Structured programming is a methodology. OOP is a methodology.
A methodology is generated by looking at what good developers are doing, and producing a description (or set of rules) that tells you how they did it.
OOP is what the best structured programming people were using, at least in some set of problems. Structured programming was what the best programmers were doing before anyone ever created the structured programming methodology.
Some programs do not benefit much from OOP. Many OOP based programs were generated without accounting for all of the requirements, either known or unknown, of the problem. They would have been bad regardless of the language or methodology used. OOP doesn't mean the code is good, it is merely a method that some very good coders use. Bad code can be generated no matter what methodology the programmer says they are using.
Then your current registrar (in my case Verisign) should notify you of the requested change, and you should approve it. Since Verisign never acknowledged either my new registrar, or me, no transfer was made (in several attempts over several months). There were several months left on my domain registration, and they had no problem renewing it (there was a way to do that online).
Verisign doesn't follow the rules, and aren't very subtle about it. I filed an online protest at a web page that my new registrar sent me to, which should have gone to ICANN, who never did anything. That part didn't surprise me either.
That's not true, I have called it numerous times. I never could talk to a person, but there was a customer service number, and a machine to answer it.
In the end I paid them for another year, since they refused to transfer my domain name to another registrar, or even provide me any way to talk to them and request it.
They do provide handy forms online if you want to transfer from another registrar, just no help at all if you want to transfer from them. I guess I could take them to court, but I'm not going to, since it would cost me way more than it will to just pay them their yearly fee. Nice business model, get them hooked, and make it too expensive to get them to perform their job properly.
"if a DNS server is considered to be a legitimate and unerring source of information linking a domain name with owner information"
And your point is? What else is a top level DNS server? Isn't that what they are supposed to provide? They charge $35 per domain (the most expensive around) each year to provide a service, maintaining the connection between the DNS name and it's proper owner. They should invest in some insurance, or do their job properly.
There is no way to draw a sharp line where blocking ends, I know this particularly well, being an electrical engineer. Inevitably areas besides just the restaurant or theatre would be covered. The exception would be if they altered their building to limit the effects, in which case your phone wouldn't work there, even without the blocking, making it unneeded.
I always turn off my cell phone in hospitals, after all, that is a matter of public safety, not just polite social behavior.
I have worn a pager constantly for years at a time, so I agree, it can be very tiring. Still, there are those times when you really do need to be notified. In the ideal world, you would be able to safely get away from pagers and cell phones. We live in a rather imperfect world, where things are often not timed for our convenience, so, much as I resent the people who interrupt us all with their conversations, I wouldn't give that capability up.
Once more I wish to say that we are talking about a social problem, not a legal one, and it should stay that way. People don't spit on the floor in buildings, and they shouldn't share their private business on a cell phone in a public place like a restaurant. Society will teach them, we just have to grit our teeth while the process happens.
I agree with most of what you said, with a few notable exceptions.
1) Do you have a child or an elderly parent? If something happened to them, like a heart attack, or they were kidnapped, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't you want to know right now, not when the show was over? Everyone, for a few moments of their life, is one of those people who NEEDS to get that call, right then. Blocking calls in an area should be illegal, since it is a public hazard. Someone could die on the street in front of a theatre because no one on the street could call for an ambulance immediately.
2) Has anyone heard of vibrating alerts on phones? I wouldn't buy one without it, because I don't want to annoy the rest of the world, but I do want to get that important call.
In case you are wondering, I have received notice while at lunch of my father having a stroke, so I feel very strongly about this, it's not just an exercise for me. I wouldn't enter a place that knowingly jammed my phone. I think the whole idea is unacceptable.
As for using your phone for non-critical conversation at socially unacceptable moments, it is that, a social problem. We already have way too many laws on the books now that aren't enforced, so adding one about cell phone usage is silly. Someone talking on their phone in class should be asked to leave, and be penalized as being absent from class that day, or get off the stupid phone. This can be a matter of policy at the school. I left my phone on beeper once when I was at an interview. I apologized for the interruption, silenced my phone, and continued the interview without taking the call. I got an offer from them, although I ended up taking another job.
The government both purchases shrink wrapped software, and has software customized/developed for them. The proposals everyone is talking about would impact both. The software the government is using makes a difference. I have seen companies standardize on a word processor because it was the one the FAA had decided to use. How much more impact would a more widespread standardization have?
If the government was using open source software, and made file interchange capability a requirement for everyone the deal with, then everyone would support standardized formats. This is a case where the only way to standardize file formats is for someone with enough clout (say the Federal Government) to mandate it.
I really support the idea of choice in their software purchases for individuals. The government has other responsibilites, and making information interchange possible is (or should be) one of them.
You can't seriously think that IBM became an open source company because they wanted to feel good about it? They want to make money, and they know they can do so by promoting open source software.
Most large companies don't use any major software packages, say the accounting software they use, out of the box. They pay someone to customize it to fit their needs. That service still needs to be performed, even for open source software.
There is no requirement that this customized version have it's source distributed to the world, unless the software is going to be distributed. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but GPL doesn't make you release changes you make for your own use. Only if you want to distribute your version do you have to make the source available to everyone else. If you want to sell your changed version, then you can negotiate some other license, at least potentially.
We are talking about the government here, and it seems only fair that softeware developed for the government, which we paid for (remember taxes), be available for us to use. When they buy a road, by having a contractor build it, they do it so we can drive on it. Why not software as well?
P.S. Data format standardization is a great idea, why don't you talk to Microsoft about it, they don't seem to be responding to the rest of us about it.
Get serious, we're talking about a civil servant here, you can't fire them. Before someone flames me for it, there are good civil servants out there, but the fact that it is almost impossible to get rid of one who isn't doing their job properly, means that there are ones who are taking advantage of the system.
Working for the patent office reviewing patent applications has to be a tough job right now. In the current environment, where patenting everything, however stupid, seems to be the rule, they are probably buried in applications, and even a dedicated person wouldn't be able to do a good job.
There are a huge number of patent relating to paper clip like creations. They relate to how paper clips are made, and the design of particular types of paper clips. No one patented the idea of clipping sheets of paper together, because that wasn't allowed then, you couldn't patent the idea. We now allow people to patent ideas in the US (maybe not exactly, but close enough to the truth), and similar notions are being proposed in Europe and England. Take the hint from us, and don't go there, it doesn't work.
The whole IM Bot is just a crossing of networking technology with a console program that responds to what you type in when you hit enter. Those are really novel concepts, aren't they? How many decades old are each of those ideas? Talk about prior art!
You are talking about commercial applications, like Microsoft Office, and Windows. Many places can indeed refuse to update those for another year.
Many IT shops develop custom software to suit their customer (internal or external) requirements. That type of work is still going on, although at a somewhat reduced pace, because it is needed. The reduction in pace is because of overall budget reduction in most companies, caused by the economy.
Having said that, this is a great time to clear out the dead wood, which will probably happen for the rest of this year. This is also the time for glitzy projects that weren't really necessary for the business to go away. Part of the cult of IT was shared with the rest of the corporate world, your power is in how many people you have working for you, and how big your budget is. I suspect there are some empires in the IT world that are shrinking seriously about now, as justification is lacking for parts of them.
So, sometime down the road, when the world has more people than it can support (assuming the population continues to grow), I'm supposed to believe they will want to bring some of us back to life?
Even if you accept that it might be technically possible to revive someone who was frozen (more like rebuild at the microscopic level), why would anyone 200 years from now want to do that for YOU? So you have lots of money, and people to manage it to finance rebuilding you when it becomes possible, why would they want to, since they control the money and power at that point?
It's a silly idea, and a very sad one. Something for people with a very large ego, too much money, and too little humility about their place in the world.
Given that the home version of Windows XP sells for $199, and most shrink wrapped distributions of Linux sell for $50 to $80, it's hard to see how you can compare them by total dollars in sales. Even the upgrade version of Windows costs much more than a boxed copy of Linux. On top of that, you have Windows being installed on most new computers from the factory, which generates even more revenue for Microsoft.
Microsoft has been trying to blackmail corporate customers into upgrading to Windows XP, which probably accounts for most of their increase. Given that, their 11% increase says that tactic is not working very well, even accounting for a bad economy.
In the worst economic times in recent history, Linux seems to be doing very well at only 5% decrease, since they aren't forcing people to buy upgrades, like Microsoft is. Any increase must be caused by people going out of their way to purchase Linux.
Why do companies think it's ok to "upgrade" software like this? Microsoft wants to control our computers, Nielson wants to monitor what we watch (with the help of TiVo), and these companies want to slip these changes in without real notice or discussion (especially in the case of TiVo).
What happened to the rights of the consumer? Does TiVo promise not to "upgrade" their software in a way that allows anyone else into your viewing habits, or is it just a matter of how much money they are paid? Do we have any assurance that there is not another listener on our habits, nor that they sold that right once? Could this be the same software that the court almost ordered them to install to monitor comercial skipping, used in a way that makes them money?
The right to privacy in your own home, and the ability to use devices and software you purchased, for the reasons you purchased them, seems to be in danger currently. This type of thing may be "technically legal", if the EULA is legal, but is this really how we want our world to work, totally run for the convenience of corporations?
Verisign cheats, as anyone who ever tried to move their domain from Verisign to another group can testify (good luck on that one), but that really means paying $35 per year, instead of some smaller fee. They do perform the other funtions they are supposed to, with only minor interference from their greed.
Much to my surprise, I find myself agreeing with them about this. ICANN does not seem to work, because they are not impartial, they are in the pockets of big corporate interests, and they don't answer the needs of the majority of internet users.
My argument implies that the market will never change unless someone makes it. "The Market" will do whatever is easiest, or makes the most monitary sense today. The market almost never looks ahead, just look at the stock market on any given day to see how short term their view of things is (think single digit minutes).
I am not arguing for the profits of the companies involved. I am arguing that I want better quality than a 1947 TV signal with a little chromatic aberration thrown in, and acknowledging that, in this particular case, the only way to get a change is for the FCC to mandate it. That it may also benefit some TV manufacturers is incidental. I just want something that does the job, which today's 1947 technology doesn't accomplish, and see no other solution that is going to deliver it.
At some point we need to junk the old TV technology, and get something better in it's place. When do you think we should do it? How do we get broadcasters, TV set manufacturers, and comsumers, to sit down at the table and buy the cost? Do you think we should have both systems forever, and really make those companies pay even more money to broadcast forever in multiple systems.
My comments about HDTV were not obviously not understood. My point was that because the FCC never selected a standard to HDTV, it essentially died due to neglect. We have no HDTV, because the market could never agree about it. Each company wanted us to use their standard, and no one said (this is the FCC's job) what the standard for the US was going to be. They delegated their job to the marketplace, which never reached a consensus. The FCC seems intent on actually doing something for a change, like setting a standard (as it should do), which it has seldom afforded much effort to in the past.
I don't like being told I have to do something like this any more than the next person. Having said that, this is probably a good thing.
The FCC has a long history of letting "the market" decide standards, and implementation schedules. The result is the current mess we have, with several competing (and incompatible) PCS phone standards (TDMA, GSM, CDMA), and digital or HD TV taking decades to develope a standard. As much as I hate to say it, if the FCC finally managed to decide to actually dictate something to the market, it may be a good thing.
We don't have HDTV now because the FCC decided to allow the market to set the standard. Since there wasn't a uniform standard, no broadcaster would invest in the equipment needed to broadcast a signal, and no set maker could market their sets without supporting several different "standards".
Sometimes the market needs an appropriately placed foot to get things in motion. This is probably one of those times. The part that shocks me is seeing the FCC take an active step in the process.
In the clocked system, you have a drummer beating out a pace for the brigade to pass the buckets. It has to be slow enough that the slowest person can handle the pace.
In the asynchronous system, everyone just does it as fast as they can, and a bucket gets to the other end faster, since they are all faster than the clock would let them be.
You wouldn't need to parallel operations to get more throughput than the clocked equivalent. In your example, replacing the the slowest person with two people who could only pass a half bucket (splitting the load) wouldn't make things faster, just more complicated.
Re:Small scale, and then larger
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Clockless Computing
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· Score: 2, Informative
The big issue in going asynchronous is scale. It's easy to get small logic blocks to work properly, but there are timing issues that exist when building something complex like a processor, that are very difficult to address.
The logic inside of standard clocked logic is asynchronous, but the clock is used to make sure you look at the result only when it is known to be valid. The clock rate is limited by how long it takes to assure the logic state to be stable.
The timing and scaling issues exist even with clocked logic, which is why it took so long to make high clock rate motherboards. The data transfers on a modern motherboard are happening at well above the frequency of the FM radio band (tops out at around 108 Mhz), which makes the physical design of the board very interesting. You need to make sure that signals travel the same distance if they are supposed to be evaluated together, like the address or data buss.
The change to asynchronous logic means you have to change the way you design your logic, change all of your CAD software you use to design the chips, and change all of your automated test equipment you use to certify which chips are good. This is a massive conversion for the chip industry, taking a great deal of time, and a great deal of money.
Do you have a history of shooting people? If you did, I would worry about that possibility, otherwise I'd probably discount it. Microsoft does have a history of crushing competition. If they see OpenGL as competition (like with DirectX), then I will reserve the right to worry about what they could do, given their past actions. That is why people worry, not because they hate Microsoft (ok, some people do for that reason), but because of the history Microsoft has of doing very nasty things to the competition. Finish this saying: "DOS isn't done until..." if you can, and say Microsoft couldn't try killing OpenGL with their patents.
This isn't just about Microsoft, look at the whole W3C issue over patents. There are attempts by corporations to make the maximum short term profits from technology, without consideration for the long term effects of those actions. OpenGL can remain open, even if Microsoft causes problems. An alternative, non-infringing implementation, can be made to keep the standard open. All it takes is time and money, which tends to give Microsoft the advantage, since they have the most money.
Yes, Red Hat and Mandrake are FOR PROFIT companies, and they will do things to attract people to buy their distribution. Duh! Many companies that "want to make money" are paying for people to contribute to Linux development full time. You make it sound like following a standard (anyone heard of LSB) means you must be part of United Linux.
United Linux is an attempt by several companies that don't have a large portion of the market to build name recognition for themselves, and to make more money. Don't make it sound like they are out to save the world, they want more people to buy their brands of Linux, just like Red Hat and Mandrake do.
I know that you can set up IIS to run as another user. People don't generally do that. I don't know why it is, but the defaults are often used with IIS, in spite of documentation that says you should change it.
I suspect that *nix admins, because they have to be more motivated to learn how to set up things without all of the pretty graphical tools, are more inclined to actually do the things needed to secure their systems. Just speculation.
Like I said, IIS is targeted because there is often a good return on the cracker's time, they get to own another computer system. Crackers (especially the script kiddie variety) want an easy mark to attack.
The difference is that Microsoft IIS runs as a service, and any exploit that lets you run code lets you have full access to the machine.
Running Apache as a process with relatively few permissions (certainly not as root) means that the most that can happen is a relatively minor problem, rather than having someone control your server.
The problem with IIS is not just the code being buggy, since any code could have a problem, it is the fact that any compromise of that code gives the IIS permissions (basically root or administrator) to the person breaking into your machine.
This is what doesn't happen on a well run *nix box, but does happen under Windows/IIS. The fact that the exploit allows full control of your machine is why the IIS exploits are so serious. Apache has not has a root exploit found in a long time, making problems with Apache less serious, however often they may be found.
The reason crackers go after IIS is how much control they get of the machine, making it much more worth their efforts.
Correction, your 486 firewall-box runs GNU/Linux and your Sharp Zaurus runs GNU/Linux as well. Now did that sentence convey more information than yours did?
Saying GNU/Linux conveys no additional information to someone who doesn't know about GNU/FSF/RMS (the very people RMS wants to get the word out to), and makes it a lot more difficult to pronounce. If you know about GNU/FSF/RMS, then you don't need to be reminded about it all the time.
I don't think RMS is asking this to glorify himself, but to spread the word about Free Software. I do feel that this is not the way to accomplish that goal, and seems to alienate many of the people who have been contributing to the Free Software cause for years, because they dislike anyone, even RMS, telling them what to do.
So they get to charge us for a potential install of their software? Doesn't that seem just a little WRONG to you? By that argument we should all be in prison, since we are all potential murderers. Most products are billed by actual use (see water meters, power meters, gas pumps, most software licenses,...), not by potential use. Why is it that Microsoft is "special", and you can understand why they need to do this, when other companies seem to survive financially by charging for the amount of service (or product) they actually deliver?
My car can go above the speed limit, so I need to pay the city a speeding fine for owning it? Isn't that saying the same thing, potential use = actual use? This kind of license agreement may be legal (although that seems a little doubtful), but it is certainly something that is far from acceptable.
You shouldn't blame Makdrake for your own errors. urpmi doesn't stop working unless you installed something that broke it, probably either some cooker packages, or some non-Mandrake software.
As far as installing a PCI card, the system checks for new hardware each time you boot, and if it doesn't know about that hardware, you may need to get a driver for it. Don't be so dramatic about it. Did you check to see if the card was on their supported hardware list?
Most people have a good experience with Mandrake, and I'm guessing that your bad experiences are your own fault.
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Structured programming is a methodology. OOP is a methodology.
A methodology is generated by looking at what good developers are doing, and producing a description (or set of rules) that tells you how they did it.
OOP is what the best structured programming people were using, at least in some set of problems. Structured programming was what the best programmers were doing before anyone ever created the structured programming methodology.
Some programs do not benefit much from OOP. Many OOP based programs were generated without accounting for all of the requirements, either known or unknown, of the problem. They would have been bad regardless of the language or methodology used. OOP doesn't mean the code is good, it is merely a method that some very good coders use. Bad code can be generated no matter what methodology the programmer says they are using.
Then your current registrar (in my case Verisign) should notify you of the requested change, and you should approve it. Since Verisign never acknowledged either my new registrar, or me, no transfer was made (in several attempts over several months). There were several months left on my domain registration, and they had no problem renewing it (there was a way to do that online).
Verisign doesn't follow the rules, and aren't very subtle about it. I filed an online protest at a web page that my new registrar sent me to, which should have gone to ICANN, who never did anything. That part didn't surprise me either.
they don't have a customer service phone number
That's not true, I have called it numerous times. I never could talk to a person, but there was a customer service number, and a machine to answer it.
In the end I paid them for another year, since they refused to transfer my domain name to another registrar, or even provide me any way to talk to them and request it.
They do provide handy forms online if you want to transfer from another registrar, just no help at all if you want to transfer from them. I guess I could take them to court, but I'm not going to, since it would cost me way more than it will to just pay them their yearly fee. Nice business model, get them hooked, and make it too expensive to get them to perform their job properly.
"if a DNS server is considered to be a legitimate and unerring source of information linking a domain name with owner information"
And your point is? What else is a top level DNS server? Isn't that what they are supposed to provide? They charge $35 per domain (the most expensive around) each year to provide a service, maintaining the connection between the DNS name and it's proper owner. They should invest in some insurance, or do their job properly.
Just as a note:
There is no way to draw a sharp line where blocking ends, I know this particularly well, being an electrical engineer. Inevitably areas besides just the restaurant or theatre would be covered. The exception would be if they altered their building to limit the effects, in which case your phone wouldn't work there, even without the blocking, making it unneeded.
I always turn off my cell phone in hospitals, after all, that is a matter of public safety, not just polite social behavior.
I have worn a pager constantly for years at a time, so I agree, it can be very tiring. Still, there are those times when you really do need to be notified. In the ideal world, you would be able to safely get away from pagers and cell phones. We live in a rather imperfect world, where things are often not timed for our convenience, so, much as I resent the people who interrupt us all with their conversations, I wouldn't give that capability up.
Once more I wish to say that we are talking about a social problem, not a legal one, and it should stay that way. People don't spit on the floor in buildings, and they shouldn't share their private business on a cell phone in a public place like a restaurant. Society will teach them, we just have to grit our teeth while the process happens.
I agree with most of what you said, with a few notable exceptions.
1) Do you have a child or an elderly parent? If something happened to them, like a heart attack, or they were kidnapped, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't you want to know right now, not when the show was over? Everyone, for a few moments of their life, is one of those people who NEEDS to get that call, right then. Blocking calls in an area should be illegal, since it is a public hazard. Someone could die on the street in front of a theatre because no one on the street could call for an ambulance immediately.
2) Has anyone heard of vibrating alerts on phones? I wouldn't buy one without it, because I don't want to annoy the rest of the world, but I do want to get that important call.
In case you are wondering, I have received notice while at lunch of my father having a stroke, so I feel very strongly about this, it's not just an exercise for me. I wouldn't enter a place that knowingly jammed my phone. I think the whole idea is unacceptable.
As for using your phone for non-critical conversation at socially unacceptable moments, it is that, a social problem. We already have way too many laws on the books now that aren't enforced, so adding one about cell phone usage is silly. Someone talking on their phone in class should be asked to leave, and be penalized as being absent from class that day, or get off the stupid phone. This can be a matter of policy at the school. I left my phone on beeper once when I was at an interview. I apologized for the interruption, silenced my phone, and continued the interview without taking the call. I got an offer from them, although I ended up taking another job.
The government both purchases shrink wrapped software, and has software customized/developed for them. The proposals everyone is talking about would impact both. The software the government is using makes a difference. I have seen companies standardize on a word processor because it was the one the FAA had decided to use. How much more impact would a more widespread standardization have?
If the government was using open source software, and made file interchange capability a requirement for everyone the deal with, then everyone would support standardized formats. This is a case where the only way to standardize file formats is for someone with enough clout (say the Federal Government) to mandate it.
I really support the idea of choice in their software purchases for individuals. The government has other responsibilites, and making information interchange possible is (or should be) one of them.
You can't seriously think that IBM became an open source company because they wanted to feel good about it? They want to make money, and they know they can do so by promoting open source software.
Most large companies don't use any major software packages, say the accounting software they use, out of the box. They pay someone to customize it to fit their needs. That service still needs to be performed, even for open source software.
There is no requirement that this customized version have it's source distributed to the world, unless the software is going to be distributed. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but GPL doesn't make you release changes you make for your own use. Only if you want to distribute your version do you have to make the source available to everyone else. If you want to sell your changed version, then you can negotiate some other license, at least potentially.
We are talking about the government here, and it seems only fair that softeware developed for the government, which we paid for (remember taxes), be available for us to use. When they buy a road, by having a contractor build it, they do it so we can drive on it. Why not software as well?
P.S. Data format standardization is a great idea, why don't you talk to Microsoft about it, they don't seem to be responding to the rest of us about it.
Get serious, we're talking about a civil servant here, you can't fire them. Before someone flames me for it, there are good civil servants out there, but the fact that it is almost impossible to get rid of one who isn't doing their job properly, means that there are ones who are taking advantage of the system.
Working for the patent office reviewing patent applications has to be a tough job right now. In the current environment, where patenting everything, however stupid, seems to be the rule, they are probably buried in applications, and even a dedicated person wouldn't be able to do a good job.
There are a huge number of patent relating to paper clip like creations. They relate to how paper clips are made, and the design of particular types of paper clips. No one patented the idea of clipping sheets of paper together, because that wasn't allowed then, you couldn't patent the idea. We now allow people to patent ideas in the US (maybe not exactly, but close enough to the truth), and similar notions are being proposed in Europe and England. Take the hint from us, and don't go there, it doesn't work.
The whole IM Bot is just a crossing of networking technology with a console program that responds to what you type in when you hit enter. Those are really novel concepts, aren't they? How many decades old are each of those ideas? Talk about prior art!
You are talking about commercial applications, like Microsoft Office, and Windows. Many places can indeed refuse to update those for another year.
Many IT shops develop custom software to suit their customer (internal or external) requirements. That type of work is still going on, although at a somewhat reduced pace, because it is needed. The reduction in pace is because of overall budget reduction in most companies, caused by the economy.
Having said that, this is a great time to clear out the dead wood, which will probably happen for the rest of this year. This is also the time for glitzy projects that weren't really necessary for the business to go away. Part of the cult of IT was shared with the rest of the corporate world, your power is in how many people you have working for you, and how big your budget is. I suspect there are some empires in the IT world that are shrinking seriously about now, as justification is lacking for parts of them.
So, sometime down the road, when the world has more people than it can support (assuming the population continues to grow), I'm supposed to believe they will want to bring some of us back to life?
Even if you accept that it might be technically possible to revive someone who was frozen (more like rebuild at the microscopic level), why would anyone 200 years from now want to do that for YOU? So you have lots of money, and people to manage it to finance rebuilding you when it becomes possible, why would they want to, since they control the money and power at that point?
It's a silly idea, and a very sad one. Something for people with a very large ego, too much money, and too little humility about their place in the world.
Given that the home version of Windows XP sells for $199, and most shrink wrapped distributions of Linux sell for $50 to $80, it's hard to see how you can compare them by total dollars in sales. Even the upgrade version of Windows costs much more than a boxed copy of Linux. On top of that, you have Windows being installed on most new computers from the factory, which generates even more revenue for Microsoft.
Microsoft has been trying to blackmail corporate customers into upgrading to Windows XP, which probably accounts for most of their increase. Given that, their 11% increase says that tactic is not working very well, even accounting for a bad economy.
In the worst economic times in recent history, Linux seems to be doing very well at only 5% decrease, since they aren't forcing people to buy upgrades, like Microsoft is. Any increase must be caused by people going out of their way to purchase Linux.
Why do companies think it's ok to "upgrade" software like this? Microsoft wants to control our computers, Nielson wants to monitor what we watch (with the help of TiVo), and these companies want to slip these changes in without real notice or discussion (especially in the case of TiVo).
What happened to the rights of the consumer? Does TiVo promise not to "upgrade" their software in a way that allows anyone else into your viewing habits, or is it just a matter of how much money they are paid? Do we have any assurance that there is not another listener on our habits, nor that they sold that right once? Could this be the same software that the court almost ordered them to install to monitor comercial skipping, used in a way that makes them money?
The right to privacy in your own home, and the ability to use devices and software you purchased, for the reasons you purchased them, seems to be in danger currently. This type of thing may be "technically legal", if the EULA is legal, but is this really how we want our world to work, totally run for the convenience of corporations?
Verisign cheats, as anyone who ever tried to move their domain from Verisign to another group can testify (good luck on that one), but that really means paying $35 per year, instead of some smaller fee. They do perform the other funtions they are supposed to, with only minor interference from their greed.
Much to my surprise, I find myself agreeing with them about this. ICANN does not seem to work, because they are not impartial, they are in the pockets of big corporate interests, and they don't answer the needs of the majority of internet users.
My argument implies that the market will never change unless someone makes it. "The Market" will do whatever is easiest, or makes the most monitary sense today. The market almost never looks ahead, just look at the stock market on any given day to see how short term their view of things is (think single digit minutes).
I am not arguing for the profits of the companies involved. I am arguing that I want better quality than a 1947 TV signal with a little chromatic aberration thrown in, and acknowledging that, in this particular case, the only way to get a change is for the FCC to mandate it. That it may also benefit some TV manufacturers is incidental. I just want something that does the job, which today's 1947 technology doesn't accomplish, and see no other solution that is going to deliver it.
At some point we need to junk the old TV technology, and get something better in it's place. When do you think we should do it? How do we get broadcasters, TV set manufacturers, and comsumers, to sit down at the table and buy the cost? Do you think we should have both systems forever, and really make those companies pay even more money to broadcast forever in multiple systems.
My comments about HDTV were not obviously not understood. My point was that because the FCC never selected a standard to HDTV, it essentially died due to neglect. We have no HDTV, because the market could never agree about it. Each company wanted us to use their standard, and no one said (this is the FCC's job) what the standard for the US was going to be. They delegated their job to the marketplace, which never reached a consensus. The FCC seems intent on actually doing something for a change, like setting a standard (as it should do), which it has seldom afforded much effort to in the past.
I don't like being told I have to do something like this any more than the next person. Having said that, this is probably a good thing.
The FCC has a long history of letting "the market" decide standards, and implementation schedules. The result is the current mess we have, with several competing (and incompatible) PCS phone standards (TDMA, GSM, CDMA), and digital or HD TV taking decades to develope a standard. As much as I hate to say it, if the FCC finally managed to decide to actually dictate something to the market, it may be a good thing.
We don't have HDTV now because the FCC decided to allow the market to set the standard. Since there wasn't a uniform standard, no broadcaster would invest in the equipment needed to broadcast a signal, and no set maker could market their sets without supporting several different "standards".
Sometimes the market needs an appropriately placed foot to get things in motion. This is probably one of those times. The part that shocks me is seeing the FCC take an active step in the process.
The bucket brigade isn't too bad a viewpoint.
In the clocked system, you have a drummer beating out a pace for the brigade to pass the buckets. It has to be slow enough that the slowest person can handle the pace.
In the asynchronous system, everyone just does it as fast as they can, and a bucket gets to the other end faster, since they are all faster than the clock would let them be.
You wouldn't need to parallel operations to get more throughput than the clocked equivalent. In your example, replacing the the slowest person with two people who could only pass a half bucket (splitting the load) wouldn't make things faster, just more complicated.
The big issue in going asynchronous is scale. It's easy to get small logic blocks to work properly, but there are timing issues that exist when building something complex like a processor, that are very difficult to address.
The logic inside of standard clocked logic is asynchronous, but the clock is used to make sure you look at the result only when it is known to be valid. The clock rate is limited by how long it takes to assure the logic state to be stable.
The timing and scaling issues exist even with clocked logic, which is why it took so long to make high clock rate motherboards. The data transfers on a modern motherboard are happening at well above the frequency of the FM radio band (tops out at around 108 Mhz), which makes the physical design of the board very interesting. You need to make sure that signals travel the same distance if they are supposed to be evaluated together, like the address or data buss.
The change to asynchronous logic means you have to change the way you design your logic, change all of your CAD software you use to design the chips, and change all of your automated test equipment you use to certify which chips are good. This is a massive conversion for the chip industry, taking a great deal of time, and a great deal of money.
Do you have a history of shooting people? If you did, I would worry about that possibility, otherwise I'd probably discount it. Microsoft does have a history of crushing competition. If they see OpenGL as competition (like with DirectX), then I will reserve the right to worry about what they could do, given their past actions. That is why people worry, not because they hate Microsoft (ok, some people do for that reason), but because of the history Microsoft has of doing very nasty things to the competition. Finish this saying: "DOS isn't done until..." if you can, and say Microsoft couldn't try killing OpenGL with their patents.
This isn't just about Microsoft, look at the whole W3C issue over patents. There are attempts by corporations to make the maximum short term profits from technology, without consideration for the long term effects of those actions. OpenGL can remain open, even if Microsoft causes problems. An alternative, non-infringing implementation, can be made to keep the standard open. All it takes is time and money, which tends to give Microsoft the advantage, since they have the most money.
Yes, Red Hat and Mandrake are FOR PROFIT companies, and they will do things to attract people to buy their distribution. Duh! Many companies that "want to make money" are paying for people to contribute to Linux development full time. You make it sound like following a standard (anyone heard of LSB) means you must be part of United Linux.
United Linux is an attempt by several companies that don't have a large portion of the market to build name recognition for themselves, and to make more money. Don't make it sound like they are out to save the world, they want more people to buy their brands of Linux, just like Red Hat and Mandrake do.
I know that you can set up IIS to run as another user. People don't generally do that. I don't know why it is, but the defaults are often used with IIS, in spite of documentation that says you should change it.
I suspect that *nix admins, because they have to be more motivated to learn how to set up things without all of the pretty graphical tools, are more inclined to actually do the things needed to secure their systems. Just speculation.
Like I said, IIS is targeted because there is often a good return on the cracker's time, they get to own another computer system. Crackers (especially the script kiddie variety) want an easy mark to attack.
The difference is that Microsoft IIS runs as a service, and any exploit that lets you run code lets you have full access to the machine.
Running Apache as a process with relatively few permissions (certainly not as root) means that the most that can happen is a relatively minor problem, rather than having someone control your server.
The problem with IIS is not just the code being buggy, since any code could have a problem, it is the fact that any compromise of that code gives the IIS permissions (basically root or administrator) to the person breaking into your machine.
This is what doesn't happen on a well run *nix box, but does happen under Windows/IIS. The fact that the exploit allows full control of your machine is why the IIS exploits are so serious. Apache has not has a root exploit found in a long time, making problems with Apache less serious, however often they may be found.
The reason crackers go after IIS is how much control they get of the machine, making it much more worth their efforts.
Correction, your 486 firewall-box runs GNU/Linux and your Sharp Zaurus runs GNU/Linux as well. Now did that sentence convey more information than yours did?
Saying GNU/Linux conveys no additional information to someone who doesn't know about GNU/FSF/RMS (the very people RMS wants to get the word out to), and makes it a lot more difficult to pronounce. If you know about GNU/FSF/RMS, then you don't need to be reminded about it all the time.
I don't think RMS is asking this to glorify himself, but to spread the word about Free Software. I do feel that this is not the way to accomplish that goal, and seems to alienate many of the people who have been contributing to the Free Software cause for years, because they dislike anyone, even RMS, telling them what to do.
So they get to charge us for a potential install of their software? Doesn't that seem just a little WRONG to you? By that argument we should all be in prison, since we are all potential murderers. Most products are billed by actual use (see water meters, power meters, gas pumps, most software licenses, ...), not by potential use. Why is it that Microsoft is "special", and you can understand why they need to do this, when other companies seem to survive financially by charging for the amount of service (or product) they actually deliver?
My car can go above the speed limit, so I need to pay the city a speeding fine for owning it? Isn't that saying the same thing, potential use = actual use? This kind of license agreement may be legal (although that seems a little doubtful), but it is certainly something that is far from acceptable.
You shouldn't blame Makdrake for your own errors. urpmi doesn't stop working unless you installed something that broke it, probably either some cooker packages, or some non-Mandrake software.
As far as installing a PCI card, the system checks for new hardware each time you boot, and if it doesn't know about that hardware, you may need to get a driver for it. Don't be so dramatic about it. Did you check to see if the card was on their supported hardware list?
Most people have a good experience with Mandrake, and I'm guessing that your bad experiences are your own fault.