I find it interesting that people here are so outraged at MS installing an extension for third party software, particularly a web browser.
Any other companies that were considered guilty of abuse of monopoly please raise a lawyer.
That's what I thought.
Additionally, MS already has components installed in FF. Silverlight and the Windows Presentation Foundation are both MS products that are commonly installed in Firefox as plugins
Not on my Firefox, at least.
, to enable apps that take advantage of Silverlight and.NET browser features to operate in Firefox and friends as well as Internet Explorer.
"Take advantage"?! "to operate as well as IE"? How much is Microsoft paying you?
This plugin seems to serve a similar purpose of allowing.NET-powered web apps (which MS wants to be common in the future) to operate in Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.
Sure they do. Embrace, extend, extinguish... That's their mantra.
It seems like we should appreciate this move towards interoperability on MS's part - the alternative is only supporting Internet Explorer for web apps.
I would mod you funny, if I hadn't written this reply.
This leaves us with only one issue, the fact that it was distributed via updates to other applications.
The fact it was distributed silently inside an update to Windows. Curiously timed to a moment when IE share is sliding.
I refute this as being a major issue for the exact same reason - quite a few programs update/install Firefox extensions as part of their normal update procedure - I raise Foxit Reader as an example, which as of v3.0 automatically installs a Firefox plugin. No one's yelling about that.
Don't you have to run its installer? Excuse me if I miss your point, but when did people grant Microsoft to install plugins into their non-Microsoft browsers.
A significant question here: If it wasn't Microsoft, would anyone be nearly as angry?
Again, is there any other company that is a convicted monopoly abuser abusing its monopoly to install additional software into a competitor's product?
Licensing is crucial. You won't see a company contributing technology that could be used by its competitors as a differential when combined with their products under an Apache license.
Am I the only one that finds a $20 price-tag utterly ridiculous?
Even if you use a TV for output, the SoC with wi-fi, cell-phone-style power supply, a keyboard and a GB of RAM cannot go for less than $20 and will not go for 2 watts.
This is seriously wrong and, when I see a government official making such lunatic claims, I expect the people being ripped off.
The economic incentive to invest in a BSD-licensed kernel is less than the economic incentive to invest in a GPL-ed one. Investment in BSD would result on a base open-source OS and a couple vendor-specific "enhanced" versions just like what happened with AT&T's Unix.
It's the GPL that keeps Linux cohesive and grants, say, IBM, the right to use the enhancements Oracle provided.
Why should I be ashamed? Microsoft can use whatever they wrote. The question is why would anyone else help them build their next release of anything for free? Why would anyone with half a brain help a convicted monopolist to screw its users even further for no reward beyond, perhaps, a poorly paying job on a company regarded as "second rate" by any programmer that could contribute to the project?
What re-licensing as GPL does is that it keeps the downstream users "honest" by forcing them to be as nice to their downstream users as their predecessors were for them. It would say "Dear Microsoft, I give you my contributions on the condition that you never subvert my will and turn them into proprietary software I can no longer study or modify". Is that too much to ask?
The license difference between BSD and Linux is probably the most influential factor in the development of the healthy community that surrounds Linux and that does not surround BSD. Why would IBM contribute to BSD if HP could take their contributions and implement them in HP-UX without giving anything in return? IBM gives code to Linux because they know that HP, SGI, Intel, Red Hat, Novell and just about everyone else will do the same. Everybody is kept nice by the force of the license, which is the "law" of the community around it.
So, again, what is the advantage this license gives the community that, for some incomprehensible reason, decides to give their time and dedication to this initiative?
"Until such day as we can make a machine that is as individually intelligent, dexterous, decisive, and bold as a human being, we have no real alternative."
Let's only hope that, when we do, they will want us for pets.;-)
For when we do make a machine that is better than we are, we will not have made our servants, emissaries and explorers. We will have made our successors.
I have no problem with them giving their lives to advance the science and practice of space travel. What I object to is them giving their lives to enrich a few government contractors that sell overpriced equipment that's less reliable than it should be.
The people on the ground have bigger responsibilities than to secure their jobs. Most of them never forget it, but NASA must make sure nobody does.
As for the unavoidable comparison with the so called "war on terror", there are a lot of people sacrificing themselves for all the wrong reasons.
The problem with hysterics is that we disregard what they say when, on occasion, they might be right.
I don't think this is the case, however. We can always dump iron in the oceans to foster algae growth and let more carbon deposit in the deep ocean as hydro-methane. That would give a nice boost to depleted fish populations. Not bad an idea.
In the meantime, we can also fix the emissions problem.
There is no need for panic, we are not doomed. We must, however, act intelligently.
I see this is the biggest hurdle for us as a species.
Sorry. I thought we were talking about the 5+ GHz space. It's not hard to imagine POWER7 going 6+ GHz without any liquid Helium just as much as POWER6 does 5 GHz.
3 GHz on x86 is routine, as far as you don't mind the extra heat output.
The problem with them is that they protest animal cruelty but don't have the same standards when their cruelty is directed towards selected humans. That't is a major problem from the law standpoint. You may hold and divulge whatever unpopular opinion you have, but when you start harassing (to say the least) other people who don't share your beliefs, it's a whole new game with far different rules.
Wouldn't it be smarter to monitor the usage of such information instead of making it go underground? I am sure all parts interested in threatening that specific judge already have all the data that was published and, quite probably, a lot that was not.
All this does it to prevent the most casual idiot from doing something really stupid that would land him/her in jail well before becoming a credible threat.
Police should worry about crimes that happen, not about crimes that may or may not given a certain specific set of circumstances happen.
The virtualized PC idea is good from the standpoint that if the data in the time capsule is destroyed, maybe the real PC can still be restored from the system images you keep in live, available storage.
I would suggest an atmosphere of Helium instead. It's somewhat hard to contain, but is inert. As for vacuum, it may rob some volatile stuff off the components (cables, capacitors, etc)
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I find it interesting that people here are so outraged at MS installing an extension for third party software, particularly a web browser.
Any other companies that were considered guilty of abuse of monopoly please raise a lawyer.
That's what I thought.
Additionally, MS already has components installed in FF. Silverlight and the Windows Presentation Foundation are both MS products that are commonly installed in Firefox as plugins
Not on my Firefox, at least.
, to enable apps that take advantage of Silverlight and .NET browser features to operate in Firefox and friends as well as Internet Explorer.
"Take advantage"?! "to operate as well as IE"? How much is Microsoft paying you?
This plugin seems to serve a similar purpose of allowing .NET-powered web apps (which MS wants to be common in the future) to operate in Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.
Sure they do. Embrace, extend, extinguish... That's their mantra.
It seems like we should appreciate this move towards interoperability on MS's part - the alternative is only supporting Internet Explorer for web apps.
I would mod you funny, if I hadn't written this reply.
This leaves us with only one issue, the fact that it was distributed via updates to other applications.
The fact it was distributed silently inside an update to Windows. Curiously timed to a moment when IE share is sliding.
I refute this as being a major issue for the exact same reason - quite a few programs update/install Firefox extensions as part of their normal update procedure - I raise Foxit Reader as an example, which as of v3.0 automatically installs a Firefox plugin. No one's yelling about that.
Don't you have to run its installer? Excuse me if I miss your point, but when did people grant Microsoft to install plugins into their non-Microsoft browsers.
A significant question here: If it wasn't Microsoft, would anyone be nearly as angry?
Again, is there any other company that is a convicted monopoly abuser abusing its monopoly to install additional software into a competitor's product?
A sane person working for Microsoft?
For libraries that help others support your product or format, then LGPL, Apache or BSD are really _the_ choice.
Licensing is crucial. You won't see a company contributing technology that could be used by its competitors as a differential when combined with their products under an Apache license.
Am I the only one that finds a $20 price-tag utterly ridiculous?
Even if you use a TV for output, the SoC with wi-fi, cell-phone-style power supply, a keyboard and a GB of RAM cannot go for less than $20 and will not go for 2 watts.
This is seriously wrong and, when I see a government official making such lunatic claims, I expect the people being ripped off.
That's precisely my point.
The economic incentive to invest in a BSD-licensed kernel is less than the economic incentive to invest in a GPL-ed one. Investment in BSD would result on a base open-source OS and a couple vendor-specific "enhanced" versions just like what happened with AT&T's Unix.
It's the GPL that keeps Linux cohesive and grants, say, IBM, the right to use the enhancements Oracle provided.
And since when re-licensing mandates the removal of previous authorship or copyright notices?
OK... "convicted monopoly abuser". I stand corrected.
Why should I be ashamed? Microsoft can use whatever they wrote. The question is why would anyone else help them build their next release of anything for free? Why would anyone with half a brain help a convicted monopolist to screw its users even further for no reward beyond, perhaps, a poorly paying job on a company regarded as "second rate" by any programmer that could contribute to the project?
What re-licensing as GPL does is that it keeps the downstream users "honest" by forcing them to be as nice to their downstream users as their predecessors were for them. It would say "Dear Microsoft, I give you my contributions on the condition that you never subvert my will and turn them into proprietary software I can no longer study or modify". Is that too much to ask?
The license difference between BSD and Linux is probably the most influential factor in the development of the healthy community that surrounds Linux and that does not surround BSD. Why would IBM contribute to BSD if HP could take their contributions and implement them in HP-UX without giving anything in return? IBM gives code to Linux because they know that HP, SGI, Intel, Red Hat, Novell and just about everyone else will do the same. Everybody is kept nice by the force of the license, which is the "law" of the community around it.
So, again, what is the advantage this license gives the community that, for some incomprehensible reason, decides to give their time and dedication to this initiative?
Never before Anonymous Coward was such an appropriate nickname...
It's like using free software in Cuba.
Can we re-license it (or fork it) under GPL?
It would break my heart if someone improved the software just to see the improvements turn into proprietary ugliness.
Wait a minute. The Falcon 1 has not, yet, delivered humans anywhere.
"Until such day as we can make a machine that is as individually intelligent, dexterous, decisive, and bold as a human being, we have no real alternative."
Let's only hope that, when we do, they will want us for pets. ;-)
For when we do make a machine that is better than we are, we will not have made our servants, emissaries and explorers. We will have made our successors.
I have no problem with them giving their lives to advance the science and practice of space travel. What I object to is them giving their lives to enrich a few government contractors that sell overpriced equipment that's less reliable than it should be.
The people on the ground have bigger responsibilities than to secure their jobs. Most of them never forget it, but NASA must make sure nobody does.
As for the unavoidable comparison with the so called "war on terror", there are a lot of people sacrificing themselves for all the wrong reasons.
The problem with hysterics is that we disregard what they say when, on occasion, they might be right.
I don't think this is the case, however. We can always dump iron in the oceans to foster algae growth and let more carbon deposit in the deep ocean as hydro-methane. That would give a nice boost to depleted fish populations. Not bad an idea.
In the meantime, we can also fix the emissions problem.
There is no need for panic, we are not doomed. We must, however, act intelligently.
I see this is the biggest hurdle for us as a species.
Sorry. I thought we were talking about the 5+ GHz space. It's not hard to imagine POWER7 going 6+ GHz without any liquid Helium just as much as POWER6 does 5 GHz.
3 GHz on x86 is routine, as far as you don't mind the extra heat output.
No x86s in this space. IBM has POWER6 running at 5 GHz.
The problem with them is that they protest animal cruelty but don't have the same standards when their cruelty is directed towards selected humans. That't is a major problem from the law standpoint. You may hold and divulge whatever unpopular opinion you have, but when you start harassing (to say the least) other people who don't share your beliefs, it's a whole new game with far different rules.
Wouldn't it be smarter to monitor the usage of such information instead of making it go underground? I am sure all parts interested in threatening that specific judge already have all the data that was published and, quite probably, a lot that was not.
All this does it to prevent the most casual idiot from doing something really stupid that would land him/her in jail well before becoming a credible threat.
Police should worry about crimes that happen, not about crimes that may or may not given a certain specific set of circumstances happen.
Helium is the least reactive gas possible. Nitrogen works for mummies, but I never tried that with computers ;-)
The virtualized PC idea is good from the standpoint that if the data in the time capsule is destroyed, maybe the real PC can still be restored from the system images you keep in live, available storage.
I would suggest an atmosphere of Helium instead. It's somewhat hard to contain, but is inert. As for vacuum, it may rob some volatile stuff off the components (cables, capacitors, etc)
When you play this "what if it were your child" card you are removing objectivity from the discussion.
Please, refrain to do so in the future.
Oops... My bad. It's been a long time since I offered my high-end hardware in sacrifice to the Windows gods.