Yeah, what's with all the toned down pushing of MS and such these days?
Court- MS disk compression was infringement
on
MS-DOS 1981-2002 RIP
·
· Score: 2
After trial in 1994, the jury found that Microsoft had infringed and awarded Stac $120 million in damages. ...Stac Electronics v. Microsoft Corp., Civil No. 93-0413-ER (Bx) (C.D.Cal. Feb. 23, 1994)
- http://www.lawhost.com/lawjournal/99winter/patents 4.html
The courts seem to think that Microsoft didn't develop their disk compression in-house.
The primary advantage that OSS has is primarily cost and the fuzzy feel-good mission of it. But they are pragmatists, so if the world wants MSFT, then they will oblige, especially if MSFT can make concessions.
That's just plain disinformation. The primary advantages of OSS are flexibility, stability, and security. That's an established fact, acknowledged by everyone
However, well placed bribes and such can cause key individuals to overcome their sense of what is best.
What a lot of people forget is that Microsoft is a marketing company, not a software company. Network infrastructure is, and has been, largely OSS / Free Software.
OSS and Free Software give a level of flexibility and choice that is impossible to meet with closed, proprietary solutions. Open standards, especially for data (e.g. word processing, spreadsheets, images) also means lower cost through making migration easier as well as avoiding vendor lock-in. The latter, if taken to extremes, means your own data becomes hostage.
The memo is about the schools, and learning requires being able to take things apart and see how they work. This is done in biology, literature, history, anthropology, medicine, etc. Even Computer Science / ICT
So in addition to providing a solid IT / ICT infrastructure, OSS and Free Software play a central, pedagogical role that cannot be fulfilled by closed proprietary solutions.
MS actually does a surprisingly small amount of development. You see their names associated with a lot of software products, but frequently they're just the publisher, they purchased the product, or they subcontracted out.
It would be very interesting to see a comprehensive list of these. DOS was bought, disk compression technology was "innovated" from Stacc, Word, Access, and Powerpoint also came from somewhere else, but it's all hard to track down. Perhaps this would be a good question for Ask Slashdot and put a bullet in this "innovation" noise.
Here in Oz "roadside TV" is a no-no, you cannot change a roadside billboard automatically, or with any frequency manually. This is a result (apparently) of a study on driver concentration.
The sugestion is that if a billboard changes in a drivers immediate or peripheral vision they will be distracted/alarmed by it.
The U.S. had this problem as well, but a long time ago. So it's disappeared from collective memory.
An old timer passed on an anecdote about road side ads. Creating a distraction was the reason the Burma Shave ads disappeared from the roadside. It worked fine with the old cares, but the distractions lead to accidents, once cars started cruising faster than 20-40 MPH.
However, to apeal to logic, ads are about fscking up your concentration and getting you to think about some thing other than what you are currently thinking. when you're on the road, especially in heavy traffic, you should only be concentrating on driving. Impairing a driver's ability to concentrate leads to accidents (death,injury,expenses), this has been shown again and again with alcohol, cellphones, and even advertisements.
Yes, there will always be anecdotes about needing/wanting/liking a specific platform.
However, we're talking about two things here: server vs workstation.
Regarding the server, that part of the argument is over and done with, even according to MS execs. BSD, QNX, Linux and the others various Unix-like have MS-Windows "server" beat hands down on stability, flexibility, security, interoperability and maintenance. Let's not forget Novell's Netware, which also outshines the closest corresponding MS products in every aspect except marketing smear campaigns.
On the desktop, Macintosh OS X has them all beat, especially in regards to choice of software and ease of use. On GNU/Linux or the others, KDE/Gnome are just as easy (or convoluted) as MS-Windows, but are much easier to maintain, more secure. A lot of the productivity software that people once claimed as absent from Linux are there and the amount of progress in the last year has been phenomenally good.
Right now Microsoft is making about 85% profit on MS-Windows due to their desktop monopoly, yet losing money on everything else except MS-Office. Microsoft won't be able to maintain monopoly prices without the monopoly and MS-Office has started to get competition that the monopoly strategy can't crush. Also businesses and governments alike are seeing the expensive risks of being locked into proprietary file formats. Nor are they eager to loose the interoperability which made the Internet and the WWW the big cash engine that it is today.
So when things start go go south, it will tip quickly. This is standard for acquisition based companies and should come as no surprise. That they were able to make a run for so many years should be more of a surprise.
Actually, the bias seems to be pro-Microsoft. If any other project had the same severity and quantity of compromises as MSIE, it would be history.
What we have here is a clear case of people letting their ideology interfere with their business sense. Ideology / religion seems to be the only reason anyone would not go right over to better products like Opera or Mozilla. The only value MSIE can add, beside keeping the AV and security consultants in gravy, is vendor lock in.
Microsoft is falling further behind in technology every month. Rather than trying to catch up, they've been trying to hold everyone else back. It's time for them to get out of the way and stop hindering economic growth in the IT sector.
... is hardly a 'small 3rd world country'. It has a population of over a billion and is the world's largest democratic nation.
This is also more significant than any individual Chinese state going OSS.
If I recall correctly, India also has the largest English speaking population. Since English (or specifically 'Merican) is the base tech language, it makes developments in India immediately accessible to the rest of the world.
The article calls for voluntary reduction in expectations from e-mail. We've seen a similar argument before -- a few years ago from the owner of Slate in regards to Linux and OSS bringing excitement back to computing.
Probably as big a problem for e-mail as spam is MS-Exchange. I'm sure that it could be argued that MS-Exchange works fine as an Intranet. However, its phenomonal ability to lose, delay and misdirect basically ruin people's ability to use it as a communications tool.
For many new mail users, MS-Exchange is their introduction to e-mail. After a bit of trouble for the users and major hassle for the sysadmin, their post-MS-Exchange judgment will be that e-mail is no good.
For old mail users, if their boss has replaced a well-functioning, reliable, low-maintenance Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, or Exim smtp server with
MS-Exchange, then after a bit of trouble for the users and major hassle for the sysadmin, their post-MS-Exchange judgment will be that e-mail has become no good.
Spam, no doubt is a problem, but replacing stable, reliable, platform independent, standards-compliant mail servers with high-maintenance, unstable, proprietary ones is a larger problem.
You do, however, have test fields, laboratories, sampling, testing, et cetera.
Hopefully not in that order. Your illustration makes my point, especially with wind pollenated crops. There have been many examples of genes tht have wandered from test fields -- that's what genes do. Once they're out they're out.
There is no need for the crops ever to go into production to cause trouble. Nor do they have to be used for food.
Genetically modified crops can be a real controversial issue. The research can be both interesting and useful, the trouble lies in the implementation and with the rush to get things to market.
Gene hacking is not the same as the gradual breeding proceses that have gone on for millenia. In the latter, each step is relatively stable, in the former, large potentially disruptive leaps can be made more or less overnight. Unfortunately, unlike with computers you don't have the comfort of chroot and/or virtual machines.
Regarding better rates, my 2 cents are a few years ago I switched from an MSIE-only back to one with a normal, browser independent interface. A side effect was much better rates, lower service fees, and an handful of unexpected perks.
It's definitely worth checking around. If they have their act together on the technology, then they likely have it together elsewhere.
That said, I did talk several times with the old bank to let them know about my requirements. There was no technical reason for them to block non-Microsoft browsers, it appeared only that they were letting their ideology get in the way of their business sense.
Gartner points out that Microsoft isn't likely to catch up any time soon. And since then, even Microsoft execs have acknowledged that security is impossible for their products. One could speculate that this admission is only to try to push users into License 6.0, which has been a flop in the consumer market.
Back to source, closed source will no longer enjoy the market it once had (why pay for work twice, thrice, etc.?) Right now new, profitable economic models are replacing the out-moded failing models in use by Microsoft. Despite this month's multi-million dollar campaign of ads and astroturfing, with people's attention now on security and TCO, the bottom would drop out of Microsoft's market if the code were accessible, even despite illegally leveraging their desktop monopoly.
Microsoft has just fallen too far behind in technology.
Microsoft dropped the ball in regards to the Internet and has frittered away the time it needed to catch up.
Arguments against using Macintosh or Linux usually center on retraining issues. However, heavy retraining occurred when migrating between Win3.11, WinNT, Win2000, and - for the chumps - WinXP. So if you have to retrain anyway, then why not go with something easier to both use and maintain like Macintosh OS X or Mandrake/Redhat?
When you consider the bizarre nature of the service pack EULAs, the migration to Macintosh or Linux should be the obvious choice
Look to see AOL, RealAudio and any other major opponent have difficulty. Now that the anti-trust case is off their back, Microsoft can pack everything into "security" get away with it.
If Microsoft were a company with any other history for interoperability than the bad one it does have, I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, given the DR-DOS and WordPerfect issues, just to name two, I'd say this is just a cheap shot to
mess with competitors,
push people into License 6.0
for revenue from the subscription treadmill
to leverage admin control over home computers via License 6.0 to line up their shots for DRM
He's desparate. He knows Microsoft dropped the ball in regards to the Internet and has frittered away the time it needed to catch up. He knows that Closed source will no longer enjoy the market it once had (why pay for work twice, thrice, etc.?) He also knows that the growth through acquisition strategy historically used by Microsoft ends when there is nothing left they can acquire.
Now the company's technology is woefully behind OSS in every technical aspect and has the edge over OSS only in the user interface and marketing. Apple has them beat by a mile on the interface and OS X gives you the best of BSD and Apple.
The last straw is that Microsoft has grown by acquiring, or "innovating" if you will, external products and technologies into their own product line. Companies that grow through acquisition eventually hit appogee and then drop like a rock.
So this visit reeks of desparation. Given that starvation, undernourishment, even smoke from cooking fires are more serious health problems (in India) than AIDS, the choice to target AIDS is not for the benefit of India but instead audiences in North America and Europe.
I think that should have been the "north polar ice cap". We'd be in serious trouble if the southern ice cap were in danger of melting away.
The ice in the south pole is going, too.
In 1987 and 2000, some massive ice bergs the size of some of the smaller U.S. states or European countries broke loose. One is about 23 km x 300 km. Ice bergs A-17 and B-22 both broke from the Ross ice shelf.
Oh, wait. He's been out of jail for several decades. Nevermind.
Even if it passes, it won't fly because a state can't legalize something that is federally outlawed.
Actually, in the 1970's, Ann Arbor used to have its own law regarding cannabis. This was less controversial then. But
both controversial and non-controversial proposals could benefit from electronic voting once the voting method evolves to adapt to computerization.
We'll have to get past the stage where electronic voting is merely emulating a process developed around the constraints of managing physical artifacts. For example, it could be used to get feedback about what parts of a bill or proposal people like or dislike. You even have the potential to find out why. Since the computer is doing the counting, this is no longer unfeasible.
Leveraging a monopoly to prevent competition is anything but free market. It's also anything but good for the economy. The IT boom was driven by interoperability ( read TCP/IP and HTTP ). Everything Microsoft has been doing in recent years has been to reduce that interoperability. In other words, they've been hindering economic growth, especially in the U.S. where their lobbying/marketing has been heaviest.
Right now we are in the midst of the marketng blitz that Microsot warned of during the summer.
Aside from marketing and lobbying, Microsoft has been putting it's money and effort into illegally maintaining a monopoly. At the end of the day, when the dust clears, it still amounts to having fallen behind in technology.
Simply put, their products can't compete on technical merits which leaves using the monopoly as a hammer.
Surely this sort of thing is exactly what the US DOJ is avidly against - using overwhelming market share (in, say, office products) to gain overwhelming market share in other sectors (wysiwyg "electronic paper").
Not according to the final decision handed down by judge CKK. She has given an official endorsement to this behavior. Look to see Microsoft take on all its U.S. competitors. This may be the drop that washes the U.S. recession into a depression.
European leaders are less likely to not get caught with their mouths open.
Moreover, I doubt if Debian wants to accept responsibility for maintaining such a list.
No, that's not what I had in mind and it's neither feasible nor appropriate. Rather it would be more like the Dept. of Defense selecting a subset from among Debian's not proven-as-unsafe packages, pounding on them till they're proven safe and recontributing the safe packages. The DoD gets something, the public gets something.
Debian's already gone through the effort of selecting FOSS+NPU, no reason for the DoD to duplicate that effort.
"Security through obscurity", like having a non-linked but available resource, is self delusion.
Yes, but a lot of Swedish businesses have the Microsoft virus among their management. Security through obscurity is just one of the symptoms. Most technology issues are still off the radar except as buzzwords or the occasional expensive, proprietary "IT-Solution/Thneed" sold by the progeny of old college buddies. Swedish reporters found that most businesses don't (can't?) respond to e-mail. So I'd speculate that "IT" expditures are more a status symbol than a tool.
One of the reports' three recommendations is to create a "Generally Recognized As Safe" list of Free or Open Source Software. The stable distribution of Debian has already done this. If the DoD is looking for a base set of packages, then Debian looks to be the set to work with.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, what's with all the toned down pushing of MS and such these days?
However, well placed bribes and such can cause key individuals to overcome their sense of what is best.
What a lot of people forget is that Microsoft is a marketing company, not a software company. Network infrastructure is, and has been, largely OSS / Free Software.
The memo is about the schools, and learning requires being able to take things apart and see how they work. This is done in biology, literature, history, anthropology, medicine, etc. Even Computer Science / ICT
So in addition to providing a solid IT / ICT infrastructure, OSS and Free Software play a central, pedagogical role that cannot be fulfilled by closed proprietary solutions.
An old timer passed on an anecdote about road side ads. Creating a distraction was the reason the Burma Shave ads disappeared from the roadside. It worked fine with the old cares, but the distractions lead to accidents, once cars started cruising faster than 20-40 MPH.
However, to apeal to logic, ads are about fscking up your concentration and getting you to think about some thing other than what you are currently thinking. when you're on the road, especially in heavy traffic, you should only be concentrating on driving. Impairing a driver's ability to concentrate leads to accidents (death,injury,expenses), this has been shown again and again with alcohol, cellphones, and even advertisements.
Regarding the server, that part of the argument is over and done with, even according to MS execs. BSD, QNX, Linux and the others various Unix-like have MS-Windows "server" beat hands down on stability, flexibility, security, interoperability and maintenance. Let's not forget Novell's Netware, which also outshines the closest corresponding MS products in every aspect except marketing smear campaigns.
On the desktop, Macintosh OS X has them all beat, especially in regards to choice of software and ease of use. On GNU/Linux or the others, KDE/Gnome are just as easy (or convoluted) as MS-Windows, but are much easier to maintain, more secure. A lot of the productivity software that people once claimed as absent from Linux are there and the amount of progress in the last year has been phenomenally good.
Right now Microsoft is making about 85% profit on MS-Windows due to their desktop monopoly, yet losing money on everything else except MS-Office. Microsoft won't be able to maintain monopoly prices without the monopoly and MS-Office has started to get competition that the monopoly strategy can't crush. Also businesses and governments alike are seeing the expensive risks of being locked into proprietary file formats. Nor are they eager to loose the interoperability which made the Internet and the WWW the big cash engine that it is today.
So when things start go go south, it will tip quickly. This is standard for acquisition based companies and should come as no surprise. That they were able to make a run for so many years should be more of a surprise.
What we have here is a clear case of people letting their ideology interfere with their business sense. Ideology / religion seems to be the only reason anyone would not go right over to better products like Opera or Mozilla. The only value MSIE can add, beside keeping the AV and security consultants in gravy, is vendor lock in.
Microsoft is falling further behind in technology every month. Rather than trying to catch up, they've been trying to hold everyone else back. It's time for them to get out of the way and stop hindering economic growth in the IT sector.
This is also more significant than any individual Chinese state going OSS.
If I recall correctly, India also has the largest English speaking population. Since English (or specifically 'Merican) is the base tech language, it makes developments in India immediately accessible to the rest of the world.
Probably as big a problem for e-mail as spam is MS-Exchange. I'm sure that it could be argued that MS-Exchange works fine as an Intranet. However, its phenomonal ability to lose, delay and misdirect basically ruin people's ability to use it as a communications tool.
For many new mail users, MS-Exchange is their introduction to e-mail. After a bit of trouble for the users and major hassle for the sysadmin, their post-MS-Exchange judgment will be that e-mail is no good.
For old mail users, if their boss has replaced a well-functioning, reliable, low-maintenance Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, or Exim smtp server with MS-Exchange, then after a bit of trouble for the users and major hassle for the sysadmin, their post-MS-Exchange judgment will be that e-mail has become no good.
Spam, no doubt is a problem, but replacing stable, reliable, platform independent, standards-compliant mail servers with high-maintenance, unstable, proprietary ones is a larger problem.
Will they cap spam, too? Or will the limit only apply to their paying customers?
You do, however, have test fields, laboratories, sampling, testing, et cetera.
Hopefully not in that order. Your illustration makes my point, especially with wind pollenated crops. There have been many examples of genes tht have wandered from test fields -- that's what genes do. Once they're out they're out.There is no need for the crops ever to go into production to cause trouble. Nor do they have to be used for food.
Gene hacking is not the same as the gradual breeding proceses that have gone on for millenia. In the latter, each step is relatively stable, in the former, large potentially disruptive leaps can be made more or less overnight. Unfortunately, unlike with computers you don't have the comfort of chroot and/or virtual machines.
Regarding better rates, my 2 cents are a few years ago I switched from an MSIE-only back to one with a normal, browser independent interface. A side effect was much better rates, lower service fees, and an handful of unexpected perks.
It's definitely worth checking around. If they have their act together on the technology, then they likely have it together elsewhere. That said, I did talk several times with the old bank to let them know about my requirements. There was no technical reason for them to block non-Microsoft browsers, it appeared only that they were letting their ideology get in the way of their business sense.
Back to source, closed source will no longer enjoy the market it once had (why pay for work twice, thrice, etc.?) Right now new, profitable economic models are replacing the out-moded failing models in use by Microsoft. Despite this month's multi-million dollar campaign of ads and astroturfing, with people's attention now on security and TCO, the bottom would drop out of Microsoft's market if the code were accessible, even despite illegally leveraging their desktop monopoly.
Microsoft has just fallen too far behind in technology. Microsoft dropped the ball in regards to the Internet and has frittered away the time it needed to catch up. Arguments against using Macintosh or Linux usually center on retraining issues. However, heavy retraining occurred when migrating between Win3.11, WinNT, Win2000, and - for the chumps - WinXP. So if you have to retrain anyway, then why not go with something easier to both use and maintain like Macintosh OS X or Mandrake/Redhat?
When you consider the bizarre nature of the service pack EULAs, the migration to Macintosh or Linux should be the obvious choice
If Microsoft were a company with any other history for interoperability than the bad one it does have, I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, given the DR-DOS and WordPerfect issues, just to name two, I'd say this is just a cheap shot to
Now the company's technology is woefully behind OSS in every technical aspect and has the edge over OSS only in the user interface and marketing. Apple has them beat by a mile on the interface and OS X gives you the best of BSD and Apple.
The last straw is that Microsoft has grown by acquiring, or "innovating" if you will, external products and technologies into their own product line. Companies that grow through acquisition eventually hit appogee and then drop like a rock.
So this visit reeks of desparation. Given that starvation, undernourishment, even smoke from cooking fires are more serious health problems (in India) than AIDS, the choice to target AIDS is not for the benefit of India but instead audiences in North America and Europe.
We'll have to get past the stage where electronic voting is merely emulating a process developed around the constraints of managing physical artifacts. For example, it could be used to get feedback about what parts of a bill or proposal people like or dislike. You even have the potential to find out why. Since the computer is doing the counting, this is no longer unfeasible.
Right now we are in the midst of the marketng blitz that Microsot warned of during the summer. Aside from marketing and lobbying, Microsoft has been putting it's money and effort into illegally maintaining a monopoly. At the end of the day, when the dust clears, it still amounts to having fallen behind in technology. Simply put, their products can't compete on technical merits which leaves using the monopoly as a hammer.
Not according to the final decision handed down by judge CKK. She has given an official endorsement to this behavior. Look to see Microsoft take on all its U.S. competitors. This may be the drop that washes the U.S. recession into a depression.
European leaders are less likely to not get caught with their mouths open.
How seriously can the courts take EULAs? Clickthoughs are already a joke. People will click on anything, include a worm with a EULA.
No, that's not what I had in mind and it's neither feasible nor appropriate. Rather it would be more like the Dept. of Defense selecting a subset from among Debian's not proven-as-unsafe packages, pounding on them till they're proven safe and recontributing the safe packages. The DoD gets something, the public gets something.
Debian's already gone through the effort of selecting FOSS+NPU, no reason for the DoD to duplicate that effort.
The "80's" hit Sweden in the 90's.
One of the reports' three recommendations is to create a "Generally Recognized As Safe" list of Free or Open Source Software. The stable distribution of Debian has already done this. If the DoD is looking for a base set of packages, then Debian looks to be the set to work with.