Except, that really doesn't excuse the practice. I drew my site's layout from a few spots, but I most assuridly did not do anything so bold as copy graphics and exact page layouts.
I'm all for drawing influence, open source code, but lifting another's work as your own is plagerism. Big no no.
That said, I do wonder if anyone will take this guy up on the offer to make their changes widespread by contributing? If so, meebe some new graphics would be in order.
While there's more info from the battlebots site, Robot Wars was started way back, and was sponsored in large part by a record company (Priority?). The creator and his financial supporter ended up fighting over how Robot Wars was going to be handled, including Robot Wars UK. The two camps didn't want to go in the same direction and Priority ended up suing to put a hold on Robot Wars events that it didn't approve of.
It ended up that one event that was to occur about two years ago in the Bay Area was cancelled, much to my roommates chagrin.
BattleBots was the community response to the lack of an organized robotic combat arena. The community, largely, the Society of Robotic Combat, developed the rules currently in use with BattleBots.
So, there may be similarities. I think what it comes down to is how the events were edited for TV. Tonight, what they had as the prelim events were part of the lightweight rounds, which were featured as much as the super heavys. The TV show seems like it is going to bypass the lightweights.
After being in the audience for the taping, I'm so far less than statisfied with the way Comedy Central put the package together. There were a few errors in fact (the arena is made of Lexan, not plexiglass). Secondly, the announcers seem to be a little over eager and dramatic and stiff. Hopefully, this gets better as the show goes on.
I also hope they won't edit too much of the matches. We were a tad surprised by how tight the editing seemed to be this evening.
It was a great couple of days at Fort Mason for the taping. I just hope it translates well for television.
I don't know about any other places, but I know that in the California State University system, teachers have had to hammer out agreements with the university over who owns the rights to distributed learning classes. The profs say they developed the material for the class. The university may reply that they own anything going out over their satellite system.
I favor the instructor's view here, but they are up against quite a bit of pressure to teach to wider audiences to pull in more students (more $$$) while not being given many more resources. And, oh, by the way, the university is going to want the copyright on that class.
...And that's what worries me. Most of the time, when arbitration is called for, it is designed to be a mediation between two sides outside the legal process. This is in the hope that it will be resolved quickly and amicably (OK, with less venom) than going to court.
However, by my understanding, *both* sides get a say in which arbitrator is used, ususally by submiting a list of sealed names of acceptible candidates from a master list. With this arrangement, ICANN has effectively given away the store. I think one of the few cases they ruled for a defendent was in the sting.com affair.
I worry about this with my own domain name. There are a.com and.net, though they don't seem to be particularly worrisome now. In fact, I've not talked to either of them. But, say the.com gets a wild hair and says I'm infringing on their trade name? We registered about two months apart. I've managed to keep a working site for two years, they will disappear for a bit as they jump bandwidth providers. Would my constant activity and the fact that I don't do anything like they intend to do matter?
Three years ago, a company wanted a domain because they were late to the party, and they paid money to get it. Now, they seem to be quite willing to sue or "arbitrate" when the deck is clearly stacked in their favor. "Not only aren't we going to pay you, we are going to make your life a living hell. Screw you for not having the foresight to know we want this domain."
Apple's using tabbed widgets in AppleWorks 6. MS uses tabbed widgets in their pref panels. Apple also used tabbed widgets in At Ease, and with some Multiple Users settings in Mac OS 9.
I disagree. While the interfaces are similar, they are suing as a stall tactic. Adobe is hoping to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of Macromedia developers and their IT managers.
"Should I buy Macromedia if we run the risk of having to learn a new interface in six months?" is the question that might be asked.
As for Flash being dead because Adobe made a new tool, well, Freehand, Dreamweaver, Flash, Director and QuarkXPress are all products that survive (and indeed are better, IMHO) competition with Adobe.
Adobe came late to the game with ImageReady, was forced to bundle it with Photoshop 5.5 so it would actually ship. Meanwhile, Fireworks integrates nicely with Dreamweaver and Flash. OTOH, Photoshop's web obtimization capability is quite clearly tacked on, not designed from the ground up. Web designers know this. The guys in my office work w/ Macromedia products for precisely this reason.
Consider this, why did Adobe feel compelled to be able to import Flash graphics?
The screen shots Adobe posted look pretty similar to the Macromedia products in question. I'm really wondering though, even though they deny it, if they're running scared from Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.
Stats? Anyone?
Also, how much doctering of the actual default screens did they need to do to make their case?
Well, considering you don't get out the door for a Solaris server or HP or IBM for under 20 grand, with onsite support extra, I'm not terribly surprised about what we ended up with.
Working at HP as a contractor on the support side, their standard warranty was (is?) "Return to Bench", meaning you send the box back. Onsite support in 4 hrs, 24/365 for mission critical systems was about as much per year as the hardware itself in some instances. HP sells it as insurance, since the company looks at what four biz days of downtime costs (shut down assembly line, customers can't withdraw funds from the bank yadda yadda yadda.) And they make a very pretty penny doing it.
My current shop on the other hand, the VA box I mentioned earlier is not (yet) mission critical. It's a workgroup development web server, not one of our live to the world machines. So, I can understand when we're not sending money VA's way for an onsite tech, the turnaround is a business week.
That said, we let our displeasure be known with the account rep and, whoa, suddenly lots of VA swag shows up on my desk. Apologies around and what not. I do expect, though, if the box failed under production circumstances, that we could get someone out onsite in a matter of hours. At least, I hope.
That said, we're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot by running Mandrake over what VA set us up with. I'd imagine we'd get some puzzled looks and the instruction to restore the system to the original OS config and update as needed from that tree.
Well, I wasn't thrilled, nor was the other tech. But that's just the way it worked out. Since it wasn't me handling the order, there wasn't much I could do but bitch and moan.
Which I did.
As for overnighting the box, yes, that would have been really good. But, I'm not sure any other linux or UNIX manufacturer could have done better. Hopefully, I'm wrong in that respect.
So far my experience has been fairly good, but not stellar. Our VA server initally came a bit damaged, one of the rack mount brackets was bent (such that my boss feared installing it). We sent it back, had the replacement in a week with VA's hearty apologies. T-shirts and mouse pads for everyone!
Since that initial rough spot, everything has been rock solid. And, given all the extra bits they tend to include with their boxes (Full On 2x2 here), I would seriously leave their custom RedHat in place, since it has the bits for remote status reporting and hardware raid management in place.
Installing new hardware in a production environment is such a pain anyway (as demonstrated above), messing with the system OS, when the supported OS is perfectly fine, is just asking for trouble IMHO.
In CA, they were popular for about two years before Albertson's purchased Lucky. That leaves two major chains as club card with club card offerings and two other major chains/companies vowing that they don't need them.
The cards appear to be disappearing, at least here. They also lost some of their teeth after the state legislature looked into restricting how supermarkets could use info from the cards, namely, no selling to third parties.
As for web tracking, is there a problem with Web Van creating a list of my previous purchases so they're easily accessible the next time I want to use them?
Access (Make sure that you can visit your server(s) whenever you choose, not just during some restricted "visiting hours").
Amen. Secondly, i'd see how phyisically close the colo is. My company is considering a local colo for a *nix box. Luckily, it's a 10 minute drive for me, 20 min for the other engineer. We figure, worst case, we can get them a replacement box same day (hour?) as well as be able to make hardware tweaks as needed, and supervise them, as needed.
Sure we're a little paranoid, but then, that's what keeps us employed.
-Reliability (Do they have good power? Do you have a big enough UPS there? Do they have more than one connection to the net? How often are they "down" from the net? Are their routers high quality? Even 1% packet loss can be annoying (and bad for your business or interest) as hell
Hopefully, their redundant connections leave through different parts of the building, to different providers. Our site was offline for a few hours after someone put a backhoe through our (distinctly nonlocal) colo's sole T-3. Redundant connections aren't worth much if the same physical hazard can take out both in one pass.
Mac OS X's got a Java 2 VM. Apps could be seen that way. Secondly, Cocoa (Yellow Box) was created to be highly portable. So, while it's not necessarily an open API, Apple's not tying it to hardware. Consider if you will the demo projects of i386 based Mac OS X... Plus, Darwin should be booting on i386 systems in the very near future.
Also, Apple didn't just kill clones last year. They killed them back in 1996/7 when they were in the process of bringing out the early Mac OS 8 series. Apple refused to license the OS.
Finally, don't be so quick to dismiss what BSD will do for the average mac user. I'm betting someone (and I'm looking at this on the low end), will be looking at creating Perl and/or shell based system utilities.
It may not do everything that you want, but it will do more than you think.
Hammers are useful tools, too, but they take time, effort, and materials to create (just like software), and despite the fact that giving them away would be for the general good, it ain't gonna happen, as long as the hammer-makers want to eat.
It's not that the hammer itself is free. By my understanding, material and distribution costs have never been an issue with FSF or Stallman. What's key is making the blueprints for making the tool available. If you modify the tool and sell it, based on the original spec, you release the new blueprint free of restriction.
So, the hammer makers will eat. Especially, the hammer inventor.
Take Sendmail. Probably the widest distributed back-end mail processor. Free to use. Sendmail, Inc, owner of the sendmail source, gets to shrinkwrap some nifty admin tools, and sell it as Sendmail SingleClick. Somewhat closed, still obeys the standard, Sendmail, Inc makes money.
And promptly destroy the information economy that makes the/. model successful.
Like any marketplace,/. rewards some parties for being good providers, and encourages ownership of comments by 1) allowing anonymous posting and 2) saying anonymous posts (no branding) need to be exceptional to be given the same initial status as owned (branded) comments.
As for anonymous moderation, well, that's the market at work. Select members are asked to pass judgement on the state of the market. Generally speaking, quality is recognized, crap is treated as such and items are average quality are left alone. Seems a better random system than having a/. editorial board.
Finally, about calling people cowards... It's a joke. Get over it.
Given that the GNU/Linux community has made so much of free software under various licenses, does it surprise you to see Linus Torvalds, a man who is as responsible for making free software popular as you are for writing it, working on a largely closed source project?
Secondly, what application does the Free Software line of thinking have for hardware control below the operating system level (particularly with Transmeta)?
Re:On target ruling, TERRIBLE Judge
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True on the training point, but I wonder about two others you made. I'll deal with them seperately.
1) As for IE not being free, my point was that while on the surface, the software is free, there are hidden costs associated with using free (beer) software. MS basically has been able to pass the cost on to the consumer in the form of product upgrades. Also, they recoup their investment upfront by reducing choice and thus increasing the liklihood you'll pay for other MS products in conjunction with IE, say Outlook. Of course, MS also going to press folks to run Exchange Server for Outlook clients. And, by having IE as their "preferred" browser, they can embrace and extend web standards. Then, they sell other tools to take advantage of proprietary code. So, again, while the cost of IE to the consumer may initially be free, the market loses (pays) in several fashions.
2) OEMS have taken more steps to pre-load Linux. But it was the public spectre of the lawsuit and a watchful industry that held Microsoft's feet to the fire about not trying to beat the crap out of OEMs that were vocal about offering non-MS options on their systems. This case does have some public opinion aspects and any perceived dirty pool would be added to the list as the latest example of ongoing MS BS. MS has had to tread lighter in the last year than ever before.
3) Jackson may be laying down the law rather harsly and appear blatantly biased. However, he's done his job. He heard the testimony and first issued findings of fact. on that basis, he gave the Justice Dept and the states and MS four months to find some sort of mutually pleasing agreement. They didn't. During that time, Jackson really didn't say or do much. The FOF was part of his job. On that basis, after both sides failed to reach agreement (he didn't appear to rush them into anything) he issued the Finding of Law. Here, on the basis of his FOF, he decides if the law has been broken. Not unlike a case before, say small claims, where the judge hears testimony and decides who's right and who's wrong. The judge has sole discretion to decide damages. And they can be comparitively steep. So, in my mind, Jackson's not out of line.
Finally, I think what really killed MS in this case is their arrogance. Judges pick up on that and will knock someone down a few pegs for not playing the game as the judge wants it played. It's the power of the judiciary and woe be those who fail to comprehend just how much leeway judges have.
Re:On target ruling, TERRIBLE Judge
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Actuallly, IE is 'free' in the sense that, so long as you don't mind paying for a $99 upgrade that 'integrates' IE more effectively with the OS. Sure, otherwise, it's totally free (as in beer).
Otherwise, you might see the cost of the free product has been reflected elsewhere -- you get to pay for the upgrade but also for training staff on the new software, training MS is more that happy to charge for.
This comes precisely to the issue at hand, did Microsoft exercise monopoly power to slaughter the market? Let's review. 1) Offer new browser software for free, as a "loss-leader." 2) offer same software to OEMs with some better licensing terms for Windows in lots of several thousands. 3) Wait a few months. 4) Make slightly better version of said browser software. 5) threaten OEMs with substantially higher costs, or worse, if IE is either not given preferential placement on the desktop, or the only browser shipped with OEM products. 6) Say the browser is now a part of the OS.
You may not have seen any direct costs in the above scenario, but I am sure several vendors did or thought MS could seriously screw them for not playing ball the Redmond way. This prevents the market from acting as it otherwise would, suggesting that a significant amount of money and effort went into to forcing the market one way or preventing any correcting forces. Monopoly action.
So, you the consumer are left with a less competitive market, with lesser products than otherwise would have been available. Does this cost you? Maybe, maybe not. But consider if MS had failed. Java might be more important than the OS. Middleware (I think of WebTurboTax as one example) would be more widespread. MS might be smaller as a result, but good companies take what the market dishes out and fight back in the ring. They don't try to buy the audience, the ref, point to the opponent and say, "You use our gloves and our trunks and our shoes and you'll like it. By the way, you'll go down in the fourth, if you know what's good for you."
That is what has cost you and me money. Not necessairily physical dollars, but potential. All because MS felt threatened that they might not be able to compete as well as they had in the past.
Only if I win since I was unnominated for the award and am therefore emminently qualified to win. Of course, I don't know that I would have given the money back to the community. Huzzahs to Alan.
I won't call you names, but I have to ask you the following question:
Why is it you feel open internet library access will bring out the worst in people?
Further, assuming it does, why wouldn't a stern look and a comment about acceptible behavior in a public location be just as effective?
I worry when people assume no one else has a rational thought process or any sense of discretion, or worse, think that parents won't instill their children with the ability to make intelligent decisions.
Please don't subject me to uncontrollable absolutes in substition for logic.
Consider if you will, that just maybe, a company can have a soul and a conscience.
Good companies that take care of their employees (HP) that throw money at R & D (Xerox) and make their innovations/contributions public (Redhat) *do* exist.
While past history certainly warrants pragmatism, given quite a few bad apples, there is a significant chance, this all could be for the best.
So VA Linux wants to make some coin. They also make a good product. Consider/. and Freshmeat their form of corporate philanthropy. Instead of strictly attaching it to the CEO (William H. and Melinda Gate Foundation), they are willing to write the checks from the corporate ledger.
Consider the following VA has donated servers to kernel.org and slashdot. They are donating a much more trivial amount to my areas local Linux Users Group. What's in it for them? They get to feel good about helping the community (gift culture ref, see Cathedral and the Bazaar). We get higher end hardware than individual maintainers would otherwise be able to afford. VA Linux gets mindshare. Given the choice, how many clued in Linux sysadmins are going to recommend Compaq over VA Linux if all things (on-site support, price, config) were equal? Let's see, VA Linux has a stake in the community.
As for investors, I suspect many invest on the basis of the company's philosophy about how they make money, not just whether they make money. Otherwise, somebody please explain the value of Amazon's stock to me. If you think this isn't true, please ask yourself why you're so cynical. If this wasn't the case, S-1 filings would probably be less important. As long as VA is upfront about what they do for the community, and write it into standard corporate practice, investors understand and support them by owning their stock.
It seems there are src.rpms (not SRPMS oddly) at hawk.linuxone.net/pub/LinuxOne/Source
Oh, that could be since they use files like xscreensaver-3.09-5mdk.src.rpm, which screams Mandrake source.
Interesting since on their site they have it linked from the the IP, perhaps since the pacbell DSL name the machine rides on is a bit cumbersome.
I suspect they haven't worked out getting PacBell to CNAME the dsl line.
Further oddities, while they have seperate entries for LinuxOne OS and LinuxOne Lite, there are no downloads for LinuxMac. Further, there is only one source directory. Hope you know what packages you need if you'd like to recompile.
Finally, if they make their own mods to the source (including a name change), simply offering Mandrake's source wouldn't cover them GPL wise, would it?.
A while back I saw the question asked, if Be was still in love with the Mac, why they didn't reverse engineer the work done for LinuxPPC, which does run on the same G3 hardware Be claims they can't figure out.
The answer, it seems is that Be doesn't want to be forced into GPLing significant portions of BeOS in the name of Mac compatibility.
So, sure, Be can flame on Apple all they like, but there are/were other alternatives Be did not publically examine or pursue. As such, I think part of the no G3 BeOs is to spite Apple and not give away the store (proprietary source). Just be clear that Apple's not neccessarily being the playground bully in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm all for drawing influence, open source code, but lifting another's work as your own is plagerism. Big no no.
That said, I do wonder if anyone will take this guy up on the offer to make their changes widespread by contributing? If so, meebe some new graphics would be in order.
It ended up that one event that was to occur about two years ago in the Bay Area was cancelled, much to my roommates chagrin.
BattleBots was the community response to the lack of an organized robotic combat arena. The community, largely, the Society of Robotic Combat, developed the rules currently in use with BattleBots.
So, there may be similarities. I think what it comes down to is how the events were edited for TV. Tonight, what they had as the prelim events were part of the lightweight rounds, which were featured as much as the super heavys. The TV show seems like it is going to bypass the lightweights.
After being in the audience for the taping, I'm so far less than statisfied with the way Comedy Central put the package together. There were a few errors in fact (the arena is made of Lexan, not plexiglass). Secondly, the announcers seem to be a little over eager and dramatic and stiff. Hopefully, this gets better as the show goes on.
I also hope they won't edit too much of the matches. We were a tad surprised by how tight the editing seemed to be this evening.
It was a great couple of days at Fort Mason for the taping. I just hope it translates well for television.
I favor the instructor's view here, but they are up against quite a bit of pressure to teach to wider audiences to pull in more students (more $$$) while not being given many more resources. And, oh, by the way, the university is going to want the copyright on that class.
Yeah, that made for some lively discussions.
However, by my understanding, *both* sides get a say in which arbitrator is used, ususally by submiting a list of sealed names of acceptible candidates from a master list. With this arrangement, ICANN has effectively given away the store. I think one of the few cases they ruled for a defendent was in the sting.com affair.
I worry about this with my own domain name. There are a .com and .net, though they don't seem to be particularly worrisome now. In fact, I've not talked to either of them. But, say the .com gets a wild hair and says I'm infringing on their trade name? We registered about two months apart. I've managed to keep a working site for two years, they will disappear for a bit as they jump bandwidth providers. Would my constant activity and the fact that I don't do anything like they intend to do matter?
Three years ago, a company wanted a domain because they were late to the party, and they paid money to get it. Now, they seem to be quite willing to sue or "arbitrate" when the deck is clearly stacked in their favor. "Not only aren't we going to pay you, we are going to make your life a living hell. Screw you for not having the foresight to know we want this domain."
Makes me nervous.
Are these also infringements?
"Should I buy Macromedia if we run the risk of having to learn a new interface in six months?" is the question that might be asked.
As for Flash being dead because Adobe made a new tool, well, Freehand, Dreamweaver, Flash, Director and QuarkXPress are all products that survive (and indeed are better, IMHO) competition with Adobe.
Adobe came late to the game with ImageReady, was forced to bundle it with Photoshop 5.5 so it would actually ship. Meanwhile, Fireworks integrates nicely with Dreamweaver and Flash. OTOH, Photoshop's web obtimization capability is quite clearly tacked on, not designed from the ground up. Web designers know this. The guys in my office work w/ Macromedia products for precisely this reason.
Consider this, why did Adobe feel compelled to be able to import Flash graphics?
with OS X and NeXT, the PS portions of Quartz and Display PostScript were licensed from Adobe for font smoothing and what not.
Stats? Anyone?
Also, how much doctering of the actual default screens did they need to do to make their case?
Working at HP as a contractor on the support side, their standard warranty was (is?) "Return to Bench", meaning you send the box back. Onsite support in 4 hrs, 24/365 for mission critical systems was about as much per year as the hardware itself in some instances. HP sells it as insurance, since the company looks at what four biz days of downtime costs (shut down assembly line, customers can't withdraw funds from the bank yadda yadda yadda.) And they make a very pretty penny doing it.
My current shop on the other hand, the VA box I mentioned earlier is not (yet) mission critical. It's a workgroup development web server, not one of our live to the world machines. So, I can understand when we're not sending money VA's way for an onsite tech, the turnaround is a business week.
That said, we let our displeasure be known with the account rep and, whoa, suddenly lots of VA swag shows up on my desk. Apologies around and what not. I do expect, though, if the box failed under production circumstances, that we could get someone out onsite in a matter of hours. At least, I hope.
That said, we're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot by running Mandrake over what VA set us up with. I'd imagine we'd get some puzzled looks and the instruction to restore the system to the original OS config and update as needed from that tree.
Which I did.
As for overnighting the box, yes, that would have been really good. But, I'm not sure any other linux or UNIX manufacturer could have done better. Hopefully, I'm wrong in that respect.
Since that initial rough spot, everything has been rock solid. And, given all the extra bits they tend to include with their boxes (Full On 2x2 here), I would seriously leave their custom RedHat in place, since it has the bits for remote status reporting and hardware raid management in place.
Installing new hardware in a production environment is such a pain anyway (as demonstrated above), messing with the system OS, when the supported OS is perfectly fine, is just asking for trouble IMHO.
The cards appear to be disappearing, at least here. They also lost some of their teeth after the state legislature looked into restricting how supermarkets could use info from the cards, namely, no selling to third parties.
As for web tracking, is there a problem with Web Van creating a list of my previous purchases so they're easily accessible the next time I want to use them?
Amen. Secondly, i'd see how phyisically close the colo is. My company is considering a local colo for a *nix box. Luckily, it's a 10 minute drive for me, 20 min for the other engineer. We figure, worst case, we can get them a replacement box same day (hour?) as well as be able to make hardware tweaks as needed, and supervise them, as needed.
Sure we're a little paranoid, but then, that's what keeps us employed.
-Reliability (Do they have good power? Do you have a big enough UPS there? Do they have more than one connection to the net? How often are they "down" from the net? Are their routers high quality? Even 1% packet loss can be annoying (and bad for your business or interest) as hell
Hopefully, their redundant connections leave through different parts of the building, to different providers. Our site was offline for a few hours after someone put a backhoe through our (distinctly nonlocal) colo's sole T-3. Redundant connections aren't worth much if the same physical hazard can take out both in one pass.
Mac OS X's got a Java 2 VM. Apps could be seen that way. Secondly, Cocoa (Yellow Box) was created to be highly portable. So, while it's not necessarily an open API, Apple's not tying it to hardware. Consider if you will the demo projects of i386 based Mac OS X... Plus, Darwin should be booting on i386 systems in the very near future.
Also, Apple didn't just kill clones last year. They killed them back in 1996/7 when they were in the process of bringing out the early Mac OS 8 series. Apple refused to license the OS.
Finally, don't be so quick to dismiss what BSD will do for the average mac user. I'm betting someone (and I'm looking at this on the low end), will be looking at creating Perl and/or shell based system utilities.
It may not do everything that you want, but it will do more than you think.
It's not that the hammer itself is free. By my understanding, material and distribution costs have never been an issue with FSF or Stallman. What's key is making the blueprints for making the tool available. If you modify the tool and sell it, based on the original spec, you release the new blueprint free of restriction.
So, the hammer makers will eat. Especially, the hammer inventor.
Take Sendmail. Probably the widest distributed back-end mail processor. Free to use. Sendmail, Inc, owner of the sendmail source, gets to shrinkwrap some nifty admin tools, and sell it as Sendmail SingleClick. Somewhat closed, still obeys the standard, Sendmail, Inc makes money.
Like any marketplace, /. rewards some parties for being good providers, and encourages ownership of comments by 1) allowing anonymous posting and 2) saying anonymous posts (no branding) need to be exceptional to be given the same initial status as owned (branded) comments.
As for anonymous moderation, well, that's the market at work. Select members are asked to pass judgement on the state of the market. Generally speaking, quality is recognized, crap is treated as such and items are average quality are left alone. Seems a better random system than having a /. editorial board.
Finally, about calling people cowards... It's a joke. Get over it.
Secondly, what application does the Free Software line of thinking have for hardware control below the operating system level (particularly with Transmeta)?
1) As for IE not being free, my point was that while on the surface, the software is free, there are hidden costs associated with using free (beer) software. MS basically has been able to pass the cost on to the consumer in the form of product upgrades. Also, they recoup their investment upfront by reducing choice and thus increasing the liklihood you'll pay for other MS products in conjunction with IE, say Outlook. Of course, MS also going to press folks to run Exchange Server for Outlook clients. And, by having IE as their "preferred" browser, they can embrace and extend web standards. Then, they sell other tools to take advantage of proprietary code. So, again, while the cost of IE to the consumer may initially be free, the market loses (pays) in several fashions.
2) OEMS have taken more steps to pre-load Linux. But it was the public spectre of the lawsuit and a watchful industry that held Microsoft's feet to the fire about not trying to beat the crap out of OEMs that were vocal about offering non-MS options on their systems. This case does have some public opinion aspects and any perceived dirty pool would be added to the list as the latest example of ongoing MS BS. MS has had to tread lighter in the last year than ever before.
3) Jackson may be laying down the law rather harsly and appear blatantly biased. However, he's done his job. He heard the testimony and first issued findings of fact. on that basis, he gave the Justice Dept and the states and MS four months to find some sort of mutually pleasing agreement. They didn't. During that time, Jackson really didn't say or do much. The FOF was part of his job. On that basis, after both sides failed to reach agreement (he didn't appear to rush them into anything) he issued the Finding of Law. Here, on the basis of his FOF, he decides if the law has been broken. Not unlike a case before, say small claims, where the judge hears testimony and decides who's right and who's wrong. The judge has sole discretion to decide damages. And they can be comparitively steep. So, in my mind, Jackson's not out of line.
Finally, I think what really killed MS in this case is their arrogance. Judges pick up on that and will knock someone down a few pegs for not playing the game as the judge wants it played. It's the power of the judiciary and woe be those who fail to comprehend just how much leeway judges have.
Otherwise, you might see the cost of the free product has been reflected elsewhere -- you get to pay for the upgrade but also for training staff on the new software, training MS is more that happy to charge for.
This comes precisely to the issue at hand, did Microsoft exercise monopoly power to slaughter the market? Let's review. 1) Offer new browser software for free, as a "loss-leader." 2) offer same software to OEMs with some better licensing terms for Windows in lots of several thousands. 3) Wait a few months. 4) Make slightly better version of said browser software. 5) threaten OEMs with substantially higher costs, or worse, if IE is either not given preferential placement on the desktop, or the only browser shipped with OEM products. 6) Say the browser is now a part of the OS.
You may not have seen any direct costs in the above scenario, but I am sure several vendors did or thought MS could seriously screw them for not playing ball the Redmond way. This prevents the market from acting as it otherwise would, suggesting that a significant amount of money and effort went into to forcing the market one way or preventing any correcting forces. Monopoly action.
So, you the consumer are left with a less competitive market, with lesser products than otherwise would have been available. Does this cost you? Maybe, maybe not. But consider if MS had failed. Java might be more important than the OS. Middleware (I think of WebTurboTax as one example) would be more widespread. MS might be smaller as a result, but good companies take what the market dishes out and fight back in the ring. They don't try to buy the audience, the ref, point to the opponent and say, "You use our gloves and our trunks and our shoes and you'll like it. By the way, you'll go down in the fourth, if you know what's good for you."
That is what has cost you and me money. Not necessairily physical dollars, but potential. All because MS felt threatened that they might not be able to compete as well as they had in the past.
Basically, it looks at the human impact of tech from cryonics to gene manipulation and youth recovery. Pretty interesting stuff.
Only if I win since I was unnominated for the award and am therefore emminently qualified to win. Of course, I don't know that I would have given the money back to the community. Huzzahs to Alan.
Why is it you feel open internet library access will bring out the worst in people?
Further, assuming it does, why wouldn't a stern look and a comment about acceptible behavior in a public location be just as effective?
I worry when people assume no one else has a rational thought process or any sense of discretion, or worse, think that parents won't instill their children with the ability to make intelligent decisions.
Please don't subject me to uncontrollable absolutes in substition for logic.
Good companies that take care of their employees (HP) that throw money at R & D (Xerox) and make their innovations/contributions public (Redhat) *do* exist.
While past history certainly warrants pragmatism, given quite a few bad apples, there is a significant chance, this all could be for the best.
So VA Linux wants to make some coin. They also make a good product. Consider /. and Freshmeat their form of corporate philanthropy. Instead of strictly attaching it to the CEO (William H. and Melinda Gate Foundation), they are willing to write the checks from the corporate ledger.
Consider the following VA has donated servers to kernel.org and slashdot. They are donating a much more trivial amount to my areas local Linux Users Group. What's in it for them? They get to feel good about helping the community (gift culture ref, see Cathedral and the Bazaar). We get higher end hardware than individual maintainers would otherwise be able to afford. VA Linux gets mindshare. Given the choice, how many clued in Linux sysadmins are going to recommend Compaq over VA Linux if all things (on-site support, price, config) were equal? Let's see, VA Linux has a stake in the community.
As for investors, I suspect many invest on the basis of the company's philosophy about how they make money, not just whether they make money. Otherwise, somebody please explain the value of Amazon's stock to me. If you think this isn't true, please ask yourself why you're so cynical. If this wasn't the case, S-1 filings would probably be less important. As long as VA is upfront about what they do for the community, and write it into standard corporate practice, investors understand and support them by owning their stock.
Oh, that could be since they use files like xscreensaver-3.09-5mdk.src.rpm, which screams Mandrake source.
Interesting since on their site they have it linked from the the IP, perhaps since the pacbell DSL name the machine rides on is a bit cumbersome.
I suspect they haven't worked out getting PacBell to CNAME the dsl line.
Further oddities, while they have seperate entries for LinuxOne OS and LinuxOne Lite, there are no downloads for LinuxMac. Further, there is only one source directory. Hope you know what packages you need if you'd like to recompile.
Finally, if they make their own mods to the source (including a name change), simply offering Mandrake's source wouldn't cover them GPL wise, would it?.
The answer, it seems is that Be doesn't want to be forced into GPLing significant portions of BeOS in the name of Mac compatibility.
So, sure, Be can flame on Apple all they like, but there are/were other alternatives Be did not publically examine or pursue. As such, I think part of the no G3 BeOs is to spite Apple and not give away the store (proprietary source). Just be clear that Apple's not neccessarily being the playground bully in this case.