It's a clever move, and really, I'm surprised it took Microsoft so long to start doing this.
For years, Microsoft had PC vendors do the job for them, in a market with little margins and fierce competition. MS could sit back and watch OEMs tear one another apart. Everyone got hooked to Windows, with little intervention. Why bother invading an ally?
But now the trends started changing a bit. This move is really a message to PC vendors: if you sell competing product, we'll compete with YOU.
After all, they don't have to give you free updates at all and, if they care enough about this, they'll start charging you monthly fees for your Windows Update account....And there goes the whole TCO argument, because a Linux admin is cheaper than a Windows admin + updates. I doubt Microsoft likes that.
Plus, they'll probably get sued for charging for the OS *and* services (look, RetHat et all charge for support only, OMG antitrust). I doubt Microsoft likes that.
Microsoft will create an annoying, yet hackable protection time and again. That suits their needs.
Indeed! Just today, I read a story about using GCC (the Gnu C compiler/GNU Compiler Collection) that is used heavily in Linux. It can also be used to create programs on windows systems, and has always done so quite well, however, under Vista, it can only allocate a maximum of 32 megabytes of memory.
The scary thing is not having cameras in public places. The scary thing is people getting used to cameras and to a Voice From Above telling them what to do.
In 2015, someone will say: well, but what about the crimes that are committed at homes by cruel parents? What about terrorists making their bombs? Let's have homes monitored!
There will be an outrage. People will gather in the streets, screaming "Give our rights back". The cameras in those streets will tell them in a firm voice, "Stop yelling and go away". People will stop yelling and go away. So will their freedom.
The deepesthole ever drilled by human is "only" 12,6 km deep. Both links are a fascinating reading.
It's the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which was drilled from 1962 till 1994 to gather information about Earth structure. The drilling was stopped because the temperature rose too high (and the walls started deforming under the enormous pressure). They also had to make several branches because of that.
Today, the deepest hole ever created by humankind lies beneath the tower enclosing Kola's drill. A number of boreholes split from the central branch, but the deepest is designated "SG-3," a hole about nine inches wide which snakes over 12.262 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Earth's crust. The drill spent twenty-four years chewing its way to that depth, until its progress was finally halted in 1994, about 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) short of its 15,000-meter goal.
*yes this guy should be punished, just not so severly.
The problem is not that one teacher used pirated Windows in class. The problem is that almost all Windows installations in Russian schools are either pirated, or donated. The schools that get enough funding to *buy* MS products are really uncommon.
This guy is thought to be guilty of doing what everyone else does. Now that's what is outrageous!
In fact, should MS really start enforcing their licenses here in Russia, what they will get is 140 millions angry Linux users with nukes. But the Russian enforcers can't just sit on it, so what they find a scape goat from time to time to keep those who can pay scared. Think BSA.
From a technical perspective, using the internal structure as the file format is the stupidest thing you can do. There is *no* good technical reason to ever do so.
Well, there is one reason. Speed.
Imagine you have an application which needs storing several megs of structured data routinely. You can
(a) write a specialized format parser (it's hard, and there may be bugs); (b) use standard (e.g. XML) parsers (it would be dog slow in most cases); (c) write the damned objects/structs to disk.
The (c) is the way to go when you need to get the product out of the door, yesterday. Which seems to have been the case for MS.
Yes, this will get you in trouble, quickly. But the alternative is having trouble now.
4. Log out of the root session as soon as the moment's job is done.
Better type password yet again than clean the mess.
5. Never use cat to view files. There are tail (1), head (1) and less (1) (and even more) for that. Pumping zetabytes of logs over the network *is* a bad habit.
6. The good old 'rm -rf *.o' joke is so well known... I type % ls -l... , then arrow up and replace 'ls -l' with 'rm -rf'. Or even use Midnight Commander to delete files (heresy, yeah).
Also, I often use constructs like % for i in foo bar baz; do echo somecommand $i; done before removing the 'echo' part.
However, a "modern scripting language" is an overkill if you just need 2 lines. I would consider a "real" language only if I can't fit into 7-10 lines of sh.
I think the proposed idea about measuring obviousness is good, however, I'm wondering what implications would it have.
Let's test it.
Think about "a method and apparatus to carry heavy goods with little force over level ground". Everyone who has once seen the solution would scream that it's obvious. But it's nearly uninventable with hindsight off.
So you think Novell, Red Hat, etc should pay for Linux?
Well, they DO pay for Linux. They give money to OSDL, they hire developers, they give away their work so that the whole Linux community benefits. They also take some marketing effort to make Linux adopted wider.
I also disagree that you need to lose something to get paid. If a novellist writes a novel that gets printed five times, he has done a good work and deserves to be paid five times. What's wrong is that the publishing Co gets paid, and that the copyright is too long. It should be unable to get rid of exclusive rights to the work (except for giving it into public domain), and the copyright should stretch to say "first publication + 25 years". Any "nonmaterial goods" (or "intellectual property") that maintain nonzero value that long should be considered part of the culture anyway, and go public domain.
In fact, I would rather be a famous poet (musician, programmer, etc.) than a rich one. Recognition is the award.
Going back to topic. The firm was using someone else's work to do business, knowingly and without permission. Play with fire, get burned. News at 11.
Adom is the best computer game written so far. But a live GM is still better:)
As for other games, those that I like: Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Supaplex (and its cousin Rocks-n-diamonds: http://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/) Cilivization Warcraft 2>&1 Doom 2 And a 50x30 kminesweeper with 1/4 of the field being mines (haven't won ever).
And no, I haven't played Elite. But was impressed to watch/hear.
Let's see, I may rather use MySQL and a huge expertice-enanbling iBuzz-oriented java middleware, or Oracle (who does the thing) and a simple perl script to do selects and updates.
While the #2 approach is perhaps still better, the #1 drains some demand from Real DBMS market. Less demand, competing gets harder.
Moreover, as time passes MySQL improves and workarounds/middleware solutions are accumulated, thus undermining Real DBMS market even more.
It's like windows in the server room: once it appeared, it didn't fit the job most of the time. But it was cheaper! And now, the MS server OSes have improved, the solutions are everywhere and windows admins are easy to find.
So, basically the el cheapo solution, while not being the choise for Real Men, quickly makes them a minority. Thus making the market conditions worse for them.
My point is: while MySQL is of no direct competition to Oracle, it still harms their business and should be considered a competitor.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a clever move, and really, I'm surprised it took Microsoft so long to start doing this.
For years, Microsoft had PC vendors do the job for them, in a market with little margins and fierce competition. MS could sit back and watch OEMs tear one another apart. Everyone got hooked to Windows, with little intervention. Why bother invading an ally?
But now the trends started changing a bit. This move is really a message to PC vendors: if you sell competing product, we'll compete with YOU.
I shudder at the thought Einstein could have decided like that.
After all, they don't have to give you free updates at all and, if they care enough about this, they'll start charging you monthly fees for your Windows Update account. ...And there goes the whole TCO argument, because a Linux admin is cheaper than a Windows admin + updates. I doubt Microsoft likes that.
Plus, they'll probably get sued for charging for the OS *and* services (look, RetHat et all charge for support only, OMG antitrust). I doubt Microsoft likes that.
Microsoft will create an annoying, yet hackable protection time and again. That suits their needs.
Just an opinion, anyway.
You forgot about piracy, er, I mean "Inexpensive content advertisement".
Now all we need is a decent client.
You mean, a bloated ad-ridden flashy clunky pile of junk that forces constant upgrades down your throat?
No thanks. I'd rather stick with Miranda/Sim which both support jabber as well.
Indeed! Just today, I read a story about using GCC (the Gnu C compiler/GNU Compiler Collection) that is used heavily in Linux. It can also be used to create programs on windows systems, and has always done so quite well, however, under Vista, it can only allocate a maximum of 32 megabytes of memory.
The story is here (just googled it).
http://www.trnicely.net/misc/vista.html
OK, I haven't figured out how to separate mice and keyboards. I only have one of each... And little time.
This seems to me like a bad idea, primarily because two people staring at the same monitor will experience a good degree of stress.
:1.0 -geometry 512x768+0+0 & :2.0 -geometry 512x768+512+0 &
But still, someone can find it useful. So, here's how I have just done it on Linux:
Xnest
Xnest
Haven't thought of a smart DM config yet.
btw, multiple desktops would be a boon for someone with such a setup.
The scary thing is not having cameras in public places. The scary thing is people getting used to cameras and to a Voice From Above telling them what to do.
In 2015, someone will say: well, but what about the crimes that are committed at homes by cruel parents? What about terrorists making their bombs? Let's have homes monitored!
There will be an outrage. People will gather in the streets, screaming "Give our rights back". The cameras in those streets will tell them in a firm voice, "Stop yelling and go away". People will stop yelling and go away. So will their freedom.
To be precise, in Russia you own someone else's software.
The American part should be changed accordingly.
The deepest hole ever drilled by human is "only" 12,6 km deep. Both links are a fascinating reading.
It's the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which was drilled from 1962 till 1994 to gather information about Earth structure. The drilling was stopped because the temperature rose too high (and the walls started deforming under the enormous pressure). They also had to make several branches because of that.
Today, the deepest hole ever created by humankind lies beneath the tower enclosing Kola's drill. A number of boreholes split from the central branch, but the deepest is designated "SG-3," a hole about nine inches wide which snakes over 12.262 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Earth's crust. The drill spent twenty-four years chewing its way to that depth, until its progress was finally halted in 1994, about 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) short of its 15,000-meter goal.
I'm from Russia.
*yes this guy should be punished, just not so severly.
The problem is not that one teacher used pirated Windows in class. The problem is that almost all Windows installations in Russian schools are either pirated, or donated. The schools that get enough funding to *buy* MS products are really uncommon.
This guy is thought to be guilty of doing what everyone else does. Now that's what is outrageous!
In fact, should MS really start enforcing their licenses here in Russia, what they will get is 140 millions angry Linux users with nukes. But the Russian enforcers can't just sit on it, so what they find a scape goat from time to time to keep those who can pay scared. Think BSA.
From a technical perspective, using the internal structure as the file format is the stupidest thing you can do. There is *no* good technical reason to ever do so.
Well, there is one reason. Speed.
Imagine you have an application which needs storing several megs of structured data routinely. You can
(a) write a specialized format parser (it's hard, and there may be bugs);
(b) use standard (e.g. XML) parsers (it would be dog slow in most cases);
(c) write the damned objects/structs to disk.
The (c) is the way to go when you need to get the product out of the door, yesterday. Which seems to have been the case for MS.
Yes, this will get you in trouble, quickly. But the alternative is having trouble now.
http://www.42inc.com/~estephen/humor/support.txt
It's really old, but it makes me smile time and time again.
I'll dare to continue.
.o' joke is so well known... I type ... ,
4. Log out of the root session as soon as the moment's job is done.
Better type password yet again than clean the mess.
5. Never use cat to view files. There are tail (1), head (1) and less (1) (and even more) for that. Pumping zetabytes of logs over the network *is* a bad habit.
6. The good old 'rm -rf *
% ls -l
then arrow up and replace 'ls -l' with 'rm -rf'. Or even use Midnight Commander to delete files (heresy, yeah).
Also, I often use constructs like
% for i in foo bar baz; do echo somecommand $i; done
before removing the 'echo' part.
Just to see what I'm going to do.
Gonna read other people's advices now...
Agreed. 10 useful tips and tricks? Yes. 10 good habits? No. Maybe two of them. A 'habit' is something more general than just smartly using a command.
:)
Perhaps, all slashdotters should post about *their* good Unix habits here, and than we make another article of 10 best ones
That's how perl was invented by Larry Wall.
However, a "modern scripting language" is an overkill if you just need 2 lines. I would consider a "real" language only if I can't fit into 7-10 lines of sh.
I think the proposed idea about measuring obviousness is good, however, I'm wondering what implications would it have.
Let's test it.
Think about "a method and apparatus to carry heavy goods with little force over level ground". Everyone who has once seen the solution would scream that it's obvious. But it's nearly uninventable with hindsight off.
So, should this invention have been patented?
The Snake as the Bad Guy has been mentioned by both Konrad Lorenz (ethologist) and Vladimir Propp (folklorist).
Also, in mythology the Snake would often swallow humans which is highly unlikely in nature.
So yes, makes sense.
The blank media tax is absurd, simple because you can't tell who gets copied how many times.
So, if every GNU/Linux contributor claims refund... Well, at least they'll make a good DDoS!
Imagine that, a crowd of people, all swinging copies fo their own copyrighted materials...
So you think Novell, Red Hat, etc should pay for Linux?
Well, they DO pay for Linux. They give money to OSDL, they hire developers, they give away their work so that the whole Linux community benefits. They also take some marketing effort to make Linux adopted wider.
I also disagree that you need to lose something to get paid. If a novellist writes a novel that gets printed five times, he has done a good work and deserves to be paid five times. What's wrong is that the publishing Co gets paid, and that the copyright is too long. It should be unable to get rid of exclusive rights to the work (except for giving it into public domain), and the copyright should stretch to say "first publication + 25 years". Any "nonmaterial goods" (or "intellectual property") that maintain nonzero value that long should be considered part of the culture anyway, and go public domain.
In fact, I would rather be a famous poet (musician, programmer, etc.) than a rich one. Recognition is the award.
Going back to topic. The firm was using someone else's work to do business, knowingly and without permission. Play with fire, get burned. News at 11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
by the local security AFAIK.
The fight itself took place in a fitness club. Perfectly civilized.
The only thing that bugs me is that if I were one of them I would have been beaten, no matter who's right.
Adom is the best computer game written so far. :)
But a live GM is still better
As for other games, those that I like:
Heroes of Might and Magic 2
Supaplex (and its cousin Rocks-n-diamonds: http://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/)
Cilivization
Warcraft 2>&1
Doom 2
And a 50x30 kminesweeper with 1/4 of the field being mines (haven't won ever).
And no, I haven't played Elite. But was impressed to watch/hear.
Let's see, I may rather use MySQL and a huge expertice-enanbling iBuzz-oriented java middleware, or Oracle (who does the thing) and a simple perl script to do selects and updates.
While the #2 approach is perhaps still better, the #1 drains some demand from Real DBMS market. Less demand, competing gets harder.
Moreover, as time passes MySQL improves and workarounds/middleware solutions are accumulated, thus undermining Real DBMS market even more.
It's like windows in the server room: once it appeared, it didn't fit the job most of the time. But it was cheaper! And now, the MS server OSes have improved, the solutions are everywhere and windows admins are easy to find.
So, basically the el cheapo solution, while not being the choise for Real Men, quickly makes them a minority. Thus making the market conditions worse for them.
My point is: while MySQL is of no direct competition to Oracle, it still harms their business and should be considered a competitor.