Bush did not invent these. It's common practice to not allow protestors front and center access to a political event (the democrats recently got a slap on the wrist from by the media for doing the exact same thing).
legislating morality (constitution ammendment on marriage)
There are many valid reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, primarily the negative social effects it will have (conclusions drawn from same-sex marriage legalizations in Scandinavian countries).
Mozilla isn't 100% standards compliant either, depending on your definition of "standards". For example, Mozilla isn't 100% compliant with CSS 3 (a holy grail W3C standard, no less!), if I remember correctly.
Still not convinced. "Convicted monopoly" may have been the wording used to describe whatever it was that Microsoft was convicted of, but I still assert that there is nothing wrong with simply BEING a monopoly. If there was, what about the USPS? They are undoubtedly a monopoly too (albeit a government-run one).
Contrary to popular Slashdot belief, being a monopoly is not illegal (see for example the US Postal Service). It's what you do with your monopoly status that makes a difference.
In other words, I find it highly unlikely that Microsoft was "convicted" of "being a monopoly."
Until they come across something covered by a patent.
Like what? A patent on a hashtable implementation? A patent on file I/O? Please. The only stuff that could conceivably be patentable is the proprietary stuff that Mono will probably never be able to implement properly ANWYAY.... And you're completely ignoring the fact that all of Microsoft's patents are freely browseable, so the Mono team could easily find out if what they're doing is patented or not.
It might also be someone trying to put the other side of the story, and to explore some of the issues that people are quick to gloss over.
You must be new to Slashdot if you think anyone on here has "glossed over" the idea that Microsoft will crush Mono somehow.
Miguel is sadly mistaken if he thinks that he's going to be able to get enough of that done (without incurring Microsoft's legal wrath) to get general Windows.NET "binaries" to run on Mono.
How do you figure? Take a look at.NET's class library and Java's. The majority of the stuff is mundane, easily implementable stuff like data structures, sockets, text manipulation, regular expressions, I/O, XML, etc. Nothing you would consider Microsoft trade secrets subject to being pulled out from under the Mono team. Besides, what are they going to do about it? As long as Microsoft publishes API documentation there's nothing they can do to stop someone from implementing an equivalent class (as ECMA-standardized.NET CLR bytecode) by simply following the API documentation. Furthermore, why would they care? The stuff that really ties.NET programs to Windows can't correctly be implemented on Linux due to the fact that Linux doesn't have some of the same facilities that Windows does.
This is more paranoid Slashdotter ranting. Microsoft could care less if Mono is implementing the mundane 90% of their APIs. If Mono out of the blue developed a perfect clone of the API that allowed every.NET program (including ones that use WinForms and other Windows-specific technologies) flawlessly, then they might start getting a little concerned. But realistically, that's never going to happen, and it's not because of anything Microsoft is doing.
Perhaps.NET allows for directly getting environment variables, but Java doesn't, and this is one case where I think it's a good idea. Instead of obtaining environment variables through a method call, you have to pass them as arguments to the VM, and then you can use System.getProperty() to obtain them. So for instance on Windows I could define the property program.home to %HOMEDIR% and $HOME on Unix and you'd never know the difference in the code because on both Windows and Unix you'd be called System.getProperty ("program.home"). Maybe it's just my Java background talking, and that's why I don't see a problem with environment variable handling.
Re:Why should "cross platform" always mean Java/.N
on
Ars Technica Tours Mono
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Python and Java are both languages and run-time thingies.
Not necessarily. People have targetted other languages for the Java runtime, including Python (Jython) and Scheme (Kawa). Basically, as long as you can spit out Java bytecode it doesn't matter language what you compiled to get it. Same basic idea with.NET.
No, it isn't their problem because they hold a sword over the heads of their distributors so that they can't educate their customers.
Who said it was the job of Dell, HP, etc. to educate consumers about alternatives to IE? Last I checked, it was the responsibility of the consumer themselves to be educated. What next, if we suddenly discover that a large number of users use notepad as their text editor because they were unaware of emacs and vi that Microsoft is somehow to blame?
Besides which, do the OEMs really care what web browser goes on the machine as long as they get to put their branding on it (i.e., company logo spinner, links in favorites menu, etc.)? Last I checked, though I don't keep up with pre-built machines much, that was still possible.
I expect Dell to be allowed to ship mozilla with their computers, but they can't. They can't even include a Mozilla CD in the damn box.
They sure as hell can. However, if they do, they will lose the pricing agreements they have with Microsoft. That's business for you. Both parties agreed to do business a certain way.
Because MS leveraged their monopoly to make it not their problem.
No, it's not Microsoft's problem because it's not Microsoft's responsibility to educate every user about alternatives to their software. I mean really, should Opera be obligated to let people know about Mozilla?
Yes, but it's a bit off to say that these people don't have a "choice", even if they merely "accepted" IE due to their own inability to research alternatives.
I have a feeling these geeks who insist that anyone using IE "must've" been forced to do so suffer from a superiority complex. They, the erudite computer geeks, who have computer knowledge bestowed by God himself, have seen through the lies and tricks and have chosen The Superior Browser, Mozilla. Meanwhile, the "plebes" are stuck with IE because they are too foolish to see through Microsoft's smokescreen of deception and trickery.
Give me a fucking break. All this self-righteousness, over software.
But I'm in the same boat as you. I have Mozilla, but I prefer IE. No one else on Slashdot will believe it, but I choose to use IE.
My mom certainly has no clue that there even IS anything other than IE to use.
Is that really Microsoft's problem though? Are they expected to periodically present users with an exhaustive list of all known web browsers?
They kept quoting x-million users but then saying they had a choice. No they didn't. They used what popped up when they clicked on a Web address somewhere on their computer
Duh, how do you expect someone to get a new web browser if the system doesn't come with one in the first place? They've got to ship some kind of web browser with Windows, don't you think? Or do you think all the default web browser should do is send people to a Google search result page for "web browser"?
and they've used that default browser from Day fucking One.
Again, not Microsoft's problem. Every Windows PC ships with the means necessary to seek out and download a new browser that can be used INSTEAD of IE.
When people are receeiving attachments from their friends in the.doc format then they need office.
No they don't, they just need a viewer, which can be downloaded for free here.
When people use Office at work and need to be able to do work at home also, they need office.
Depends on what they need to do. If OpenOffice will suffice, then so be it. Also, most businesses will provide employees with personal copies of software tools if their work demands it. For instance, where I work, all employees can download full copies of Office.
Justifying your position by calling average users idiots that don't need the software they use just makes you an elitist prick.
If their usage scenarios do not fall into the ones listed above and they think they need Office without researching the alternatives, then yes, they are idiots.
And these users may have thought that they need Office, but really they don't. Same thing with people that download Photoshop because "it's too expensive" and all they want to do is make some cute graphics for their webpage. Microsoft and other companies should not cater to the stupidity of the average consumer who "thinks" they need a high-end product and "must" resort to downloading it because it costs more than they thought.
People are not jacking BMW's at left and right because that is theft, downloading music, software, and movies IS NOT THEFT.
No, people aren't stealing BMW's because it's harder than downloading software and there's a high chance of getting caught. If there were a way to steal property that left you totally anonymous and were as easy as clicking a button, I have a feeling we would see quite a bit more theft occurring.
Microsoft wants four hundred dollars for Office. Four Hundred!
Office and similar products are priced the way they are because there is an expectation that it is not going to sell as many units as more popular software, e.g. games. You have to factor in the total costs of producing the software and the market size before coming to a final price for the software itself.
Consider, for example, if I were to spend $100,000 to produce a piece of software. Let's say the market for this software is very small due to the specialized nature of the software. So, let's say that realistically the market for this software is 100 people (to make the math easy). Now, if I produce 100 CDs, sure those CDs cost pennies, but in order to even recoup my initial costs, the software itself has to cost $1,000 a copy. This is how it works for high-end software like Photoshop, 3D rendering tools, etc.
Now Office, on the other hand, does have a fairly large user base, though clearly the market for Office is smaller than the market for, say, Doom 3 or Norton Antivirus. That alone bumps the price up a little (the expectation that the market is smaller, thus price has to be higher to make up for it). There's also the expectation on the part of the consumers that buying this tool will save them time (and time is money in the business world) over alternative methods that may be cheaper upfront, so that raises the value of the software and, consequently, the price.
I think geeks tend to take the "unlimited" label a little too far. To ISPs, "unlimited" means "to the average person, this will be 'unlimited' usage as they will never leech enough to cause problems." The average person will only use a reasonable amount, and they will never run up against overage charges because of it. For all intents and purposes, this is "unlimited". Only geeks who think $40 a month is enough to cover saturating a high-speed pipe 24/7 take the ISPs "unlimited" offer to the extreme, perhaps even making it impossible for other customers to enjoy their definition of "unlimited" service.
If you bandwidth-hogging geeks had it your way, no one would offer "unlimited" service, they would be forced to create strict rules governing how much bandwidth can be consumed at different times of the day, how much data can be down/uploaded during a monthly period, etc. Perhaps the limits might be high, like 30GB a month, but either way, putting a hard limit on the service will scare away customers, including the aforementioned 90%, who consider their internet usage to be "unlimited".
Slashdot Mirror
I just learned about "Freedom of Speech Zones"
Bush did not invent these. It's common practice to not allow protestors front and center access to a political event (the democrats recently got a slap on the wrist from by the media for doing the exact same thing).
legislating morality (constitution ammendment on marriage)
There are many valid reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, primarily the negative social effects it will have (conclusions drawn from same-sex marriage legalizations in Scandinavian countries).
war
Bush didn't invent war.
removal of free speech
Specific example please.
Of course i am just a commie liberal right?
Probably.
Yes, that sounds more likely than being convicted simply because they are a monopoly.
Either way, the myth that simply being a monopoly is illegal has been perpetuated on Slashdot for too long...
Mozilla isn't 100% standards compliant either, depending on your definition of "standards". For example, Mozilla isn't 100% compliant with CSS 3 (a holy grail W3C standard, no less!), if I remember correctly.
Still not convinced. "Convicted monopoly" may have been the wording used to describe whatever it was that Microsoft was convicted of, but I still assert that there is nothing wrong with simply BEING a monopoly. If there was, what about the USPS? They are undoubtedly a monopoly too (albeit a government-run one).
Contrary to popular Slashdot belief, being a monopoly is not illegal (see for example the US Postal Service). It's what you do with your monopoly status that makes a difference.
In other words, I find it highly unlikely that Microsoft was "convicted" of "being a monopoly."
Internet Explorer is free too. Doesn't stop anyone from bitching about it.
Well, perhaps they've "un"-deprecated it since 1.4.2:
getenv
That's a deprecated method, meaning it's not the preferred way of doing things.
Until they come across something covered by a patent.
... And you're completely ignoring the fact that all of Microsoft's patents are freely browseable, so the Mono team could easily find out if what they're doing is patented or not.
Like what? A patent on a hashtable implementation? A patent on file I/O? Please. The only stuff that could conceivably be patentable is the proprietary stuff that Mono will probably never be able to implement properly ANWYAY.
It might also be someone trying to put the other side of the story, and to explore some of the issues that people are quick to gloss over.
You must be new to Slashdot if you think anyone on here has "glossed over" the idea that Microsoft will crush Mono somehow.
Miguel is sadly mistaken if he thinks that he's going to be able to get enough of that done (without incurring Microsoft's legal wrath) to get general Windows .NET "binaries" to run on Mono.
.NET's class library and Java's. The majority of the stuff is mundane, easily implementable stuff like data structures, sockets, text manipulation, regular expressions, I/O, XML, etc. Nothing you would consider Microsoft trade secrets subject to being pulled out from under the Mono team. Besides, what are they going to do about it? As long as Microsoft publishes API documentation there's nothing they can do to stop someone from implementing an equivalent class (as ECMA-standardized .NET CLR bytecode) by simply following the API documentation. Furthermore, why would they care? The stuff that really ties .NET programs to Windows can't correctly be implemented on Linux due to the fact that Linux doesn't have some of the same facilities that Windows does.
.NET program (including ones that use WinForms and other Windows-specific technologies) flawlessly, then they might start getting a little concerned. But realistically, that's never going to happen, and it's not because of anything Microsoft is doing.
How do you figure? Take a look at
This is more paranoid Slashdotter ranting. Microsoft could care less if Mono is implementing the mundane 90% of their APIs. If Mono out of the blue developed a perfect clone of the API that allowed every
Perhaps .NET allows for directly getting environment variables, but Java doesn't, and this is one case where I think it's a good idea. Instead of obtaining environment variables through a method call, you have to pass them as arguments to the VM, and then you can use System.getProperty() to obtain them. So for instance on Windows I could define the property program.home to %HOMEDIR% and $HOME on Unix and you'd never know the difference in the code because on both Windows and Unix you'd be called System.getProperty ("program.home"). Maybe it's just my Java background talking, and that's why I don't see a problem with environment variable handling.
Python and Java are both languages and run-time thingies.
.NET.
Not necessarily. People have targetted other languages for the Java runtime, including Python (Jython) and Scheme (Kawa). Basically, as long as you can spit out Java bytecode it doesn't matter language what you compiled to get it. Same basic idea with
don't depend on environment variables
Why, because they don't work the same way in both Windows and Linux? Is there some fundamental difference I'm missing...?
Microsoft loses MORE money if you DON'T buy an X-Box, moron.
No, it isn't their problem because they hold a sword over the heads of their distributors so that they can't educate their customers.
Who said it was the job of Dell, HP, etc. to educate consumers about alternatives to IE? Last I checked, it was the responsibility of the consumer themselves to be educated. What next, if we suddenly discover that a large number of users use notepad as their text editor because they were unaware of emacs and vi that Microsoft is somehow to blame?
Besides which, do the OEMs really care what web browser goes on the machine as long as they get to put their branding on it (i.e., company logo spinner, links in favorites menu, etc.)? Last I checked, though I don't keep up with pre-built machines much, that was still possible.
I expect Dell to be allowed to ship mozilla with their computers, but they can't. They can't even include a Mozilla CD in the damn box.
They sure as hell can. However, if they do, they will lose the pricing agreements they have with Microsoft. That's business for you. Both parties agreed to do business a certain way.
Because MS leveraged their monopoly to make it not their problem.
No, it's not Microsoft's problem because it's not Microsoft's responsibility to educate every user about alternatives to their software. I mean really, should Opera be obligated to let people know about Mozilla?
Yes, but it's a bit off to say that these people don't have a "choice", even if they merely "accepted" IE due to their own inability to research alternatives.
I have a feeling these geeks who insist that anyone using IE "must've" been forced to do so suffer from a superiority complex. They, the erudite computer geeks, who have computer knowledge bestowed by God himself, have seen through the lies and tricks and have chosen The Superior Browser, Mozilla. Meanwhile, the "plebes" are stuck with IE because they are too foolish to see through Microsoft's smokescreen of deception and trickery.
Give me a fucking break. All this self-righteousness, over software.
But I'm in the same boat as you. I have Mozilla, but I prefer IE. No one else on Slashdot will believe it, but I choose to use IE.
My mom certainly has no clue that there even IS anything other than IE to use.
Is that really Microsoft's problem though? Are they expected to periodically present users with an exhaustive list of all known web browsers?
They kept quoting x-million users but then saying they had a choice. No they didn't. They used what popped up when they clicked on a Web address somewhere on their computer
Duh, how do you expect someone to get a new web browser if the system doesn't come with one in the first place? They've got to ship some kind of web browser with Windows, don't you think? Or do you think all the default web browser should do is send people to a Google search result page for "web browser"?
and they've used that default browser from Day fucking One.
Again, not Microsoft's problem. Every Windows PC ships with the means necessary to seek out and download a new browser that can be used INSTEAD of IE.
When people are receeiving attachments from their friends in the .doc format then they need office.
No they don't, they just need a viewer, which can be downloaded for free here.
When people use Office at work and need to be able to do work at home also, they need office.
Depends on what they need to do. If OpenOffice will suffice, then so be it. Also, most businesses will provide employees with personal copies of software tools if their work demands it. For instance, where I work, all employees can download full copies of Office.
Justifying your position by calling average users idiots that don't need the software they use just makes you an elitist prick.
If their usage scenarios do not fall into the ones listed above and they think they need Office without researching the alternatives, then yes, they are idiots.
(g) I'll summarize all the posts: ...
And these users may have thought that they need Office, but really they don't. Same thing with people that download Photoshop because "it's too expensive" and all they want to do is make some cute graphics for their webpage. Microsoft and other companies should not cater to the stupidity of the average consumer who "thinks" they need a high-end product and "must" resort to downloading it because it costs more than they thought.
People are not jacking BMW's at left and right because that is theft, downloading music, software, and movies IS NOT THEFT.
No, people aren't stealing BMW's because it's harder than downloading software and there's a high chance of getting caught. If there were a way to steal property that left you totally anonymous and were as easy as clicking a button, I have a feeling we would see quite a bit more theft occurring.
Microsoft wants four hundred dollars for Office. Four Hundred!
Office and similar products are priced the way they are because there is an expectation that it is not going to sell as many units as more popular software, e.g. games. You have to factor in the total costs of producing the software and the market size before coming to a final price for the software itself.
Consider, for example, if I were to spend $100,000 to produce a piece of software. Let's say the market for this software is very small due to the specialized nature of the software. So, let's say that realistically the market for this software is 100 people (to make the math easy). Now, if I produce 100 CDs, sure those CDs cost pennies, but in order to even recoup my initial costs, the software itself has to cost $1,000 a copy. This is how it works for high-end software like Photoshop, 3D rendering tools, etc.
Now Office, on the other hand, does have a fairly large user base, though clearly the market for Office is smaller than the market for, say, Doom 3 or Norton Antivirus. That alone bumps the price up a little (the expectation that the market is smaller, thus price has to be higher to make up for it). There's also the expectation on the part of the consumers that buying this tool will save them time (and time is money in the business world) over alternative methods that may be cheaper upfront, so that raises the value of the software and, consequently, the price.
I think geeks tend to take the "unlimited" label a little too far. To ISPs, "unlimited" means "to the average person, this will be 'unlimited' usage as they will never leech enough to cause problems." The average person will only use a reasonable amount, and they will never run up against overage charges because of it. For all intents and purposes, this is "unlimited". Only geeks who think $40 a month is enough to cover saturating a high-speed pipe 24/7 take the ISPs "unlimited" offer to the extreme, perhaps even making it impossible for other customers to enjoy their definition of "unlimited" service.
If you bandwidth-hogging geeks had it your way, no one would offer "unlimited" service, they would be forced to create strict rules governing how much bandwidth can be consumed at different times of the day, how much data can be down/uploaded during a monthly period, etc. Perhaps the limits might be high, like 30GB a month, but either way, putting a hard limit on the service will scare away customers, including the aforementioned 90%, who consider their internet usage to be "unlimited".