An agreement between the UK and the forces of Evil (M$)? Oh yeah, "Peace for our time." That should keep everyone happy.
Every time I think there's no way in hell you could sink lower and surprise us with this type of pointless crap, you go and do it. It's just amazing.
don't see a need for co-operation with M$ on this one
On "which one" did you "see" a need for cooperation with "M$", twitter? Would you point "it" out so we can compare your recommendations?
Why don't they just allow and encourage libraries to mirror the content as is?
This is the part where you're done with your "M$ is teh suxx" ad hominem and then try to make a vague argument that incorporates the idea of "free", right? You clearly have no idea whatsoever what the BBC is or how they function. I don't know how "M$ DRM snake oil" plays into this because everything the BBC produces must be made available to citizens of the UK absolutely free of charge. By law. The brits pay $150 or so for it every year. What exactly in your estimation will be saddled with "M$ DRM" here? Please elaborate.
The natural partner for that kind of effort is Google.
Really? Assuming this i-don't-know-what-i'm-talking-about "argument" of yours about "libraries" and "mirrors" is valid, are you referring to Google "you can have freedom of information except if you live in China" Corporation?
Not Debian, but for example I'm sure Shuttleworth could come up with the dough for Ubuntu. That way it actually works out because the Debian people who like their stuff "super free" are happy but the downstream distros can ship an OS that plays MP3s out of the box instead of making me type "apt-emerge -blah -bluh -bleh" into a console or helpfully suggesting I convert my entire music collection to Ogg because "well, it's free of patent encumbrance and harmful IP and corporate greed". People just don't fucking care about that sort of thing, despite what you might hear on Slashdot.
Another at the 16 to 32 bit transition, which was masked a little bit, because in that transition Microsoft succeeded in maintaining its incumbency, but they did it with a different software suite. And then there is a 32-bit to 64-bit transition going on now, which I think is going to be our best window for a long time to achieve majority market share, but the hardware trend curves indicate that the 64-bit transition will probably be over sometime in 2008, and that means that the market's going to be making its collective decision about the dominant 64-bit operating system probably before that.
The "collective decision" about the dominant operating system is going to be the decision about which OS supports existing applications. People switch OSes only if they'll run their applications. And that's going to be Windows Vista. The ace up the sleeve here is that, as with the 16-32bit transition, Microsoft will continue to support 32-bit in the back. The "different software suite" bit makes no sense to me - Microsoft had at that time a "pure" 32-bit OS (NT3.x) as well as the 9x line that balanced the 32/16 mix well. I don't understand why ESR is making this argument at all, because it makes no sense.
Does "court of public opinion" mean "surrounded by morons who use terminology they don't really understand and are afflicted by a lack of basic comprehension"? If that's the case then I totally agree. My "acumen" notwithstanding, I do have the capacity to differentiate between a simple "this is what I think" argument advanced by someone with an obvious predisposition of opinion, and a formal logical proposition.
Now this might seem "pedantic" to you my dear slashbot, but then I never suggested the OP was right or wrong in his argument about the topic at hand. Only that his use of logical terms is slightly retarded at best, which coupled with that annoying "let me tell you how it is" tone was just begging for some correction. Court of public opinion and all that.
Oh, and thanks for the shark example. It was stupid and proves you have no idea what you're talking about, but hilarious.
Look, statistics != logic. There is no such thing as "reasonable" in logic. Do you understand that? Go read your MacKay again and pay special attention to the logical indeterminism of choice and the problem of propositional logic. Then go play with your Linux boxen or something.
That's all well and good. What I said was that you need to stop pretending you're making a "logical" argument when you are obviously not. The main fallacy here is your argumentative presumption based on "feeling". That's it. As far as I'm concerned you can play tarot card reader all day and tell us what Microsoft will be doing next Tuesday - just don't try to pass it as logic.
It appears that you fell asleep when your logic teacher was trying to explain the concept of fallacies of involved assumptions, better known in logic circles as Petitio Principii. Eg: Microsoft did X yesterday and Y the day before - therefore they will do Z tomorrow. Whoosh. Dahmer was also not a murderer the day before he first murdered someone, mmm? And of course your analogy is a classic example of the poisoning the well fallacy, in which you draw a comparison to an emotionally charged subject that cannot be dismissed as false because it's based on well-known previous, observable events.
Trust me, you impress no one with your "Mr. Logic" arguments. Stick to the "microsoft is evil because I say so" mantra and you'll be OK.
Yes, MSHTML is really no better than the Spyglass renderer. I still don't see how this "they didn't develop it" thing maps. By your definition then Firefox is really no better than Spyglass as well? After all, all that code was also "stolen", right?
Are you ready to admit the possibility
No. Understand I'm not trying to give you a hard time here. You were the one who questioned what I said to begin with, and two posts later followed up with the "Microsoft killed Netscape" meme. If your theory of the "ant-competitive streak" were correct then it really wouldn't matter what Nescape did or didn't do, they would have been "crushed" regardless. Isn't that the very definition of "going against the evil monopoly"? The reality is much different. Netscape ceased to function as an entity capable of shipping functional software long before Microsoft got wind of how important the browser was going to be. Thus my challenge with the dates, which unless I've convinced you I'd like to see answers to.
As far as the whole antitrust thing goes, I have no problem whatsoever with Microsoft getting their arses dragged downhill because of what they tried to do with Java. But Netscape? No way. Netscape managed to kill themselves with zeal and precision. No help from Microsof there whatsoever.
No, you claimed he was a visionary who was somehow damaged by a "monopolistic behemot". Now, unless I misread what you wrote, I'd love for you to prove me wrong.
Please understand though - I'm not contesting that Andreessen's contributions are useless or unimportant. Not by far. What I do frankly find insulting is the idea that he was just a poor guy with lots of talent, incredible business acumen and generally just a fantastic dude that got "crushed" by Microsoft. That is nothing more than revisionist bull, whether you worked for the guy or not.
Do you have a specific cite of this? That he specifically *invented* the layout and the concepts? I'd love to see it.
I don't ever recall Andreessen
The fact that you don't "recall" does not mean it's not true. Surely it's not my fault that you were young at the time.
In fact he's on record for crediting Al Gore
I don't understand how that is relevant. Please find me a specific instance where Andreessen or Clark specifically said "well, it was really the folks at CERN that invented the WWW concept, we just built a product for it". I'd love to see that too. I'll tell you what you'll find though - the Netscape boys consistently claiming credit for "the internet" in one way or another. But hey, go ahead and prove me wrong.
That's success by any standard.
By one standard at least, sure. I guess it's too much to ask for you to make a distinction between "making a lot of money" and running a successful software business that has the capability and focus to actually ship quality software that works. Andreessen and Clark just got lucky. The only difference between them and all the people who got lucky during the technology boom is that they were pretty much the first ones.
Yes. This is what happens when visionaries go up against beheamoth monopolies.
Please enlighten us about this terrible clash. Please tell us when Microsoft began to ship IE with their operating systems. Please quote the year when NS3 and NS4 were released, and the year IE4 was released. Then ask anyone (anyone) about the quality of the Netscape browsers after version 2.0.
As a parallel exercise, you may also cite the year Microsoft started shipping a media player with their operating systems, and the number of downloads of Winamp, Sonique, MusicMatch and all the other alternative media players in the market up to and after that point.
Then we'll discuss this sad moment in history when the "visionary" was put down by the evil monopoly, as opposed to the "visionary" simply screwing everything up and then going to court to argue how said evil monopoly robbed him of his vision.
Um, I don't know what aspects of the browser you're not supposed to "copy". Did you level that accusation at Opera too?
'Visionary' turns out to be an apt label for him.
Your memory must be failing. Both Andreessen and Jim Clark essentially claimed they had pretty much "invented" the "internet" time and time again back way when Netscape was the darling of the stock market and they had zero competitors. The traditional media lapped that up as fact. I remember seeing an interview on CNN back in 93 or 94 where the slant was that the internet would not exist without their largesse.
And then they proceeded to run the company into the ground when the going got tough, proving that neither of them even qualified as decent businessmen. Netscape had the brand recognition, product capabilities and locked customer base to have knocked Microsoft out of the "market", regardless of Microsoft's dominance of the platform. People were downloading NS in droves even after the IE4 release. But their browser became so bad as Microsoft's became so good that they never had a prayer. And it was all their doing. NS3 and NS4 were, to put it mildly, pieces of crap.
Adreessen was one of the people who nearly managed to bring Netscape to its knees by completely f'ing up the direction and scope of the products (was it a browser? was it a collaboration tool? was it a dodo? should we call it "communicator" to confuse people?), went to court crying about how Microsoft would not let them ship their unvelievably buggy and unstable piece of crap to the millions of happy people who used (the then vastly superior) NN2 after Microsoft had completely overtaken them in features and quality, and was more than happy to unload the whole mess on AOL for a few million and walked away. He was also known for going on TV to explain how he and his associates had essentially "invented" this "internet" thing, gladly ignoring all the hard work and actual vision of people like Tim Berners-Lee.
And now good old Marc is a "visionary". Whoopdedo.
I really have no respect from anyone at Netscape, with the possible exception of jzw. If they were in business today they'd be as bad as Microsoft is accused to be, and then some.
I suppose that when your operating system is written and designed by people who have the power to say "fuck X" instead of people who are told to support X you get into the sad situation of having to organize "panel discussions" about why your OS is not doing X. And by the time you are organizing said panel discussions it's probably too late anyway.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but does the GPL not expressly prohibit the restriction of rights beyond what it already provides for (distribution)? It does not prohibit granting licensees additional rights (which is what the LGPL is, basically), but it doesn't let me invent exciting new restrictions, AFAIK.
Perhaps from an idealistic POV this is commendable, but they should have used another license. I think it sets a bad precedent.
I don't know about "Unix sucks" (which sounds more like FUD to me), but if you have some sort of argument about why Microsoft did not get the desktop right (at least in comparison to GNOME/KDE), I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.
While the islamofascists and extremists do not really hold the United Kingdom close to their heart, they hate the United States a lot more. This attack was directed at the US. I don't know if that's good or bad as far as the brits are concerned =)
And even that does not compare to their virulent hatred of Israel - or as they like to call it, the "Zionist entity".
Don't feel bad though. Maybe in a few years they'll hate you as much or even more. It takes time =)
No, he does not. He establishes that Jobs has taken this Microsoft bashing thing to ridiculous levels. Are you contesting that?
Needless to say, he doesn't even mention Bill Gates throughout the entire article.
I don't understand why he had to. I'm sure that when he writes an article about the Bill Gates personality cult he'll be mentioned. Oh, wait..
Am I missing something?
Yes, per your assertion about "software bundles" and "compatibility". They are different operating systems with different capabilities built on the same codebase. Apple on the other hand produces exactly two versions of OS X. That's his point.
Again, no big deal. Almost every product on the market is starting to move towards 64-bit support.
This is pretty simple - if Apple had been out the door with real 64-bit support before Microsoft you can bet some good money you'd be hearing about it from Jobs. Constantly.
It seems to me that all these arguments are really week and that this guy just wants to complain about Apple.
It seems to me your Stevie distortion field is turned up too high. I'm not sure if you understand (or even want to) that much of Steve Jobs' bullshit and bluster is just desperate FUD that his fanbois seem to lap up like mana from the sky. His TV ads with the "really cool guy" telling the "really nerdy slob" that "he crashes too much" is just one example of that. He should've stuck to Helen Fleiss' crack-induced "beep-beep" monologue. It helped him sell a lot of boxes, but now he's stuck at whatever tiny % market share and he seems to have problems getting out of there - which is Thurrot's second point.
Maybe you should try it before you knock it.
I have a feeling Thurrot has used OS X probably as much as you.
For those of us who wondered what the hell a POSSLQ is, I have good news. And I say good news because initially I thought it was some sort of gay thing... sorry =)
Um, the deal is Firefox gets distributed with RealPlayer, not the other way around. If you just get FF you'll never see the Real crapware[1] - but I suppose in some situations you'll get FF bundled with Real.
So this changes nothing for users of FF, but might be good for Real users who clearly deserve to be expunged from the gene pool by virtue of having willfully downloaded the #1 rated crapware on teh interwebs.
At least maybe, maybe they'll use FF instead of IE, which is good at least until IE7 is generally available.
I was happy with the functionality of office five years ago.
What exactly prevents you from running Office 2000 still?
Why should I need to buy it again?
You tell us. Why?
Hello, Open Office.
Well, since OO is kinda equivalent to Office 97 I don't think you'll be very happy with it. Unless all you're doing is writing letters and whatnot, in which case you could potentially be happy with WordPad or failing that AbiWord, wich is an excellent general-purpose word processor that doesn't carry 300MB of bloat along.
If you don't need Microsoft Office then there's simply no reason to buy it. OTOH, if you do need it my experience is that it's worth every penny of those $300 or whatever it goes for these days.
Slashdot Mirror
This guy is just unbelievable.
Every time I think there's no way in hell you could sink lower and surprise us with this type of pointless crap, you go and do it. It's just amazing.
don't see a need for co-operation with M$ on this one
On "which one" did you "see" a need for cooperation with "M$", twitter? Would you point "it" out so we can compare your recommendations?
Why don't they just allow and encourage libraries to mirror the content as is?
This is the part where you're done with your "M$ is teh suxx" ad hominem and then try to make a vague argument that incorporates the idea of "free", right? You clearly have no idea whatsoever what the BBC is or how they function. I don't know how "M$ DRM snake oil" plays into this because everything the BBC produces must be made available to citizens of the UK absolutely free of charge. By law. The brits pay $150 or so for it every year. What exactly in your estimation will be saddled with "M$ DRM" here? Please elaborate.
The natural partner for that kind of effort is Google.
Really? Assuming this i-don't-know-what-i'm-talking-about "argument" of yours about "libraries" and "mirrors" is valid, are you referring to Google "you can have freedom of information except if you live in China" Corporation?
Not Debian, but for example I'm sure Shuttleworth could come up with the dough for Ubuntu. That way it actually works out because the Debian people who like their stuff "super free" are happy but the downstream distros can ship an OS that plays MP3s out of the box instead of making me type "apt-emerge -blah -bluh -bleh" into a console or helpfully suggesting I convert my entire music collection to Ogg because "well, it's free of patent encumbrance and harmful IP and corporate greed". People just don't fucking care about that sort of thing, despite what you might hear on Slashdot.
The "collective decision" about the dominant operating system is going to be the decision about which OS supports existing applications. People switch OSes only if they'll run their applications. And that's going to be Windows Vista. The ace up the sleeve here is that, as with the 16-32bit transition, Microsoft will continue to support 32-bit in the back. The "different software suite" bit makes no sense to me - Microsoft had at that time a "pure" 32-bit OS (NT3.x) as well as the 9x line that balanced the 32/16 mix well. I don't understand why ESR is making this argument at all, because it makes no sense.
Does "court of public opinion" mean "surrounded by morons who use terminology they don't really understand and are afflicted by a lack of basic comprehension"? If that's the case then I totally agree. My "acumen" notwithstanding, I do have the capacity to differentiate between a simple "this is what I think" argument advanced by someone with an obvious predisposition of opinion, and a formal logical proposition.
Now this might seem "pedantic" to you my dear slashbot, but then I never suggested the OP was right or wrong in his argument about the topic at hand. Only that his use of logical terms is slightly retarded at best, which coupled with that annoying "let me tell you how it is" tone was just begging for some correction. Court of public opinion and all that.
Oh, and thanks for the shark example. It was stupid and proves you have no idea what you're talking about, but hilarious.
Look, statistics != logic. There is no such thing as "reasonable" in logic. Do you understand that? Go read your MacKay again and pay special attention to the logical indeterminism of choice and the problem of propositional logic. Then go play with your Linux boxen or something.
That's all well and good. What I said was that you need to stop pretending you're making a "logical" argument when you are obviously not. The main fallacy here is your argumentative presumption based on "feeling". That's it. As far as I'm concerned you can play tarot card reader all day and tell us what Microsoft will be doing next Tuesday - just don't try to pass it as logic.
It appears that you fell asleep when your logic teacher was trying to explain the concept of fallacies of involved assumptions, better known in logic circles as Petitio Principii. Eg: Microsoft did X yesterday and Y the day before - therefore they will do Z tomorrow. Whoosh. Dahmer was also not a murderer the day before he first murdered someone, mmm? And of course your analogy is a classic example of the poisoning the well fallacy, in which you draw a comparison to an emotionally charged subject that cannot be dismissed as false because it's based on well-known previous, observable events.
Trust me, you impress no one with your "Mr. Logic" arguments. Stick to the "microsoft is evil because I say so" mantra and you'll be OK.
Yes, MSHTML is really no better than the Spyglass renderer. I still don't see how this "they didn't develop it" thing maps. By your definition then Firefox is really no better than Spyglass as well? After all, all that code was also "stolen", right?
Are you ready to admit the possibility
No. Understand I'm not trying to give you a hard time here. You were the one who questioned what I said to begin with, and two posts later followed up with the "Microsoft killed Netscape" meme. If your theory of the "ant-competitive streak" were correct then it really wouldn't matter what Nescape did or didn't do, they would have been "crushed" regardless. Isn't that the very definition of "going against the evil monopoly"? The reality is much different. Netscape ceased to function as an entity capable of shipping functional software long before Microsoft got wind of how important the browser was going to be. Thus my challenge with the dates, which unless I've convinced you I'd like to see answers to.
As far as the whole antitrust thing goes, I have no problem whatsoever with Microsoft getting their arses dragged downhill because of what they tried to do with Java. But Netscape? No way. Netscape managed to kill themselves with zeal and precision. No help from Microsof there whatsoever.
No, you claimed he was a visionary who was somehow damaged by a "monopolistic behemot". Now, unless I misread what you wrote, I'd love for you to prove me wrong.
Please understand though - I'm not contesting that Andreessen's contributions are useless or unimportant. Not by far. What I do frankly find insulting is the idea that he was just a poor guy with lots of talent, incredible business acumen and generally just a fantastic dude that got "crushed" by Microsoft. That is nothing more than revisionist bull, whether you worked for the guy or not.
Do you have a specific cite of this? That he specifically *invented* the layout and the concepts? I'd love to see it.
I don't ever recall Andreessen
The fact that you don't "recall" does not mean it's not true. Surely it's not my fault that you were young at the time.
In fact he's on record for crediting Al Gore
I don't understand how that is relevant. Please find me a specific instance where Andreessen or Clark specifically said "well, it was really the folks at CERN that invented the WWW concept, we just built a product for it". I'd love to see that too. I'll tell you what you'll find though - the Netscape boys consistently claiming credit for "the internet" in one way or another. But hey, go ahead and prove me wrong.
That's success by any standard.
By one standard at least, sure. I guess it's too much to ask for you to make a distinction between "making a lot of money" and running a successful software business that has the capability and focus to actually ship quality software that works. Andreessen and Clark just got lucky. The only difference between them and all the people who got lucky during the technology boom is that they were pretty much the first ones.
Please enlighten us about this terrible clash. Please tell us when Microsoft began to ship IE with their operating systems. Please quote the year when NS3 and NS4 were released, and the year IE4 was released. Then ask anyone (anyone) about the quality of the Netscape browsers after version 2.0.
As a parallel exercise, you may also cite the year Microsoft started shipping a media player with their operating systems, and the number of downloads of Winamp, Sonique, MusicMatch and all the other alternative media players in the market up to and after that point.
Then we'll discuss this sad moment in history when the "visionary" was put down by the evil monopoly, as opposed to the "visionary" simply screwing everything up and then going to court to argue how said evil monopoly robbed him of his vision.
Um, I don't know what aspects of the browser you're not supposed to "copy". Did you level that accusation at Opera too?
'Visionary' turns out to be an apt label for him.
Your memory must be failing. Both Andreessen and Jim Clark essentially claimed they had pretty much "invented" the "internet" time and time again back way when Netscape was the darling of the stock market and they had zero competitors. The traditional media lapped that up as fact. I remember seeing an interview on CNN back in 93 or 94 where the slant was that the internet would not exist without their largesse.
And then they proceeded to run the company into the ground when the going got tough, proving that neither of them even qualified as decent businessmen. Netscape had the brand recognition, product capabilities and locked customer base to have knocked Microsoft out of the "market", regardless of Microsoft's dominance of the platform. People were downloading NS in droves even after the IE4 release. But their browser became so bad as Microsoft's became so good that they never had a prayer. And it was all their doing. NS3 and NS4 were, to put it mildly, pieces of crap.
And now good old Marc is a "visionary". Whoopdedo.
I really have no respect from anyone at Netscape, with the possible exception of jzw. If they were in business today they'd be as bad as Microsoft is accused to be, and then some.
I suppose that when your operating system is written and designed by people who have the power to say "fuck X" instead of people who are told to support X you get into the sad situation of having to organize "panel discussions" about why your OS is not doing X. And by the time you are organizing said panel discussions it's probably too late anyway.
The edge of reason. Voyager will stare into the void, go psycho and start blogging about his cats.
Yes... can you quote a single thing there that is false? Are you using that as "proof" of the "Unix sucks" thing? Are you serious?
because in my entire career, I've used Windows only for a hellish 5-month stint back in 1996 (Win95) [...] I'm not sure if MSFT has fixed the desktop
No, it's still the same. Windows hasn't changed at all since 1996, so don't worry about it.
Perhaps from an idealistic POV this is commendable, but they should have used another license. I think it sets a bad precedent.
I mean, beyond "yawn".
While the islamofascists and extremists do not really hold the United Kingdom close to their heart, they hate the United States a lot more. This attack was directed at the US. I don't know if that's good or bad as far as the brits are concerned =)
And even that does not compare to their virulent hatred of Israel - or as they like to call it, the "Zionist entity".
Don't feel bad though. Maybe in a few years they'll hate you as much or even more. It takes time =)
No, he does not. He establishes that Jobs has taken this Microsoft bashing thing to ridiculous levels. Are you contesting that?
Needless to say, he doesn't even mention Bill Gates throughout the entire article.
I don't understand why he had to. I'm sure that when he writes an article about the Bill Gates personality cult he'll be mentioned. Oh, wait..
Am I missing something?
Yes, per your assertion about "software bundles" and "compatibility". They are different operating systems with different capabilities built on the same codebase. Apple on the other hand produces exactly two versions of OS X. That's his point.
Again, no big deal. Almost every product on the market is starting to move towards 64-bit support.
This is pretty simple - if Apple had been out the door with real 64-bit support before Microsoft you can bet some good money you'd be hearing about it from Jobs. Constantly.
It seems to me that all these arguments are really week and that this guy just wants to complain about Apple.
It seems to me your Stevie distortion field is turned up too high. I'm not sure if you understand (or even want to) that much of Steve Jobs' bullshit and bluster is just desperate FUD that his fanbois seem to lap up like mana from the sky. His TV ads with the "really cool guy" telling the "really nerdy slob" that "he crashes too much" is just one example of that. He should've stuck to Helen Fleiss' crack-induced "beep-beep" monologue. It helped him sell a lot of boxes, but now he's stuck at whatever tiny % market share and he seems to have problems getting out of there - which is Thurrot's second point.
Maybe you should try it before you knock it.
I have a feeling Thurrot has used OS X probably as much as you.
For those of us who wondered what the hell a POSSLQ is, I have good news. And I say good news because initially I thought it was some sort of gay thing... sorry =)
Whoa, that looks like my real email. I must go re-train my filters now.
So this changes nothing for users of FF, but might be good for Real users who clearly deserve to be expunged from the gene pool by virtue of having willfully downloaded the #1 rated crapware on teh interwebs.
At least maybe, maybe they'll use FF instead of IE, which is good at least until IE7 is generally available.
[1] I hope to hell that assumption is correct.
If you don't need Microsoft Office then there's simply no reason to buy it. OTOH, if you do need it my experience is that it's worth every penny of those $300 or whatever it goes for these days.