This is just a PR stunt so that Microsoft can reap the benefit of open sources good reputation. If they wore genuinly interested in working with the community all they had to do would be to release current specs for their various document formats and network protocols. I really hope the OSI take a long hard gander and turn every single stone before agreeing to anything. Microsofts history tells you to watch your back.
Microsofts shared source license should not in any way be let in without complete abolishment of the windows platform clause. OSS licenses should not tell you what platform you can use the code on.
I wouldnt call OpenOffice a native linux app even if its written in c++ for large parts. Compare it to Abiword and you see what the multiplatform support has done for bloat and speed. Also, OpenOffice is not fast on any system so it is a recourcehog you cant blame on the scheduler.
I dont feel the Linux desktop as slow, rather some isolated applications like Nautilus. If work was directed to making nautilus, firefox and OpenOffice faster and leaner i really think it would do much more for the desktop than anything the kernel guys can do. They are not magicians and cannot provide more recources from the CPU, memory or disk that is already taken. If an app uses 100% CPU without reason the kernel guys can only do so much. My point is that the applications should be made faster and leaner long before you start tinkering in the kernel to try to get the last 2 % of performance out, sacrificing stability and portability in the process.
It would be perfectly possible to have ten different schedulers and just choose at compile time. The question is, is it really worth it? The performance benefits are pretty small compared to if you have better optimized code in the games or better drivers for the graphics card. A better scheduler doesnt solve buggy drivers, bad coding or bad ports.
If i understand Linux correctly he is more than fine with people using whatever sheduler they want in their own trees. Hes just not that hot for maintaning more than one in the vanilla tree because its not just worth it. Again, there are much bigger improvements to get in other places that people tend to completely forget.
1. Games run just perfectly on Linux with often better speed than in Windows. Every single game i has played in Linux has worked perfectly and smoothly. What Linux needs for gaming is more normal users who buys games. If there is a market someone will fill it quickly. I will also strongly refute that games are essential to desktops. There are infact people who use their computer to actually do something useful.
2. This decision has nothing to do with egos. This guy just happens to believe that its essential to speed up the kernel when the only slow apps in Linux are non-native apps like Java, OpenOffice or Firefox. Those are not slow because of any sheduler but because they are written with slow toolchains. More work on making the kernel more responsive wont help at all at this stage.
I fail to see what battle has played out in China. For all i know Microsoft has always had the biggest marketshare in China too. Linux can still gain on Windows, especially when Microsoft soon enough starts taxing for licenses. Its one thing to run things for free, another when a country of Chinas size have to pay through their noose. Also if i wore China i would be very afraid of running an OS from the US, soon to be a bitter tradewar enemy.
This isnt over just yet.
"It is Firefox's fault. They're invoking a Windows API directly without doing any sanity checking on the input."
According to your masters its the receiving application that should do the sanity check. There was a rather heated debate on this a while ago when it was IE who forwarded malicious URLS to Firefox.
Also, Firefox told IE to open an URL for all it knows, not some random application. The error is in IE7 no matter how you spin it. Dont forget any application besides Firefox can forward this kinds of URLs to IE7. In short any application you use that connects to web pages is a threat to IE7.
Just about any application can forward malicious data to IE7. Microsoft can blame Firefox all they want but the hole will still exist in IE7 after having been patched by the Mozilla org. I repeat, the hole is accessible from any application connecting to the internet, not just firefox. IE6 does not have this security issue so its safe to assume the fault lies with Microsoft.
Last time when the roles was the other way around, when Firefox passed malicious things onto IE Microsoft said the receiving application was at fault because it should check if it could handle what it received. Well, this time thats just how it is, IE7 does not check what it receive at all.
In short, IE7 is unsafer in this case than IE6 was and the fault does according to previous statements from Microsoft no lie in the sending application (Firefox) but in the receiver (Internet Explorer 7).
I have used Linux since -93 and the only time i have been irritated about performance is when non native code is in the picture. Openoffice, Azureus, Firefox and other apps thats not written specifically for Linux is the only snails i know of.
Sluggish performance in for eg. nautilus cant be blamed on the kernel either. Plenty filemanagers for Linux is fast so its doable. All in all i think the kernel is the least problem for the desktop.
Legal DVD and MP3 is not a problem outside the US where software patents dont apply. Also you can get plugins legal in the US and other countries stupid enough to allow software patents at https://shop.fluendo.com/
As for the market, what was Linspires market share again? Its not because they have a bad distribution people avoid them. Linspire is really pretty darn good, just run by greedy bastards with no interest in the community that do all their work for free.
This is strange times indeed. Bush seems bent on making the US into a fascist totalitarian dictatorship where the (for now, that will probably change) elected president decides pretty much everything. At the same time we see china opening up and slowly inching towards market echonomy and because of that slowly into a democracy.
In ten years the US and China will meet halfway through with China capturing more and more of the worlds mindshare. The US is going down the road of the Roman empire, dying because of power struggles, rampant greed and corruption in all levels of society.
My first thought is how one can secure anything with the help of Symantec, Mcafee or any other security vendor. If they gladly whitelist governmental spyware/keyloggers how do i know my network is secure? Nothing stops a blackhat that has gotten his hands on one of theese programs. Or do the security vendors somehow know who can use it or not? I really dont see how that would work. Most probably no destinction is made as to whom is using the badware. I also dont trust foreign governments, expecially since the US has been involved in spying for its own business many times before. So in effect any non US company should shun US based security products like the plague.
When the US go out and makes new lows in argumenting for its right to torture, imprison and kill people without just cause or even any trials China looks good. The US is morally bancrupt and the world see the need of an opposing force, be it communist or whatever. Its bloody obvious that a US without something holding it back will do whatever it feels like no matter who or what gets hurt in the process.
China will therefore get support it really doesnt deserve because of crappy US foreign policy.
The credit for how china looks good in press should really be given to US foreign policy. If the US continues to support dictators, suppress democracies (palestinians, you voted for the wrong party now starve and die!), use torture, illegally invade countries and vote for presidents whos dumber than a really really stupid rock China can do pretty much anything it like and still come out as a pretty nice country.
This is wrong in any possible way i can think of. Both from an economic, enviromental and governmental viewpoint. First of all the fuel in this case has already been taxed multiple times. It is enviromentally friendly so it should not in any way be taxed like gasoline etc which is extremely bad for mother nature.
From a taxation viewpoint in no way should the propulsion agent be taxed for road maintenance and such. If thats the case then the right way would be to move that tax from the energy source to the car itself or the cars milage / year. To punish alternative fuels and propulsion systems wont fix the current oil strangelhold.
The countries who can realease themselves from oil dependance is the countries who will rule in the future. As it looks now China is the one country who seems most eager to pull that feat off. The US, well, the war in Iraq says it all. Oil supply is still the number one thing on the agenda and finding alternatives on the bottom of the list.
"I remember a time when M$ was viewed as a hero for scoring victories over the evil IBM monopoly."
Strangely, the first things i thought when i first used MS-Dos was like:
-Wtf have they been smoking at Microsoft? -Who in their right mind will pay for this crap?
IBM could have walked all over the PC market owning it all for all i care. In no way would they have produced such utter crap as MS-Dos was.
Also, if Microsoft hadnt been given the PC market on a silver platter because of the ongoing antitrust battle against IBM at the time we would have Amiga, Atari or some other "Personal Computer" instead. It wasnt like MS was the only player in town at the time. Just the cheapest and best lying one.
Bill Gates is the same greedy powerhungry man he was when he started Microsoft. This just shows you can buy reputation without really doing anything good. Microsoft is the exact same evil company as before, theyve just bought enough magazines now.
I cant for my life understand why all the computer manufacturers insist on having the CPU inside the box. Its the worst possible place to cool it. Not only is it hot in the box, its also very hard to get a good airflow going.
By placing the CPU on the backside of the motherboard and let it protrude out from the case it would be very feasable to use passive cooling. One 10x20 cm cooling plate with fins is more than enough to cool away 120w if there is a free flow of air.
I think drivers is what pulls developers towards linux. That and the abundance of developing tools.
Also, how fun is it to make your own os nowadays and then populate it with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp and whatnot and realize that your new shiny OS is looking more and more lika a heavily altered linux distribution?
It would be fun to see more projects with new ideas and conventions for the desktop and the file system. By starting off with Linux such projects can concentrate on the fun part right away,
That said, there are room for more OS as long as they follow standards in protocols and file formats.
I think this is a bold move by Microsoft. After having tought everyone how expensive training is for people migrating to OpenOffice is they make radical changes requiring huge training costs.
Hopefully many corps will take the time to try other alternatives as they are tossing big dollars down the training path anyway,
MS Office 2007 does not contain anything that will help corps becoming more effective unless you measure by number of pointless powerpoints presented per week.
"Great. All the better to control our access to the data on our computers."
I think the concept of having files in a structured manner is very good and efficient. The problem in my view lies in how they are abused in varionus OS. Microsoft has done a great job at spreading files all over in a seemingly random fashion. Linux is a bit better but could improve much. A quick nice way would be to drop the user in ~/ every time a user wants to save a file. ~/Desktop should be just ~/, maybe with some readymade folders for music, sharing and documents.
"Until the first fully operational craft is delivered to a customer"
Does this include software? If so, there is a whole industry of vaporware out there and Microsoft is teh king!!
DRM can also be used to copy protect games and applications. It can be utterly abused by any corp you install applications from.
As for HD-DVD etc, who cares? Except for a small amount of high end videophiles most people are more than satisfied with DVD. Heck, here in sweden where pirating is common most people seems very content with much lower resolutions.
I dont think anyone is really afraid of that. All evidence suggests its just w2k/XP all again. Those wore also supposed to be the holy grail of computing but showed to be just minor improvements in some areas and degradation in others.
I love DRM because it will drive people towards free systems. Afraid isnt the right word, rather a smug smile. The FSF etc should just ignore DRM and let Windows Vista users smack into the wall in a couple of years time. In the meen time extensive work should be done in improving OSS instead. Why spend any time trying to educate Windows users about DRM? They will find out soon enough, just tell them Linux is without theese restrictions instead.
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This is just a PR stunt so that Microsoft can reap the benefit of open sources good reputation. If they wore genuinly interested in working with the community all they had to do would be to release current specs for their various document formats and network protocols. I really hope the OSI take a long hard gander and turn every single stone before agreeing to anything. Microsofts history tells you to watch your back. Microsofts shared source license should not in any way be let in without complete abolishment of the windows platform clause. OSS licenses should not tell you what platform you can use the code on.
What the world really needs is more OS players. Welcome SUN!
I wouldnt call OpenOffice a native linux app even if its written in c++ for large parts. Compare it to Abiword and you see what the multiplatform support has done for bloat and speed. Also, OpenOffice is not fast on any system so it is a recourcehog you cant blame on the scheduler. I dont feel the Linux desktop as slow, rather some isolated applications like Nautilus. If work was directed to making nautilus, firefox and OpenOffice faster and leaner i really think it would do much more for the desktop than anything the kernel guys can do. They are not magicians and cannot provide more recources from the CPU, memory or disk that is already taken. If an app uses 100% CPU without reason the kernel guys can only do so much. My point is that the applications should be made faster and leaner long before you start tinkering in the kernel to try to get the last 2 % of performance out, sacrificing stability and portability in the process.
It would be perfectly possible to have ten different schedulers and just choose at compile time. The question is, is it really worth it? The performance benefits are pretty small compared to if you have better optimized code in the games or better drivers for the graphics card. A better scheduler doesnt solve buggy drivers, bad coding or bad ports. If i understand Linux correctly he is more than fine with people using whatever sheduler they want in their own trees. Hes just not that hot for maintaning more than one in the vanilla tree because its not just worth it. Again, there are much bigger improvements to get in other places that people tend to completely forget.
1. Games run just perfectly on Linux with often better speed than in Windows. Every single game i has played in Linux has worked perfectly and smoothly. What Linux needs for gaming is more normal users who buys games. If there is a market someone will fill it quickly. I will also strongly refute that games are essential to desktops. There are infact people who use their computer to actually do something useful. 2. This decision has nothing to do with egos. This guy just happens to believe that its essential to speed up the kernel when the only slow apps in Linux are non-native apps like Java, OpenOffice or Firefox. Those are not slow because of any sheduler but because they are written with slow toolchains. More work on making the kernel more responsive wont help at all at this stage.
I fail to see what battle has played out in China. For all i know Microsoft has always had the biggest marketshare in China too. Linux can still gain on Windows, especially when Microsoft soon enough starts taxing for licenses. Its one thing to run things for free, another when a country of Chinas size have to pay through their noose. Also if i wore China i would be very afraid of running an OS from the US, soon to be a bitter tradewar enemy. This isnt over just yet.
No good can come from this. Expect some MVPs donating code but real OSS developers? I dont think so =P
"It is Firefox's fault. They're invoking a Windows API directly without doing any sanity checking on the input." According to your masters its the receiving application that should do the sanity check. There was a rather heated debate on this a while ago when it was IE who forwarded malicious URLS to Firefox. Also, Firefox told IE to open an URL for all it knows, not some random application. The error is in IE7 no matter how you spin it. Dont forget any application besides Firefox can forward this kinds of URLs to IE7. In short any application you use that connects to web pages is a threat to IE7.
Just about any application can forward malicious data to IE7. Microsoft can blame Firefox all they want but the hole will still exist in IE7 after having been patched by the Mozilla org. I repeat, the hole is accessible from any application connecting to the internet, not just firefox. IE6 does not have this security issue so its safe to assume the fault lies with Microsoft. Last time when the roles was the other way around, when Firefox passed malicious things onto IE Microsoft said the receiving application was at fault because it should check if it could handle what it received. Well, this time thats just how it is, IE7 does not check what it receive at all. In short, IE7 is unsafer in this case than IE6 was and the fault does according to previous statements from Microsoft no lie in the sending application (Firefox) but in the receiver (Internet Explorer 7).
I have used Linux since -93 and the only time i have been irritated about performance is when non native code is in the picture. Openoffice, Azureus, Firefox and other apps thats not written specifically for Linux is the only snails i know of. Sluggish performance in for eg. nautilus cant be blamed on the kernel either. Plenty filemanagers for Linux is fast so its doable. All in all i think the kernel is the least problem for the desktop.
Legal DVD and MP3 is not a problem outside the US where software patents dont apply. Also you can get plugins legal in the US and other countries stupid enough to allow software patents at https://shop.fluendo.com/
As for the market, what was Linspires market share again? Its not because they have a bad distribution people avoid them. Linspire is really pretty darn good, just run by greedy bastards with no interest in the community that do all their work for free.
This is strange times indeed. Bush seems bent on making the US into a fascist totalitarian dictatorship where the (for now, that will probably change) elected president decides pretty much everything. At the same time we see china opening up and slowly inching towards market echonomy and because of that slowly into a democracy. In ten years the US and China will meet halfway through with China capturing more and more of the worlds mindshare. The US is going down the road of the Roman empire, dying because of power struggles, rampant greed and corruption in all levels of society.
My first thought is how one can secure anything with the help of Symantec, Mcafee or any other security vendor. If they gladly whitelist governmental spyware/keyloggers how do i know my network is secure? Nothing stops a blackhat that has gotten his hands on one of theese programs. Or do the security vendors somehow know who can use it or not? I really dont see how that would work. Most probably no destinction is made as to whom is using the badware. I also dont trust foreign governments, expecially since the US has been involved in spying for its own business many times before. So in effect any non US company should shun US based security products like the plague.
When the US go out and makes new lows in argumenting for its right to torture, imprison and kill people without just cause or even any trials China looks good. The US is morally bancrupt and the world see the need of an opposing force, be it communist or whatever. Its bloody obvious that a US without something holding it back will do whatever it feels like no matter who or what gets hurt in the process. China will therefore get support it really doesnt deserve because of crappy US foreign policy. The credit for how china looks good in press should really be given to US foreign policy. If the US continues to support dictators, suppress democracies (palestinians, you voted for the wrong party now starve and die!), use torture, illegally invade countries and vote for presidents whos dumber than a really really stupid rock China can do pretty much anything it like and still come out as a pretty nice country.
This is wrong in any possible way i can think of. Both from an economic, enviromental and governmental viewpoint. First of all the fuel in this case has already been taxed multiple times. It is enviromentally friendly so it should not in any way be taxed like gasoline etc which is extremely bad for mother nature. From a taxation viewpoint in no way should the propulsion agent be taxed for road maintenance and such. If thats the case then the right way would be to move that tax from the energy source to the car itself or the cars milage / year. To punish alternative fuels and propulsion systems wont fix the current oil strangelhold. The countries who can realease themselves from oil dependance is the countries who will rule in the future. As it looks now China is the one country who seems most eager to pull that feat off. The US, well, the war in Iraq says it all. Oil supply is still the number one thing on the agenda and finding alternatives on the bottom of the list.
"I remember a time when M$ was viewed as a hero for scoring victories over the evil IBM monopoly."
Strangely, the first things i thought when i first used MS-Dos was like:
-Wtf have they been smoking at Microsoft?
-Who in their right mind will pay for this crap?
IBM could have walked all over the PC market owning it all for all i care. In no way would they have produced such utter crap as MS-Dos was.
Also, if Microsoft hadnt been given the PC market on a silver platter because of the ongoing antitrust battle against IBM at the time we would have Amiga, Atari or some other "Personal Computer" instead. It wasnt like MS was the only player in town at the time. Just the cheapest and best lying one.
Bill Gates is the same greedy powerhungry man he was when he started Microsoft. This just shows you can buy reputation without really doing anything good. Microsoft is the exact same evil company as before, theyve just bought enough magazines now.
Well, why not us beta testers?
I cant for my life understand why all the computer manufacturers insist on having the CPU inside the box. Its the worst possible place to cool it. Not only is it hot in the box, its also very hard to get a good airflow going. By placing the CPU on the backside of the motherboard and let it protrude out from the case it would be very feasable to use passive cooling. One 10x20 cm cooling plate with fins is more than enough to cool away 120w if there is a free flow of air.
I think drivers is what pulls developers towards linux. That and the abundance of developing tools. Also, how fun is it to make your own os nowadays and then populate it with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp and whatnot and realize that your new shiny OS is looking more and more lika a heavily altered linux distribution? It would be fun to see more projects with new ideas and conventions for the desktop and the file system. By starting off with Linux such projects can concentrate on the fun part right away, That said, there are room for more OS as long as they follow standards in protocols and file formats.
I think this is a bold move by Microsoft. After having tought everyone how expensive training is for people migrating to OpenOffice is they make radical changes requiring huge training costs. Hopefully many corps will take the time to try other alternatives as they are tossing big dollars down the training path anyway, MS Office 2007 does not contain anything that will help corps becoming more effective unless you measure by number of pointless powerpoints presented per week.
"Great. All the better to control our access to the data on our computers." I think the concept of having files in a structured manner is very good and efficient. The problem in my view lies in how they are abused in varionus OS. Microsoft has done a great job at spreading files all over in a seemingly random fashion. Linux is a bit better but could improve much. A quick nice way would be to drop the user in ~/ every time a user wants to save a file. ~/Desktop should be just ~/, maybe with some readymade folders for music, sharing and documents.
"Until the first fully operational craft is delivered to a customer" Does this include software? If so, there is a whole industry of vaporware out there and Microsoft is teh king!!
DRM can also be used to copy protect games and applications. It can be utterly abused by any corp you install applications from. As for HD-DVD etc, who cares? Except for a small amount of high end videophiles most people are more than satisfied with DVD. Heck, here in sweden where pirating is common most people seems very content with much lower resolutions.
I dont think anyone is really afraid of that. All evidence suggests its just w2k/XP all again. Those wore also supposed to be the holy grail of computing but showed to be just minor improvements in some areas and degradation in others. I love DRM because it will drive people towards free systems. Afraid isnt the right word, rather a smug smile. The FSF etc should just ignore DRM and let Windows Vista users smack into the wall in a couple of years time. In the meen time extensive work should be done in improving OSS instead. Why spend any time trying to educate Windows users about DRM? They will find out soon enough, just tell them Linux is without theese restrictions instead.