whilst Windows 2000 may support NFS, AFAIK it does not support NIS. Does Win2k support PAM either?
23 pages for this patent? How did they do that? Just look at that language, they must have been purposefully trying to write something so incredibly verbose they knew the patent office wouldn't bother reading all the way through.
This really should condem the application to the wastepaper basket. However there appears to be a problem that difficult to understand gets interpreted as "innovation" rather than "waste of time".
Nonexclusive rights to copyright is absolutely REQUIRED if copyright is to serve the interest of the artistic community ever again.
Or maybe a system which only addresses copying of actual works. Rather than arbitrary parts of works such as characters and settings. Which would also eliminate the whole "Micky Mouse" problem. Indeed this is the way copyright used to work in the UK...
People seem to have forgotten that copyright was written to combat exclusive publishing deals given to the publishers in the 1600s. Now that copyright is again a commodity, and can be licenced exclusively,
Not only that a large amount of copyright is in the hands of publishers. Especially, music and motion pictures.
it is no different than the pre-copyright age which the current copyright proponants are selling as the dystopic vision of a world without _modern_ copyright law.
Modern copyright law is different from that of even a few decades ago, let alone that of 3 centuries.
There also tends to be the false dicotomy of either no copyright or the kind of copyright we have now.
'A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb.'
Was he refering to Micky Mouse? Who certainly has proved to be a highly dangerous mouse.
That would sensibly be covered by existing murder and man-slaughter laws.
The term to cover this kind of legislation is "supercriminalisation". Such laws are redundant before they are even passed. Typically done to make politicans appear to be "doing something", especially if there is a lobby group needing to be appeased.
You could also look at it as a way of politicans avoiding doing their jobs whilst appearing to do so.
Windownium (element 286) also includes elements 47 (silver), 78 (platinum), 79 (gold), and 92 (uranium), as well as a few other elements, SO there will no longer be a need to aquire those elements from 3rd party distributors.
Created by a patented process known as "Microsoft fusion".
It's entirely possible that element 119, which will theoretically be an alkali metal with properties similar to cesium, will have a half life long enough to allow it to take place in non-nuclear chemical reactions.
Probably more likely it will resemble Francium.
Every space in the Periodic Table should have a corresponding element. However, these elements may not occur in nature (eg. Technetium) or may have infinitesimally short half-lives (eg. most atomic numbers > about 100).
Relative to the age of the Earth these elements have short half lives. Which is why they don't tend to be found on Earth. There is no reason why supernova explosions would not create all elements (up to some limit probably rather higher than 92). AFIAK transuranics end up joining one of the "natural" decay chains at some point or other.
Nuclei with odd Z and odd N will have even A (#protons+#neutrons) but will generally have less binding energy per nucleon than even-even nuclei.
Thus you'd expect such nuclei to tend to undergo beta decay. Since that will change from odd Z & odd N to even Z & even N.
However, you can have gaps between stable (or almost-stable) elements, with only very-unstable elements in between. That's the whole idea of the "magic island of stability" mentioned in the articles
You don't even have to look at transuranics to see this. Most obvious would be francium which is very much less stable than either radon or radium. Or technetium...
Even-numbered heavy elements also tend to be more stable than odd-numbered elements (as even-numbered nuclei tend to be more energetically favourable, and there's an easy decay path that turns odd nuclei into even ones [beta decay]).
Alpha decay will leave an odd element as odd and even as even.
My Chem 101 prof gave us a problem to determine how much francium (element 87) you would have to buy in order to make a complete investigation of its chemical properties, assuming you could do it by working continuously for two weeks and would have to have at least one milligram left at the end of the procedure. Considering that the half-life of francium is 21 minutes, it worked out to around one million kilograms.
Not that you would really order the full load up front, but it made a good illustration of why you don't find these elements lying around...
The Earth is something like 4.5 billion years old. You don't find any transuranics laying around. Even those such as plutonium which has been produced in large quantities in the last few decades.
Then - assuming any stability can be achieved past 120 - we'll get the superactinides around 122...
"Stability" in this context would mean having a half life measured in something longer than fractions of a second. Since such an element does not exist on Earth now, if it ever was there it must have decayed completely. As with any transuranics and technetium which might have been present when the Earth was formed.
More accurately, property owners said I don't care if my house got burned down, this is still my land. If you think that you can drive a nice wide avenue through it, you can piss right off.>
Once you get lots of property owners building and street plans can remain for centuries. Because of this kind of thing.
They have this already. Its called "red diesel". Its tax free so its something like 20p a litre. Its coloured with a red die, so if you use it on the road the police can easily tell from the plume of red smoke behind you.
The dye shows up in the fuel system, not the exhaust. Otherwise every farm and construction site would be covered in red smoke.
Shall we put a road-use tax on the gas that goes into your lawn mower? How about the generators, cranes and earthmovers at the local construction site? What about the fuel in Joe Farmer's tractor?
In the UK diesel is sold as "white diesel" (also called "derv") which is taxed and "red diesel" which isn't. The red version contains a dye which will will be obvious in the fuel system for some time. Agricultural and construction machines tend to use red diesel.
My only complaint is that it's not terribly obvious to out-of-towners just how the toll issue is worked out, or the charges. We were in a U-Haul, and AFTER dropping the truck off, we found out just how high the charge would have been.
How is it handled for rented vehicles? Does the rental company hold onto the deposit for a month or somthing like that...
And lemme tell you, having taken the TGV from Laussaune, Switzerland to Paris, France, it was one hell of a ride. It just keeps accelerating for the longest time.. and it's an even more comfortable ride the faster it goes.
I truly wish one would be built in the US.
The important technology isn't just in the trains it's also in the track and the monitoring and control systems on the network. Similarly with the Japanese Shinkanshen. Whilst these trains could run on regular track, indeed a Shinkanshen was run on a section of British track and the Eurostar regually does so, they can only do so at well below their regular speed.
I assumed it was the fence keeping people away from the launch pad.
Probably to keep large animals such as kangaroos away too.
You seem to be forgetting the Tupolev TU-144 [www.bird.ch], dubbed Concordski in the west due to its uncanny resemblence to Concorde.
Apparently Tupolev copied some aspects of the design. Yet there are differences such as engine placement and the retractable cannards.
In terms of speed, payload and range the TU-144 is a superior aircraft.