I'm not thrilled with Outlook's performance in general, but I blame Exchange for the woes I've seen.
Not that there's any excuse for Outlook being such a pig when it can't connect to the server. *sigh* I should probably also say that I see nothing but a philosophic difference between malicious code and buggy, showstopping code, just to stay on topic.
I am kinda surprised cDc compares itself to Microsoft, though.
Anyway, it's painfully obvious when so many great artists released all of their best material in near obscurity for the last 20 years that there is something wrong with the monopoly.. er... system. Death to your evil mega-corporation.
The only thing that is obvious (and I use the term ironically) is that equating artistry and beauty and talent with commercial success is a mistake. How many people suffer from the illusion that the big record companies spend so much money on marketing to promote great artists?
How many people suffer from the illusion that Sony executives are going to shut down and confiscate my computer because I have written and recorded songs and I distribute them in MP3 format? I have no contract with Sony. They have no legal right to do so. Nice monopoly.
Otherwise one might have to conclude that those awful "When ______ Attack!" specials on the US FOX network have some artistic merit.
How naive. You only get one vote; I suppose you're happy with the political system too? What? You never vote? Sorry.
In a capitalistic, market-driven system, I have as many votes as I have dollars to spend on entertainment from the Giant Five. (and that's a very small amount, as I am generally unwilling to finance such pablum)
In the boardroom, I have as many votes as I have voting-shares of stock.
You're right -- blame the people who don't vote, or who don't care what they support. Or who do. I don't care.
Just don't expect me to believe that there are very many conspiracies out there that don't focus mainly on money.
The core issues are really choice and price, and whether individuals can take back some creative power and influence for the mega-corporations that now control American culture, from music to broadcasting to publishing.
I guess I'd better sell my stock, 'cuz I'm an owner of those evil mega-corporations. I guess I'd better stop choosing to use their products and services... it's the people who define culture, and the same people who own corporations. If we chose not to pay for their stuff, they would have to sell something else, or go out of business.
In the United States, the five labels sell $14 billion worth of music every year. Small wonder kids rebelled and began downloading the music they wanted.
Sounds more like people with $14 billion dollars bought the music they wanted. People getting what they want makes other people want to rebel? I don't understand this line of thought. Perhaps the intermediary logics are missing.
Zappers and switchers permitted TV watchers to take control of their sets back from the three networks that monopolized TV programming for half-a-century. People could make choices about what they wanted to watch, and were no longer forced to choose from the tepid offerings of three networks.
Please. Until entertainment industry executives break into my house and force me even to buy a television, much less watch it all of the time, the idea that people don't have a choice is a joke.
You have a choice not to watch TV. Or to watch only public TV. Or not to own a TV. Or to change the channel. (And unless by "zapper" you mean "free cable or digital broadcasting", your point is silly anyway.)
As for the rest, there have been garage bands making tapes and CDs and what-have-you for decades. The real revolution is just a means of communication.
Operated, yes. If I used either KDE or GNOME, I'd comment on how well it did this.
Tweaked? Nah.
I don't think there are many people out there who want to tweak their systems but don't want to use a keyboard to do it.
Is it a good idea to create a graphical program to manipulate text files for a console program (or worse, a daemon)? I say it depends on the program.
We should expect and presume some level of technical competence from people -- give them a chance to rise to that level.
By giving boneheads a chance to set up a web server with a few mouse clicks, you've given script kiddies a chance to abuse their machines with a few clever scripts. Is that good?
There should be a learning curve. The question is, how steep?
Windows NT came pre-installed on my latest work computer.
I'm not silly enough to believe that it was free. Since the hardware manufacturer didn't offer me a choice of which operating system I want (and since corporate IT uses that one manufacturer exclusively), there goes my choice.
The argument that "most users are willing to pay for Windows or NT" (emphasis mine) is rather silly if the OS is preinstalled and the OS cost is included in the price of the computer. As far as the average consumer cares, he is not really paying for Windows.
If you want to see who is really willing to learn Linux, pre-install it on 85% of the computers sold for the next three years and we'll see what happens then.
Point being: People use Windows primarily because it is, to them, ubiquitous. Reading technical superiority or ease of use or whatever criteria you wish to use into that fact to discredit a Free OS is poor logic.
Remember, WordPerfect 5.1 used to be the standard word processor. That was hardly an example of mouse-enabled, flashy menu-driven GUI programming. It didn't even have a talking paperclip! People used it anyway.
People aren't willing to learn what they don't have to learn, but people are willing to learn what they have to use.
The real question is: can paid programmers produce systems that are worth the extra cost for the average user. Today the answer is clearly yes, most users are more willing to pay for Windows or NT than they are to learn Linux.
Wait, I thought Windows came free with my computer!
Besides that, Linus and Alan get paychecks for working on the kernel. I guess that makes them paid too.
("Better" is way too subjective. Be more specific.)
Wow! I'll be able to install something in my lightsaber. I get closer to being a Jedi every day.
Hmm, do they have Debian packages, or should I just grab the tarball?
Maybe when I'm ready I can make my own. I want a yellow blade. Or a white one. Enough green, blue, and red crap. Additive colors just don't do it these days.
What's next? Start the Church of Linux? Worship large statues of Linus and everyone is required to have a ring with a little golden Tux on it.
Hm, now I want a ring with a little golden Tux on it.
That would be even cooler than a Java ring.
(Oh, and I fail to see the point in getting worked up over the "My OS is better than your OS" wars. There are better ways to amuse the elite fourteen year old boys who care about that sort of thing.)
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Re:Microsoft developers do know about other OSs
on
Scott Hacker Responds
·
· Score: 1
Hey, cool. When is he going to port his screensaver to Linux? (It's funny. Laugh.)
Just look at Ultima Online. You can tell the computer players from the real players by the overwhelming aura of munchkinness.
(yes, that's tongue in cheek, but there are plenty of mediocre humans that a good If...Then...Else bot can eat for dinner).
Now how do you set up a neural net to make the Giant Squad of Killer Orcs (not the ones who just updated my Slashdot page) smarter as they watch my character fight them?
The distinction here may lie in the difference between an idea and the practical application of that idea.
Does the person who came up with the idea of the internal combustion engine (or the estate of that person, by now) get a royalty each time someone builds something based on that idea?
By saying "software is more intangible", I mean that we are primarily dealing with ideas as opposed to physical property. How does one steal an idea? What if two people have the same idea at the same time? We can certainly recognize that a car exists and provides a more easily quantified value to its owner. When we talk about the monetary losses of software companies due to piracy and the like, we can only talk about estimates and opportunity costs.
I suspect the answer has more to do with philosophy than pragmatics, while patent law seems to have more to do with pragmatics than philosophy.
On the other hand, you bring up a good point, namely that value is linked to the time and effort necessary to create something. That's a point that I've not often heard in these discussions.
As to the question of the value of software, that's up to the creator. Seeing that the creator decides the licensing, the question of ownership seems to have been settled. If I create a program to make my job easier and to learn Perl (not so unlikely), I can put whatever monetary value and licensing restrictions on it that I choose. That's freedom. I also have a global means of distribution via the Internet, without being subject to supply chains and costs of production and the like.
It's my philosophy that software should be free -- and that the largest benefit is not to create a piece of code which may or may not be good and worthwhile and useful, but to give me more tools to solve problems. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way.
If it sounds like I'm wavering between the two positions that 'code has owners' and 'code has no owners', I am. I'm also probably dead wrong about a couple of things here.
For the sake of discussion, what is wrong with a company that says "you can work with our code and if you make money we can have some"? I would equate that to someone borrowing a taxi and generating all sorts of revenue. The borrower never paid for the taxi yet he reaps benefits. Is it wrong for the taxi company to ask for some money?
Please don't get me wrong. I am all for open source and GPL. The only thing I am wondering is does all software have to be under the same liscence and why is it wrong for the original software author to ask a bit in return?
On one hand, a taxi is a physical commodity while a piece of software is rather more intangible. As many people are likely to point out, it costs nearly nothing to make a copy of software, while making a copy of a taxi requires a more sophisticated process.
On the other hand, we have licenses such as the GPL and the Artistic license which do require some things from those who use the software, whether it is making changes freely available under the same license or distributing the original source, complete, with the differences clearly marked.
Pragmatically speaking, it's pretty hard to enforce free software licenses -- maybe even more difficult than enforcing unfree licenses. How many free software folks have the resources to go after big offenders? How many free software folks can even find big offenders? I'm toying with a license which makes my software free for non-commercial use, but requires commercial users to make a contribution to free software, whether in code or in cash. Maybe that's a better solution. Maybe not.
It's an interesting question either way.
(Oh, and the Subject is just a joke. I doubt anyone is going to Make Money Fast! by propagating Free-Until-You-Make-Money-From-It software through a downline.)
Now think of this situation of the playstation 2, people will get it illegally, just like alot of illegal CDs coming out of China of our best software,
Our best software isn't illegal to distribute on CD. It's also not just from US programmers. *grin*
All you'll have to do is buy a couple of books like "The Start Menu (for Computer Beginners)" and "Rebooting in a Nutshell."
Seriously, though, I'm having trouble separating Microsoft The Platform from Microsoft the Operating System.
That's not surprising, though, since Microsoft has the same trouble. I wonder if the company is going for a consistent user interface (based on Office toolbars) similar to the Mac interface.
There's a scary thought... but it may be good for businesses.
Which wasn't the point of this article. *sigh* And it won't help gamers.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry boys, it doesn't work if you yell out the names.
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I'm not thrilled with Outlook's performance in general, but I blame Exchange for the woes I've seen.
Not that there's any excuse for Outlook being such a pig when it can't connect to the server. *sigh*
I should probably also say that I see nothing but a philosophic difference between malicious code and buggy, showstopping code, just to stay on topic.
I am kinda surprised cDc compares itself to Microsoft, though.
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I believe all that command does is actually execute OUTLOOK.EXE.
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I wonder if one could re-write Perl in Perl. People have ray-traced in Perl.
Hey, you have to boot-strap somewhere! If Be is the Object-Oriented Operating System, PerlOS can be the RegExp TMTOWTDI Operating System!
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7) Dust Puppy!
8) Alan Cox?
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Look at all of the irresponsible closed source software out there, heh heh.
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This is the same George Lucas who wouldn't let theaters show his film unless they banned discount coupons for his movie.
Dunno which Legos, Linux, or Star Wars toys are better at expanding kids' minds. Heh heh.
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I've seen it too.
Advanced Tea Substitute. Can't beat Brownian motion for powering an Infinite Improbability Generator!
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chromatic's law: Web sites that sell stuff expand until they can auction off free e-mail addresses.
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Anyway, it's painfully obvious when so many great artists released all of their best material in near obscurity for the last 20 years that there is something wrong with the monopoly.. er... system. Death to your evil mega-corporation.
The only thing that is obvious (and I use the term ironically) is that equating artistry and beauty and talent with commercial success is a mistake. How many people suffer from the illusion that the big record companies spend so much money on marketing to promote great artists?
How many people suffer from the illusion that Sony executives are going to shut down and confiscate my computer because I have written and recorded songs and I distribute them in MP3 format? I have no contract with Sony. They have no legal right to do so. Nice monopoly.
Otherwise one might have to conclude that those awful "When ______ Attack!" specials on the US FOX network have some artistic merit.
How naive. You only get one vote; I suppose you're happy with the political system too? What? You never vote? Sorry.
In a capitalistic, market-driven system, I have as many votes as I have dollars to spend on entertainment from the Giant Five. (and that's a very small amount, as I am generally unwilling to finance such pablum)
In the boardroom, I have as many votes as I have voting-shares of stock.
You're right -- blame the people who don't vote, or who don't care what they support. Or who do. I don't care.
Just don't expect me to believe that there are very many conspiracies out there that don't focus mainly on money.
--
QDMerge -- data + templates = documents.
The core issues are really choice and price, and whether individuals can take back some creative power and influence for the mega-corporations that now control American culture, from music to broadcasting to publishing.
I guess I'd better sell my stock, 'cuz I'm an owner of those evil mega-corporations. I guess I'd better stop choosing to use their products and services... it's the people who define culture, and the same people who own corporations. If we chose not to pay for their stuff, they would have to sell something else, or go out of business.
In the United States, the five labels sell $14 billion worth of music every year. Small wonder kids rebelled and began downloading the music they wanted.
Sounds more like people with $14 billion dollars bought the music they wanted. People getting what they want makes other people want to rebel? I don't understand this line of thought. Perhaps the intermediary logics are missing.
Zappers and switchers permitted TV watchers to take control of their sets back from the three networks that monopolized TV programming for half-a-century. People could make choices about what they wanted to watch, and were no longer forced to choose from the tepid offerings of three networks.
Please. Until entertainment industry executives break into my house and force me even to buy a television, much less watch it all of the time, the idea that people don't have a choice is a joke.
You have a choice not to watch TV. Or to watch only public TV. Or not to own a TV. Or to change the channel. (And unless by "zapper" you mean "free cable or digital broadcasting", your point is silly anyway.)
As for the rest, there have been garage bands making tapes and CDs and what-have-you for decades. The real revolution is just a means of communication.
--
QDMerge -- data + templates = documents.
Operated, yes. If I used either KDE or GNOME, I'd comment on how well it did this.
Tweaked? Nah.
I don't think there are many people out there who want to tweak their systems but don't want to use a keyboard to do it.
Is it a good idea to create a graphical program to manipulate text files for a console program (or worse, a daemon)? I say it depends on the program.
We should expect and presume some level of technical competence from people -- give them a chance to rise to that level.
By giving boneheads a chance to set up a web server with a few mouse clicks, you've given script kiddies a chance to abuse their machines with a few clever scripts. Is that good?
There should be a learning curve. The question is, how steep?
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Let me elaborate.
Windows NT came pre-installed on my latest work computer.
I'm not silly enough to believe that it was free. Since the hardware manufacturer didn't offer me a choice of which operating system I want (and since corporate IT uses that one manufacturer exclusively), there goes my choice.
The argument that "most users are willing to pay for Windows or NT" (emphasis mine) is rather silly if the OS is preinstalled and the OS cost is included in the price of the computer. As far as the average consumer cares, he is not really paying for Windows.
If you want to see who is really willing to learn Linux, pre-install it on 85% of the computers sold for the next three years and we'll see what happens then.
Point being: People use Windows primarily because it is, to them, ubiquitous. Reading technical superiority or ease of use or whatever criteria you wish to use into that fact to discredit a Free OS is poor logic.
Remember, WordPerfect 5.1 used to be the standard word processor. That was hardly an example of mouse-enabled, flashy menu-driven GUI programming. It didn't even have a talking paperclip! People used it anyway.
People aren't willing to learn what they don't have to learn, but people are willing to learn what they have to use.
That happens to be Windows, for now.
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The real question is: can paid programmers produce systems that are worth the extra cost for the average user. Today the answer is clearly yes, most users are more willing to pay for Windows or NT than they are to learn Linux.
Wait, I thought Windows came free with my computer!
Besides that, Linus and Alan get paychecks for working on the kernel. I guess that makes them paid too.
("Better" is way too subjective. Be more specific.)
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Wow! I'll be able to install something in my lightsaber. I get closer to being a Jedi every day.
Hmm, do they have Debian packages, or should I just grab the tarball?
Maybe when I'm ready I can make my own. I want a yellow blade. Or a white one. Enough green, blue, and red crap. Additive colors just don't do it these days.
I can't resist:
Use the source, Luke.
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We never paid for IIS... it comes with the OS.
Really?
When you buy a $20,000 steering wheel, does it come with a free car?
When I buy computers at work, they come with Windows 9x installed for "free" -- and someone has to uninstall it.
That'd be me. (I almost wish I didn't work for a hardware company so I could take advantage of Windows Refund Days.)
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D'oh!
s/or better/more proprietary/
Happy now? heh heh
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What's next? Start the Church of Linux? Worship large statues of Linus and everyone is required to have a ring with a little golden Tux on it.
Hm, now I want a ring with a little golden Tux on it.
That would be even cooler than a Java ring.
(Oh, and I fail to see the point in getting worked up over the "My OS is better than your OS" wars. There are better ways to amuse the elite fourteen year old boys who care about that sort of thing.)
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Hey, cool. When is he going to port his screensaver to Linux?
(It's funny. Laugh.)
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Yep, they're pretty much the same, except for Access files.
They also support a file format called 'HTML' which produces really ugly XML that only displays right if you're using IE 4 or better.
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Just look at Ultima Online. You can tell the computer players from the real players by the overwhelming aura of munchkinness.
(yes, that's tongue in cheek, but there are plenty of mediocre humans that a good If...Then...Else bot can eat for dinner).
Now how do you set up a neural net to make the Giant Squad of Killer Orcs (not the ones who just updated my Slashdot page) smarter as they watch my character fight them?
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The distinction here may lie in the difference between an idea and the practical application of that idea.
Does the person who came up with the idea of the internal combustion engine (or the estate of that person, by now) get a royalty each time someone builds something based on that idea?
By saying "software is more intangible", I mean that we are primarily dealing with ideas as opposed to physical property. How does one steal an idea? What if two people have the same idea at the same time? We can certainly recognize that a car exists and provides a more easily quantified value to its owner. When we talk about the monetary losses of software companies due to piracy and the like, we can only talk about estimates and opportunity costs.
I suspect the answer has more to do with philosophy than pragmatics, while patent law seems to have more to do with pragmatics than philosophy.
On the other hand, you bring up a good point, namely that value is linked to the time and effort necessary to create something. That's a point that I've not often heard in these discussions.
As to the question of the value of software, that's up to the creator. Seeing that the creator decides the licensing, the question of ownership seems to have been settled. If I create a program to make my job easier and to learn Perl (not so unlikely), I can put whatever monetary value and licensing restrictions on it that I choose. That's freedom. I also have a global means of distribution via the Internet, without being subject to supply chains and costs of production and the like.
It's my philosophy that software should be free -- and that the largest benefit is not to create a piece of code which may or may not be good and worthwhile and useful, but to give me more tools to solve problems. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way.
If it sounds like I'm wavering between the two positions that 'code has owners' and 'code has no owners', I am. I'm also probably dead wrong about a couple of things here.
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For the sake of discussion, what is wrong with a company that says "you can work with our code and if you make money we can have some"? I would equate that to someone borrowing a taxi and generating all sorts of revenue. The borrower never paid for the taxi yet he reaps benefits. Is it wrong for the taxi company to ask for some money?
Please don't get me wrong. I am all for open source and GPL. The only thing I am wondering is does all software have to be under the same liscence and why is it wrong for the original software author to ask a bit in return?
On one hand, a taxi is a physical commodity while a piece of software is rather more intangible. As many people are likely to point out, it costs nearly nothing to make a copy of software, while making a copy of a taxi requires a more sophisticated process.
On the other hand, we have licenses such as the GPL and the Artistic license which do require some things from those who use the software, whether it is making changes freely available under the same license or distributing the original source, complete, with the differences clearly marked.
Pragmatically speaking, it's pretty hard to enforce free software licenses -- maybe even more difficult than enforcing unfree licenses. How many free software folks have the resources to go after big offenders? How many free software folks can even find big offenders?
I'm toying with a license which makes my software free for non-commercial use, but requires commercial users to make a contribution to free software, whether in code or in cash. Maybe that's a better solution. Maybe not.
It's an interesting question either way.
(Oh, and the Subject is just a joke. I doubt anyone is going to Make Money Fast! by propagating Free-Until-You-Make-Money-From-It software through a downline.)
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Now think of this situation of the playstation 2, people will get it illegally, just like alot of illegal CDs coming out of China of our best software,
Our best software isn't illegal to distribute on CD. It's also not just from US programmers. *grin*
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Hey, that's not fair.
All you'll have to do is buy a couple of books like "The Start Menu (for Computer Beginners)" and "Rebooting in a Nutshell."
Seriously, though, I'm having trouble separating Microsoft The Platform from Microsoft the Operating System.
That's not surprising, though, since Microsoft has the same trouble. I wonder if the company is going for a consistent user interface (based on Office toolbars) similar to the Mac interface.
There's a scary thought... but it may be good for businesses.
Which wasn't the point of this article. *sigh* And it won't help gamers.
--
QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.