I assumed she was a tenant, but now that I look the article says nothing to that effect. Does anyone have more information on why she couldn't press charges.
On the Newsforge page, there's a very similar question to your's, and the answer given is that the EFF is a lawyer and activism group, whereas this would be a lobbying group which goes directly to Congress. I don't really know a lot about the differences. If someone here does, I'd find it very helpful to have the distinction clarified.
I program in Java and I think it's a great language for most things. I also know C++ and I think it's usually very ugly in comparison, but there are a lot of things that C and C++ are just better for. Drivers and Operating systems for example. Java can do them, but you can tell Java wasn't designed to fiddle with the machine directly. It feels clunky. So my question is, what would you suggest for the machine level stuff? I think that if you need to do something easy and cross-platform, you should use java, because it's easy to make stuff pretty, but when you need C++, it comes in awfully handy.
Currently at my school (The University of Utah) they teach CS1 in scheme, CS2 in java, and Software engineering in C++ (I think). The professor can pretty much pick his language for whatever other class he's teaching. The engineering labs have Sun and Linux. There is one small CS lab for lab sections that uses Win2k. The first class any engineering or CS Student takes is intro. to unix, but it's a 1 credit very basic class. Generally speaking the professors try not to tout any platform. That's why java's popular. I have been advised to avoid M$ IDE's and compilers because they don't conform to standards and I don't know what my Professor will be compiling my code on. Borland is popular.
If this is the case than there is really no incentive not to try to use monopolistic practices. If you were caught for stealing 25K and all that happened was you got the 25K taken away you lost nothing. You might as well try again, because it's risk free and if you pull it off you get the money you stole. It's unclear to me (and I think to everyone) exactly what gains can be attributed to MS's monopolistic practices, and what can be attributed to being a "successful software company", but if it could be determined, they should have those gains removed, and then they should be punished to convince them that crime doesn't pay.
"If you look at the past Slashdot articles you can see a good business model is what makes sense."
I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement, but you have to understand that there are plenty of proprietary software businesses going under, because of bad business models. The current economy isn't demonstrating that Free Software can't make money. It's demonstrating that nobody can make money off of a bad or non-existant business model. The companies with solid business models are making money in both proprietary and free software. Those that don't have them aren't. This doesn't really come as a surprise.
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I assumed she was a tenant, but now that I look the article says nothing to that effect. Does anyone have more information on why she couldn't press charges.
On the Newsforge page, there's a very similar question to your's, and the answer given is that the EFF is a lawyer and activism group, whereas this would be a lobbying group which goes directly to Congress. I don't really know a lot about the differences. If someone here does, I'd find it very helpful to have the distinction clarified.
I program in Java and I think it's a great language for most things. I also know C++ and I think it's usually very ugly in comparison, but there are a lot of things that C and C++ are just better for. Drivers and Operating systems for example. Java can do them, but you can tell Java wasn't designed to fiddle with the machine directly. It feels clunky. So my question is, what would you suggest for the machine level stuff? I think that if you need to do something easy and cross-platform, you should use java, because it's easy to make stuff pretty, but when you need C++, it comes in awfully handy.
Thankyou very much. I looked at the list and registered a complaint. I recommend others do the same. It only takes two minutes.
Gillmor's article suggests the solution of not buying discs from companies that use these tactics. Is there any sort of list of labels to avoid?
Currently at my school (The University of Utah) they teach CS1 in scheme, CS2 in java, and Software engineering in C++ (I think). The professor can pretty much pick his language for whatever other class he's teaching. The engineering labs have Sun and Linux. There is one small CS lab for lab sections that uses Win2k. The first class any engineering or CS Student takes is intro. to unix, but it's a 1 credit very basic class. Generally speaking the professors try not to tout any platform. That's why java's popular. I have been advised to avoid M$ IDE's and compilers because they don't conform to standards and I don't know what my Professor will be compiling my code on. Borland is popular.
If this is the case than there is really no incentive not to try to use monopolistic practices. If you were caught for stealing 25K and all that happened was you got the 25K taken away you lost nothing. You might as well try again, because it's risk free and if you pull it off you get the money you stole. It's unclear to me (and I think to everyone) exactly what gains can be attributed to MS's monopolistic practices, and what can be attributed to being a "successful software company", but if it could be determined, they should have those gains removed, and then they should be punished to convince them that crime doesn't pay.
"If you look at the past Slashdot articles you can see a good business model is what makes sense." I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement, but you have to understand that there are plenty of proprietary software businesses going under, because of bad business models. The current economy isn't demonstrating that Free Software can't make money. It's demonstrating that nobody can make money off of a bad or non-existant business model. The companies with solid business models are making money in both proprietary and free software. Those that don't have them aren't. This doesn't really come as a surprise.
It would be easier to say than gnu/linux and it might bring peace to the community. Think they'd go for it.