I'd pay for a port of DirectX that
*worked*. I wouldn't pay for the *chance*
that said port will come out (i.e.
Codeweaver's subscription philosophy) when
there's really a lower chance that it will
happen.
I think you're confusing Codeweavers
with Transgaming.
Codeweavers is selling a product to support
Quicktime, Shockwave, and a few other plugins
on Linux. It works right now. Transgaming
is selling subscriptions for effort in
supporting Windows games.
Why stop there?? Just head over to Transgaming [transgaming.com] and
get rid of Windows once and for all.
I have a subscription to Transgaming for just
this purpose. Unfortunately Transgaming
work isn't far enough along for my needs yet.
By supporting them, I hope that this will change.
Why? Does it look
any better than watching it on Windows?
Was it easier?
It looks the same. Compared to
rebooting into Windows, it's
significantly easier.
I spend most of my time under
Linux. I used only reboot into Windows
for games and Quicktime. Now I only
reboot into Windows for games. (And
thanks to my Playstation 2, I don't boot
into Windows for games very often any
more.)
Why not just get
Windows?
I have Windows, but I don't like it.
I'm perfectly happy working under Linux.
Crossover allows me to satisify my
desire to watch Quicktime videos under
Linux. Seems like a good match to me.
Why support a software vendor
that refuses to support your favorite
platform?
Because I'm a realist. Maybe as
Linux's share grows we'll see Quicktime
for Linux, but that's not going to
happen in the near future. Refusing to
use non-native software does
nothing to improve the
situation.
Or do you consider "it doesn't
break under Wine" to be good
enough?
I use Linux. I want to watch
Quicktime videos. Apple is not going to
port Quicktime Player to Linux in the
forseeable future. Crossover solves my
problem. So yes, it's good enough for
now. One step at a time...
I purchased Crossover
several weeks ago and have been
completely satisfied. Quicktime
works great. Being able to watch the
Fellowship
of the Ring trailer on Linux is
great! Shockwave
works well for many sites. (In
particular, Shockwave plugins for stuff
like 3D has problems.) Codeweaver's tech
support mailing list is great, the
developers reply quickly and are very
helpful.
While I would prefer that Crossover
be free
software, at least Codeweavers
is contributing most of their
improvements back to the main Wine
project. Pretty much only the Crossover
plugin itself is proprietary software.
Buying Crossover is a great way to
support the development of Wine and get
Quicktime support on Linux right now.
You can call it bloat, but there's probably a reason why people
(not just "lusers", but also "power users" who "know better") keep
upgrading anyways.
So they can read the newest proprietary file
formats that other people email them. I run
into this constantly. People take it as a
personal attack if you ask them to save it in an
older format. Newer versions of Word don't
install the ability to save old formats by default
any more. Without this forced upgrading to
conform to other users, I'd still be happily
using Word 7. (I believe it was version 7, it was the
last 16 bit version). Word 7 had ever feature I
needed, was lightening fast, and took almost no
disk space.
The notion that "information
wants to be free" is a rather
interesting case study of
anthropomorphism gone horribly wrong.
Information doesn't want anything.
You're nitpicking. Would you so
angrily jump down the throat of someone
who suggested that water wants to run
downhill? Would you attempt to correct
me what I suggest that the software I'm
working on wants a 256 megabytes of RAM?
Most people are perfectly capable of
recognizing that anthropomorphism is not
literal.
No, information doesn't want
to be free. But information damn well
tends toward being free.
People fundamentally like
sharing information. We tend to tell
others things we find interesting. We
spend a great deal of effort inventing
tools to help share information with
each other. Writing, printing, movable
type, telegraphs, telephones, email,
usenet, web pages.
Once you've given me a piece of
information, you would be hard pressed
to stop me from sharing it as I see fit.
We've had to build complex legal systems
of copyrights and trade secrets for the
sole purpose of stopping information
from spreading. In the absence of this
legal system, information would tend
spread. People spend huge amounts of
effort developing encryption, copy
restriction mechanisms, and similar
mechanisms to stop information from
being shared. It's always easier to
make a technology that always shares
information that a technology that can
restrict the sharing of information.
Human beings like sharing
information. Stopping this free spread
of information is very difficult. No,
information doesn't literally want to be
free, but the behavior of normal people
tends to spread information.
"Information wants to be free" seems to
me to be a reasonable way of summarizing
the situation.
When did we stop being a nation of
citizens and become a nation of
consumers? The government is supposed
to protect its citizens.
Anyway...
There is no doubt that msft
hurts other companies by integrating the
best ideas in to the OS itself, but that
must be a plus for the consumer.
There is more to helping consumers
than just giving them (sorta) free
stuff. Microsoft's tactics were
designed to destroy competition.
Competition is good for the public, it
encourages lower prices, higher quality,
and specialized products for different
needs. Once a person or business is
largely using Microsoft products,
proprietary protocols and file formats
create a prison that is very expensive
to migrate out of.
Furthermore, integration isn't the
only crime Microsoft commited.
Microsoft repeated took steps to
actively deny people options.
Restrictive agreements with ISPs to
limit end users from using competing web
browsers. Apple wanted to ship only
Netscape with new versions of MacOS, but
Microsoft leveraged their office suite
monopoly to force Apple to make IE the
default browser. Several computer
manufacturers wanted to ship additional
functionality for customers on new
systems, functionality like additional
ISP options and Netscape Navigator, but
Microsoft used restrictive license
agreements to stop them.
Microsoft's tactics definately harmed
consumers. The immediate gain of a web
browser or similar additions doesn't
outweight the cost.
1. What are the uses of
cryptography as a "Human Rights
Tool"?
Human rights workers in oppressive
countries are under constant threat of
being tortured or killed if they are
found to releasing information the local
government disagrees with. Encryption
lets them send reports home with the
knowledge that their report can't be
intercepted. Through the use of
steganography, the oppressive government
doesn't even need to know that they're
sending anything suspicoius. The same
goes for citizens of a repressive
government sending reports of their
plight to the outside world, or sharing
suppressed news. PGP is being used for
exactly this purpose.
2. If in fact tools such as PGP
are used by terrorists, how do
governments protect against this?
Terrorists are known to use
boxcutters. Does this mean we need
boxcutter control laws? PGP and similar
tools are just tools. They are
certainly tools that can be used for
good.
Personally, I trust them, and I
know they're accountable for what they
do. Until they give me a reason to
distrust them, then I won't. How could
I?
The US government has a long history
of breaking our trust. Secret chemical
experiments on citizens. Providing
weapons to terrorists. Spying on
poltical enemies. Using census data to
help imprison Americans whose only crime
was having a Japanese heritage during
World War II. Illegal wiretaps.
Maybe Canada has somehow managed to
to only get honest, upright public
servants. Count yourself lucky.
Government is human and fallable.
Maybe most civil servants are honest,
trustworthy, and dependable, but it only
takes a handful willing to betray that
trust. These bad apples can do a great
deal of harm if they have too much
information or power. Information will
eventually be used in inappropriate
ways. For example, it may illegally
sold to other people. By carefully
controlling what information the
government has, and who in the
government has access to it, you can
reduce the risk.
Take medical records. What if they
were leaked? A woman who had an
abortion may become a target of radical
anti-abortion activists. An HIV
positive man may find himself shunned.
An alcoholic who is under control and
not touched a drink in years may be
declined employment because he's
considered "too risky."
How about your spending habits?
Anyone who makes regular donations to
Islamic organizations would probably not
like that widely known at the moment.
Maybe you have (or had) an expensive
gambling habit that you'd rather your
employer didn't know about.
Criminal records? A youthful mistake
might haunt you many years later. False
charges you were aquitted of may make
an employer suspicious.
Misused information can ruin lives.
The government has a lot of this
potentially dangerous information. It's
only natural to be wary of government's
access to it. (And relately, natural to
fear the growing mass of information
corportations has.)
From the "This
is War" article. " We should invade their countries, kill
their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
If it wasn't so horrible, this would almost be funny.
Apparently "Thou shalt now kill" has been amended "unless you're
at war." You'll find extremists preaching violence on both sides.
I think Mark Twain summarized the hypocracy of war in the name
of religion best in "The
War Prayer".
As Ktistec Machine points out, CNN
runs an IRC server. It's working fine
right now.The channel #CNN_Newsfeed
contains the closed caption information
from the live broadcast. It's a
resonable fall back if you don't have
access to television or radio.
If you've got an IRC client, connect
to irc://chat.cnn.com:7000/.
If you've got Java support in your web
browser, connect to CNN's
java interface. Once you've logged
in and given it a nickname, type "/join
#CNN_Newsfeed" in the box.
Re:An argument I don't understand
on
Microsoft vs. Ximian
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The Free Software Foundation has
recently started to promote the idea
that all software should be free.
Recently? This has been the goal of
the Free Software Foundation since the
beginning. They feel that non-free
software is immoral. Thus is naturally
follows that all software should be
free.
By stating that "all software
must be free, no matter who developed
it," I believe that the FSF is shooting
itself in the foot. By crippling itself
with such extremism, the FSF takes away
opportunities to convince people that by
having a choice, they can make the
choice to improve their futures by
choosing free software. The FSF
political tendencies seem to be closer
to dictatorship rather than the common
attack of communism. Even if a
dictatorship is benevolent, it is still
a dictatorship.
I see advertisments almost daily
telling me that I should only use
Microsoft software, I should only drive
Ford cars. Yet I don't feel the need to
accuse Microsoft and Ford of being
extremist. Oracle wants you to
exclusively use Oracle databases. The
FSF wants you to exclusively use Free
Software. Both are attempting to change
your behavoir. Don't demonize the FSF
for behavoir every software company
engages in.
In addition, the FSF is arguing from
a moral position. If you agree
that non-Free Software is immoral (a big
If, I'll agree), there can be
no-compromise. You might as well ask
pro-life proponents to admit that
abortions are a reasonable option.
While you're at it, maybe Christians
would be interested in accepting Islam
as a valid choice. The FSF follows
their beliefs as closely as they can.
It would be hypocritical to do
otherwise.
Preaching the word of freedom
while advocating the removal of freedoms
is counterproductive.
The FSF is not, to my knowledge,
lobbying for laws to force all software
to be free. They're simply trying to
convince everyone that Free Software is
the only morally acceptable answer. No
removal of your freedom there, just
simple persuasion.
Does the US Legal system really
have much right to tell a Japanese
company what technologies it can and
cannot develop?
You're kidding, right? Sony engages
in a great deal of business in the
United States. As a result, they need
to play by the local rules. If they
fail to respect US law, the US will
simply spank everything within reach.
Worst case, there are plenty of assets
based the US to be seized, and we could
refuse import of Sony products. Any
multi-national corporation knows how
this game is played and carefully toes
the line in every country they do
business in.
Re:um, yeah, whatever
on
Make Your Own DSL
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Cringley is in talking about getting some
sort of service in areas where you can't get
DSL. Sure, you still have to pay for it,
but maybe it will let you get DSL speeds to
your home when previously you couldn't.
His previous articles on the subject discussed
how he set up a long range wireless link to
another house which does has high speed access,
and he is paying the owner of the other home
for bandwidth. I don't think he's advocating
taking bandwidth without permission. He's
advocating working around telcos which refuse to
provide high speed service.
If you are worried about other
platforms, then put in support for ActiveX controls.
Supporting ActiveX in any non-trivial way is
a nightmare on non-Windows platforms.
Microsoft's port of ActiveX for Internet Explorer
for MacOS was a cruel joke. My former employer spent weeks trying to develop a plugin for IE for MacOS without success. If Microsoft
has such problems implementing it, how do you
expect smaller companies to handle it?
Why would a developer create a Netscape plugin on the Windows platform?
Perhaps because he wants a plugin that works in Netscape and Opera? The Netscape plugin API has been the defacto standard. It has of problems, but it's relatively easy to implement on the web browser side. The Netscape plugin API is also relatively easy to understand as a plugin developer. ActiveX has a fairly steep learning curve. Sure, you can support both, but for a small developer this is just more time (and money)
Google uses keyword searching. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Keyword searching is a Dead-End Technology. It scales badly, throws too many false positives and too many false negatives, and makes no allowance for international variations in spelling.
Keyword searching by itself is a dead end. But Google isn't just keyword searching. Google's real strength is it's ability to distill information from links to and from web pages. Google effectively makes ever web page author an intelligent indicer. Google pulls out previously ignored data on the value of a web page. In short, Google works.
Keyword searching scales badly? Compared to what? There is no magical way to avoid looking at every page and doing some form of analysis. Every search engine needs to pay roughly the same price to build up their data set. As for searching, quickly collecting results from an optimized database is fast. Database work is a heavily studied and optimized area. Search cost should be sub-linear to the size of the database.
International variations? If you mean regional variations on the same language, it's solvable by keyword equivalence lists. Many search engines already know to search for misspellings and different conjugations. Again, what would you suggest to replace it?
But in a few years time, will Google be any more useful than Altavista? Google is already more useful than Altavista (in most areas). All Altavista can do is catch up to Google. Meanwhile Google can explore further improvements. If Google is foolish enough to sit on their laurels, they'll be overtaken by someone with a clever idea.
If not, then the investors would be better throwing their cash into an R&D house that might actually produce some long-term return.
Investors don't look three years into the future. They might see two years. Probably only one. Long term research is a fundamentally risky investment. Many times you don't develop something useful, you just discover things that don't work. Don't expect investors to sink money into big maybes.
All in all, it's a bit silly to predict doom for one of the most effective search engines without having a better idea to point to. Researches are working on better searching. Google itself came from such a project. I expect Google is doing some of that research itself.
The argument for calling it GNU/Linux is not based on there being some GNU tools typically packaged with the system. The GNU prefix is a way of showing respect for a critical component in the development of Linux. Without gcc, you can't compile the kernel. Without the supporting GNU tools, you can't accomplish anything useful. With just the GNU tools and the Linux kernel, you have enough to do development. You're being asked to call it GNU/Linux to remind people that Linux exists because all of the essential supporting tools were already present thanks to the GNU project. You're being asked to call it GNU/Linux to remind users that even if Linux was originally Linus's project, it builds upon a toolset created by the GNU project for the purpose of creating a Free operating system.
I suppose in short, you're being asked to call it GNU/Linux to help publicize the GNU project and their goals.
All that said, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the argument, but I can appreciate the reasoning.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd pay for a port of DirectX that *worked*. I wouldn't pay for the *chance* that said port will come out (i.e. Codeweaver's subscription philosophy) when there's really a lower chance that it will happen.
I think you're confusing Codeweavers with Transgaming. Codeweavers is selling a product to support Quicktime, Shockwave, and a few other plugins on Linux. It works right now. Transgaming is selling subscriptions for effort in supporting Windows games.
Why stop there?? Just head over to Transgaming [transgaming.com] and get rid of Windows once and for all.
I have a subscription to Transgaming for just this purpose. Unfortunately Transgaming work isn't far enough along for my needs yet. By supporting them, I hope that this will change.
Why? Does it look any better than watching it on Windows? Was it easier?
It looks the same. Compared to rebooting into Windows, it's significantly easier.
I spend most of my time under Linux. I used only reboot into Windows for games and Quicktime. Now I only reboot into Windows for games. (And thanks to my Playstation 2, I don't boot into Windows for games very often any more.)
Why not just get Windows?
I have Windows, but I don't like it. I'm perfectly happy working under Linux. Crossover allows me to satisify my desire to watch Quicktime videos under Linux. Seems like a good match to me.
Why support a software vendor that refuses to support your favorite platform?
Because I'm a realist. Maybe as Linux's share grows we'll see Quicktime for Linux, but that's not going to happen in the near future. Refusing to use non-native software does nothing to improve the situation.
Or do you consider "it doesn't break under Wine" to be good enough?
I use Linux. I want to watch Quicktime videos. Apple is not going to port Quicktime Player to Linux in the forseeable future. Crossover solves my problem. So yes, it's good enough for now. One step at a time...
I purchased Crossover several weeks ago and have been completely satisfied. Quicktime works great. Being able to watch the Fellowship of the Ring trailer on Linux is great! Shockwave works well for many sites. (In particular, Shockwave plugins for stuff like 3D has problems.) Codeweaver's tech support mailing list is great, the developers reply quickly and are very helpful.
While I would prefer that Crossover be free software, at least Codeweavers is contributing most of their improvements back to the main Wine project. Pretty much only the Crossover plugin itself is proprietary software. Buying Crossover is a great way to support the development of Wine and get Quicktime support on Linux right now.
You can call it bloat, but there's probably a reason why people (not just "lusers", but also "power users" who "know better") keep upgrading anyways.
So they can read the newest proprietary file formats that other people email them. I run into this constantly. People take it as a personal attack if you ask them to save it in an older format. Newer versions of Word don't install the ability to save old formats by default any more. Without this forced upgrading to conform to other users, I'd still be happily using Word 7. (I believe it was version 7, it was the last 16 bit version). Word 7 had ever feature I needed, was lightening fast, and took almost no disk space.
The notion that "information wants to be free" is a rather interesting case study of anthropomorphism gone horribly wrong. Information doesn't want anything.
You're nitpicking. Would you so angrily jump down the throat of someone who suggested that water wants to run downhill? Would you attempt to correct me what I suggest that the software I'm working on wants a 256 megabytes of RAM? Most people are perfectly capable of recognizing that anthropomorphism is not literal.
No, information doesn't want to be free. But information damn well tends toward being free. People fundamentally like sharing information. We tend to tell others things we find interesting. We spend a great deal of effort inventing tools to help share information with each other. Writing, printing, movable type, telegraphs, telephones, email, usenet, web pages.
Once you've given me a piece of information, you would be hard pressed to stop me from sharing it as I see fit. We've had to build complex legal systems of copyrights and trade secrets for the sole purpose of stopping information from spreading. In the absence of this legal system, information would tend spread. People spend huge amounts of effort developing encryption, copy restriction mechanisms, and similar mechanisms to stop information from being shared. It's always easier to make a technology that always shares information that a technology that can restrict the sharing of information.
Human beings like sharing information. Stopping this free spread of information is very difficult. No, information doesn't literally want to be free, but the behavior of normal people tends to spread information. "Information wants to be free" seems to me to be a reasonable way of summarizing the situation.
Does Microsoft hurt the consumer?
When did we stop being a nation of citizens and become a nation of consumers? The government is supposed to protect its citizens. Anyway...
There is no doubt that msft hurts other companies by integrating the best ideas in to the OS itself, but that must be a plus for the consumer.
There is more to helping consumers than just giving them (sorta) free stuff. Microsoft's tactics were designed to destroy competition. Competition is good for the public, it encourages lower prices, higher quality, and specialized products for different needs. Once a person or business is largely using Microsoft products, proprietary protocols and file formats create a prison that is very expensive to migrate out of.
Furthermore, integration isn't the only crime Microsoft commited. Microsoft repeated took steps to actively deny people options. Restrictive agreements with ISPs to limit end users from using competing web browsers. Apple wanted to ship only Netscape with new versions of MacOS, but Microsoft leveraged their office suite monopoly to force Apple to make IE the default browser. Several computer manufacturers wanted to ship additional functionality for customers on new systems, functionality like additional ISP options and Netscape Navigator, but Microsoft used restrictive license agreements to stop them.
Microsoft's tactics definately harmed consumers. The immediate gain of a web browser or similar additions doesn't outweight the cost.
1. What are the uses of cryptography as a "Human Rights Tool"?
Human rights workers in oppressive countries are under constant threat of being tortured or killed if they are found to releasing information the local government disagrees with. Encryption lets them send reports home with the knowledge that their report can't be intercepted. Through the use of steganography, the oppressive government doesn't even need to know that they're sending anything suspicoius. The same goes for citizens of a repressive government sending reports of their plight to the outside world, or sharing suppressed news. PGP is being used for exactly this purpose.
2. If in fact tools such as PGP are used by terrorists, how do governments protect against this?
Terrorists are known to use boxcutters. Does this mean we need boxcutter control laws? PGP and similar tools are just tools. They are certainly tools that can be used for good.
I missed the most obvious point:
Personally, I trust them, and I know they're accountable for what they do. Until they give me a reason to distrust them, then I won't. How could I?
The US government has a long history of breaking our trust. Secret chemical experiments on citizens. Providing weapons to terrorists. Spying on poltical enemies. Using census data to help imprison Americans whose only crime was having a Japanese heritage during World War II. Illegal wiretaps.
Maybe Canada has somehow managed to to only get honest, upright public servants. Count yourself lucky.
Distrust of government is a virtue.
Government is human and fallable. Maybe most civil servants are honest, trustworthy, and dependable, but it only takes a handful willing to betray that trust. These bad apples can do a great deal of harm if they have too much information or power. Information will eventually be used in inappropriate ways. For example, it may illegally sold to other people. By carefully controlling what information the government has, and who in the government has access to it, you can reduce the risk.
Take medical records. What if they were leaked? A woman who had an abortion may become a target of radical anti-abortion activists. An HIV positive man may find himself shunned. An alcoholic who is under control and not touched a drink in years may be declined employment because he's considered "too risky."
How about your spending habits? Anyone who makes regular donations to Islamic organizations would probably not like that widely known at the moment. Maybe you have (or had) an expensive gambling habit that you'd rather your employer didn't know about.
Criminal records? A youthful mistake might haunt you many years later. False charges you were aquitted of may make an employer suspicious.
Misused information can ruin lives. The government has a lot of this potentially dangerous information. It's only natural to be wary of government's access to it. (And relately, natural to fear the growing mass of information corportations has.)
From the "This is War" article. " We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
If it wasn't so horrible, this would almost be funny. Apparently "Thou shalt now kill" has been amended "unless you're at war." You'll find extremists preaching violence on both sides.
I think Mark Twain summarized the hypocracy of war in the name of religion best in "The War Prayer".
As Ktistec Machine points out, CNN runs an IRC server. It's working fine right now.The channel #CNN_Newsfeed contains the closed caption information from the live broadcast. It's a resonable fall back if you don't have access to television or radio.
If you've got an IRC client, connect to irc://chat.cnn.com:7000/. If you've got Java support in your web browser, connect to CNN's java interface. Once you've logged in and given it a nickname, type "/join #CNN_Newsfeed" in the box.
The Free Software Foundation has recently started to promote the idea that all software should be free.
Recently? This has been the goal of the Free Software Foundation since the beginning. They feel that non-free software is immoral. Thus is naturally follows that all software should be free.
By stating that "all software must be free, no matter who developed it," I believe that the FSF is shooting itself in the foot. By crippling itself with such extremism, the FSF takes away opportunities to convince people that by having a choice, they can make the choice to improve their futures by choosing free software. The FSF political tendencies seem to be closer to dictatorship rather than the common attack of communism. Even if a dictatorship is benevolent, it is still a dictatorship.
I see advertisments almost daily telling me that I should only use Microsoft software, I should only drive Ford cars. Yet I don't feel the need to accuse Microsoft and Ford of being extremist. Oracle wants you to exclusively use Oracle databases. The FSF wants you to exclusively use Free Software. Both are attempting to change your behavoir. Don't demonize the FSF for behavoir every software company engages in.
In addition, the FSF is arguing from a moral position. If you agree that non-Free Software is immoral (a big If, I'll agree), there can be no-compromise. You might as well ask pro-life proponents to admit that abortions are a reasonable option. While you're at it, maybe Christians would be interested in accepting Islam as a valid choice. The FSF follows their beliefs as closely as they can. It would be hypocritical to do otherwise.
Preaching the word of freedom while advocating the removal of freedoms is counterproductive.
The FSF is not, to my knowledge, lobbying for laws to force all software to be free. They're simply trying to convince everyone that Free Software is the only morally acceptable answer. No removal of your freedom there, just simple persuasion.
Does the US Legal system really have much right to tell a Japanese company what technologies it can and cannot develop?
You're kidding, right? Sony engages in a great deal of business in the United States. As a result, they need to play by the local rules. If they fail to respect US law, the US will simply spank everything within reach. Worst case, there are plenty of assets based the US to be seized, and we could refuse import of Sony products. Any multi-national corporation knows how this game is played and carefully toes the line in every country they do business in.
Cringley is in talking about getting some sort of service in areas where you can't get DSL. Sure, you still have to pay for it, but maybe it will let you get DSL speeds to your home when previously you couldn't. His previous articles on the subject discussed how he set up a long range wireless link to another house which does has high speed access, and he is paying the owner of the other home for bandwidth. I don't think he's advocating taking bandwidth without permission. He's advocating working around telcos which refuse to provide high speed service.
If you are worried about other platforms, then put in support for ActiveX controls.
Supporting ActiveX in any non-trivial way is a nightmare on non-Windows platforms. Microsoft's port of ActiveX for Internet Explorer for MacOS was a cruel joke. My former employer spent weeks trying to develop a plugin for IE for MacOS without success. If Microsoft has such problems implementing it, how do you expect smaller companies to handle it?
Why would a developer create a Netscape plugin on the Windows platform?
Perhaps because he wants a plugin that works in Netscape and Opera? The Netscape plugin API has been the defacto standard. It has of problems, but it's relatively easy to implement on the web browser side. The Netscape plugin API is also relatively easy to understand as a plugin developer. ActiveX has a fairly steep learning curve. Sure, you can support both, but for a small developer this is just more time (and money)
Google uses keyword searching. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Keyword searching is a Dead-End Technology. It scales badly, throws too many false positives and too many false negatives, and makes no allowance for international variations in spelling.
Keyword searching by itself is a dead end. But Google isn't just keyword searching. Google's real strength is it's ability to distill information from links to and from web pages. Google effectively makes ever web page author an intelligent indicer. Google pulls out previously ignored data on the value of a web page. In short, Google works.
Keyword searching scales badly? Compared to what? There is no magical way to avoid looking at every page and doing some form of analysis. Every search engine needs to pay roughly the same price to build up their data set. As for searching, quickly collecting results from an optimized database is fast. Database work is a heavily studied and optimized area. Search cost should be sub-linear to the size of the database.
International variations? If you mean regional variations on the same language, it's solvable by keyword equivalence lists. Many search engines already know to search for misspellings and different conjugations. Again, what would you suggest to replace it?
But in a few years time, will Google be any more useful than Altavista? Google is already more useful than Altavista (in most areas). All Altavista can do is catch up to Google. Meanwhile Google can explore further improvements. If Google is foolish enough to sit on their laurels, they'll be overtaken by someone with a clever idea.
If not, then the investors would be better throwing their cash into an R&D house that might actually produce some long-term return.
Investors don't look three years into the future. They might see two years. Probably only one. Long term research is a fundamentally risky investment. Many times you don't develop something useful, you just discover things that don't work. Don't expect investors to sink money into big maybes.
All in all, it's a bit silly to predict doom for one of the most effective search engines without having a better idea to point to. Researches are working on better searching. Google itself came from such a project. I expect Google is doing some of that research itself.
I suppose in short, you're being asked to call it GNU/Linux to help publicize the GNU project and their goals.
All that said, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the argument, but I can appreciate the reasoning.