Ah yes, I forgot about that "Internet" thing, silly me:) Most corps have some sort of firewall though, which usually block/restrict access to certain ports/users/IPs etc. Even if not, the traffic could easily be noticed. This would probably only really work if the admin was not watching very closely what goes on on the network and over the 'Net connection.
Would it? With only 2MB of flash to store snooped info, I don't think so. It would have to send out the info to be stored somewhere else.. how? Via LAN... making it all a bit pointless.
I've used a 15+ year old Airbus commercial flight simulator that had precisely this kind of force feedback on the joysticks - simulated and controlled to feel very close to the real thing. Not to mention the entire motion platform itself, which also allows you to "feel the terrain" - literally.
You've hit the nail on the head: Microsoft shares source as a PR move. They throw out what is really a few miniscule token gestures, but it generates a lot of goodwill, and makes people think they're not so bad after all. They're really just manipulating your view of them.
MS also takes a bit of flak for keeping their source closed, and also some clients attempt to use OSS as a bargaining chip to drive down the price they get from MS. Also some clients DO value software being OS. Thus Microsoft also wants such clients to think that they are "moving in the direction of" OSS, i.e. they want you to think that they are "moving towards" OpenSourcing Windows etc., so that you perceive buying into Windows now as less of a risk, thinking that at some point in the future this product would possibly be opened. But Microsoft will never, ever open Windows or Office. It will never happen, because it would allow a bunch of competitors to spring up with Windows-compatible platforms and Office-format-compatible office suites, which would force MS to slash their margins. Their proprietary formats and platforms are the bedrock of their monopoly. They're not stupid.
Under this "pseudo/pretend" "open" strategy, Microsoft intend to simply forever be in this perpetual state of "moving towards OpenSource".. it may look like they are 'moving', but they will never reach the destination, and they know it.
The OS should not cost more than applications software, because applications are what people actually use to work/play/communicate and the OS is just what abstracts hardware
Hmm... I'd say that the OS should not cost more than applications purely for market reasons: economies of scale. Very simply put, the cost of ANY software package should be based on the cost it takes to develop/maintain, plus a reasonable profit margin, and then divided by the expected size of the market. If it costs e.g. MS $15 per customer to produce Windows, then e.g. $20 max would be a reasonable price (IF there were competition driving down margins and increasing efficiencies). Currently the markup MS adds to Windows over cost is something like 500% though (80% profit margins, reportedly). The OS can't really be free if it costs money to *make*, I think it is perfectly reasonable to charge for anything that costs money to make and support, however the current margins on Windows are clearly just ridiculous (monopoly pricing - 'what the market will bear'). Many people think the price is normal only because the majority of people aren't capable of evaluating the value of such a complex product by themselves.
This is why software vendors in niche/vertical markets charge so much more for their software, even when the cost of developing a product may be similar or comparable (e.g. military flight training simulator vs. flight sim game... OK, different, but a lot of overlap).
OEM versions DO add a lot to the cost of a new PC, BTW. OEM versions are no longer discounted as they used to often be, ever since the anti-trust ruling, as MS was using the discounts to do price discrimination to force OEMs to do whatever they wanted (i.e. put Windows on every PC they sold, bundle IE and so on). Microsoft was ordered to do it, so they simply sent out a letter to OEMs saying that in terms of the ruling, they are now "forced" to charge all OEMs FULL PRICE for Windows!
Major carriers are blocking the phone's entry because they want to be able to force users to pay them money to do something as basic as copy songs onto the phone/player. These are economic/strategic obstacles not technical obstacles.
Are they afraid of it just being that much easy to switch to Mac or Linux
That's exactly it. If Microsoft conformed to open standards, then anyone could develop competing software (that costs less) that provides the same services/functionality (e.g. any OS/browser would work fine for 100% of the Web). Competition would ultimately mean greatly slashed profit margins (margins are currently massively overinflated). So by creating broken "Microsoft" versions of standards, and getting lots of e.g. Web developers to develop to MS standards, they get to effectively control what (MS-specific) standards are used on much of the Web, which means you need IE to effectively browse, and effectively that means you have to buy Windows. It's all about creating lock-in to their solutions. Of course, they can only get away with "forcing" people to adopt their standards because of their desktop monopoly - they couldn't do it if they weren't in that position. This is also why products like Word and FrontPage don't generate HTML, they generate some odd MS stuff that bears a vague resemblance to HTML. They almost got away with this one, but for now it looks like even the relatively small rise of Firefox is helping force a lot of Web developers to use standards, and it's becoming increasingly rare to find "IE-only" sites. But they basically attempt this strategy with every single open standard in the IT industry. Open standards = platform competition = lower prices = increased efficiency in the economy. MS can't allow other browsers to gain significant market share.
There is also another fear, that of "browser as platform", that partially drove MS to kill Netscape in the first place. The problem was that web browsers were becoming so powerful etc. it looked like they would effectively start being capable of being full-on "fat" "thin clients" capable of running applications. In other words, the web browser was becoming a platform, and would thus eventually compete with Windows, and Netscape being cross-platform, if your apps just ran in the browser, you could run the browser on any platform - you wouldn't need Windows, and again that would mean competition and thus lower margins. MS successfully stopped Netscape dead in it's tracks though, which also nearly halted development in this area, setting part of the industry back probably about 5 years as this has stagnated now. Only now is the industry starting to pick up again where it left off at the end of the last browser wars (e.g. think of "rich" web apps like google maps.. this is just a start).
Look, troll, it's simple:
- A large percentage of Slashdot's audience consists of technical people like Web developers
- Issues like broken CSS compliance have a very real and direct effect on web developers, as they/we have to spend a lot of time and effort dealing with, and working around, the problems caused by poor support
- The facts are true: Microsoft's CSS support is broken.. MS is cast in a bad light because FACT, they ARE in the wrong here.. duh
- The issue is thus very relevant to the audience, who will have to deal with the negative consequences of poor CSS support in IE7
These are indisputable facts. If this is "mindless bashing", kindly demonstrate to us (with facts, not lame attempts at attempting to redefine MS-bashing as "uncool") that we're all wrong and that MS's CSS support in fact has no problems.
You're not a developer, this doesn't affect you, so you find it boring, fine: Then why not just ignore the MS articles and shut up? Why come in here and post? It may be boring to you, but is relevant to us and affects the work we do in a real way. If you don't want to see MS articles, just turn them off in your slashdot settings, simple.
(Repost, ignore previous; why does/. post the previously previewed version before I edited the post again?)
Look, troll, it's simple:
- A large percentage of Slashdot's audience consists of technical people like Web developers
- Issues like broken CSS compliance have a very real and direct effect on web developers, as they/we have to spend a lot of time and effort dealing with, and working around, the problems caused by poor support
- The facts are true: Microsoft's CSS support is broken
- The issue is thus very relevant to the audience, who will have to deal with the negative consequences of poor CSS support in IE7
These are indisputable facts. If this is "mindless bashing", kindly demonstrate to us (with facts, not lame attempts at attempting to redefine MS-bashing as "uncool") that we're all wrong and that MS's CSS support in fact has no problems.
All I did was click on and open the c file, and Visual Studio.NET locked up while loading it, bringing Explorer down with it and rendering my system useless.
"innovative as they once were".. Microsoft was once innovative? That's a new one. Examples please?
Microsoft have always taken years to come out with new products, they always run late, and their new products have always only been incremental improvements over the previous ones, also they have always been behind others in functionality and copying from others. I don't think Microsoft is slowing down; they've always been slow. For every release of Windows since 3.1 I've watched people wait patiently for a few years for the running-late "next version of Windows" that's always supposed to be great but somehow never is. People have short memories though, and once the new version comes out, they're distracted for a while until they start seeing all the problems in the new version and wondering when the next one will be released, and the cycle starts over. I don't think anything has changed at all.
It seems to me like Microsoft HAS been farther along in many technologies than Linux, such as native language input and localization for years. It seems to me Linux is still playing catchup to many of MS's supposedly inferior technologies.
Assuming that Windows and Linux are the only two OSs, which is of course not true. Windows has been ahead of Linux in various respects only because Linux is a very new operating system, as OSs go (only, what, 14 years old now?), but virtually every aspect of Windows has always been behind other operating systems. Thus I don't see any problem with saying that Microsoft has 'held everyone back' (just that I wouldn't say that Linux has been leading) (Linux was ahead of Windows for a long time mainly in its UNIX-y network-related functionality, like multi-user, network, IP masquerading, remote access and so on, but most of that functionality came from the UNIX world and predates Windows entirely.)
I'll grant you that Microsoft have done a good, in fact impressive job w.r.t. localisation and support for Unicode and advanced Unicode text rendering (I have very few good things to say about MS, but this is one of them!). But localisation is the only technology I know of where Microsoft can really be said to have been 'at the forefront' (on par, mind you, with e.g. Apple, but not significantly ahead). Can you name some other areas where MS was ahead of everyone? I don't think so.
The other main improvements to Windows during the rise of Linux have been, actually, adding much of the functionality that Linux and various UNIXes had had for years already, e.g. remote access, NAT, etc. Broadly speaking, I always say that Linux had been playing catch-up to Windows in the desktop arena, and Windows had been playing catch-up to UNIX/Linux in the networking/multi-user arena.
I don't think Linux has ever done much of its own thinking - contrary to what many people often say, Linux hasn't copied mostly from Windows, they have copied mostly from UNIX. Most people's first exposure to a UNIX-like system is Linux, so they tend to think many of the things in Linux were 'invented' there (the same mistake Windows users make). UNIX is old! A lot older than Windows or Linux.
You make it sound like CEOs are forced/pressured to increase profits for the benefits of others. Then how do you explain that it is the executives who are increasingly benefitting personally? Google for "Historical Trends in Executive Compensation": "Soaring executive compensation during the past two decades..."; "In the early 1940s, average executive salaries fell by 25 percent"; "The real value of CEO compensation grew at 8.4 percent per year during from 1980 to 1994"; "The compensation of the top 100 CEO listed in Forbes's annual survey on executive compensation was 59 times larger than the average production worker in 1979 but 311 times larger by 1999".
Executive compensation has shot through the roof in just the last two decades. This money is not going to pension funds, and has nothing to do with them, this is basically money going directly to the personal bank accounts of the executives. If CEOs were obliged as you say to deliver increasingly greater returns to the pension fund, there would be downward pressure on their personal compensation packages. The opposite is true.
True! Good point.. the Darwinism thing would only really work if the playing field was level and dominant players weren't continually finding ways to artificially keep new players from being able to enter markets.
It's basically a modern get-rich-quick scheme for CEOs and shareholders etc. Get in, cut out any costs that only pay off in the long-term (i.e. R&D), report increased profits, pay out huge bonuses, get out. Company may collapse or suffer badly afterwards, possibly putting thousands out of work, but you don't care because you retired a billionaire. It's become a kind of plague on western economies during the last few decades. These people are just "cashing in" on the efforts of their predecessors. The problem is most CEOs are not going to be around long enough to reap the rewards of the R&D being spent now, and they know it, so there is no incentive for them personally to manage the company well. In the "old days" this wasn't such a problem because the culture was somehow different, you just didn't do that, you thought about the long-term; the trend of bonuses paid out proportionally to 'performance' seemed to cause a kind of cultural shift in the way people think about running companies. CEOs are paid far more disproportionately now, siphoning off massive amounts of wealth from the economy.. most ordinary "middle-class" workers today can't afford to live as well as their parents did even when both husband and wife work, unlike their parents when probably only the man worked.. why is this? Because more of the wealth is taken by the few at the top, and the economy runs less efficient. In theory Darwin should sort this out, i.e. companies that invest in R&D should have greater survivability in the long term, but for now it seems this problem is just not going away.
Yup, I think the primary difference (from a technical standpoint) between MS and Apple is that Apple actually gives a crap about the quality of the products they make, and actually innovate. Microsoft honestly just do as little as they can humanly get away with. (I was just pondering today how even the most basic things like Notepad are actually outright broken - try edit in it with word wrap on, for example - it's really completely broken, and MS couldn't give a fart, because they don't have to).
Microsoft have a looong history of shady, unethical and downright illegal business practices... many of which are enabled only by their position of dominance... Apple is nowhere near being "the new Microsoft" (they just don't have the industry clout that MS has to abuse), and they have a long way to go to get anywhere near it.
If a monopoly company made good products and didn't charge massive rip-off pricing for them, I probably wouldn't mind as much if they were a monopoly and abused that monopoly position. I guess that's hypocritical, but as an engineer the technical quality of any software/hardware product is what matters most to me.
If the patent can't be upheld in court it is effectively invalid. I suspect that'd be the case with sudo as prior art is emminently provable.
Only if you have HUGE amounts of money to take the issue to court. It doesn't actually matter how obviously wrong a patent may be, very very few companies or individuals have the ability to take it to court - the other 99.9% out there are simply forced to back down and stop using the "technology". In fact, the fact that a patent won't be upheld in court is almost irrelevant - the effect could be the same for several years even if a big company (e.g. IBM?) is willing to take it to court... that time would be used by MS to gain market share and thus further their "lock-in".
All signs do seem to point towards Microsoft gearing up to make a major 'patent-based' attack on Linux (their funding of the SCO lawsuit being the first round, if you will). With MS's effectively bottomless wallets, I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the possible negative impact on Linux. Especially if they push European patents through. (Although that still leaves Asia, at least.)
There is another negative effect that several Linux patent court cases could have, even if it was clear the patents were invalid: Companies considering using Linux would be more fearful of doing so, because of the perceived increased risk that the future of Linux may 'hang in the balance' or even just a perceived increased risk that their is a chance they could end up paying royalties for using 'patented technologies' in Linux. This point was already played up a lot in the Microsoft/SCO press FUD since the start of the SCO lawsuit, i.o.w. this strategy is already in use by Microsoft (indirectly) and will probably increase.
Note that although they are still winning in terms of desktop market share, Microsoft is increasingly losing the server market, and are desparate to make gains there as they need dominance on all fronts to truly ensure complete "lock-in" to their solutions. And since in the long run you can't win against OpenSource on a purely technological level, patents are probably MS's only possibly effective long-term strategy against Linux (well, that and DRM, which they are also trying). Look for MS to start using more of these in the years to come, especially if the DRM 'arm' of their strategy doesn't work well.
Maybe they think of attempts to ssh in as root and guess the password as attacks?
I suspect you are right. FTA:
The Windows Service Pack 2, or SP 2, system is the most up-to-date Windows operating system. It received 16 direct attacks.
The Macintosh system received three attacks. Two of the Linux systems received eight attacks each, though Red Hat's version of Linux received no attacks at all.
But in the end, none of the attacks were successful.
So on up to date systems, none of them were successfully hacked. XPS1 got taken over in minutes though. Which just confirms what we already knew, that XPSP1 was an atrocious POS OS, and was released because of Microsoft's sloppy "release a beta-quality product way too early in order to gain market share quickly and then patch the inevitable mess later" attitude, but SP2 is definitely a move in the right direction, although years late, and a lot of damage has already been done. Has MS really changed, I wonder? Will they stay on this 'right track' where they 'care about security' or is it all necessary damage control + PR "for now", in their minds?
Hmm.. just thinking, the software update on my 10.3 Mac mini downloaded an update referred to as a 'security update'.. wonder if a known vulnerability was patched there-in.
Re:The Problem With XML
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In my experience the main reason our clients want their data in XML is that most of them are afraid of single-vendor lock-in to proprietary formats, especially to smaller vendors they perceive could more easily go under - in other words, they want data longevity and a format they can easily process their data if they need to. And this trumps the inefficiency. Especially as people mostly transfer such documents across high-speed LANs and store them on modern 120+ GB hard disks and open them on machines with 512MB+ RAM... in all of which cases inefficiency doesn't cause any problems.
There are also generic XML content editors which, although rather pricy, help reduce a lot of the negatives associated with working with XML (i.e. you would be crazy these days to be writing XML in e.g. Notepad).
I personally agree that XML is overrated, but many people want it because they understand one thing: if their data is in XML format, you can't in the long run lock them in to your software with excessive prices, and if you disappear, they can still get their data.
But (assuming the election weren't rigged), the American people voted this administration into power again. The American people chose for things like this to happen to them (all of these things have been crafted by the current administration, and I somehow doubt things would be going down the same, or half as badly, if the election had gone the other way - remember that none of these things are necessarily "inevitable", they're highly dependent on who is in power, there have been many similar 'low points' during the previous century and it is possible to come out of them if you're not so complacent that you just accept things as inevitable). I think most people are simply uninformed, and don't care that they're uninformed. Thus one must conclucde that the root cause of the problems here is that majority of the American public are not competent enough to choose their leaders properly.
The cost of the bandwidth and overheads and so on will be subsidized by advertising costs. These costs are in turn paid for by the customers of the advertisers (*) (meaning the advertisers must charge more for their products than they would otherwise have been able to). This means the customers of the advertisers' products are paying for it, rather directly in fact (although that may seem too abstract for some people to connect the two.. but a percentage of the cost of any product you buy is used to advertise that very product to you.. you are in a sense "buying" the advertising too). There is also going to be some overlap between the two sets of users (advertisers' customers vs 'bandwidth users'), so some will pay for the BW even more directly. But while on an individual level it may be possible to just sit and use the bandwidth 'for free', taken on the average the users are still paying for it. And it doesn't sound like a terribly efficient bandwidth payment model to me - paying an ISP directly is probably more economically efficient for providing the same service, which may make this "devolution" in a sense, or perhaps just "divergence" as there is now a choice between models to the consumer.
And although you may think that you're purely snarfing free bandwidth and that the ads have no effect on you, unless you physically block the ads or take note of the places advertised and deliberately avoid them, those ads are absorbed by your brain in one way or another, and will increase brand recognition and brand identity no matter what you do, making you statistically more likely to buy those products. An interesting question is whether or not this is a more effective (and thus economically efficient) advertising medium than other advertising media. If it turns out to be less effecient, it means the advertisers have to pay more to get the same return, which is perhaps a step backwards.
My own theory is that ultimately we never get anything for free because over the course of your life it all averages out: Some level of cross-subsidisation is everywhere (e.g. IE isn't "free" because those who buy Windows pay for it; "free pizza delivery" is effectively subsidised by walk-in customers in the form of slightly higher prices to cover the delivery costs, etc.) For every product you get for "free", on average there is another occasion where you end up subsidising someone else's "free" product (usually without even knowing), so it all cancels out in the end.
(*) Just to pre-empt anyone counter-arguing that investor funding may be used: True, but investors still expect returns, and investor returns generally come from customers or more investments.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, I forgot about that "Internet" thing, silly me :) Most corps have some sort of firewall though, which usually block/restrict access to certain ports/users/IPs etc. Even if not, the traffic could easily be noticed. This would probably only really work if the admin was not watching very closely what goes on on the network and over the 'Net connection.
Would it? With only 2MB of flash to store snooped info, I don't think so. It would have to send out the info to be stored somewhere else .. how? Via LAN ... making it all a bit pointless.
I've used a 15+ year old Airbus commercial flight simulator that had precisely this kind of force feedback on the joysticks - simulated and controlled to feel very close to the real thing. Not to mention the entire motion platform itself, which also allows you to "feel the terrain" - literally.
Man .. I thought this kind of thing was supposed to be a 3rd world problem.
You've hit the nail on the head: Microsoft shares source as a PR move. They throw out what is really a few miniscule token gestures, but it generates a lot of goodwill, and makes people think they're not so bad after all. They're really just manipulating your view of them.
MS also takes a bit of flak for keeping their source closed, and also some clients attempt to use OSS as a bargaining chip to drive down the price they get from MS. Also some clients DO value software being OS. Thus Microsoft also wants such clients to think that they are "moving in the direction of" OSS, i.e. they want you to think that they are "moving towards" OpenSourcing Windows etc., so that you perceive buying into Windows now as less of a risk, thinking that at some point in the future this product would possibly be opened. But Microsoft will never, ever open Windows or Office. It will never happen, because it would allow a bunch of competitors to spring up with Windows-compatible platforms and Office-format-compatible office suites, which would force MS to slash their margins. Their proprietary formats and platforms are the bedrock of their monopoly. They're not stupid.
Under this "pseudo/pretend" "open" strategy, Microsoft intend to simply forever be in this perpetual state of "moving towards OpenSource" .. it may look like they are 'moving', but they will never reach the destination, and they know it.
The OS should not cost more than applications software, because applications are what people actually use to work/play/communicate and the OS is just what abstracts hardware
Hmm ... I'd say that the OS should not cost more than applications purely for market reasons: economies of scale. Very simply put, the cost of ANY software package should be based on the cost it takes to develop/maintain, plus a reasonable profit margin, and then divided by the expected size of the market. If it costs e.g. MS $15 per customer to produce Windows, then e.g. $20 max would be a reasonable price (IF there were competition driving down margins and increasing efficiencies). Currently the markup MS adds to Windows over cost is something like 500% though (80% profit margins, reportedly). The OS can't really be free if it costs money to *make*, I think it is perfectly reasonable to charge for anything that costs money to make and support, however the current margins on Windows are clearly just ridiculous (monopoly pricing - 'what the market will bear'). Many people think the price is normal only because the majority of people aren't capable of evaluating the value of such a complex product by themselves.
This is why software vendors in niche/vertical markets charge so much more for their software, even when the cost of developing a product may be similar or comparable (e.g. military flight training simulator vs. flight sim game ... OK, different, but a lot of overlap).
OEM versions DO add a lot to the cost of a new PC, BTW. OEM versions are no longer discounted as they used to often be, ever since the anti-trust ruling, as MS was using the discounts to do price discrimination to force OEMs to do whatever they wanted (i.e. put Windows on every PC they sold, bundle IE and so on). Microsoft was ordered to do it, so they simply sent out a letter to OEMs saying that in terms of the ruling, they are now "forced" to charge all OEMs FULL PRICE for Windows!
Major carriers are blocking the phone's entry because they want to be able to force users to pay them money to do something as basic as copy songs onto the phone/player. These are economic/strategic obstacles not technical obstacles.
Troll my ass. Hope metamod gets you.
Are they afraid of it just being that much easy to switch to Mac or Linux
That's exactly it. If Microsoft conformed to open standards, then anyone could develop competing software (that costs less) that provides the same services/functionality (e.g. any OS/browser would work fine for 100% of the Web). Competition would ultimately mean greatly slashed profit margins (margins are currently massively overinflated). So by creating broken "Microsoft" versions of standards, and getting lots of e.g. Web developers to develop to MS standards, they get to effectively control what (MS-specific) standards are used on much of the Web, which means you need IE to effectively browse, and effectively that means you have to buy Windows. It's all about creating lock-in to their solutions. Of course, they can only get away with "forcing" people to adopt their standards because of their desktop monopoly - they couldn't do it if they weren't in that position. This is also why products like Word and FrontPage don't generate HTML, they generate some odd MS stuff that bears a vague resemblance to HTML. They almost got away with this one, but for now it looks like even the relatively small rise of Firefox is helping force a lot of Web developers to use standards, and it's becoming increasingly rare to find "IE-only" sites. But they basically attempt this strategy with every single open standard in the IT industry. Open standards = platform competition = lower prices = increased efficiency in the economy. MS can't allow other browsers to gain significant market share.
There is also another fear, that of "browser as platform", that partially drove MS to kill Netscape in the first place. The problem was that web browsers were becoming so powerful etc. it looked like they would effectively start being capable of being full-on "fat" "thin clients" capable of running applications. In other words, the web browser was becoming a platform, and would thus eventually compete with Windows, and Netscape being cross-platform, if your apps just ran in the browser, you could run the browser on any platform - you wouldn't need Windows, and again that would mean competition and thus lower margins. MS successfully stopped Netscape dead in it's tracks though, which also nearly halted development in this area, setting part of the industry back probably about 5 years as this has stagnated now. Only now is the industry starting to pick up again where it left off at the end of the last browser wars (e.g. think of "rich" web apps like google maps .. this is just a start).
Look, troll, it's simple: .. MS is cast in a bad light because FACT, they ARE in the wrong here .. duh
- A large percentage of Slashdot's audience consists of technical people like Web developers
- Issues like broken CSS compliance have a very real and direct effect on web developers, as they/we have to spend a lot of time and effort dealing with, and working around, the problems caused by poor support
- The facts are true: Microsoft's CSS support is broken
- The issue is thus very relevant to the audience, who will have to deal with the negative consequences of poor CSS support in IE7
These are indisputable facts. If this is "mindless bashing", kindly demonstrate to us (with facts, not lame attempts at attempting to redefine MS-bashing as "uncool") that we're all wrong and that MS's CSS support in fact has no problems.
You're not a developer, this doesn't affect you, so you find it boring, fine: Then why not just ignore the MS articles and shut up? Why come in here and post? It may be boring to you, but is relevant to us and affects the work we do in a real way. If you don't want to see MS articles, just turn them off in your slashdot settings, simple.
(Repost, ignore previous; why does /. post the previously previewed version before I edited the post again?)
Look, troll, it's simple:
- A large percentage of Slashdot's audience consists of technical people like Web developers
- Issues like broken CSS compliance have a very real and direct effect on web developers, as they/we have to spend a lot of time and effort dealing with, and working around, the problems caused by poor support
- The facts are true: Microsoft's CSS support is broken
- The issue is thus very relevant to the audience, who will have to deal with the negative consequences of poor CSS support in IE7
These are indisputable facts. If this is "mindless bashing", kindly demonstrate to us (with facts, not lame attempts at attempting to redefine MS-bashing as "uncool") that we're all wrong and that MS's CSS support in fact has no problems.
All I did was click on and open the c file, and Visual Studio .NET locked up while loading it, bringing Explorer down with it and rendering my system useless.
"innovative as they once were" .. Microsoft was once innovative? That's a new one. Examples please?
Microsoft have always taken years to come out with new products, they always run late, and their new products have always only been incremental improvements over the previous ones, also they have always been behind others in functionality and copying from others. I don't think Microsoft is slowing down; they've always been slow. For every release of Windows since 3.1 I've watched people wait patiently for a few years for the running-late "next version of Windows" that's always supposed to be great but somehow never is. People have short memories though, and once the new version comes out, they're distracted for a while until they start seeing all the problems in the new version and wondering when the next one will be released, and the cycle starts over. I don't think anything has changed at all.
It seems to me like Microsoft HAS been farther along in many technologies than Linux, such as native language input and localization for years. It seems to me Linux is still playing catchup to many of MS's supposedly inferior technologies.
Assuming that Windows and Linux are the only two OSs, which is of course not true. Windows has been ahead of Linux in various respects only because Linux is a very new operating system, as OSs go (only, what, 14 years old now?), but virtually every aspect of Windows has always been behind other operating systems. Thus I don't see any problem with saying that Microsoft has 'held everyone back' (just that I wouldn't say that Linux has been leading) (Linux was ahead of Windows for a long time mainly in its UNIX-y network-related functionality, like multi-user, network, IP masquerading, remote access and so on, but most of that functionality came from the UNIX world and predates Windows entirely.)
I'll grant you that Microsoft have done a good, in fact impressive job w.r.t. localisation and support for Unicode and advanced Unicode text rendering (I have very few good things to say about MS, but this is one of them!). But localisation is the only technology I know of where Microsoft can really be said to have been 'at the forefront' (on par, mind you, with e.g. Apple, but not significantly ahead). Can you name some other areas where MS was ahead of everyone? I don't think so.
The other main improvements to Windows during the rise of Linux have been, actually, adding much of the functionality that Linux and various UNIXes had had for years already, e.g. remote access, NAT, etc. Broadly speaking, I always say that Linux had been playing catch-up to Windows in the desktop arena, and Windows had been playing catch-up to UNIX/Linux in the networking/multi-user arena.
I don't think Linux has ever done much of its own thinking - contrary to what many people often say, Linux hasn't copied mostly from Windows, they have copied mostly from UNIX. Most people's first exposure to a UNIX-like system is Linux, so they tend to think many of the things in Linux were 'invented' there (the same mistake Windows users make). UNIX is old! A lot older than Windows or Linux.
Something non-monetary that is often an important motivator: glory/credit/recognition. Put their name in lights for their achievements/contributions.
You make it sound like CEOs are forced/pressured to increase profits for the benefits of others. Then how do you explain that it is the executives who are increasingly benefitting personally? Google for "Historical Trends in Executive Compensation": "Soaring executive compensation during the past two decades ..."; "In the early 1940s, average executive salaries fell by 25 percent"; "The real value of CEO compensation grew at 8.4 percent per year during from 1980 to 1994"; "The compensation of the top 100 CEO listed in Forbes's annual survey on executive compensation was 59 times larger than the average production worker in 1979 but 311 times larger by 1999".
Executive compensation has shot through the roof in just the last two decades. This money is not going to pension funds, and has nothing to do with them, this is basically money going directly to the personal bank accounts of the executives. If CEOs were obliged as you say to deliver increasingly greater returns to the pension fund, there would be downward pressure on their personal compensation packages. The opposite is true.
True! Good point .. the Darwinism thing would only really work if the playing field was level and dominant players weren't continually finding ways to artificially keep new players from being able to enter markets.
It's basically a modern get-rich-quick scheme for CEOs and shareholders etc. Get in, cut out any costs that only pay off in the long-term (i.e. R&D), report increased profits, pay out huge bonuses, get out. Company may collapse or suffer badly afterwards, possibly putting thousands out of work, but you don't care because you retired a billionaire. It's become a kind of plague on western economies during the last few decades. These people are just "cashing in" on the efforts of their predecessors. The problem is most CEOs are not going to be around long enough to reap the rewards of the R&D being spent now, and they know it, so there is no incentive for them personally to manage the company well. In the "old days" this wasn't such a problem because the culture was somehow different, you just didn't do that, you thought about the long-term; the trend of bonuses paid out proportionally to 'performance' seemed to cause a kind of cultural shift in the way people think about running companies. CEOs are paid far more disproportionately now, siphoning off massive amounts of wealth from the economy .. most ordinary "middle-class" workers today can't afford to live as well as their parents did even when both husband and wife work, unlike their parents when probably only the man worked .. why is this? Because more of the wealth is taken by the few at the top, and the economy runs less efficient. In theory Darwin should sort this out, i.e. companies that invest in R&D should have greater survivability in the long term, but for now it seems this problem is just not going away.
Yup, I think the primary difference (from a technical standpoint) between MS and Apple is that Apple actually gives a crap about the quality of the products they make, and actually innovate. Microsoft honestly just do as little as they can humanly get away with. (I was just pondering today how even the most basic things like Notepad are actually outright broken - try edit in it with word wrap on, for example - it's really completely broken, and MS couldn't give a fart, because they don't have to).
Microsoft have a looong history of shady, unethical and downright illegal business practices ... many of which are enabled only by their position of dominance ... Apple is nowhere near being "the new Microsoft" (they just don't have the industry clout that MS has to abuse), and they have a long way to go to get anywhere near it.
If a monopoly company made good products and didn't charge massive rip-off pricing for them, I probably wouldn't mind as much if they were a monopoly and abused that monopoly position. I guess that's hypocritical, but as an engineer the technical quality of any software/hardware product is what matters most to me.
Well done, your troll got +4 insightful! (Dancin_Santa is a troll people ...)
If the patent can't be upheld in court it is effectively invalid. I suspect that'd be the case with sudo as prior art is emminently provable.
Only if you have HUGE amounts of money to take the issue to court. It doesn't actually matter how obviously wrong a patent may be, very very few companies or individuals have the ability to take it to court - the other 99.9% out there are simply forced to back down and stop using the "technology". In fact, the fact that a patent won't be upheld in court is almost irrelevant - the effect could be the same for several years even if a big company (e.g. IBM?) is willing to take it to court ... that time would be used by MS to gain market share and thus further their "lock-in".
All signs do seem to point towards Microsoft gearing up to make a major 'patent-based' attack on Linux (their funding of the SCO lawsuit being the first round, if you will). With MS's effectively bottomless wallets, I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the possible negative impact on Linux. Especially if they push European patents through. (Although that still leaves Asia, at least.)
There is another negative effect that several Linux patent court cases could have, even if it was clear the patents were invalid: Companies considering using Linux would be more fearful of doing so, because of the perceived increased risk that the future of Linux may 'hang in the balance' or even just a perceived increased risk that their is a chance they could end up paying royalties for using 'patented technologies' in Linux. This point was already played up a lot in the Microsoft/SCO press FUD since the start of the SCO lawsuit, i.o.w. this strategy is already in use by Microsoft (indirectly) and will probably increase.
Note that although they are still winning in terms of desktop market share, Microsoft is increasingly losing the server market, and are desparate to make gains there as they need dominance on all fronts to truly ensure complete "lock-in" to their solutions. And since in the long run you can't win against OpenSource on a purely technological level, patents are probably MS's only possibly effective long-term strategy against Linux (well, that and DRM, which they are also trying). Look for MS to start using more of these in the years to come, especially if the DRM 'arm' of their strategy doesn't work well.
Maybe they think of attempts to ssh in as root and guess the password as attacks?
I suspect you are right. FTA:
The Windows Service Pack 2, or SP 2, system is the most up-to-date Windows operating system. It received 16 direct attacks.
The Macintosh system received three attacks. Two of the Linux systems received eight attacks each, though Red Hat's version of Linux received no attacks at all.
But in the end, none of the attacks were successful.
So on up to date systems, none of them were successfully hacked. XPS1 got taken over in minutes though. Which just confirms what we already knew, that XPSP1 was an atrocious POS OS, and was released because of Microsoft's sloppy "release a beta-quality product way too early in order to gain market share quickly and then patch the inevitable mess later" attitude, but SP2 is definitely a move in the right direction, although years late, and a lot of damage has already been done. Has MS really changed, I wonder? Will they stay on this 'right track' where they 'care about security' or is it all necessary damage control + PR "for now", in their minds?
Hmm .. just thinking, the software update on my 10.3 Mac mini downloaded an update referred to as a 'security update' .. wonder if a known vulnerability was patched there-in.
In my experience the main reason our clients want their data in XML is that most of them are afraid of single-vendor lock-in to proprietary formats, especially to smaller vendors they perceive could more easily go under - in other words, they want data longevity and a format they can easily process their data if they need to. And this trumps the inefficiency. Especially as people mostly transfer such documents across high-speed LANs and store them on modern 120+ GB hard disks and open them on machines with 512MB+ RAM ... in all of which cases inefficiency doesn't cause any problems.
There are also generic XML content editors which, although rather pricy, help reduce a lot of the negatives associated with working with XML (i.e. you would be crazy these days to be writing XML in e.g. Notepad).
I personally agree that XML is overrated, but many people want it because they understand one thing: if their data is in XML format, you can't in the long run lock them in to your software with excessive prices, and if you disappear, they can still get their data.
But (assuming the election weren't rigged), the American people voted this administration into power again. The American people chose for things like this to happen to them (all of these things have been crafted by the current administration, and I somehow doubt things would be going down the same, or half as badly, if the election had gone the other way - remember that none of these things are necessarily "inevitable", they're highly dependent on who is in power, there have been many similar 'low points' during the previous century and it is possible to come out of them if you're not so complacent that you just accept things as inevitable). I think most people are simply uninformed, and don't care that they're uninformed. Thus one must conclucde that the root cause of the problems here is that majority of the American public are not competent enough to choose their leaders properly.
The cost of the bandwidth and overheads and so on will be subsidized by advertising costs. These costs are in turn paid for by the customers of the advertisers (*) (meaning the advertisers must charge more for their products than they would otherwise have been able to). This means the customers of the advertisers' products are paying for it, rather directly in fact (although that may seem too abstract for some people to connect the two .. but a percentage of the cost of any product you buy is used to advertise that very product to you .. you are in a sense "buying" the advertising too). There is also going to be some overlap between the two sets of users (advertisers' customers vs 'bandwidth users'), so some will pay for the BW even more directly. But while on an individual level it may be possible to just sit and use the bandwidth 'for free', taken on the average the users are still paying for it. And it doesn't sound like a terribly efficient bandwidth payment model to me - paying an ISP directly is probably more economically efficient for providing the same service, which may make this "devolution" in a sense, or perhaps just "divergence" as there is now a choice between models to the consumer.
And although you may think that you're purely snarfing free bandwidth and that the ads have no effect on you, unless you physically block the ads or take note of the places advertised and deliberately avoid them, those ads are absorbed by your brain in one way or another, and will increase brand recognition and brand identity no matter what you do, making you statistically more likely to buy those products. An interesting question is whether or not this is a more effective (and thus economically efficient) advertising medium than other advertising media. If it turns out to be less effecient, it means the advertisers have to pay more to get the same return, which is perhaps a step backwards.
My own theory is that ultimately we never get anything for free because over the course of your life it all averages out: Some level of cross-subsidisation is everywhere (e.g. IE isn't "free" because those who buy Windows pay for it; "free pizza delivery" is effectively subsidised by walk-in customers in the form of slightly higher prices to cover the delivery costs, etc.) For every product you get for "free", on average there is another occasion where you end up subsidising someone else's "free" product (usually without even knowing), so it all cancels out in the end.
(*) Just to pre-empt anyone counter-arguing that investor funding may be used: True, but investors still expect returns, and investor returns generally come from customers or more investments.