The thing they don't seem to mention is the volume of staff needed to admin the two different platforms. I think that 1 MCSE (or equivalent) per 5-7 Win2k servers is probably a common ratio at many companies (that's about what my company works with), while you can have 1 *NIX admin manage 20+ Linux/BSD machines with ease (my group has 5 people managing 96 FreeBSD servers). Many companies don't understand this, they think that if you just *throw* more staff at the issue (untrained staff at that), you are getting an acceptable TCO. One good *NIX admin hardly needs to admin his boxes at all.
Re:matrix and all that.
on
Equilibrium
·
· Score: 2
I think he made the reference to The Matrix because, after watching the trailer, it does look AMAZINGLY like The Matrix. Another guy wearing an all-black overcoat (yet it appears he dons white at some point in this flic), with 2+ guns in each hand, shootin' and flippin' all over the place. I would have thought it to be a very very very similar movie to The Matrix, until I read the review, which only sounds very familiar.
He made the reference to quickly distinguish between the two, not to say that The Matrix was the first in the line of Orwellian thought.
Good day. I represent the www.MyPlan.com Corporation. I am writing you to inform you on my client's existing trademarks on "MY PLAN", "MYPLAN", "MYPLAN.COM", "WWW.MYPLAN.COM", and "WWW.MYPLANSUCKS.COM". In occordance with existing Trademark Law in the lower 7 planes of existence, my client has an obligation to enforce his trademark ownership in order to protect it. My client has signed agreements with groups in competition with yourself, and my client does not want your name associated with their trademark.
-You must IMMEDIATELY stop any and all references to "MY PLAN". All assets utilizing the "MY PLAN" trademark must be destroyed or exchanged with my client.
-You must reverse the flow of time and remove your references to "MY PLAN" from any and all Slashdot (tm) postings.
Failure to comply will result in legal action. Thank you for your prompt assistance in this matter.
Sincerely, Leo Fleckmeyerhofferstern Partner, Lipshitz, Altoona, and Poo
Install Win2k. Update various device drivers via Windows Update (as many many people do). Shutdown the machine. Move your PCI cards around. Boot machine. Watch windows redetect all of them, and the driver installation will fail for all device drivers that were later updated via Windows Update. Remove drivers. Try to reinstall off of the original installation media. No go. Check Windows Update. The drivers are not listed because (gasp!) Windows Update isn't capable of understanding that sometimes people need to reinstall drivers because Windows "forgets" about them.
I've tested this on 2 pristine Windows installations... one on Win98SE (which admittedly is quite old by today's standards), and one on (gasp!) Win2k Pro. Tried it 3 times after a brand-new install. Same issue every time. Discovered the issue by accident on one of my machines, and later tested the above scenario on 2 other boxes to make sure I wasn't fooling myself.
While moving PCI cards around in a box is not what many would consider normal operating procedure, it should by no means prevent the reinstallation of the drivers for those devices. On these same machines, Linux (and FreeBSD) was able to detect the devices on boot as if nothing had changed, and did not fail on any of the devices, so the hardware itself was verified to work just fine.
Ever have a Win2k laptop "forget" about its installed PCMCIA/Cardbus cards? I have, when the keyboard on the unit was replaced. Rebooted my laptop only to find that my Xircom modem/NIC were being detected as "unsupported devices". Removed the drivers out of the Hardware Manager, same issue. I eventually found a MSKB article about this issue suggesting I remove several entries from my \winnt\inf folder and several registry entries relating to the card. Never have to do that in Linux... remove the drivers and its gone, but then again, Linux is for people who aren't smarty-enough to use Windows, so I guess all you uber Windows admins already knew about that.
I will say that there are tons and tons of novice users that will blame the OS when there is another (application, hardware, user) problem causing the grief. However, I also say that I seen Windows die for no reason whatsoever on boxes where there were no additional applications installed (expect perhaps updates to the OS that were provided by MS) and the hardware works just fine under other OSes. WinNT SP4 (or was it 5) is a perfect example of this. I personally would never trust a Windows box to do anything except spread virii. I'm sure you have a much different opinion, but as you say, you're right and I'm wrong and a complete liar.
Now that you're convinced that all windows users who blame the problem on the OS are liars, I see that it really doesn't take much at all to convince you of anything. Interested in buying a bridge in San Fransisco? I'll give you a great deal...
It seems like people who are confused by the clicking aspect of Windows...
Or it could be people are confused by the idea that... gasp... Windows doesn't bother to log half of its own activities, or it loads a largly-non-functional GUI for simple non-GUI-related tasks (like starting/stoping services), or it provides a wonderful BSOD often times with no explaination or suggested fix whatsoever, or it often loses its own hardware drivers and will refuse to reinstall them when media is provided, or it requires a user to install a service patch on a browser that, if left unfixed, will leave a security hole opened in the core operating system. All of these things are the user's fault... yep, good call on that one buddy.
You provide the hardfast notion that EVERYONE that has a problem with Windows is a complete idiot that shouldn't be touching a keyboard in the first place. I'm sure YOU'VE never ever ever run into a problem with Windows that was a) completely unprompted, b) provided you with absoultely no debugging information, and c) left your machine in an unusable state.
While you may know everything about Windows, there are many others that do as well and still have problems, so they switch to other OSes that perhaps make more sense to a power user who doesn't need to rely on Clippy as a useful reference utility.
At least have the sense to back up your arguments. Windows did not get the moniker of being the most unstable OS for nothing. If you need proof, have a quick look through the MSKB once and a while.
Whatever. I've yet to find a sci-fi show on television with the depth of characters that Firefly has. Stargate SG1 is a lame rehash and completely wasteful extension of what was once a lame 2-hour movie. Farscape was alright, kinda, until they started using the same empty plots for every freakin episode. Don't even get me started with Babylon 5 or any of the Star Trek repeat-o-crap series that keep coming out. Its like Roddenberry won't die!
Firefly really impressed me, and this is coming from someone who totally despises Buffy and other works of the producer. Every episode has been original, and the silent-pychological drama episodes are some of the best I've seen on television.
Pass on eBay, check Package 2 You and NewEgg for cheap new and refurbished hardware. Ever since Onsale @ Auction went away, I've been buying my upgrades from these guys. Usually as cheap (or cheaper) than most of the equivalents I've seen on eBay and most of it has some sort of warranty included.
No, I don't work for either of these places, but as a purveyor of yesterday's hardware on the cheap, I feel obligated to pass on the places I have good experiences with.
Openbox has font anti-aliasing (with XFree86 4.1+), opaque window moving, and it runs like a champ on a P75 laptop of mine. You can get alpha blending using psuedo-transparent terminal emulators like aterm.
Then you also have drop shadows for window text, multiple workspaces (seems to be standard with every wm nowadays), window snapping and/or edge resistance (which I STILL wish Windows would include by default), and it only consumes a few hundred kbytes of RAM, leaving almost all of a system's resources available to applications.
You could just register your own domain name for $12-$15 a year, and use a registrar that freely allows you to alias domain email to any existing POP3 or IMAP mailbox (like 15dollardomains.com, who I use currently). Presto! unlimited email addresses perminantly, that can be redirected anywhere, for the lifetime of your domain, and you're not advertising for Yahoo! every time you email someone.
Considering I am an artist that allows my music to be broadcasted for free, I don't have any problem with it. Its not stealing, its promotion. Part of getting your name out there. Of course, I am part of the 99% of musicians who 99% of the world hasn't heard of. I imagine for musicians who are established and don't necessarily need the promotion might sing another tune, but I don't know as I'm not one.
* 100/133 Mhz AMD ElanSC520
* 16-64 Mbyte SDRAM, soldered on board
* 1 Mbit BIOS/BOOT Flash
* CompactFLASH Type I/II socket, 8 Mbyte FLASH to 1Gbyte IBM Microdrive
* 1-3 10/100 Mbit Ethernet ports, RJ-45
* 1 Serial port, DB9. (optional 2nd serial port)
* Power LED, Activity LED, Error LED
* Mini-PCI type III socket. (t.ex for optional hardware encryption.)
* PCI Slot, right angle 3.3V only. (t.ex for optional WAN board.)
* 8 bit general purpose I/O, 14 pins header
* Hardware watchdog
* Board size 4.85" x 5.7"
* Power either 5V DC fixed or 7-20V DC, max 10 Watt
* Operating temperature 0-60 C
Software:
* comBIOS for full headless operation over serial port
* PXE boot rom for diskless booting
* Designed for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux
* Runs most realtime operating systems
But I'll say it again: copying bits on a hard disk is not the same as stealing a physical object. It's still wrong but it's not the same.
That's precisely why its not called theft when you obtain/distribute commercial software without paying for it, its called copyright infringement. They are completely seperate concepts under the law, although they both deal with the unauthorized use or duplication of someone else's property (whether it be intellectual or otherwise).
Now that's not a bad idea... I've been fairly anxious to try the "other BSD," having already installed FreeBSD and OpenBSD on various machines I own or have r00t access to. Trying an even thinner BSD distro might prove quite useful on the leftover 540MB drive for my NEC.
Thanks! You just gave me a project for next weekend.
Ditto that. My PIII 550 is still my main machine and does what I do reasonably well (play games, coding, experiment with new OSes, etc...). The last upgrade I bought for it was a GeForce 4MX, and that increased my gaming "productivity" tenfold.
Then again, my (very) aging P75 NEC laptop with 40MB RAM still works quite well as a portable development platform with FreeBSD. Not the fastest thing in the world, but for taking my coding outside, it does the job I need it to.
Or what about their games under the Black Dog Game Factory label, the most infamous being H.O.L (Human Occupied Landfill, pronounced "hole")? H.O.L has some FANTASTIC creativity in it for anyone who's been slightly frustrated with the more-structured tabletop RPGs. Crying shame that it's been discontinued.
Technically: If the license were GPL'ed, the same microsoft would have been forced to "release" any enhancements they made. Thus, a GPL has a way of getting improvements back into the main release.. and is likely to win out over a BSD in the long run.
Depending on the your definition of the word "win" above, I think you missed the point of your own argument. If the TCP/IP stack was GPLed, then MS would never have used the code to begin with. This of course assumes they wouldn't have just stolen the code without any credit or redistribution of the code back to the community, which I wouldn't put past them (as companies like SonicBlue are so fond of lately). This would have caused MS to either A) find a TCP/IP stack which would allow them to make the code proprietary (as is the case with the BSD license, the advertising clause that was recently removed nonwithstanding) or B) write their own TCP/IP stack and not release any source. In either of those cases, a GPLed TCP/IP stack would NOT have made it into any MS products, and with the current market realization of MS products, would have severely limited distribution of this said GPL TCP/IP stack to non-proprietary products.
In any case, I believe that BSD-licensed software has just as much, if not much MORE, a chance to live-out its existance as GPLed software. Chances are BSD-licensed code will get more use than GPLed code, as both free software developers and (gasp!) comemrcial companies can both use the code to their liking. You just won't see it as much, as not all of the products that use BSD-licensed code will release that code for others to see. Whether this is a good or bad thing is really up to each indivdual, which is why arguments about GPL-vs-BSD licensing on/. is just a way to bring out the trolls for a day.
(Note that I don't think the previous poster is a troll, but arguments like these often fail to recognize both sides of the coin)
There is a difference here. I'm a member of ISOC. You can be a member of ISOC. Its free. It is composed of hundreds of thousands of individuals in addition to corporations. I personally think this is a great idea, as the ISOC charter on this matter rings pretty true in my ears.
"For those who might ask "What about vibrate mode?", it doesn't work very well well you're female and the phone is in your purse."
I don't like this particular cop-out. What about my movie that I just paid for? IT DOESN'T WORK VERY WELL when someone's cell phone is going off.
Your right to have an audible cell phone ends when I'm paying for clarity in the aureal space of a movie theater or artistic performance. If you can't put it on vibrate, leave it at home. If you can't put leave it at home, find something else to do. Simple.
So if i fart in the resteraunt you're eating at, I should be arrested?
Now that depends. If your alleged fumes can reach an equivalent speed, range, and annoyance level of the sound produced by a high-volume cell phone playing Canon in D, then yes, I would sleep much better at night knowing that you are incarcerated.
Re:Yes, but why does Microsoft need a stand...
on
Linuxworld Fun
·
· Score: 2
I think an even bigger problem to add to this is the draconian licensing agreements you must abide by to have access to this "free" MS software. IIRC, when MS began to open the code for CIFS, you had to agree to an NDA that prevented you from working on a GPLed product after viewing the source code, even if the source code you create has NOTHING IN COMMON with MS's CIFS code. This is what prompted the Samba.org team to inform developers that if you sign the MS NDA, you are unable to contribute to samba on the grounds that having the knowledge of MS's CIFS implementation would infringe on MS intellectual property when coding for a GPLed project like samba.
I know MS has a business to maintain, but they are still in the stone-age of licencing, and I think that most developers (GPL developers anyway) know this. I just hope that some of them are prepared to tell Microsoft this at their LinuxWorld booth. If I were there, I'd at least say something about it. Unfortunately, I've used most of my vacation this year already and hence won't be attending to address my concerns of draconian licensing.
If the RIAA really went after individuals, they'd be shooting their best customers and their best new promotional vehicle since radio. Really smart!
They already killed their best new promotional vheicle since radio when they proposed their CARP rates for webcasting (which the LOC cut in half and are STILL way way too much). I really wouldn't put it past them to blow off their other foot as well.
Now that I've vented, can someone please explain to me how retroactive unspecified charges can be applied? If the IRS were to say, "We're going to tax you next year, but we're not going to decide how much those taxes are going to be for a couple of years and then you'll have to pony up the dough," I would think someone would take them to court and manage to get the charges wiped. Can someone with some real background in this explain this to me?
Unfortunately, this was set when the US Copyright Office instituted CARP to set the rates for webcasting, back in 1998. Webcasters had the choice of a) negotiating their own deal with the copyright holders (aka, the RIAA) until the price was set by the Copyright Office, or b) wait until the rate was set and then back-pay since 1998. Big media companies like Yahoo.com opted for A. For obvious reasons, most webcasters realized that the RIAA would try to set an unacceptable rate and chose B instead.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing they don't seem to mention is the volume of staff needed to admin the two different platforms. I think that 1 MCSE (or equivalent) per 5-7 Win2k servers is probably a common ratio at many companies (that's about what my company works with), while you can have 1 *NIX admin manage 20+ Linux/BSD machines with ease (my group has 5 people managing 96 FreeBSD servers). Many companies don't understand this, they think that if you just *throw* more staff at the issue (untrained staff at that), you are getting an acceptable TCO. One good *NIX admin hardly needs to admin his boxes at all.
I think he made the reference to The Matrix because, after watching the trailer, it does look AMAZINGLY like The Matrix. Another guy wearing an all-black overcoat (yet it appears he dons white at some point in this flic), with 2+ guns in each hand, shootin' and flippin' all over the place. I would have thought it to be a very very very similar movie to The Matrix, until I read the review, which only sounds very familiar.
He made the reference to quickly distinguish between the two, not to say that The Matrix was the first in the line of Orwellian thought.
From the Firm of Lipshitz, Altoona, and Poo
God--
Good day. I represent the www.MyPlan.com Corporation. I am writing you to inform you on my client's existing trademarks on "MY PLAN", "MYPLAN", "MYPLAN.COM", "WWW.MYPLAN.COM", and "WWW.MYPLANSUCKS.COM". In occordance with existing Trademark Law in the lower 7 planes of existence, my client has an obligation to enforce his trademark ownership in order to protect it. My client has signed agreements with groups in competition with yourself, and my client does not want your name associated with their trademark.
-You must IMMEDIATELY stop any and all references to "MY PLAN". All assets utilizing the "MY PLAN" trademark must be destroyed or exchanged with my client.
-You must reverse the flow of time and remove your references to "MY PLAN" from any and all Slashdot (tm) postings.
Failure to comply will result in legal action. Thank you for your prompt assistance in this matter.
Sincerely,
Leo Fleckmeyerhofferstern
Partner, Lipshitz, Altoona, and Poo
Install Win2k. Update various device drivers via Windows Update (as many many people do). Shutdown the machine. Move your PCI cards around. Boot machine. Watch windows redetect all of them, and the driver installation will fail for all device drivers that were later updated via Windows Update. Remove drivers. Try to reinstall off of the original installation media. No go. Check Windows Update. The drivers are not listed because (gasp!) Windows Update isn't capable of understanding that sometimes people need to reinstall drivers because Windows "forgets" about them.
I've tested this on 2 pristine Windows installations... one on Win98SE (which admittedly is quite old by today's standards), and one on (gasp!) Win2k Pro. Tried it 3 times after a brand-new install. Same issue every time. Discovered the issue by accident on one of my machines, and later tested the above scenario on 2 other boxes to make sure I wasn't fooling myself.
While moving PCI cards around in a box is not what many would consider normal operating procedure, it should by no means prevent the reinstallation of the drivers for those devices. On these same machines, Linux (and FreeBSD) was able to detect the devices on boot as if nothing had changed, and did not fail on any of the devices, so the hardware itself was verified to work just fine.
Ever have a Win2k laptop "forget" about its installed PCMCIA/Cardbus cards? I have, when the keyboard on the unit was replaced. Rebooted my laptop only to find that my Xircom modem/NIC were being detected as "unsupported devices". Removed the drivers out of the Hardware Manager, same issue. I eventually found a MSKB article about this issue suggesting I remove several entries from my \winnt\inf folder and several registry entries relating to the card. Never have to do that in Linux... remove the drivers and its gone, but then again, Linux is for people who aren't smarty-enough to use Windows, so I guess all you uber Windows admins already knew about that.
I will say that there are tons and tons of novice users that will blame the OS when there is another (application, hardware, user) problem causing the grief. However, I also say that I seen Windows die for no reason whatsoever on boxes where there were no additional applications installed (expect perhaps updates to the OS that were provided by MS) and the hardware works just fine under other OSes. WinNT SP4 (or was it 5) is a perfect example of this. I personally would never trust a Windows box to do anything except spread virii. I'm sure you have a much different opinion, but as you say, you're right and I'm wrong and a complete liar.
Now that you're convinced that all windows users who blame the problem on the OS are liars, I see that it really doesn't take much at all to convince you of anything. Interested in buying a bridge in San Fransisco? I'll give you a great deal...
It seems like people who are confused by the clicking aspect of Windows...
Or it could be people are confused by the idea that... gasp... Windows doesn't bother to log half of its own activities, or it loads a largly-non-functional GUI for simple non-GUI-related tasks (like starting/stoping services), or it provides a wonderful BSOD often times with no explaination or suggested fix whatsoever, or it often loses its own hardware drivers and will refuse to reinstall them when media is provided, or it requires a user to install a service patch on a browser that, if left unfixed, will leave a security hole opened in the core operating system. All of these things are the user's fault... yep, good call on that one buddy.
You provide the hardfast notion that EVERYONE that has a problem with Windows is a complete idiot that shouldn't be touching a keyboard in the first place. I'm sure YOU'VE never ever ever run into a problem with Windows that was a) completely unprompted, b) provided you with absoultely no debugging information, and c) left your machine in an unusable state.
While you may know everything about Windows, there are many others that do as well and still have problems, so they switch to other OSes that perhaps make more sense to a power user who doesn't need to rely on Clippy as a useful reference utility.
At least have the sense to back up your arguments. Windows did not get the moniker of being the most unstable OS for nothing. If you need proof, have a quick look through the MSKB once and a while.
Whatever. I've yet to find a sci-fi show on television with the depth of characters that Firefly has. Stargate SG1 is a lame rehash and completely wasteful extension of what was once a lame 2-hour movie. Farscape was alright, kinda, until they started using the same empty plots for every freakin episode. Don't even get me started with Babylon 5 or any of the Star Trek repeat-o-crap series that keep coming out. Its like Roddenberry won't die!
Firefly really impressed me, and this is coming from someone who totally despises Buffy and other works of the producer. Every episode has been original, and the silent-pychological drama episodes are some of the best I've seen on television.
Pass on eBay, check Package 2 You and NewEgg for cheap new and refurbished hardware. Ever since Onsale @ Auction went away, I've been buying my upgrades from these guys. Usually as cheap (or cheaper) than most of the equivalents I've seen on eBay and most of it has some sort of warranty included.
No, I don't work for either of these places, but as a purveyor of yesterday's hardware on the cheap, I feel obligated to pass on the places I have good experiences with.
Openbox has font anti-aliasing (with XFree86 4.1+), opaque window moving, and it runs like a champ on a P75 laptop of mine. You can get alpha blending using psuedo-transparent terminal emulators like aterm.
Then you also have drop shadows for window text, multiple workspaces (seems to be standard with every wm nowadays), window snapping and/or edge resistance (which I STILL wish Windows would include by default), and it only consumes a few hundred kbytes of RAM, leaving almost all of a system's resources available to applications.
You could just register your own domain name for $12-$15 a year, and use a registrar that freely allows you to alias domain email to any existing POP3 or IMAP mailbox (like 15dollardomains.com, who I use currently). Presto! unlimited email addresses perminantly, that can be redirected anywhere, for the lifetime of your domain, and you're not advertising for Yahoo! every time you email someone.
Considering I am an artist that allows my music to be broadcasted for free, I don't have any problem with it. Its not stealing, its promotion. Part of getting your name out there. Of course, I am part of the 99% of musicians who 99% of the world hasn't heard of. I imagine for musicians who are established and don't necessarily need the promotion might sing another tune, but I don't know as I'm not one.
I found 2 quotes particularly enjoyable:
Call yourself a computer professional? Congratulations. You are responsible for the imminent collapse of civilization.
and
The user is pure evil.
Very true and sometimes misunderstood bits of information.
Or 72 hours, Internet time.
They're already doing this... with Carnivore.
Have a look at http://www.soekris.com/net4501.htm
From the page:
Specifications:
* 100/133 Mhz AMD ElanSC520
* 16-64 Mbyte SDRAM, soldered on board
* 1 Mbit BIOS/BOOT Flash
* CompactFLASH Type I/II socket, 8 Mbyte FLASH to 1Gbyte IBM Microdrive
* 1-3 10/100 Mbit Ethernet ports, RJ-45
* 1 Serial port, DB9. (optional 2nd serial port)
* Power LED, Activity LED, Error LED
* Mini-PCI type III socket. (t.ex for optional hardware encryption.)
* PCI Slot, right angle 3.3V only. (t.ex for optional WAN board.)
* 8 bit general purpose I/O, 14 pins header
* Hardware watchdog
* Board size 4.85" x 5.7"
* Power either 5V DC fixed or 7-20V DC, max 10 Watt
* Operating temperature 0-60 C
Software:
* comBIOS for full headless operation over serial port
* PXE boot rom for diskless booting
* Designed for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux
* Runs most realtime operating systems
But I'll say it again: copying bits on a hard disk is not the same as stealing a physical object. It's still wrong but it's not the same.
That's precisely why its not called theft when you obtain/distribute commercial software without paying for it, its called copyright infringement. They are completely seperate concepts under the law, although they both deal with the unauthorized use or duplication of someone else's property (whether it be intellectual or otherwise).
Now that's not a bad idea... I've been fairly anxious to try the "other BSD," having already installed FreeBSD and OpenBSD on various machines I own or have r00t access to. Trying an even thinner BSD distro might prove quite useful on the leftover 540MB drive for my NEC.
Thanks! You just gave me a project for next weekend.
ISOs away!
Ditto that. My PIII 550 is still my main machine and does what I do reasonably well (play games, coding, experiment with new OSes, etc...). The last upgrade I bought for it was a GeForce 4MX, and that increased my gaming "productivity" tenfold.
Then again, my (very) aging P75 NEC laptop with 40MB RAM still works quite well as a portable development platform with FreeBSD. Not the fastest thing in the world, but for taking my coding outside, it does the job I need it to.
Or what about their games under the Black Dog Game Factory label, the most infamous being H.O.L (Human Occupied Landfill, pronounced "hole")? H.O.L has some FANTASTIC creativity in it for anyone who's been slightly frustrated with the more-structured tabletop RPGs. Crying shame that it's been discontinued.
Technically: If the license were GPL'ed, the same microsoft would have been forced to "release" any enhancements they made. Thus, a GPL has a way of getting improvements back into the main release.. and is likely to win out over a BSD in the long run.
/. is just a way to bring out the trolls for a day.
Depending on the your definition of the word "win" above, I think you missed the point of your own argument. If the TCP/IP stack was GPLed, then MS would never have used the code to begin with. This of course assumes they wouldn't have just stolen the code without any credit or redistribution of the code back to the community, which I wouldn't put past them (as companies like SonicBlue are so fond of lately). This would have caused MS to either A) find a TCP/IP stack which would allow them to make the code proprietary (as is the case with the BSD license, the advertising clause that was recently removed nonwithstanding) or B) write their own TCP/IP stack and not release any source. In either of those cases, a GPLed TCP/IP stack would NOT have made it into any MS products, and with the current market realization of MS products, would have severely limited distribution of this said GPL TCP/IP stack to non-proprietary products.
In any case, I believe that BSD-licensed software has just as much, if not much MORE, a chance to live-out its existance as GPLed software. Chances are BSD-licensed code will get more use than GPLed code, as both free software developers and (gasp!) comemrcial companies can both use the code to their liking. You just won't see it as much, as not all of the products that use BSD-licensed code will release that code for others to see. Whether this is a good or bad thing is really up to each indivdual, which is why arguments about GPL-vs-BSD licensing on
(Note that I don't think the previous poster is a troll, but arguments like these often fail to recognize both sides of the coin)
There is a difference here. I'm a member of ISOC. You can be a member of ISOC. Its free. It is composed of hundreds of thousands of individuals in addition to corporations. I personally think this is a great idea, as the ISOC charter on this matter rings pretty true in my ears.
"For those who might ask "What about vibrate mode?", it doesn't work very well well you're female and the phone is in your purse."
I don't like this particular cop-out. What about my movie that I just paid for? IT DOESN'T WORK VERY WELL when someone's cell phone is going off.
Your right to have an audible cell phone ends when I'm paying for clarity in the aureal space of a movie theater or artistic performance. If you can't put it on vibrate, leave it at home. If you can't put leave it at home, find something else to do. Simple.
So if i fart in the resteraunt you're eating at, I should be arrested?
Now that depends. If your alleged fumes can reach an equivalent speed, range, and annoyance level of the sound produced by a high-volume cell phone playing Canon in D, then yes, I would sleep much better at night knowing that you are incarcerated.
I think an even bigger problem to add to this is the draconian licensing agreements you must abide by to have access to this "free" MS software. IIRC, when MS began to open the code for CIFS, you had to agree to an NDA that prevented you from working on a GPLed product after viewing the source code, even if the source code you create has NOTHING IN COMMON with MS's CIFS code. This is what prompted the Samba.org team to inform developers that if you sign the MS NDA, you are unable to contribute to samba on the grounds that having the knowledge of MS's CIFS implementation would infringe on MS intellectual property when coding for a GPLed project like samba.
I know MS has a business to maintain, but they are still in the stone-age of licencing, and I think that most developers (GPL developers anyway) know this. I just hope that some of them are prepared to tell Microsoft this at their LinuxWorld booth. If I were there, I'd at least say something about it. Unfortunately, I've used most of my vacation this year already and hence won't be attending to address my concerns of draconian licensing.
If the RIAA really went after individuals, they'd be shooting their best customers and their best new promotional vehicle since radio. Really smart!
They already killed their best new promotional vheicle since radio when they proposed their CARP rates for webcasting (which the LOC cut in half and are STILL way way too much). I really wouldn't put it past them to blow off their other foot as well.
Unfortunately, this was set when the US Copyright Office instituted CARP to set the rates for webcasting, back in 1998. Webcasters had the choice of a) negotiating their own deal with the copyright holders (aka, the RIAA) until the price was set by the Copyright Office, or b) wait until the rate was set and then back-pay since 1998. Big media companies like Yahoo.com opted for A. For obvious reasons, most webcasters realized that the RIAA would try to set an unacceptable rate and chose B instead.