Why would you care? Wouldn't OpenOffice be better off with 100% compatibility by using the free MS license rather than the half-baked "compatibility" that OO claims today?
What you're really scared about is that once Office12 ships, the Office12 format will instantly be the most widely used *open* format just like that. Hell, Apple's TextEdit program already uses Word 2003's XML format; the Office12 formats will be used all the more.
Ironically, you guys have always said that Microsoft would never open their formats because then they'd have to compete on merit. Well guess what, the reverse is now the case - OpenOffice will now have to compete based on *merit* rather than based on having an "open" format, and that scares you guys to death. LOL
WMP already does have a monetary value of 0, so what's your point? You suggest that the EU force WMP to have a monetary value that can be subtracted from XP-N? And just how would they do that anyway, let the value of WMP relative to XP be equal to the number of bytes of WMP relative to XP? The value will still be zero. Or maybe WMP should be valued at the same price as QuickTime or Real - i.e. zero. Or maybe you propose some arbitrary discount like 20%. Is WMP really worth 1/5 of XP?
There's no way to measure the "value" of WMP relative to the rest of the system, which is why what you propose was not done. The EU knew that such a measure wouldn't hold up under appeal, even in an anti-US corporation venue like the EU courts.
LOL It's funny to see someone that's drunk the "M$=devil" kool-aid and fully lives by the typical slashdot group-think calling someone else "brainwashed". LOL
"Brainwashed" is more applicable to those that think that the ultimate virtue is to develop software without compensation for their labor, giving the fruits of their labor to a company (like Red hat) that wraps the software in a pretty bow and sells/supports if for millions while giving the developers nothing more than an "Atta boy!" and a pat on the back. And the developers that buy into that system actually LIKE it that way!! THAT's the definition of "brainwashed".
And just how are they supposed to improve Word's performance on Linux? Spend millions making a Linux version of Word for a crowd that wouldn't buy it because the hate Microsoft and/or refuse to pay for software and/or refuse to use any software that's not open-sourced?
There's a reason why Office exists for Windows and Mac - the users of those systems are willing to pay for software and don't demand the source.
ActiveX is only dangerous if its used to download plugins "on-demand". With the "on-demand" downloading disabled, it's just like any other plug-in architecture: binary code that needs to be installed by the user. Installing WMP plugin installs some ActiveX stuff because the WMP plugin is an Active X control, but that doesn't mean it'll open any attack vector and is no different from installing any other binary plugin.
The gcc runtime libraries have "special exceptions" to the GPL? Doesn't this essentially mean that that gcc libraries aren't covered under GPL but rather under their own license that's more BSD-like?
"true...Micro$oft usually goes for the max profit on everything..."
Is that why they sold Xbox at a loss? Is that why they decided to give away VS2005 Express RTM for free through Nov 1996 rather than charging $50 as originally planned? Is that why WMP10 is free? Is that why hotmail is free? Etc...
How can I write portable versions of Mac OS X apps when the Cocoa API doesn't exist outside of Mac OS X (don't tell me about YellowBox or what-have-you) and the language Objective C isn't supported outside of Mac OS X (Apple is killing off Cocoa's Java support)? Oh, and the Carbon API doesn't exist outside of Mac OS X either (but at least it uses a widely supported language). You mentioned a software company in the Northwest US, but what about the one in Cupertino? Apps written to their platform are no more portable than Windows apps.
Besides that, apps that aren't able to take advantave of the underlying platform's unique features aren't sellable. Mac users in particular want apps that take advantage of the unique features of Mac OS X (and no, they don't consider some unix app to be a real "Mac" app, and rightly so). That means Cocoa or Carbon, and neither api is supported outside of Mac OS X.
"BTW, that update is less than 2 years old, so it's not like I'm really digging in the crates to find that one or making "OMG teh BSOD!" Win98 jokes."
Sorry, but bringing up any security problem that occurred on versions of Windows pre-XP SP2 is digging in the crates, and frankly, a sign of desperation.
And why bring up Windows in this thread anyway? This thread deals with Linux vulnerabilities.
"Who's stopping MS from adding the feature? My complaint is not that MS copied the idea, but that they took so long to do it."
But you'd rather they didn't add it at all, is that it? The fact is that whenever Microsoft adds some unix-like feature, it's one less thing for you guys to trash Windows about, and that stings like a bitch!! LOL Admit it, you'd rather have Windows suck than be good. Windows improvements scare the anti-MS crowd to death.
Ajax apps have been around long before Google started using it, but I think that Microsoft's Outlook Web Access was the first widely deployed such app (deployed by businesses, not the masses).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), this wouldn't work with XP SP2.;-) Recall the studies that appeared some months ago (around February, I believe) showing that XP SP2, Mac OSX, and Ubunto Linux all resisted being compromised over a two week period of being connected to the net. XP SP2 was attacked much more, but resisted the attacks. XP SP1 was also part of the study, and it got owned within 12 minutes.:p
Microsoft releases the source code to MFC and has done so from MFC's beginning (it comes with VS). They also released the code to the core part of.NET (see "Rotor").
"Forced upgrades => more users of XP => more users of IE 6 => browser statistics go up"
Nice spin attempt, but no. The w3schools.com stats show that the combined IE5 and IE6 usage has gone up. In other words, IE6 has usage has increased by more than IE5 usage has decreased. So IE's total usage increase has nothing to do with IE5 users moving to IE6. And your theory wouldn't explain the decrease in usage of Firefox and the other browsers.
Firefox has been on a precipitous decline at w3schools.com. For each of the last 4 months Firefox has lost user share, while IE has risen. In fact, IE is the only browser with a rising share over the last 4 months. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp
May 2005 ===> Sept 2005 IE 5 and 6: 71.6% ===> 75.5% Firefox: 21.0% ===> 18.0% Mozilla: 3.1% ===> 2.5% Netscape 0.7% ===> 0.4% Opera 7 and 8: 1.3% ===> 1.2%
Why do people, particularly slashdotters, keep citing wikipedia articles as if everything in there is fact? So much that's there is inaccurate and much of it is slanted to serve the contributer's particular agenda. I've even seen on another message board, somebody was arguing with another poster about some issue, and during the argument he added an article to wikipedia supporting his own side, then cited that article in a post to the message board as if it were some third party authority backing him up! LOL
Most wikipedia articles that I've seen have some kernel of truth but the articles that deal with debatable issues normally present only one side of the issue.
Google's desktop search has always sent search results back to google for "formatting" before being displayed, unlike the Microsoft search tool which is 100% local.
Who's evil now?
Why, Google of course!!
Here's a rule of thumb that slashdotters should learn. The evilness of an entity is proportional to the entity's self-declarations of non-evilness.:p
Why do people keep citing wikipedia articles as if everything in there is fact? So much that's there is inaccurate and much of it is slanted to serve the contributer's particular agenda. I've even seen on another message board, somebody was arguing with another poster about some issue, and during the argument he added an article to wikipedia supporting his own side, then cited that article in a post to the message board as if there was some third party authority backing him up! LOL
Most wikipedia articles that I've seen have some kernel of truth but the articles that deal with debatable issues normally present only one side of the issue. Cite a more credible source next time.
LOL I like how you OSS coders are supposed to be so superior to closed source devs, yet you don't want to hold your code to the same liability standards as you want to hold the code of closed source devs. What's the matter? Chicken? LOL
You want OSS devs to be free of any liability and pass such liability onto the user or some "certifier" paid by the user. This is absurd. Who better to "certify" the code than the person that wrote it? Besides that, it's humanly impossible to formally verify code of any significant complexity. Get real. If you want devs accountable for their code, you need to include yourself.
OWA (Outlook Web Access) already works great in IE (and blows away any web mail client that I've used, including GMail, btw), so IE's support for CSS is certainly good enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you care?
Wouldn't OpenOffice be better off with 100% compatibility by using the free MS license rather than the half-baked "compatibility" that OO claims today?
What you're really scared about is that once Office12 ships, the Office12 format will instantly be the most widely used *open* format just like that. Hell, Apple's TextEdit program already uses Word 2003's XML format; the Office12 formats will be used all the more.
Ironically, you guys have always said that Microsoft would never open their formats because then they'd have to compete on merit. Well guess what, the reverse is now the case - OpenOffice will now have to compete based on *merit* rather than based on having an "open" format, and that scares you guys to death. LOL
"There are lots of potential legal gotchas in a lot of "free" licenses. "
:p
Yep, just look at the GPL!
WMP already does have a monetary value of 0, so what's your point? You suggest that the EU force WMP to have a monetary value that can be subtracted from XP-N? And just how would they do that anyway, let the value of WMP relative to XP be equal to the number of bytes of WMP relative to XP? The value will still be zero. Or maybe WMP should be valued at the same price as QuickTime or Real - i.e. zero. Or maybe you propose some arbitrary discount like 20%. Is WMP really worth 1/5 of XP?
There's no way to measure the "value" of WMP relative to the rest of the system, which is why what you propose was not done. The EU knew that such a measure wouldn't hold up under appeal, even in an anti-US corporation venue like the EU courts.
LOL
It's funny to see someone that's drunk the "M$=devil" kool-aid and fully lives by the typical slashdot group-think calling someone else "brainwashed". LOL
"Brainwashed" is more applicable to those that think that the ultimate virtue is to develop software without compensation for their labor, giving the fruits of their labor to a company (like Red hat) that wraps the software in a pretty bow and sells/supports if for millions while giving the developers nothing more than an "Atta boy!" and a pat on the back. And the developers that buy into that system actually LIKE it that way!! THAT's the definition of "brainwashed".
And just how are they supposed to improve Word's performance on Linux? Spend millions making a Linux version of Word for a crowd that wouldn't buy it because the hate Microsoft and/or refuse to pay for software and/or refuse to use any software that's not open-sourced?
There's a reason why Office exists for Windows and Mac - the users of those systems are willing to pay for software and don't demand the source.
ActiveX is only dangerous if its used to download plugins "on-demand". With the "on-demand" downloading disabled, it's just like any other plug-in architecture: binary code that needs to be installed by the user. Installing WMP plugin installs some ActiveX stuff because the WMP plugin is an Active X control, but that doesn't mean it'll open any attack vector and is no different from installing any other binary plugin.
The gcc runtime libraries have "special exceptions" to the GPL? Doesn't this essentially mean that that gcc libraries aren't covered under GPL but rather under their own license that's more BSD-like?
"true...Micro$oft usually goes for the max profit on everything..."
Is that why they sold Xbox at a loss?
Is that why they decided to give away VS2005 Express RTM for free through Nov 1996 rather than charging $50 as originally planned?
Is that why WMP10 is free?
Is that why hotmail is free?
Etc...
How can I write portable versions of Mac OS X apps when the Cocoa API doesn't exist outside of Mac OS X (don't tell me about YellowBox or what-have-you) and the language Objective C isn't supported outside of Mac OS X (Apple is killing off Cocoa's Java support)? Oh, and the Carbon API doesn't exist outside of Mac OS X either (but at least it uses a widely supported language). You mentioned a software company in the Northwest US, but what about the one in Cupertino? Apps written to their platform are no more portable than Windows apps.
Besides that, apps that aren't able to take advantave of the underlying platform's unique features aren't sellable. Mac users in particular want apps that take advantage of the unique features of Mac OS X (and no, they don't consider some unix app to be a real "Mac" app, and rightly so). That means Cocoa or Carbon, and neither api is supported outside of Mac OS X.
"BTW, that update is less than 2 years old, so it's not like I'm really digging in the crates to find that one or making "OMG teh BSOD!" Win98 jokes."
Sorry, but bringing up any security problem that occurred on versions of Windows pre-XP SP2 is digging in the crates, and frankly, a sign of desperation.
And why bring up Windows in this thread anyway? This thread deals with Linux vulnerabilities.
"I'm afraid I'm not going to shed my skepticism just because Google claims to "do no evil"."
;-)
The propensity of an entity to do "evil" is directly proportional to the propensity of said entity to deny that it does evil.
LOLOL :-)
God, I wish I had mod points! This is a classic post. Thanks for the laugh!
"Who's stopping MS from adding the feature? My complaint is not that MS copied the idea, but that they took so long to do it."
But you'd rather they didn't add it at all, is that it? The fact is that whenever Microsoft adds some unix-like feature, it's one less thing for you guys to trash Windows about, and that stings like a bitch!! LOL
Admit it, you'd rather have Windows suck than be good. Windows improvements scare the anti-MS crowd to death.
Ajax apps have been around long before Google started using it, but I think that Microsoft's Outlook Web Access was the first widely deployed such app (deployed by businesses, not the masses).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), this wouldn't work with XP SP2. ;-) :p
Recall the studies that appeared some months ago (around February, I believe) showing that XP SP2, Mac OSX, and Ubunto Linux all resisted being compromised over a two week period of being connected to the net. XP SP2 was attacked much more, but resisted the attacks. XP SP1 was also part of the study, and it got owned within 12 minutes.
Microsoft releases the source code to MFC and has done so from MFC's beginning (it comes with VS). .NET (see "Rotor").
They also released the code to the core part of
"Forced upgrades => more users of XP => more users of IE 6 => browser statistics go up"
Nice spin attempt, but no.
The w3schools.com stats show that the combined IE5 and IE6 usage has gone up. In other words, IE6 has usage has increased by more than IE5 usage has decreased. So IE's total usage increase has nothing to do with IE5 users moving to IE6. And your theory wouldn't explain the decrease in usage of Firefox and the other browsers.
Firefox has been on a precipitous decline at w3schools.com. For each of the last 4 months Firefox has lost user share, while IE has risen. In fact, IE is the only browser with a rising share over the last 4 months.a sp
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
May 2005 ===> Sept 2005
IE 5 and 6: 71.6% ===> 75.5%
Firefox: 21.0% ===> 18.0%
Mozilla: 3.1% ===> 2.5%
Netscape 0.7% ===> 0.4%
Opera 7 and 8: 1.3% ===> 1.2%
Why do people, particularly slashdotters, keep citing wikipedia articles as if everything in there is fact? So much that's there is inaccurate and much of it is slanted to serve the contributer's particular agenda. I've even seen on another message board, somebody was arguing with another poster about some issue, and during the argument he added an article to wikipedia supporting his own side, then cited that article in a post to the message board as if it were some third party authority backing him up! LOL
Most wikipedia articles that I've seen have some kernel of truth but the articles that deal with debatable issues normally present only one side of the issue.
Keep pushing people and they will try something else, look at Firefox
a sp
Firefox's userbase has declined each month since May, while IE has risen.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
Mozilla and Netscape also declined during the same time period. (Opera remains unchanged, just people switching from Opera7 to Opera 8).
Google's desktop search has always sent search results back to google for "formatting" before being displayed, unlike the Microsoft search tool which is 100% local.
:p
Who's evil now?
Why, Google of course!!
Here's a rule of thumb that slashdotters should learn. The evilness of an entity is proportional to the entity's self-declarations of non-evilness.
Is that why 90% of projects on sourceforge are moribund?
Why do people keep citing wikipedia articles as if everything in there is fact? So much that's there is inaccurate and much of it is slanted to serve the contributer's particular agenda. I've even seen on another message board, somebody was arguing with another poster about some issue, and during the argument he added an article to wikipedia supporting his own side, then cited that article in a post to the message board as if there was some third party authority backing him up! LOL
Most wikipedia articles that I've seen have some kernel of truth but the articles that deal with debatable issues normally present only one side of the issue.
Cite a more credible source next time.
LOL
I like how you OSS coders are supposed to be so superior to closed source devs, yet you don't want to hold your code to the same liability standards as you want to hold the code of closed source devs. What's the matter? Chicken? LOL
You want OSS devs to be free of any liability and pass such liability onto the user or some "certifier" paid by the user. This is absurd. Who better to "certify" the code than the person that wrote it? Besides that, it's humanly impossible to formally verify code of any significant complexity. Get real. If you want devs accountable for their code, you need to include yourself.
OWA (Outlook Web Access) already works great in IE (and blows away any web mail client that I've used, including GMail, btw), so IE's support for CSS is certainly good enough.