after looking at the mod points being awarded in this sequence, it is very obvious that there are a number of MS type people around here. There is a severe lack of logic going on.
I'll take the bait.
What is an "MS type" person? I have three machines in my office, all of which run Mac OS X. I use Linux and BSD servers to run my business. The only MS software I've ever owned is Office.
I'm not going to stop using Linux just because of these shennanegans, but if I were running a Fortune 500 company and I didn't want to get embroiled in a costly and profit-disrupting legal battle with SCO, I might very well look at holding off on any new Linux deployments.
If you run a company, your job is to make sure the company makes money and provides return to stockholders. Championing a technology for its own sake is ludicrous if you're an O-level person in a company. Linux has made inroads in the corporate world by providing a better return on investment than the alternatives. ROI drops radically when you have to spend money on legal fees just to use a given technology.
Sure, SCO is using FUD to disrupt the Linux market. But the fact remains that FUD is very powerful when backed by high-powered lawyers and a bankroll.
The corporate backers of GNU/Linux (notably IBM, which is the real target of all this tomfoolery) need to get off their asses and go on the offensive. Unfortunately in the technology world, how you spin your side of things to the press is just as important as the real facts. IBM may have the facts on their side, but they are losing the PR battle. If IBM continues to loose the PR battle, then Linux will really take it in the shins.
What typical/. crap." I suppose you actually mean, "What typical non-blunte/. crap."
In spite of the belligerent tone, your post did make me look into InterTrust in more detail. They may not be the weasels I made them out to be in my original post. However, the fact that they were engaged in DRM research doesn't mean that Microsoft's DRM implementation is at all related.
I do stand by my statement that the very tactics Microsoft has used over the years have helped create this poisonous business climate, but I suppose we'll have to wait until all the evidence is out to see if InterTrust has a viable claim.
I heartily agree with you about Microsoft's DRM being a Bad Thing.
However, my gut feeling is that Microsoft will simply funnel money to the weasels so as to shut them up. They'll continue to push DRM as long as they see profit in it. After all, it is never about the technology approach with them. They'll use whatever technological approach is most convenient, which means they'll either pay off the weasels or they'll buy competing technology from someone else, and shift their approach accordingly.
You can do that sort of thing when you have more money than God.
I've never liked Microsoft or their tactics. But this is nothing more than extortion by weasels who want a slice of the big Microsoft money bag.
We're now seeing the inevitable result of a system wherein the unequal playing field forces companies to do battle in the intellectual property realm rather than in the marketplace. Rather than come to market first with the best products, it's now about building up an intellectual property portfolio and torpedoing whomever surfaces first.
The business climate that Microsoft helped to engender has rebounded back on them with a vengeance. But that doesn't make InterTrust the good guys. They're just slimy opportunists who have elected to go along with the prevailing attitude, which is "Build up a company the old fashioned way? Screw that! Let's sue instead!"
Maybe it doesn't appear in the news because DARPA is *investigating* the potential for applying this as-yet operational technology, so that they can determine if they *might* want to fund experimental projects in the future that *might* lead to some sort of operational military deployment.
Nothing has happened yet. Writing a story about this is like saying that the US is drawing up contingency plans for an evacuation of Liberia. News flash! Military planners have detailed mission plans for a variety of operations in every country on the globe. By the same token, DARPA investigates new technologies all the time, but doesn't necessarily fund research with equal emphasis.
DARPA has nothing to do with whether the Democrats or Republicans are in charge of the government. Just as Colin Powell and hundreds of thousands of career military personnel have served under various Democratic and Republican administrations, the folks at DARPA do their job regardless of who decides what projects get priority.
I'm not thrilled about the direction this country has taken since 9/11 either, but let's not equate this DARPA story with the end of American innocence. Calling Chicken Little on all things military only makes non-Bushites look simplistic and ill-informed.
Don't blame DARPA. Blame your elected officials. More accurately, blame the American public for failing to exercise their democratic responsibilities. Blame those who don't vote, blame those who make excuses about why they don't pay attention to their own government. Blame the fat and happy Americans who wave the flag when we send the boys and girls to Iraq, then are totally shocked that the war isn't truly over.
Or it could be that they're refining it based on feedback and their own ongoing development. It's almost impossible to get something right the first time, particularly in software development.
Justin Timberlake feels that because of the success of his albums, he's "one of the really great musical artists of all time, right up there with Tupak and the Beetles."
The Anaheim Angels general manager uttered this statement: "This is a dynasty that cannot, and will not ever lose. We've won the Series once, and our destiny is to continue winning it every single year from now until baseball as we know it ceases to exist."
Lawrence "Bull in a China Shop" Ellison has declared, "Only Oracle had the foresight to retain market share in the face of determined opposition. Our share of the market continues to rise. In fact, it now stands at just over 107%."
Heh heh! Look at the clueless "tech writer". Heh heh!
People, the guy writes for the New Zealand News, not Nework Computing. His audience is people who want to be informed about technology without being made to feel stupid about it.
The use of quotes is one technique to introduce terms in a way that acknowledges that the terms might be new to Windows users. The author wrote, "If you don't know how to defrag, you're probably not ready for the Linux experience." Note that he didn't say, "I don't know what defrag means." He wrote it in a way that made readers realize that there is some technical stuff going on with a Linux installation that might be new to them.
While it's funny to think that there are people out there who don't know how to defrag a disc or set up dual booting, or select the right distribution for their needs, the truth is that if Linux is going to penetrate the skulls of Joe and Joan Public, they'll need gentle introductions like the one provided by Mr. Barton.
I love to ride bicycles. But I hate going into a bike shop where the people who work their look down their nose at me simply because I don't shave my legs and ride a Lightspeed. If you've ever been in a bike shop like that, you know what it's like to be a Windows user confronted by sneering Linux know-it-alls. The "you're an idiot" mentality of so many Linux users is the opposite of true evangelism.
Chris Barton has the right approach to introducing Windows users to Linux in a non-threatening way. Kudos to the man.
anyone higher than brigade levels has no fucking clue what a battalion needs, and even then they don't really know.
Amen to that. When I was an Infantry officer I encountered the same thing. I figured, "Hey, in the *real* world of Corporate America, things must be more efficient. After all, since everyone is trying to save or make money, nobody will put up with this sort of wasteful bullshit. There are no Mad Minutes in Corporate America. There's no federal accounting that forces you to spend it or loose it.
Then I started working in Corporate America, and found out that I was dead-wrong. Nobody literally gets on the firing line to blow off ammo before the fiscal year ends, but I've seen so many instances of ass-covering, ego driven "strategies" and just complete incompetence out here in the private sector. In fact, I've come to realize that while the Army's procurement system does suck ass through a straw, in many ways the overall efficiency of the Army (at least at the unit level) is far greater than that of most corporations.
The military periodically gets nailed for million-dollar hammer episodes and the like, but believe me, staggering incompetence is not the exclusive domain of Uncle Sam.
At least in its current incarnation, cellular technology is great for phones, but while looking up movie times on the Web using a cellphone is all well and good, WiFi lets me do a lot more. WiFi lets me leverage the full power of my computer, which is still a far better tool for using the Internet than a cell phone.
The cell phone is an adaptation of a device that was originally intended for voice communication, and no matter what Nokia, Sony/Ericcson, et. al. do, it's still a fish riding a bicycle. Or, to use a Star Trek metaphor, cell devices are communicators and WiFi devices are tricorders.
Before the Apple Music Store proved that the music industry and online distributors could provide something useful to customers, KaZaa and their partners in file-swapping were the only game in town.
Now the RIAA and MPAA have seen an alternate model that actually works. KaZaA is making their bid now because they know that Apple, Microsoft, and a host of other players are jumping into online distribution with both feet.
It was easy to be the poster child for disgruntled consumers before the music industry made the deal with Apple. Hell, KaZaA could get away with all kinds of bullshit that nobody would put up with from an established software company.
KaZaA's moment of maximum impact on the industry has already been passed. They're scrambling to be relevant in an industry that is finally moving into the future.
will the "Will Linux Pass Apple on the Desktop?" question become the standard geek flamebait, replacing the antiquated, "Will Apple survive?" and "Linux is a hobbyist's OS, isn't it?"
Clue - Sun and Apple are targeting completely different markets.
That's what Sun used to think about Intel. I'm not saying that Apple is going after Sun's market right now, but Sun's smug attitude hasn't hindered Intel's quest to bury them in the server market.
If you're on top of the market and you assume that nobody has plans to unseat you, sooner or later you'll get a rude wake up call to reality.
Hmm... methinks your handle "PhysicsGenius" gives the lie to your comment. My feeling, based on a lot of up-close examination of web usability tests, is that your emphasis on "just give me the data" is not shared by the majority of Web users.;-)
But seriously, the web design community has learned a lot over the years about usability. Ultimately the issue for the *real* general public is that they want sites that look good, are easy to navigate, and provide them with helpful information and/or transactional capability.
Users do like "dynamic" things, as long as they're applied in a way that doesn't detract from the user experience. Your unattributed comment about 95% of bandwidth being "wasted" is without a frame of reference. Wasted in what sense? If you mean that there are meaningless graphics and user interface elements, you're presupposing that every viewer would stick with a site that isn't visually appealing. Give us a link so we can find out the basis of this 95% figure.
I agree that many sites suffer from hopeless bloat, but I'm not sure that you understand how web development at large organizations works. Everyone has their paws on the "web effort", and it takes Herculean effort to get basic things like thorough architecture, usability testing and the like. It's maddening as hell when you're the person who is supposed to put the lipstick on the pig.
Remember that the web development community has come along way over the past few years. If you look at the most successful commercial sites (Amazon, eBay, etc.) you'll see that in general they are able to balance marketing and advertising needs with highly useful interfaces.
Finally, by grouping Java, Flash, Javascript and CSS in one category, you're betraying an ignorance of which technologies cause bloat, and which can relieve it. Well-applied XHTML and CSS looks better and loads faster than the old-school HTML that you so love.
"... considerably more evil than Microsoft..."
on
iBox Episode 2
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· Score: 1
Uhhh...
Microsoft has been legally found to be a monopoly. "Fine," say you. "That doesn't make them evil."
If you haven't been paying attention, there are a few other things they've done that put them beyond the category of aggressive competitors. For example:
You may think Apple, Sun, Red Hat, et. al. engage in practices that sometimes benefit themselves over the needs of their users. But it is one thing for a company to make an occasional mistake in the attempt to profit, and another thing entirely to have a corporate culture of complete arrogance, unfettered greed, and deceit.
It'll give the "tech analysts" something to get excited about besides Oracle v. PeopleSoft and Microsoft v. World.
Let's all fake them out by posting a whole bunch of comments about warchalking. I got a great laugh out of how the big media reported that one the first time around.
I think it would be quite interesting to see how many of the people bitching about the economy actually vote every year (not just every four years, but in the local and state elections).
How many Americans know who represents them at the state level? How many Americans know who represents them in the US House and Senate?
GenXers (and I am one) often characterize the Internet economy as something that was spawned wholly by free enterprise. That was fine with people in the boom, but now everyone is yelping that big business is bad. The truth is, business never operates in a vacuum.
Get involved in politics. Learn the issues. Vote, and encourage others to vote. If you want a society (and by extension an economy) that works, you have to make it yourself.
Will it deter conspiracy "theorists" ?
on
Roswell Declassified
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Uh.. no.
Conspiracy theories are not really theories, in that they can never be disproved. The theory that the earth is flat can be disproved; the theory that aliens have infiltrated the highest levels of government can't be disproved.
Conspiracy theory is a belief system, and as such is highly resistant to facts.
I agree with you that it's not so easy to confuse Unix with BSD, OS X, Linux, or whatever. However, the term Unix does get thrown around quite a bit, and this is the first time I've heard of anyone getting hammered for it.
It may be too little, too late for the Open Group, if Apple can provide many examples of Unix in common (not specific to POSIX compliance) parlance.
Personally I think the timing of all this is a bit bizarre. To add to it, Apple could have avoided a lot of hassle by working with the Open Group to ensure compliance.
Hey, the economy still sucks, but at least the lawyers are busy.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, areas in which Microsoft has repeatedly trounced the competition in unbiased tests!
You can set your own hours! Work over the phone! Pay no money up front! Buy from the safety of your own home! Live the life you've always dreamed of!
Herbal viagra has nothing on this get rich quick scheme. Where do I sign up? :-P
I'll take the bait.
What is an "MS type" person? I have three machines in my office, all of which run Mac OS X. I use Linux and BSD servers to run my business. The only MS software I've ever owned is Office.
I'm not going to stop using Linux just because of these shennanegans, but if I were running a Fortune 500 company and I didn't want to get embroiled in a costly and profit-disrupting legal battle with SCO, I might very well look at holding off on any new Linux deployments.
So tell me about the lack of logic in that, AC.
If you run a company, your job is to make sure the company makes money and provides return to stockholders. Championing a technology for its own sake is ludicrous if you're an O-level person in a company. Linux has made inroads in the corporate world by providing a better return on investment than the alternatives. ROI drops radically when you have to spend money on legal fees just to use a given technology.
Sure, SCO is using FUD to disrupt the Linux market. But the fact remains that FUD is very powerful when backed by high-powered lawyers and a bankroll.
The corporate backers of GNU/Linux (notably IBM, which is the real target of all this tomfoolery) need to get off their asses and go on the offensive. Unfortunately in the technology world, how you spin your side of things to the press is just as important as the real facts. IBM may have the facts on their side, but they are losing the PR battle. If IBM continues to loose the PR battle, then Linux will really take it in the shins.
In spite of the belligerent tone, your post did make me look into InterTrust in more detail. They may not be the weasels I made them out to be in my original post. However, the fact that they were engaged in DRM research doesn't mean that Microsoft's DRM implementation is at all related.
I do stand by my statement that the very tactics Microsoft has used over the years have helped create this poisonous business climate, but I suppose we'll have to wait until all the evidence is out to see if InterTrust has a viable claim.
However, my gut feeling is that Microsoft will simply funnel money to the weasels so as to shut them up. They'll continue to push DRM as long as they see profit in it. After all, it is never about the technology approach with them. They'll use whatever technological approach is most convenient, which means they'll either pay off the weasels or they'll buy competing technology from someone else, and shift their approach accordingly.
You can do that sort of thing when you have more money than God.
We're now seeing the inevitable result of a system wherein the unequal playing field forces companies to do battle in the intellectual property realm rather than in the marketplace. Rather than come to market first with the best products, it's now about building up an intellectual property portfolio and torpedoing whomever surfaces first.
The business climate that Microsoft helped to engender has rebounded back on them with a vengeance. But that doesn't make InterTrust the good guys. They're just slimy opportunists who have elected to go along with the prevailing attitude, which is "Build up a company the old fashioned way? Screw that! Let's sue instead!"
Nothing has happened yet. Writing a story about this is like saying that the US is drawing up contingency plans for an evacuation of Liberia. News flash! Military planners have detailed mission plans for a variety of operations in every country on the globe. By the same token, DARPA investigates new technologies all the time, but doesn't necessarily fund research with equal emphasis.
DARPA has nothing to do with whether the Democrats or Republicans are in charge of the government. Just as Colin Powell and hundreds of thousands of career military personnel have served under various Democratic and Republican administrations, the folks at DARPA do their job regardless of who decides what projects get priority.
I'm not thrilled about the direction this country has taken since 9/11 either, but let's not equate this DARPA story with the end of American innocence. Calling Chicken Little on all things military only makes non-Bushites look simplistic and ill-informed.
Don't blame DARPA. Blame your elected officials. More accurately, blame the American public for failing to exercise their democratic responsibilities. Blame those who don't vote, blame those who make excuses about why they don't pay attention to their own government. Blame the fat and happy Americans who wave the flag when we send the boys and girls to Iraq, then are totally shocked that the war isn't truly over.
The Anaheim Angels general manager uttered this statement: "This is a dynasty that cannot, and will not ever lose. We've won the Series once, and our destiny is to continue winning it every single year from now until baseball as we know it ceases to exist."
Lawrence "Bull in a China Shop" Ellison has declared, "Only Oracle had the foresight to retain market share in the face of determined opposition. Our share of the market continues to rise. In fact, it now stands at just over 107%."
People, the guy writes for the New Zealand News, not Nework Computing. His audience is people who want to be informed about technology without being made to feel stupid about it.
The use of quotes is one technique to introduce terms in a way that acknowledges that the terms might be new to Windows users. The author wrote, "If you don't know how to defrag, you're probably not ready for the Linux experience." Note that he didn't say, "I don't know what defrag means." He wrote it in a way that made readers realize that there is some technical stuff going on with a Linux installation that might be new to them.
While it's funny to think that there are people out there who don't know how to defrag a disc or set up dual booting, or select the right distribution for their needs, the truth is that if Linux is going to penetrate the skulls of Joe and Joan Public, they'll need gentle introductions like the one provided by Mr. Barton.
I love to ride bicycles. But I hate going into a bike shop where the people who work their look down their nose at me simply because I don't shave my legs and ride a Lightspeed. If you've ever been in a bike shop like that, you know what it's like to be a Windows user confronted by sneering Linux know-it-alls. The "you're an idiot" mentality of so many Linux users is the opposite of true evangelism.
Chris Barton has the right approach to introducing Windows users to Linux in a non-threatening way. Kudos to the man.
Amen to that. When I was an Infantry officer I encountered the same thing. I figured, "Hey, in the *real* world of Corporate America, things must be more efficient. After all, since everyone is trying to save or make money, nobody will put up with this sort of wasteful bullshit. There are no Mad Minutes in Corporate America. There's no federal accounting that forces you to spend it or loose it.
Then I started working in Corporate America, and found out that I was dead-wrong. Nobody literally gets on the firing line to blow off ammo before the fiscal year ends, but I've seen so many instances of ass-covering, ego driven "strategies" and just complete incompetence out here in the private sector. In fact, I've come to realize that while the Army's procurement system does suck ass through a straw, in many ways the overall efficiency of the Army (at least at the unit level) is far greater than that of most corporations.
The military periodically gets nailed for million-dollar hammer episodes and the like, but believe me, staggering incompetence is not the exclusive domain of Uncle Sam.
The cell phone is an adaptation of a device that was originally intended for voice communication, and no matter what Nokia, Sony/Ericcson, et. al. do, it's still a fish riding a bicycle. Or, to use a Star Trek metaphor, cell devices are communicators and WiFi devices are tricorders.
Gimme the WiFi!
Now the RIAA and MPAA have seen an alternate model that actually works. KaZaA is making their bid now because they know that Apple, Microsoft, and a host of other players are jumping into online distribution with both feet.
It was easy to be the poster child for disgruntled consumers before the music industry made the deal with Apple. Hell, KaZaA could get away with all kinds of bullshit that nobody would put up with from an established software company.
KaZaA's moment of maximum impact on the industry has already been passed. They're scrambling to be relevant in an industry that is finally moving into the future.
That's what Sun used to think about Intel. I'm not saying that Apple is going after Sun's market right now, but Sun's smug attitude hasn't hindered Intel's quest to bury them in the server market.
If you're on top of the market and you assume that nobody has plans to unseat you, sooner or later you'll get a rude wake up call to reality.
But seriously, the web design community has learned a lot over the years about usability. Ultimately the issue for the *real* general public is that they want sites that look good, are easy to navigate, and provide them with helpful information and/or transactional capability.
Users do like "dynamic" things, as long as they're applied in a way that doesn't detract from the user experience. Your unattributed comment about 95% of bandwidth being "wasted" is without a frame of reference. Wasted in what sense? If you mean that there are meaningless graphics and user interface elements, you're presupposing that every viewer would stick with a site that isn't visually appealing. Give us a link so we can find out the basis of this 95% figure.
I agree that many sites suffer from hopeless bloat, but I'm not sure that you understand how web development at large organizations works. Everyone has their paws on the "web effort", and it takes Herculean effort to get basic things like thorough architecture, usability testing and the like. It's maddening as hell when you're the person who is supposed to put the lipstick on the pig.
Remember that the web development community has come along way over the past few years. If you look at the most successful commercial sites (Amazon, eBay, etc.) you'll see that in general they are able to balance marketing and advertising needs with highly useful interfaces.
Finally, by grouping Java, Flash, Javascript and CSS in one category, you're betraying an ignorance of which technologies cause bloat, and which can relieve it. Well-applied XHTML and CSS looks better and loads faster than the old-school HTML that you so love.
Microsoft has been legally found to be a monopoly. "Fine," say you. "That doesn't make them evil."
If you haven't been paying attention, there are a few other things they've done that put them beyond the category of aggressive competitors. For example:
- They committed perjury by faking video testimony.
- They're still under investigation in the EU for displaying a pattern of illegal monopoly protection.
- They've done quite a few other things that could qualify as nasty.
You may think Apple, Sun, Red Hat, et. al. engage in practices that sometimes benefit themselves over the needs of their users. But it is one thing for a company to make an occasional mistake in the attempt to profit, and another thing entirely to have a corporate culture of complete arrogance, unfettered greed, and deceit.All companies are not the same.
Let's all fake them out by posting a whole bunch of comments about warchalking. I got a great laugh out of how the big media reported that one the first time around.
They were fooled once; they can be fooled again!
How many Americans know who represents them at the state level? How many Americans know who represents them in the US House and Senate?
GenXers (and I am one) often characterize the Internet economy as something that was spawned wholly by free enterprise. That was fine with people in the boom, but now everyone is yelping that big business is bad. The truth is, business never operates in a vacuum.
Get involved in politics. Learn the issues. Vote, and encourage others to vote. If you want a society (and by extension an economy) that works, you have to make it yourself.
Conspiracy theories are not really theories, in that they can never be disproved. The theory that the earth is flat can be disproved; the theory that aliens have infiltrated the highest levels of government can't be disproved.
Conspiracy theory is a belief system, and as such is highly resistant to facts.
Now who, I wonder, would be interested in smearing the "hydrogen economy" concept. Hmm.. I'm drawing a blank... .
I agree with you that it's not so easy to confuse Unix with BSD, OS X, Linux, or whatever. However, the term Unix does get thrown around quite a bit, and this is the first time I've heard of anyone getting hammered for it.
It may be too little, too late for the Open Group, if Apple can provide many examples of Unix in common (not specific to POSIX compliance) parlance.
Personally I think the timing of all this is a bit bizarre. To add to it, Apple could have avoided a lot of hassle by working with the Open Group to ensure compliance.
Hey, the economy still sucks, but at least the lawyers are busy. ;-)