This is a clear example of a problem that can never exist in opensource projects. You cannot have this kind of "design decisions" if your code is open...
Cisco is also a monopoly, and unlike microsoft has not been convicted as far as i know for illegal practises.
You definetely shouldn't underestimate cisco, and you propably shouldn't overestimate the current ability of microsoft to threaten major partners.
And, just to make a point, if MS did "roll their own software just like it for free" which one would work better with cisco routers?
Linux was "easier to maintain", "less prone to infection" and had "reliability" long before IBM's contributions. It was partly those virtues, that actually convinced IBM (and many others) to join the team.
It does. Without root privileges a worm cannot hide itself. And naturally it would need at least *some* special account to spread, unless you are talking about a worm that does dictionary attacts to telnet servers or something.
Even if it is theoretically possible for a worm to do that, it's highly unlikely, since that would eliminate the possibility for the worm to multiply itself. So, don't lose your sleep, the possibility to be the first (and only) victim of this worm that does not spread is about 1/6000000000:)
You are not bound by the requirements of course. Otherwise you wouldn't be allowed to run winXP in anything less than a pentium 3 with 128 MB RAM or whatever the requirements are.. Imagine if you weren't allowed to download this critical memory leak update if you machine only has 96 MB of RAM;)
Many corporations nowadays find that they can live without windows, but they still need MS office.
If MS understood that and provided an office version for linux, people wouldn't need to run it under wine. If MS did not have monopoly power in both operating systems and office suites, they would be forced to provide a linux version of office.
They do though, so people have to work with what they've got.
And to answer your question, all people who migrate from a legitimate setup of windows+MSoffice to linux+MSoffice have a "legitimate copy of Office".
as mentioned in more than one posts, it is propably (legally) ok to stop wine users from downloading windows patches. If they want they can even deny downloading of "free apps".
But the people that bought an application like MS office SHOULD be allowed to download patches. They can forbid running MS office in any other operating system, but they are not. They hapilly sell office to crossover users. They should allow them to get the patches too.
Let me just say that i find your language extremely professional for this forum, you might want to ease a little bit. I mean, even Martin Taylor was more relaxed;)
I stick with my opinion though. When MS applies for a patent in US, supposebly it has to (publicly) provide the patent office whith a description and a working example of the idea. It is essential to give the idea to the public if you want to be granted this type of monopoly.
On the other hand, shutting down the department in denmark would actually force the developers to go work for someone else.
So there you go. Information is freely available to the public and you lost your experts. How is moving the jobs to US helping then?
If you want to "protect your investment" under US patent law only, you do business in US. The laws in denmark did not change after MS acquired navision...
>There may be legitimate business reasons to develop >intellectual property in those places where it is >better protected
No, there aren't. Many writers choose to work in a carribean island. This has absolutely no effect on the way their books are protected in US (by US law) or EU (by EU directives or national law). MS can write the software in a spaceship travelling to Jupiter, it has no effect in the way it is protected in any individual region with a code of law.
Applying for patents in a region, has nothing to do with where the software house is physically located (or the nationality of the programmers). While his concern for software patents in europe is legitimate, his proposed "solution" to take away the jobs is irrelevant, and the whole thing is definetely an extortion which should be answered accordingly.
Al Capone was not the "only one person in the entire universe" to do criminal stuff. Actually in his days a *LOT* of people did it. This doesn't make it right and whoever pulls stuff like that deserves to be punished.
>Stop putting all evil on Bill's shoulders.
Oh, come on, he personally travels around, threatening people, and this should not be on his shoulders, because... ?!?!?
"the majority of people doing programming" cannot setup an editor to do what they want?
We are not talking about average joe, these people are *programmers*. Maybe you wouldn't expect all of them to be able to implement an editor from scratch, but managing a simple vimrc file?
That said, i have yet to see a preconfigured "easy-to-use" editor that can match the functionality of good old vim. My question is "Are there any programming tools that offer the functionality of traditional editors in a more userfriendly package?"
>having 1/10th of a TRILLION dollars in the bank >before the large dividend
actually this was the first sign. They had 80 billions in the bank, why didn't they throw 20 billions in R&D to get loghorn out in time ??? Instead they lost 4+ billion trying to get a piece of the home entertainment market with xbox.
The stock is stagnant because the whole company is. There is absolutely nothing exciting going on in redmond these days: When linux started gaining market share their reaction was to double their marketing budget, as "their message wasn't coming through". Not R&D budget, *marketing*. And it's getting worse. They are still cutting R&D expenses, while loghorn is 2 years late. A company that is run by accountants IS rottent in IT industry.
>Your example doesn't demonstrate that software >patents are evil. It demonstrates that companies >don't like paying for things.
It demonstrates that the particular patent damaged the industry and the consumers. Yes, companies don't like paying for things, nobody does. Apparently the "alternative" to paying for this patent was *not* to use encryption.
>How can you blame RSA, Inc. for the absence of >RSA encryption in today's devices? The patent >expired in 2000.
Just as i can blame win95 for security problems in WinXP.
But this is the point: for *software* the current patent system is *worse* than going back to keeping everything secret: It is practically impossible to create a computer program that actually does something useful without infringing a number of patents. It would take years to read through all the software patents issued to determine which ones you might infringe. It is impossible to license all of them.
So you might actually have a good idea, but there is no lawful way to bring it to the market. If patents didn't exist, you propably would need to reinvent the wheel, but at least you could build something with wheels. But now, not only the wheels are patented, but their forward movement is patented, their horizontal movement is patented, their perimeter is patented, their "going over 30mph" is patented, their "apply force to stop before obstacle", their "not touching the ground", their "turning oval after a hit", their "applying force to turn", their "running backwards"... Nowadays you cannot use a wheel *even* if you reinvent it.
>I see software patents as a good thing for the >future of software. Not the software industry, and >not the legal industry, and not even the David >Stein industry.
Correct me if i am wrong, but i feel that patents do not work that way. When someone gets a software patent, it actually gives away something that could otherwise be a trade secret: "i do not hide my method, but you have to pay me for it".
You could keep it secret instead and *everyone* else would have to come up with a different way to do it. In a ideal world, when you file for a patent you actually *want* people to use your way (and you price it accordingly: so that it is cheaper for everyone else to buy it than to search for an alternative).
What you describe is an abuse of the system: Use the patents simply to *forbid* (practically) the use of the technology, but thats ok, as people will have motivation to do more researh. This only makes sense if you have a reason to forbid the use of the technology to others, i can only thing of one such reason: monopoly power. You mention RSA in a previous post, i'd like to point out that no new methods were invented during the existence of that patent, partly because it was broad enough to cover 99% of most alternatives (so researchers were in danger of litigation when they worked in that area), and partly because it was cheaper for companies to use the RSA algorithm than do research.
>"How can a small startup ever get venture capital >if Microsoft can eat their technology for lunch"?... >"Microsoft's current, zealous approach to >software patents stems directly from such >decisions."
Excactly. by that time it will be impossible for any software company to create anything that doesn't violate a few of MS's patents (MS is an example, substitute with any major company). So all those little companies will be forced to choose: keep making the software and don't sue MS over -possible- misuse of their patents, or sue MS and stop making software. Both ways the patent system has failed.
The RSA patent should never have been accepted, for many reasons (prior act, broad claims, plain mathematics, to name a few) , and i fail to understand your argument that the patent itself helped the industry.
You can read about the patent and its problems in this nice article in cyberlaw . I would like to add a few things though, regarding the industry reaction to the patent.
In '95 computers were already fast enough to handle secure-only communications, but the existence of this particular patent was a big problem for most of the new and small web companies (and users). And make no mistake, RSA really enforced this patent, they didn't play Mr. nice guy, if that is what you thought. So the majority of web sites, did not serve encrypted pages, the majority of emails are not encrypted (even today), and most of electronic devices have no such support.
To be fair, the patent did create a new market: a few companies selling "security" profited from this. RSA too. The industry as a whole didn't.
Internet naturally did not die from this patent (as the patent was not broad enough to cover non-secure communication as well) , but online security definetely took a major hit.
The numbers are real alright but they do say something else:
I can't find the actual data of this quarter, but here are the data for the last four quarters. Notice that the quarter ending 12/31/2003 is the one used for comparison by the article.
-quarter ending 12/31/2003: revenue $10,153,000, net income $1,549,000
-quarter ending 9/30/2004: revenue $9,189,000, net income $2,528,000.
How can they have a billion less in revenue and a billion more in income? The answer is also there: they spent $1.4 BILLION *less* in Research and Development.
Microsoft is of course still in a dominant position, and their software still sells like no other piece of software ever did, but the real advancement from last year is a +6% in revenue (which is propably *less* than the overall market growth).
Re:How lightweight, if it requires gtk+?
on
Xfce 4.2.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
gtk+ is not that big - maybe 5-6 mb. Besides, as a *common* library, it will ultimately *save* space, if you are planning to actually install graphical applications.
i checked, and apparently there are some third-party solutions for windows diskless booting. That microsoft link though, only talks about booting winxp embedded, for diskless gadgets, or for firing up a terminal server client (hardly usefull for a cluster where you need the clients' processor to do the math).
The parent was talking about diskless boot, thats when you have a machine with a nic and memory, -no hdd, no floppy, no flash-, and you download *everything* from the server.
My question was whether that was possible with some version of windows. apparently it is for winxp embeded sp1 as i see in his link:
>.. Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 1 >introduced the Remote Boot feature...
still his point is that it doesn't make sense, although they *can* be used for clustering, they are simply not the right tool for the job. This is not simply my opinion, the market has spoken on this:
They cost money, they provide no advantages over linux or bsd, and they would propably need much more human hours for their administration.
besides, as i understand the article, this is mostly a development thingie, and some sort of central application management service. And with a possible* release date somewhere in the end of the decade it just doesn't seem important. I don't understand why this story was even posted...
*possible as in "maybe it will be released" not as in "maybe in the end of the decade"
Slashdot Mirror
This is a clear example of a problem that can never exist in opensource projects.
You cannot have this kind of "design decisions" if your code is open...
Even so, everyone will be able to read everything.
IMHO you still have a big problem.
Cisco is also a monopoly, and unlike microsoft has not been convicted as far as i know for illegal practises.
You definetely shouldn't underestimate cisco, and you propably shouldn't overestimate the current ability of microsoft to threaten major partners.
And, just to make a point, if MS did "roll their own software just like it for free" which one would work better with cisco routers?
Linux was "easier to maintain", "less prone to infection" and had "reliability" long before IBM's contributions.
It was partly those virtues, that actually convinced IBM (and many others) to join the team.
>Also it doesn't matter if it's not run as root
It does.
Without root privileges a worm cannot hide itself.
And naturally it would need at least *some* special account to spread, unless you are talking about a worm that does dictionary attacts to telnet servers or something.
Even if it is theoretically possible for a worm to do that, it's highly unlikely, since that would eliminate the possibility for the worm to multiply itself. :)
So, don't lose your sleep, the possibility to be the first (and only) victim of this worm that does not spread is about 1/6000000000
You are not bound by the requirements of course. Otherwise you wouldn't be allowed to run winXP in anything less than a pentium 3 with 128 MB RAM or whatever the requirements are.. ;)
Imagine if you weren't allowed to download this critical memory leak update if you machine only has 96 MB of RAM
Is this EULA dated before or after the antitrust lawsuit?
Many corporations nowadays find that they can live without windows, but they still need MS office.
If MS understood that and provided an office version for linux, people wouldn't need to run it under wine. If MS did not have monopoly power in both operating systems and office suites, they would be forced to provide a linux version of office.
They do though, so people have to work with what they've got.
And to answer your question, all people who migrate from a legitimate setup of windows+MSoffice to linux+MSoffice have a "legitimate copy of Office".
as mentioned in more than one posts, it is propably (legally) ok to stop wine users from downloading windows patches. If they want they can even deny downloading of "free apps".
But the people that bought an application like MS office SHOULD be allowed to download patches. They can forbid running MS office in any other operating system, but they are not. They hapilly sell office to crossover users. They should allow them to get the patches too.
Let me just say that i find your language extremely professional for this forum, you might want to ease a little bit. I mean, even Martin Taylor was more relaxed ;)
I stick with my opinion though. When MS applies for a patent in US, supposebly it has to (publicly) provide the patent office whith a description and a working example of the idea.
It is essential to give the idea to the public if you want to be granted this type of monopoly.
On the other hand, shutting down the department in denmark would actually force the developers to go work for someone else.
So there you go. Information is freely available to the public and you lost your experts. How is moving the jobs to US helping then?
If you want to "protect your investment" under US patent law only, you do business in US.
The laws in denmark did not change after MS acquired navision...
>There may be legitimate business reasons to develop
>intellectual property in those places where it is
>better protected
No, there aren't.
Many writers choose to work in a carribean island. This has absolutely no effect on the way their books are protected in US (by US law) or EU (by EU directives or national law).
MS can write the software in a spaceship travelling to Jupiter, it has no effect in the way it is protected in any individual region with a code of law.
Applying for patents in a region, has nothing to do with where the software house is physically located (or the nationality of the programmers). While his concern for software patents in europe is legitimate, his proposed "solution" to take away the jobs is irrelevant, and the whole thing is definetely an extortion which should be answered accordingly.
Al Capone was not the "only one person in the entire universe" to do criminal stuff. Actually in his days a *LOT* of people did it. This doesn't make it right and whoever pulls stuff like that deserves to be punished.
... ?!?!?
>Stop putting all evil on Bill's shoulders.
Oh, come on, he personally travels around, threatening people, and this should not be on his shoulders, because
"the majority of people doing programming" cannot setup an editor to do what they want?
We are not talking about average joe, these people are *programmers*. Maybe you wouldn't expect all of them to be able to implement an editor from scratch, but managing a simple vimrc file?
That said, i have yet to see a preconfigured "easy-to-use" editor that can match the functionality of good old vim. My question is "Are there any programming tools that offer the functionality of traditional editors in a more userfriendly package?"
>having 1/10th of a TRILLION dollars in the bank
>before the large dividend
actually this was the first sign. They had 80 billions in the bank, why didn't they throw 20 billions in R&D to get loghorn out in time ??? Instead they lost 4+ billion trying to get a piece of the home entertainment market with xbox.
The stock is stagnant because the whole company is. There is absolutely nothing exciting going on in redmond these days: When linux started gaining market share their reaction was to double their marketing budget, as "their message wasn't coming through". Not R&D budget, *marketing*. And it's getting worse. They are still cutting R&D expenses, while loghorn is 2 years late. A company that is run by accountants IS rottent in IT industry.
>Your example doesn't demonstrate that software
>patents are evil. It demonstrates that companies >don't like paying for things.
It demonstrates that the particular patent damaged the industry and the consumers. Yes, companies don't like paying for things, nobody does. Apparently the "alternative" to paying for this patent was *not* to use encryption.
>How can you blame RSA, Inc. for the absence of
>RSA encryption in today's devices? The patent
>expired in 2000.
Just as i can blame win95 for security problems in WinXP.
But this is the point: for *software* the current patent system is *worse* than going back to keeping everything secret:
...
It is practically impossible to create a computer program that actually does something useful without infringing a number of patents. It would take years to read through all the software patents issued to determine which ones you might infringe. It is impossible to license all of them.
So you might actually have a good idea, but there is no lawful way to bring it to the market. If patents didn't exist, you propably would need to reinvent the wheel, but at least you could build something with wheels. But now, not only the wheels are patented, but their forward movement is patented, their horizontal movement is patented, their perimeter is patented, their "going over 30mph" is patented, their "apply force to stop before obstacle", their "not touching the ground", their "turning oval after a hit", their "applying force to turn", their "running backwards"
Nowadays you cannot use a wheel *even* if you reinvent it.
>I see software patents as a good thing for the
...
>future of software. Not the software industry, and
>not the legal industry, and not even the David
>Stein industry.
Correct me if i am wrong, but i feel that patents do not work that way. When someone gets a software patent, it actually gives away something that could otherwise be a trade secret: "i do not hide my method, but you have to pay me for it".
You could keep it secret instead and *everyone* else would have to come up with a different way to do it. In a ideal world, when you file for a patent you actually *want* people to use your way (and you price it accordingly: so that it is cheaper for everyone else to buy it than to search for an alternative).
What you describe is an abuse of the system: Use the patents simply to *forbid* (practically) the use of the technology, but thats ok, as people will have motivation to do more researh. This only makes sense if you have a reason to forbid the use of the technology to others, i can only thing of one such reason: monopoly power.
You mention RSA in a previous post, i'd like to point out that no new methods were invented during the existence of that patent, partly because it was broad enough to cover 99% of most alternatives (so researchers were in danger of litigation when they worked in that area), and partly because it was cheaper for companies to use the RSA algorithm than do research.
>"How can a small startup ever get venture capital >if Microsoft can eat their technology for lunch"?
>"Microsoft's current, zealous approach to
>software patents stems directly from such
>decisions."
Excactly. by that time it will be impossible for any software company to create anything that doesn't violate a few of MS's patents (MS is an example, substitute with any major company).
So all those little companies will be forced to choose: keep making the software and don't sue MS over -possible- misuse of their patents, or sue MS and stop making software. Both ways the patent system has failed.
The RSA patent should never have been accepted, for many reasons (prior act, broad claims, plain mathematics, to name a few) , and i fail to understand your argument that the patent itself helped the industry.
You can read about the patent and its problems in this nice article in cyberlaw . I would like to add a few things though, regarding the industry reaction to the patent.
In '95 computers were already fast enough to handle secure-only communications, but the existence of this particular patent was a big problem for most of the new and small web companies (and users). And make no mistake, RSA really enforced this patent, they didn't play Mr. nice guy, if that is what you thought. So the majority of web sites, did not serve encrypted pages, the majority of emails are not encrypted (even today), and most of electronic devices have no such support.
To be fair, the patent did create a new market: a few companies selling "security" profited from this. RSA too. The industry as a whole didn't.
Internet naturally did not die from this patent (as the patent was not broad enough to cover non-secure communication as well) , but online security definetely took a major hit.
The numbers are real alright but they do say something else:
I can't find the actual data of this quarter, but here are the data for the last four quarters. Notice that the quarter ending 12/31/2003 is the one used for comparison by the article.
-quarter ending 12/31/2003:
revenue $10,153,000, net income $1,549,000
-quarter ending 9/30/2004:
revenue $9,189,000, net income $2,528,000.
How can they have a billion less in revenue and a billion more in income?
The answer is also there: they spent $1.4 BILLION *less* in Research and Development.
Microsoft is of course still in a dominant position, and their software still sells like no other piece of software ever did, but the real advancement from last year is a +6% in revenue (which is propably *less* than the overall market growth).
gtk+ is not that big - maybe 5-6 mb.
Besides, as a *common* library, it will ultimately *save* space, if you are planning to actually install graphical applications.
i checked, and apparently there are some third-party solutions for windows diskless booting.
That microsoft link though, only talks about booting winxp embedded, for diskless gadgets, or for firing up a terminal server client (hardly usefull for a cluster where you need the clients' processor to do the math).
The parent was talking about diskless boot, thats when you have a machine with a nic and memory, -no hdd, no floppy, no flash-, and you download *everything* from the server.
...
My question was whether that was possible with some version of windows. apparently it is for winxp embeded sp1 as i see in his link:
>.. Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 1 >introduced the Remote Boot feature
still his point is that it doesn't make sense, although they *can* be used for clustering, they are simply not the right tool for the job. This is not simply my opinion, the market has spoken on this:
...
They cost money, they provide no advantages over linux or bsd, and they would propably need much more human hours for their administration.
besides, as i understand the article, this is mostly a development thingie, and some sort of central application management service. And with a possible* release date somewhere in the end of the decade it just doesn't seem important. I don't understand why this story was even posted
*possible as in "maybe it will be released" not as in "maybe in the end of the decade"