And we are to believe that human activity is somehow solely resposible for global warming?
No, you are not to believe that humans are "solely" responsible. But no matter what else is contributing to it, humans are contributing to it as well. And while there are many things we can't do anything about, we can do something about the human contributions.
We're facing another climate change....and we should accept it. Is it fault of humans? Maybe, maybe not.
So, you are saying we should calmly accept the death of possibly billions of people because we can't get our act together on consumption and birth control? That's bullshit.
It just happens.
No, it doesn't "just happen". Self-inflicted ecological disaster is one of the most frequent ways in which big civilizations end. We are on our way to repeat that on a global scale; if it isn't through global warming, it is through many other changes we have made to the global environment.
If someone is going to run a file anyways..it just gets ran by double clicking it in the download manager or whatever.
It takes a significant amount of attention and effort to download an executable to run it under Firefox. That's a good thing because it means that people don't do it accidentally. Even people who know exactly what they are doing accidentally click on the wrong link sometimes and may reflexively acknowledge the dialog box.
More importantly, there are lots of people who don't know what that means or how to do it at all, and it's a particularly good thing that those people can't run executables simply by clicking on a link.
Your virus scanner will check it out the same either way, its gettung run if the scanner lets it either way.
Virus scanners only catch viruses, not spyware or other malicious code. And you are assuming that people are actually using working, up-to-date virus scanners, which they probably aren't.
I personally hate that you cant open exes like you can any other file 'from its current location'
It's easy to set up Firefox so that you can just run executables from their current location. If you don't know how to, you, too, probably have no business enabling that feature either.
I.e., the kernel NFS client implementations in (SunOS,Digital UNIX, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, etc., etc., etc.} should be removed, as should smbfs in {Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OS X} and cifsfs in Linux, as well as nwfs in {Linux, whatever BSDs have it} and afs in {OS X, Linux and/or BSDs if they have it}? (I'm not saying that shouldn't be done, but that is a consequence of saying that you "don't believe that any remote file system should go through kernel system calls".)
Yes, that's basically what I'm saying. Those systems were designed for different environments and under different assumptions. For example, NFS used to assume that both the kernel and the network could be trusted (it's gotten a bit better since, but its hard to change it completely).
They're also circumventing well-understood and simple user-mode restrictions. AFS's caching mechanisms, for example, operate outside the usual user-mode restrictions and quotas and hence let multiple users cause each other problems that would be prevented for other file accesses. Or take NFS: it has to have special hacks to disable some file system functionality (e.g., setuid) because remote file systems can't be trusted. If your file system is implemented completely in user code, you don't have to worry about any of that: each user running it automatically can do only whatever he could do already. Remote executable bit? The user can download it, chmod it, and run it, if he likes. UIDs and user names? The user can do whatever he likes.
And think of the messes it creates in the kernel: the kernel now needs to know about key management, cryptography, remote user id mappings, new failure modes on file accesses, and lots of other stuff. What functionality are we getting back for all those headaches by putting VFS or even VFS hooks in the kernel?
but it is a choice that avoids making any kernel changes, if, for whatever reason, you want to or have to avoid doing so.
Well, I think it is also a problem that kernels are so hard modify. But maybe one should be thankful in this instance...
Full compliance with Microsoft licensing terms is good for FOSS. As long as people live with the misconception that Microsoft software is affordable, because they pirate it or don't bother buying the right version, Microsoft's proprietary formats will remain entrenched. Furthermore, people should also take into account the impact on TCO that attempts to comply with vendor restrictions have (I'm sure Microsoft doesn't count that in their TCO studies).
To put it differently, OpenOffice would probably have a big jump in market share if all the pirated or incorrectly licensed versions of MS Office wordlwide were replaced with OpenOffice.
There are some things that freedesktop.org is developing that are just useful to both desktops and that's getting used. But is there any indication that the VFS implementations are getting merged?
Also, "freedesktop.org" still sounds like they are not building tools that would really become a core part of Linux; they are mostly working on desktop related issues. For something like a user-mode VFS to catch on, the libc maintainers would have to be on board, at least providing hooks into libc.
and a small "stub" file system for WebDAV that talks to a user-mode WebDAV client.
I don't believe that any remote file system should go through kernel system calls; that raises security concerns that simply need not be raised in the first place, and it has unnecessary performance costs. WebDAV can be implemented as a library, but it can still be made to look as if it's part of the file system namespace with a few small hooks in the standard C library. All that needs to be done is to standardize those hooks. The few software systems that make direct kernel calls have to deal with it.
The only part that's in the kernel for FTP is the NFS client (which is useful for more than talking to a user-mode NFS server/FTP client program)
NFS wasn't designed for this sort of thing, so even if one believes that the right way of implementing FTP and WebDAV file systems is with a kernel stub and a user mode server, using NFS just can't be the right choice.
but Apple is doing it right by integrating network resources into the real VFS layer so that all applications can access them.
If you mean the kernel VFS layer, then Apple is not doing it right: this sort of functionality does not belong in the kernel. And Apple has not even managed to make the Carbon and Cocoa views of the world entirely consistent.
KDE's I/O slaves are not real filesystems and are not accessible by all applications.
True, and that is bad. But there is a middle ground between KDE's piecemeal approach and Apple's kernel bloat.
and how much "modern" technology has made it much more accessable
Did I say anything about not using modern technology? (I talked about sailing and on foot simply to point out that you don't need a lot of energy.)
You can't simply hop in your rowboat on the Hudson River and expect to get to the South Pole on a budget of a Wal-Mart stocking clerk.
Um--the South Pole isn't the same as Antarctica. In any case, almost any place on earth is good for humans compared to space: you get gravity, air, and water, at least.
Incidentally, when people talk about "robotic exploration", the first order of business is still aerial and orbital robotic exploration: drones, balloons, etc. And those are the primary mode of mapping and exploration even here on earth because those are cheaper even here. We should be planning on sending hundreds of aerial and orbital explorers to Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan. We should also be dropping hundreds of simple, non-mobile sensor packets on every big planetary body and moon.
Once stable populations of people are "up there" in space, the economics of going up and flying people into space will take care of themselves
I don't see how: unlike PCs, mass production of rockets doesn't drive down their costs significantly, since most of the costs are not in the manufacturing.
Human space exploration must continue
Why "must" it? I see no reason to continue it, at least not until we actually have achieved radical changes in technology that make it a trivial afterthought.
and it need not be in direct competition for funds from the robotic science missions. It is unfortunately the science community that tries to push it that way and make it Hard Science vs. Manned Spaceflight.
Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that the people pushing manned space flight actually try to sell it as "science" and even "useful science". If they presented it for what it was, entertainment, hard scientists wouldn't care.
It is also better to send a robot to Antarctica as well, but actual people do go there and live year-round under extreme circumstances.
Absolutely not. If you're on a budget, you can probably get to Antarctica and live there more cheaply than you move to and live in a nice Manhattan apartment: the air is breathable, you can get food if you must, you can get there with comparatively small amounts of energy (sail and on foot). You don't even have to worry about recycling your water or your waste.
Another good example (perhaps even better) is deep-ocean exploration.
Same thing: it's an inhospitable environment, arguably more inhospitable than space, but it's comparatively easy to get there and back.
(AI systems havn't become that advanced yet) and change mission parameters on the fly. Not to mention the ability to actually repair equipment on the fly and get it to work correctly. Or even a manual override if it is clear that the automated systems aren't working correctly.
Robotic probes don't mean autonomously intelligent probes. You only need intelligence if there is a frequent need to respond quickly and intelligently, and there has been. For everything else, you can leave the intelligence on earth, with mission control.
None of this can be done with Cassini, and even the Galleleo probe would have worked better had somebody been available to fix the Hi-gain antenna.
For the sake of argument, let's assume the following mission costs (I think that's being pretty kind to the manned mission--it would probably be even more expensive): (1) Cassini: $4bn (2) Cassini+Robotic Arms: $40bn (3) Cassini+Manned Crew: $400bn It simply doesn't add up: the added flexibility you get from robotic arms or a manned crew doesn't justify the extra expense; you're better off sending 100 probes than 1 manned mission, even if many of the probes fail. And the manned mission would probably be high risk.
A much more accurate comparison would have been between the Apollo program and the Shuttle program, both of which involved manned spaceflight.
I think manned spaceflight in general gives poor return on the investment, hence my comment.
The Apollo program achieved an incredible goal, namely that of putting a crew of two on the moon, and was both an incredible engineering accomplishment as well as accomplishing some very useful science that is still being sorted through to this day.
In the 1960's, perhaps there wasn't much choice other than to put people there. Today, there is no need to do that: robotic probes are much cheaper.
Virtual file systems have been around for a while, and they are useful: there really is little reason why something like WebDAV or even NFS should have to go through the kernel--it can be handled more efficiently in user code. But as long as they are implemented as part of these desktop environments, they are not used by enough software for users to actually rely on them.
What is needed is for the Gnome, KDE, and libc developers to get together and talk about how to unify this functionality, break it out completely from the desktop environments, and integrate it (via hooks) into the kernel I/O and stdio functions in the standard library. But I suppose hell will freeze over before that happens.
Say that the smoke and fire scared you so much that you threw it out the window; that's when "it must have popped open". You would gladly send them the pieces if they like. They can hardly argue with that...
ALL pieces of hardware are known to stop working for some amount of people.
If they stop working for too many people, it's assumed to be an intrinsic design flaw or serious manufacturing problem, and then the manufacturer is responsible above and beyond the warranty.
People do accept the risks, such as they are, arising from drinking coffee at the temperatures at which coffee is customarily served. At issue is that McDonald's served the coffee at a different temperature, which increased those risks unreasonably and unexpectedly for customers.
Mcdonald's solution? Brew hotter coffee. Why? Because the customer reqested it.
"The" customer didn't request it at all; McDonald's doesn't customize food or food temperature for individual customers, they have corporate standards. Furthermore, companies are not free to supply unsafe products just because customers request it. McDonald's is the expert on food safety while the 81 year old grandmother isn't, so if it is unsafe for them to serve coffee at 185F, they must refuse even if the customer asks them to.
I see: so Seven Towns manages to abuse the trademark system to extend patent protection on something that should be in the public domain by now, these bogus trademarks get enforced by an agency with special powers granted to it to handle terrorist threats whose mere appearance on someone's doorsteps sends shivers down their spine, and you seem to think that's all just the way it should be. Yes, I think lots of people don't like those facts, and you shouldn't like them either.
If an agency is called "Department of Homeland Security", with lots of powers to act arbitrarily and cause people a great deal of trouble without any judicial review, then it is prudent that that agency only deal with terrorism enforcement. Trademark enforcement should be handled by other agencies with fewer powers to avoid any sort of abuse of power.
These things have been around for at least 10 years (and the same people have been working on them). People used to do the same thing with LEDs as well, and there have been commercial products.
I'm not sure what people expect of these things, but you still have to look at them to see something and so it's not all that different from looking at any other screen. The potential advantage these systems have are power consumption, size and weight, but it remains to be seen whether those can be realized in practice and whether other technologies don't end up being more cost-effective in the end.
M$ is not stealing ideas/contributions from users!
I didn't use the term "stealing"; I simply pointed out where most of the value for that company comes from. There is nothing illegal in doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean that it's fair to the customer either.
By analogy, most people probably pay too much for their cars, and car dealers make a bundle because of that. That doesn't mean that the car dealer is stealing, it means that the car buyer didn't do their homework. Once you realize how car dealerships and most software houses work, you can start making informed choices that save you money. Like, for example, using open source software.
Microsoft is doing nothing different than any other software developer.
Just like there are many car dealers that try to overcharge you, there are many software developers doing the same thing as Microsoft. But there are also some ways in which you can get your software that's more efficient:
Open source software developers incorporate your ideas, but because the way open source licenses work, you don't pay for the free contributions made by yourself or by others, you just pay for the actual work performed on your behalf. That's why the open source model is so cost effective for customers.
While Microsoft, effectively, has their users do a lot of their software testing, other companies do, in fact, pay for it in-house and then release much more mature products.
Furthermore, keep the context of this discussion in mind: Microsoft is making grand statements about TCO, but they are sweeping the costs of their development model under the rug.
At the same time, our worldwide sales organization is going even deeper with customers to understand their needs and create a feedback loop with our product development teams that enables us to deliver integrated solutions that support real-world customer scenarios, and comprehensively address issues such as manageability, ease of use and reliability.
Anybody who has been part of a software development effort knows that that kind of feedback takes time--lots of time, in fact. Is Microsoft paying their customers for this time? I don't believe they are. Similarly, is Microsoft paying for all the beta testing and bug reporting they are getting out of their customers? I don't believe they are.
So, the question is: why should anybody give Microsoft many hours of free consulting just so that Microsoft can turn around and use that to further monopolize the market? Why should anybody donate time and effort to Microsoft just to have the company turn around and charge them for everybody's voluntary contributions to their software?
Microsoft's dirty little secret is that most of the value of their software isn't created by them, it's created by their customers. They are just capturing that value and making a bundle on it. And they are charging their customers for the same effort over and over again, just because they can.
Even if Linux were no better than Windows, with Linux, people can be sure that they are not getting charged for their own and other people's free contributions to the effort.
Indians and other nations that perform cheap outsourced labor have much more cause to complain than the US or the Europeans: the US and Europeans are using huge amounts of money to subsidize farmers, who then turn around and dump their products on other markets. As a result, those other nations can't even compete in markets in which they ought to be competitive if it were a level playing field. Now, Americans get upset when people in those nations do manufacturing, service, and technical jobs for peanuts and want to take away those jobs as well. What are those people supposed to do?
If the US keeps trying to keep every profitable business opportunity to itself, at some point, those nations may well decide that so-called "free trade" with the US just isn't in their interest anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
And we are to believe that human activity is somehow solely resposible for global warming?
No, you are not to believe that humans are "solely" responsible. But no matter what else is contributing to it, humans are contributing to it as well. And while there are many things we can't do anything about, we can do something about the human contributions.
We're facing another climate change. ...and we should accept it. Is it fault of humans? Maybe, maybe not.
So, you are saying we should calmly accept the death of possibly billions of people because we can't get our act together on consumption and birth control? That's bullshit.
It just happens.
No, it doesn't "just happen". Self-inflicted ecological disaster is one of the most frequent ways in which big civilizations end. We are on our way to repeat that on a global scale; if it isn't through global warming, it is through many other changes we have made to the global environment.
If someone is going to run a file anyways..it just gets ran by double clicking it in the download manager or whatever.
It takes a significant amount of attention and effort to download an executable to run it under Firefox. That's a good thing because it means that people don't do it accidentally. Even people who know exactly what they are doing accidentally click on the wrong link sometimes and may reflexively acknowledge the dialog box.
More importantly, there are lots of people who don't know what that means or how to do it at all, and it's a particularly good thing that those people can't run executables simply by clicking on a link.
Your virus scanner will check it out the same either way, its gettung run if the scanner lets it either way.
Virus scanners only catch viruses, not spyware or other malicious code. And you are assuming that people are actually using working, up-to-date virus scanners, which they probably aren't.
I personally hate that you cant open exes like you can any other file 'from its current location'
It's easy to set up Firefox so that you can just run executables from their current location. If you don't know how to, you, too, probably have no business enabling that feature either.
I.e., the kernel NFS client implementations in (SunOS,Digital UNIX, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, etc., etc., etc.} should be removed, as should smbfs in {Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OS X} and cifsfs in Linux, as well as nwfs in {Linux, whatever BSDs have it} and afs in {OS X, Linux and/or BSDs if they have it}? (I'm not saying that shouldn't be done, but that is a consequence of saying that you "don't believe that any remote file system should go through kernel system calls".)
Yes, that's basically what I'm saying. Those systems were designed for different environments and under different assumptions. For example, NFS used to assume that both the kernel and the network could be trusted (it's gotten a bit better since, but its hard to change it completely).
They're also circumventing well-understood and simple user-mode restrictions. AFS's caching mechanisms, for example, operate outside the usual user-mode restrictions and quotas and hence let multiple users cause each other problems that would be prevented for other file accesses. Or take NFS: it has to have special hacks to disable some file system functionality (e.g., setuid) because remote file systems can't be trusted. If your file system is implemented completely in user code, you don't have to worry about any of that: each user running it automatically can do only whatever he could do already. Remote executable bit? The user can download it, chmod it, and run it, if he likes. UIDs and user names? The user can do whatever he likes.
And think of the messes it creates in the kernel: the kernel now needs to know about key management, cryptography, remote user id mappings, new failure modes on file accesses, and lots of other stuff. What functionality are we getting back for all those headaches by putting VFS or even VFS hooks in the kernel?
but it is a choice that avoids making any kernel changes, if, for whatever reason, you want to or have to avoid doing so.
Well, I think it is also a problem that kernels are so hard modify. But maybe one should be thankful in this instance...
What is definitely a good thing, however, is that Firefox will not run the file from its current location...
Full compliance with Microsoft licensing terms is good for FOSS. As long as people live with the misconception that Microsoft software is affordable, because they pirate it or don't bother buying the right version, Microsoft's proprietary formats will remain entrenched. Furthermore, people should also take into account the impact on TCO that attempts to comply with vendor restrictions have (I'm sure Microsoft doesn't count that in their TCO studies).
To put it differently, OpenOffice would probably have a big jump in market share if all the pirated or incorrectly licensed versions of MS Office wordlwide were replaced with OpenOffice.
There are some things that freedesktop.org is developing that are just useful to both desktops and that's getting used. But is there any indication that the VFS implementations are getting merged?
Also, "freedesktop.org" still sounds like they are not building tools that would really become a core part of Linux; they are mostly working on desktop related issues. For something like a user-mode VFS to catch on, the libc maintainers would have to be on board, at least providing hooks into libc.
and a small "stub" file system for WebDAV that talks to a user-mode WebDAV client.
I don't believe that any remote file system should go through kernel system calls; that raises security concerns that simply need not be raised in the first place, and it has unnecessary performance costs. WebDAV can be implemented as a library, but it can still be made to look as if it's part of the file system namespace with a few small hooks in the standard C library. All that needs to be done is to standardize those hooks. The few software systems that make direct kernel calls have to deal with it.
The only part that's in the kernel for FTP is the NFS client (which is useful for more than talking to a user-mode NFS server/FTP client program)
NFS wasn't designed for this sort of thing, so even if one believes that the right way of implementing FTP and WebDAV file systems is with a kernel stub and a user mode server, using NFS just can't be the right choice.
but Apple is doing it right by integrating network resources into the real VFS layer so that all applications can access them.
If you mean the kernel VFS layer, then Apple is not doing it right: this sort of functionality does not belong in the kernel. And Apple has not even managed to make the Carbon and Cocoa views of the world entirely consistent.
KDE's I/O slaves are not real filesystems and are not accessible by all applications.
True, and that is bad. But there is a middle ground between KDE's piecemeal approach and Apple's kernel bloat.
and how much "modern" technology has made it much more accessable
Did I say anything about not using modern technology? (I talked about sailing and on foot simply to point out that you don't need a lot of energy.)
You can't simply hop in your rowboat on the Hudson River and expect to get to the South Pole on a budget of a Wal-Mart stocking clerk.
Um--the South Pole isn't the same as Antarctica. In any case, almost any place on earth is good for humans compared to space: you get gravity, air, and water, at least.
Incidentally, when people talk about "robotic exploration", the first order of business is still aerial and orbital robotic exploration: drones, balloons, etc. And those are the primary mode of mapping and exploration even here on earth because those are cheaper even here. We should be planning on sending hundreds of aerial and orbital explorers to Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan. We should also be dropping hundreds of simple, non-mobile sensor packets on every big planetary body and moon.
Once stable populations of people are "up there" in space, the economics of going up and flying people into space will take care of themselves
I don't see how: unlike PCs, mass production of rockets doesn't drive down their costs significantly, since most of the costs are not in the manufacturing.
Human space exploration must continue
Why "must" it? I see no reason to continue it, at least not until we actually have achieved radical changes in technology that make it a trivial afterthought.
and it need not be in direct competition for funds from the robotic science missions. It is unfortunately the science community that tries to push it that way and make it Hard Science vs. Manned Spaceflight.
Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that the people pushing manned space flight actually try to sell it as "science" and even "useful science". If they presented it for what it was, entertainment, hard scientists wouldn't care.
It is also better to send a robot to Antarctica as well, but actual people do go there and live year-round under extreme circumstances.
Absolutely not. If you're on a budget, you can probably get to Antarctica and live there more cheaply than you move to and live in a nice Manhattan apartment: the air is breathable, you can get food if you must, you can get there with comparatively small amounts of energy (sail and on foot). You don't even have to worry about recycling your water or your waste.
Another good example (perhaps even better) is deep-ocean exploration.
Same thing: it's an inhospitable environment, arguably more inhospitable than space, but it's comparatively easy to get there and back.
(AI systems havn't become that advanced yet) and change mission parameters on the fly. Not to mention the ability to actually repair equipment on the fly and get it to work correctly. Or even a manual override if it is clear that the automated systems aren't working correctly.
Robotic probes don't mean autonomously intelligent probes. You only need intelligence if there is a frequent need to respond quickly and intelligently, and there has been. For everything else, you can leave the intelligence on earth, with mission control.
None of this can be done with Cassini, and even the Galleleo probe would have worked better had somebody been available to fix the Hi-gain antenna.
For the sake of argument, let's assume the following mission costs (I think that's being pretty kind to the manned mission--it would probably be even more expensive):
(1) Cassini: $4bn
(2) Cassini+Robotic Arms: $40bn
(3) Cassini+Manned Crew: $400bn
It simply doesn't add up: the added flexibility you get from robotic arms or a manned crew doesn't justify the extra expense; you're better off sending 100 probes than 1 manned mission, even if many of the probes fail. And the manned mission would probably be high risk.
A much more accurate comparison would have been between the Apollo program and the Shuttle program, both of which involved manned spaceflight.
I think manned spaceflight in general gives poor return on the investment, hence my comment.
The Apollo program achieved an incredible goal, namely that of putting a crew of two on the moon, and was both an incredible engineering accomplishment as well as accomplishing some very useful science that is still being sorted through to this day.
In the 1960's, perhaps there wasn't much choice other than to put people there. Today, there is no need to do that: robotic probes are much cheaper.
Virtual file systems have been around for a while, and they are useful: there really is little reason why something like WebDAV or even NFS should have to go through the kernel--it can be handled more efficiently in user code. But as long as they are implemented as part of these desktop environments, they are not used by enough software for users to actually rely on them.
What is needed is for the Gnome, KDE, and libc developers to get together and talk about how to unify this functionality, break it out completely from the desktop environments, and integrate it (via hooks) into the kernel I/O and stdio functions in the standard library. But I suppose hell will freeze over before that happens.
This is cool. It costs about $3.26 billion total and yields amazing scientific results
This is not. It costs about $2.4 billion / year and kills a few people occasionally.
Watch it here. You need to use slowcat or it's over a little too quickly to enjoy.
Say that the smoke and fire scared you so much that you threw it out the window; that's when "it must have popped open". You would gladly send them the pieces if they like. They can hardly argue with that...
ALL pieces of hardware are known to stop working for some amount of people.
If they stop working for too many people, it's assumed to be an intrinsic design flaw or serious manufacturing problem, and then the manufacturer is responsible above and beyond the warranty.
But it's an accepted risk of life.
People do accept the risks, such as they are, arising from drinking coffee at the temperatures at which coffee is customarily served. At issue is that McDonald's served the coffee at a different temperature, which increased those risks unreasonably and unexpectedly for customers.
Mcdonald's solution? Brew hotter coffee. Why? Because the customer reqested it.
"The" customer didn't request it at all; McDonald's doesn't customize food or food temperature for individual customers, they have corporate standards. Furthermore, companies are not free to supply unsafe products just because customers request it. McDonald's is the expert on food safety while the 81 year old grandmother isn't, so if it is unsafe for them to serve coffee at 185F, they must refuse even if the customer asks them to.
I see: so Seven Towns manages to abuse the trademark system to extend patent protection on something that should be in the public domain by now, these bogus trademarks get enforced by an agency with special powers granted to it to handle terrorist threats whose mere appearance on someone's doorsteps sends shivers down their spine, and you seem to think that's all just the way it should be. Yes, I think lots of people don't like those facts, and you shouldn't like them either.
If an agency is called "Department of Homeland Security", with lots of powers to act arbitrarily and cause people a great deal of trouble without any judicial review, then it is prudent that that agency only deal with terrorism enforcement. Trademark enforcement should be handled by other agencies with fewer powers to avoid any sort of abuse of power.
These things have been around for at least 10 years (and the same people have been working on them). People used to do the same thing with LEDs as well, and there have been commercial products.
I'm not sure what people expect of these things, but you still have to look at them to see something and so it's not all that different from looking at any other screen. The potential advantage these systems have are power consumption, size and weight, but it remains to be seen whether those can be realized in practice and whether other technologies don't end up being more cost-effective in the end.
Please try to keep the three concepts apart. One thing is clear: the DHS should have no business enforcing any of them.
I didn't use the term "stealing"; I simply pointed out where most of the value for that company comes from. There is nothing illegal in doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean that it's fair to the customer either.
By analogy, most people probably pay too much for their cars, and car dealers make a bundle because of that. That doesn't mean that the car dealer is stealing, it means that the car buyer didn't do their homework. Once you realize how car dealerships and most software houses work, you can start making informed choices that save you money. Like, for example, using open source software.
Microsoft is doing nothing different than any other software developer.
Just like there are many car dealers that try to overcharge you, there are many software developers doing the same thing as Microsoft. But there are also some ways in which you can get your software that's more efficient:
Furthermore, keep the context of this discussion in mind: Microsoft is making grand statements about TCO, but they are sweeping the costs of their development model under the rug.
So, the question is: why should anybody give Microsoft many hours of free consulting just so that Microsoft can turn around and use that to further monopolize the market? Why should anybody donate time and effort to Microsoft just to have the company turn around and charge them for everybody's voluntary contributions to their software?
Microsoft's dirty little secret is that most of the value of their software isn't created by them, it's created by their customers. They are just capturing that value and making a bundle on it. And they are charging their customers for the same effort over and over again, just because they can.
Even if Linux were no better than Windows, with Linux, people can be sure that they are not getting charged for their own and other people's free contributions to the effort.
Indians and other nations that perform cheap outsourced labor have much more cause to complain than the US or the Europeans: the US and Europeans are using huge amounts of money to subsidize farmers, who then turn around and dump their products on other markets. As a result, those other nations can't even compete in markets in which they ought to be competitive if it were a level playing field. Now, Americans get upset when people in those nations do manufacturing, service, and technical jobs for peanuts and want to take away those jobs as well. What are those people supposed to do?
If the US keeps trying to keep every profitable business opportunity to itself, at some point, those nations may well decide that so-called "free trade" with the US just isn't in their interest anymore.