You claim this isn't about being sued by Microsoft
I wish you would stop paraphrasing me, badly. What I'm disputing is the following statement from you: "When has Microsoft ever made a promise not to sue for patent infringement about a public, free licence, and then turned around and sued anyway?"
The key point here is all the other parts tied to the non-public stuff. I spent several paragraphs on it. I am not claiming, and have never claimed, that Microsoft will sue over a patent after they granted you royalty-free rights to use it.
So you ARE talking about being sued.
DETAILS MATTER. See above. I also talked a lot about other issues besides lawsuits.
How much of that deal was just a PR exercise anyway?
Umm, you're going to summarize litigation threats in an effort to gather royalties from Linux users as Public Relations? What the fuck.
But back to the topic in hand. If your entire reason to avoid Mono is because you might decide to go off and use another product (Silverlight), then surely you should be arguing against using Silverlight and leave Mono alone.
I spent several paragraphs defending my reasoning. You have summarily ignored them with a stupid car to tank analogy.
Is there an easy upgrade path from a car to a tank? No. Is there any evidence that people will likely upgrade from a car to a tank? No. Do people who adopt Mono often adopt other technologies like Silverlight? Yes, just look at the Mono team itself, headed up by Miguel. People often point to Moonlight when talking about Silverlight and being cross-platform.
Does Microsoft have a history of playing the cross-platform game, and then dropping it once they achieve dominance? Yes. Is Microsoft a convicted, abusive monopoly? Yes. Have they lost some of their dominance and are trying to gain it back by dabbling in open standards? Yes. Have they done this before? Yes.
When has Microsoft ever made a promise not to sue for patent infringement about a public, free licence, and then turned around and sued anyway?
I never said they did or will. I said, "anybody who believes in open standards should stay away from Mono. If you follow Microsoft's lead you will get burned."
The problem is by following Microsoft's lead, you'll put them in a position of power. People will be more inclined to adopt the non-Community Promise stuff like Silverlight, because people like Miguel have decided to endorse it.
Microsoft already has a patent deal with Novell and it's distribution of Linux. Don't want to be sued by Microsoft for using Linux? Buy Novell and pay royalties to Microsoft. This has already happened. It's old news.
Later on, if Silverlight is adopted by the web as a whole, in part because it is "cross-platform", then they can just pull the plug on Linux. New versions will be tied to Windows. The idea of being cross-platform will be quietly dropped.
This already happened with IE. It used to be available to Linux, back when it first came out and they were competing with Netscape, which was cross-platform. IE ended up dominating Netscape and the Linux version was dropped.
See, I don't just speak from blind hatred. I speak from experience and a hatred of monopolies. I shouldn't have to pay Microsoft a royalty to use a computer. The industry is slowly chipping away at Microsoft's monopoly. It's taken over ten years to get this far. Back in 1999 something like 98% of people browsed the web with IE. Apple was near death. Linux had almost no presence on the desktop.
Now Windows is still strong on the desktop, but not nearly as much. With the exception of laptops, they're failing almost completely in mobile. Firefox has made large gains on the Web. A computer industry not dominated by Microsoft actually seems possible.
Now they're making a push with.NET and Silverlight to try and get it back. Making C# and parts of.NET open is just a lever to gain adoption. Microsoft has, and always will, use their technologies to reinforce their desktop monopoly. If you believe in open standards, then you should not follow Microsoft's lead.
For Microsoft, Mono provides a legitimacy for their language to show that it really is cross platform, open standard.
Yes, and this is why anybody who believes in open standards should stay away from Mono. If you follow Microsoft's lead you will get burned.
It would be a public relations nightmare if they did an about face on this.
They won't give a shit once they get beyond the adoption stage. They'll just tell everybody to license their intellectual property that they invested in. You're not a communist, are you? Don't they deserve to get paid?
The general public won't be able to make the distinction between technology that is covered by the Microsoft Community Promise Agreement and the parts that is not.
Exactly. First you swallow the open parts, then you eat the rest, and finally you're locked in.
More likely it would take too much work, and the chance of success is low. For every hit game, you've got countless games that languish. How many developers would turn down a sure thing, even if it's a cheesy remake of old ideas? Not many, I bet.
Given Facebook has all the hallmarks of being the next AOL
The comparison with AOL is just stupid. AOL was making tons of money on the dial-up crowd, but broadband through cable, DSL, and fiber optics was ramping up rapidly at the height of their success. Also, they were offering an expensive service in a commodity market. It didn't take a genius to see that they had a problem.
Facebook's value is in the network effect. It may fail to the latest and greatest social network site, it may not. What concrete signal do you have that it will fail? A pundit that got some Slashdot coverage doesn't count.
If you're going to talk about considered and defended arguments, don't drop shallow insults like "empty suit" and "Obama's just a jaw wagging in time to a teleprompter".
I want to add one thing, though. It's not just the President:
"Both houses of Congress denied Obama's funding requests to shut down Guantanamo and relocate the most dangerous prisoners to the United States. The vote in the Senate was 90-6; all but a half-dozen Democrats opposed their own President. That is why I was optimistic, but only cautiously so."
However, there was a similar effect, in a way: after he got the award, he proceeded to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the US still hasn't pulled out of either.
He continued the war in Iraq as he campaigned on. He pulled out the majority of troops but left a contingent. He also said he would ramp up the war in Afghanistan. The problem isn't with Obama, the problem is with the idiots who gave him a Peace Prize for doing absolutely nothing. It's too bad Obama didn't just refuse the prize.
In addition, he reneged on his campaign promise to close Guantanamo.
Yes, he did. The cable Wikileaks showed that they were having trouble getting countries to accept them. A failure is still a failure, but I think they genuinely would like to close it and are trying.
So I guess after he got the Peace Prize, without having actually done anything to earn it, he decided not to even bother doing anything to promote peace.
That's bullshit. He's tried to promote peace between Israel and Palestinians. He's tried the whole outreach to Muslims thing. He's been working with Russia and trying to be less antagonist towards them. However, anybody who thinks he was going to change the basics of his foreign policy because some fools in Norway gave him a prize he didn't deserve is also a fool.
What needs to happen is you need to demand that your ISP provide you with a real IPv6 address on their network or be willing to find another ISP who is. It does not take many lost customers for ISPs to get a clue and get serious about deployment.
The problem is many home consumers don't have a choice over an ISP, and even if they did, are clueless about IPv6, and even if they aren't, don't have a practical benefit to demand an IPv6 address. Yes, if everybody collectively moved to IPv6, it would be great, but each individual looks at the situation and sees no benefit.
But the companies mentioned don't pay dividends, don't *need* to acquire companies (and can afford to do so anyways and still operate on cash), and don't *need* credit if they have cash to spend. Remember the person I responded to said "no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have". It just isn't true.
The Roman Empire didn't have to expand its economy per se, it had to keep attacking more countries to plunder them.
I can't really see the difference. It had to keep on expanding, either through growth or plunder. How is it any different than, for example, the British Opium Wars with China, the Nixon Shock, the huge debts the United States is racking up with China, or if I'm really cynical, war with Iraq to keep oil trading in American dollars?
The primary goal is often to maintain a credit line while the problems are resolved (because no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have.)
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Large companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple have billions in cash reserves, and can probably operate for a year or two by spending just cash.
Imperial Rome almost at no point actually had a sustainable economy per se. It was a robber economy, simply put. They _had_ to keep expanding and plundering new countries, even to keep paying their legions.
Isn't this the same of almost every currency that has been put into existence? We keep have to repaying the always inflating currency debt by exponentially expanding our economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Obama was voted president, so we must be getting exactly what we want, right?
Who is "we"? Do you think "we" could define exactly who "we" wants, without pissing off the other people named "we"?
You claim this isn't about being sued by Microsoft
I wish you would stop paraphrasing me, badly. What I'm disputing is the following statement from you: "When has Microsoft ever made a promise not to sue for patent infringement about a public, free licence, and then turned around and sued anyway?"
The key point here is all the other parts tied to the non-public stuff. I spent several paragraphs on it. I am not claiming, and have never claimed, that Microsoft will sue over a patent after they granted you royalty-free rights to use it.
So you ARE talking about being sued.
DETAILS MATTER. See above. I also talked a lot about other issues besides lawsuits.
How much of that deal was just a PR exercise anyway?
Umm, you're going to summarize litigation threats in an effort to gather royalties from Linux users as Public Relations? What the fuck.
But back to the topic in hand. If your entire reason to avoid Mono is because you might decide to go off and use another product (Silverlight), then surely you should be arguing against using Silverlight and leave Mono alone.
I spent several paragraphs defending my reasoning. You have summarily ignored them with a stupid car to tank analogy.
Is there an easy upgrade path from a car to a tank? No. Is there any evidence that people will likely upgrade from a car to a tank? No. Do people who adopt Mono often adopt other technologies like Silverlight? Yes, just look at the Mono team itself, headed up by Miguel. People often point to Moonlight when talking about Silverlight and being cross-platform.
Does Microsoft have a history of playing the cross-platform game, and then dropping it once they achieve dominance? Yes. Is Microsoft a convicted, abusive monopoly? Yes. Have they lost some of their dominance and are trying to gain it back by dabbling in open standards? Yes. Have they done this before? Yes.
When has Microsoft ever made a promise not to sue for patent infringement about a public, free licence, and then turned around and sued anyway?
I never said they did or will. I said, "anybody who believes in open standards should stay away from Mono. If you follow Microsoft's lead you will get burned."
The problem is by following Microsoft's lead, you'll put them in a position of power. People will be more inclined to adopt the non-Community Promise stuff like Silverlight, because people like Miguel have decided to endorse it.
Microsoft already has a patent deal with Novell and it's distribution of Linux. Don't want to be sued by Microsoft for using Linux? Buy Novell and pay royalties to Microsoft. This has already happened. It's old news.
Later on, if Silverlight is adopted by the web as a whole, in part because it is "cross-platform", then they can just pull the plug on Linux. New versions will be tied to Windows. The idea of being cross-platform will be quietly dropped.
This already happened with IE. It used to be available to Linux, back when it first came out and they were competing with Netscape, which was cross-platform. IE ended up dominating Netscape and the Linux version was dropped.
See, I don't just speak from blind hatred. I speak from experience and a hatred of monopolies. I shouldn't have to pay Microsoft a royalty to use a computer. The industry is slowly chipping away at Microsoft's monopoly. It's taken over ten years to get this far. Back in 1999 something like 98% of people browsed the web with IE. Apple was near death. Linux had almost no presence on the desktop.
Now Windows is still strong on the desktop, but not nearly as much. With the exception of laptops, they're failing almost completely in mobile. Firefox has made large gains on the Web. A computer industry not dominated by Microsoft actually seems possible.
Now they're making a push with .NET and Silverlight to try and get it back. Making C# and parts of .NET open is just a lever to gain adoption. Microsoft has, and always will, use their technologies to reinforce their desktop monopoly. If you believe in open standards, then you should not follow Microsoft's lead.
I'm a big Microsoft-hater, but I don't really see how Silverlight is any worse than Flash, so I can't hate on it too much.
The difference is that Microsoft has a near monopoly on the desktop, and everything they do revolves around reinforcing it.
For Microsoft, Mono provides a legitimacy for their language to show that it really is cross platform, open standard.
Yes, and this is why anybody who believes in open standards should stay away from Mono. If you follow Microsoft's lead you will get burned.
It would be a public relations nightmare if they did an about face on this.
They won't give a shit once they get beyond the adoption stage. They'll just tell everybody to license their intellectual property that they invested in. You're not a communist, are you? Don't they deserve to get paid?
The general public won't be able to make the distinction between technology that is covered by the Microsoft Community Promise Agreement and the parts that is not.
Exactly. First you swallow the open parts, then you eat the rest, and finally you're locked in.
I didn't buy a PS2 until FFXII came out
Do you mean Final Fantasy X? That was the first one on the PS2. That and GTA3 sold me on the platform. Pretty amazing stuff for 2001.
The one labeled Argonne National Laboratory raises a security eyebrow.
Dignity? Ethics?
More likely it would take too much work, and the chance of success is low. For every hit game, you've got countless games that languish. How many developers would turn down a sure thing, even if it's a cheesy remake of old ideas? Not many, I bet.
Given Facebook has all the hallmarks of being the next AOL
The comparison with AOL is just stupid. AOL was making tons of money on the dial-up crowd, but broadband through cable, DSL, and fiber optics was ramping up rapidly at the height of their success. Also, they were offering an expensive service in a commodity market. It didn't take a genius to see that they had a problem.
Facebook's value is in the network effect. It may fail to the latest and greatest social network site, it may not. What concrete signal do you have that it will fail? A pundit that got some Slashdot coverage doesn't count.
I also can respect that he turned around Apple Computer and thanks to that we have more choice in desktop and mobile devices now.
So the choice is between commodity-evil and shiny-evil?
OK, that's a bit unfair. I think the iPhone opened up a new market. Surely that's worth a body part or two. Hey Steve, what do you need now?
Pain is entirely the creation of a nervous system, and suffering is the creation of memory of pain.
How do you know?
they have no ability to feel pain, and certainly no ability to suffer.
How do you know?
If you're going to talk about considered and defended arguments, don't drop shallow insults like "empty suit" and "Obama's just a jaw wagging in time to a teleprompter".
[Fry ate an alien mummy thinking it was jerky] "My God, this is an outrage! I was going to eat that mummy."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756882/quotes
I want to add one thing, though. It's not just the President:
"Both houses of Congress denied Obama's funding requests to shut down Guantanamo and relocate the most dangerous prisoners to the United States. The vote in the Senate was 90-6; all but a half-dozen Democrats opposed their own President. That is why I was optimistic, but only cautiously so."
http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/its-free-blog/2010/dec/02/leaked-cables-demonstrate-guantanamo-dilemma/
I did some research into this, and I agree with your assessment.
However, there was a similar effect, in a way: after he got the award, he proceeded to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the US still hasn't pulled out of either.
He continued the war in Iraq as he campaigned on. He pulled out the majority of troops but left a contingent. He also said he would ramp up the war in Afghanistan. The problem isn't with Obama, the problem is with the idiots who gave him a Peace Prize for doing absolutely nothing. It's too bad Obama didn't just refuse the prize.
In addition, he reneged on his campaign promise to close Guantanamo.
Yes, he did. The cable Wikileaks showed that they were having trouble getting countries to accept them. A failure is still a failure, but I think they genuinely would like to close it and are trying.
So I guess after he got the Peace Prize, without having actually done anything to earn it, he decided not to even bother doing anything to promote peace.
That's bullshit. He's tried to promote peace between Israel and Palestinians. He's tried the whole outreach to Muslims thing. He's been working with Russia and trying to be less antagonist towards them. However, anybody who thinks he was going to change the basics of his foreign policy because some fools in Norway gave him a prize he didn't deserve is also a fool.
What needs to happen is you need to demand that your ISP provide you with a real IPv6 address on their network or be willing to find another ISP who is. It does not take many lost customers for ISPs to get a clue and get serious about deployment.
The problem is many home consumers don't have a choice over an ISP, and even if they did, are clueless about IPv6, and even if they aren't, don't have a practical benefit to demand an IPv6 address. Yes, if everybody collectively moved to IPv6, it would be great, but each individual looks at the situation and sees no benefit.
For those that don't get the joke:
The Incredible Hulk Opening Theme
But the companies mentioned don't pay dividends, don't *need* to acquire companies (and can afford to do so anyways and still operate on cash), and don't *need* credit if they have cash to spend. Remember the person I responded to said "no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have". It just isn't true.
The Roman Empire didn't have to expand its economy per se, it had to keep attacking more countries to plunder them.
I can't really see the difference. It had to keep on expanding, either through growth or plunder. How is it any different than, for example, the British Opium Wars with China, the Nixon Shock, the huge debts the United States is racking up with China, or if I'm really cynical, war with Iraq to keep oil trading in American dollars?
I agree with the Anonymous Coward. Bashing Intel for a 1994 flaw? Come on. It's 16 years later.
By the way, it's not like AMD never makes mistakes.
The primary goal is often to maintain a credit line while the problems are resolved (because no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have.)
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Large companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple have billions in cash reserves, and can probably operate for a year or two by spending just cash.
Imperial Rome almost at no point actually had a sustainable economy per se. It was a robber economy, simply put. They _had_ to keep expanding and plundering new countries, even to keep paying their legions.
Isn't this the same of almost every currency that has been put into existence? We keep have to repaying the always inflating currency debt by exponentially expanding our economy.
You have a very poor imagination and, apparently, no knowledge of even the last 100 years of history.