The more I read this the more I think "interrupt" and not "escape".
An interrupt "tells a computer to make a shift in its processing". At the hardware level it's an indication to give the CPU to a handler to deal with whatever event just happened. At the software level, it tells the application to stop what it's doing and maybe process a new command.
So are interrupts an invocation of the "escape principle" or is the "escape principle" a type of interrupt.
You know what's kind of ironic? The fact that the first programmer - Ada Lovelace (okay, not programming as *we* know it but then neither are punch cards, IMO ) and the inventor of the most pervasive business language for decades - Grace Hopper - are women.
And yet the industry is still largely male. Ironic.
I just hope *I'm* still going at 82 like this guy.
There are situations when I'll gladly give out my personal information if it means I'll get service faster or better or more personalized.
Case in point - say you shop at store X all the time. The sales people (or whatever title they're using these days) know you by name, etc...
You get better service because they *know* you. It's like leaving decent tips at a restaurant. After a while you get excellent service because the waiters/waitresses *know* you're going to leave them a decent tip as long as they give you good service.
The Web isn't much different. If I do a lot of shopping on-line at a particular place then I'd expect if I call with a problem or a special order that I'd get some damn good service simply because of a history of patronage.
The issue is that *I* want to be able to control who has the information and who doesn't. And quite frankly, my favorite restaurant/jewelry store doesn't go around selling my contact information to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks for it. Some of my favorite Web sites DO.
That, IMO, is the real issue. You have less control over who has your info in VR than in RL.
So yes - I would prefer to receive targetted marketing than what I get now, which is junk. And in order to do targetted marketing they need to have some sort of demographic information on you.
And maybe if Corp XYZ knew that millions of us actually liked product A or TV show B then we would't be so pissed off when the product is discontinued or the show is cancelled. If they don't know who's eating/watching/drinking something, they have no financial incentive to continue their offering...
TWACS currently reads at 300bps. There's technology out there that will up that, but it isn't going to get anywhere near what's needed for a decent Internet connection anytime soon.
My husband has been working with DCSI for about 2 years on the system in NE WI and there have been a few issues with interference, but not with homes and shit. The pulses aren't strong enough to interfere with normal shit, though there was one incident of a substation - which sends time synch pulses out to individual meters - setting off the railroad crossing alarms every 15 minutes.
It's a better solution than using RF to transmit the readings back to the sub - most of those are using 900MHz to transmi and you can imagine what kind of problems THAT causes.
Of course I have - it's a bitch. Yes, you are right. They are easy to make mistakes with.
There are tools that make finding things like memory leaks and wild pointers and overflows. Some of them are damn good. NuMega springs to mind..
I don't think you can catch all the errors before shipping. I think you can get most of them, but there are some configurations and interactions with other applications that you simply can't account for. I've never seen an error free application - not one that did anything, at least.
There are times when it is absolutely necessary to use pointers. You don't want 5 layers of encapsulation between you and a NIC and you certainly don't want to slow down processing of packets by keeping your queues in highly complex data structures. How you manipulating that queue becomes the difference between 40Mbps and 10Mbps and pointer manipulation is the faster way to do that.
General business apps - well, I could probably agree that people writing these types of apps don't need - and shouldn't - be messing with pointers.
I did the common work area twice. The enterprise common work environment was bad. Maybe it was just the company or the people, but it just didn't work well.
I did it again later when working on the code for cell phones and a commercial GIS product. It worked REALLY well then - and we had a lot of fun at the same time. We got things done - as you said, the people you needed to be working with were right there so it was great.
Maybe it was just the project the first time - haven't figured it out. Something went right the second time, so it isn't a bad idea but I think you have to really click with the people you're working with for it to work. And I'm not a very good enterprise developer - too many politics no matter what the PHB does and too many people who are just there 8-5 for the paycheck. For me it's who I am, not just what I do. I think that's what made the second project so great. Everyone in the common area was a hard core coder and really bought into the project.
Telecommunication is how I work now and it's great, but the lack of feedback and - as you point out - the speed of response to e-mail is frustrating at times.
The entire office thing is important. Cube farms are NOT a productive environment to work in. And if you're going to force geeks into cube farms, at least make sure they have some breathing room.
I've had a cube so small I couldn't turn around in and it was stifling and made being productive difficult. An office is ideal, but unfortunately not too practical for most organizations, so at least give us some room to breathe.
Telecommuting isn't so important to me, but being flexible in work hours is very important. If I'm caught up or ahead of the game - don't get upset if I leave 2 hours early or come in two hours late. Believe me, if I'm behind or something is wrong I'll be there all night if necessary. But when it's slow, relax.
And stop being so damned serious. The end of the world will not come about if we don't do X, Y or Z right this minute. Give us a little slack once in a while. Those rubber bands and nerf guns aren't going to hurt anyone. At least not seriously.
Inexperienced? Shall I list my CV for you? C'mon..
We didn't start our master's until last year. We've been in the "Big Bad Real World (tm) for YEARS. We've done shrink-wrap shit and enteprise shit. I've coded for AutoDESK, the government, a tax software company that shall remain nameless, among others.
I don't need to justify my experience to you, but suffice it to say that I have NEVER had a problem with pointers and think that programmers who can't deal with them and don't do proper design in the first place aren't worth a damn.
Pointers aren't the problem, people who don't know how to use them are.
True, not the 1992, but the 1984 law is applicable.
With all this technology you'd think that marketing folks would have a hey day. Why is it that we tape shows? Because we like them, we want to watch them. I'm surprised that marketing hasn't pushed for technology not only to track what we're watching (digital cable should allow this fairly easily) but tie it into taping products - what are we taping? And then offer those as DVD collections.
I'd much rather have a DVD collection than video tapes, which degrade over time.
Do I want to be monitored? No. But at the same time I'd prefer them gathering REAL data as opposed to the "Nielsen Families" ratings.
People shouldn't mess with things they don't understand IFF they're going to complain to the vendor/retailer/next door neighbor/me when they break it.
People can't learn if they can't play with it, but they have to understand that they are going to break things. For some people (read: educated, intelligent people) this is part of the learning process. For morons, DON'T WHINE ABOUT IT if you break it. You took the chance, now be a big boy and deal with it.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that consumers could "time shift" TV programs on VCRs to view later.
Making cassette tapes or copies of CDs for personal use has been affirmed by court rulings, while a 1992 law allowed consumers to make limited digital copies of music, with royalties to be included in the price of blank tapes and discs.
In 1999, a court ruled that portable digital music players could be sold and gave owners the right to move their music from PCs to the devices.
The precedences are astounding, so what (other than money) are the "big boys" going to do to overturn these rulings?
And this would break the 1992 law regarding the consumer's ability to videotape. They'll go to court over it and then *hopefully* get their asses kicked.
I say hopefully because the climate has changed so much in the past 10 years that I'm not positive that such case law will be enough to stop these ridiculous attempts at stifling the use of technology to make our lives easier.
Good luck finding a provider offering unrestricted speeds.
As for the time/download limits and hosting, that's feasible today.
I used to be an @link customer, which offered SDSL and static IPs - didn't care what you hosted. When they went under I moved to Ameritech's ADSL ('cause we can't get SDSL through them in Wisconsin).
For $75/month I get 768d/128u, a/29 and the ability to host whatever I want. Yes, I'd like better uplink speeds, but I like being able to host our sites, friends sites and manage my own servers.
Cable (Time Warner specifically) would offer better dl/ul speeds (still restricted, however) and the ability to host - but they want like $190 for business class (which you have to have to host and get static IPs) and - here's the kicker - you can't touch the router they put in. That's right, it's on the edge of YOUR network but they will manage it cause it's on the edge of THEIR network too.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I do not want someone else putting equipment in my house and then not letting me manage it. No way. Besides, the price just isn't worth it. Especially when they won't support you if you're running non-MS operating systems OR if you have a network - even if you're a biz customer. You can't run a network. WTF good is biz class if you aren't running a network? Sheesh!
There are other options up here - TDS Metrocom offers SDSL for about $130/month, but they were being hardasses about the number of static IPs they were offering - only wanted to give out 1 when I needed 2.
I've had issues trying to open Office 2000 documents in previous versions.
Power point presentations are even worse - but that's yet another issue.
Valid response. But if they're a business user and the desktop is locked down they would not be able to install a free viewer. And there are offices where versions are behind.
Would you still refuse to send in a plain text format in that scenario?
If so, what I'm hearing is the pot calling the kettle black - you refusing to send in anything but Word and RMS refusing to open anything in Word. If RMS's view is elitist, so is this.
BTW, I'm not really for RMS's attitude, nor again. I'm RMS agnostic. I read Word docs in SO but if I can't, I do tell the person who sent it and I've never had anyone refuse to convert the file. It happens rarely, but most people aren't so fanatical ( either way ) as to refuse to convert or refuse to read.
----------
And if someone sends a Word 2000 document to you when you are running Word 95 or 97?
Is it "elitist" or just impolite to inform them that you are unable to read the file and would the sender please resend with either an earlier Word format or plain text?
If it isn't elitist to in this scenario, then it isn't elitist in the scenario where you do not have a program capable of reading Word documents.
Granted - RMS's tirade on the evils of Word documents along with the request pushes this the realm of fanaticism, but the request in and of itself is NOT elitist nor wrong.
Believe me, when I tell a PR flak I can't read a file they figure out how to send me something I can read. Quickly.
That's an extremely hypothetical stance considering that you always have the option of returning to snail mail to pay your bills. Which, IMNSHO, is a damn sight better than offering up your life blood to Passport and Microsoft.
In the end YOU are still choosing. Excercise your right to NOT utilize such services and express your disdain cordially. I will never use Passport or PayPal or Yahoo Wallet or any other "service" that "assists" me by keeping my personal data relatively unsecured in a remote location and watched over by greedy opportunitistic marketers.
What I find most disconcerting about this entire situation is that if I do something like this I'm a "bad girl" and face possible charges under vague federal law but when a company does it nothing happens to them - they issue an "apology" and it's over.
We have a filter on our phone line that deals with interference from our DSL line (we have really old crappy wiring in our neighborhood). Works wonders for filtering out the noise from DSL, wonder if the same would alleviate some of the noise from the WiFi?
1. I use Linux on my laptop as my primary desktop. I run SO 6 beta and have absolutely no problems exchanging files with others in the publishing biz using Word on Mac and Win9x.
2. Why do we need IE on Linux? Galeon is by far the best revision of a browser I've seen on Linux as far as rendering and functionality goes. The only problems I've had thus far is when trying to access a site that requires Netscape or IE and does a JS check to insure browser type. That's poor coding and has nothing to do with the functionality of Galeon.
The whole idea behind open source isn't that it's free - although in most cases it is and that's a nice fringe benefit - the idea is that if YOU don't like what you have or have a good idea that you can extend and improve upon what's out there and give back to the community.
If SO or Galeon/Opera/Mozilla aren't what you want, code up what you do want - or make suggestions to the guys writing it. They're more likely to take your opinion into consideration than the guys at MS.
And lastly, I don't want to see MS products on Linux. Bloated, insecure applications with "technical support" backdoor trojans are not what I want out of an OS. If I want MS to know what hardware/software I'm running I'll write them a freaking letter and tell them. Otherwise, it's none of their damn business. Tell that to Dell and MS, who by default install 3 different accounts on XP machines for "technical support" remote access. Or how about the scripts in ME that run periodically to ship an XML document off to Microsoft detailing the hardware/software on your PC.
Is this the kind of crap you want on your Linux? I don't.
1. MS Exchange is a groupware and/or e-mail server, not an e-mail client.
2. Office is a productivity suite, not a groupware suite. A groupware suite is a suite of applications that works in conjunction with a server to enable email, calendaring and collaborative workflow. Such applications are offered by Novell, Lotus and MS.
While it may be the case that the only reason most offices use MS products is because of the entrenchment in MS-Office, it is definitely the case that most businesses use MS because monkeys could be trained to use it.
If you doubt this, just remember - they taught you to use it.
From all of my research on this subject the reason why RIAA is determined to go after P2P networks is that it makes downloading of copyrighted material "too easy".
In other words, any dolt with a computer can figure out how to download via KaZaa,Napster, etc... but if they were required to not only find a server and connect via FTP that it would be deemed too difficult for the masses and is therefore not a threat.
The same goes for IRC, etc... Transferring files via most applications is too intellectually challenging and what KaZaa and Napster are being nailed for is being innovative enough to make file transfer via the Internet "easy".
Of course, my personal take on it is also that these companies have little cash with which to fight back. Microsoft's peer to peer has been available for many years and is just easy to use - but it doesn't offer automated searching of hosts. You need to actually understand how to find a host and connect. Same with browsers.
The companies behind these technologies have lots of cache and lawyers. Napster and KaZaa don't.
This is the real issue the RIAA has with P2P and their current implementation. It's too easy.
Closed source is not necessarily the enemy either.
Yes, Microsoft puts out insecure and sometimes extremely shoddy code. But the real problem isn't that it's closed, it that they're using their power and connections in the manufacturing market to force Windows 98/ME/XP/whatever on people and at the same time integrating every damn application they can into the OS.
It isn't the code - it's the people running the company and making decisions to do unethical, legally questionable acts that's the real issue.
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The more I read this the more I think "interrupt" and not "escape".
An interrupt "tells a computer to make a shift in its processing". At the hardware level it's an indication to give the CPU to a handler to deal with whatever event just happened. At the software level, it tells the application to stop what it's doing and maybe process a new command.
So are interrupts an invocation of the "escape principle" or is the "escape principle" a type of interrupt.
Hmm.. wonder who owns the patent on interrupts?
You know what's kind of ironic? The fact that the first programmer - Ada Lovelace (okay, not programming as *we* know it but then neither are punch cards, IMO ) and the inventor of the most pervasive business language for decades - Grace Hopper - are women.
And yet the industry is still largely male. Ironic.
I just hope *I'm* still going at 82 like this guy.
Congratulations!!!!!! As a geek and a female I think this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.
Of course my entire courtship consisted of tons of e-mail - often when we were in the same room so perhaps my view on cool is skewed.
There are girls out there who really dig geek guys and there are some of us girl-geeks who just couldn't deal with a non-geek that didn't *get* us.
There are situations when I'll gladly give out my personal information if it means I'll get service faster or better or more personalized.
...
Case in point - say you shop at store X all the time. The sales people (or whatever title they're using these days) know you by name, etc...
You get better service because they *know* you. It's like leaving decent tips at a restaurant. After a while you get excellent service because the waiters/waitresses *know* you're going to leave them a decent tip as long as they give you good service.
The Web isn't much different. If I do a lot of shopping on-line at a particular place then I'd expect if I call with a problem or a special order that I'd get some damn good service simply because of a history of patronage.
The issue is that *I* want to be able to control who has the information and who doesn't. And quite frankly, my favorite restaurant/jewelry store doesn't go around selling my contact information to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks for it. Some of my favorite Web sites DO.
That, IMO, is the real issue. You have less control over who has your info in VR than in RL.
So yes - I would prefer to receive targetted marketing than what I get now, which is junk. And in order to do targetted marketing they need to have some sort of demographic information on you.
And maybe if Corp XYZ knew that millions of us actually liked product A or TV show B then we would't be so pissed off when the product is discontinued or the show is cancelled. If they don't know who's eating/watching/drinking something, they have no financial incentive to continue their offering
TWACS currently reads at 300bps. There's technology out there that will up that, but it isn't going to get anywhere near what's needed for a decent Internet connection anytime soon.
My husband has been working with DCSI for about 2 years on the system in NE WI and there have been a few issues with interference, but not with homes and shit. The pulses aren't strong enough to interfere with normal shit, though there was one incident of a substation - which sends time synch pulses out to individual meters - setting off the railroad crossing alarms every 15 minutes.
It's a better solution than using RF to transmit the readings back to the sub - most of those are using 900MHz to transmi and you can imagine what kind of problems THAT causes.
Of course I have - it's a bitch. Yes, you are right. They are easy to make mistakes with.
There are tools that make finding things like memory leaks and wild pointers and overflows. Some of them are damn good. NuMega springs to mind..
I don't think you can catch all the errors before shipping. I think you can get most of them, but there are some configurations and interactions with other applications that you simply can't account for. I've never seen an error free application - not one that did anything, at least.
There are times when it is absolutely necessary to use pointers. You don't want 5 layers of encapsulation between you and a NIC and you certainly don't want to slow down processing of packets by keeping your queues in highly complex data structures. How you manipulating that queue becomes the difference between 40Mbps and 10Mbps and pointer manipulation is the faster way to do that.
General business apps - well, I could probably agree that people writing these types of apps don't need - and shouldn't - be messing with pointers.
I did the common work area twice. The enterprise common work environment was bad. Maybe it was just the company or the people, but it just didn't work well.
I did it again later when working on the code for cell phones and a commercial GIS product. It worked REALLY well then - and we had a lot of fun at the same time. We got things done - as you said, the people you needed to be working with were right there so it was great.
Maybe it was just the project the first time - haven't figured it out. Something went right the second time, so it isn't a bad idea but I think you have to really click with the people you're working with for it to work. And I'm not a very good enterprise developer - too many politics no matter what the PHB does and too many people who are just there 8-5 for the paycheck. For me it's who I am, not just what I do. I think that's what made the second project so great. Everyone in the common area was a hard core coder and really bought into the project.
Telecommunication is how I work now and it's great, but the lack of feedback and - as you point out - the speed of response to e-mail is frustrating at times.
The entire office thing is important. Cube farms are NOT a productive environment to work in. And if you're going to force geeks into cube farms, at least make sure they have some breathing room.
I've had a cube so small I couldn't turn around in and it was stifling and made being productive difficult. An office is ideal, but unfortunately not too practical for most organizations, so at least give us some room to breathe.
Telecommuting isn't so important to me, but being flexible in work hours is very important. If I'm caught up or ahead of the game - don't get upset if I leave 2 hours early or come in two hours late. Believe me, if I'm behind or something is wrong I'll be there all night if necessary. But when it's slow, relax.
And stop being so damned serious. The end of the world will not come about if we don't do X, Y or Z right this minute. Give us a little slack once in a while. Those rubber bands and nerf guns aren't going to hurt anyone. At least not seriously.
Inexperienced? Shall I list my CV for you? C'mon..
We didn't start our master's until last year. We've been in the "Big Bad Real World (tm) for YEARS. We've done shrink-wrap shit and enteprise shit. I've coded for AutoDESK, the government, a tax software company that shall remain nameless, among others.
I don't need to justify my experience to you, but suffice it to say that I have NEVER had a problem with pointers and think that programmers who can't deal with them and don't do proper design in the first place aren't worth a damn.
Pointers aren't the problem, people who don't know how to use them are.
Only baby programmers and script kiddies and VB wienies are afraid to handle pointers.
The entire notion that pointer manipulation is unsafe is only because they let idiots write code.
Anyone with half a brain can manipulate a pointer and not fsck it up. It isn't the LANGUAGE that's insecure, it's the fscking programmers using it.
C# is crap anyway - an unholy joining of Java, VB and C++.
And what about development packages?
Where about standard include directories?
Trying to compile something on SuSE is a bitch.
It would be nice to have this addressed in a standard too, at least for kernel headers and "standard" include files.
True, not the 1992, but the 1984 law is applicable.
With all this technology you'd think that marketing folks would have a hey day. Why is it that we tape shows? Because we like them, we want to watch them. I'm surprised that marketing hasn't pushed for technology not only to track what we're watching (digital cable should allow this fairly easily) but tie it into taping products - what are we taping? And then offer those as DVD collections.
I'd much rather have a DVD collection than video tapes, which degrade over time.
Do I want to be monitored? No. But at the same time I'd prefer them gathering REAL data as opposed to the "Nielsen Families" ratings.
I think the proper attitude should be:
People shouldn't mess with things they don't understand IFF they're going to complain to the vendor/retailer/next door neighbor/me when they break it.
People can't learn if they can't play with it, but they have to understand that they are going to break things. For some people (read: educated, intelligent people) this is part of the learning process. For morons, DON'T WHINE ABOUT IT if you break it. You took the chance, now be a big boy and deal with it.
In recent years:
The Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that consumers could "time shift" TV programs on VCRs to view later.
Making cassette tapes or copies of CDs for personal use has been affirmed by court rulings, while a 1992 law allowed consumers to make limited digital copies of music, with royalties to be included in the price of blank tapes and discs.
In 1999, a court ruled that portable digital music players could be sold and gave owners the right to move their music from PCs to the devices.
The precedences are astounding, so what (other than money) are the "big boys" going to do to overturn these rulings?
And this would break the 1992 law regarding the consumer's ability to videotape. They'll go to court over it and then *hopefully* get their asses kicked.
I say hopefully because the climate has changed so much in the past 10 years that I'm not positive that such case law will be enough to stop these ridiculous attempts at stifling the use of technology to make our lives easier.
Good luck finding a provider offering unrestricted speeds.
/29 and the ability to host whatever I want. Yes, I'd like better uplink speeds, but I like being able to host our sites, friends sites and manage my own servers.
As for the time/download limits and hosting, that's feasible today.
I used to be an @link customer, which offered SDSL and static IPs - didn't care what you hosted. When they went under I moved to Ameritech's ADSL ('cause we can't get SDSL through them in Wisconsin).
For $75/month I get 768d/128u, a
Cable (Time Warner specifically) would offer better dl/ul speeds (still restricted, however) and the ability to host - but they want like $190 for business class (which you have to have to host and get static IPs) and - here's the kicker - you can't touch the router they put in. That's right, it's on the edge of YOUR network but they will manage it cause it's on the edge of THEIR network too.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I do not want someone else putting equipment in my house and then not letting me manage it. No way. Besides, the price just isn't worth it. Especially when they won't support you if you're running non-MS operating systems OR if you have a network - even if you're a biz customer. You can't run a network. WTF good is biz class if you aren't running a network? Sheesh!
There are other options up here - TDS Metrocom offers SDSL for about $130/month, but they were being hardasses about the number of static IPs they were offering - only wanted to give out 1 when I needed 2.
I've had issues trying to open Office 2000 documents in previous versions.
Power point presentations are even worse - but that's yet another issue.
Valid response. But if they're a business user and the desktop is locked down they would not be able to install a free viewer. And there are offices where versions are behind.
Would you still refuse to send in a plain text format in that scenario?
If so, what I'm hearing is the pot calling the kettle black - you refusing to send in anything but Word and RMS refusing to open anything in Word. If RMS's view is elitist, so is this.
BTW, I'm not really for RMS's attitude, nor again. I'm RMS agnostic. I read Word docs in SO but if I can't, I do tell the person who sent it and I've never had anyone refuse to convert the file. It happens rarely, but most people aren't so fanatical ( either way ) as to refuse to convert or refuse to read.
----------
And if someone sends a Word 2000 document to you when you are running Word 95 or 97?
Is it "elitist" or just impolite to inform them that you are unable to read the file and would the sender please resend with either an earlier Word format or plain text?
If it isn't elitist to in this scenario, then it isn't elitist in the scenario where you do not have a program capable of reading Word documents.
Granted - RMS's tirade on the evils of Word documents along with the request pushes this the realm of fanaticism, but the request in and of itself is NOT elitist nor wrong.
Believe me, when I tell a PR flak I can't read a file they figure out how to send me something I can read. Quickly.
-----
That's an extremely hypothetical stance considering that you always have the option of returning to snail mail to pay your bills. Which, IMNSHO, is a damn sight better than offering up your life blood to Passport and Microsoft.
In the end YOU are still choosing. Excercise your right to NOT utilize such services and express your disdain cordially. I will never use Passport or PayPal or Yahoo Wallet or any other "service" that "assists" me by keeping my personal data relatively unsecured in a remote location and watched over by greedy opportunitistic marketers.
--------------
What I find most disconcerting about this entire situation is that if I do something like this I'm a "bad girl" and face possible charges under vague federal law but when a company does it nothing happens to them - they issue an "apology" and it's over.
-------
We have a filter on our phone line that deals with interference from our DSL line (we have really old crappy wiring in our neighborhood). Works wonders for filtering out the noise from DSL, wonder if the same would alleviate some of the noise from the WiFi?
------------
1. I use Linux on my laptop as my primary desktop. I run SO 6 beta and have absolutely no problems exchanging files with others in the publishing biz using Word on Mac and Win9x.
2. Why do we need IE on Linux? Galeon is by far the best revision of a browser I've seen on Linux as far as rendering and functionality goes. The only problems I've had thus far is when trying to access a site that requires Netscape or IE and does a JS check to insure browser type. That's poor coding and has nothing to do with the functionality of Galeon.
The whole idea behind open source isn't that it's free - although in most cases it is and that's a nice fringe benefit - the idea is that if YOU don't like what you have or have a good idea that you can extend and improve upon what's out there and give back to the community.
If SO or Galeon/Opera/Mozilla aren't what you want, code up what you do want - or make suggestions to the guys writing it. They're more likely to take your opinion into consideration than the guys at MS.
And lastly, I don't want to see MS products on Linux. Bloated, insecure applications with "technical support" backdoor trojans are not what I want out of an OS. If I want MS to know what hardware/software I'm running I'll write them a freaking letter and tell them. Otherwise, it's none of their damn business. Tell that to Dell and MS, who by default install 3 different accounts on XP machines for "technical support" remote access. Or how about the scripts in ME that run periodically to ship an XML document off to Microsoft detailing the hardware/software on your PC.
Is this the kind of crap you want on your Linux? I don't.
-----
1. MS Exchange is a groupware and/or e-mail server, not an e-mail client.
2. Office is a productivity suite, not a groupware suite. A groupware suite is a suite of applications that works in conjunction with a server to enable email, calendaring and collaborative workflow. Such applications are offered by Novell, Lotus and MS.
While it may be the case that the only reason most offices use MS products is because of the entrenchment in MS-Office, it is definitely the case that most businesses use MS because monkeys could be trained to use it.
If you doubt this, just remember - they taught you to use it.
-------
From all of my research on this subject the reason why RIAA is determined to go after P2P networks is that it makes downloading of copyrighted material "too easy".
In other words, any dolt with a computer can figure out how to download via KaZaa,Napster, etc... but if they were required to not only find a server and connect via FTP that it would be deemed too difficult for the masses and is therefore not a threat.
The same goes for IRC, etc... Transferring files via most applications is too intellectually challenging and what KaZaa and Napster are being nailed for is being innovative enough to make file transfer via the Internet "easy".
Of course, my personal take on it is also that these companies have little cash with which to fight back. Microsoft's peer to peer has been available for many years and is just easy to use - but it doesn't offer automated searching of hosts. You need to actually understand how to find a host and connect. Same with browsers.
The companies behind these technologies have lots of cache and lawyers. Napster and KaZaa don't.
This is the real issue the RIAA has with P2P and their current implementation. It's too easy.
Closed source is not necessarily the enemy either.
Yes, Microsoft puts out insecure and sometimes extremely shoddy code. But the real problem isn't that it's closed, it that they're using their power and connections in the manufacturing market to force Windows 98/ME/XP/whatever on people and at the same time integrating every damn application they can into the OS.
It isn't the code - it's the people running the company and making decisions to do unethical, legally questionable acts that's the real issue.
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