Try Terraserver, and then try Windows Live Local. One of them seems suspiciously like Google Maps. One of them came to market at a time that seems suspiciously like they're trying to compete with Google Maps.
So nobody should be able to compete with Google?
BTW, when are you OSS guys going to make a non-commercial GPL'ed version of this?
You do realize that you're going up against the/. groupthink that MSFT never innovates anything. Posting your info is equivalent to talking to a wall. LOL
Don't you get it dear boy? Then I will shout. MICROSOFT IS AN ABUSIVE MONOPOLIST, wheras Apple is not (and make some nice computers too).
Apple abused its PPC OS monopoly to systematically destroy the Mac clone market in the late 90's; a more blatant example of monopoly abuse than anything Microsoft has ever done.
I'm curious, what Google software bundles VLC? Isn't VLS technically "illegal" since the devs don't pay for the various codec licenses. Those who hold the codec licenses (the various MPEG orgs, MSFT, Apple, Real, etc) haven't done anything against VLC (for practical reasons), but I'd be surprised if Google bundled software that could play MPEG2 (for example) without paying for the MPEG2 license. (Hell, Apple makes you pay $10 to get QuickTime player to play MPEG2, and MSFT makes you pay a third party for an MPEG2 codec for WMP).
Secondly, if Google becomes a monopoly in its field (which it definitely is striving for), would you support them bundling a particular media player, making it harder for others to compete?
*grins* Your second analogy is exactly what people what microsoft don't allow (or didn't before getting their predatory asses hauled through court) - OEMs having Real / Quicktime / etc media players installed instead of Media Player.
Bzzzt!! Wrong! HP bundles iTunes and QT as the default media players. Dell bundles the horrible "Dell Media Experience" app as the default CD and DVD player. And I know that another OEM bundles RealPlayer. It's true that Microsoft doesn't allow OEMs to remove WMP, but users don't want them to (witness the utter failure of XP sans WMP in Europe). As long as OEMs can bundle other players as the default players, what's the problem?
who Jesus chided for praying outdoors so that everyone could see how "righteous" they were. If Google's so benevolent, why do they have to proclaim their righteousness every chance they get? Have you ever heard the saying, "The clearest sign that someone is a racist is for that someone to say, 'I'm not a racist.'"?
Rule of thumb: The likelihood of one's being evil is inverely proportional to the tendency of one to declare himself not to be evil.
BTW, the slashdotters (and their ilk), and sadly, Google, have diluted the word "evil" to the point that the term is nigh-meaningless.
Re:An example of the advantages of the new windows
on
Debugging Microsoft.com
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
... Google runs on several thousand PC-class servers.
Yeah, but Google's servers aren't just passing bits around, they store a copy of the whole (freely accessible) web.;-)
This is why I expect this suit to be thrown out. Microsoft already provides the means to address this idiot's problems, so the suit is wholly unnecessary and frivolous.
10 Home 20 Print "What is the password: " 30 Get A$ 40 If A$ = "b" then goto 70 50 Print "Wrong!" 60 Goto 20 70 Print "Right" 80 End
I do remember programs like the above (the old Compute! magazine provided listings of old-style BASIC programs each month), but such code is the very definition of "spaghetti".;-)
Several national governments are now mandating Open formats for thier documents, spreadsheets, etc. The more they are adopted, the more Bill and Company will have to compete on quality, features and price, not "Only we are 100% compatible with our proprietary format".
Quality and features are exactly the things that OO.o has been unable to compete on. That's why they developed OpenDoc (based on what was already the OO.o format, so it's not like there was much work there) so that they could compete simply based on "We have an *open* format" and nothing else. Office12 makes OO.o look like utter trash.
You suggest that any code that directly links with GPL code must be GPL'ed itself, but code that talks to a separate GPL process does not.
But what about weak-linking a GPL DLL? In that case the host app doesn't directly link with the DLL, but loads the DLL dynamically, explicitly queries for the proc address of each function, and calls the functions through the function pointers?
Or, how about a COM interface? Clearly, a non-GPL'ed app can talk to a GPL'ed app through a COM interface. Why not do the same thing with a COM DLL? A non-GPL'ed app should be able to CoCreateInstance and talk to an in-proc COM object that lives in a GPL'ed DLL just like it can with a COM object that lives in a separate process, shouldn't it? The host app doesn't link directly to the DLL and the communication with the DLL's COM object is no different than what is used to talk to a COM object of a separate process (as far as the host app is concerned; the COM interface in question is used in both cases, and COM provides the "messaging mechanism" in both cases).
"Google has done nothing so far to earn our distrust. Micro$oft, on the other hand, has done NOTHING BUT deceitful, anti-competitive shenanigans since its inception (list is too long to reproduce here). THAT is the difference!"
How would simply extending GPL to cover web apps turn it into more of a EULA than it already is?
Today, if you distribute a GPL app you must release the code. But if you make a GPL web app available for use by the general public, you don't have to release the code. This gives an unfair "advantage" to those that make web apps over local apps. Secondly, as more and more apps become web apps, the GPL's provisions lose more and more relevance since they don't apply to those apps.
Look at it this way - eventually bandwidth will be so large that one will be able to run a binary app over the web as one might run a binary app located on a LAN server today. In such day and age, Microsoft could build just one binary of Office, put it on their server, and charge people to use it over the Web. Or Google to do something similar and "charge" people to use it through ads. In either of these cases, Microsoft or Google could use all the GPL 2 code that they want and not release the code since they're not distributing the binary even though their app is used by the general public. Hell, Google is doing this today (making use of GPL for their publicly used web stuff and not releasing the code). Nobody here complains because Goolge is everyone's "darling", but just replace "Google" with "Microsoft" and see if you feel the same way.
Summary: If GPL software is made available for external use, whether it be through releasing the binary, running it as a web app on a web server, or through some other means, then the developer should have to release the code. It's "external use" that should be the determining factor of whether code must be released, not "distributing binaries". Times have changed, and GPL should change with the times.
OpenDocument format was created because OO.o (and ostensibly others) couldn't compete with MS Office (whether it be based on merit or based on format lock-in). So they created a new format and proclaimed the openness of the format as the primary reason to use OO.o (as opposed to reasons like features, UI, integration, etc). But this format was made with OO.o in mind. It naturally fits with OO.o's features and code structure. OO.o can easily support this format because it was made *for* OO.o. MS, on the other hand, would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to force their apps to support OpenDocument. And for what purpose? To support a format of competing product with tiny fraction of MS Office's userbase? Developers of other non-OO.o apps are willing to jump through the hoops to support what is essentially OO.o's format because they don't have the userbase that MS Office does, and don't have the responsibility to support the features on which that large userbase relies.
And yes, I know that the OASIS committee invited Microsoft to have input in OpenDocument format, but why should Microsoft jump thru hoops (both technical and political) to shoehorn their features into a format designed with a competing product in mind? "Hey, Microsoft, we created a new open format for OO.o. We cordially invite you to forcefeed your features into this format."
Microsoft is the fittest entity to design an XML format for their products just as OO.o (and whatever tokens that are on the OAISIS committee) is the best entity to design an XML format for OO.o. Both are going to be open standards (neither has gone through the ECMA process yet). And Microsoft's initiative isn't solely supported by them, they have others like Apple backing them, that will participate in the ECMA committee that standardizes the Microsoft formats.
In summary: 1. Both formats will be open ECMA and ISO standards. 2. Both formats have *multiple* entities backing them and participating in the ECMA committees standardizing the formats. 3. OpenDocument was submitted to ECMA on Oct 25, 2005 (so I've read), and Microsoft's will be submitted shortly. It's not like OpenDocument is a longtime well established standard. 4. Microsoft Office a much much larger userbase that relies on particular MS Office features that are not supported by OpenDocument (or at least not easily or well). It is Microsoft that must transition their large userbase from the old formats to the new, and Microsoft is the appropriate entity to design a format that will drive that transition (by contrast, the OASIS committee has a vested interest in seeing that such a transition NOT go smoothly; meaning they have an incentetive to make OpenDocument clash with MS Office and its feature-set).
Given the above, forcing Microsoft to support OpenDocument (created with OO.o in mind), rather than Microsoft's own open format (created with MS Office in mind), when Microsoft Office's userbase is orders of magnitude larger than OO.o's woulb be a classic example of "tail wagging the dog."
their internal tech moves because nobody really gives a damn. It would be the height of arrogance for a company to assume that the world cares whether it moves to open source or any other tech for that matter. Most companies aren't in the business of announcing to the world what their internal tech moves are.
I don't know what internal tech McDonalds uses, and don't care. McDonalds knows that I don't care, and therefore doesn't waste time bothering to make irrelevant declarations to the world regarding their internal tech.
What makes you think that OpenDocument is technically superior to Office 12 formats? In fact, I've seen evidence of the opposite (OpenDocument lacks support for all of the Office 12 (hell, Office 97) features and tries to forcefeed spreadsheets, word processors, and presentations to have the exact same format, leading to kludginess beyond belief).
The GPL does not require to provide a license to whomever comes asking for one, nor does it require you to provide source code to anyone except those to whom you have licensed/given the software.
That the GPL allows the customer receiving the binary and code to redistribute both to anyone he so chooses means that, in effect, the developer did release it to the world when he gave it to the customer.
"With FOSS, what you tend to sell are service contracts and development time. Sort of the "You need feature X? Sure, but it will cost you $Y and it will be released in the next version though you get it backported first and get to beta test it." In the end it allows you to develop software in directions you *know* your customers are willing to pay for..."
The problem being that Cutsomer A pays money for a particular feature and once that feature is complete, Customers B thru Z get it for free! Either from you, or some other developer that makes use of the feature for which Customer A paid you that you then released to the world in the spirit of FOSS! And if Customers B thru Z are *competitors* of Customer A, then Customer A is screwed over all the more, sice he paid for the very tools that B thru Z use to compete! LOL
Now, in the old days (before you guys tried to create this FOSS utopia of yours), Customer A would pay you for a particular feature and you would deliver the feature and the source to Customer A *only*. Customer A would own the source (literally "own"; i.e. control; he could license it to others on his own terms or keep it to himself, and you'd have nothing to say about it and you couldn't release it to his competitors for free (unless Customer A agreed to such terms before hand)). In effect, the software provided by the developer to Customer A becomes another part of Customer A's "in house" software, it's just that he contracted an outside dev to make it rather than getting it made by his own company's programmers. Yes, I know that this reeks of "evil", "greed", "selfishness", and what-have-you, but that's what makes the world go 'round. BTW, most custom software is still done this way, despite your efforts at destroying the software industry so you can remake it in RMS' image.
Nice to see that you admit that the only thing that OO has going for it is price (now that the "open file format" issue is kaput). But people don't want to use 2nd rate software even if its free (except those that have an political/philisophical agenda of some sort). And make no mistake, OO is indeed "2nd rate" software (if even that; Lotus Smart Suite still runs rings 'round OO as does WordPerfect Office). And Office 12 makes OO look like a high school project.
OpenDocument is essentially OO's format. There's nothing *special* about it such that anyone should support it other than that it's an open "standard", declared as a standard by an ad-hoc committee specially created for the purpose (has it been submitted to ECMA or ISO yet? Feel free to educate me on this.:-)). Anyway, why should Microsoft, or anyone for that matter, support OO's format rather than MS's if both are open standards? Especially since MS's standard will be much more widely used and supports more features?
Slashdot Mirror
Try Terraserver, and then try Windows Live Local. One of them seems suspiciously like Google Maps. One of them came to market at a time that seems suspiciously like they're trying to compete with Google Maps.
So nobody should be able to compete with Google?
BTW, when are you OSS guys going to make a non-commercial GPL'ed version of this?
I saw no posts regarding IE, but you're so ycophantically defensive of FF that you felt the need for a pre-emptive strike. LOL
There's something known as the "Halting Problem". It's impossible for a browser to "catch" all infinite loops that may lurk in a script.
You do realize that you're going up against the /. groupthink that MSFT never innovates anything. Posting your info is equivalent to talking to a wall. LOL
Don't you get it dear boy? Then I will shout. MICROSOFT IS AN ABUSIVE MONOPOLIST, wheras Apple is not (and make some nice computers too).
Apple abused its PPC OS monopoly to systematically destroy the Mac clone market in the late 90's; a more blatant example of monopoly abuse than anything Microsoft has ever done.
I'm curious, what Google software bundles VLC? Isn't VLS technically "illegal" since the devs don't pay for the various codec licenses. Those who hold the codec licenses (the various MPEG orgs, MSFT, Apple, Real, etc) haven't done anything against VLC (for practical reasons), but I'd be surprised if Google bundled software that could play MPEG2 (for example) without paying for the MPEG2 license. (Hell, Apple makes you pay $10 to get QuickTime player to play MPEG2, and MSFT makes you pay a third party for an MPEG2 codec for WMP).
Secondly, if Google becomes a monopoly in its field (which it definitely is striving for), would you support them bundling a particular media player, making it harder for others to compete?
*grins* Your second analogy is exactly what people what microsoft don't allow (or didn't before getting their predatory asses hauled through court) - OEMs having Real / Quicktime / etc media players installed instead of Media Player.
Bzzzt!! Wrong! HP bundles iTunes and QT as the default media players. Dell bundles the horrible "Dell Media Experience" app as the default CD and DVD player. And I know that another OEM bundles RealPlayer. It's true that Microsoft doesn't allow OEMs to remove WMP, but users don't want them to (witness the utter failure of XP sans WMP in Europe). As long as OEMs can bundle other players as the default players, what's the problem?
who Jesus chided for praying outdoors so that everyone could see how "righteous" they were. If Google's so benevolent, why do they have to proclaim their righteousness every chance they get? Have you ever heard the saying, "The clearest sign that someone is a racist is for that someone to say, 'I'm not a racist.'"?
Rule of thumb: The likelihood of one's being evil is inverely proportional to the tendency of one to declare himself not to be evil.
BTW, the slashdotters (and their ilk), and sadly, Google, have diluted the word "evil" to the point that the term is nigh-meaningless.
... Google runs on several thousand PC-class servers.
;-)
Yeah, but Google's servers aren't just passing bits around, they store a copy of the whole (freely accessible) web.
This is why I expect this suit to be thrown out. Microsoft already provides the means to address this idiot's problems, so the suit is wholly unnecessary and frivolous.
10 Home
;-)
20 Print "What is the password: "
30 Get A$
40 If A$ = "b" then goto 70
50 Print "Wrong!"
60 Goto 20
70 Print "Right"
80 End
I do remember programs like the above (the old Compute! magazine provided listings of old-style BASIC programs each month), but such code is the very definition of "spaghetti".
Several national governments are now mandating Open formats for thier documents, spreadsheets, etc. The more they are adopted, the more Bill and Company will have to compete on quality, features and price, not "Only we are 100% compatible with our proprietary format".
Quality and features are exactly the things that OO.o has been unable to compete on. That's why they developed OpenDoc (based on what was already the OO.o format, so it's not like there was much work there) so that they could compete simply based on "We have an *open* format" and nothing else. Office12 makes OO.o look like utter trash.
Sounds like you guys are talking about the LG LRM-519 machine just released last week.
Microsoft and LG release the LG LRM-519 digital media recorder.
You suggest that any code that directly links with GPL code must be GPL'ed itself, but code that talks to a separate GPL process does not.
But what about weak-linking a GPL DLL? In that case the host app doesn't directly link with the DLL, but loads the DLL dynamically, explicitly queries for the proc address of each function, and calls the functions through the function pointers?
Or, how about a COM interface? Clearly, a non-GPL'ed app can talk to a GPL'ed app through a COM interface. Why not do the same thing with a COM DLL? A non-GPL'ed app should be able to CoCreateInstance and talk to an in-proc COM object that lives in a GPL'ed DLL just like it can with a COM object that lives in a separate process, shouldn't it? The host app doesn't link directly to the DLL and the communication with the DLL's COM object is no different than what is used to talk to a COM object of a separate process (as far as the host app is concerned; the COM interface in question is used in both cases, and COM provides the "messaging mechanism" in both cases).
"Google has done nothing so far to earn our distrust. Micro$oft, on the other hand, has done NOTHING BUT deceitful, anti-competitive shenanigans since its inception (list is too long to reproduce here). THAT is the difference!"
How old are you, twelve?
How would simply extending GPL to cover web apps turn it into more of a EULA than it already is?
Today, if you distribute a GPL app you must release the code. But if you make a GPL web app available for use by the general public, you don't have to release the code. This gives an unfair "advantage" to those that make web apps over local apps. Secondly, as more and more apps become web apps, the GPL's provisions lose more and more relevance since they don't apply to those apps.
Look at it this way - eventually bandwidth will be so large that one will be able to run a binary app over the web as one might run a binary app located on a LAN server today. In such day and age, Microsoft could build just one binary of Office, put it on their server, and charge people to use it over the Web. Or Google to do something similar and "charge" people to use it through ads. In either of these cases, Microsoft or Google could use all the GPL 2 code that they want and not release the code since they're not distributing the binary even though their app is used by the general public. Hell, Google is doing this today (making use of GPL for their publicly used web stuff and not releasing the code). Nobody here complains because Goolge is everyone's "darling", but just replace "Google" with "Microsoft" and see if you feel the same way.
Summary: If GPL software is made available for external use, whether it be through releasing the binary, running it as a web app on a web server, or through some other means, then the developer should have to release the code. It's "external use" that should be the determining factor of whether code must be released, not "distributing binaries". Times have changed, and GPL should change with the times.
OpenDocument format was created because OO.o (and ostensibly others) couldn't compete with MS Office (whether it be based on merit or based on format lock-in). So they created a new format and proclaimed the openness of the format as the primary reason to use OO.o (as opposed to reasons like features, UI, integration, etc). But this format was made with OO.o in mind. It naturally fits with OO.o's features and code structure. OO.o can easily support this format because it was made *for* OO.o. MS, on the other hand, would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to force their apps to support OpenDocument. And for what purpose? To support a format of competing product with tiny fraction of MS Office's userbase? Developers of other non-OO.o apps are willing to jump through the hoops to support what is essentially OO.o's format because they don't have the userbase that MS Office does, and don't have the responsibility to support the features on which that large userbase relies.
And yes, I know that the OASIS committee invited Microsoft to have input in OpenDocument format, but why should Microsoft jump thru hoops (both technical and political) to shoehorn their features into a format designed with a competing product in mind? "Hey, Microsoft, we created a new open format for OO.o. We cordially invite you to forcefeed your features into this format."
Microsoft is the fittest entity to design an XML format for their products just as OO.o (and whatever tokens that are on the OAISIS committee) is the best entity to design an XML format for OO.o. Both are going to be open standards (neither has gone through the ECMA process yet). And Microsoft's initiative isn't solely supported by them, they have others like Apple backing them, that will participate in the ECMA committee that standardizes the Microsoft formats.
In summary:
1. Both formats will be open ECMA and ISO standards.
2. Both formats have *multiple* entities backing them and participating in the ECMA committees standardizing the formats.
3. OpenDocument was submitted to ECMA on Oct 25, 2005 (so I've read), and Microsoft's will be submitted shortly. It's not like OpenDocument is a longtime well established standard.
4. Microsoft Office a much much larger userbase that relies on particular MS Office features that are not supported by OpenDocument (or at least not easily or well). It is Microsoft that must transition their large userbase from the old formats to the new, and Microsoft is the appropriate entity to design a format that will drive that transition (by contrast, the OASIS committee has a vested interest in seeing that such a transition NOT go smoothly; meaning they have an incentetive to make OpenDocument clash with MS Office and its feature-set).
Given the above, forcing Microsoft to support OpenDocument (created with OO.o in mind), rather than Microsoft's own open format (created with MS Office in mind), when Microsoft Office's userbase is orders of magnitude larger than OO.o's woulb be a classic example of "tail wagging the dog."
1. Visio supports svg.
2. WMF is well understood and many Mac apps support it.
their internal tech moves because nobody really gives a damn. It would be the height of arrogance for a company to assume that the world cares whether it moves to open source or any other tech for that matter. Most companies aren't in the business of announcing to the world what their internal tech moves are.
I don't know what internal tech McDonalds uses, and don't care. McDonalds knows that I don't care, and therefore doesn't waste time bothering to make irrelevant declarations to the world regarding their internal tech.
'Twas true that Opera 7 = crash fest. But Opera 8 is much better; you should give it another try. :-)
What makes you think that OpenDocument is technically superior to Office 12 formats? In fact, I've seen evidence of the opposite (OpenDocument lacks support for all of the Office 12 (hell, Office 97) features and tries to forcefeed spreadsheets, word processors, and presentations to have the exact same format, leading to kludginess beyond belief).
The GPL does not require to provide a license to whomever comes asking for one, nor does it require you to provide source code to anyone except those to whom you have licensed/given the software.
That the GPL allows the customer receiving the binary and code to redistribute both to anyone he so chooses means that, in effect, the developer did release it to the world when he gave it to the customer.
"With FOSS, what you tend to sell are service contracts and development time. Sort of the "You need feature X? Sure, but it will cost you $Y and it will be released in the next version though you get it backported first and get to beta test it." In the end it allows you to develop software in directions you *know* your customers are willing to pay for..."
The problem being that Cutsomer A pays money for a particular feature and once that feature is complete, Customers B thru Z get it for free! Either from you, or some other developer that makes use of the feature for which Customer A paid you that you then released to the world in the spirit of FOSS! And if Customers B thru Z are *competitors* of Customer A, then Customer A is screwed over all the more, sice he paid for the very tools that B thru Z use to compete! LOL
Now, in the old days (before you guys tried to create this FOSS utopia of yours), Customer A would pay you for a particular feature and you would deliver the feature and the source to Customer A *only*. Customer A would own the source (literally "own"; i.e. control; he could license it to others on his own terms or keep it to himself, and you'd have nothing to say about it and you couldn't release it to his competitors for free (unless Customer A agreed to such terms before hand)). In effect, the software provided by the developer to Customer A becomes another part of Customer A's "in house" software, it's just that he contracted an outside dev to make it rather than getting it made by his own company's programmers. Yes, I know that this reeks of "evil", "greed", "selfishness", and what-have-you, but that's what makes the world go 'round. BTW, most custom software is still done this way, despite your efforts at destroying the software industry so you can remake it in RMS' image.
Nice to see that you admit that the only thing that OO has going for it is price (now that the "open file format" issue is kaput). But people don't want to use 2nd rate software even if its free (except those that have an political/philisophical agenda of some sort). And make no mistake, OO is indeed "2nd rate" software (if even that; Lotus Smart Suite still runs rings 'round OO as does WordPerfect Office). And Office 12 makes OO look like a high school project.
OpenDocument is essentially OO's format. There's nothing *special* about it such that anyone should support it other than that it's an open "standard", declared as a standard by an ad-hoc committee specially created for the purpose (has it been submitted to ECMA or ISO yet? Feel free to educate me on this. :-)). Anyway, why should Microsoft, or anyone for that matter, support OO's format rather than MS's if both are open standards? Especially since MS's standard will be much more widely used and supports more features?