Where this article is off base is that it fails to acknowledge that in the server market, Linux is already very much mainstream, and at its current growth rate, it seems almost inevitable that the continued growth will come at the expense of Microsoft's NT server sales -- indeed , it is hard to see how linux's effectiveness in certain server roles combined with the cost advantage will not lead to NT losing out in markets that would other wise be there for the taking. Linux is undeniably capable of ( in fact I'd guess it already is ) hurting Microsoft's revenues in the server space.
On the other hand, the point about applications and about linux not being ready for the desktop market is pretty accurate.
So I guess Linux really isn't competition (-; The only thing that perplexes me is this: If linux is "as defined 20 years ago", then why aren't they talking about a more modern OS in the DOJ trial... like, say... SunOS 4 (-;
The critical services are not running on Windows. Windows is good for end user applications, but not for mission critical services ( as you seem to claim )
Using unix does not require a sys admin on the space station as unix machines can be administered remotely ( and I would imagine that they manage the Solaris machines they have up there in this manner.... )
I don'tknow how you substantiate your claims of "equal performance and stability". ROFL. I guess you are just trolling.
information can not be held or treated like tangable property is - that is universal, like it or not
I disagree, but that is beside the point... But this is not so much about "property" as it is the right to be compensated for ones labour. What you are advocating is bypassing the compensation process.
if someone can distribute their game to millions of people without cost - and can't find a way to get money out of that, than it's their problem - not everyone else's
If there were no games on the market, that would be everyone else's problem, because your proposed system ( no copyright protection) does not reward programmers, only distributers. You are advocating that the only compensation due to a programmer is for their efforts in distributing their work. The problem with this is that it leaves no incentive to program. In your system, everyone would want to distribute and no one would want to program.
A society of parasites cannot survive without a host.
I thought that linux was ``ready for prime-time''?! I sure hope it is, Red Hat's charging $2995 for 10 issue resolutions
Linux the server OS is ready for prime time. Microsoft most certainly does NOT have a monopoly on server OSs... linux and novell have a large market share, and (other) UNIX have a significant minority ( when you consider the fact that the big unix servers are more multifuncitonal, and serve more users )
However, linux , the desktop OS still has a way to go. Microsoft do have a monopoly on desktop OSs.
A great deal of the time you're saying, "Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!"
Linux is a serious threat to Microsoft's server software...
"How dare Micro$uck say that they're not a monopoly! They have no competition!"
However, they have a clear monopoly in the desktop OS market.
If Microsoft is really a monopoly, then you must believe that Linux will be relegated to irrelevancy unless the government wins this anti-trust suit.
Nonsense. MS have a monopoly on Desktop OS's right now. That does not mean that linux can not take out a huge chunk of the server market (in fact it has already taken a substantial slice.
you guys really do have a lot to be worried about.
I find it highly ironic that a group that promotes Linux so strongly, software that is released under the GNU Public License, has a problem with ROM piracy / warez when the founder of the GNU movement writes things like this in the GNU manifesto
You do ? Let me clue you in on something: not everyone agrees with everything Richard Stallman says. In fact most of us do not.
There are several parts of RMS's discussion that many would dispute:
Consider a space station where air must be manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill.
Is this implying that software is essential as air ? That we have some kind of inalienable right to use any software ? If only software existed when the constitution was written. (-;
It's better to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
In other words, he acknowledges that ultimately, someone has to pay for the software. He is advocating that our taxes pay for all software. Hmmm... more taxes, anyone ?
Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive.
He is talking about programmers. He is talking about access to source code, not access to binary images. He is advocating that deveopers have free access to the source, not that warez d00dz have access to binary images.
Hmmm, with statements like those, you could almost stay that GNU DEMANDS THAT YOU PIRATE SOFTWARE.
No... The GNU public license neither demands or condones any such thing. I believe you are guilty of confusing the license itself with the FSF. Not everyone who uses the license agrees with everything RMS says. Though some of RMS's rants put him in the position of an apologist for software pirates.
Sorry folks, but the raw core fact is that the right to "own" information like private property rights is simply immoral.
You invoke this rhetoric as if it's some kind of universally held belief, but it is not. In the absence of due compensation, financial incentive, software authors (and book authors , etc ) will not be productive. Copyright protection gives software authors a means to seek compensation for their labour in a competitive market place, just as anyone else doing their job has a means to seek compensation for their efforts. Without due compensation, they will seize to produce.
Your attempt to bypass this , is none other than an act of theft, which is why it is treated as such in the US.
Selling things on the internet is old. Selling a new product on the internet hardly constitutes a "great invention". And the patent holder certainly can't claim to have invented e-commerce.
Moreover, there isn't anything new about selling data over the internet ( eg software, or just straight graphical data such as porn... )
I don't see this happening. Most of the existing "incompatibilities" between distributions have been due to either of the following
1) Different package formats. 2) Different libc versions
However, (1) is becoming less of an issue since the more popular distributions (namely SuSE, redhat , caldera , and derivatives ) have standardised on RPM. (2) is more a compatibility issue between old/new versions of linux than it is between different distributions. Redhat and SuSE have already moved to glibc.
Secondly, about HP: the way I read this is that they are intending to port linux to the merced, so that they can sell the hardware to linux users. If there is no linux port to the merced, this could cost them dearly in the high end market ( for example, the buyers perhaps will just purchase alphas instead if there is no merced port ). But I doubt that distributing linux itself will make a lot of money for HP.
Also worth checking out "Death of a Nation". This is the movie that John Pilger made there when he risked his life by going in under cover (journalists aren't allowed to enter east Timor)
Cheers,
-- Elflord
Australians aren't killing aborigines
on
First Virtual War
·
· Score: 1
I have no idea where you got this from. It is true that there was a lot of violence against the aborigines until recently. However, this kind of thing has discontinued for some time.
I am amazed by all of the ignorant ranting that has taken place here, in particular, comments to the effect that all windows software is bad. These comments are just plain ignorant.
An enormous amount of good software is available on windows. Examples include sequencer software (Cakewalk), DTP software (pagemaker, quark express), high end graphics software (lightwave, softimage) , games (too many to name... ) , educational software (nonexistent on linux), etc. I certainly wouldn't mind if more of this became available for linux (and I aren't complaining about the recent WP port and games ports... )
A lot of armchair critics will probably slam these guys for using the "oppose Microsoft" slogan instead of something more pro-linux , but to me, what's important is they went out there and did something, and, by and large, conducted themselves in an appropriate manner. And it seems that it went over well. Unless linux users "come out of the closet", linux will never gain the mindshare it needs. Fortunately, the coming out is beginning to take place (witness the windows refund day and the mainstream coverage that is beginning to look very favourable)
The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed with the computer as a single integrated product. The SOFTWARE PRODUCT may only be used with the COMPUTER
This seems to rule out the option of acquiring a refund on the windows license without getting a refund on the entire computer. However, this clause does look rather fishy, and it would be interesting to see how such a clause would stand up in court. I am personally surprised that Toshiba did not cite this in their letters.
Anyway, it's an interesting case. I always wondered what would happen if the "refund" part of the EULA was put to the test. Hopefully, this will incite more people to start demanding refunds on their windows licenses. If nothing else, it will make the OEMs notice us...
Do you have a more specific reference, such as a patent description?
unfortunately, no. As you point out, it is possible that the patent is fairly specific. However, it seems somewhat plausible that those working in the patent office would be completely ignorant regarding mathematical ( and comp sci ) academic literature published in the second half of the 20th century.
I agree that patents on hardware aren't as obviously destructive as patents on algorithms. Most of my arguments about algorithms don't apply as obviously to other things ( the fact that patents on algorithms can act as obstructions to scientific reasoning don't seem as applicable to a patent on hardware processes. )
1.US Patent law only permits the actual person who invented/discovered the idea to register a patent.
Not true. (a) Patents are transferable, and (b) The patent office do not have the technical knowledge to discover who "really" invented an idea. A glaring example: IBM have a patent on finite state automata. My bet is that a lot of modern mathematics and computer science ( including that which pre-dates the granting of the patent some time in the 90s by more than 50 years ) violates this patent
2.In the broader sense, patents encourage the free distribution of knowledge.
This is nonsense. Contrarily, frivilous patents serve little purpose but to make invention illegal. For example, if mathematicians did not use the "idea" of finite state automata in any of their proofs , a lot of modern mathematics simply wouldn't exist.
I find it hard to believe that you have never seen a trinitron display as they are fairly common, especially on Macs and Sun workstations.
The issue with the two shadows appearing on the screen is not as bad as one would expect. Personally, I never noticed those lines until I knew about this issue, and started looking for the lines. They tend to be almost invisible unless you have a flat white background.
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Linux trounces NT as a server platform. "Apache is losing the performence battle" ? hmmm ...
On the other hand, the point about applications and about linux not being ready for the desktop market is pretty accurate.
-- Elflord
-- Elflord
Using unix does not require a sys admin on the space station as unix machines can be administered remotely ( and I would imagine that they manage the Solaris machines they have up there in this manner .... )
I don'tknow how you substantiate your claims of "equal performance and stability". ROFL. I guess you are just trolling.
Cheers,
-- Elflord
I disagree, but that is beside the point ... But this is not so much about "property" as it is the right to be compensated for ones labour. What you are advocating is bypassing the compensation process.
if someone can distribute their game to millions of people without cost - and can't find a way to get money out of that, than it's their problem - not everyone else's
If there were no games on the market, that would be everyone else's problem, because your proposed system ( no copyright protection) does not reward programmers, only distributers. You are advocating that the only compensation due to a programmer is for their efforts in distributing their work. The problem with this is that it leaves no incentive to program. In your system, everyone would want to distribute and no one would want to program.
A society of parasites cannot survive without a host.
Linux the server OS is ready for prime time. Microsoft most certainly does NOT have a monopoly on server OSs ... linux and novell have a large market share, and (other) UNIX have a significant minority ( when you consider the fact that the big unix servers are more multifuncitonal, and serve more users )
However, linux , the desktop OS still has a way to go. Microsoft do have a monopoly on desktop OSs.
Cheers,
--Elflord
Linux is a serious threat to Microsoft's server software ...
"How dare Micro$uck say that they're not a monopoly! They have no competition!"
However, they have a clear monopoly in the desktop OS market.
If Microsoft is really a monopoly, then you must believe that Linux will be relegated to irrelevancy unless the government wins this anti-trust suit.
Nonsense. MS have a monopoly on Desktop OS's right now. That does not mean that linux can not take out a huge chunk of the server market (in fact it has already taken a substantial slice.
you guys really do have a lot to be worried about.
Yeah, that's why MS wrote the halloween docs (-;
You do ? Let me clue you in on something: not everyone agrees with everything Richard Stallman says. In fact most of us do not.
There are several parts of RMS's discussion that many would dispute:
Consider a space station where air must be manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill.
Is this implying that software is essential as air ? That we have some kind of inalienable right to use any software ? If only software existed when the constitution was written. (-;
It's better to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
In other words, he acknowledges that ultimately, someone has to pay for the software. He is advocating that our taxes pay for all software. Hmmm... more taxes, anyone ?
Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive.
He is talking about programmers. He is talking about access to source code, not access to binary images. He is advocating that deveopers have free access to the source, not that warez d00dz have access to binary images.
Hmmm, with statements like those, you could almost stay that GNU DEMANDS THAT YOU PIRATE SOFTWARE.
No ... The GNU public license neither demands or condones any such thing. I believe you are guilty of confusing the license itself with the FSF. Not everyone who uses the license agrees with everything RMS says. Though some of RMS's rants put him in the position of an apologist for software pirates.
-- Elflord
Sorry folks, but the raw core fact is that the right to "own" information like private property rights is simply immoral.
You invoke this rhetoric as if it's some kind of universally held belief, but it is not. In the absence of due compensation, financial incentive, software authors (and book authors , etc ) will not be productive. Copyright protection gives software authors a means to seek compensation for their labour in a competitive market place, just as anyone else doing their job has a means to seek compensation for their efforts. Without due compensation, they will seize to produce.
Your attempt to bypass this , is none other than an act of theft, which is why it is treated as such in the US.
cheers,
-- Elflord
Moreover, there isn't anything new about selling data over the internet ( eg software, or just straight graphical data such as porn
-- Elflord
VA research sell good linux laptops but they're a bit pricy. Linux hardware solutions sell laptops at a fairly decent price.
Cheers,
Elflord
I am not responsible for what happened in my country >50 years ago ...
cheers,
-- Elflord
1) Different package formats.
2) Different libc versions
However, (1) is becoming less of an issue since the more popular distributions (namely SuSE, redhat , caldera , and derivatives ) have standardised on RPM. (2) is more a compatibility issue between old/new versions of linux than it is between different distributions. Redhat and SuSE have already moved to glibc.
Secondly, about HP: the way I read this is that they are intending to port linux to the merced, so that they can sell the hardware to linux users. If there is no linux port to the merced, this could cost them dearly in the high end market ( for example, the buyers perhaps will just purchase alphas instead if there is no merced port ). But I doubt that distributing linux itself will make a lot of money for HP.
Cheers,
-- Elflord
Cheers,
-- Elflord
You are rambling.
HAND,
-- Elflord
An enormous amount of good software is available on windows. Examples include sequencer software (Cakewalk), DTP software (pagemaker, quark express), high end graphics software (lightwave, softimage) , games (too many to name ... ) , educational software (nonexistent on linux), etc. I certainly wouldn't mind if more of this became available for linux (and I aren't complaining about the recent WP port and games ports ... )
-- Elflord
Good job.
-- Elflord
I assume someone has notified the media
I got an email from somebody at wired who wanted to do a story on it. Stay tuned !!!
-- Elflord
This seems to rule out the option of acquiring a refund on the windows license without getting a refund on the entire computer. However, this clause does look rather fishy, and it would be interesting to see how such a clause would stand up in court. I am personally surprised that Toshiba did not cite this in their letters.
Anyway, it's an interesting case. I always wondered what would happen if the "refund" part of the EULA was put to the test. Hopefully, this will incite more people to start demanding refunds on their windows licenses. If nothing else, it will make the OEMs notice us
-- Elflord
unfortunately, no. As you point out, it is possible that the patent is fairly specific. However, it seems somewhat plausible that those working in the patent office would be completely ignorant regarding mathematical ( and comp sci ) academic literature published in the second half of the 20th century.
I agree that patents on hardware aren't as obviously destructive as patents on algorithms. Most of my arguments about algorithms don't apply as obviously to other things ( the fact that patents on algorithms can act as obstructions to scientific reasoning don't seem as applicable to a patent on hardware processes. )
Not true.
(a) Patents are transferable, and
(b) The patent office do not have the technical knowledge to discover who "really" invented an idea. A glaring example: IBM have a patent on finite state automata. My bet is that a lot of modern mathematics and computer science ( including that which pre-dates the granting of the patent some time in the 90s by more than 50 years ) violates this patent
2.In the broader sense, patents encourage the free distribution of knowledge.
This is nonsense. Contrarily, frivilous patents serve little purpose but to make invention illegal. For example, if mathematicians did not use the "idea" of finite state automata in any of their proofs , a lot of modern mathematics simply wouldn't exist.
--Elflord
The issue with the two shadows appearing on the screen is not as bad as one would expect. Personally, I never noticed those lines until I knew about this issue, and started looking for the lines. They tend to be almost invisible unless you have a flat white background.
cheers,
-- Elflord
... and also supported, I believe.
cheers,
-- Elflord