It may be stating the obvious, especially on Slashdot, but there are many people in the world who need to hear this: again and again, M$ pushes its products not by trying to make them have the highest quality and win in market competition, and certainly not by innovating, but rather by playing political hardball and introducing gratuitous incompatibilities, all to deprive consumers of choices.
So many times, I hear people insisting that M$ could only have become so powerful by being the best. This seems to derive from a profound conviction that market forces can only ever do The Right Thing, so anything that succeeds in the market is by definition a superior product. I think that market forces make this happen most of the time, but like anything else conceived and practiced by human beings, markets are flawed, in that they sometimes allow products to succeed by shenanigans rather than by quality. And M$ is living proof of it.
Here's M$, reacting to the open source phenomenon, which may truly be the biggest threat they face today. Especially the GPL fosters the existence of software that they couldn't at least copy for their own purposes, unless they open their source code as well. So what do they do? Create even better products that beat out GPL'd software on the market? NOOOOOOOO!!! Instead they create a license designed to make the competitor incompatible, by legal fiat. Not that any consumer of software derives any benefit from the intracacies of software licenses, and not that there's any innovation in legally forbidding interoperation.
What will it take before M$ apologists finally get it?
... that's how the Internet came to flourish, and that's the only way future network technologies will ever have a chance. Anything else is quite simply doomed.
The existence of open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP and all the rest, which were agreed upon by the major players, created markets in which everyone had their chance to create the best products. We've seen in recent years how hard it is to make money in the Internet, since users are accustomed to getting everything for free. If it had cost money just to use the thing in the first place, it never would have gotten off the ground.
If standards for web services are not royalty-free, then there will be no such thing within a few years. Or perhaps the idea of web services will survive on the basis of other, royalty-free protocols, but SOAP and WDSL and other patented technologies will be a footnote in history. Let IBM and M$ go ahead if they want to kill off their own inventions, it really doesn't bother me a bit.
CNET said that Unix isn't dead? Wow, if CNET says so, then maybe there's something to it! You know, I've got that geeky guy with the funny hair working for me in the techie whatsis department, and he keeps trying to tell me about Lunix or whatever it's called, and how it's really good, but I never pay any attention to him. I mean, he stays up late writing a lot of programs all the time, but what makes him think he knows this business better than me? After all, the most successful system in the world is Windows, not Lunix or Unix or whatever, so it's obviously the best; how could some free program written by some commie kid over in Europe be any better than that? I mean, they don't want any money for it, so how good could it be?
And then I saw those ads talking about how hard that Unix stuff is. That's for sure. And it costs so much money, even if it's free! I just knew it! Sure, I don't mind paying nothing for my computer stuff, I just love it in fact. But those geeky guys with the greasy hair always want me to pay them so much money; almost as much as I get, and I'm the boss, can you believe that?! Then they just want to turn around and act like they're so much smarter than me! They just want it to be really complicated, so only they understand it. Well, my nephew Herb just took an exam and now it says he's a Certified Engineer, and he got my Windows stuff working after only about three days, and he only wants half as much money! I'd fire that geeky fellow, except first I need to find someone who understands how to make our email and Explorer stuff work.
I'm going to learn a lot more about this stuff, I really am. In fact I turned on my Explorer the other day, to check it out. (That geeky jerk always says I don't know how to use the Explorer; but he's always trying to confuse me by calling it the internetwork, or something.) I saw that TV ad and went to the Way Out homepage, but it wasn't working, but that's OK, it's completely normal for computers to go down sometimes, so I'll come back later. (The geek was laughing, because he says that homepage was first running on BCD or something, which is supposed to be the same as Lunix, and then they put it on Windows and it went down. But he must be lying, because it all works with the Explorer, I can see it right here.)
So anyway, I thought it was pretty clear that Lunix and Unix and whatever are all dead. But CNET says it isn't? Right there in black and white? Geeze, this stuff is really confusing, you know.
Didn't Hawking say ...
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Time Travel
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· Score: 2
... that he doesn't think so?
I recall reading a quotation from one of his recent books (which I haven't read, so I'm on thin ice here). IIRC it said that he doesn't believe time travel is possible because we haven't noticed tourists from the future visiting us in the present.
Whether or not Hawking said it, I find this argument rather compelling. Suppose that mankind has all of the future (all the way to the Big Crunch, if there will be such a thing) to try to discover time travel. If it were ever discovered, then sooner or later it would become a consumer item, and folks would be taking their kids for whirl through the 21st century.
Seriously, even if the inventors started out using their time machine cautiously, only sending a few people who go unnoticed, eventually they'd be sending more people on trips to the past. From our perspective, we wouldn't be able to tell if they were coming shortly after the invention or later. And we'd notice them. Even if the time travellers were warned not interfere with the course of history, as Christopher Lloyd was always bellowing to Michael J. Fox in the first film, one of them would eventually slip up, and others wouldn't care and would run roughshod over the course of events.
This isn't proof, because it is possible to assume that all of the time travellers have been so careful that we haven't noticed them, at least those who have visited times up to 2002. But this assumption is so inconsistent with the fallibility that is intrinsic to human nature, that I must conclude that time travel is impossible.
It wasn't until version 4 of the two browsers that IE was widely regarded as fairly equal in quality with Netscape (not better, but just about the same). But by this time, IE was bundled with every copy of Windows, impossible to remove, and OEM's and ISP's were contractually forbidden to give Netscape equal availability. Netscape never had a chance to recover.
And spectecjr wrote:
RUBBISH.
I bought a Packard Bell in 1998, which came with Windows 98, and both IE and Netcape preinstalled.
Explain that.
Sorry mate, don't see why it's rubbish. Of course the OEM deals did not forbid any installation of Netscape, that's well known (they'd really have anti-trust problems if they tried to prevent that). But as you say yourself, they weren't allow to do things like replace the IE icon on the desktop with Netscape.
And that's bad enough, because many OEM's wanted to do exactly that -- IE was widely regarded as so much worse than Netscape that the OEM's felt that they were passing off shoddy products to their customers, unless they could make Netscape the default. They were pissed at M$ that they couldn't, and testified to that under oath. That was my original point.
You say that your Packard Bell had both browsers pre-installed, but did they both appear by default on the desktop? I'd be surprised if they did, because that was usually not permitted (IE had to be on the desktop, but Netscape, if present at all, was buried somewhere). But even if it were so in your case, exceptions prove the rule.
As others have noted, while Microsoft put pressure on its competitors, now found to be illegal pressure, much of the demise of MS's competitors has been their own dang fault.
For example, MS did everything they could to get IE as the "default browser" that it is today, but who here has used any recent version of Netscape and been happy with it? 4.x sucks, 6.x is worse, and IE is quite usable. Throw the politics out - which would you prefer?
ARRRRRRRGH!
I've heard this argument so many times, and I can't really understand while people continue to believe it.
Yes, Netscape has been inferior to IE for many years now, but to say that IE gained dominant market share because of that is to ignore history and to reverse cause and effect. Netscape didn't lose because it is inferior; Netscape is inferior because M$ forced it out of competition -- illegally, as the poster admits --, drying up its revenues ("cutting off Netscape's air supply", in M$'s own words), making it nearly impossible to invest in improvements of its product.
Recall that the first versions of IE (versions 1 & 2) were abonimably bad, universally regarded as far worse than Netscape. Version 3 was good enough to work with, but still the clear consensus was that Netscape's version 3 was far better. And yet it was around this time that M$ entered into all the exclusive deals and illegal shenanigans that impeded or closed off Netscape's means of distribution. IE's market share increased rapidly not because of its quality, but simply due to its easy availability. At the time, Netscape was trying to make money from its browser, and needed the revenue to finance further development, but as market share fell, they started to lose money and lay off employees.
It wasn't until version 4 of the two browsers that IE was widely regarded as fairly equal in quality with Netscape (not better, but just about the same). But by this time, IE was bundled with every copy of Windows, impossible to remove, and OEM's and ISP's were contractually forbidden to give Netscape equal availability. Netscape never had a chance to recover.
This where many Slashdotters answer with an argument that assumes that all the world's a geek. So IE was the default setting, they say. So the icon was on the desktop, and you might have to go download Netscape, they say. Then couldn't people use Netscape after all, if it was so good and that's what they wanted? Surely you can change your default settings! Surely you can, and a geek does it all the time, but it is an empirically well-established fact that most users don't. That's not to assert that they're dumb or lazy; for whatever reason, most users never change their defaults, even if there are superior alternatives, and to believe otherwise is to display vast ignorance of the facts about software consumers. And so whoever has the power to control the defaults has significant power to determine which products get used. M$ knows it, and that's why they did everything they could, illegal if necessary, to use that power.
What I miss in many M$ apologists is the recognition of lost opportunity -- how much better software could be in today's world if there were a real opportunity for competition. Yes, a lot of the alternatives really and truly suck, but don't just think about the way the world is; think about how the world could be if the creators of innovative, quality software had a genuine chance to compete.
Subject: Has anyone figured out how to pay the coders?
Maybe someday we'll know the answer to this question. There are many interesting ideas in this thread, so maybe the answer is yes. But maybe it won't work out. A few years and we'll know.
But this question will not decide the fate of open source software. There will always be open source software.
This is because you just can't stop people from sharing their ideas and seeking feedback. Someone somewhere will publish his code, and someone somewhere will reply with her patch, and there you go. It will go on, even if no one involved is making any money, and no amount of censorship, FUD or corporate-inspired regulation will ever be able to stop it. It's just human nature.
No matter what happens, we're going to have to reconcile our business models with the existence of open source software, because it's here to stay.
I know there are some english speaking Germans reading/. Enlighten us, please...
Would you settle for an American who has lived in Germany for over fifteen years?
I have to agree with an earlier poster who suggested that by and large, German citizens are better educated and far and away more interested in politics and civil rights issues than Americans are. Hate to have to say that about my countrymen, but it's true. And ultimately, it's history that's responsible for that. Germans only have to look back one generation to see a time when they abandoned all respect for freedom, and it brought on unparalleled disaster. As a result, very many Germans today have a strong sense of responsibility to history that requires their active interest in politics and civil rights. Unfortunately, I miss this sense of duty among too many people in the US.
And another issue is simply fact that weak encryption and weak privacy policy is largely an interest of the United States, and hardly any one else shares the interest. It is widely suspected that American spooks are monitoring communications in countries like Germany, and they don't like it. Naturally, this kind of policy is precisely what they can and should do about it.
Having said all that, I must add that there are some laws and ideas I find very weird, especially concerning freedom of speech. The most astounding of all: You can prosecuted in Germany for insulting someone! You can criticize someone as sharply as you like, but if you utter something unconstructive such as "You're an asshole," you can be taken to court.
What's worse is that the penalty's are more severe if the insult is directed at a civil servant, such as a policeman or a bureaucrat.
I could rant on about this for a few more pages, but I think I'll just leave it there.
Web of trust vs. certification authorities
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Linus Does Not Scale
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The notion of trust seems central to this debate -- who can be trusted to apply patches that will make the kernel better? And it reminds me of structures for establishing trust in the world of cryptography -- who do I trust to tell me that this public key really belongs to the person to whom it's supposed to belong?
The ideas about kernel patches being discussed remind me of the distinction between a "web of trust" and "certification authorities" in the world of cryptography. Certification authorities are the conventional means, which are used by the most popular web browsers. Some authority, like Verisign or Thawte, is universally accepted as trustworty, and if they sign a key, then it can be trusted. The web of trust was advocated by Phil Zimmermann and built into PGP, and AFAIK, PGP is the only context in which it's ever been applied (or even proposed). It's an attempt to reflect our everyday notion of trust -- I decide who I trust, on whatever basis I choose, and if someone I trust has signed a key, then I trust it. I can also decide if I trust people I don't know, if they are trusted by people I trust. There's no need for a central authority in a web of trust (although I might choose to include CAs in my web and trust them).
Rob Landley is suggesting that we entrust the patch penguin with the job of filtering patches towards Linus, but Linus sees the PP as a kind of central authority, and prefers to have a web of individuals around hom who he can trust.
Like Phil Zimmermann, Linus is arguing that his model is much more similar to the way that people decide to trust each other in real life. In the world of crypto, certification authorities have always been regarded with suspicion for reasons just like this -- why should I trust Verisign more than my friends? In the kernel world, Linus is saying, isn't it better and more intuitive to trust a group of people I know well, who can distribute the work amongst each other?
The analogy breaks here a bit. CAs in the crypto world are suspicious because we don't if they're corrupt -- maybe they're full of Enron managers. In the kernel world, we need to trust maintainers with their skill and above all, ability to handle the workload. Corruption is not the problem (I hope not, anyway.)
But, to take the analogy further, one should also note that PGP web of trust never really worked well as a practical matter. Most people using PGP had an island of people around them whom they trusted, with few connections outside of their immediate clique. I don't recall *ever* receiving a key from a stranger that was evaluated as trustworthy because of its position in the web topology.
So I'd say that Linus has a point in saying that the web model fits our common-sense intuitions about trust. But if Rob Landley says that it's not functioning well, the experience of PGP gives some support to his argument.
I must disagree with you here. Stallman, or at least his strong views on the purity of free software are needed more than ever.
... and so on and so forth, but your post just keeps asserting that these things are all so important, without explaining why.
Sure it's a Good Thing that the FSF exists, and of course RMS deserves respect for the dogged exercise of his rights (as everybody always says nowadays). And if he and others like him can convince more people, then more power to 'em. But a lot of us know and understand the message, are not terribly convinced by it, and aren't planning on doing anything particular to promote it in the foreseeable future. In the marketplace of ideas, you win some and you lose some.
Incidentally, since you're evidently a supporter of the FSF and the free software concept, I'd like to advise you, probably for the umpteenth time, that RMS is an extremely poor ambassador for your cause. Let's once and for all be rid of the canard that it's everybody else's fault, because we're all just too lily-livered to cope with someone who is so strongly dedicated. RMS could be just as passionate without being such an insufferable jackass. It is possible to take a strong, principled stance, and nevertheless have some skills at diplomacy and just generally getting along with people. RMS's fans try to redefine his weaknesses as strengths, but that's just an argument born out of desperation, not to mention sheer baloney. He has simply failed to learn some lessons that his mother and kindergarten teacher should have taught him, and it is extremely damaging to the free software cause.
What delicious, terrific irony! Not to mention breathtaking hypocrisy!
Stallman/Richard refers to the kind of software he advocates as Free Software, and illustrates the idea with the phrase "free as in speech" as opposed to "free as in beer".
And yet his problem with the GNOME project is apparently the fact that somebody has mentioned propietary software!
What'll it be, Stallman/Richard? Do you wish to promote software that is "free as in speech" by restricting freedom of speech?
Bad corporation! Bad Bill! You've been very, very naughty, and I'm very disappointed in you!
No go to your room, young man, and promise me that you'll never, ever do it again!
Re:No more security risk than usual
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GNU-Darwin Goes Beta
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· Score: 3, Insightful
When's the last time you read the entire Makefile and all external files that it calls, before typing 'make install'?
Dunno about you, but when I download a tarball, I sure as hell don't su to root and blast away with 'make install' right after I get it. I read the READMEs and install instructions, read some docs, check out the available install options, and generally have a look around. Then I make the binaries under my usual login account, take a look at the results, and finally 'make install' as root as the very last step.
Sure I could still get fooled that way, but it does give me a good chance at an informed opinion about whether the stuff I downloaded and will install is indeed what I thought I was getting. And in fact, sometimes I've stopped the process, because the package in question required something for the install that I wasn't willing to do.
Piping the output of a web page into the C-shell as root is about the most cockamamie idea I have ever seen! And this is in a headline on Slashdot! You've got no chance to decide whether you're installing something legit -- even the most cursory inspection is impossible. Sheesh, if this is what people running Unix boxen are going to start doing, then it won't be long before the Unix world is just as saturated with Code Reds and Nimdas and God knows what-all the Microserfs have to live with.
Every time there's a thread about the anti-trust trial against Microsoft, I am astonished to read posts on Slashdot by people rushing to their defense. One of the common claims is that the efforts to destroy Netscape have created no disadvantage to consumers.
Well, here you are: an Internet based on open standards is a benefit to consumers, because the browser vendors have to compete by delivering better quality against a common standard, but can't drive anyone out by introducing incompatibilities (which are completely superfluous to any consumers' needs). The more competition, the better the software, and hence greater quality at consumers' disposal.
Now that Microsoft has gotten away with their crime and have succeeded at demolishing Netscape, leaving no meaningful competition in the browser market, it was only a matter of time before things like this would begin. With dominant market share, they can seek to eviscerate standards and leave behind an Internet that only operates on M$'s rules. Great benefit to Redmond, nothing but disadvantages for consumers.
But even in this thread, people are claiming there's no problem! This is a sign of people completely locked into libertarian ideology, which simply cannot countenance the existence of a monopoly like M$ doing the things that they do. Evidently, denial is their only way out.
Re:What does pro-microsoft have to do with this?
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Opposing Open Source?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
... Microsoft have said negative things about the GPL, but not about 'Open Source'. Open Source!=GPL.
Well, you know that and I know that, and most others who post to Slashdot know it, too. But as a matter of fact, when Microsoft has criticized the GPL, they have not made much of an effort to distinguish it from the other kinds of open source software.
Their vagueness is surely deliberate, and therein lies the ever-present dishonesty of that ethical midget with respect to this particular issue. There are many plausible criticisms of the GPL that the general public can easily understand -- after all, the GPL is not universally liked among developers of open source software either. (But even there, M$ has been misleading, by implying that if you just use a GPL'd tool like emacs to develop software, then you have to GPL the software you developed with it; which is sheer nonsense.) By failing to state clearly that there are other models besides the GPL, M$ leaves the impression that these criticisms apply to any open source software. That's dishonest, but as always, they're probably not sorry about it.
Since we're all geeks here, let's try to move this debate onto technical topic. It's my judgment that the existence of steganography means that any ban on encryption will fail to thwart terrorists or any other criminals that law enforcement is attempting to monitor. And that's why I conclude that there should be no further restrictions on the use of encryption -- the bad guys will always be able to hide their messages, so a ban would only restrict people who have legitimate use of encryption.
If the government really wants to gain something by preventing the use of strong encryption with unescrowed keys, they'll have to go on to forbid the exchange of images, audio, and any other data with enough noise to hide messages. I don't see how this could ever be possible, not only in terms of civil liberties, but also as a matter of sheer practicality.
So the technical question is: Is it conceivable for law enforcement to detect hidden messages by analyzing Internet traffic? I know that stego is not necessarily easy -- if it's done poorly, patterns can indeed be detected in a file's noise, indicating that there's a hidden message in there. But my understanding of stego is that it can be done well enough to make message detection on a large scale completely impractical; enough to make a ban on encryption pointless.
This post is by far one of the worst examples I've seen of 'loaded language.' It was obviously an attempt by the author to drive a point across with out haveing a single reliable premise on which to base a conclusion on.
You have got to be off your rocker. The significance of the M$ case as both a matter of government business and as a political issue, and the President's responsibility as the final arbiter of high-level decisions in the executive branch, certainly are reliable premises. I went into those things extensively in the post; would you care to quote those parts in italics in your next post?
The inference that W approved the executive decision on this case flows from those premises. Of course it's a probabilistic inference, but there's nothing illegitimate about that. Real life is hardly amenable to deductions based on absolute truths; just about all of our everyday reasoning is based on likelihoods. Welcome to the real world, champ.
Do you think it is at all likely that the President didn't approve this decision? Well actually, given the reports of Bush's disengagement in office, and the role of Cheney as a shadow president, it might actually be possible! But that would be shocking indictment of Bush as a President whose irresponsibility is unprecedented. Let's hope it's not true. This case is so important to the future of the software industry, and the hence the US economy, that no President worth a damn could have neglected to take responsibility for this decision.
Although the FSF does not charge for software, they certainly do accept donations and have information about it here. Cygwin was developed very much in the spirit and philosophy of the GNU project, and if you make a donation and inform both FSF and Cygwin that it's a token of recognition for Cygwin, you can be certain that there will be good will and warm vibes all around. You'll also be helping Cygwin in a material way, because they benefit from the FSF's efforts, and the FSF has operating costs that you'll be helping them defray.
The LinuxPPC project also encourages donations to the FSF -- when you order their stuff online, there's a box where you can enter any amount you'd like to donate.
I'm probably sounding like more of a fan of the FSF than I really am here -- sometimes RMS grates me in the profoundest way -- but I just think this is what fits your desires best. There's nothing excessively material and unworthy about donating cash; many organizations make good use of it and will be deeply grateful. If that's a way for you to get a warm, fuzzy feeling, go do it. The fuzzies will surely come right back at you.
Folks, let's not be so hard on this guy. Since log_2(1048) is about 10.033, then obviously, about 10.033 mistakes have been discovered in Knuth's books so far.
The Web will never be open again if M$ succeeds in getting away with it. Through illegal activity (as confirmed by the appeals court), M$ has managed to demolish the browser market. Now, with the Smart Tags, they're starting to do what everybody expected them to do when they gain a browser monopoly -- take the control of the Web away from the general population, and try to control it themselves.
Since the courts are evidently too timid to treat M$ the way a criminal should be treated (and the Justice Department probably will be as well), then the only way to restore normal competition in the browser market to the benefit of consumers and an open Web is to ensure that IE does not get used any more. Any means of persuading the general public of this is certainly legitimate. I just think we need another six days in the Microsoft-Free Week.
There is a certain kind of conent that a lot of people pay a fair amount of money for on the Internet, and it's porn. Porn is probably the most successful business on the Net, and probably will be for a long time.
Evidently, this is just a question of priorities. We won't pay for news, we won't pay for art, but we will pay for pictures of naked girls. If there's one thing that the Internet has taught us, it's that human beings are very, very interested in sex.
Can a perl buff outline the main advantages or is it just the peer group effect?
Well, as you can already see from some of the threads, some people don't like Perl at all. It's just a matter of time until a major Perl vs. Python flamewar breaks out.
I think that inclination toward Perl has a lot to do with your background. As much as I like it, I have to admit that a lot of the syntax that so many people complain about can seem a bit quirky -- all of that punctuation and funny variable names, and all kinds of idiomatic idiosyncrasies.
But what many Perl-bashers don't realize is that almost none of this was invented the first time in Perl: Most elements of Perl syntax have a precedent in languages and tools that are common and familiar if you happen to use and adminster Unix every day. Shell script languages, sed, awk, grep and many other regular expression tools, and C -- all of these have idioms that you find again in Perl.
So if you live Unix every day, and these idioms all come naturally to you, then Perl doesn't seem that unnatural at all. This is the way I feel about Perl -- it is very grokkable, its syntax flows out smoothly, it just seems to feel like the right way to express these things.
But then there are the people who just can't a feel for Perl at all. In many cases, I've found that these people aren't as familiar with the standard Unix tools either, so the idioms of Perl that seem so ordinary to me are entirely alien to them.
Incidentally, I am very amused by the posts in this thread that complain about regular expression syntax, as if they are pointing out a weakness of Perl. Regular expressions are a mathematical concept and powerful computer science tool that have been known about for decades. And as hard as the syntax may be to learn, Perl follows tried and true idioms that have proven their worth in numerous tools and programming languages: the various greps, awk, Tcl, emacs, the C regex libraries and the POSIX standards. These all certainly have their differences, but they converge on a syntax for regular expressions that is very nearly a standard; and Perl has the most sophisticated version of them all. Maybe, just maybe, this common syntax is not so obtuse after all; maybe, just maybe, it's the most efficient and compelling way to express that is intrinsically quite powerful and complex.
When I first started working with Oracle (I'm a certified DBA now), I often had the same skepticism. I had worked with MySQL before, and couldn't understand what all the hype and the expense was for. What's the big deal about storing data in tables and querying them with SQL statements? No doubt there's a bit of sophisticated computer science that goes into that, but surely there's a limit to how complex it all can get. Why the hell does Oracle have to be so damn complicated (I hated trying to understand the docs, which always leave out the forest for all the trees), not to mention expensive?
After a while, I understood that as far as representing tables and data and SQL statements is concerned, this really is true. About this part, the questioner is right: An open source solution will represent your data just fine, no reason to pay out the nose if that's all you need. And MySQL is still almost always faster than the expensive commercial RDBMS's. But tables and SQL statements are only one small part of a database application, and may not be the most important part.
What you're getting for all that complexity and cost is all of the extra services that come with the data management, and these things really are worth it in many projects: Constraints that enforce data integrity, safe transactions according to the ACID principles, robust backup and recovery regimes that really can survive the worst catastrophe, distributed computing and clustering (for high availability and distributed load), and a lot of parameters to tune. All of this stuff seems like add-ons, if all you think about are tables and SQL statements. But for many applications, the data model is not what matters most; these things are by far the most important qualities of your RDBMS.
Oracle RDBMS's still could stand to be less expensive and complex; but I see the justification now much better than I used to.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be stating the obvious, especially on Slashdot, but there are many people in the world who need to hear this: again and again, M$ pushes its products not by trying to make them have the highest quality and win in market competition, and certainly not by innovating, but rather by playing political hardball and introducing gratuitous incompatibilities, all to deprive consumers of choices.
So many times, I hear people insisting that M$ could only have become so powerful by being the best. This seems to derive from a profound conviction that market forces can only ever do The Right Thing, so anything that succeeds in the market is by definition a superior product. I think that market forces make this happen most of the time, but like anything else conceived and practiced by human beings, markets are flawed, in that they sometimes allow products to succeed by shenanigans rather than by quality. And M$ is living proof of it.
Here's M$, reacting to the open source phenomenon, which may truly be the biggest threat they face today. Especially the GPL fosters the existence of software that they couldn't at least copy for their own purposes, unless they open their source code as well. So what do they do? Create even better products that beat out GPL'd software on the market? NOOOOOOOO!!! Instead they create a license designed to make the competitor incompatible, by legal fiat. Not that any consumer of software derives any benefit from the intracacies of software licenses, and not that there's any innovation in legally forbidding interoperation.
What will it take before M$ apologists finally get it?
... that's how the Internet came to flourish, and that's the only way future network technologies will ever have a chance. Anything else is quite simply doomed.
The existence of open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP and all the rest, which were agreed upon by the major players, created markets in which everyone had their chance to create the best products. We've seen in recent years how hard it is to make money in the Internet, since users are accustomed to getting everything for free. If it had cost money just to use the thing in the first place, it never would have gotten off the ground.
If standards for web services are not royalty-free, then there will be no such thing within a few years. Or perhaps the idea of web services will survive on the basis of other, royalty-free protocols, but SOAP and WDSL and other patented technologies will be a footnote in history. Let IBM and M$ go ahead if they want to kill off their own inventions, it really doesn't bother me a bit.
CNET said that Unix isn't dead? Wow, if CNET says so, then maybe there's something to it! You know, I've got that geeky guy with the funny hair working for me in the techie whatsis department, and he keeps trying to tell me about Lunix or whatever it's called, and how it's really good, but I never pay any attention to him. I mean, he stays up late writing a lot of programs all the time, but what makes him think he knows this business better than me? After all, the most successful system in the world is Windows, not Lunix or Unix or whatever, so it's obviously the best; how could some free program written by some commie kid over in Europe be any better than that? I mean, they don't want any money for it, so how good could it be?
And then I saw those ads talking about how hard that Unix stuff is. That's for sure. And it costs so much money, even if it's free! I just knew it! Sure, I don't mind paying nothing for my computer stuff, I just love it in fact. But those geeky guys with the greasy hair always want me to pay them so much money; almost as much as I get, and I'm the boss, can you believe that?! Then they just want to turn around and act like they're so much smarter than me! They just want it to be really complicated, so only they understand it. Well, my nephew Herb just took an exam and now it says he's a Certified Engineer, and he got my Windows stuff working after only about three days, and he only wants half as much money! I'd fire that geeky fellow, except first I need to find someone who understands how to make our email and Explorer stuff work.
I'm going to learn a lot more about this stuff, I really am. In fact I turned on my Explorer the other day, to check it out. (That geeky jerk always says I don't know how to use the Explorer; but he's always trying to confuse me by calling it the internetwork, or something.) I saw that TV ad and went to the Way Out homepage, but it wasn't working, but that's OK, it's completely normal for computers to go down sometimes, so I'll come back later. (The geek was laughing, because he says that homepage was first running on BCD or something, which is supposed to be the same as Lunix, and then they put it on Windows and it went down. But he must be lying, because it all works with the Explorer, I can see it right here.)
So anyway, I thought it was pretty clear that Lunix and Unix and whatever are all dead. But CNET says it isn't? Right there in black and white? Geeze, this stuff is really confusing, you know.
... that he doesn't think so?
I recall reading a quotation from one of his recent books (which I haven't read, so I'm on thin ice here). IIRC it said that he doesn't believe time travel is possible because we haven't noticed tourists from the future visiting us in the present.
Whether or not Hawking said it, I find this argument rather compelling. Suppose that mankind has all of the future (all the way to the Big Crunch, if there will be such a thing) to try to discover time travel. If it were ever discovered, then sooner or later it would become a consumer item, and folks would be taking their kids for whirl through the 21st century.
Seriously, even if the inventors started out using their time machine cautiously, only sending a few people who go unnoticed, eventually they'd be sending more people on trips to the past. From our perspective, we wouldn't be able to tell if they were coming shortly after the invention or later. And we'd notice them. Even if the time travellers were warned not interfere with the course of history, as Christopher Lloyd was always bellowing to Michael J. Fox in the first film, one of them would eventually slip up, and others wouldn't care and would run roughshod over the course of events.
This isn't proof, because it is possible to assume that all of the time travellers have been so careful that we haven't noticed them, at least those who have visited times up to 2002. But this assumption is so inconsistent with the fallibility that is intrinsic to human nature, that I must conclude that time travel is impossible.
I wrote:
It wasn't until version 4 of the two browsers that IE was widely regarded as fairly equal in quality with Netscape (not better, but just about the same). But by this time, IE was bundled with every copy of Windows, impossible to remove, and OEM's and ISP's were contractually forbidden to give Netscape equal availability. Netscape never had a chance to recover.
And spectecjr wrote:
RUBBISH.
I bought a Packard Bell in 1998, which came with Windows 98, and both IE and Netcape preinstalled.
Explain that.
Sorry mate, don't see why it's rubbish. Of course the OEM deals did not forbid any installation of Netscape, that's well known (they'd really have anti-trust problems if they tried to prevent that). But as you say yourself, they weren't allow to do things like replace the IE icon on the desktop with Netscape.
And that's bad enough, because many OEM's wanted to do exactly that -- IE was widely regarded as so much worse than Netscape that the OEM's felt that they were passing off shoddy products to their customers, unless they could make Netscape the default. They were pissed at M$ that they couldn't, and testified to that under oath. That was my original point.
You say that your Packard Bell had both browsers pre-installed, but did they both appear by default on the desktop? I'd be surprised if they did, because that was usually not permitted (IE had to be on the desktop, but Netscape, if present at all, was buried somewhere). But even if it were so in your case, exceptions prove the rule.
ARRRRRRRGH!
I've heard this argument so many times, and I can't really understand while people continue to believe it.
Yes, Netscape has been inferior to IE for many years now, but to say that IE gained dominant market share because of that is to ignore history and to reverse cause and effect. Netscape didn't lose because it is inferior; Netscape is inferior because M$ forced it out of competition -- illegally, as the poster admits --, drying up its revenues ("cutting off Netscape's air supply", in M$'s own words), making it nearly impossible to invest in improvements of its product.
Recall that the first versions of IE (versions 1 & 2) were abonimably bad, universally regarded as far worse than Netscape. Version 3 was good enough to work with, but still the clear consensus was that Netscape's version 3 was far better. And yet it was around this time that M$ entered into all the exclusive deals and illegal shenanigans that impeded or closed off Netscape's means of distribution. IE's market share increased rapidly not because of its quality, but simply due to its easy availability. At the time, Netscape was trying to make money from its browser, and needed the revenue to finance further development, but as market share fell, they started to lose money and lay off employees.
It wasn't until version 4 of the two browsers that IE was widely regarded as fairly equal in quality with Netscape (not better, but just about the same). But by this time, IE was bundled with every copy of Windows, impossible to remove, and OEM's and ISP's were contractually forbidden to give Netscape equal availability. Netscape never had a chance to recover.
This where many Slashdotters answer with an argument that assumes that all the world's a geek. So IE was the default setting, they say. So the icon was on the desktop, and you might have to go download Netscape, they say. Then couldn't people use Netscape after all, if it was so good and that's what they wanted? Surely you can change your default settings! Surely you can, and a geek does it all the time, but it is an empirically well-established fact that most users don't. That's not to assert that they're dumb or lazy; for whatever reason, most users never change their defaults, even if there are superior alternatives, and to believe otherwise is to display vast ignorance of the facts about software consumers. And so whoever has the power to control the defaults has significant power to determine which products get used. M$ knows it, and that's why they did everything they could, illegal if necessary, to use that power.
What I miss in many M$ apologists is the recognition of lost opportunity -- how much better software could be in today's world if there were a real opportunity for competition. Yes, a lot of the alternatives really and truly suck, but don't just think about the way the world is; think about how the world could be if the creators of innovative, quality software had a genuine chance to compete.
Maybe someday we'll know the answer to this question. There are many interesting ideas in this thread, so maybe the answer is yes. But maybe it won't work out. A few years and we'll know.
But this question will not decide the fate of open source software. There will always be open source software.
This is because you just can't stop people from sharing their ideas and seeking feedback. Someone somewhere will publish his code, and someone somewhere will reply with her patch, and there you go. It will go on, even if no one involved is making any money, and no amount of censorship, FUD or corporate-inspired regulation will ever be able to stop it. It's just human nature.
No matter what happens, we're going to have to reconcile our business models with the existence of open source software, because it's here to stay.
Would you settle for an American who has lived in Germany for over fifteen years?
I have to agree with an earlier poster who suggested that by and large, German citizens are better educated and far and away more interested in politics and civil rights issues than Americans are. Hate to have to say that about my countrymen, but it's true. And ultimately, it's history that's responsible for that. Germans only have to look back one generation to see a time when they abandoned all respect for freedom, and it brought on unparalleled disaster. As a result, very many Germans today have a strong sense of responsibility to history that requires their active interest in politics and civil rights. Unfortunately, I miss this sense of duty among too many people in the US.
And another issue is simply fact that weak encryption and weak privacy policy is largely an interest of the United States, and hardly any one else shares the interest. It is widely suspected that American spooks are monitoring communications in countries like Germany, and they don't like it. Naturally, this kind of policy is precisely what they can and should do about it.
Having said all that, I must add that there are some laws and ideas I find very weird, especially concerning freedom of speech. The most astounding of all: You can prosecuted in Germany for insulting someone! You can criticize someone as sharply as you like, but if you utter something unconstructive such as "You're an asshole," you can be taken to court.
What's worse is that the penalty's are more severe if the insult is directed at a civil servant, such as a policeman or a bureaucrat.
I could rant on about this for a few more pages, but I think I'll just leave it there.
The notion of trust seems central to this debate -- who can be trusted to apply patches that will make the kernel better? And it reminds me of structures for establishing trust in the world of cryptography -- who do I trust to tell me that this public key really belongs to the person to whom it's supposed to belong?
The ideas about kernel patches being discussed remind me of the distinction between a "web of trust" and "certification authorities" in the world of cryptography. Certification authorities are the conventional means, which are used by the most popular web browsers. Some authority, like Verisign or Thawte, is universally accepted as trustworty, and if they sign a key, then it can be trusted. The web of trust was advocated by Phil Zimmermann and built into PGP, and AFAIK, PGP is the only context in which it's ever been applied (or even proposed). It's an attempt to reflect our everyday notion of trust -- I decide who I trust, on whatever basis I choose, and if someone I trust has signed a key, then I trust it. I can also decide if I trust people I don't know, if they are trusted by people I trust. There's no need for a central authority in a web of trust (although I might choose to include CAs in my web and trust them).
Rob Landley is suggesting that we entrust the patch penguin with the job of filtering patches towards Linus, but Linus sees the PP as a kind of central authority, and prefers to have a web of individuals around hom who he can trust.
Like Phil Zimmermann, Linus is arguing that his model is much more similar to the way that people decide to trust each other in real life. In the world of crypto, certification authorities have always been regarded with suspicion for reasons just like this -- why should I trust Verisign more than my friends? In the kernel world, Linus is saying, isn't it better and more intuitive to trust a group of people I know well, who can distribute the work amongst each other?
The analogy breaks here a bit. CAs in the crypto world are suspicious because we don't if they're corrupt -- maybe they're full of Enron managers. In the kernel world, we need to trust maintainers with their skill and above all, ability to handle the workload. Corruption is not the problem (I hope not, anyway.)
But, to take the analogy further, one should also note that PGP web of trust never really worked well as a practical matter. Most people using PGP had an island of people around them whom they trusted, with few connections outside of their immediate clique. I don't recall *ever* receiving a key from a stranger that was evaluated as trustworthy because of its position in the web topology.
So I'd say that Linus has a point in saying that the web model fits our common-sense intuitions about trust. But if Rob Landley says that it's not functioning well, the experience of PGP gives some support to his argument.
Wow, I didn't know that. I'm sorry then, my remark about his mother was below the belt.
... and so on and so forth, but your post just keeps asserting that these things are all so important, without explaining why.
Sure it's a Good Thing that the FSF exists, and of course RMS deserves respect for the dogged exercise of his rights (as everybody always says nowadays). And if he and others like him can convince more people, then more power to 'em. But a lot of us know and understand the message, are not terribly convinced by it, and aren't planning on doing anything particular to promote it in the foreseeable future. In the marketplace of ideas, you win some and you lose some.
Incidentally, since you're evidently a supporter of the FSF and the free software concept, I'd like to advise you, probably for the umpteenth time, that RMS is an extremely poor ambassador for your cause. Let's once and for all be rid of the canard that it's everybody else's fault, because we're all just too lily-livered to cope with someone who is so strongly dedicated. RMS could be just as passionate without being such an insufferable jackass. It is possible to take a strong, principled stance, and nevertheless have some skills at diplomacy and just generally getting along with people. RMS's fans try to redefine his weaknesses as strengths, but that's just an argument born out of desperation, not to mention sheer baloney. He has simply failed to learn some lessons that his mother and kindergarten teacher should have taught him, and it is extremely damaging to the free software cause.
What delicious, terrific irony! Not to mention breathtaking hypocrisy!
Stallman/Richard refers to the kind of software he advocates as Free Software, and illustrates the idea with the phrase "free as in speech" as opposed to "free as in beer".
And yet his problem with the GNOME project is apparently the fact that somebody has mentioned propietary software!
What'll it be, Stallman/Richard? Do you wish to promote software that is "free as in speech" by restricting freedom of speech?
slap! slap! slap! slap! slap!
Bad corporation! Bad Bill! You've been very, very naughty, and I'm very disappointed in you!
No go to your room, young man, and promise me that you'll never, ever do it again!
Dunno about you, but when I download a tarball, I sure as hell don't su to root and blast away with 'make install' right after I get it. I read the READMEs and install instructions, read some docs, check out the available install options, and generally have a look around. Then I make the binaries under my usual login account, take a look at the results, and finally 'make install' as root as the very last step.
Sure I could still get fooled that way, but it does give me a good chance at an informed opinion about whether the stuff I downloaded and will install is indeed what I thought I was getting. And in fact, sometimes I've stopped the process, because the package in question required something for the install that I wasn't willing to do.
Piping the output of a web page into the C-shell as root is about the most cockamamie idea I have ever seen! And this is in a headline on Slashdot! You've got no chance to decide whether you're installing something legit -- even the most cursory inspection is impossible. Sheesh, if this is what people running Unix boxen are going to start doing, then it won't be long before the Unix world is just as saturated with Code Reds and Nimdas and God knows what-all the Microserfs have to live with.
Every time there's a thread about the anti-trust trial against Microsoft, I am astonished to read posts on Slashdot by people rushing to their defense. One of the common claims is that the efforts to destroy Netscape have created no disadvantage to consumers.
Well, here you are: an Internet based on open standards is a benefit to consumers, because the browser vendors have to compete by delivering better quality against a common standard, but can't drive anyone out by introducing incompatibilities (which are completely superfluous to any consumers' needs). The more competition, the better the software, and hence greater quality at consumers' disposal.
Now that Microsoft has gotten away with their crime and have succeeded at demolishing Netscape, leaving no meaningful competition in the browser market, it was only a matter of time before things like this would begin. With dominant market share, they can seek to eviscerate standards and leave behind an Internet that only operates on M$'s rules. Great benefit to Redmond, nothing but disadvantages for consumers.
But even in this thread, people are claiming there's no problem! This is a sign of people completely locked into libertarian ideology, which simply cannot countenance the existence of a monopoly like M$ doing the things that they do. Evidently, denial is their only way out.
Well, you know that and I know that, and most others who post to Slashdot know it, too. But as a matter of fact, when Microsoft has criticized the GPL, they have not made much of an effort to distinguish it from the other kinds of open source software.
Their vagueness is surely deliberate, and therein lies the ever-present dishonesty of that ethical midget with respect to this particular issue. There are many plausible criticisms of the GPL that the general public can easily understand -- after all, the GPL is not universally liked among developers of open source software either. (But even there, M$ has been misleading, by implying that if you just use a GPL'd tool like emacs to develop software, then you have to GPL the software you developed with it; which is sheer nonsense.) By failing to state clearly that there are other models besides the GPL, M$ leaves the impression that these criticisms apply to any open source software. That's dishonest, but as always, they're probably not sorry about it.
Snow White,
The owl howls at midnight.
Rumpelstiltskin
Since we're all geeks here, let's try to move this debate onto technical topic. It's my judgment that the existence of steganography means that any ban on encryption will fail to thwart terrorists or any other criminals that law enforcement is attempting to monitor. And that's why I conclude that there should be no further restrictions on the use of encryption -- the bad guys will always be able to hide their messages, so a ban would only restrict people who have legitimate use of encryption.
If the government really wants to gain something by preventing the use of strong encryption with unescrowed keys, they'll have to go on to forbid the exchange of images, audio, and any other data with enough noise to hide messages. I don't see how this could ever be possible, not only in terms of civil liberties, but also as a matter of sheer practicality.
So the technical question is: Is it conceivable for law enforcement to detect hidden messages by analyzing Internet traffic? I know that stego is not necessarily easy -- if it's done poorly, patterns can indeed be detected in a file's noise, indicating that there's a hidden message in there. But my understanding of stego is that it can be done well enough to make message detection on a large scale completely impractical; enough to make a ban on encryption pointless.
You have got to be off your rocker. The significance of the M$ case as both a matter of government business and as a political issue, and the President's responsibility as the final arbiter of high-level decisions in the executive branch, certainly are reliable premises. I went into those things extensively in the post; would you care to quote those parts in italics in your next post?
The inference that W approved the executive decision on this case flows from those premises. Of course it's a probabilistic inference, but there's nothing illegitimate about that. Real life is hardly amenable to deductions based on absolute truths; just about all of our everyday reasoning is based on likelihoods. Welcome to the real world, champ.
Do you think it is at all likely that the President didn't approve this decision? Well actually, given the reports of Bush's disengagement in office, and the role of Cheney as a shadow president, it might actually be possible! But that would be shocking indictment of Bush as a President whose irresponsibility is unprecedented. Let's hope it's not true. This case is so important to the future of the software industry, and the hence the US economy, that no President worth a damn could have neglected to take responsibility for this decision.
Although the FSF does not charge for software, they certainly do accept donations and have information about it here. Cygwin was developed very much in the spirit and philosophy of the GNU project, and if you make a donation and inform both FSF and Cygwin that it's a token of recognition for Cygwin, you can be certain that there will be good will and warm vibes all around. You'll also be helping Cygwin in a material way, because they benefit from the FSF's efforts, and the FSF has operating costs that you'll be helping them defray.
The LinuxPPC project also encourages donations to the FSF -- when you order their stuff online, there's a box where you can enter any amount you'd like to donate.
I'm probably sounding like more of a fan of the FSF than I really am here -- sometimes RMS grates me in the profoundest way -- but I just think this is what fits your desires best. There's nothing excessively material and unworthy about donating cash; many organizations make good use of it and will be deeply grateful. If that's a way for you to get a warm, fuzzy feeling, go do it. The fuzzies will surely come right back at you.
Folks, let's not be so hard on this guy. Since log_2(1048) is about 10.033, then obviously, about 10.033 mistakes have been discovered in Knuth's books so far.
Is it really that open, then?
The Web will never be open again if M$ succeeds in getting away with it. Through illegal activity (as confirmed by the appeals court), M$ has managed to demolish the browser market. Now, with the Smart Tags, they're starting to do what everybody expected them to do when they gain a browser monopoly -- take the control of the Web away from the general population, and try to control it themselves.
Since the courts are evidently too timid to treat M$ the way a criminal should be treated (and the Justice Department probably will be as well), then the only way to restore normal competition in the browser market to the benefit of consumers and an open Web is to ensure that IE does not get used any more. Any means of persuading the general public of this is certainly legitimate. I just think we need another six days in the Microsoft-Free Week.
There is a certain kind of conent that a lot of people pay a fair amount of money for on the Internet, and it's porn. Porn is probably the most successful business on the Net, and probably will be for a long time.
Evidently, this is just a question of priorities. We won't pay for news, we won't pay for art, but we will pay for pictures of naked girls. If there's one thing that the Internet has taught us, it's that human beings are very, very interested in sex.
Can a perl buff outline the main advantages or is it just the peer group effect?
Well, as you can already see from some of the threads, some people don't like Perl at all. It's just a matter of time until a major Perl vs. Python flamewar breaks out.
I think that inclination toward Perl has a lot to do with your background. As much as I like it, I have to admit that a lot of the syntax that so many people complain about can seem a bit quirky -- all of that punctuation and funny variable names, and all kinds of idiomatic idiosyncrasies.
But what many Perl-bashers don't realize is that almost none of this was invented the first time in Perl: Most elements of Perl syntax have a precedent in languages and tools that are common and familiar if you happen to use and adminster Unix every day. Shell script languages, sed, awk, grep and many other regular expression tools, and C -- all of these have idioms that you find again in Perl.
So if you live Unix every day, and these idioms all come naturally to you, then Perl doesn't seem that unnatural at all. This is the way I feel about Perl -- it is very grokkable, its syntax flows out smoothly, it just seems to feel like the right way to express these things.
But then there are the people who just can't a feel for Perl at all. In many cases, I've found that these people aren't as familiar with the standard Unix tools either, so the idioms of Perl that seem so ordinary to me are entirely alien to them.
Incidentally, I am very amused by the posts in this thread that complain about regular expression syntax, as if they are pointing out a weakness of Perl. Regular expressions are a mathematical concept and powerful computer science tool that have been known about for decades. And as hard as the syntax may be to learn, Perl follows tried and true idioms that have proven their worth in numerous tools and programming languages: the various greps, awk, Tcl, emacs, the C regex libraries and the POSIX standards. These all certainly have their differences, but they converge on a syntax for regular expressions that is very nearly a standard; and Perl has the most sophisticated version of them all. Maybe, just maybe, this common syntax is not so obtuse after all; maybe, just maybe, it's the most efficient and compelling way to express that is intrinsically quite powerful and complex.
When I first started working with Oracle (I'm a certified DBA now), I often had the same skepticism. I had worked with MySQL before, and couldn't understand what all the hype and the expense was for. What's the big deal about storing data in tables and querying them with SQL statements? No doubt there's a bit of sophisticated computer science that goes into that, but surely there's a limit to how complex it all can get. Why the hell does Oracle have to be so damn complicated (I hated trying to understand the docs, which always leave out the forest for all the trees), not to mention expensive?
After a while, I understood that as far as representing tables and data and SQL statements is concerned, this really is true. About this part, the questioner is right: An open source solution will represent your data just fine, no reason to pay out the nose if that's all you need. And MySQL is still almost always faster than the expensive commercial RDBMS's. But tables and SQL statements are only one small part of a database application, and may not be the most important part.
What you're getting for all that complexity and cost is all of the extra services that come with the data management, and these things really are worth it in many projects: Constraints that enforce data integrity, safe transactions according to the ACID principles, robust backup and recovery regimes that really can survive the worst catastrophe, distributed computing and clustering (for high availability and distributed load), and a lot of parameters to tune. All of this stuff seems like add-ons, if all you think about are tables and SQL statements. But for many applications, the data model is not what matters most; these things are by far the most important qualities of your RDBMS.
Oracle RDBMS's still could stand to be less expensive and complex; but I see the justification now much better than I used to.