There is no law prohibiting a monopoly. Secondly, they don't have a monopoly by any kind of rational standard (there are many alternatives to using Windows, many of which your average SlashDweeb even claims are far superior to Windows in every possible way). Finally, the idea of a monopoly based on copyright or trademark is laughable and ridiculous. Laws concerning abuse of monopoly only make sense when it comes to limited physical resources or "life and death" stuff. Applying it to something that someone sat down, thought up, and created is utterly stupid.
You could use the same logic and apply it to the viewer, as others have said. "Everything just goes black" - the series has died. I think the more obvious (and Occam'sly) explanation is that they were fine and had dinner and life went on (for a while, at least). The recurring theme in the show is that the life he leads is one where you never know whats coming next. The final scene highlighted that - Tony has to be looking over his shoulder at all times for what's coming next, be it the law or the enemy.
How ridiculous. Is Microsoft supposed to put a big red button on the desktop "DISABLE WINDOWS SEARCH"?? So.. OK, you can disable it but not as easily as opening Internet Explorer? God's what a stupid argument.
Unfortunately for you, anectdotal, half assed claims that "Vista doesn't handle IPv6!" don't mean anything to anyone but you and the rest of the bandwagon jumpers around here. Has there been any conclusive documentation that Vista, the OS, has issues dealing with IPv6?
Wow. That completely puts the smackdown on this entire subject. MS right, other guy wrong. Yet we're going to hear god damned whinefest after whinefest about how this poor guy is being hounded by big old mean MS.
If he had just released the product and it happened to work, he might have a point. He intentionally added code _specifically_ for the Express SKU to workaround the technical limitations. This is forbidden in the license. Ergo, he is in the wrong. As they say, can I just download his (or anyone's) shit and add a hack to make it the "full" version?
He quite simply is not a neo-con. Neo-con implies moral righteousness and religious nuttery. He claims neither, though he has been kissing ass a little with the religious right so I'm losing my respect for him.
Not being a Slashdweeb I could give two shits about him saying he wants Ballmer on his cabinet.
I don't understand how Slashdot, usually bastion of small government libertarianism, can have the cajones to be hypocritical enough to be pro net neutrality. It's hilarious. You want the government passing laws dictating technology and what a company can charge for its services? Well, maybe it does make sense - you've been equally hypocritical with MS, you'd love the government to basically take ownership of them and split them up.
Haha, listen to you. You even put "convicted criminal" in bold! If only Slashdot could convey the deep, meaninful stare that goes along with such a dramatic pronouncement.
Of course, we out here in the real world know that "convicted criminal corporation" means absolutely nothing. You not only aren't a lawyer, you don't even play one on Slashdot - that's f'ing retarded.
Hmm... Seems a little black pot kettle calling is going on here. I've never seen a group of supposedly technically people literate more out of touch with respect to the technology industry than the gaggle of Slashdot retards who post the same inane shit day in day out.
Microsoft in no way illegally built their monopoly. You can argue that they leveraged it "illegally", but then you could argue Burger King levereges their Big Mac monopoly illegally too or that Coca Cola "illegally" limits manufacture and distribution of Coca Cola Products to themselves or licensed affiliates. The fact is that you people can't get your story straight. Is Microsoft a bad, mean monopoly or is Linux a valid, free alternative? Kind of difficult to whine "monopoly!" with meaningful glances when you also claim a free competitor is much higher quality.
Nobody's perfect. I missed the part where he was convicted of anything...? Oh, wait, he wasn't. Fact is that politicians are to a man (or woman) complete douchebags. This is a simple fact. Unfortunately we're tasked with picking the least dripping of the douchebags. McCain's not so bad, though his recent pandering to the religious nutbags is somewhat troubling, traditionally he's not really dealt with them all that much.
Fair enough. VS2005 in all its full glory (Team editions for developers/testers/architects, TFS explorer, WCF software factory addins, Workflow addins, Ghostdoc, etc..) is a thing of crazy hotness. The free version, not so much.
Mono and Samba come to mind, as well as the many clones of the Windows interface available as X desktop environments/window managers. As for Apache, it's difficult to argue it's use on Windows when IIS is available. In fact, the only time I'd use Apache is if I had to - e.g. I had to run on UNIX for any of various reasons. Another point I'd point out is that Active Directory may be the catalyst to finally bring UNIX into the Kerberos age. Of course I absolutely realize that Kerberos came from the UNIX world, however its adoption has been poor. Many organizations are now moving to a single sign on solution based on Active Directory.
Another day that's past is the day when Apache was a better web server than IIS. This day is especially past when Longhorn finally comes out. Not knocking Apache, if you need to run on UNIX it's absolutely the best and really only logical choice, but seriously - IIS is hard core now, it's not 1996 anymore.
Still, the point isn't bragging rights about who "invented the interwebs" or which platform's dad can beat up the other platform's dad. The point is that in many application domains it's far easier to develop quality software on the Windows platform than the UNIX platform, and this is because Microsoft provides far superior development tools. Seriously, go look at WCF and WF and how simple it would be to create a Kerberos enabled web service that has policy injection, consistent logging, and workflow based business logic that uses SQL persistence and SQL stored procedures written in C#. Same on UNIX? Pretty difficult and far more time consuming. It's very powerful shit.
I will give you one thing - all of the above makes the most sense in a corporate environment where MS tech is "free", meaning it gets paid in a lump sum and you can use whatever you want from MS. If you have to pay for the shit as a small group/business then cost definitely becomes a factor.
I don't want layers. Layers mean I have to make each individual product talk with each other product. Sometimes, if you're lucky, it works but other times it doesn't. And either way - it takes time and hacking to make them work correctly together. I want to develop my software, not develop hacks and layers to handle day to day tasks like issue tracking, reporting, continuous integration, etc...
A few things. First, Java was free. Comparing it to MS's products is disingenuous. Microsoft has a lot of free software, but Visual Studio has not historically been free. They released a dumbed down version so people could play with it, but VS makes MS money. Java is great and all, but Joe Bloe developer never had to pay for it.
Second, comparing Sun to MS also rings a little false. MS makes boatloads of money, Sun doesn't. You're saying that MS, the most successful software company in history by a long stretch, should emulate Sun?
Third, MS's new generation software is much more open than it has been historically. In fact, Java lags pitifully behind WCF in implementing important web services standards, for example.
Finally, it's difficult to argue that neither MS nor its developer community have made much contribution to computing. In fact, it's impossible. The vast majority of applications run on computers around the world run on Windows. They look and feel largely the same. Dumb people can even sometimes figure them out.
The fact is that MS is in overdrive lately with respect to how they court developers (queue "developers, developers, developers" remix). They've always been good about it, and they're getting better. Seriously, go look around MSDN. Look at WCF. Look at WPF. Look at Windows Workflow. Look at the Enterprise library. Look at the software factories. Look around Codeplex. Play with TFS, Silverlight, etc... Believe me or not, I was a hardcore UNIX developer not too long ago - Perl, C/C++, Java stuff. I've moved to.NET and I _absolutely dread_ having to go back to that primitive shit. Unlike most Slashdotters, I know both sides of the aisle very well and developing on the MS side of the fence is far more efficient and enjoyable - _if_ you can afford it, i.e. you work in a corporate environment.
Reading slashdot, I get the impression that a lot of you don't know anything about what's going on in the real world, and you act like MS's dominance is receding. It isn't, I assure you. Most of the "hot technology" being cranked out by open source people is a) tinker toy compared to some MS equivelents and b) poorly interoperable and difficult to use.
Have you ever used TFS, do you even know what it is? It's not "source control". Go download the free trial and look at it. TFS > Subversion because it does everything subversion does, plus a _whole_ lot more. As to being open, that was to counter the "but TFS is for VS only" argument, which is 100% false. You can use TFS from within Eclipse or from UNIX.
Oooh, sorry. Your first sentence gets you off to a bad start. TFS is absolutely not a Visual Studio Only system. It's based on web services. You could go out and write your own TFS client, and people have. There is a TFS plugin for Eclipse, for example, and I can do checkouts/checkins/etc.. from the UNIX CLI if I really wanted to.
And if you can't find CVS for VS, you're a very poor googler. http://www.codeproject.com/macro/CVS_with_VSNET.as p Literally first match on "CVS visual studio". Read the comments, yes it works on VS2005. There are other ways as well.
Jason
OK, we're talking about the software development world here. Name some examples. TFS vs. Subversion - not even close, SVN is a tinker toy compared to TFS. Nant vs. MSBuild - Nant is good but how does MS prevent anyone from using it? Others?
In general, as a software developer, I don't feel MS has forced anything down my throat. If I want to regress and deal with the headaches of trying to get 20 different random open source tools to work I could certainly develop software for Windows using open source tools, though I would probably quit my job before doing that.
That's not what he was saying. He was saying exactly what I thought he was saying - e.g. why do we need TFS when we have subversion, or MSBuild when we have Nant? The answer is those products are all one-offs and generally have far fewer features than comparable MS products.
As for MS and the developer community, it's alive and kicking. Go check out MSDN and the MSDN forums. Go check out the patterns and practices group and how they've encouraged community participation. Go check out Codeplex.com. In short, this is one guy who either violated the license or the spirit of the license. If this was open source and some company squeezed through a loophole the OSS zealots would be up in arms. Personally I think MS would have been better off just plugging the hole in a new version or patch that added compelling functionality so people would want to lose the extensions hack.
Subversion doesn't have all the features they need, that's the problem. For one thing, TFS is open - it's web services based. It's like comparing Subversion to RCS.
Umm, OK. So maybe Microsoft should just terminate the Express line? How would Jamie like that, I wonder, being the one person responsible for ending availability of a product his customers apparently use?
You've got to be kidding, right? You actually think MS should just not develop products because there are a bunch of various different open source tools people could use instead? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
First, they are a software company and they sell solutions, not products. MsBuild integrates with all the other MS tools including Visual Studio and TFS. I would rather have one solution that works well than having to pass through the open source gauntlet of choosing from 20 different tools and trying to make them all work together. Comparing TFS to Subversion is insultint - to TFS. TFS is much more than Subversion, think Subversion + Continuum + Bugzilla (somewhat) + requirements tracking + other tools.
In short, your post is entirely wrong. I don't see you bitching about ClearCase, Synchronicity, or other commercial tools. It's just Microsoft that is silly for releasing products when there are already all these "great" open source tools.
So.. charities exist outside the normal rules of capitalism? How does the Classmate, which you stipulate is an inferior product due to price, act to the detriment of the OLPC program?
I'll take capitalism, thanks you. It's known to work.
Slashdot Mirror
"Convicted monopolist". You guys crack me up. That phrase has 0 legal meaning.
There is no law prohibiting a monopoly. Secondly, they don't have a monopoly by any kind of rational standard (there are many alternatives to using Windows, many of which your average SlashDweeb even claims are far superior to Windows in every possible way). Finally, the idea of a monopoly based on copyright or trademark is laughable and ridiculous. Laws concerning abuse of monopoly only make sense when it comes to limited physical resources or "life and death" stuff. Applying it to something that someone sat down, thought up, and created is utterly stupid.
You could use the same logic and apply it to the viewer, as others have said. "Everything just goes black" - the series has died. I think the more obvious (and Occam'sly) explanation is that they were fine and had dinner and life went on (for a while, at least). The recurring theme in the show is that the life he leads is one where you never know whats coming next. The final scene highlighted that - Tony has to be looking over his shoulder at all times for what's coming next, be it the law or the enemy.
How ridiculous. Is Microsoft supposed to put a big red button on the desktop "DISABLE WINDOWS SEARCH"?? So.. OK, you can disable it but not as easily as opening Internet Explorer? God's what a stupid argument.
Unfortunately for you, anectdotal, half assed claims that "Vista doesn't handle IPv6!" don't mean anything to anyone but you and the rest of the bandwagon jumpers around here. Has there been any conclusive documentation that Vista, the OS, has issues dealing with IPv6?
If he had just released the product and it happened to work, he might have a point. He intentionally added code _specifically_ for the Express SKU to workaround the technical limitations. This is forbidden in the license. Ergo, he is in the wrong. As they say, can I just download his (or anyone's) shit and add a hack to make it the "full" version?
Not being a Slashdweeb I could give two shits about him saying he wants Ballmer on his cabinet.
I don't understand how Slashdot, usually bastion of small government libertarianism, can have the cajones to be hypocritical enough to be pro net neutrality. It's hilarious. You want the government passing laws dictating technology and what a company can charge for its services? Well, maybe it does make sense - you've been equally hypocritical with MS, you'd love the government to basically take ownership of them and split them up.
Of course, we out here in the real world know that "convicted criminal corporation" means absolutely nothing. You not only aren't a lawyer, you don't even play one on Slashdot - that's f'ing retarded.
Microsoft in no way illegally built their monopoly. You can argue that they leveraged it "illegally", but then you could argue Burger King levereges their Big Mac monopoly illegally too or that Coca Cola "illegally" limits manufacture and distribution of Coca Cola Products to themselves or licensed affiliates. The fact is that you people can't get your story straight. Is Microsoft a bad, mean monopoly or is Linux a valid, free alternative? Kind of difficult to whine "monopoly!" with meaningful glances when you also claim a free competitor is much higher quality.
Nobody's perfect. I missed the part where he was convicted of anything...? Oh, wait, he wasn't. Fact is that politicians are to a man (or woman) complete douchebags. This is a simple fact. Unfortunately we're tasked with picking the least dripping of the douchebags. McCain's not so bad, though his recent pandering to the religious nutbags is somewhat troubling, traditionally he's not really dealt with them all that much.
Fair enough. VS2005 in all its full glory (Team editions for developers/testers/architects, TFS explorer, WCF software factory addins, Workflow addins, Ghostdoc, etc..) is a thing of crazy hotness. The free version, not so much.
Another day that's past is the day when Apache was a better web server than IIS. This day is especially past when Longhorn finally comes out. Not knocking Apache, if you need to run on UNIX it's absolutely the best and really only logical choice, but seriously - IIS is hard core now, it's not 1996 anymore.
Still, the point isn't bragging rights about who "invented the interwebs" or which platform's dad can beat up the other platform's dad. The point is that in many application domains it's far easier to develop quality software on the Windows platform than the UNIX platform, and this is because Microsoft provides far superior development tools. Seriously, go look at WCF and WF and how simple it would be to create a Kerberos enabled web service that has policy injection, consistent logging, and workflow based business logic that uses SQL persistence and SQL stored procedures written in C#. Same on UNIX? Pretty difficult and far more time consuming. It's very powerful shit.
I will give you one thing - all of the above makes the most sense in a corporate environment where MS tech is "free", meaning it gets paid in a lump sum and you can use whatever you want from MS. If you have to pay for the shit as a small group/business then cost definitely becomes a factor.
I don't want layers. Layers mean I have to make each individual product talk with each other product. Sometimes, if you're lucky, it works but other times it doesn't. And either way - it takes time and hacking to make them work correctly together. I want to develop my software, not develop hacks and layers to handle day to day tasks like issue tracking, reporting, continuous integration, etc...
Have you ever used VS2005 for any moderately complex software development? It's not on par with Visual Studio.
Second, comparing Sun to MS also rings a little false. MS makes boatloads of money, Sun doesn't. You're saying that MS, the most successful software company in history by a long stretch, should emulate Sun?
Third, MS's new generation software is much more open than it has been historically. In fact, Java lags pitifully behind WCF in implementing important web services standards, for example.
Finally, it's difficult to argue that neither MS nor its developer community have made much contribution to computing. In fact, it's impossible. The vast majority of applications run on computers around the world run on Windows. They look and feel largely the same. Dumb people can even sometimes figure them out.
The fact is that MS is in overdrive lately with respect to how they court developers (queue "developers, developers, developers" remix). They've always been good about it, and they're getting better. Seriously, go look around MSDN. Look at WCF. Look at WPF. Look at Windows Workflow. Look at the Enterprise library. Look at the software factories. Look around Codeplex. Play with TFS, Silverlight, etc... Believe me or not, I was a hardcore UNIX developer not too long ago - Perl, C/C++, Java stuff. I've moved to .NET and I _absolutely dread_ having to go back to that primitive shit. Unlike most Slashdotters, I know both sides of the aisle very well and developing on the MS side of the fence is far more efficient and enjoyable - _if_ you can afford it, i.e. you work in a corporate environment.
Reading slashdot, I get the impression that a lot of you don't know anything about what's going on in the real world, and you act like MS's dominance is receding. It isn't, I assure you. Most of the "hot technology" being cranked out by open source people is a) tinker toy compared to some MS equivelents and b) poorly interoperable and difficult to use.
Have you ever used TFS, do you even know what it is? It's not "source control". Go download the free trial and look at it. TFS > Subversion because it does everything subversion does, plus a _whole_ lot more. As to being open, that was to counter the "but TFS is for VS only" argument, which is 100% false. You can use TFS from within Eclipse or from UNIX.
And if you can't find CVS for VS, you're a very poor googler. http://www.codeproject.com/macro/CVS_with_VSNET.as p Literally first match on "CVS visual studio". Read the comments, yes it works on VS2005. There are other ways as well.
Jason
In general, as a software developer, I don't feel MS has forced anything down my throat. If I want to regress and deal with the headaches of trying to get 20 different random open source tools to work I could certainly develop software for Windows using open source tools, though I would probably quit my job before doing that.
As for MS and the developer community, it's alive and kicking. Go check out MSDN and the MSDN forums. Go check out the patterns and practices group and how they've encouraged community participation. Go check out Codeplex.com. In short, this is one guy who either violated the license or the spirit of the license. If this was open source and some company squeezed through a loophole the OSS zealots would be up in arms. Personally I think MS would have been better off just plugging the hole in a new version or patch that added compelling functionality so people would want to lose the extensions hack.
Subversion doesn't have all the features they need, that's the problem. For one thing, TFS is open - it's web services based. It's like comparing Subversion to RCS.
Oh boy, the old "Translation: put whatever idiotic thing I want here" tactic. Good god, but you're boring.
Umm, OK. So maybe Microsoft should just terminate the Express line? How would Jamie like that, I wonder, being the one person responsible for ending availability of a product his customers apparently use?
First, they are a software company and they sell solutions, not products. MsBuild integrates with all the other MS tools including Visual Studio and TFS. I would rather have one solution that works well than having to pass through the open source gauntlet of choosing from 20 different tools and trying to make them all work together. Comparing TFS to Subversion is insultint - to TFS. TFS is much more than Subversion, think Subversion + Continuum + Bugzilla (somewhat) + requirements tracking + other tools.
In short, your post is entirely wrong. I don't see you bitching about ClearCase, Synchronicity, or other commercial tools. It's just Microsoft that is silly for releasing products when there are already all these "great" open source tools.
I'll take capitalism, thanks you. It's known to work.