I think Peter Norton ran out of ideas, but had made so much money that he decided to buy a small island and start buying art with his billions for investment purposes should the world economy collapse due to something like, oh I dunno, crappy commercial software having so many security holes in it that everyone gets their identities stolen by hackers who withdrawal all money from bank accounts and cash in stocks from data stolen from commercial database servers they installed some trojan on when the system administrator clicked on one of their web ads while he was looking for how to fix the problem of the server crashing 12 times a day on some web forum. Then whole nations' economies collapse, except for some small island nation that Peter Norton bought and stores his art collection on? What a coincidence! Why, that happened to me just yesterday!
Yup. And for the long haul, there's also the doctrine of 'estoppable' or -- "mend the hold". If Microsoft says they're not going to sue and developers use the spec and, but some years later subsequently get sued -- the developers can use the estoppel doctrine as an affirmative defense, saying Microsoft took no action against them or anybody else for implementing the spec, so they are estopped from taking any action against them.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: They're animals. Captain Torvalds: Richard, there is an historic opportunity here. Captain Richard M. Stallman: Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Captain Torvalds: They're dying. Captain Richard M. Stallman: Let them die! Captain Bill Gates: Admeeral, there is a very old Klingon proverb. Do you know it? Revenge is a dish best served cold. Captain Richard M. Stallman: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATES!!!!
of penguin stuffed animals in your possession. # of kernel builds # of ICQ shouting matches ending in "Nazi!!!" # of cans of Jolt consumed # of steps from mom's basement to side door. No! You got it all wrong! Everybody knows that programmer productivity is inversely proportional to the number of Slashdot posts!
What about some slightly deeper tracking into the repository? Figure out how much code a developer committed that had to be changed later. Not bad, but it depends a lot on the maturity of the project. Many young projects start out with several complete rewrites before they find a workable solution that performs well, is scalable, robust and reliable. And even on mature projects -- a lot of times and entire codebase is scrapped to accommodate new features: think Samba 3.x -> 4.x or GNOME 1.4 -> GNOME 2.0.
Marketers in the computer industry, no matter where they work, have a picture of Bill Gates on their wall, candles lined underneath, and genuflect to it every time they enter or leave that room. Doesn't everybody have one those? *amazed*
Microsoft's approach to breakthrough engineering is through acquisitions? Is it just me or do I sense an oxymoron here... Yes. Just like "innovated" PowerPoint and they "innovated" MS-DOS, etc. Bill Gates thinks "innovate" == "acquire through any means necessary".
I'd assume you're always authorized to use your own computer. Nope. There are times when I'm not authorized to use my own computer. Just ask my wife!;)
Exactly. Vision is all in the brain -- you don't "see" with your eyes, you "see" with your brain. And your brain naturally filters what it sees. Sometimes these filters are wrong -- they make up stuff that isn't there. Conversely, many times you don't see something because you don't expect to see it. How many times have you went looking for some place that you wanted to go by looking it up online and then when you get there you go "Why, I must've driven by this place a thousand times and never even knew it existed!" That's because you weren't looking for it. You weren't expecting it all those 1,000 times you drove by it, so although the light reflections may have bounced through your eyes, your brain filtered it out -- hence you never "saw" it.
Try reading what I wrote; I didn't say "prefer writing for Windows" I said "creating off-the-shelf software." The religon behind OSS will keep those developers (and many investors) away. But there isn't really a vast number of "I only write proprietary code" developers. Most major open source projects include some developers who work on closed-source applications during the day and write OSS in their off-time. There are even open source projects that include people who work at companies like Microsoft.
I can think of several developers right now work for a company called UGS who write OSS projects in their spare time.
Have you ever driven an American car? Yes. I've oned both.
It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to see why the Japanese own the car market. The truth is the American companies dropped the ball on engineering. Straight out of the words of the Japanese. Try driving a 4-cylinder Ford Ranger. Any of them. The 2.3L I4, originally manufactured by Ford for the Pinto, is considered one of the top-10 best engines in the world.
If you are not legally permitted to grant all of these rights to others (because of patents) Now, note that Microsoft promised not to sue you and they did not promise to grant you patent rights. However, they also say that they aren't saying that any patents are necessarily involved, either, and they're also not saying whether they believe such patents to be valid.
Here's the rub for Microsoft: patent law doesn't actually prevent you from doing anything. You don't know what Microsoft has a patent on and what it doesn't. And you need to keep it that way, because that means the difference between willful patent infringement and plain ol' "oops, we infringed your patent." In any case, Microsoft's only recourse is to sue you. Which, BTW, they have to do two things to win:
1) They have to prove actual damages. (No, this isn't automatic) and 2) They have to prove that they took steps to mitigate having those damages occur.
It could be argued that by putting that spec out there with a promise not to sue... that they have failed to mitigate their own damages.
And, you could always just put the onus on the community by posting the code under the public domain -- anonymously. Then there's nobody to sue but everybody who uses the code.
I'm just in a state of confusion as I read this. Don't worry. It's just the government mind control lasers misfiring again. It'll clear up in a minute and you'll think this stuff is cool.
It's not Walmart's fault that people shop there and buy so much Chinese stuff. Mmmmm...actually, it pretty much is. WalMart uses predatory business practices, far worse than Microsoft could imagine in it's worst nightmares, to knock out their competition, brow-beat their vendors into compliance and make themselves a virtual monopoly in every small town in America. When you consider that the vast majority of Americans live in small town America, well...that means that WalMart has pretty much pwned a vast amount of the retail market.
It's not Toyota's fault that Americans would rather pay Toyota and get a nicer car than have a better standard of living for American auto workers. It's not that simple. The Japanese, who do make a pretty good product, do business differently than Americans. You see, in Japan, they won't buy American-made cars. Nobody will. It's seen as a disgrace. To the Japanese, business is war -- a war that means knocking out all of your competition. Price fixing, industrial spying, bribes and collusion are the sine qua non in the world of Japanese business and industry. Toyota, Nissan and Honda didn't compete against each other as much as they competed together -- with Japanese companies in different industries even participating in the collusion -- against the American car companies using all sorts s of dirty tricks to command as much of the market as they could.
Much of the reputation that American cars have for being unreliable isn't entirely earned -- the Japanese own large portions of American media conglomerates and use their influence to convince people that American cars suck and Japanese cars are the only thing they should buy if they want reliability.
It is that -every- American is greedy, and therefor, we got the institutions we asked for. That's an over-generalization and a poor stereotype.
As PJ pointed out over on Groklaw, MS are giving a "Promise" not to sue but this is very very far from a license. Careful analysis suggests that any GPL'd software using these binaries could easily fall foul of the fury of MS lawyers. Correct.
Here's my suggestion: someone should use these specs to create a BSD-licensed implementation as a library. Then, of course, (L)GPL programs would be free to use the implementation. Nobody gets sued, everybody is happy.
No, lack of social skills would be the reason, there. D&D is actually the only reason geeks tend to have *any* social skills (no, learning to type "pwnd!" with one hand while strafing is not a social skill). Correct. The last time I did tabletop gaming was back a long time ago, but at that time there were definitely girls playing, and there were like 3 of them in my particular gaming party that were unattached. One of whom -- who was VERY hot -- tried to get me in bed with her. Unfortunately, that would have made my then-girlfriend extremely jealous.:) If I knew then what I know now -- man, she was hot!
If your text editor can read the file on the disk, so can any other program on the computer. Which is exactly why I always rely on the following for security:
cat/dev/random >mysecretfile.txt
Because if you're text editor can't make sense of it, then nobody can!
His brother [Wolfman Jack impersonation] Raooooooouuuuuuul! [/Wolfman jack impersonation] will take over on the 24th and it will business as usual. Raoul has been running the country, more or less, since 2006 anyway. And the Cuban people pretty much abominate him as much as Fidel himself.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup. And for the long haul, there's also the doctrine of 'estoppable' or -- "mend the hold". If Microsoft says they're not going to sue and developers use the spec and, but some years later subsequently get sued -- the developers can use the estoppel doctrine as an affirmative defense, saying Microsoft took no action against them or anybody else for implementing the spec, so they are estopped from taking any action against them.
Captain Torvalds: Richard, there is an historic opportunity here.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
Captain Torvalds: They're dying.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: Let them die! Captain Bill Gates: Admeeral, there is a very old Klingon proverb. Do you know it? Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Captain Richard M. Stallman: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATES!!!!
# of kernel builds
# of ICQ shouting matches ending in "Nazi!!!"
# of cans of Jolt consumed
# of steps from mom's basement to side door. No! You got it all wrong! Everybody knows that programmer productivity is inversely proportional to the number of Slashdot posts!
Ohloh doesn't even list me. On any projects I've contributed to, or even my own. *sniff*
Like I actually care. I don't do this stuff for recognition anyway. I do it because it's fun.
Do not try to use the mod point -- that's impossible. Instead, try to realize the truth: There is no mod point.
Exactly. Vision is all in the brain -- you don't "see" with your eyes, you "see" with your brain. And your brain naturally filters what it sees. Sometimes these filters are wrong -- they make up stuff that isn't there. Conversely, many times you don't see something because you don't expect to see it. How many times have you went looking for some place that you wanted to go by looking it up online and then when you get there you go "Why, I must've driven by this place a thousand times and never even knew it existed!" That's because you weren't looking for it. You weren't expecting it all those 1,000 times you drove by it, so although the light reflections may have bounced through your eyes, your brain filtered it out -- hence you never "saw" it.
I can think of several developers right now work for a company called UGS who write OSS projects in their spare time.
Here's the rub for Microsoft: patent law doesn't actually prevent you from doing anything. You don't know what Microsoft has a patent on and what it doesn't. And you need to keep it that way, because that means the difference between willful patent infringement and plain ol' "oops, we infringed your patent." In any case, Microsoft's only recourse is to sue you. Which, BTW, they have to do two things to win:
1) They have to prove actual damages. (No, this isn't automatic) and
2) They have to prove that they took steps to mitigate having those damages occur.
It could be argued that by putting that spec out there with a promise not to sue
And, you could always just put the onus on the community by posting the code under the public domain -- anonymously. Then there's nobody to sue but everybody who uses the code.
Much of the reputation that American cars have for being unreliable isn't entirely earned -- the Japanese own large portions of American media conglomerates and use their influence to convince people that American cars suck and Japanese cars are the only thing they should buy if they want reliability. It is that -every- American is greedy, and therefor, we got the institutions we asked for. That's an over-generalization and a poor stereotype.
Here's my suggestion: someone should use these specs to create a BSD-licensed implementation as a library. Then, of course, (L)GPL programs would be free to use the implementation. Nobody gets sued, everybody is happy.
"Gates is a God. Only Microsoft software is secure. The GPL is a plague upon the world."
Just the usual....
Oh, don't worry. The sharks will take care of the tinfoil hats.
Yep. Sharks. With friggin' lasers attached their heads!
Yeah, but the real $64K question is this: Does that explain the D&D girl that wanted to bed me or the girlfriend?
cat
Because if you're text editor can't make sense of it, then nobody can!
I think my HDD uses this technology.
His brother [Wolfman Jack impersonation] Raooooooouuuuuuul! [/Wolfman jack impersonation] will take over on the 24th and it will business as usual. Raoul has been running the country, more or less, since 2006 anyway. And the Cuban people pretty much abominate him as much as Fidel himself.