I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
But then virtually every software platform vendor is a monopolist. At best, you need some new rules to govern platform builders (OSs, RDBMSs, etc.). Calling each one a monopoly isn't going to be very constructive in the long run.
I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
But then virtually every software platform vendor is a monopolist. At best, you need some new rules to govern platform builders (OSs, RDBMSs, etc.). Calling each one a monopoly isn't going to be very constructive in the long run.
Also, the economic definition of a monopoly is that it can raise prices at will
So could any RDBMS vendor - the cost of switching systems is so prohibitive, most users would gladly pay $100 more than switch, even if the cost was unjustifiable.
So does that mean that Informix and Sybase are both monopolists?
Your rules don't apply to software, where any installed software has a stickiness, especially if apps have been built around it.
Example:A RDBMS vendor who has 1% market share can change prices at will for a present customer that has built a number of apps based on that RDBMS - the customer simply cannot afford to reeengineer the code. So could any vendor. So are they all monopolisits?
Arrghh! Why do people insist on treating this as if it were settled and byond debate?
Microsoft is NOT A MONOPOLY. Look at any graph of OS use - Microsoft has competition in every segment. In the server OS segment it wasn't even the fastest growing product this year.
Microsoft abuses contracts, attempts to impose its will where it shouldn't and uses some questionable bundling practices. But these are NOT tantamount to a monopoly.
Please people, we just make ourselves look silly when we believe our own BS and throw around terms like this as if they were resolved historical facts.
Really. If Microsoft can get people to fall for it, then why not?
Honestly folks, every piece of software is a fix, upgrade, or amendment to something that has come before, so I don't really see a logical reason why a pricetag can't be put on the upgrade.
There were no claims that the original piece of software was defect free, and no one is claiming that users must purchase the upgrade.
I fervently disagree that the government must "do" something about this as other knee-jerk responses above have stated. Software vendors do this all the time. Database vendors, for example, typically roll out.x versions of software that mainly contain fixes, and charge for it.
KDE and GNOME are shells. Just like Windows/386 (remember that?). Meaning only a few apps are compliant.
The MacOS has an interface.
EVERY application on the Mac conforms to and uses the interface in some way. Heck, even Windows has better coverage.
I'm not picking on KDE and GNOME just because they are late to the game and have not picked up steam - I'm saying that until there is one pervasive standard that eveyone can agree upon, you can forget any notion of a pervasive GUI.
No one in the real world wants to make the distinction between KBiff and GBiff. It might be entertaining to you, but its a hassle for people who want to get things done.
Hmmm, ever worked at a startup? You barely have time to go to the john, let alone go on a training expedition.
Maybe if you work at IBM they can float the time to send off to train. At a small company, you better produce within 30 minutes or you should be out the door so as to not hinder other programmers.
A small company should not be altruistic. Focus your few resources on what you need to do to stay alive. If your programmers are inadequate - either get more or replace them. Sending them off to waste away days in the Mozilla source tree is simply ridiculous, especially for a small company.
I really think your boss is whitless if he directs your efforts at mozilla thinking it will get your homepage to download faster. Why not help people dig ditches for fiber optic cable while you're at it? Thats probably an even better ass-backeards way to improve bandwith.
A better approach is to put your html on a diet. There are a number of ways to do this, but the first and best is to actually understand how tables work. Most users nest tables where creating cells is more apporpriate.
This effort would most likely lead to better results for your company.
Having a few concentrated, talented developers, is better than having a million semi-witless volunteers. And guess what, boys and girls, is the best way to conetrate a group of engineers? Thats right kids - pay them and put them in the same building. Oops, I forgot, corporations aren't in style with the/. crowd, are they?
No one really wants to volunteer for what is perceived to be a corporate effort at sloshing through a cruft forest. Its just not fun!
Documentation and tools are as important as code. This is probably obvious to a lot of engineers working on distributed projects.
Like it or lump it, Mozilla's biggest problem is that their competition actually has out right now something that may be superior to most of what they are still building. Like it or lump it, IE is pretty slick.
are you just trying to incite a language war with your unqualified comment?
Its easy to qualify - Java sells books. Its impact on mainstream programming has been far less significant than O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Prentice-Hall and other prublishers would have you believe.
Publishers love nothing more than a whiz-bang technology that floats almost entirely on hype alone.
And don't quote me the number of supposed Java programmers out there - the number quoted is typically the number of downloads of the JDK recorded at Sun. You know and I know that number is menaningless.
If you want to take a piece of land, you have to occupy it with men on the ground.
The U.S. is learning that air campaigns have limited usefulness, although it is currently the safest way to punish an opponent (if not entirely effective).
Reading this paper was a very interesting experience. Its a wake-up call with some obvious clues.
Firstly, open source projects don't happen unless people contribute.
Secondly, no one really wants to spend their free time digging through cruft in order to figure out how to contribute. Most developers appear to prefera clean slate to cruft. JWZ seems to think that this was a mitigating factor to getting more outside help on Mozilla.
I can't say any of this astounds me - I program for a living, and its only fun some of the time. Other times its a pain in the rump - its work. Most people don't want to dig through mountains of cruft pro bono, and I can't say I blame them.
When I was a student the quoted stat was 1 in 3. You say 1 in 6. Thats a very large margin of error. How could both be right?
This is why I am leary of these absurd crime statisitcs. Most of them lump in a high number of unreported criminal activity simply because they "assume" its happening even if it isn't reported.
I obviously believe violence against women is morally reprehensible. I also believe that those statistics are generated to serve a need, or more typically, a lobbying group.
Of course it goes without saying that anyone should be careful about meeting anyone whose origins and crudentials are dubious.
That said, I hardly doubt that a posting on/. is sufficient to determine guilt in such a serious matter.
I am sorry your friend was hurt, but like the law, I must remain dispassionate. If you simply came here to vent or fish for sympathy, you'll probably feel satisfied. If you want me to tell you who is guilty and who is innocent - that is left to the legal system.
I'm not sure what compelled you to post this - it really is cheap button-pushing.
On a tangent, I have to say that any virus that strikes only Outlook users must be seen as beneficial in the global sense.
Only Microsoft could have taken a task as simple (by design!) as reading e-mail and evolve it into a beast that takes at least 8 MB of memory when running. Strangely enough, even Microsoft's own Outlook Express tool is far lighter and friendlier, without making you feel like you're firing up Word just to read an email.
"Less is More" evidently isn't a design addage that is used much at Microsoft.
The open source community insists on recasting tools and libraries while avoiding at all costs the task of building applications people want and need.
How many times can you rewrite a windowing toolkit? Stop right now and work with what you have. Its the trade off most businesses deal with to get some product, any product, off the ground.
Linux has plenty of great options without having to squander resources like this - I expect developer interest to be about zilch anyway, but thats my 2 cents.
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I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
But then virtually every software platform vendor is a monopolist. At best, you need some new rules to govern platform builders (OSs, RDBMSs, etc.). Calling each one a monopoly isn't going to be very constructive in the long run.
I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
But then virtually every software platform vendor is a monopolist. At best, you need some new rules to govern platform builders (OSs, RDBMSs, etc.). Calling each one a monopoly isn't going to be very constructive in the long run.
Also, the economic definition of a monopoly is that it can raise prices at will
So could any RDBMS vendor - the cost of switching systems is so prohibitive, most users would gladly pay $100 more than switch, even if the cost was unjustifiable.
So does that mean that Informix and Sybase are both monopolists?
Your rules don't apply to software, where any installed software has a stickiness, especially if apps have been built around it.
Example:A RDBMS vendor who has 1% market share can change prices at will for a present customer that has built a number of apps based on that RDBMS - the customer simply cannot afford to reeengineer the code. So could any vendor. So are they all monopolisits?
If they didn't have monopoly status
Arrghh! Why do people insist on treating this as if it were settled and byond debate?
Microsoft is NOT A MONOPOLY. Look at any graph of OS use - Microsoft has competition in every segment. In the server OS segment it wasn't even the fastest growing product this year.
Microsoft abuses contracts, attempts to impose its will where it shouldn't and uses some questionable bundling practices. But these are NOT tantamount to a monopoly.
Please people, we just make ourselves look silly when we believe our own BS and throw around terms like this as if they were resolved historical facts.
Okay, okay. I used to think that Justice needed something better to do than try to break up a company like Microsoft.
.x releases that mainly contain bug fixes (and charge for them)?
Then how about Oracle, IBM, Sybase, Sun, Informix, etc. who release
I just wish there was some *usuable* competitive OS
If you don't want to use Linux, the MacOS is a passable (not preferrable) alternative to win95/98.
You're free to be as stupid as you want to be.
.x versions of software that mainly contain fixes, and charge for it.
Really. If Microsoft can get people to fall for it, then why not?
Honestly folks, every piece of software is a fix, upgrade, or amendment to something that has come before, so I don't really see a logical reason why a pricetag can't be put on the upgrade.
There were no claims that the original piece of software was defect free, and no one is claiming that users must purchase the upgrade.
I fervently disagree that the government must "do" something about this as other knee-jerk responses above have stated. Software vendors do this all the time. Database vendors, for example, typically roll out
This really isn't that abnormal.
The more toolkits, the fewer the apps that will adopt them. Soon we'll be back to good 'ol Athena.
KDE and GNOME are shells. Just like Windows/386 (remember that?). Meaning only a few apps are compliant.
The MacOS has an interface.
EVERY application on the Mac conforms to and uses the interface in some way. Heck, even Windows has better coverage.
I'm not picking on KDE and GNOME just because they are late to the game and have not picked up steam - I'm saying that until there is one pervasive standard that eveyone can agree upon, you can forget any notion of a pervasive GUI.
No one in the real world wants to make the distinction between KBiff and GBiff. It might be entertaining to you, but its a hassle for people who want to get things done.
And yet microsoft is making money so fast they need to burn it outside to keep it from becoming a fire hazard.
Of all the criticisms I could level against Microsoft, most of them don't have anything to do with money.
Hmmm, ever worked at a startup? You barely have time to go to the john, let alone go on a training expedition.
Maybe if you work at IBM they can float the time to send off to train. At a small company, you better produce within 30 minutes or you should be out the door so as to not hinder other programmers.
Anyway you cut it, its a dumb business move.
A small company should not be altruistic. Focus your few resources on what you need to do to stay alive. If your programmers are inadequate - either get more or replace them. Sending them off to waste away days in the Mozilla source tree is simply ridiculous, especially for a small company.
The market punishes altruism.
I really think your boss is whitless if he directs your efforts at mozilla thinking it will get your homepage to download faster. Why not help people dig ditches for fiber optic cable while you're at it? Thats probably an even better ass-backeards way to improve bandwith.
A better approach is to put your html on a diet.
There are a number of ways to do this, but the first and best is to actually understand how tables work. Most users nest tables where creating cells is more apporpriate.
This effort would most likely lead to better results for your company.
Highlights, in my opinion:
Like it or lump it, Mozilla's biggest problem is that their competition actually has out right now something that may be superior to most of what they are still building. Like it or lump it, IE is pretty slick.
are you just trying to incite a language war with your unqualified comment?
Its easy to qualify - Java sells books. Its impact on mainstream programming has been far less significant than O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Prentice-Hall and other prublishers would have you believe.
Publishers love nothing more than a whiz-bang technology that floats almost entirely on hype alone.
And don't quote me the number of supposed Java programmers out there - the number quoted is typically the number of downloads of the JDK recorded at Sun. You know and I know that number is menaningless.
Its your experts vs. a hunk of black carbon-fiber tailwing on the ground in Yugoslavia.
I'm going with the empirical evidence that says that invisible fighters aren't so invisible.
Which, last time I checked, was a technology largely (well, almost entirely) used to drive book sales...
Unless O'Reilly lets us photocopy books without pause, I can't see any license pertaining to Java making much of a difference for most people.
If you want to take a piece of land, you have to occupy it with men on the ground.
The U.S. is learning that air campaigns have limited usefulness, although it is currently the safest way to punish an opponent (if not entirely effective).
If you want the government to actually be able to go around and make cavalier decisions like that.
JWZ resigns from mozilla
Reading this paper was a very interesting experience. Its a wake-up call with some obvious clues.
Firstly, open source projects don't happen unless people contribute.
Secondly, no one really wants to spend their free time digging through cruft in order to figure out how to contribute. Most developers appear to prefera clean slate to cruft. JWZ seems to think that this was a mitigating factor to getting more outside help on Mozilla.
I can't say any of this astounds me - I program for a living, and its only fun some of the time. Other times its a pain in the rump - its work. Most people don't want to dig through mountains of cruft pro bono, and I can't say I blame them.
Your protest is quite droll. Do phone users get upset thinking that crank callers are giving them a bad name?
It bothers me very little that a detective thinks all internet users are perverts.
When I was a student the quoted stat was 1 in 3. You say 1 in 6. Thats a very large margin of error. How could both be right?
This is why I am leary of these absurd crime statisitcs. Most of them lump in a high number of unreported criminal activity simply because they "assume" its happening even if it isn't reported.
I obviously believe violence against women is morally reprehensible. I also believe that those statistics are generated to serve a need, or more typically, a lobbying group.
Of course it goes without saying that anyone should be careful about meeting anyone whose origins and crudentials are dubious.
/. is sufficient to determine guilt in such a serious matter.
That said, I hardly doubt that a posting on
I am sorry your friend was hurt, but like the law, I must remain dispassionate. If you simply came here to vent or fish for sympathy, you'll probably feel satisfied. If you want me to tell you who is guilty and who is innocent - that is left to the legal system.
I'm not sure what compelled you to post this - it really is cheap button-pushing.
On a tangent, I have to say that any virus that strikes only Outlook users must be seen as beneficial in the global sense.
Only Microsoft could have taken a task as simple (by design!) as reading e-mail and evolve it into a beast that takes at least 8 MB of memory when running. Strangely enough, even Microsoft's own Outlook Express tool is far lighter and friendlier, without making you feel like you're firing up Word just to read an email.
"Less is More" evidently isn't a design addage that is used much at Microsoft.
I can't believe someone is still flogging Hurd. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, blah blah blah - who needs *another* OS?
As for discussions of RMS,ESR,LT,AC, etc - Slashdot is turning into a gossip site. Its rather petty.
It seems that nitpicking the personalities in open source is more important than talking about software. Oh well.
The open source community insists on recasting tools and libraries while avoiding at all costs the task of building applications people want and need.
How many times can you rewrite a windowing toolkit? Stop right now and work with what you have. Its the trade off most businesses deal with to get some product, any product, off the ground.
Linux has plenty of great options without having to squander resources like this - I expect developer interest to be about zilch anyway, but thats my 2 cents.