The problem w/ recounting only some votes is that it violates the Equal Protection clause of the United States Constitution.
Totally bogus argument. Election rules are set up on a county-by-county basis. Each county has the power to run their elections as they determine. There is no standing for Equal Protection being applied to one county that runs their election with a less reliable vote-counting system than another county. Never has been in over two centuries of voting. To now claim that problems in some counties cannot be addressed without applying the same remedies to all counties is absurd. The Supremes knew this, which is why they stressed that their ruling could never be used as the basis for any other decision.
Everyone else knows that they never release applications for public beta testing. They only release operating systems as public betas
Not true. There have been several public betas of the dev tools. In fact, a public beta of Visual FoxPro 9.0 is scheduled for this July.
People who still choose to smoke today, knowing full well the deadly qualities of the product, have no one but themselves to blame when they get lung cancer.
People who still choose to use Windows to run their businesses, knowing full well the security track record of Microsoft, have no one but themselves to blame when they get the latest virus/worm infecting their systems.
Aw, geez... I had a client once who wanted all the dialogs that used the word "Abort" to be changed because the Anti-Choice folks at the company didn't want to have to read that nasty word.
Technical usage nearly always differs from everyday usage. When was the last time you saw a floppy that could actually flop?
Gotta agree with you on VFP 3.0. Blame it on the Microsoft versioning system - it really was a 1.0 release. I mean, except for the menus and reports, every single thing about the product was re-written. 5.0 was a bug fix release, 6.0 improved stability, and 7.0 and the recently-released 8.0 are rock-solid. In fact, I found the alpha of 8.0 to be more stable than the released version of 6.0!
First off, WINE is not illegal. It simply accepts the documented Win32 API calls, and responds appropriately. Nothing illegal about that at all.
Second, one of the fundamental aspects of EULA law is that if it is binding at all, it is only binding on the parties involved: the seller (Microsoft) and the buyer (the developer). If the developer creates an executable application for a client, and the client installs it to run under WINE, there is no violation of the EULA. Microsoft cannot go after the developer's client, because they were not a party to the original EULA.
Third, with the legal finding that Microsoft is indeed a monopoly on the OS, tying an application like Visual FoxPro to the OS is one of the actions prohibited by law. So even if EULAs themselves are binding, this one isn't, since you cannot enforce an illegal provision of a contract.
If it were a totally new app, then yes, I'd agree with you. But many of my clients have a big investment in their apps, and they either a) don't want to spring for new hardware to run the latest bloated Microsoft OS, or b) have lots of workstations that run the VFP app and nothing else. In the latter case, replacing those Windows workstations with Linux and Wine would save them lots of money. The sole intent of the recently added clause to the EULA prohibiting such a setup seems to be designed to prevent exactly this sort of migration to a competitive desktop OS.
I always love demoing VFP to someone whose impression of it was formed back in the DOS days. Things like the Class Browser usually stun them, and then manipulating MySQL tables in an interactive browse, all from the Command Window, usually knocks them for a loop.
I've programmed in many other languages in my time, but I still think that VFP kicks all their butts.
The VFP user community is of course mostly responsible for this.
Exactly. You can't imagine the number of times that we have been told by Microsoft to move to VB, VC++, Windows DNA,.Net, or whatever the flavor of the month is at Redmond.
And I must say to those who think that VFP is simply the old FoxPro with the word "Visual" tacked on: you don't know what the hell you are talking about. I program in Java and Python, and I have to say that VFP's object model is just as strong as either of those languages. I've written 3-tier apps against MySQL backends with web interfaces, simply because the VFP object model makes programming business objects so clean and easy.
This has far more grave consequences than what the VFP developer community has seen. It is the start of locking down Windows.
Couldn't agree with you more. I have lots of clients who run my VFP apps on desktops, and they have to pay for a Windows license for each machine. If they replaced them all with Linux/Wine systems, they could run their app without having to pay Microsoft a single dime in license fees. That's what they are afraid of - people who aren't locked into the Windows OS to run their businesses.
Also, the EULA requires that you distribute the files with a EULA that is at least as restrictive as the Microsoft EULA. It doesn't, however, require you to enforce that EULA if your client breaks it.
So give the runtimes to your client, let 'em install them on thousands of desktops running Linux/Wine, and then let them be. The client has no contract with Microsoft regarding this, so Microsoft can't sue them. And you've upheld your end of the EULA, since you passed on as restrictive a EULA as Microsoft imposed on you.
I'm sure you haven't. FoxPro hasn't been around for 8 years. Visual FoxPro is a totally different, object-oriented development tool with a killer data engine. It's so good that it is the only reason I use Windows at all.
It is a recent addition to the EULA for Visual FoxPro. Prior to version 7, there was no such restriction.
There is no technical reason for this restriction. The only explanation is to quash the viability of Linux on the desktop.
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Sod. Who would watch that when you have Chelsea at Arsenal this Sunday?
Those who can't hold their bladders for 45 minutes?
The problem w/ recounting only some votes is that it violates the Equal Protection clause of the United States Constitution. Totally bogus argument. Election rules are set up on a county-by-county basis. Each county has the power to run their elections as they determine. There is no standing for Equal Protection being applied to one county that runs their election with a less reliable vote-counting system than another county. Never has been in over two centuries of voting. To now claim that problems in some counties cannot be addressed without applying the same remedies to all counties is absurd. The Supremes knew this, which is why they stressed that their ruling could never be used as the basis for any other decision.
Everyone else knows that they never release applications for public beta testing. They only release operating systems as public betas Not true. There have been several public betas of the dev tools. In fact, a public beta of Visual FoxPro 9.0 is scheduled for this July.
People who still choose to smoke today, knowing full well the deadly qualities of the product, have no one but themselves to blame when they get lung cancer.
People who still choose to use Windows to run their businesses, knowing full well the security track record of Microsoft, have no one but themselves to blame when they get the latest virus/worm infecting their systems.
http://www.ipodbattery.com/ It helps to run something by Google before posting your ignorance for all the world to see.
Aw, geez... I had a client once who wanted all the dialogs that used the word "Abort" to be changed because the Anti-Choice folks at the company didn't want to have to read that nasty word. Technical usage nearly always differs from everyday usage. When was the last time you saw a floppy that could actually flop?
True - Bill Gates actually exists!
Gotta agree with you on VFP 3.0. Blame it on the Microsoft versioning system - it really was a 1.0 release. I mean, except for the menus and reports, every single thing about the product was re-written. 5.0 was a bug fix release, 6.0 improved stability, and 7.0 and the recently-released 8.0 are rock-solid. In fact, I found the alpha of 8.0 to be more stable than the released version of 6.0!
First off, WINE is not illegal. It simply accepts the documented Win32 API calls, and responds appropriately. Nothing illegal about that at all.
Second, one of the fundamental aspects of EULA law is that if it is binding at all, it is only binding on the parties involved: the seller (Microsoft) and the buyer (the developer). If the developer creates an executable application for a client, and the client installs it to run under WINE, there is no violation of the EULA. Microsoft cannot go after the developer's client, because they were not a party to the original EULA.
Third, with the legal finding that Microsoft is indeed a monopoly on the OS, tying an application like Visual FoxPro to the OS is one of the actions prohibited by law. So even if EULAs themselves are binding, this one isn't, since you cannot enforce an illegal provision of a contract.
If it were a totally new app, then yes, I'd agree with you. But many of my clients have a big investment in their apps, and they either a) don't want to spring for new hardware to run the latest bloated Microsoft OS, or b) have lots of workstations that run the VFP app and nothing else. In the latter case, replacing those Windows workstations with Linux and Wine would save them lots of money. The sole intent of the recently added clause to the EULA prohibiting such a setup seems to be designed to prevent exactly this sort of migration to a competitive desktop OS.
I always love demoing VFP to someone whose impression of it was formed back in the DOS days. Things like the Class Browser usually stun them, and then manipulating MySQL tables in an interactive browse, all from the Command Window, usually knocks them for a loop. I've programmed in many other languages in my time, but I still think that VFP kicks all their butts.
Also, the EULA requires that you distribute the files with a EULA that is at least as restrictive as the Microsoft EULA. It doesn't, however, require you to enforce that EULA if your client breaks it. So give the runtimes to your client, let 'em install them on thousands of desktops running Linux/Wine, and then let them be. The client has no contract with Microsoft regarding this, so Microsoft can't sue them. And you've upheld your end of the EULA, since you passed on as restrictive a EULA as Microsoft imposed on you.
I'm sure you haven't. FoxPro hasn't been around for 8 years. Visual FoxPro is a totally different, object-oriented development tool with a killer data engine. It's so good that it is the only reason I use Windows at all.
It is a recent addition to the EULA for Visual FoxPro. Prior to version 7, there was no such restriction. There is no technical reason for this restriction. The only explanation is to quash the viability of Linux on the desktop.