If Linux is better than MS window then surely you won't mind paying more to get it?
More than what? Ubuntu, for instance? Just because the price of Windows has been artificially
inflated for years, that doesn't mean that Linux vendors need to adopt the same pricing
strategy.
why are you so fixated on how much people are making
Let me answer that by selling you a packet of gum. For you, I have a special low, low price of
ten million dollars, but I'll settle for everything you own in the world, plus ten percent of any future earnings. Sound fair?
Most people take a healthy interest in not being ripped off. In some circles that is called
"good business sense". It's something that's allowed to individual people, and not just
corporations, strange as that may sound to some on this board.
so What if linux costs them less to Buy?
I agree. The real issue here is about a monopoly abusing its market power to make it harder to
find competing products, thus stifling competition. The actual software is a complete red herring.
it only takes one asshole to ruin a forum, if you have a problem you need to be able to stop them ALL.
Much as I sympathise, I don't think that works. If you're in a ship in mid ocean, it makes sense to plug all the leaks you can. Just because there's a slow trickle you can't quite seal off, that doesn't mean
you might as well knock holes in the hull.
And much as one bad user can make a nuisance of himself, a hundred can make things much much worse, f only by means of posting a hundred times as much abuse.
requiring real id wont affect the quality of the news, that's what news sites compete upon!
That's a little simplistic. The quality of news isn't the only determining factor. If it was, then pay per hit pages would be the norm, and that clearly isn't the case.
It seems equally clear, from the fact that this is being debated at all, that requiring a "real id" registration will upset an number of readers, both potential and otherwise. We can reasonably expect a number of these people to avoid the Washington Post (as many have done with the New York Times for
similar reasons). Whether or not the numbers will be sufficient to affect the paper's bottom line
remains to be seen, of course.
Its been suggested that you have to login to post on slashdot too (youd still have anon tho), how is this that different?
The suggestion may have been made, but that doesn't make it a good idea for Slashdot either,
and for much the same reasons. Any increase in post quality from such a move assumes that
you can ban the abusive posters. However, experience that the trolls will just return
with new accounts. So not only do you still get the trolls, but now you can no longer filter the ACs.
That sounds like a lose/lose proposition to me.
Of course, the Washington Post goes further, proposing to prevent such re-registrations by requiring
some form of "real id" which would authoritatively identify each registrant. This has all sorts of implications, since it would seem to require some sort of "internet licence" for web surfers to make
the ID work. And that raises issues around data mining, identity theft, abuse of power,
and data security.
welcome to the world of marketing. It's been that way for over 30 years now.
Respectfully, I disagree. It's not marketing's world, it's ours.
If the issue were purely a matter of marketers lying to one another
then I might agree with the whole apathy-is-the-best-policy meme.
But it's not, and we need to allow people to challenge organized deception
without automatically assuming them to be tarred with the same brush.
Obviously there are issues with astroturfers and viral marketers, and it's not
always a trivial matter to tell them from the genuine seekers after truth.
But if we simply assume duplicity whenever anyone challenges the marketers,
then the battle is lost before it begins.
this guy is clearly out to sway the audience in favour of his preffered os
Which is a fair point if you assume that anyone with an opinion is automatically a liar
by the very fact of their advocacy. I don't think that necessarily follows.
Certainly it doesn't seem to be the case in this instance. I can't see anything that looks
to be untrue, or even deliberately misleading the article. Mr. Williams even goes so far as acknowledge that one case, (the Hi China story) actually reflected well on Microsoft. So you can't
really paint him as being just as dishonest as the corporation he is challenging.
A deeper point is this: do we really want to live in a world where lies and deception are regarded as the norm, and where all opinions are automatically worthless simply by virtue of their being
opinions? I can't see that polluting the world's data flow like that is a good thing, personally.
I think we need people who are willing to challenge spin and propaganda wherever they find it. Williams seems to be doing that, and personally, I applaud him for his efforts.
I wasn't trying to give you enough information to implement OOXML in a/. post.
No, and I wasn't trying suggest that quoted passage was inadequate for any purposes beyond
implementing the autoSpaceLikeWord95 behavior. My apologies for any confusion on that point.
Actually, on a second reading, that does indeed look suitably precise. I would like it worded a
little less ambiguously, especially given some of the creative interpretations of standards
MS have made in the past, but yeah, that looks like it might be sufficient.
I'll still be very surprised if they've addressed all the issues considered at the BRM, let alone
all the comments from the national standards bodies.
The reason you haven't seen any of the relevent references in any Slashdot discussion is that they're invariably modded down to 0 or -1, because Slashdot modders don't like it when reality disagrees with their anti-Microsoft POV. E.g., here's a link to someone quoting from the documentation for autoSpaceLikeWord95
All the more reason to link to the post in question if you're using it in support, as you quite rightly have in this case.
If I might just address a few words to Macthorpe (since he apparently reads every post in any conversation in which he posts) See, Macthorpe? How hard was that?
Coming back to your point, let me quote from the post you reference:
2.15.3.6 autoSpaceLikeWord95 (Incorrectly Adjust Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges)
This element specifies adjustments (detailed below) which should be applied to the spacing between adjoining regions of non-ideographic and ideographic text when the autoSpaceDE (Â2.3.1.2) and autoSpaceDN (Â2.3.13) elements have a value of true (or equivalent). This algorithm typically results in the following:
An increase in the inter-character spacing added between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain full-width characters
No inter-character spacing between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain half-width characters
Now, the trouble I have here, (and I say this as man who writes software for a living), is that while I see
reference to an algorithm here, I don't see the algorithm specified. In the post you reference I see a description of what will typically happen in two (or possibly three - the wording seems unclear) cases, and it offers a single example.
Now this would be adequate for an in-house functional spec, where I might be asked to produce something kind-of-sort-of like what it says in the spec. But for an international standard that is supposed to enable
interoperability between independently authored applications, the quoted passage is woefully inadequate.
These same grown ups who've been whining "it's not fair" and stamping their feet whenever something didn't go their way?
They certainly didn't wait for the courts to determine if it was above board or not.
Talking about the UK UUG? I haven't seen them whining or stamping their feet. They do have a position
on whether or not the process was correctly followed in this case, which I believe is allowed. And they are
indeed waiting for the courts to make a ruling. It's difficult to see what else they could do,
Unless of course you have evidence of the UKUUG dispensing bloody retribution to
MSOOXML adopters in a series of vigilante style raids, or something equally outlandish.
In fact if you have anything tangible at all to contribute,
I'm sure we'd all love to read it.
Are you serious? You're too lazy to read all the comments on the Slashdot post that you're commenting on?
Luckily for me, you're setting a shining example by linking to the comments you're claiming in support of your point
and thus demonstrating your moral superiority.
...
I'll just hold my breath while I'm waiting, shall I?
As many other people who are posting have suggested. This whole situation is getting rather tiresome
I expect it's past your bedtime. Why don't you go have a nap in the corner? The grownups will carry on without you.
What I know of the BSI (who are very well respected) is that they don't come to decisions lightly.
There's no real evidence their process was flawed.
The issue of evidence is for the courts to determine, don't you think? I mean that's what the legal process is for.
As to the BSI, they are highly respected. And the reason for this is that they usually do an
excellent job. The lawsuit is being raised because, in this specific instance,
that does not seem to be the case.
Equally, the body bringing the action is the UK Uinix Users Group, a somewhat respectable body in
its own right. We're not talking about not some penny ante local LUG full of hotheaded
teenagers here, and I rather doubt they'd be wasting the groups resources on a potentially expensive lawsuit unless they'd first taken legal advice, and determined that they had a case.
Except, as pointed out by people in comments on this article, those items have been flagged and fixed as per the comments raised on the initial draft.
Would that be TFA, of this slashdot discussion? I can't find any references to flagging or
fixing in TFA, and a vague reference to an ongoing slashdot debate is hardly authoritative.
A quote or a link might be helpful.
Personally, I haven't heard about any comments being addressed in the MSOOXML spec. I know the
issues from the BRM were flagged to be fixed, but when last I heard we were relying on Microsoft's willingness to do the right thing in order to get them fixed. Historically, trusting
Microsoft in this matter this rarely not been a winning strategy, and that odd noise you can hear
is the sound of IR professionals the world over not holding their breath.
And of course, due to the very large number of issues raised, only about 10% of the comments at the BRM were actually discussed. So even if they fixed all the issues flagged that doesn't mean the spec is now
for for purpose.
But let's suppose that they've been busy boys indeed over in Redmond, and have fixed not only the issues from BRM, but also the ones that were raised by the various nation standards bodies that didn't get discussed due to time pressure. Even then, it doesn't really help. There are still issues with the patent promise that would prevent anyone from using the specification to interoperate with MSOffice - and if not for that, what good is it?
Serious question: Do you think MS-Office's essential world domination will go away if OOXML takes it in the pants?
Ah, but this is not all about Microsoft. It's about having standards that are actually fit for purpose, and about not having the international standardisation process corrupted to serve the short term purposes of a single corporate entity at the expense of everyone else.
Microsoft like to frame the argument as a plot to destroy the Redmond giant because then they can
go telling everyone how unfair it is for us all to make so much fuss. Poor little Microsoft, you gotta feel sorry for them.
The bottom line though is that if MSOOXML was a worthwhile standard,
there wouldn't be a fraction of this opposition.
I can understand the problem Pidgin developers point and I can agree with their point as a developer
And I can understand the drive to restrict the number of options to a functional minimum. But I think
that should be a guiding principle rather than an iron clad rule.
I suppose the question then becomes: how do you tell if an option is worth the overhead of the extra maintenance?
I would humbly submit that, if it's an option that stands to cost you half your userbase
then it probably is worth the effort.
When you want good usability you have to throw stuff away, completly. Moving the option around doesn't help, because you end up with more code to maintain, side-effects that might break other stuff and a lot of problem.
That's an issue with maintainability though, not usability. The program can be just as usable with a compile time option
in there. More so, since it doesn't annoy all those people who find the feature doesn't suit their work patterns.
And really, there's no reason it has to even be a maintenance issue with proper software design. The IM code is already
isolated in libpurple, They could (if they wished) have a separate interface with no more side-effect issues than there
are already between finch and pidgin. It would require that someone to commit to maintain the option,
but then, given that there seem to be enough devs to support a fork, that probably wouldn't have been a problem.
All that said, I havn't read the discussion (trac is down) so I don't know if there really is a good use case
for having a manually resizable inputbox or if it is just users wanting back the behavior they got used to.
Me neither, I must admit, and for the same reason. Still, I have to say that over the past five years I've gone from being
an argent fan of Gaim to using Kopete and Amsn almost exclusively. So I'm not entirely surprised that their userbase is up in arms.
How about asking actual users before starting to code anything?
Mmmm... in my experience, that doesn't work as well as you might expect. I've spent days at a time trying to explain to people why X is a good idea and all the wonderful things it will enable, all to no avail.
But code the bloody thing up, and it's different. Showing someone makes for somewhere between ten and a hundred times more effective communication in my experience. Of course, if I take a fortnight and write up a report, with diagrams and a presentation, I can generally get the point across. But if the feature only takes week to code and debug...
And I'm not always right, either. But I still generally find it far faster to show than to tell.
I think the main reason to not make it an option is because it is such a tiny obscure detail that you wouldn't even think to look for an option in the first place. And thus adding the option to the GUI would be useless clutter.
Tcha. Then make it a compile time option and let the people who feel that strongly about the issue enable or disable it at build time. The can stick the instructions in the FAQ.
I really can't see the point of refusing to budge over such a trivial issue.
Any moves to sue, based on an open standard would prove how useless the "standard" is. And that there is no point trusting one of MS's standards in the future.
What they've done is set it up so that any licences only cover software that conforms to the software, and not extensions. So, all they have to do now is maintain MS Office as non-conforming to the spec. That way, anyone who follows the spec has useless software, and anyone who tweaks thins so they can interoperate isn't following the terms of the licence and can be used for violating MS's holy IP.
By the time Redmond finishes spinning the story, it will be about smelly hippies pirating Microsoft's assets, while Ballmer dances on the sidelines chanting "I told you so". The fact this grubby little non-spec was never fit for purpose and should never have been approved won't make it into the new stories.
Slashdot Mirror
More than what? Ubuntu, for instance? Just because the price of Windows has been artificially inflated for years, that doesn't mean that Linux vendors need to adopt the same pricing strategy.
Let me answer that by selling you a packet of gum. For you, I have a special low, low price of ten million dollars, but I'll settle for everything you own in the world, plus ten percent of any future earnings. Sound fair?
Most people take a healthy interest in not being ripped off. In some circles that is called "good business sense". It's something that's allowed to individual people, and not just corporations, strange as that may sound to some on this board.
I agree. The real issue here is about a monopoly abusing its market power to make it harder to find competing products, thus stifling competition. The actual software is a complete red herring.
I hear that if you're wiling to pay a premium, they'll arrange for Steve Ballmer to come over and kick you in the nuts, personally.
Although, I expect that's only for corporate customers, OEMs, since Steve's time is valuable.
Much as I sympathise, I don't think that works. If you're in a ship in mid ocean, it makes sense to plug all the leaks you can. Just because there's a slow trickle you can't quite seal off, that doesn't mean you might as well knock holes in the hull.
And much as one bad user can make a nuisance of himself, a hundred can make things much much worse, f only by means of posting a hundred times as much abuse.
That's a little simplistic. The quality of news isn't the only determining factor. If it was, then pay per hit pages would be the norm, and that clearly isn't the case.
It seems equally clear, from the fact that this is being debated at all, that requiring a "real id" registration will upset an number of readers, both potential and otherwise. We can reasonably expect a number of these people to avoid the Washington Post (as many have done with the New York Times for similar reasons). Whether or not the numbers will be sufficient to affect the paper's bottom line remains to be seen, of course.
The suggestion may have been made, but that doesn't make it a good idea for Slashdot either, and for much the same reasons. Any increase in post quality from such a move assumes that you can ban the abusive posters. However, experience that the trolls will just return with new accounts. So not only do you still get the trolls, but now you can no longer filter the ACs. That sounds like a lose/lose proposition to me.
Of course, the Washington Post goes further, proposing to prevent such re-registrations by requiring some form of "real id" which would authoritatively identify each registrant. This has all sorts of implications, since it would seem to require some sort of "internet licence" for web surfers to make the ID work. And that raises issues around data mining, identity theft, abuse of power, and data security.
You're more than welcome to try...
Respectfully, I disagree. It's not marketing's world, it's ours.
If the issue were purely a matter of marketers lying to one another then I might agree with the whole apathy-is-the-best-policy meme. But it's not, and we need to allow people to challenge organized deception without automatically assuming them to be tarred with the same brush.
Obviously there are issues with astroturfers and viral marketers, and it's not always a trivial matter to tell them from the genuine seekers after truth. But if we simply assume duplicity whenever anyone challenges the marketers, then the battle is lost before it begins.
Which is a fair point if you assume that anyone with an opinion is automatically a liar by the very fact of their advocacy. I don't think that necessarily follows.
Certainly it doesn't seem to be the case in this instance. I can't see anything that looks to be untrue, or even deliberately misleading the article. Mr. Williams even goes so far as acknowledge that one case, (the Hi China story) actually reflected well on Microsoft. So you can't really paint him as being just as dishonest as the corporation he is challenging.
A deeper point is this: do we really want to live in a world where lies and deception are regarded as the norm, and where all opinions are automatically worthless simply by virtue of their being opinions? I can't see that polluting the world's data flow like that is a good thing, personally. I think we need people who are willing to challenge spin and propaganda wherever they find it. Williams seems to be doing that, and personally, I applaud him for his efforts.
Yes, yes, conceeded.
No, and I wasn't trying suggest that quoted passage was inadequate for any purposes beyond implementing the autoSpaceLikeWord95 behavior. My apologies for any confusion on that point.
Actually, on a second reading, that does indeed look suitably precise. I would like it worded a little less ambiguously, especially given some of the creative interpretations of standards MS have made in the past, but yeah, that looks like it might be sufficient.
I'll still be very surprised if they've addressed all the issues considered at the BRM, let alone all the comments from the national standards bodies.
After you, sir.
All the more reason to link to the post in question if you're using it in support, as you quite rightly have in this case.
If I might just address a few words to Macthorpe (since he apparently reads every post in any conversation in which he posts) See, Macthorpe? How hard was that?
Coming back to your point, let me quote from the post you reference:
Now, the trouble I have here, (and I say this as man who writes software for a living), is that while I see reference to an algorithm here, I don't see the algorithm specified. In the post you reference I see a description of what will typically happen in two (or possibly three - the wording seems unclear) cases, and it offers a single example.
Now this would be adequate for an in-house functional spec, where I might be asked to produce something kind-of-sort-of like what it says in the spec. But for an international standard that is supposed to enable interoperability between independently authored applications, the quoted passage is woefully inadequate.
Talking about the UK UUG? I haven't seen them whining or stamping their feet. They do have a position on whether or not the process was correctly followed in this case, which I believe is allowed. And they are indeed waiting for the courts to make a ruling. It's difficult to see what else they could do,
Unless of course you have evidence of the UKUUG dispensing bloody retribution to MSOOXML adopters in a series of vigilante style raids, or something equally outlandish. In fact if you have anything tangible at all to contribute, I'm sure we'd all love to read it.
Luckily for me, you're setting a shining example by linking to the comments you're claiming in support of your point and thus demonstrating your moral superiority.
I'll just hold my breath while I'm waiting, shall I?
I expect it's past your bedtime. Why don't you go have a nap in the corner? The grownups will carry on without you.
The issue of evidence is for the courts to determine, don't you think? I mean that's what the legal process is for.
As to the BSI, they are highly respected. And the reason for this is that they usually do an excellent job. The lawsuit is being raised because, in this specific instance, that does not seem to be the case.
Equally, the body bringing the action is the UK Uinix Users Group, a somewhat respectable body in its own right. We're not talking about not some penny ante local LUG full of hotheaded teenagers here, and I rather doubt they'd be wasting the groups resources on a potentially expensive lawsuit unless they'd first taken legal advice, and determined that they had a case.
Would that be TFA, of this slashdot discussion? I can't find any references to flagging or fixing in TFA, and a vague reference to an ongoing slashdot debate is hardly authoritative. A quote or a link might be helpful.
Personally, I haven't heard about any comments being addressed in the MSOOXML spec. I know the issues from the BRM were flagged to be fixed, but when last I heard we were relying on Microsoft's willingness to do the right thing in order to get them fixed. Historically, trusting Microsoft in this matter this rarely not been a winning strategy, and that odd noise you can hear is the sound of IR professionals the world over not holding their breath.
And of course, due to the very large number of issues raised, only about 10% of the comments at the BRM were actually discussed. So even if they fixed all the issues flagged that doesn't mean the spec is now for for purpose.
But let's suppose that they've been busy boys indeed over in Redmond, and have fixed not only the issues from BRM, but also the ones that were raised by the various nation standards bodies that didn't get discussed due to time pressure. Even then, it doesn't really help. There are still issues with the patent promise that would prevent anyone from using the specification to interoperate with MSOffice - and if not for that, what good is it?
Ah, but this is not all about Microsoft. It's about having standards that are actually fit for purpose, and about not having the international standardisation process corrupted to serve the short term purposes of a single corporate entity at the expense of everyone else.
Microsoft like to frame the argument as a plot to destroy the Redmond giant because then they can go telling everyone how unfair it is for us all to make so much fuss. Poor little Microsoft, you gotta feel sorry for them.
The bottom line though is that if MSOOXML was a worthwhile standard, there wouldn't be a fraction of this opposition.
And I can understand the drive to restrict the number of options to a functional minimum. But I think that should be a guiding principle rather than an iron clad rule.
I suppose the question then becomes: how do you tell if an option is worth the overhead of the extra maintenance? I would humbly submit that, if it's an option that stands to cost you half your userbase then it probably is worth the effort.
That's an issue with maintainability though, not usability. The program can be just as usable with a compile time option in there. More so, since it doesn't annoy all those people who find the feature doesn't suit their work patterns.
And really, there's no reason it has to even be a maintenance issue with proper software design. The IM code is already isolated in libpurple, They could (if they wished) have a separate interface with no more side-effect issues than there are already between finch and pidgin. It would require that someone to commit to maintain the option, but then, given that there seem to be enough devs to support a fork, that probably wouldn't have been a problem.
Me neither, I must admit, and for the same reason. Still, I have to say that over the past five years I've gone from being an argent fan of Gaim to using Kopete and Amsn almost exclusively. So I'm not entirely surprised that their userbase is up in arms.
Mmmm... in my experience, that doesn't work as well as you might expect. I've spent days at a time trying to explain to people why X is a good idea and all the wonderful things it will enable, all to no avail.
But code the bloody thing up, and it's different. Showing someone makes for somewhere between ten and a hundred times more effective communication in my experience. Of course, if I take a fortnight and write up a report, with diagrams and a presentation, I can generally get the point across. But if the feature only takes week to code and debug...
And I'm not always right, either. But I still generally find it far faster to show than to tell.
Tcha. Then make it a compile time option and let the people who feel that strongly about the issue enable or disable it at build time. The can stick the instructions in the FAQ.
I really can't see the point of refusing to budge over such a trivial issue.
Just out of curiosity, when did we decide that monopolies, and the abuse of power were to be encouraged? Did I miss a memo, or something?
All right everyone, move along, nothing to see here. Free market capitalism is SO Twentieth Century. Everybody move along ...
It's an interesting use of the word, isn't it?
What do they think they're going to do if we don't stop talking about them
"All right: everyone just STFU, or else... or else we'll approve MSOOXML....umm ... oops!"
Quaking in my boots, me.
my pleasure - although I can't the point came across with any great clarity.
Bah. Muggers are up straightforward about what they do.
That doesn't mean we should encourage them.
What they've done is set it up so that any licences only cover software that conforms to the software, and not extensions. So, all they have to do now is maintain MS Office as non-conforming to the spec. That way, anyone who follows the spec has useless software, and anyone who tweaks thins so they can interoperate isn't following the terms of the licence and can be used for violating MS's holy IP.
By the time Redmond finishes spinning the story, it will be about smelly hippies pirating Microsoft's assets, while Ballmer dances on the sidelines chanting "I told you so". The fact this grubby little non-spec was never fit for purpose and should never have been approved won't make it into the new stories.