My comment brought up "the strength that the PFJ gives to Microsoft by allowing them to exclude developers whose "business viability" is not certified by Microsoft". Of course, nobody (except maybe some unfortunate law clerk -- apologies in advance) will ever read it. I really rambled, because I had one hour to write and it was 4am or so when I started.
The rest of my comment discussed Microsoft's apparent view of their place in our society. I wanted to make sure at least one comment discussed Microsoft's antisocial behavior -- i.e. they want to win every battle, no matter the effect on our society. That includes multiple deliberate attempts to increase the length of this trial, at *everyone's* expense.
The Federalist Papers discuss just how stupid the public is expected to be. Part of the design of the US governmentmal system comes from protecting the smart minority from the stupid majority. The Electoral College system for electing the President is one example (good or bad) of this design effort.
While I'm on the subject, think about the word "design", above. It was pointed out to me that the US government really was designed intellectually, unlike most governments before it. That makes me pause every time.
"but I've been looking, and looking, and looking,"
Good luck. I've been through the quality audio search myself, but thankfully I was limited by budget to low-end NAD stuff.
A friend picked up some awfully good sounding Musical Fidelity equipment. Until he can afford good-enough speakers, though, we won't know how good it can sound. He was actually looking at some horn speakers from Avantegarde, but decided he should keep some padding in his bank account instead. He's a classical pianist, and jobs aren't that easy to come by.
I, for one, hope Rob never experiences "next time around." Let's see, now, congratulations to both of you!
User 794 is feeling kind of sentimental, despite the fact he doesn't know Rob or Kathleen personally. Heck, I remember when Rob finished school, and I was proud of him because he didn't bail as slashdot became super-popular. This is twisted.
The important difference, to me, between MS's settlement and Intel's, is that Microsoft went through a long trial first, and lost. There are many indications that Microsoft attempted to make this (and subsequent) trials as long as possible (possibly to avoid legal interference with WinXP's ship date). Furthremore, this is the *second* time the US has had to take MS to court for antitrust violations.
Intel *was* pursued by the FTC, an organization with far more teeth than the DoJ. Intel, however, chose to accept the FTC's findings and settle out of court. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been wasting public money in stupid trials while increasing public corruption. I'm no fan of Intel, as they've done their share to stifle innovation just as Microsoft does. However, Intel at least sees themselves as part of our society -- Microsoft sees themsevles as above our society.
Don't forget that the "Microsoft Bob" OS and "Clippy" were results of the same "billions of dollars and several years of Microsoft R&D". Go search computer science archives for the academic output of Microsoft's R&D 'machine'. Then do the same with IBM.
Also, does MS really spend billions on R&D? I'd expect not. I'd be surprised if they cleared a half-billion on R&D. Note that programming and engineering are not traditionally part of R&D.
I'm not sure (and am not going to check), but I think that all of the successful non-GPL software you mention meets the Free Software definition proposed by FSF, and doesn't take advantage of the less-restrictive Open Source definition from OSI. I think that's very interesting.
I think you mean "FSF's philosophy is a subset of the OSI's", i.e. it's more restrictive. Then again, we haven't defined "philosophy", and we all know what happens when you don't take enough care defining sets properly.;-)
Absolutely! Ever since I found a Reg article linked from/. years ago, I've been a faithful reader. Sure they print crap from time to time, but it's not difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. And they make their biases well-known.
The Reg is worth reading even just for the giggles and laughs from the sub-headlines.
It is against the law, whatever you call it. People have been convicted -- a hippy commune, IIRC. The power companies pay close attention to where the power goes. Anomolies are checked, using trucks and helicopters.
I thought the non-license power limit was 100mW. I've seen instructions for a an amplified antenna (250mW nominal) which claim you need a licensed installer. Any idea whose wrong, or what fine point I'm missing?
When/. mentioned "frameing" in the synopsis, I thought (honest, why would I make this up) those cheesy simulated picture-frame borders that some people insist on putting around their digital images. I'd like to see that made against the law, even if you own the image.
On the other hand, maybe this law will help end one of the many html frame abuses. Maybe we'll see more laws in the future which make bad web design illegal. Imagine if popping up windows you didn't ask for was declared vandalism, whether done by javascript or some installed program's registration reminder or advert. That would, perhaps, be the greatest day in gui history.
In the realm of "pocket" books, I've never found O'Reilly's pocket books to be very helpful. They usually don't even have an index or TOC.
On the other hand, the larger "Python Essential Reference" from Beazley/New Riders is the best darn Python reference I've seen, with just the right balance between code, reference, and completeness but remaining extremely compact. For Perl, I tend to go back to "Learning Perl" because it's small enough (and straightforward enough, unlike the camel book) to find what I want quickly. Learning Perl is much more useful than the Perl pocket reference.
There aren't that many uses for dead-tree collections of man pages, which is essentially what the O'Reilly pocket references I have used felt like. I guess the emacs pocket reference has been slightly better, but again I find it difficult to find what I want (this may be an emacs problem in this case...;-).
I'll back down on the DOS on Win95 point. Evidently it was just my experience, and (as one poster suspected) probably mostly involved games. Do I remember correctly that Win95 made some special run-time patch or similar for one of ID's games, something to do with sound?
I used to live in Washington state, and never ran into any MS developers. Now I live in Pittsburgh, and you're the second Visual C++ developer I've run into (the other is at CMU, which is why I'm in Pittsburgh). At any rate, I'm glad these teams worked hard for backwards compatibility. However, these products aren't the whole story. It seems there are a lot of good efforts inside Microsoft, which are countered by David "We should surely crash the system" Cole, Jim "make sure it has problems in the future" Alchin, and other jerks among Microsoft's senior executives.
I can't believe I had to accept my BS diploma from Cole. I guess that means I ran into one MS developer after all. =-)
IBM had a subset of Win32, not the whole thing. They pretty much gave up on it when Microsoft kept fiddling with the subset which Open32 implemented. I believe that project Odin, a more ambitious Win32 cloning effort on OS/2, built on top of Open32.
It's interesting how many volunteer efforts there were in the OS/2 world, and how important they were. You could run pretty much the usual GNU environment natively or near-natively, as well as XFree86. In fact, I used gcc and gdb first on OS/2. gdb on os/2 had the nicest frontend (part of the EMX package) I've ever used.
Slashdot Mirror
My comment brought up "the strength that the PFJ gives to Microsoft by allowing them to exclude developers whose "business viability" is not certified by Microsoft". Of course, nobody (except maybe some unfortunate law clerk -- apologies in advance) will ever read it. I really rambled, because I had one hour to write and it was 4am or so when I started.
The rest of my comment discussed Microsoft's apparent view of their place in our society. I wanted to make sure at least one comment discussed Microsoft's antisocial behavior -- i.e. they want to win every battle, no matter the effect on our society. That includes multiple deliberate attempts to increase the length of this trial, at *everyone's* expense.
-Paul Komarek
The Federalist Papers discuss just how stupid the public is expected to be. Part of the design of the US governmentmal system comes from protecting the smart minority from the stupid majority. The Electoral College system for electing the President is one example (good or bad) of this design effort.
While I'm on the subject, think about the word "design", above. It was pointed out to me that the US government really was designed intellectually, unlike most governments before it. That makes me pause every time.
-Paul Komarek
Thanks for point that out. I'll be sure to read these now, at least until I vomit. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
(what follows is unabashedly off-topic)
"but I've been looking, and looking, and looking,"
Good luck. I've been through the quality audio search myself, but thankfully I was limited by budget to low-end NAD stuff.
A friend picked up some awfully good sounding Musical Fidelity equipment. Until he can afford good-enough speakers, though, we won't know how good it can sound. He was actually looking at some horn speakers from Avantegarde, but decided he should keep some padding in his bank account instead. He's a classical pianist, and jobs aren't that easy to come by.
-Paul Komarek
In a way, you're pretty lucky. I don't think many of us get to see that sort of thing. It's probably a rare event!
-Paul Komarek
Back in the day when programmers were mathematicians , that is.
-Paul Komarek
I, for one, hope Rob never experiences "next time around." Let's see, now, congratulations to both of you!
User 794 is feeling kind of sentimental, despite the fact he doesn't know Rob or Kathleen personally. Heck, I remember when Rob finished school, and I was proud of him because he didn't bail as slashdot became super-popular. This is twisted.
-Paul Komarek
Unless they find a way to clone spading or neutering, too.
-Paul Komarek
The important difference, to me, between MS's settlement and Intel's, is that Microsoft went through a long trial first, and lost. There are many indications that Microsoft attempted to make this (and subsequent) trials as long as possible (possibly to avoid legal interference with WinXP's ship date). Furthremore, this is the *second* time the US has had to take MS to court for antitrust violations.
-Paul Komarek
Intel *was* pursued by the FTC, an organization with far more teeth than the DoJ. Intel, however, chose to accept the FTC's findings and settle out of court. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been wasting public money in stupid trials while increasing public corruption. I'm no fan of Intel, as they've done their share to stifle innovation just as Microsoft does. However, Intel at least sees themselves as part of our society -- Microsoft sees themsevles as above our society.
-Paul Komarek
Don't forget that the "Microsoft Bob" OS and "Clippy" were results of the same "billions of dollars and several years of Microsoft R&D". Go search computer science archives for the academic output of Microsoft's R&D 'machine'. Then do the same with IBM.
Also, does MS really spend billions on R&D? I'd expect not. I'd be surprised if they cleared a half-billion on R&D. Note that programming and engineering are not traditionally part of R&D.
-Paul Komarek
I'm not sure (and am not going to check), but I think that all of the successful non-GPL software you mention meets the Free Software definition proposed by FSF, and doesn't take advantage of the less-restrictive Open Source definition from OSI. I think that's very interesting.
-Paul Komarek
I think you mean "FSF's philosophy is a subset of the OSI's", i.e. it's more restrictive. Then again, we haven't defined "philosophy", and we all know what happens when you don't take enough care defining sets properly. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
Absolutely! Ever since I found a Reg article linked from /. years ago, I've been a faithful reader. Sure they print crap from time to time, but it's not difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. And they make their biases well-known.
The Reg is worth reading even just for the giggles and laughs from the sub-headlines.
-Paul Komarek
Finally, an application which Perl can't make more confusing.
-Paul Komarek
It is against the law, whatever you call it. People have been convicted -- a hippy commune, IIRC. The power companies pay close attention to where the power goes. Anomolies are checked, using trucks and helicopters.
-Paul Komarek
I thought the non-license power limit was 100mW. I've seen instructions for a an amplified antenna (250mW nominal) which claim you need a licensed installer. Any idea whose wrong, or what fine point I'm missing?
-Paul Komarek
When /. mentioned "frameing" in the synopsis, I thought (honest, why would I make this up) those cheesy simulated picture-frame borders that some people insist on putting around their digital images. I'd like to see that made against the law, even if you own the image.
On the other hand, maybe this law will help end one of the many html frame abuses. Maybe we'll see more laws in the future which make bad web design illegal. Imagine if popping up windows you didn't ask for was declared vandalism, whether done by javascript or some installed program's registration reminder or advert. That would, perhaps, be the greatest day in gui history.
-Paul Komarek
I expect intent is important. It would be difficult to convince someone that by resizing 99.5% you were trying to make a thumbnail.
-Paul Komarek
Thanks for letting me know that things are improving! Maybe I'll start looking at these books again.
-Paul Komarek
Any Perl books are too many. You should program in Python.
*Paul ducks*
-Paul Komarek
In the realm of "pocket" books, I've never found O'Reilly's pocket books to be very helpful. They usually don't even have an index or TOC.
On the other hand, the larger "Python Essential Reference" from Beazley/New Riders is the best darn Python reference I've seen, with just the right balance between code, reference, and completeness but remaining extremely compact. For Perl, I tend to go back to "Learning Perl" because it's small enough (and straightforward enough, unlike the camel book) to find what I want quickly. Learning Perl is much more useful than the Perl pocket reference.
There aren't that many uses for dead-tree collections of man pages, which is essentially what the O'Reilly pocket references I have used felt like. I guess the emacs pocket reference has been slightly better, but again I find it difficult to find what I want (this may be an emacs problem in this case...;-).
-Paul Komarek
I'll back down on the DOS on Win95 point. Evidently it was just my experience, and (as one poster suspected) probably mostly involved games. Do I remember correctly that Win95 made some special run-time patch or similar for one of ID's games, something to do with sound?
I used to live in Washington state, and never ran into any MS developers. Now I live in Pittsburgh, and you're the second Visual C++ developer I've run into (the other is at CMU, which is why I'm in Pittsburgh). At any rate, I'm glad these teams worked hard for backwards compatibility. However, these products aren't the whole story. It seems there are a lot of good efforts inside Microsoft, which are countered by David "We should surely crash the system" Cole, Jim "make sure it has problems in the future" Alchin, and other jerks among Microsoft's senior executives.
I can't believe I had to accept my BS diploma from Cole. I guess that means I ran into one MS developer after all. =-)
-Paul Komarek
IBM had a subset of Win32, not the whole thing. They pretty much gave up on it when Microsoft kept fiddling with the subset which Open32 implemented. I believe that project Odin, a more ambitious Win32 cloning effort on OS/2, built on top of Open32.
It's interesting how many volunteer efforts there were in the OS/2 world, and how important they were. You could run pretty much the usual GNU environment natively or near-natively, as well as XFree86. In fact, I used gcc and gdb first on OS/2. gdb on os/2 had the nicest frontend (part of the EMX package) I've ever used.
-Paul Komarek
I'd gotten the idea that RMS had pretty much given up on LISP ever succeeding.
-Paul Komarek