You realize that, if MS is split for example into a "customer" and a "professional" section (with Win98 being in the "customer" and NT being in the "professional" section), MS would benefit from that solution very well ?
Linux and many other OSes suffer very hard from neither drivers nor support nor documentation being readily available (that is, in printed form when you buy your computer), since there simply is no "central" place for drivers, support or documentation. This burden of "availability" would lie with the single, preinstalled distribution, which would have to offer (solid) drivers, support and (solid, printed, native-language) documentation - three things which are not easily obtained in the Linux world and which drive up the "free" cost of preinstalled Linux (or we get the phenomenon of illegal copies of Linux (support)).
Your requirements are an interesting proposal, since it would open up the interoperability between every software, but I guess that this wouldn't work very well, since the Microsoft Office file formats are more or less documented (they are OLE streams of objects streamed to disk), but this dosen't make loading something from such a file easier, since you don't have the code to the OLE object stored. So a solution like this would also mean that all code must be opened, something which I don't think would be beneficial to commercial programming.
The one thing I've been wondering all through this trial is, how can it be possible for a free man in a free country to be disowned by the state (except for taxes) ?
If MS is indeed split up, it will have either no consequences, as Bill Gates still holds the majority of shares (and rightfully so, since he owns the majority of MS currently), or the state will have to restrict Mr. Gates rights to his fortune, which is what happened during various communist revolutions, or the state will have to buy out Mr. Gates, which is propably the best thing that could ever happen to Mr. Gates, since all his wealth is currently paper money depending on the stock price of MSFT, but when he gets bought out, he will have "real" money (real as far as these green paper things can be...).
If you take a look back at other famous split ups, neither of them worked in the past. Neither the IG Farben split up in Germany (into Hoechst, BASF and Bayer) weakened the IG Farben (they all are now bigger players), nor the Seven Sisters split up of Oil worked.
IMO, the split up will not change the world of software in any way, since Bill Gates (and the other people who hold the stock in MSFT) will see that the BabyBills work together.
To be honest, the Unix security model is almost as weak as the Windows security model in this aspect. If I ever write "my" virus, it would either infect user-writable executables or simply ~/.bashrc to make sure it gets started. This is a simple solution to make the virus resident even after a restart. Then of course somehow the virus has to get root access, but that is OS specific, it could either be done like the Internet Worm by manually cracking the passwords (the virus has time) or simply by mail-spreading itself. A "click here to see my new Linux demo (attached)" is still a good way to attract new breeding grounds...
I understand the projects maintainers objections to a patch that is differently/stronger licensed than the whole project. If a project is under a non-restrictive license (== BSD, Artistic/Perl), it is impossible to accept any patches into it that do not have the same (or weaker) licenses on it without weakening the original goals the author had when choosing the license for the program.
It wonders me that people are not willing to respect the authors choice of license and make the project coordination harder by supplying patches that are licensed incompatibly(sp?) to the program itself - but this seems to stem more from lack of understanding the different licenses(== blind faith in one of the licenses).
I will never use the GPL, because IMHolyO, the GPL takes freedom away from the people.
Suppose the case that I wrote some piece of software. I didn't write it for money or I already got paid for writing that software. I am proud of what this piece of software does and I want other people to enjoy and use this piece of software. I don't care if they make money (or even more money than I did) from it. So why should I put it under the GPL, when there are the Artistic License and/or BSD license, that do exactly allow that - everybody can use this code for whatever it is usable for, in the small exchange of giving credit where credit is due.
Well - Perl can be quite useful - just think of the "Perl Power Tools|Toys" - a rewrite of many GNU tools in Perl. I did write an (albeit simple) HTTP server in Perl (single client since I don't have fork() on NT yet) - I guess that maybe a distribution of a kernel, Perl and a huge batch of Perl programs could make a real "Linux" (under the GPL for the kernel and under the artistic license for the rest) instead of that "GNU/Linux" we all have to put up with currently:) Perl can be quite fast too since it compiles into bytecode... Amazing what people do in Perl, "just because they can":)
I found the situation of disassemblers for the X86 relatively bleak, since there is only one tool that suits my needs (offline disassembly). Every development tool contains a debugger that also does some disassembly of the current instruction stream, but they all lack the ability to define data structures.
I did find "the one true" (at least to me) disassembly tool, IDA by http://www.datarescue.com. It is an interactive disassembler that does background disassembly and lets the user identify additional code and data sections (and correct the mistakes:) ). IDA supports a whole slew of input files (DLL, VxD, NLM, COM...) for a lot of processors (Z80, x86, Java VM,...). It has working versions for OS/2, DOS, Win32...
There are only two things about it - it is payware and no source code is available. And it is virtually impossible to find warezed copies on the net. I paid for my copy and I'm still happy with IDA (in fact, I was happy with the trial version and found it well worth the money to upgrade). The copy protection seems also to be relatively hard, at least from what I found (or better, didn't find) by looking at it.
I have read Starship Troopers. Heinlein originally designed it to be one in a series of "youth education" stories (along with the stories of juvenile delinquents working on an asteroid etc.) but the theme proved unsuitable (at least his editors did think so).
Personally, I don't see Heinlein as "racism proof" as you would like to picture him. I agree that the Lazarus universe and Stranger in a Strange Land are free of this, but if you look at "The Fifth Column" (a story where the chinese take over the world, and get wiped out by a genetical weapon (the death ray that only wipes out the bad chinese)), you'll find very strong racism there (and some unreflected reasoning too - you don't free people with a slave mind just by removing all oppression).
For the Alien, Aliens and Alien III comparisions - Alien and Aliens are simply two different movies revolving basically around the same theme - How mankind is the greatest beast of them all.
Alien is a psycho thriller. You don't exactly know what the alien is up to, and you don't find out until the end.
Aliens is an action movie by James Camerone. It centers around the action.
I never liked Alien III for its unrealistic computer graphics and lame (and old) story and even worse ending.
Alien IV resurrects some of the virtues of Alien and Aliens and has at least again a good portrait of all participating (and dying) characters, so that you at least care about them when they die...
BTW - anyone have the directors cut of Aliens for sale ?
Here's the english translation for the language impaired (if you don't know at least two (foreign) languages, you can't be considered a full human) :
Personally, I'm mad about this : Everyone in the world knows that (the prime meridian) is at Greenwich, and if the french want to commit some political stupidities, let them. Think back of the Academie Francais(e) some years ago, with all these stories about the "english" vocabulary and the "anglophone" (==english speaking) music on the radio. Did this work ? I don't think so. This is always a question of nationalism with the french people. They don't accept that they aren't in the center of the universe. Too bad for them.
There are two things that you might want to consider.
First, Microsoft has an organized force in customer/public relations, PR people that go out and evangelize, distribute and install their software as their way of earning life. They will come on call - which is something that Linux will never have (before you say "I would do that", imagine installing 500+ machines).
Second, because Linux is a "grass-roots" movement, Linux must be careful about the people its movement consists off. Even though I see the nice things about Linux, there is still the choice of with whom I want to be associated. And I do not want to be associated with anyone fighting a holy war. Even if Linux "wins" (whatever winning in this context might be) and is "the right OS for everyone", I don't want to be counted among such a childish group of users.
Thinking about the good ol' times, I have yet to see an NT user with the same attitude as a Linux user, running around and trying to evangelize everyone towards it. On the other side, my experience with NT users comes from time when NT was not the heal-everything OS, but when NT didn't even have DirectX, one selected hardware by first asking if it had drivers for NT and one was still wondering if moving to NT 4 was really a good idea stability wise.
The more I think about this (hey, I even slept over it before making this comment), this simply seems like the standard IBM/Microsoft FUD tactic, that RMS is employing:
There is a market, where demand is, but where the FSF can not yet be.
Other competitors (== publishers) maybe also see this market and threaten to occupy this market with their own products.
So the FSF announces a product, that will blow out all competition (they say). The product is fitted with unbelievable specs, but it will hold all potential buyers from commiting to the other products, until they have seen the FSF product.
Thus, the other competitors products are not selling well or even not selling at all, because of vaporware by the FSF, and the FSF gains time to occupy this market as well.
Before you think that this is far fetched and another mindless attack against RMS, replace FSF by Microsoft (or by IBM, depending on your age) and think how you would then react to such behaviour. -max
For all those who complain about it being in PDF - Ghostscript can view/print PDF (Ghostscript can even print PDFs that you are not allowed to print by the publisher).
You can find Ghostscript on the web, there are versions for almost every OS out there (quite unlike the Acrobat Reader)
Slashdot Mirror
You realize that, if MS is split for example into a "customer" and a "professional" section (with Win98 being in the "customer" and NT being in the "professional" section), MS would benefit from that solution very well ?
Linux and many other OSes suffer very hard from neither drivers nor support nor documentation being readily available (that is, in printed form when you buy your computer), since there simply is no "central" place for drivers, support or documentation. This burden of "availability" would lie with the single, preinstalled distribution, which would have to offer (solid) drivers, support and (solid, printed, native-language) documentation - three things which are not easily obtained in the Linux world and which drive up the "free" cost of preinstalled Linux (or we get the phenomenon of illegal copies of Linux (support)).
Your requirements are an interesting proposal, since it would open up the interoperability between every software, but I guess that this wouldn't work very well, since the Microsoft Office file formats are more or less documented (they are OLE streams of objects streamed to disk), but this dosen't make loading something from such a file easier, since you don't have the code to the OLE object stored. So a solution like this would also mean that all code must be opened, something which I don't think would be beneficial to commercial programming.
-max
The one thing I've been wondering all through this trial is, how can it be possible for a free man in a free country to be disowned by the state (except for taxes) ?
...).
If MS is indeed split up, it will have either no consequences, as Bill Gates still holds the majority of shares (and rightfully so, since he owns the majority of MS currently), or the state will have to restrict Mr. Gates rights to his fortune, which is what happened during various communist revolutions, or the state will have to buy out Mr. Gates, which is propably the best thing that could ever happen to Mr. Gates, since all his wealth is currently paper money depending on the stock price of MSFT, but when he gets bought out, he will have "real" money (real as far as these green paper things can be
If you take a look back at other famous split ups, neither of them worked in the past. Neither the IG Farben split up in Germany (into Hoechst, BASF and Bayer) weakened the IG Farben (they all are now bigger players), nor the Seven Sisters split up of Oil worked.
IMO, the split up will not change the world of software in any way, since Bill Gates (and the other people who hold the stock in MSFT) will see that the BabyBills work together.
-max
To be honest, the Unix security model is almost as weak as the Windows security model in this aspect. If I ever write "my" virus, it would either infect user-writable executables or simply ~/.bashrc to make sure it gets started. This is a simple solution to make the virus resident even after a restart. Then of course somehow the virus has to get root access, but that is OS specific, it could either be done like the Internet Worm by manually cracking the passwords (the virus has time) or simply by mail-spreading itself. A "click here to see my new Linux demo (attached)" is still a good way to attract new breeding grounds...
I understand the projects maintainers objections to a patch that is differently/stronger licensed than the whole project. If a project is under a non-restrictive license (== BSD, Artistic/Perl), it is impossible to accept any patches into it that do not have the same (or weaker) licenses on it without weakening the original goals the author had when choosing the license for the program.
It wonders me that people are not willing to respect the authors choice of license and make the project coordination harder by supplying patches that are licensed incompatibly(sp?) to the program itself - but this seems to stem more from lack of understanding the different licenses(== blind faith in one of the licenses).
-max
I will never use the GPL, because IMHolyO, the GPL takes freedom away from the people.
Suppose the case that I wrote some piece of software. I didn't write it for money or I already got paid for writing that software. I am proud of what this piece of software does and I want other people to enjoy and use this piece of software. I don't care if they make money (or even more money than I did) from it. So why should I put it under the GPL, when there are the Artistic License and/or BSD license, that do exactly allow that - everybody can use this code for whatever it is usable for, in the small exchange of giving credit where credit is due.
Just another point of view,
-max
Well - Perl can be quite useful - just think of the "Perl Power Tools|Toys" - a rewrite of many GNU tools in Perl. :) ... Amazing what people do in Perl, "just because they can" :)
I did write an (albeit simple) HTTP server in Perl (single client since I don't have fork() on NT yet) - I guess that maybe a distribution of a kernel, Perl and a huge batch of Perl programs could make a real "Linux" (under the GPL for the kernel and under the artistic license for the rest) instead of that "GNU/Linux" we all have to put up with currently
Perl can be quite fast too since it compiles into bytecode
-max
I found the situation of disassemblers for the X86 relatively bleak, since there is only one tool that suits my needs (offline disassembly). Every development tool contains a debugger that also does some disassembly of the current instruction stream, but they all lack the ability to define data structures.
:) ). IDA supports a whole slew of input files (DLL, VxD, NLM, COM ...) for a lot of processors (Z80, x86, Java VM, ...). It has working versions for OS/2, DOS, Win32 ...
I did find "the one true" (at least to me) disassembly tool, IDA by http://www.datarescue.com. It is an interactive disassembler that does background disassembly and lets the user identify additional code and data sections (and correct the mistakes
There are only two things about it - it is payware and no source code is available. And it is virtually impossible to find warezed copies on the net. I paid for my copy and I'm still happy with IDA (in fact, I was happy with the trial version and found it well worth the money to upgrade). The copy protection seems also to be relatively hard, at least from what I found (or better, didn't find) by looking at it.
-max
I have read Starship Troopers. Heinlein originally designed it to be one in a series of "youth education" stories (along with the stories of juvenile delinquents working on an asteroid etc.) but the theme proved unsuitable (at least his editors did think so).
Personally, I don't see Heinlein as "racism proof" as you would like to picture him. I agree that the Lazarus universe and Stranger in a Strange Land are free of this, but if you look at "The Fifth Column" (a story where the chinese take over the world, and get wiped out by a genetical weapon (the death ray that only wipes out the bad chinese)), you'll find very strong racism there (and some unreflected reasoning too - you don't free people with a slave mind just by removing all oppression).
For the Alien, Aliens and Alien III comparisions - Alien and Aliens are simply two different movies revolving basically around the same theme - How
mankind is the greatest beast of them all.
Alien is a psycho thriller. You don't exactly know what the alien is up to, and you don't find out until the end.
Aliens is an action movie by James Camerone. It centers around the action.
I never liked Alien III for its unrealistic computer graphics and lame (and old) story and even worse ending.
Alien IV resurrects some of the virtues of Alien and Aliens and has at least again a good portrait of all participating (and dying) characters, so that you at least care about them when they die...
BTW - anyone have the directors cut of Aliens for sale ?
Here's the english translation for the language impaired (if you don't know at least two (foreign) languages, you can't be considered a full human) :
Personally, I'm mad about this :
Everyone in the world knows that (the prime meridian) is at Greenwich, and if the french want to commit some political stupidities, let them. Think back of the Academie Francais(e) some years ago, with all these stories about the "english" vocabulary and the "anglophone" (==english speaking) music on the radio. Did this work ? I don't think so. This is always a question of nationalism with the french people. They don't accept that they aren't in the center of the universe. Too bad for them.
Long live england. God save the queen.
There are two things that you might want to consider.
...
First, Microsoft has an organized force in customer/public relations, PR people that go out and evangelize, distribute and install their software as their way of earning life. They will come on call - which is something that Linux will never have (before you say "I would do that", imagine installing 500+ machines).
Second, because Linux is a "grass-roots" movement, Linux must be careful about the people its movement consists off. Even though I see the nice things about Linux, there is still the choice of with whom I want to be associated. And I do not want to be associated with anyone fighting a holy war. Even if Linux "wins" (whatever winning in this context might be) and is "the right OS for everyone", I don't want to be counted among such a childish group of users.
Thinking about the good ol' times, I have yet to see an NT user with the same attitude as a Linux user, running around and trying to evangelize everyone towards it.
On the other side, my experience with NT users comes from time when NT was not the heal-everything OS, but when NT didn't even have DirectX, one selected hardware by first asking if it had drivers for NT and one was still wondering if moving to NT 4 was really a good idea stability wise.
Those fond times
- There is a market, where demand is, but where the FSF can not yet be.
- Other competitors (== publishers) maybe also see this market and threaten to occupy this market with their own products.
- So the FSF announces a product, that will blow out all competition (they say). The product is fitted with unbelievable specs, but it will hold all potential buyers from commiting to the other products, until they have seen the FSF product.
- Thus, the other competitors products are not selling well or even not selling at all, because of vaporware by the FSF, and the FSF gains time to occupy this market as well.
Before you think that this is far fetched and another mindless attack against RMS, replace FSF by Microsoft (or by IBM, depending on your age) and think how you would then react to such behaviour.-max
For all those who complain about it being in PDF - Ghostscript can view/print PDF (Ghostscript can even print PDFs that you are not allowed to print by the publisher).
You can find Ghostscript on the web, there are versions for almost every OS out there (quite unlike the Acrobat Reader)
-max