I would like to comment on phrases like 'criminal intent' and 'it has been determined that Microsoft broke he law'.
First, let's remember we're not talking about crimes in the same sense that murder, theft or break-and-entry are crimes. This is merely a lawsuit, and the burden of proof is much smaller in lawsuits.
Also, it's a subjective decision. Some particular judges may believe that Microsoft has broken the anti-trust laws -- but others may believe they haven't. One can't prove it definitely one way or the other. It depends on the particular judge(s) making the decision and how he/she believes the law should be interpreted.
If a court of law decides their business practices must change, of course they must comply, but a company can't be expected to know beforehand what constitutes a 'crime' against the anti-trust laws. It depends on the particular case and the particular judge(s) making the decision.
And the trial is not only about Microsoft's intent. Microsoft is judged more harshly just because its size makes it a bigger threat. If Microsoft had been a relatively small company with a relatively small market share, nobody would even have bothered to examine it's business practices. It's not fair to say that Microsoft 'has commited a crime' just because its size makes it a bigger threat -- when a smaller company could have got away with the same thing.
So I feel terms like 'crime' and 'breaking the law' are a little misappropriate here (even though I sometimes use them for lack of better words). I personally believe that Microsoft systematically uses it's dominance in one market (e.g. office suites and desktop operating systems) to gain dominance in others (e.g. web browsers, handheld computers, server operating systems, collaboration software, web servers, etc), but where to draw the line and call it illegal is highly subjective. The only thing you can know for sure, is that once the court reaches a final verdict, it's criminal for Microsoft not to comply. Let's discuss the exact nature of Microsoft's business practices, why they fail sometimes and why they succeed sometimes, why they are good for the customers or bad for the customers, and remember that judges are merely humans trying to make an informed decision -- just like us.
I just remembered that XML and TeX have entirely different purposes.
The purpose of SGML/HTML/XML is to define the CONTENT of a document, i.e. the words and symbols and how they are structured into sentences, paragraphs, lists, etc, and then present the information on different platforms (platform = computer + OS + browser, in this case) in realtime.
The purpose of TeX is to define the exakt visual appearance of a document, and then present it on any flat surface.
HTML has gradually added more and more functionality to control the graphical layout of the page, which eventually resulted in XML, but the main purpose is to present the content, not the form.
So comparing XML and TeX is like comparing apples and oranges. TeX has nothing to do with preserving historical documents in a format that future generations will understand. Actually, SGML, HTML and XML hasn't either. Future generations will probably be much more interested in the pure text than in the graphical layout.
So I think the problem will occur on the character-encoding level, i.e. when future generations are trying to understand EBCDIC, ASCII, ISO-8859, UTF-8, etc.
But honestly, I don't think it will be that hard. They can apply very elementary code breaking techniques to solve the problem.
A sequence of codes, where each code corresponds to a character, is a very simple chifer called a 'substitution chifer'. Any encryption specialist (actually, any college student who has taken a course in cryptology) can use statistical methods to easily find out which code corresponds to which character. You only need to know one page or so of the encrypted text, what language it was written in, and no access to the plaintext.
Ces't ne pas?
I don't live in the USA, so what might seem obvious to you might not be obvious to me.
Are you saying that
1) Books have time to decay before copyright expires, due to extended copyright laws.
2) Nobody can make their own copies of books before copyright expires.
3) This means that the books decay before anybody can legally make backup copies of them.
?
Isn't there 'fair use' in the US-American copyright laws? Can't people make copies of a book or music CD for personal use? Can't libraries make backup copies on, for instance, microfiche?
"You're right about a good CS department. A really good one doesn't even teach languages, it should stick to concepts. Languages are just a means to an end."
Ah... but can one understand the concepts, without a lot of concret examples to build up the abstractions from?
"[Don Knuth's] idea was to write your documents in plain text (the lowest common denominator) and use a processor to convert them to whatever format you need 'today': postscript, html, or whatever."
Pardon for asking a beginners question, but isn't that what SGML is for? Are TeX and SGML competitiors?
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to comment on phrases like 'criminal intent' and 'it has been determined that Microsoft broke he law'.
First, let's remember we're not talking about crimes in the same sense that murder, theft or break-and-entry are crimes. This is merely a lawsuit, and the burden of proof is much smaller in lawsuits.
Also, it's a subjective decision. Some particular judges may believe that Microsoft has broken the anti-trust laws -- but others may believe they haven't. One can't prove it definitely one way or the other. It depends on the particular judge(s) making the decision and how he/she believes the law should be interpreted.
If a court of law decides their business practices must change, of course they must comply, but a company can't be expected to know beforehand what constitutes a 'crime' against the anti-trust laws. It depends on the particular case and the particular judge(s) making the decision.
And the trial is not only about Microsoft's intent. Microsoft is judged more harshly just because its size makes it a bigger threat. If Microsoft had been a relatively small company with a relatively small market share, nobody would even have bothered to examine it's business practices. It's not fair to say that Microsoft 'has commited a crime' just because its size makes it a bigger threat -- when a smaller company could have got away with the same thing.
So I feel terms like 'crime' and 'breaking the law' are a little misappropriate here (even though I sometimes use them for lack of better words). I personally believe that Microsoft systematically uses it's dominance in one market (e.g. office suites and desktop operating systems) to gain dominance in others (e.g. web browsers, handheld computers, server operating systems, collaboration software, web servers, etc), but where to draw the line and call it illegal is highly subjective. The only thing you can know for sure, is that once the court reaches a final verdict, it's criminal for Microsoft not to comply. Let's discuss the exact nature of Microsoft's business practices, why they fail sometimes and why they succeed sometimes, why they are good for the customers or bad for the customers, and remember that judges are merely humans trying to make an informed decision -- just like us.
I just remembered that XML and TeX have entirely different purposes. The purpose of SGML/HTML/XML is to define the CONTENT of a document, i.e. the words and symbols and how they are structured into sentences, paragraphs, lists, etc, and then present the information on different platforms (platform = computer + OS + browser, in this case) in realtime. The purpose of TeX is to define the exakt visual appearance of a document, and then present it on any flat surface. HTML has gradually added more and more functionality to control the graphical layout of the page, which eventually resulted in XML, but the main purpose is to present the content, not the form. So comparing XML and TeX is like comparing apples and oranges. TeX has nothing to do with preserving historical documents in a format that future generations will understand. Actually, SGML, HTML and XML hasn't either. Future generations will probably be much more interested in the pure text than in the graphical layout. So I think the problem will occur on the character-encoding level, i.e. when future generations are trying to understand EBCDIC, ASCII, ISO-8859, UTF-8, etc. But honestly, I don't think it will be that hard. They can apply very elementary code breaking techniques to solve the problem. A sequence of codes, where each code corresponds to a character, is a very simple chifer called a 'substitution chifer'. Any encryption specialist (actually, any college student who has taken a course in cryptology) can use statistical methods to easily find out which code corresponds to which character. You only need to know one page or so of the encrypted text, what language it was written in, and no access to the plaintext. Ces't ne pas?
I don't live in the USA, so what might seem obvious to you might not be obvious to me. Are you saying that 1) Books have time to decay before copyright expires, due to extended copyright laws. 2) Nobody can make their own copies of books before copyright expires. 3) This means that the books decay before anybody can legally make backup copies of them. ? Isn't there 'fair use' in the US-American copyright laws? Can't people make copies of a book or music CD for personal use? Can't libraries make backup copies on, for instance, microfiche?
"You're right about a good CS department. A really good one doesn't even teach languages, it should stick to concepts. Languages are just a means to an end." Ah... but can one understand the concepts, without a lot of concret examples to build up the abstractions from?
You all have very interesting and valid points, but I am amazed how anything can be turned into a discussion on copyright issues.
"[Don Knuth's] idea was to write your documents in plain text (the lowest common denominator) and use a processor to convert them to whatever format you need 'today': postscript, html, or whatever."
Pardon for asking a beginners question, but isn't that what SGML is for? Are TeX and SGML competitiors?