I had noticed the browser/OS stats thing the other day and sent an email about it. To my surprise I got back an answer from "David Lemin" (dlemin@google.com) within a couple hours:
Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Google Zeitgeist.
As a result of user feedback we have decided to focus our efforts on the
international expansion of the Google Zeitgeist and will no longer be
publishing data about Web browsers, operating systems and languages used to
access Google. You can view historic data in the Google Zeitgeist archives,
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/archive.html ....Which is interesting, though I'm having trouble believing the thing about "user feedback". Were there that many people complaining about the stats in some way?
Really? How many?...Having spent a lot of time on the Moz Tech Evangalism team, I'd have to say that the number of websites that aren't standards-compliant enough to be viewed by Mozilla is well below 1%.
There are definitely still sites that are incompatible with Mozilla. However, unless there are specific sites that you need that are incompatible (usually sites that require ActiveX, which for Windows there's at least an ActiveX plugin for Mozilla), this "incompatibility" thing just isn't a good enough reason anymore. And if people start to use Mozilla (or other non-IE browsers), most of the leftover web sites will come around...
Exactly what would changing licensing model/terms of the GPL do in this case? It surely wouldn't affect the patent onslaught?
In this case the problem is patents on processes and software ideas, not on the code itself, the way it's distributed, etc. The GPL would have to be changed to exclude "patented ideas".
Keep in mind too that the onslaught may be totally unfounded. Microsoft patented the double-click recently, click-and-hold, virtual desktops, etc., and I'm sure everyone reading Slashdot can quote a piece of prior art. However, it doesn't matter - all Microsoft has to do is keep throwing patent after patent (valid or not) to anti-compete OSS to death. The only real chances are for either 1) Patent law regarding software to be drastically altered, or 2) the industry at large cooperate and fight the battles.
#2 is a bit more likely, but both are fairly *slim* chances. And the impact is potentially devastating either way. The SCO situation turned out to be just some noise. I think companies (as evidenced by the memo) WILL start getting very nervous if they begin to feel that OSS is far too vulnerable to patent fights (which it is, IMO).
Er, the only manual I got with my G4 or G5 was a big, shiny, 12-page "How-to-use" document that described virtually nothing. Considering OS X's help system still stinks, users really don't have much in the way of good documentation for new systems. I'd have to disagree that "Apple's manually are usually very good", that's why the "Missing Manual" series has been such a success.
The iPod's documentation was pretty sparse too, though I'd have to admit that it did cover nearly everything I'd want to know as a "normal" (non-hacking) end user...
iTunes also sorts files into directories, and you're also able to simply navigate to an artist (or album or whatever) and just hit "play" to cause it to play all tracks. No need to build a playlist unless you really want to... However, if I DO want some kind of special order, I can build playlists to do that, and can organize songs in a bunch of different ways in the playlists without affecting the way they're stored on disk.
I fail to see how your way is any better (or much different)... Though if you want to use another program to play your files, by all means do it.
1996: Duke Nukem 3D 1.0 came out using modified Doom II engine
No, Duke3d used a engine developed completely independent of Id, called "BUILD". It was much closer in capabilities to the Quake engine than to the Doom II engine, though many (most?) people considered it inferior to the Quake engine.
My question is, will the cloning of the APIs/technology be *legal*?
With Microsoft patenting everything under the sun that relates to Longhorn, how long do you think it would take it would take Microsoft to whip out the lawyer hordes if an open-source project (or any competitor) were to build a XAML implementation?
It's a very smart strategy. Even if Longhorn and associated technologies aren't released until 2007, with current momentum Microsoft will still have a fairly heavy stranglehold on the desktop. Longhorn will fairly quickly be adopted by the masses, pushing their proprietary tech onto the world.
XAML poses to be significantly cool. How long do you think it will take before we start seeing sites that are XAML-only? I mean, today how many MAJOR websites can't even be bothered to do even basic cross-browser compatibility checking (or do outright requirement of IE), let alone spend the resources to implement sites using two very different technologies?
The OSS community says "hey, that's no problem, we'll play catch-up like we always have. We'll just clone your stuff!" Then Microsoft starts slyly waving software patents in Mozilla/KDE/Opera's face....Great for Microsoft, but clear evidence that software patents are BAD for consumers. (Also reminds us that OSS is wonderful, OSS is great, but for the *most part*, most OSS that has been produced so far is not INNOVATIVE. When the primary goal of a project is to clone another product (Evolution springs to mind), it's just not something that drives the realm of computing forward. It's GREAT for competition, though).
And chances are that MS will license the technology to Apple, or someone like that, but you can see the danger for OSS browsers and OSS platforms....And don't get me started on the dangers inherent in developing using Mono. Ugh.
Microsoft has two distinctly different target markets - Server and Desktop. This one is fairly obviously being targeted as a WinXP follow-up at the consumer/workstation, I'm not quite sure how "server administrators" come into play there...
That's a pretty wide swing there - Generally the two systems have very different capabilities and are used for very different things. Which do you need? A Mac or a Sun?
Originally I was just irritated by what appeared to be another irresposible journalist who appears to be, for the most part, clueless. But after reading the article again I have to say I'm fairly offended by BBC News today.
Steven Evans' article, "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty" seems to be a frustrated gasp by a writer with a level of journalistic talent shared by most supermarket tabloid reporters.
However, besides being sensationalistic, he seems to be intentionally insulting and accusing of a relatively large group of people (of which I suppose I'm a member) because of the suspected actions of a few.
SCO has made movements that have been quite unpopular with the Linux user (sorry, "zealot") community. As a result, Evans concludes, Linux users "struck back" as only a 16-year old computer geeks can - with yet another virus.
It's not unlikely that the virus author(s)' reasons for choosing SCO to assault was influenced by SCO's unpopularity (disapproval probably was also a major influence for the choice of target for MyDoom.B, which assaulted www.microsoft.com starting Feb 3rd).
However, Evans seems to be saying that the underground Linux community of users/developers ("devotees", sorry) as a whole was responsible for the illegal attacks on SCO starting Sunday.
By the same logic Evans provides, all Arabs were responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11th. All Chinese were responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
I suspect most Arabs and Chinese would probably be fairly insulted by the implication, as I'd imagine would be the tens of millions of Linux users worldwide (which include IT departments in nearly every Fortune 500, major Linux contributors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Cisco Systems, Novell, etc). Including myself.
It doesn't help at all that Evans' email is riddled with factual errors and lack of understanding of DoS viruses, the SCO lawsuit situation, or Linux in general.
At the moment I'm convinced that the fact that this story was approved in this state by editors leads me to believe that this is simply new proof of BBC News' steady decline into a second-rate news organization.
I assume this article was meant to be a opinion piece of some sort, but it must be embarassing to BBC News to have released an article so shamefully sensationalistic, and chock full of factual errors (what few "facts" were presented...)
Some examples: "Two years ago, SCO claimed that it owned more than 800,000 lines of the system which had always been available for free and to anyone since its invention in 1991."
Unless you're thinking it's 2005 already, you may be a bit confused here. SCO's original Linux complaint was filed in March 2003, and the "800,000 line" comments were made at roughly the same time.
"On top of that, SCO has sued IBM, accusing it of using SCO property because it too uses Linux."
No, SCO's suing IBM for breach of contract because they claim that IBM has contributed SCO-owned code to Linux. It has nothing to do about using, evangelizing, selling, etc Linux.
"Meanwhile the court dispute between SCO and Linux users (rather than the cyberspace war between SCO and the hackers) is scheduled for next year in a court in Utah."
I'm not quite sure where this comes from. Since no lawsuit has been filed (yet) against any "users", so it'd be difficult to say exactly when and where any "court disputes" would take place. Though if you believe anything SCO says, and in the sloth of the US judicial system, it's not difficult to think that users may be sued, that it will end up in Utah, and take until 2005 to come to court.
If by "users" you mean, say, IBM, then I'm not sure what you're talking about. The next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, Feb 6 2004.
"Despite the law-suits against users by SCO..."
Again, no lawsuits have been filed by any users. There are suits against IBM and SGI (SGI for similar "IP infringement" claims), is this perhaps what you're referring to?
"It represents a new degree of viciousness in internet warfare", "wickedly ingenious", "clever evil"...
How was this virus any more clever or malicious than the last 10 major targeted Denial-of-Service viruses that have been released in the last three years? Or the variant that targetted Microsoft two days later? This smells of either 1) lack of clue, and 2) sensationalistic "journalism" that I'd expect to read in supermarket tabloids or online rumor sites.
Also, I understand that for the purposes of the article it was important to vilify the "mongrel hordes" that make up the Linux development and user (ahem, "zealot") community, but I'm having a difficult time understanding why you seem to be going out of your way to give SCO's actions more merit then they deserve.
You seem to completely forget to mention that:
- So far SCO has been unable to provide any proof of merit to any claim of IP infringement. - In fact, every sign has pointed to a lack of merit to any claim: Most public claims made since the original IBM lawsuit was filed in March '03 have been proven to be false, inflated/misleading, and/or contradicted by later claims by SCO; All examples of "infringing code" that have made their way into the public have been very quickly shown to have been in the public domain for years (sometimes more than 20 years...); In their latest court filing SCO essentially admitted (contrary to public statements) that they have no direct proof of any infringement - instead circumstantial evidence seemed to lead them to believe their employees that there was a "high likelihood of some infringement". - Despite this, the fact that they've proven no claims and made no effort to provide any proof to end-users, they've proceeded to browbeat, slander, threaten, and make motions towards extorting money from large numbers of users, both private users and corporates (including large numbers of Fortune 500 companies) - While the extraordinary claims have been made (which appear to be at least for a very large part, false, inflated, or severely misleading), SCO's stock has managed to climb from
No, most of the IBM PPC 970 technology (G5) came from the POWER series of processors. Much of the POWER stuff is based off of Power PC (PPC) technology developed by IBM, Apple, and Motorola.
Apple DOES still have chip designers employed, and pretty good ones at that. Remember they were a key player in designing the PPC in the *first* place.
However, it does make more sense that AMD would be talking to IBM. They already have a very cozy relationship, and this isn't quite the kind of thing that would play to Apple's role in chip design anyway...
Because Apple has done an extremely good job of making quite a few apps scriptable in extremely powerful ways, and providing powerful APIs to allow app vendors to build this functionality in.
I could also, for example. script iTunes to download and embed album artwork from an album artwork server, or rebuild ID3 tags in a series of files.
Of course, we don't have this with the Windows version of iTunes, and scripting support in most apps is a joke (and the ones that support it are chock-full of security holes). But I guess us Windows users are used to second-rate software =)
Cash cow? What are you talking about? The market leader can't even make money, for cripe's sake.
Perhaps it's infinitely more revenue than was being brought in before, but that doesn't mean that it's profitable or a feasible business plan. And they're just going to be reselling someone else's service, which gives them an even smaller piece of revenue to play with...
This is also the same legal system that ruled that Microsoft should preliminarily stop shipping Internet Explorer with Windows, ruled the company an illegal monopoly performing persistant, highly anti-competitive practices, then ordered that it should be split into three parts as there was no better remedy to prevent the problem in the future.
...Then let the DoJ settle with MS for what amounted to a slap on the wrist (a promise that they will never, ever do it again. Really.) when the DoJ realized that the system would allow Microsoft to continue to appeal for all eternity. (Of course, Bush and the "wait-big-government-is-good-after-all", "trust us" mob coming to power was no small impact).
Slashdot Mirror
Need to run an ActiveX control doesn't necessarily mean anything if you're running Mozilla on Windows.
There's a fairly well-done plugin that allows Mozilla to host ActiveX controls, see here
I had noticed the browser/OS stats thing the other day and sent an email about it. To my surprise I got back an answer from "David Lemin" (dlemin@google.com) within a couple hours: Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Google Zeitgeist. As a result of user feedback we have decided to focus our efforts on the international expansion of the Google Zeitgeist and will no longer be publishing data about Web browsers, operating systems and languages used to access Google. You can view historic data in the Google Zeitgeist archives, http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/archive.html . ...Which is interesting, though I'm having trouble believing the thing about "user feedback". Were there that many people complaining about the stats in some way?
Someone rate the parent +1 funny! That's just good satire...
Really? How many? ...Having spent a lot of time on the Moz Tech Evangalism team, I'd have to say that the number of websites that aren't standards-compliant enough to be viewed by Mozilla is well below 1%.
There are definitely still sites that are incompatible with Mozilla. However, unless there are specific sites that you need that are incompatible (usually sites that require ActiveX, which for Windows there's at least an ActiveX plugin for Mozilla), this "incompatibility" thing just isn't a good enough reason anymore. And if people start to use Mozilla (or other non-IE browsers), most of the leftover web sites will come around...
Exactly what would changing licensing model/terms of the GPL do in this case? It surely wouldn't affect the patent onslaught?
In this case the problem is patents on processes and software ideas, not on the code itself, the way it's distributed, etc. The GPL would have to be changed to exclude "patented ideas".
Keep in mind too that the onslaught may be totally unfounded. Microsoft patented the double-click recently, click-and-hold, virtual desktops, etc., and I'm sure everyone reading Slashdot can quote a piece of prior art. However, it doesn't matter - all Microsoft has to do is keep throwing patent after patent (valid or not) to anti-compete OSS to death. The only real chances are for either 1) Patent law regarding software to be drastically altered, or 2) the industry at large cooperate and fight the battles.
#2 is a bit more likely, but both are fairly *slim* chances. And the impact is potentially devastating either way. The SCO situation turned out to be just some noise. I think companies (as evidenced by the memo) WILL start getting very nervous if they begin to feel that OSS is far too vulnerable to patent fights (which it is, IMO).
Er, how is Netscape 7.0 not OSS?
Er, the only manual I got with my G4 or G5 was a big, shiny, 12-page "How-to-use" document that described virtually nothing. Considering OS X's help system still stinks, users really don't have much in the way of good documentation for new systems. I'd have to disagree that "Apple's manually are usually very good", that's why the "Missing Manual" series has been such a success.
The iPod's documentation was pretty sparse too, though I'd have to admit that it did cover nearly everything I'd want to know as a "normal" (non-hacking) end user...
iTunes also sorts files into directories, and you're also able to simply navigate to an artist (or album or whatever) and just hit "play" to cause it to play all tracks. No need to build a playlist unless you really want to... However, if I DO want some kind of special order, I can build playlists to do that, and can organize songs in a bunch of different ways in the playlists without affecting the way they're stored on disk.
I fail to see how your way is any better (or much different)... Though if you want to use another program to play your files, by all means do it.
1996: Duke Nukem 3D 1.0 came out using modified Doom II engine
No, Duke3d used a engine developed completely independent of Id, called "BUILD". It was much closer in capabilities to the Quake engine than to the Doom II engine, though many (most?) people considered it inferior to the Quake engine.
See Planet Duke for details.
While the iPod can play copy-protected files, the protection that Apple uses currently allows protected files to play on an unlimited number of iPods.
The iPod can, however, also play unprotected MP3s and AAC files.
Did you actually send them this feedback, or are you just complaining to the rest of us without doing anything about it?
My question is, will the cloning of the APIs/technology be *legal*?
...Great for Microsoft, but clear evidence that software patents are BAD for consumers. (Also reminds us that OSS is wonderful, OSS is great, but for the *most part*, most OSS that has been produced so far is not INNOVATIVE. When the primary goal of a project is to clone another product (Evolution springs to mind), it's just not something that drives the realm of computing forward. It's GREAT for competition, though).
...And don't get me started on the dangers inherent in developing using Mono. Ugh.
With Microsoft patenting everything under the sun that relates to Longhorn, how long do you think it would take it would take Microsoft to whip out the lawyer hordes if an open-source project (or any competitor) were to build a XAML implementation?
It's a very smart strategy. Even if Longhorn and associated technologies aren't released until 2007, with current momentum Microsoft will still have a fairly heavy stranglehold on the desktop. Longhorn will fairly quickly be adopted by the masses, pushing their proprietary tech onto the world.
XAML poses to be significantly cool. How long do you think it will take before we start seeing sites that are XAML-only? I mean, today how many MAJOR websites can't even be bothered to do even basic cross-browser compatibility checking (or do outright requirement of IE), let alone spend the resources to implement sites using two very different technologies?
The OSS community says "hey, that's no problem, we'll play catch-up like we always have. We'll just clone your stuff!" Then Microsoft starts slyly waving software patents in Mozilla/KDE/Opera's face.
And chances are that MS will license the technology to Apple, or someone like that, but you can see the danger for OSS browsers and OSS platforms.
What is it that doesn't work right exactly?
If something doesn't, make sure you email them to let them know...
Microsoft has two distinctly different target markets - Server and Desktop. This one is fairly obviously being targeted as a WinXP follow-up at the consumer/workstation, I'm not quite sure how "server administrators" come into play there...
When have they ever bothered to make it pretty, either?
That's a pretty wide swing there - Generally the two systems have very different capabilities and are used for very different things. Which do you need? A Mac or a Sun?
However, dump the PC ASAP.
Can't get anything past you...
That of course has nothing to do with this article - they're kicking themselves for having more orders than they can fill?
They have, however, been having some major operational issues lately, it seems. Delay after delay, botched rollouts, etc. What's going on?
Then I sent this (as "Complaint"):
Originally I was just irritated by what appeared to be another irresposible journalist who appears to be, for the most part, clueless. But after reading the article again I have to say I'm fairly offended by BBC News today.
Steven Evans' article, "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty" seems to be a frustrated gasp by a writer with a level of journalistic talent shared by most supermarket tabloid reporters.
However, besides being sensationalistic, he seems to be intentionally insulting and accusing of a relatively large group of people (of which I suppose I'm a member) because of the suspected actions of a few.
SCO has made movements that have been quite unpopular with the Linux user (sorry, "zealot") community. As a result, Evans concludes, Linux users "struck back" as only a 16-year old computer geeks can - with yet another virus.
It's not unlikely that the virus author(s)' reasons for choosing SCO to assault was influenced by SCO's unpopularity (disapproval probably was also a major influence for the choice of target for MyDoom.B, which assaulted www.microsoft.com starting Feb 3rd).
However, Evans seems to be saying that the underground Linux community of users/developers ("devotees", sorry) as a whole was responsible for the illegal attacks on SCO starting Sunday.
By the same logic Evans provides, all Arabs were responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11th. All Chinese were responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
I suspect most Arabs and Chinese would probably be fairly insulted by the implication, as I'd imagine would be the tens of millions of Linux users worldwide (which include IT departments in nearly every Fortune 500, major Linux contributors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Cisco Systems, Novell, etc). Including myself.
It doesn't help at all that Evans' email is riddled with factual errors and lack of understanding of DoS viruses, the SCO lawsuit situation, or Linux in general.
At the moment I'm convinced that the fact that this story was approved in this state by editors leads me to believe that this is simply new proof of BBC News' steady decline into a second-rate news organization.
First I sent this (As "Factual Errors"):
I assume this article was meant to be a opinion piece of some sort, but it must be embarassing to BBC News to have released an article so shamefully sensationalistic, and chock full of factual errors (what few "facts" were presented...)
Some examples:
"Two years ago, SCO claimed that it owned more than 800,000 lines of the system which had always been available for free and to anyone since its invention in 1991."
Unless you're thinking it's 2005 already, you may be a bit confused here. SCO's original Linux complaint was filed in March 2003, and the "800,000 line" comments were made at roughly the same time.
"On top of that, SCO has sued IBM, accusing it of using SCO property because it too uses Linux."
No, SCO's suing IBM for breach of contract because they claim that IBM has contributed SCO-owned code to Linux. It has nothing to do about using, evangelizing, selling, etc Linux.
"Meanwhile the court dispute between SCO and Linux users (rather than the cyberspace war between SCO and the hackers) is scheduled for next year in a court in Utah."
I'm not quite sure where this comes from. Since no lawsuit has been filed (yet) against any "users", so it'd be difficult to say exactly when and where any "court disputes" would take place. Though if you believe anything SCO says, and in the sloth of the US judicial system, it's not difficult to think that users may be sued, that it will end up in Utah, and take until 2005 to come to court.
If by "users" you mean, say, IBM, then I'm not sure what you're talking about. The next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, Feb 6 2004.
"Despite the law-suits against users by SCO..."
Again, no lawsuits have been filed by any users. There are suits against IBM and SGI (SGI for similar "IP infringement" claims), is this perhaps what you're referring to?
"It represents a new degree of viciousness in internet warfare", "wickedly ingenious", "clever evil"...
How was this virus any more clever or malicious than the last 10 major targeted Denial-of-Service viruses that have been released in the last three years? Or the variant that targetted Microsoft two days later? This smells of either 1) lack of clue, and 2) sensationalistic "journalism" that I'd expect to read in supermarket tabloids or online rumor sites.
Also, I understand that for the purposes of the article it was important to vilify the "mongrel hordes" that make up the Linux development and user (ahem, "zealot") community, but I'm having a difficult time understanding why you seem to be going out of your way to give SCO's actions more merit then they deserve.
You seem to completely forget to mention that:
- So far SCO has been unable to provide any proof of merit to any claim of IP infringement.
- In fact, every sign has pointed to a lack of merit to any claim: Most public claims made since the original IBM lawsuit was filed in March '03 have been proven to be false, inflated/misleading, and/or contradicted by later claims by SCO; All examples of "infringing code" that have made their way into the public have been very quickly shown to have been in the public domain for years (sometimes more than 20 years...); In their latest court filing SCO essentially admitted (contrary to public statements) that they have no direct proof of any infringement - instead circumstantial evidence seemed to lead them to believe their employees that there was a "high likelihood of some infringement".
- Despite this, the fact that they've proven no claims and made no effort to provide any proof to end-users, they've proceeded to browbeat, slander, threaten, and make motions towards extorting money from large numbers of users, both private users and corporates (including large numbers of Fortune 500 companies)
- While the extraordinary claims have been made (which appear to be at least for a very large part, false, inflated, or severely misleading), SCO's stock has managed to climb from
No, most of the IBM PPC 970 technology (G5) came from the POWER series of processors. Much of the POWER stuff is based off of Power PC (PPC) technology developed by IBM, Apple, and Motorola.
Apple DOES still have chip designers employed, and pretty good ones at that. Remember they were a key player in designing the PPC in the *first* place.
However, it does make more sense that AMD would be talking to IBM. They already have a very cozy relationship, and this isn't quite the kind of thing that would play to Apple's role in chip design anyway...
Because Apple has done an extremely good job of making quite a few apps scriptable in extremely powerful ways, and providing powerful APIs to allow app vendors to build this functionality in.
I could also, for example. script iTunes to download and embed album artwork from an album artwork server, or rebuild ID3 tags in a series of files.
Of course, we don't have this with the Windows version of iTunes, and scripting support in most apps is a joke (and the ones that support it are chock-full of security holes). But I guess us Windows users are used to second-rate software =)
Cash cow? What are you talking about? The market leader can't even make money, for cripe's sake.
Perhaps it's infinitely more revenue than was being brought in before, but that doesn't mean that it's profitable or a feasible business plan. And they're just going to be reselling someone else's service, which gives them an even smaller piece of revenue to play with...
This is also the same legal system that ruled that Microsoft should preliminarily stop shipping Internet Explorer with Windows, ruled the company an illegal monopoly performing persistant, highly anti-competitive practices, then ordered that it should be split into three parts as there was no better remedy to prevent the problem in the future.
...Then let the DoJ settle with MS for what amounted to a slap on the wrist (a promise that they will never, ever do it again. Really.) when the DoJ realized that the system would allow Microsoft to continue to appeal for all eternity. (Of course, Bush and the "wait-big-government-is-good-after-all", "trust us" mob coming to power was no small impact).