It is interesting that there is a small difference between hardware configurations on HP's Windows XP and Linux solutions. I wonder if they are exploiting a loophole in Microsoft's anti competitive agreements. Perhaps the agreement specifies something about 'the same hardware model'.
First, 'a read ahead and preview' kind of capability. The way this would operate is as follows: when otherwise idle, the browser would try to anticipate future user actions and read the data in advance. But most important, when you moved the mouse over a link that the browser had already read some data for, it would display a preview. Moving the mouse would revert the display. Clicking the mouse would confirm the page navigation. I grant that this might generate extra network activity (perhaps images might be initially suppressed) but the user experience would be much enhanced.
Second, I think there is scope for a far better builtin download manager. I know Opera and Mozilla have rudimentary download managers, but these lack obvious useful features: drag and drop; downloading of all matching patterns; scheduled downloads and others.
Whenever someone states that a particular feature is only useable by reading documentation and memorizing, it always raises a flag in my mind. There ought to be creative ways of teaching stuff like this.
It may not be the best solution, but what about something like this: a 'teach gestures' option; when checked, every time the user did something another way that could be more efficiently done with a gesture, this would display a popup with a diagram of the relevant technique.
Actually, Darl McBride has already taken ATI over. The ATI drivers run under a Unix type operating system, thus making them Unix derivatives. That means all ATI software and hardware is now SCO property.
Re:Requires Microsoft Visual C++
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, you can download the non-optimizing compiler for free from their web site.
I stand to be corrected, but I believe this is no longer true. On the other hand, it may be possible to work with the Intel C++ compiler. It seems to play with MS Visual C++ stuff quite well in most cases.
Someone is going to sue for defamation, and probably win
I do not disagree with you, but when will they finally be forced to try to produce a real case? Based on what I have seen of US litigation in the past, is there not every prospect of years of unsubstantiated FUD before they ever have to produce something for a court to make a decision about?
They say they finally fixed that. Time will tell. It has not been effecting me much anyway since I just used Group Policy to reduce the delay from 60 seconds down to 5 seconds.
if MS were preventing the OEMs from bundling Java, that would be different - but they're specifically barred from doing that anymore
Microsoft is specifically barred from doing various things. Until this appeal ruling, they were (for instance) obliged to ship XP with Sun's JVE. Even more to the point, perhaps some remember this story: Office Depot: Windows XP Apps Must Be Microsoft-Approved
If it is important enough to MS commercially and strategically, then laws, ethics, contracts and any other agreements will not restrain them.
To be fair, W2K is a decent operating system and W2K3 is better. That said, its vendor is sleasy, deliberately breaks standards and (in my view) will eventually bleed dry anyone who locks themselves into Microsoft. For business, I use Windows a lot. But, I recommend to everyone who will listen that they should position themselves to be able to move to alternatives.
Yes, I can well understand the concern about power consumption if reliant on wind power or something. But, in that case, maybe a notebook computer is the way to go.
For my Shuttle, I elected to go with an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. It is definitely not a gamer's choice, but it draws relatively little power and needs no active cooling. When not using the DVD drive, I draw less than 200 watts (including LCD monitor).
In something like the Shuttle, sure... but the Iwill ZPC only takes notebook type harddrives. I may be a little out of date, but I think the largest are about 60GB.
... I really do not understand what the niche for this might be. Notebook class performance, notebook level pricing, less portable than a notebook (when you consider the need for a monitor also) and no more configurable.
I own a Shuttle. It is more expensive than the cheapest desktops and less portable than a notebook, but it has real desktop performance in a reasonably portable form factor. That makes sense to me.
Pump and dump may well be a part of this. However, one thing I have seen noone mention is that McBride and friends make pretty good salaries and bonuses that will cease once SCO goes down the tubes. SCO did not look very healthy until they started all this. Under US law, they may be able to spin this out for years before being forced to produce any evidence. I think they could stand up five years from now and say "Ha Ha Ha... this was all a scam to continue collecting our salaries and bonuses", and there is no US law that could touch them.
Let us assume (it really is possible) that SCO just wants to spin this out as long as possible. Am I right that we will need to endure literally years (not weeks or months) of unsubstantiated FUD before SCO can be forced to prove anything? No doubt, eventually, SCO can be sued into the ground if (as most of us suspect) their claims are frivolous. This is rather irrelevant in that the company was clearly going under before they initiated all this. Can any lawyer indicate how, under US law, this might be brought to a quick conclusion if IBM has no real case to answer? How quickly?
I did RTFA and, while Hall indicated that looting of open source is a potential problem, he did not seem to me to be proposing any solutions. IMHO, the most important "protections" are to closely circumscribe software IP:
* ban software patents;
* allow enforcement of software copyright only where irrefutable evidence of infringement exists;
* provide a cheap, fast track method of dealing with frivoulous claims;
* free legal aid for non profit open source providers, but making deliberate misappropriation of IP a criminal offence.
What I think is most likely is that IBM is being responsibly cautious. They probably do not believe that SCO has a serious case. On the other hand, why not let the other side run their mouth and see what useful information you can pick up. Maybe, after all, SCO will reveal something that IBM needs to be concerned about.
Selecting raw data is part of statistics. Your sarcasm is unwarranted
Selecting raw data certainly is part of statistics. It is not, however, one of the mathematically precise areas of statistics. It is a fact that people very often select data to prove whatever point they are trying to make. Professional statisticians are not immune to this tendency.
As with all statistics, you can make them say whatever you want...
This is false. An urban myth. Something that people like to say to make themselves sound more knowledgeable than they really are. The reality is that statistics is a mathematical field and it is as rigorous as any other mathematical field.
Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding on this. I have always naively assumed that the raw data selected for analysis was somewhat important. In the future, I shall never doubt the result of those benchmarks I see reported as long as the numbers are correctly calculated using appropriate statistical formulae.
You can rant and rave about microsoft's shortcomings, but by and large, if you try and do something with their products, it will either work, or the app will crash. What doesn't often happen is that the function "sorta" works
Not often, only on the good days -- or is the reference to the products of some other Microsoft company I do not know about.
Maybe they're paying that admin what he's worth now!
No, ATTFA the Americans have just promoted the Saddam Hussein loyalist who demoted Harif.
Does anyone else think this plausible?
on
My Visit to SCO
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· Score: 1, Troll
I have been watching events with growing concern and would certainly claim the following is more credible than anything SCO has been saying recently. I have a conspiracy theory that I
fervently hope is wrong. I have no proof for what I suggest below. I really do not know if it is happening, but I believe it is a possibility. My main reason for outlining this is my desire for someone to totally discredit it, so that I can relax.
I postulate that it is entirely possible that the driving force behind SCO v. IBM is the US Administration.
MOTIVE AND OPPORTUNITY
Would the current US authorities like to have the ability to infiltrate all computers at will, even destroy them? Yes: they have demonstrated amply that they want unfettered and absolute power.
Would they BE WILLING to subvert the US justice system to achieve this? Yes: they will
do whatever it takes. They have already shown a willingness to manipulate the intelligence
services for political ends; lying to Congress they regard as justified; the spirit and even the letter of the US constitution is being ignored -- they would certainly BE WILLING
to include manipulation of the legal system.
Would they BE ABLE to subvert the US justice system at will? Unclear: I think the justice system was probably manipulated by the government in Justice v. Microsoft. I think there was a secret agreement whereby Microsoft agreed to help US authorities access computers in return
for being allowed to continue operating as an abusive monopoly. That said, I am not sure
they would BE ABLE to manipulate a case, to achieve the result they wanted, if one of the
participants in the lawsuit was a powerful opponent of that result. What happened after the
last presidential election in the US does not, however, inspire confidence that they could not.
So, to recap so far, the US authorities would like to have the ability to exert control over computers worldwide. They would have no compunction in breaking laws to achieve this. Whether they could actually manipulate the legal system to advance these aims is unclear.
How might this relate to SCO v. IBM?
With open source operating systems, secret access into computers worldwide would probably
be unattainable. The US authorities would consider a totally ridiculous court ruling that:
(a) would pass control of Linux, BSD etc. to SCO (under conditions where part of the source
would become closed) or,
(b) better still virtually eliminate these products
as in their best interests. If, through interference, they could achieve such a ruling, most
observers would probably not be unduly suspicious given the past record of judicial rulings
in the US.
(Far fetched, but possible: could the recently announced SEC probe into IBM be part of an attempt
to stitch IBM up? That could then be used to leverage IBM's acquiescence to a settlement the
US authorities wanted.)
MICROSOFT
I believe Microsoft has already made secret agreements with the US authorities. An
extension under which they get to destroy their open source competition in return for
continuation of what they have already agreed is a no brainer. Their only slight concern
might be whether this might someday be exposed. Ethics and laws are no real consideration.
SCO
They would go along with anything good for their "stockholders" (meaning Darl McBride and friends).
SCO's LEGAL REPRESENTATION
At the federal level, we have Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP (including David Boies himself).
As the firm that negotiated Microsoft's deal with the US Administration in Justice v.
Microsoft, they would be the logical choice for this case if my conjectures are correct.
In Utah, SCO is represented by Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm
Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah (a strong administration
insider).
Slashdot Mirror
It is interesting that there is a small difference between hardware configurations on HP's Windows XP and Linux solutions. I wonder if they are exploiting a loophole in Microsoft's anti competitive agreements. Perhaps the agreement specifies something about 'the same hardware model'.
Perhaps this will be settled by an agreement that Microsoft can use buttons in their applications without paying license fees to Amazon.
Second, I think there is scope for a far better builtin download manager. I know Opera and Mozilla have rudimentary download managers, but these lack obvious useful features: drag and drop; downloading of all matching patterns; scheduled downloads and others.
It may not be the best solution, but what about something like this: a 'teach gestures' option; when checked, every time the user did something another way that could be more efficiently done with a gesture, this would display a popup with a diagram of the relevant technique.
Actually, Darl McBride has already taken ATI over. The ATI drivers run under a Unix type operating system, thus making them Unix derivatives. That means all ATI software and hardware is now SCO property.
I stand to be corrected, but I believe this is no longer true. On the other hand, it may be possible to work with the Intel C++ compiler. It seems to play with MS Visual C++ stuff quite well in most cases.
I had forgotten about this. What has happened to it in the last five years, anyway? Did it fall foul of budget cuts or some vested interests?
I do not disagree with you, but when will they finally be forced to try to produce a real case? Based on what I have seen of US litigation in the past, is there not every prospect of years of unsubstantiated FUD before they ever have to produce something for a court to make a decision about?
Seems like a great idea but, based on this quote, it is all just vapourware right now.
They say they finally fixed that. Time will tell. It has not been effecting me much anyway since I just used Group Policy to reduce the delay from 60 seconds down to 5 seconds.
Microsoft is specifically barred from doing various things. Until this appeal ruling, they were (for instance) obliged to ship XP with Sun's JVE. Even more to the point, perhaps some remember this story: Office Depot: Windows XP Apps Must Be Microsoft-Approved
If it is important enough to MS commercially and strategically, then laws, ethics, contracts and any other agreements will not restrain them.
To be fair, W2K is a decent operating system and W2K3 is better. That said, its vendor is sleasy, deliberately breaks standards and (in my view) will eventually bleed dry anyone who locks themselves into Microsoft. For business, I use Windows a lot. But, I recommend to everyone who will listen that they should position themselves to be able to move to alternatives.
For my Shuttle, I elected to go with an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. It is definitely not a gamer's choice, but it draws relatively little power and needs no active cooling. When not using the DVD drive, I draw less than 200 watts (including LCD monitor).
In something like the Shuttle, sure ... but the Iwill ZPC only takes notebook type harddrives. I may be a little out of date, but I think the largest are about 60GB.
I own a Shuttle. It is more expensive than the cheapest desktops and less portable than a notebook, but it has real desktop performance in a reasonably portable form factor. That makes sense to me.
Pump and dump may well be a part of this. However, one thing I have seen noone mention is that McBride and friends make pretty good salaries and bonuses that will cease once SCO goes down the tubes. SCO did not look very healthy until they started all this. Under US law, they may be able to spin this out for years before being forced to produce any evidence. I think they could stand up five years from now and say "Ha Ha Ha ... this was all a scam to continue collecting our salaries and bonuses", and there is no US law that could touch them.
Kind of ironic that one of the main reasons cited why Unix-like systems are unsuited for consumers is that they do not support games playing!
Let us assume (it really is possible) that SCO just wants to spin this out as long as possible. Am I right that we will need to endure literally years (not weeks or months) of unsubstantiated FUD before SCO can be forced to prove anything? No doubt, eventually, SCO can be sued into the ground if (as most of us suspect) their claims are frivolous. This is rather irrelevant in that the company was clearly going under before they initiated all this. Can any lawyer indicate how, under US law, this might be brought to a quick conclusion if IBM has no real case to answer? How quickly?
I did RTFA and, while Hall indicated that looting of open source is a potential problem, he did not seem to me to be proposing any solutions. IMHO, the most important "protections" are to closely circumscribe software IP:
* ban software patents;
* allow enforcement of software copyright only where irrefutable evidence of infringement exists;
* provide a cheap, fast track method of dealing with frivoulous claims;
* free legal aid for non profit open source providers, but making deliberate misappropriation of IP a criminal offence.
What I think is most likely is that IBM is being responsibly cautious. They probably do not believe that SCO has a serious case. On the other hand, why not let the other side run their mouth and see what useful information you can pick up. Maybe, after all, SCO will reveal something that IBM needs to be concerned about.
Selecting raw data certainly is part of statistics. It is not, however, one of the mathematically precise areas of statistics. It is a fact that people very often select data to prove whatever point they are trying to make. Professional statisticians are not immune to this tendency.
This is false. An urban myth. Something that people like to say to make themselves sound more knowledgeable than they really are. The reality is that statistics is a mathematical field and it is as rigorous as any other mathematical field.
Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding on this. I have always naively assumed that the raw data selected for analysis was somewhat important. In the future, I shall never doubt the result of those benchmarks I see reported as long as the numbers are correctly calculated using appropriate statistical formulae.
Not often, only on the good days -- or is the reference to the products of some other Microsoft company I do not know about.
No, ATTFA the Americans have just promoted the Saddam Hussein loyalist who demoted Harif.
I postulate that it is entirely possible that the driving force behind SCO v. IBM is the US Administration.
MOTIVE AND OPPORTUNITY
Would the current US authorities like to have the ability to infiltrate all computers at will, even destroy them? Yes: they have demonstrated amply that they want unfettered and absolute power.
Would they BE WILLING to subvert the US justice system to achieve this? Yes: they will do whatever it takes. They have already shown a willingness to manipulate the intelligence services for political ends; lying to Congress they regard as justified; the spirit and even the letter of the US constitution is being ignored -- they would certainly BE WILLING to include manipulation of the legal system.
Would they BE ABLE to subvert the US justice system at will? Unclear: I think the justice system was probably manipulated by the government in Justice v. Microsoft. I think there was a secret agreement whereby Microsoft agreed to help US authorities access computers in return for being allowed to continue operating as an abusive monopoly. That said, I am not sure they would BE ABLE to manipulate a case, to achieve the result they wanted, if one of the participants in the lawsuit was a powerful opponent of that result. What happened after the last presidential election in the US does not, however, inspire confidence that they could not.
So, to recap so far, the US authorities would like to have the ability to exert control over computers worldwide. They would have no compunction in breaking laws to achieve this. Whether they could actually manipulate the legal system to advance these aims is unclear.
How might this relate to SCO v. IBM? With open source operating systems, secret access into computers worldwide would probably be unattainable. The US authorities would consider a totally ridiculous court ruling that:
(a) would pass control of Linux, BSD etc. to SCO (under conditions where part of the source would become closed) or,
(b) better still virtually eliminate these products
as in their best interests. If, through interference, they could achieve such a ruling, most observers would probably not be unduly suspicious given the past record of judicial rulings in the US.
(Far fetched, but possible: could the recently announced SEC probe into IBM be part of an attempt to stitch IBM up? That could then be used to leverage IBM's acquiescence to a settlement the US authorities wanted.)
MICROSOFT
I believe Microsoft has already made secret agreements with the US authorities. An extension under which they get to destroy their open source competition in return for continuation of what they have already agreed is a no brainer. Their only slight concern might be whether this might someday be exposed. Ethics and laws are no real consideration.
SCO
They would go along with anything good for their "stockholders" (meaning Darl McBride and friends).
SCO's LEGAL REPRESENTATION
At the federal level, we have Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP (including David Boies himself). As the firm that negotiated Microsoft's deal with the US Administration in Justice v. Microsoft, they would be the logical choice for this case if my conjectures are correct.
In Utah, SCO is represented by Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah (a strong administration insider).
THE OTHER MYSTERIOUS SCO FINANCIAL SUPPORTER