is it possible for there to be any kind of media without advertising?
There are plenty of premium channels on cable that don't have advertising. And there are many European channels that have little or no advertising and are financed through a television tax.
Microsoft has said using free software with commercial software might violate the intellectual-property rights of companies such as Microsoft. Stenbit said the issue is legally "murky.
Microsoft might write into its licenses "you may not run open source software on our platforms". That's Microsoft's choice. Such a provision may or may not hold up in court. They may or may not be able to put such a provision into a Pentagon contract when it comes to contractual negotiations (the Pentagon may simply say "no, thanks").
But I don't see the "murk". Either Microsoft puts such provisions into the contract or not. What other "murky" issues are there supposed to be? And who, other than Microsoft, is to blame for making the issues "murky"?
Sorry, I just realized that this wasn't Stenbit's opinion--he was just relating Microsoft's statements. My apologies. My criticism of the position itself still stands.
The company also complained that the Pentagon is funding research on making free software more secure, which in effect subsidizes Microsoft's open-source competitors, Stenbit said.
Stenbit is either very confused or deliberately misleading when he gives the impression that releasing publically funded software for free is analogous to preferring one company over another. Playing favorites with companies is generally not acceptable for the government (even if various administrations like to do it for their buddies in the corporate world).
But open source software is not a commercial "competitor" to Microsoft. If the public pays for the development of software, the public should get it for free. If that nixes one of Microsoft's business models, that's just too bad.
Otherwise, if we follow down that reasoning, what is next? Companies will start complaining that because the government funds police services, it unfairly competes with private security companies? They'll complain that if the government builds roads, it unfairly competes with private roads?
We, the people, get to choose what services we believe should be provided by the government. The private sector is free to pick up the rest.
The CEO of RealNames is experiencing just what people have been complaining about in the anti-trust lawsuit: because of Microsoft's monopoly, Microsoft gets to pick the winners and loser in the market. As long as Microsoft picked RealNames as a winner, this was really swell for them. Teare even went so far as to publically say that Microsoft was not a monopoly and that there were no problems with competition. Now that Microsoft has made them losers, he is whining about it.
This should be a warning to any company that bets their business on being Microsoft's favorites rather than on innovating and competing independently. The lesson is actually quite independent of Microsoft: it is a fundamental mistake to build your business on a relationship with a single corporate partner. It just happens to be the case that in the software space, in some areas, there is no other partner around besides Microsoft.
What's the point? If it's not open source and if it's not commercially supported, it's dead. Oh, you may still be able to use it for a little while but then operating systems and libraries will drift away.
it is also in Lisp, which narrows down the number of potential hackers even more. Nothing wrong with Lisp, mind you, just not as many proficient lisp hackers in the community as there are C hackers.
I would have bought that argument B.P. ("Before Perl"). But Perl supports just about every concept that Lisp supports and Perl is a much, much more complex language. Given the number of Perl hackers out there, the problems people have with Lisp are not about inability to become proficient in it rapidly, they are psychological. In fact, except for the parentheses, Lisp is very close to Python.
Yes, difficult to maintain packages are at a higher risk of becoming orphaned. But the same is true for commercial packages as well: either the company gives up and starts from scratch, or they go out of business.
In part, this is a bit of evolution in action. If a piece of open source software is difficult to maintain and there are maintainable and working alternatives around, the latter will catch on. Nevertheless, if the piece of software in question is unique or important in some way, people will pick it up, even if it is a pain to maintain.
So there you have it! Before you start flaming back and forth about what's better, think about the logistics behind using a WM that's no longer being maintained.
Everybody has the source, and it is apparently quite usable since many people sue it. If someone like Sun additional features or bug fixes, they can make them and publish them. The fact that a single person has moved on to doing something else makes little difference for open source software.
Choosing Metacity may be the right thing for Sun to do anyway, but the departure of even the main developer of Sawfish would not be sufficient reason.
Re:maybe the problem is the business model?
on
Hacking Web Services
·
· Score: 1
As for "theft," whether you like it or not, taking my data and selling it without permission is theft.
Stock prices aren't Yahoo!'s data. In fact, stock prices aren't anybody's data, they are a simple economic fact.
maybe the problem is the business model?
on
Hacking Web Services
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
But he dismissed legal solutions altogether, saying that measures like anti-spam legislation are completely ineffective. "This has to be solved technically, not legally," he warned. "If we can't solve these problems, we'll see less and less services."
Yahoo!'s problems are no different from those brick-and-mortar retailers have with loss leaders and promotions: if you give something away at a loss, there is a good chance that others will find it profitable to get lots of it and resell it. It's not a security problem, it's a problem with the business model. Welcome to the real world.
Yahoo! may want to continue to bask in the glory of having many millions of users, but if they want stop these problems, all they have to do is charge for all of their services. The choice is really theirs.
Don't get me wrong: I like Yahoo! services and I think it would be great if they continue to be free. But I really worry when Manber uses terms like "theft" and "security" for a problem that has very little to do with "theft" and "security". Fortunately, Manber himself isn't calling for a legal solution, but management and lawmakers may be less understanding of the issues involved.
Code Complete and similar books strikes me as being a bit like books on nutrition and dieting: they tell you what is good for you and they give you some tips on dieting. But most people who read them end up eating junk food anyway because they just don't have the time to do it right.
By all means, read Code Complete--its suggestions are sensible. But the real culprit when it comes to poor software are time and resource pressures, feature creep, and other environmental factors. Maybe at least the book will let you recognize when your project is doomed and leave; McConnell seems to have done that--he isn't at Microsoft anymore.
Well written code should not require a lot of comments. It should use clear, self-explanatory variable, argument, and method names. It should also use well-known programming patterns and document those patterns in the class names (ServerConnectionFactory, EmployeeAdapter, etc.). When code is written in such a style, it will not require a lot of comments.
If code has a lot of comments, that is either an indication that it isn't clearly written, or that it contains unnecessary comments. The first is an indication that there is a problem with the code itself, the second impedes readability (but can usually be remedied by hiding the comments in the editor).
I need an MS OS if I want to watch most Internet video, if I want to listen to most Internet audio, if I want to submit patents electronically, if I want to order from many web sites, if I want to read many public documents, if I want to do on-line banking, and for many other functions.
You may want to argue about whether this is good or bad, or whether it is justified, but it is a simple fact that if people want to participate in the digital age, they invariably end up having to pay money to Microsoft.
I think MS Windows is awful and use it only for the applications I absolutely have to use it for (which is maybe a few minutes a day on average). But I still ended up having to buy a second $1000 PC for that.
I'm sure EA needs all sorts of agreements and support from Microsoft to develop games for the Xbox. They also may eventually want to deliver on Microsoft's network after all. Microsoft also advertises games for its platforms and has a lot of influence on the computer press. And Microsoft is known for disadvantaging companies that haven't played by their rules in the past.
If the Xbox were significant, this would be risky for EA. The fact that EA makes such statements shows that they don't consider it likely that the Xbox will become the dominant gaming platform any time soon.
The protocol is open and standardized now: OFX (link down right now). It's based on XML. In theory, it should not require relations between the software vendor and the bank; the end user should be able to get all the necessary information. Reality may be different, however.
Pi is not defined in terms of physical measurements, it is defined in terms of idealized mathematical concepts. If the universe is "slowly dilating on a hyperbolic space", the the circumference of a hula-hoop would be changing, but the circumference of an idealized unit circle on an idealized plane won't change.
That's not such a big drawback: XFree86 and Squeak both have handwriting software availble for them. For XFree86, you can even get OpenOffice. Why would you want to pay for XP software and struggle with MS Office instead?
The PaceBlade seems very similar in design to the Compaq Concerto from about a decade ago. A faster screen and higher resolution screen may make it more popular, though.
Slashdot Mirror
There are plenty of premium channels on cable that don't have advertising. And there are many European channels that have little or no advertising and are financed through a television tax.
Microsoft might write into its licenses "you may not run open source software on our platforms". That's Microsoft's choice. Such a provision may or may not hold up in court. They may or may not be able to put such a provision into a Pentagon contract when it comes to contractual negotiations (the Pentagon may simply say "no, thanks").
But I don't see the "murk". Either Microsoft puts such provisions into the contract or not. What other "murky" issues are there supposed to be? And who, other than Microsoft, is to blame for making the issues "murky"?
Sorry, I just realized that this wasn't Stenbit's opinion--he was just relating Microsoft's statements. My apologies. My criticism of the position itself still stands.
Stenbit is either very confused or deliberately misleading when he gives the impression that releasing publically funded software for free is analogous to preferring one company over another. Playing favorites with companies is generally not acceptable for the government (even if various administrations like to do it for their buddies in the corporate world).
But open source software is not a commercial "competitor" to Microsoft. If the public pays for the development of software, the public should get it for free. If that nixes one of Microsoft's business models, that's just too bad.
Otherwise, if we follow down that reasoning, what is next? Companies will start complaining that because the government funds police services, it unfairly competes with private security companies? They'll complain that if the government builds roads, it unfairly competes with private roads?
We, the people, get to choose what services we believe should be provided by the government. The private sector is free to pick up the rest.
This should be a warning to any company that bets their business on being Microsoft's favorites rather than on innovating and competing independently. The lesson is actually quite independent of Microsoft: it is a fundamental mistake to build your business on a relationship with a single corporate partner. It just happens to be the case that in the software space, in some areas, there is no other partner around besides Microsoft.
What's the point? If it's not open source and if it's not commercially supported, it's dead. Oh, you may still be able to use it for a little while but then operating systems and libraries will drift away.
that they will enforce it vigorously. The higher they make the cost for other people to create pop-unders, the better.
Yes, but these people are using the hammer to hammer in a nail.
I would have bought that argument B.P. ("Before Perl"). But Perl supports just about every concept that Lisp supports and Perl is a much, much more complex language. Given the number of Perl hackers out there, the problems people have with Lisp are not about inability to become proficient in it rapidly, they are psychological. In fact, except for the parentheses, Lisp is very close to Python.
In part, this is a bit of evolution in action. If a piece of open source software is difficult to maintain and there are maintainable and working alternatives around, the latter will catch on. Nevertheless, if the piece of software in question is unique or important in some way, people will pick it up, even if it is a pain to maintain.
Everybody has the source, and it is apparently quite usable since many people sue it. If someone like Sun additional features or bug fixes, they can make them and publish them. The fact that a single person has moved on to doing something else makes little difference for open source software.
Choosing Metacity may be the right thing for Sun to do anyway, but the departure of even the main developer of Sawfish would not be sufficient reason.
Stock prices aren't Yahoo!'s data. In fact, stock prices aren't anybody's data, they are a simple economic fact.
Yahoo!'s problems are no different from those brick-and-mortar retailers have with loss leaders and promotions: if you give something away at a loss, there is a good chance that others will find it profitable to get lots of it and resell it. It's not a security problem, it's a problem with the business model. Welcome to the real world.
Yahoo! may want to continue to bask in the glory of having many millions of users, but if they want stop these problems, all they have to do is charge for all of their services. The choice is really theirs.
Don't get me wrong: I like Yahoo! services and I think it would be great if they continue to be free. But I really worry when Manber uses terms like "theft" and "security" for a problem that has very little to do with "theft" and "security". Fortunately, Manber himself isn't calling for a legal solution, but management and lawmakers may be less understanding of the issues involved.
By all means, read Code Complete--its suggestions are sensible. But the real culprit when it comes to poor software are time and resource pressures, feature creep, and other environmental factors. Maybe at least the book will let you recognize when your project is doomed and leave; McConnell seems to have done that--he isn't at Microsoft anymore.
If code has a lot of comments, that is either an indication that it isn't clearly written, or that it contains unnecessary comments. The first is an indication that there is a problem with the code itself, the second impedes readability (but can usually be remedied by hiding the comments in the editor).
I need an MS OS if I want to watch most Internet video, if I want to listen to most Internet audio, if I want to submit patents electronically, if I want to order from many web sites, if I want to read many public documents, if I want to do on-line banking, and for many other functions.
You may want to argue about whether this is good or bad, or whether it is justified, but it is a simple fact that if people want to participate in the digital age, they invariably end up having to pay money to Microsoft.
I think MS Windows is awful and use it only for the applications I absolutely have to use it for (which is maybe a few minutes a day on average). But I still ended up having to buy a second $1000 PC for that.
If the Xbox were significant, this would be risky for EA. The fact that EA makes such statements shows that they don't consider it likely that the Xbox will become the dominant gaming platform any time soon.
People who don't have a clue what the word "exponential" means probably shouldn't use it.
The protocol is open and standardized now: OFX (link down right now). It's based on XML. In theory, it should not require relations between the software vendor and the bank; the end user should be able to get all the necessary information. Reality may be different, however.
Pi is not defined in terms of physical measurements, it is defined in terms of idealized mathematical concepts. If the universe is "slowly dilating on a hyperbolic space", the the circumference of a hula-hoop would be changing, but the circumference of an idealized unit circle on an idealized plane won't change.
const double alpha = 1.0/137;
hack_universe() {
*(double *)&alpha += 1e-9;
}
// don't call this; the universe requires
// double-word aligned doubles
crash_universe() {
*(double *)(1+(char *)&alpha)) += 1e-9;
}
Flamebait? Moderators: get a life!
That's not such a big drawback: XFree86 and Squeak both have handwriting software availble for them. For XFree86, you can even get OpenOffice. Why would you want to pay for XP software and struggle with MS Office instead?
The PaceBlade seems very similar in design to the Compaq Concerto from about a decade ago. A faster screen and higher resolution screen may make it more popular, though.
These are silicon based micromachines. That has little to do with nanotechnology.