Thus, the sudden release of software from companies that go out of business either into the public domain or (worse) under the GPL can cause a chain reaction which destroys any incentives to create or improve products in that category.
This would seem to be a good basis for the idea of competing and improving products in the market. ACME Software A competes with ADME Software B, ADME goes out of business, Software B hits the Open Domain. Now, if ACME still wants to have a money-making, competing software product to their prior competitor, they have to develop more features for Software A, or move it in directions that make it a more appealing choice. This way people will be more willing to stick with a commercial product, because it does more than the free one does.
I for one can see that, contrary what others say, Linux does pose a threat to Microsoft. Not just in price, but in security, connectivity across various systems, etc. What strikes me is the tone that this exec. takes in his confidential email.
To me, competition is Sammy Sosa doing "blind taste tests" of Pepsi vs. Coke, with Pepsi the clear winner. And someone else doing it for Coke 15 years ago. What this exec. is saying is that Microsoft is putting together a team of personnel who's primary responsibility will be to help sales people convert any customers using Linux to a Windows alternative, and make it sound better than Linux.
That is not competition, that is OS genocide. Going in to your customer's data center and weaseling out all the information you can, then coming back with plans for those customers to improve their data centers through Windows. It is sneaky and underhanded. No one from the Linux community went in as a "sales consultant" and determined what systems were better served by Linux than Windows, sysadmins and operators decided that, in their experience, Linux would do the job more effectively and at lower cost. So Microsoft sending in the troops to crush Linux in their customers data centers is not competition, it is all out war. And with no one to defend Linux against the grand sales pitches of MS sales vendors, who's gonna win?
This is how Microsoft competes. It finds out exactly how competitors are beating them in the workplace, and develops turn-key solutions to replace them.
Any bets on how long the independance of the Bungie teams last in the meagacorp known as Microsoft? I say not long. Invariably the mentality of big business does not coincide with the ideas and mentality of "independant personalities." Bungie may still be a name on the box, but I think that the corporate culture that is Microsoft will get the best of Jason Jones and his crew. Perhaps it will be too much "innovation..."
One thing I don't quite get, but why did Bungie have to become part of Microsoft to develop for the Xbox? If Sony or Nintendo were the only developers of games for their consoles, they would be so lame and sad that no one would buy them. But you have companies like EA or SquareSoft who make games for their consoles. Why couldn't have Bungie done the same? They already developed multi-platform games like the Myth series that were incredible on Macintosh and Windows machines, and also had a port to Linux! I can't believe that they would have refused to make ports of future Myth titles and Halo for the Xbox. So if you need to work for Microsoft to develop for the Xbox, does that mean that companies like SquareSoft (Final Fantasy series) will not be able to port to it? And if they want to become wholly owned by Microsoft?
I am sad to see Jason Jones leave behind the Myth series, one of my favorite games to play, but I am relieved that Take2 now owns it entirely, and not Microsoft. I wish Bungie all the success that may come in developing for the Xbox, but future Myth titles just won't be the same. *sniff*
I have copyright ownership of the <p> and <br> tags. If you are currently using these tags, please stop, or else I will find you and sue you. Failure to believe this post will only make you a better person.
Now I will admit that Microsoft has a somewhat valid point to their complaint, since it is copyrighted, blah, blah, blah. But think about it. If the posts were made congratulating Microsoft on some great new innovation, would they be as pissed? Or as quick to lash out at/.? I don't think so.
And, as most places do, there is that age old disclaimer of/. that reads: "The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. Slashdot is not responsible for what they say." So isn't Microsoft going against the wrong individuals anyway? Should they not track down those posters themselves, if it is so crucial a thing? Censorship is bad. Always has been, always will be. What ever happened to the free market of ideas and opinions? Does that fall victim to corporate overlords? Perhaps we, as posters need to start disclaiming things by saying "The above information is reproduced without permission...copyright...etc."
That said, the above quote is reproduced without express written permission from Slashdot."
I liked the insights Shewchuk had into the use of the words in language, and how some of the top language reference sources treat the words. I am not a hacker, nor a cracker, nor a crackpot for that matter! But I do have some issues with something that was said in the article.
Shewchuk talked about this manual on writing, and a particular point that the CBC has since adopted. He quoted Michael Enright as saying "We do not follow the lead in accepting new words and phrases." That sounds all well and good, but isn't it becoming more and more clear to people that this isn't a new term? That the distinction that has been made has been there for over a decade? In a media dominated society, it seems clear to me that if the distinction between hacker and cracker is going to be made more clear to the world at large, then the media should play an important role in it. Where else will the populus at large hear the terms being used interchangably yet accurately? How many people in this world will know enough to ask their hacker friend or relative to explain the difference, then remember it a month later?
People in this world, including a portion of/. readers pride themselves on being hackers, and not because of the malicious damage that they can do, but because of the way they can take new technology and make it work for them. The kinds of things that hackers do is amazing to most of the world, and hackers should be able to proudly state "I am a hacker!" without worrying that his or her community will look at them, scared that he or she will wipe out their credit history if they don't get invited to the weekend barbeque.
I aspire to one day know enough to be considered a hacker. If I never break into NASA or some.gov or.mil server, I still want to be a hacker. I, on the other hand, never want to be a cracker, nor would I wish to be associated to those derivative individuals who are known as crackers simply because the world didn't want one more distinction to learn.
When you honestly look at the big picture, you have a company who's idea was to bring the Internet affordably to many people. In the process they stumbled upon a very useful product beyond their original vision. My question is this: If so many people want to hack these little boxes to do something they're not really designed to do, they why not start your own business? Develop your own little thin client and run Linux on it and sell it.
Now I am not saying go out and rip off the i-Opener design or anything, but if this is such a popular device, why doesn't someone else come along with their own and market it to corporations and schools?
I'm not saying that Netpliance isn't nuts for not jumping on this chance to fill a clear market void, but if it isn't in their mission statement, then why fault them? They are pursuing the audience they set out to, and they're well within their rights not to drop one market for another. I applaud Netpliance for not seizing a quick buck but standing by their business model.
Great analogy. I think I'll go out and find out exactly how many different radioes I can get for my car (which isn't a Ford but who cares?). What I love is the whole
"It's essentially the same situation. A third party company was making a useful addition to a product which the product's maker decided to include as standard."
Last time I checked, there was only one Microsoft. The same Microsoft making Windows, Office, Visual Studio, and Internet Explorer. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how in the hell Microsoft can be a third-party to itself. That just doesn't make sense to me. Then again, I am a Linux fan, so a lot that Microsoft does doesn't make sense to me.
All this hype about AOL breaking other ISP's. I know, I know...when one software breaks another it means big trouble. But has anyone stopped to think about what this really means? If the plaintiff's win the suit, then what the EULA stands for goes in to the toilet. I have installed AOL, and the EULA (like most others) has statements about AS IS, and no liability. So if you accept, you live with the consequences. I have installed software before that caused Explorer.exe to IPF every time I ran it. The company did fix this with a patch, and life was beautiful again.
It is the responsibility of the consumer to realize that if things don't work, that the best course is to contact the company that made the software that broke things. Chances are there is a fix, or enough requests will urge them to make one. Sometimes companies don't play nice, and things are harder, but legal action should be a last resort, not a first.
And something else I don't get. $1000 in damages? That is preposterous. Let's be honest here, if you have an ISP that charges $21.95 per month, and then you install AOL 5.0 just for laughs, and things break, wouldn't you fixit immediately? Suppose you didn't. AOL 5.0 has not been around for a year yet, and even if you could not get to your ISP for a year, the cost would only be ~$263. I think thatwith the merger ISP's and others want a piece of AOL. Get them in the news...make them look bad, because let's face the facts, AOL is not going to be hurting to pay $8 billion.
I don't think that what AOL is doing with 5.0 is right, but I disagree more with the actions of the class action suit filers. I hope they are laughed out of court with EULA stamped on their forehead so they can see why they didn't win!
I cannot and will not stand idly by and watch as yet another thing in this world be perverted and twisted in political agenda. Censorship has been a hot topic for as long as I can remember. Whether it is books or music or theatre, no one is happy with what is available. Then along comes the WWW. It has no restrictions, whatsoever, except for the occasional password barrier. When it hit, I thought that the world as a whole was going to get past these trifling issues, but I guess we as a world community are just too immature. Sure, there is lots of content on the Web, good AND bad. You cannot have one without the other, I am sorry! Deal with it folks. Let the information speak for itself, and let the intelligent beings of the planet decide for themselves./rant
As far as I have read recently, M$ is planning a release 5 for Macintosh which will be more compliant than IE5 for the PC. And at the same time an update (5.01 or 5.1) for the PC will increase the standards compliance of IE. Netscape's version 5, if it ever is released, still has loads of proprietary tags, and is not nearly as broadly compliant as IE. They may, as has been said, more CSS supportive, but there is more than CSS out there that web designers would like to take advantage of. I think we should just give M$ a rest...sure they're trying to take over the planet, but until we see a better browser come out of Netscape, not a whole lot can be said.
Slashdot Mirror
They were called "SuperDisk" drives from Imation. Close, but no cigar...
This would seem to be a good basis for the idea of competing and improving products in the market. ACME Software A competes with ADME Software B, ADME goes out of business, Software B hits the Open Domain. Now, if ACME still wants to have a money-making, competing software product to their prior competitor, they have to develop more features for Software A, or move it in directions that make it a more appealing choice. This way people will be more willing to stick with a commercial product, because it does more than the free one does.
I for one can see that, contrary what others say, Linux does pose a threat to Microsoft. Not just in price, but in security, connectivity across various systems, etc. What strikes me is the tone that this exec. takes in his confidential email.
To me, competition is Sammy Sosa doing "blind taste tests" of Pepsi vs. Coke, with Pepsi the clear winner. And someone else doing it for Coke 15 years ago. What this exec. is saying is that Microsoft is putting together a team of personnel who's primary responsibility will be to help sales people convert any customers using Linux to a Windows alternative, and make it sound better than Linux.
That is not competition, that is OS genocide. Going in to your customer's data center and weaseling out all the information you can, then coming back with plans for those customers to improve their data centers through Windows. It is sneaky and underhanded. No one from the Linux community went in as a "sales consultant" and determined what systems were better served by Linux than Windows, sysadmins and operators decided that, in their experience, Linux would do the job more effectively and at lower cost. So Microsoft sending in the troops to crush Linux in their customers data centers is not competition, it is all out war. And with no one to defend Linux against the grand sales pitches of MS sales vendors, who's gonna win?
This is how Microsoft competes. It finds out exactly how competitors are beating them in the workplace, and develops turn-key solutions to replace them.
</rant>
Any bets on how long the independance of the Bungie teams last in the meagacorp known as Microsoft? I say not long. Invariably the mentality of big business does not coincide with the ideas and mentality of "independant personalities." Bungie may still be a name on the box, but I think that the corporate culture that is Microsoft will get the best of Jason Jones and his crew. Perhaps it will be too much "innovation..."
One thing I don't quite get, but why did Bungie have to become part of Microsoft to develop for the Xbox? If Sony or Nintendo were the only developers of games for their consoles, they would be so lame and sad that no one would buy them. But you have companies like EA or SquareSoft who make games for their consoles. Why couldn't have Bungie done the same? They already developed multi-platform games like the Myth series that were incredible on Macintosh and Windows machines, and also had a port to Linux! I can't believe that they would have refused to make ports of future Myth titles and Halo for the Xbox. So if you need to work for Microsoft to develop for the Xbox, does that mean that companies like SquareSoft (Final Fantasy series) will not be able to port to it? And if they want to become wholly owned by Microsoft?
I am sad to see Jason Jones leave behind the Myth series, one of my favorite games to play, but I am relieved that Take2 now owns it entirely, and not Microsoft. I wish Bungie all the success that may come in developing for the Xbox, but future Myth titles just won't be the same. *sniff*
For your information!
I have copyright ownership of the <p> and <br> tags. If you are currently using these tags, please stop, or else I will find you and sue you. Failure to believe this post will only make you a better person.
Now I will admit that Microsoft has a somewhat valid point to their complaint, since it is copyrighted, blah, blah, blah. But think about it. If the posts were made congratulating Microsoft on some great new innovation, would they be as pissed? Or as quick to lash out at /.? I don't think so.
And, as most places do, there is that age old disclaimer of /. that reads: "The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. Slashdot is not responsible for what they say." So isn't Microsoft going against the wrong individuals anyway? Should they not track down those posters themselves, if it is so crucial a thing? Censorship is bad. Always has been, always will be. What ever happened to the free market of ideas and opinions? Does that fall victim to corporate overlords? Perhaps we, as posters need to start disclaiming things by saying "The above information is reproduced without permission...copyright...etc."
That said, the above quote is reproduced without express written permission from Slashdot."
I liked the insights Shewchuk had into the use of the words in language, and how some of the top language reference sources treat the words. I am not a hacker, nor a cracker, nor a crackpot for that matter! But I do have some issues with something that was said in the article.
Shewchuk talked about this manual on writing, and a particular point that the CBC has since adopted. He quoted Michael Enright as saying "We do not follow the lead in accepting new words and phrases." That sounds all well and good, but isn't it becoming more and more clear to people that this isn't a new term? That the distinction that has been made has been there for over a decade? In a media dominated society, it seems clear to me that if the distinction between hacker and cracker is going to be made more clear to the world at large, then the media should play an important role in it. Where else will the populus at large hear the terms being used interchangably yet accurately? How many people in this world will know enough to ask their hacker friend or relative to explain the difference, then remember it a month later?
People in this world, including a portion of /. readers pride themselves on being hackers, and not because of the malicious damage that they can do, but because of the way they can take new technology and make it work for them. The kinds of things that hackers do is amazing to most of the world, and hackers should be able to proudly state "I am a hacker!" without worrying that his or her community will look at them, scared that he or she will wipe out their credit history if they don't get invited to the weekend barbeque.
I aspire to one day know enough to be considered a hacker. If I never break into NASA or some .gov or .mil server, I still want to be a hacker. I, on the other hand, never want to be a cracker, nor would I wish to be associated to those derivative individuals who are known as crackers simply because the world didn't want one more distinction to learn.
When you honestly look at the big picture, you have a company who's idea was to bring the Internet affordably to many people. In the process they stumbled upon a very useful product beyond their original vision. My question is this: If so many people want to hack these little boxes to do something they're not really designed to do, they why not start your own business? Develop your own little thin client and run Linux on it and sell it.
Now I am not saying go out and rip off the i-Opener design or anything, but if this is such a popular device, why doesn't someone else come along with their own and market it to corporations and schools?
I'm not saying that Netpliance isn't nuts for not jumping on this chance to fill a clear market void, but if it isn't in their mission statement, then why fault them? They are pursuing the audience they set out to, and they're well within their rights not to drop one market for another. I applaud Netpliance for not seizing a quick buck but standing by their business model.
Great analogy. I think I'll go out and find out exactly how many different radioes I can get for my car (which isn't a Ford but who cares?). What I love is the whole
"It's essentially the same situation. A third party company was making a useful addition to a product which the product's maker decided to include as standard."
Last time I checked, there was only one Microsoft. The same Microsoft making Windows, Office, Visual Studio, and Internet Explorer. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how in the hell Microsoft can be a third-party to itself. That just doesn't make sense to me. Then again, I am a Linux fan, so a lot that Microsoft does doesn't make sense to me.
All this hype about AOL breaking other ISP's. I know, I know...when one software breaks another it means big trouble. But has anyone stopped to think about what this really means? If the plaintiff's win the suit, then what the EULA stands for goes in to the toilet. I have installed AOL, and the EULA (like most others) has statements about AS IS, and no liability. So if you accept, you live with the consequences. I have installed software before that caused Explorer.exe to IPF every time I ran it. The company did fix this with a patch, and life was beautiful again.
It is the responsibility of the consumer to realize that if things don't work, that the best course is to contact the company that made the software that broke things. Chances are there is a fix, or enough requests will urge them to make one. Sometimes companies don't play nice, and things are harder, but legal action should be a last resort, not a first.
And something else I don't get. $1000 in damages? That is preposterous. Let's be honest here, if you have an ISP that charges $21.95 per month, and then you install AOL 5.0 just for laughs, and things break, wouldn't you fixit immediately? Suppose you didn't. AOL 5.0 has not been around for a year yet, and even if you could not get to your ISP for a year, the cost would only be ~$263. I think thatwith the merger ISP's and others want a piece of AOL. Get them in the news...make them look bad, because let's face the facts, AOL is not going to be hurting to pay $8 billion.
I don't think that what AOL is doing with 5.0 is right, but I disagree more with the actions of the class action suit filers. I hope they are laughed out of court with EULA stamped on their forehead so they can see why they didn't win!
Thank you...play through.
I cannot and will not stand idly by and watch as yet another thing in this world be perverted and twisted in political agenda. Censorship has been a hot topic for as long as I can remember. Whether it is books or music or theatre, no one is happy with what is available. Then along comes the WWW. It has no restrictions, whatsoever, except for the occasional password barrier. When it hit, I thought that the world as a whole was going to get past these trifling issues, but I guess we as a world community are just too immature. Sure, there is lots of content on the Web, good AND bad. You cannot have one without the other, I am sorry! Deal with it folks. Let the information speak for itself, and let the intelligent beings of the planet decide for themselves. /rant
As far as I have read recently, M$ is planning a release 5 for Macintosh which will be more compliant than IE5 for the PC. And at the same time an update (5.01 or 5.1) for the PC will increase the standards compliance of IE.
Netscape's version 5, if it ever is released, still has loads of proprietary tags, and is not nearly as broadly compliant as IE. They may, as has been said, more CSS supportive, but there is more than CSS out there that web designers would like to take advantage of.
I think we should just give M$ a rest...sure they're trying to take over the planet, but until we see a better browser come out of Netscape, not a whole lot can be said.