But that doesn't mean you shouldn't hate Microsoft's goal of destroying Linux
That's just standard business practice. Why shouldn't I consider competitors lethal enemies to be destroyed at the first opportunity? There's only so much money to go around and in business, what's important to the stockholders is the profit margin. They paid their money, they expect a return - if I'm a businessman, it's my job to get it.
or their constantly unethical behavior.
I disagree with you on this, also. Illegal behaviour, I'm completely against. Unethical behaviour, since it's not by definition, illegal, is more difficult to define. What's unethical to you may have no meaning to someone else.
The only standard one can objectively apply is measuring behaviour against the law. If a company breaks the law, then I have no sympathy whatsoever - fine them, jail them, whatever. But until they cross that line, they're free to move around as their conscience and public opinion dictate.
I meant, I would call the local law enforcement to see to the needs of the motorist.
Not such a big deal - I've dealt with the police before and as long as your reasonably polite and not terribly defensive, they are quite reasonable and understanding. On the other hand, I've never had them called on me for anything other than loud music, so no problem.
The thing is, as long you don't give them grief, they're just trying to keep the peace. Give them a hard time and you're stuffed and cuffed. Which is fine by me.
I dunno about you guys, but I'm paranoid enough not to stop and help anyone on the side of the road. I got no problem with calling the local law enforcement, but I just don't trust other drivers enough to stop.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Microsoft has a Linux testing lab (and probably one for every other possible competitor) set up somewhere. It's one of the basic ideas of keeping an eye on the competition. As for publicity, I also don't blame them for keeping hush-hush (if it exists). One of the worst things you can do is publicize that you use opposing products, in any form or fashion.
It's just a standard business practice, people, it's nothing personal.
Their sponsored links are not as easy to spot as Google's. At least Google makes an effort to clearly delineate who's paid for an ad, and where the real results start.
Give'm the death sentence. Sure, it's painful, but if enough people stop accepting traffic from UUNet and explain why, it should force them to enforce their policies.
"I have been doing X in Photoshop for years, so I know how to do it in my sleep in Photoshop, but I'm not used to the differences in The GIMP"
It doesn't matter. When you have deadlines and promises to clients, any kind of a slowdown is a problem. Remember, your clients don't care and shouldn't have to if you have a problem delivering because the software doesn't perform as expected. Saying "I was having trouble with the graphic software" is not an acceptable excuse.
I have "history" with Photoshop. In the same way that it's easier to work with old friends than with new ones, it's easier to work with an expensive software package than it is to spend the time to learn a new one. That time spent can be used for other things (getting clients, earning money, having a life).
In order for Free Software to catch up to commercial, it not only has to meet the needs and wants of the users, but it has to exceed them on so many levels that will make users look beyond any history they've developed with commercial software. It has to go beyond "scratching an itch", it has to think ahead and anticipate.
That, in my mind, is where the majority of Free Software and Open Source loses out and will always lose out. These movements have only limited access to the kinds of advance information that major software companies are paying for from hardware makers. They have a very limited ability (not in a personal sense, but in a business sense) to form the kind of close relationships necessary for Sony (for example) to consider an open source solution for software before considering a commercial solution.
Despite some successes (Apache, for one) Open Source and Free Software are playing catch-up on so many levels, it's not funny.
This is, of course, my opinion. I could be wrong. Worse things have happened.
False advertising? If the product performs as advertised (even at less than optimum) you'd have to work pretty hard to prove it.
Which advertising agents? I freelance to a marketing firm who works with the salespeople for a particular gadget. Who's liable?
Marketing is a fact of life. Without it, companies have to wait for consumers to come to them. No one has that much time or money. And without that, no gadgets.
It's kind of like that line from from "The Right Stuff": What makes this spaceship go up? Funding.
It would be really nice if Apple's config utilities were released back to the open source community.
If they just gave it back, then what would be the point of owning an Apple computer? By creating the extra value, they are able to charge a pretty penny for it and justify their existence. For that part of it, at least, they are fulfilling the promise of open-source: a level playing field for everyone that they add their own particular brand of value to.
permanently reject any patent for which initial submission has obvious prior art that dates back more than 10 years prior
Except that some poor schlub would still have to hunt down the prior art, just like they do now. It seems the problem is not necessarily that the people are incompetent, it's that they are inundated with so much subjective information that it becomes quite easy to overlook some detail that would deny an application based on prior art.
It would probably help some to have better and more complete databases, but there's very little one can do about the subjective differences between widgets. That's a judgement call and it's impossible to be right 100% of the time.
OK, point taken. I had a kneejerk reactionary moment, there. My apologies to the NSA for dragging them through the mud like that.
I guess its just hard to imagine that a government agency under the current administration is looking out for our best interests when it's pretty clear that the rest of aforementioned administration is doing the exact opposite.
Libertarian candidates, Reform Party candidates, Constitution Party candidates, Greens, or somebody OTHER than the same corrupt, power-hungry fuckers
Provide one with a sensible, reasonable platform that doesn't try to upset the applecart all at once and alienate every damn person on the planet, and I'll consider it.
I like the Libertarians as a general rule, except they can't ever agree on anything, except in the most general terms. The Libertarian convention is some of the best entertainment ever. Sorry, too fragmented to ever serve as anything but an example.
The Reform Party - uh. no. never. Ross Perot? C'mon guys. Great ideas focused solely on govermental reform and nothing else.
Greens - Nope. Not ever. Too far left.
Constitution Party - Too much Bible thumping. "Return... our law to it's Biblical foundation". Not only no, but hell no. It's the Taliban all over again.
I'd feel like I was wasting my vote if I DID vote for any of those.
Considering the current administration's political direction, I don't doubt that the NSA is already looking carefully at domestic communications and backdoors into our own systems. Yes, they are a bunch of geeks, but they're government geeks with a whole different agenda than preserving privacy.
Remember, being a geek doesn't necessarily make you a nice guy. Some geek had to write all the software that's used for spamming. Some geek has to sit down and figure out how bypass spam filters. Some geek has to figure out how to rip a database to pull all your private information.
Which is not to say that the NSA doesn't do a fine job. Well, or a good one either. Actually, we have no way of knowing since most of the oversight is done in Washington and never publicly released.
One's a database product. The other's a browser. Kinda hard to confuse the two, I should think. They don't compete in the same arena, unless you consider the entire open source/free software movement their arena.
In the end, it probably didn't really matter. Firebird is still obscure compared to some of the other longstanding offerings, and the name change didn't hurt the Mozilla team any, although I do wish they would stop naming each release, and just stick to one damn name.
a random code-swap where a bunch of us get together and hand eachother a blank disc with the source code to something nifty on it to play with.
I was pretty much right alongside the whole idea until you typed that last bit. Having heard that, I'm thinking you might want to reexamine your plan a bit.
Yes, I remember Netscape very well. They lost. Plain and simple.
They promised the moon and had no way of delivering it - they had a bad business model. Dig around on the web and you can find of plenty of supporting arguments (there are just as many going the other direction - but fewer of them discuss the business side).
Yes, they did a fine and noble thing by releasing the code as they went down, snapped up by the voracious jaws of AOL, but it was pretty inevitable.
Making your decisions based on emotion is not a rational way to run a business and Netscape fired up plenty of emotion, but there was very little rationality behind the way the company ran and engineered their products.
If they offered money and were reasonable - I'd definitely change the name. Look, by all accounts, there was no armtwisting on the part of Microsoft and apparently, Microsoft was willing to help them out some as part of the deal.
I read that as being gracious, not brutal.
It's starting to look like a lot of the posters here are looking for reasons to blame Microsoft. While there are a lot of problems dealing with the 800 lb. gorilla, this does not appear to be one of them.
I think a lot of you have gotten carried away with your blind hatred.
they did this willingly after polite discussion - no lawsuits involved. Microsoft is also going to provide them some funding for further development and to point to their domain for a year or so.
That's why educating the consumer is the most crucial point of this whole issue.
I don't disagree with you, but it ain't gonna happen. Consumers (users, lusers, what have you) are far too busy with other things to learn something that has been more or less promised to "just work", even if it means ignoring reality.
Most of the problems that happen in the real world, viruses, trojans, and hackers, happen to "someone else", and even if it did happen to them, they don't know enough to even recognize that there's a problem and they need to ask questions. They know that what used to work, doesn't work so well anymore.
Part of the problem is that we made computers easy to use (which was the right thing to do, regardless), but we also allowed marketing and advertising to sell it as the perfect solution to every problem when it clearly isn't. It's all well -intentioned, but we missed the mark in the process.
It's probably too late, now, anyway so there's probably not much we can do.
Insults? Injuries? You make it sound like he owed you something. Like you were entitled.
I don't think so. When you go to the theater, or some other form of public entertainment, you are now owed anything. You take your chances like everyone else - if you happen to like it, fine. If not, no problem. But get over this apparent sense of entitlement or you're bound to be disappointed.
Look, I'm as disappointed as anyone else by Episodes I & II (moreso, I saw the originals when they were released), but attack the man's filmmaking, not his other ventures. At least you people saw the movies. How many of you have tasted the wine? I haven't - I'll reserve my judgement until I do.
It must be when/. has lowered itself to post little better than a gossip headline (complete with catty comments). This is ridiculous, people - I thought this place was supposed to set a higher tone than the Drudge Report and Faux^H^H^Hox News, but apparently not.
Aw, crap. Now my secret's out. OK, well, I'll post another message from Ibiza while my laptop is resting on the back of some half-naked euroteen while her girlfriend slowly feeds me individually peeled grapes to the exotic rhythms of an undiscovered techno artist.
</fantasy>
Damn. if I had enough money to make an airphone call, I certainly wouldn't spend it posting on/.
Could this be a ploy to spur Win2k+3 updates? Blame the hackers for making win2k insecure. Oops you gotta upgrade now, sorry,
Not a very effective one, then. The key component - Windows Update - still fetches from the same place each time, and unless someone manages to fool that program into downloading from some other source, it's not a big problem.
The bigger issue here is the release of code that Microsoft may have licensed from third parties that they were not supposed to reveal, as well as the release of their own IP. I imagine someone's or some institution is going to be in a world of hurt if MS ever finds out who did it. Not terribly likely, but possible.
If it were me who did it, accidentally or on purpose, I'd be on a jet to some foreign country right now.
If it's charged against the person filing the bad patent, then I'm all in favor of charging them double that or more. Make it a penalty (I'd even go for imprisonment) for attempting to file a bad patent.
Moreover, if you're going to have a patent system, put the onus of proving that the patent is valid on the one filing it, not on the government.
Slashdot Mirror
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't hate Microsoft's goal of destroying Linux
That's just standard business practice. Why shouldn't I consider competitors lethal enemies to be destroyed at the first opportunity? There's only so much money to go around and in business, what's important to the stockholders is the profit margin. They paid their money, they expect a return - if I'm a businessman, it's my job to get it.
or their constantly unethical behavior.
I disagree with you on this, also. Illegal behaviour, I'm completely against. Unethical behaviour, since it's not by definition, illegal, is more difficult to define. What's unethical to you may have no meaning to someone else.
The only standard one can objectively apply is measuring behaviour against the law. If a company breaks the law, then I have no sympathy whatsoever - fine them, jail them, whatever. But until they cross that line, they're free to move around as their conscience and public opinion dictate.
I meant, I would call the local law enforcement to see to the needs of the motorist.
Not such a big deal - I've dealt with the police before and as long as your reasonably polite and not terribly defensive, they are quite reasonable and understanding. On the other hand, I've never had them called on me for anything other than loud music, so no problem.
The thing is, as long you don't give them grief, they're just trying to keep the peace. Give them a hard time and you're stuffed and cuffed. Which is fine by me.
I dunno about you guys, but I'm paranoid enough not to stop and help anyone on the side of the road. I got no problem with calling the local law enforcement, but I just don't trust other drivers enough to stop.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Microsoft has a Linux testing lab (and probably one for every other possible competitor) set up somewhere. It's one of the basic ideas of keeping an eye on the competition. As for publicity, I also don't blame them for keeping hush-hush (if it exists). One of the worst things you can do is publicize that you use opposing products, in any form or fashion.
It's just a standard business practice, people, it's nothing personal.
Their sponsored links are not as easy to spot as Google's. At least Google makes an effort to clearly delineate who's paid for an ad, and where the real results start.
Well, aside from getting stuck in the link farms.
There is one other solution.
Block UUNet.
Give'm the death sentence. Sure, it's painful, but if enough people stop accepting traffic from UUNet and explain why, it should force them to enforce their policies.
"I have been doing X in Photoshop for years, so I know how to do it in my sleep in Photoshop, but I'm not used to the differences in The GIMP"
It doesn't matter. When you have deadlines and promises to clients, any kind of a slowdown is a problem. Remember, your clients don't care and shouldn't have to if you have a problem delivering because the software doesn't perform as expected. Saying "I was having trouble with the graphic software" is not an acceptable excuse.
I have "history" with Photoshop. In the same way that it's easier to work with old friends than with new ones, it's easier to work with an expensive software package than it is to spend the time to learn a new one. That time spent can be used for other things (getting clients, earning money, having a life).
In order for Free Software to catch up to commercial, it not only has to meet the needs and wants of the users, but it has to exceed them on so many levels that will make users look beyond any history they've developed with commercial software. It has to go beyond "scratching an itch", it has to think ahead and anticipate.
That, in my mind, is where the majority of Free Software and Open Source loses out and will always lose out. These movements have only limited access to the kinds of advance information that major software companies are paying for from hardware makers. They have a very limited ability (not in a personal sense, but in a business sense) to form the kind of close relationships necessary for Sony (for example) to consider an open source solution for software before considering a commercial solution.
Despite some successes (Apache, for one) Open Source and Free Software are playing catch-up on so many levels, it's not funny.
This is, of course, my opinion. I could be wrong. Worse things have happened.
False advertising? If the product performs as advertised (even at less than optimum) you'd have to work pretty hard to prove it.
Which advertising agents? I freelance to a marketing firm who works with the salespeople for a particular gadget. Who's liable?
Marketing is a fact of life. Without it, companies have to wait for consumers to come to them. No one has that much time or money. And without that, no gadgets.
It's kind of like that line from from "The Right Stuff": What makes this spaceship go up? Funding.
It would be really nice if Apple's config utilities were released back to the open source community.
If they just gave it back, then what would be the point of owning an Apple computer? By creating the extra value, they are able to charge a pretty penny for it and justify their existence. For that part of it, at least, they are fulfilling the promise of open-source: a level playing field for everyone that they add their own particular brand of value to.
permanently reject any patent for which initial submission has obvious prior art that dates back more than 10 years prior
Except that some poor schlub would still have to hunt down the prior art, just like they do now. It seems the problem is not necessarily that the people are incompetent, it's that they are inundated with so much subjective information that it becomes quite easy to overlook some detail that would deny an application based on prior art.
It would probably help some to have better and more complete databases, but there's very little one can do about the subjective differences between widgets. That's a judgement call and it's impossible to be right 100% of the time.
OK, point taken. I had a kneejerk reactionary moment, there. My apologies to the NSA for dragging them through the mud like that.
I guess its just hard to imagine that a government agency under the current administration is looking out for our best interests when it's pretty clear that the rest of aforementioned administration is doing the exact opposite.
Libertarian candidates, Reform Party candidates, Constitution Party candidates, Greens, or somebody OTHER than the same corrupt, power-hungry fuckers
... our law to it's Biblical foundation". Not only no, but hell no. It's the Taliban all over again.
Provide one with a sensible, reasonable platform that doesn't try to upset the applecart all at once and alienate every damn person on the planet, and I'll consider it.
I like the Libertarians as a general rule, except they can't ever agree on anything, except in the most general terms. The Libertarian convention is some of the best entertainment ever. Sorry, too fragmented to ever serve as anything but an example.
The Reform Party - uh. no. never. Ross Perot? C'mon guys. Great ideas focused solely on govermental reform and nothing else.
Greens - Nope. Not ever. Too far left.
Constitution Party - Too much Bible thumping. "Return
I'd feel like I was wasting my vote if I DID vote for any of those.
Considering the current administration's political direction, I don't doubt that the NSA is already looking carefully at domestic communications and backdoors into our own systems. Yes, they are a bunch of geeks, but they're government geeks with a whole different agenda than preserving privacy.
Remember, being a geek doesn't necessarily make you a nice guy. Some geek had to write all the software that's used for spamming. Some geek has to sit down and figure out how bypass spam filters. Some geek has to figure out how to rip a database to pull all your private information.
Which is not to say that the NSA doesn't do a fine job. Well, or a good one either. Actually, we have no way of knowing since most of the oversight is done in Washington and never publicly released.
How scary is that?
Why not? They were there before.
One's a database product. The other's a browser. Kinda hard to confuse the two, I should think. They don't compete in the same arena, unless you consider the entire open source/free software movement their arena.
In the end, it probably didn't really matter. Firebird is still obscure compared to some of the other longstanding offerings, and the name change didn't hurt the Mozilla team any, although I do wish they would stop naming each release, and just stick to one damn name.
a random code-swap where a bunch of us get together and hand eachother a blank disc with the source code to something nifty on it to play with.
I was pretty much right alongside the whole idea until you typed that last bit. Having heard that, I'm thinking you might want to reexamine your plan a bit.
Yes, I remember Netscape very well. They lost. Plain and simple.
They promised the moon and had no way of delivering it - they had a bad business model. Dig around on the web and you can find of plenty of supporting arguments (there are just as many going the other direction - but fewer of them discuss the business side).
Yes, they did a fine and noble thing by releasing the code as they went down, snapped up by the voracious jaws of AOL, but it was pretty inevitable.
Making your decisions based on emotion is not a rational way to run a business and Netscape fired up plenty of emotion, but there was very little rationality behind the way the company ran and engineered their products.
If they offered money and were reasonable - I'd definitely change the name. Look, by all accounts, there was no armtwisting on the part of Microsoft and apparently, Microsoft was willing to help them out some as part of the deal.
I read that as being gracious, not brutal.
It's starting to look like a lot of the posters here are looking for reasons to blame Microsoft. While there are a lot of problems dealing with the 800 lb. gorilla, this does not appear to be one of them.
I think a lot of you have gotten carried away with your blind hatred.
they did this willingly after polite discussion - no lawsuits involved. Microsoft is also going to provide them some funding for further development and to point to their domain for a year or so.
That's why educating the consumer is the most crucial point of this whole issue.
I don't disagree with you, but it ain't gonna happen. Consumers (users, lusers, what have you) are far too busy with other things to learn something that has been more or less promised to "just work", even if it means ignoring reality.
Most of the problems that happen in the real world, viruses, trojans, and hackers, happen to "someone else", and even if it did happen to them, they don't know enough to even recognize that there's a problem and they need to ask questions. They know that what used to work, doesn't work so well anymore.
Part of the problem is that we made computers easy to use (which was the right thing to do, regardless), but we also allowed marketing and advertising to sell it as the perfect solution to every problem when it clearly isn't. It's all well -intentioned, but we missed the mark in the process.
It's probably too late, now, anyway so there's probably not much we can do.
Insults? Injuries? You make it sound like he owed you something. Like you were entitled.
I don't think so. When you go to the theater, or some other form of public entertainment, you are now owed anything. You take your chances like everyone else - if you happen to like it, fine. If not, no problem. But get over this apparent sense of entitlement or you're bound to be disappointed.
Look, I'm as disappointed as anyone else by Episodes I & II (moreso, I saw the originals when they were released), but attack the man's filmmaking, not his other ventures. At least you people saw the movies. How many of you have tasted the wine? I haven't - I'll reserve my judgement until I do.
It must be when /. has lowered itself to post little better than a gossip headline (complete with catty comments). This is ridiculous, people - I thought this place was supposed to set a higher tone than the Drudge Report and Faux^H^H^Hox News, but apparently not.
Only if you're willing to pay me for the use of my data.
Aw, crap. Now my secret's out. OK, well, I'll post another message from Ibiza while my laptop is resting on the back of some half-naked euroteen while her girlfriend slowly feeds me individually peeled grapes to the exotic rhythms of an undiscovered techno artist.
/.
</fantasy>
Damn. if I had enough money to make an airphone call, I certainly wouldn't spend it posting on
Could this be a ploy to spur Win2k+3 updates? Blame the hackers for making win2k insecure. Oops you gotta upgrade now, sorry,
Not a very effective one, then. The key component - Windows Update - still fetches from the same place each time, and unless someone manages to fool that program into downloading from some other source, it's not a big problem.
The bigger issue here is the release of code that Microsoft may have licensed from third parties that they were not supposed to reveal, as well as the release of their own IP. I imagine someone's or some institution is going to be in a world of hurt if MS ever finds out who did it. Not terribly likely, but possible.
If it were me who did it, accidentally or on purpose, I'd be on a jet to some foreign country right now.
If it's charged against the person filing the bad patent, then I'm all in favor of charging them double that or more. Make it a penalty (I'd even go for imprisonment) for attempting to file a bad patent.
Moreover, if you're going to have a patent system, put the onus of proving that the patent is valid on the one filing it, not on the government.