Back in highschool I made a car stereo for myself using a pentium 133. It took forever to get the infrared receiver working, but the little 4x24 text LCD didn't have drivers at all:-) I wrote them in assembly. Yes, I'm a sad, sad, nerd.
But if you think that's bad, while in an internship during college, I used the name of the company I worked for to make me sound important so I could order samples of various chips. I ordered a 100 MB NAND flash chip, an mp3 decoder (had all the analog->digital stuff built in: booyah!), and a few little stone-age microcontrollers and made an mp3 player from that. It sucked, to be honest, but it's still an accomplishment:-)
To a limited extent. We have to realize that the words we're saying will affect the opinions and actions of others. Given that we have a responsibility to research our stances before persuading others to adopt them by our endorsements.
I'm all about peoples' right to voice their opinions, but if we encourage everyone to speak up before they've really looked at the facts with an objective (as objective as a person can be, of course) eye, we encourage ignorant, rash decisions.
That is, unless that company has been convicted of intentional patent infringements and anticompetitive practices via their own correspondences (which, to ice the cake, they lied about in court). I encourage you to Google the proceedings of the late 90's antitrust proceedings. There is documented evidence of clear-as-day correspondence between MS executives to knife their business "partners" (Sun is an example) in the back, matched with sworn-in-court testimonies otherwise. I'm not trying to undermine you in any way here, but search a bit for that stuff and let me know if anything you find is still questionable in your eyes. I haven't looked up if/. has personal messaging capability, but if it does you're welcome to message me with your findings or just post them in a reply.
If it was just an arbitrary judgement without proof I would also be outraged, but the events in history seemed to line up to the plaintiff's evidence much more than the defendants' testimonies.
if what you say is true, then I think some bussinesses are simply taking a free ride on this, hoping for some pay out at the end of the line. I hadn't thought of that, and I think you're probably right.
I`m somewhat ignorant in the details on this, but could something similiar happen to Apache if their software suddenly caused half the internet to go kaboom because someone found an exploit in their software, does it open them up to being sued because they run most of the web servers? I don't believe so, unless there are some things I don't know about Apache. The thing that draws the distinction in this case is illegal behavior. If someone engages in illegal behavior (such as anticompetitive practices) that directly results in security flaws or damages to the consumer, that's prosecutable. The exact same damage which doesn't result from something illegal isn't. So in Microsoft's case in this situation, they illegally limited people's options to IE. Therefore if IE sucks and their security is forfeit, it's Microsoft's fault for limiting their options to a product that makes them vulnerable.
Or, heaven forbid, I actually gained all of my possessions honestly. Tell me, if someone gains their "private property" by unjustly taking that which should belong to others, isn't it "a completely arbitrary reason" to say "well crap... they did practically steal this, but they got it before we caught them, so ok!"?
If someone wins a bike race by pedaling fastest I completely agree that nobody has the right to take that medal (that "private property") from them. If they win it by throwing a wrench in everyone else's spokes I can't imagine a fair world that would award them a medal.
The idea that just because someone currently owns something they deserve to is Machiavellian ("the ends justify the means") and is the philosophy of bullies, dictators, and all the people that our government should be protecting us from.
But then I'm either poor or a hypocrite, so what do I know?
You're right to be concerned, but I think in this case Microsoft is being punished not for the security vulnerabilities but for the security vulnerabilities that were made mandatory by anticompetitive practices. So... any damages you introduce as the result of illegal activity can be prosecuted, but if it wasn't caused by illegal activity, it probably doesn't fall under the precedent of this case.
Is it the browser they're going after? Or is it the OS itself? Either of which would make no sense since that would basically make every software company liable for any exploits or holes uncovered in their software that would allow people or viruses to sneak through your computer. Not true. It'd make any software company that introduced security flaws as a direct result anticompetitive practices liable. They should be.
I would say that all these people "chose" to use Windows of their own free will, and I know someone in/. will come and tell how their monopoly basically "forces" people to use their products, but in the end - the choice is up to the end-user. My mom doesn't know that Windows isn't built into the hardware of her computer. She doesn't know Windows isn't a processor type. When she buys "a computer" all she knows is she can get a Mac or a PC. The separation of OS from hardware is, to non-geeks, a totally new idea. They have a machine and it gives them pretty pictures. That's a computer.
I hope this case ammounts to nothing in the end, because it could prove to be costly to everyone, not just MS. That's wrong on more levels than I could even try to specify. Anticompetitive practices hurt innovation and progress by stifling better ideas in favor of the current market leader's power. This hinders progress as long as the market leader isn't forced to improve, which doesn't happen without competitors. As long as any single entity (Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Ford, MA-Bell, anyone) has enough power to choke out competition (and willingness to abuse it) by any means other than superior product/price, it hurts everyone but themselves. It astonishes me that anyone would stand up for them.
Windows is the most secure OS out there. No other OS has been tested so much. Testing only helps if bugs are fixed. I'm quite confident that Windows's DRM will be the best out there by your logic, but I'm far (far (far)) from convinced that the same applies to security: they've made their priorities quite clear.
I agree with you for the most part, but there is something to be said for word-of-mouth OS evangelism: something has to make up for the fact that there are 9-digit marketing budgets for (insert commercial OS of your choice here) and barely any for Linux/BSD.
All the Open Source stuff has going for it is word of mouth. Given that, it's a legendary accomplishment that it even managed to grasp the attention of the Big Dogs. Give fanboy asshat some credit here - he may be pissing some people off, but at least he's affecting change.
Hell, when I talk to people that haven't given Linux a shot, they often site that they would, but it doesn't have.... and it's had that feature for ages now, but there was never a 1/2 page ad taken out in their favorite periodical about it.
Just... ick. The funny thing is that this post, encouraging the use of a Microsoft owned standard, occurs in a thread that exemplifies yet another reason we shouldn't. Go foresight.
The consensus seems to be that OSX is the most usable desktop OS, and when I bought my Mac Mini I was psyched to give it a shot.
Ended up bugging the crap out of me. If you want to do anything but the 10 things Apple thinks you want to do, it is like pulling teeth. Try setting up SSH accounts for 10 users, showing hidden files in Finder, etc... it is NOT usable.
I ended up wiping the mini and installing Ubuntu 6.10 instead. I get better eye candy (the cube rules!) with Beryl, faster startup times, sooo much more flexibility. It's just no contest.
"So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing."
You forgot your question mark. Anyway, here's an example: configure the Apple remote on an Intel Mac Mini. You could say this isn't a technical limitation - as a company has just to write drivers and it'll work, but it's still a limitation. Nobody WILL. It's not in Apple's interest to see their hardware work as well in Windows as it works in OSX, and it's not in Microsoft's interest to encourage the use of Mac hardware. Either scenario just encourages the competitor's sales.
I got my Mac Mini remote working with 30 lines of ruby in Linux, and I have yet to find a way to get Windows to even recognize the presence of the device. This may not be a technical limitation, but it certainly is a practical one. The fact that "random dude x" (me) can get things working in Linux and nobody that I know of can get it working in Windows says something.
"
I will even be kind enough to go first with a very basic example of something Windows can do that Linux cannot do at the core architectural level. Windows is based on the NT architecture, which is a hybrid kernel concept that allows it to host OS subsystems. This is also why the NT architecture has been called a client/server kernel concept. What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
*cut for brevity, but read the parent, it's interesting stuff*
It is even rumored that MS has worked on a non BSD based *nix subsystem for Windows that is Linux based and would be able to run anything Linux could run with no virtualization or emulation and it would also have the ability to talk to the other subsystems, like the Win32 subsystem.
Ok, your turn..."... and where is any of this in practice? Other than running 16-bit explorer because they were too lazy to port it, of course. What you're saying is that Windows apparently has endless compatibility capabilities, and yet it isn't even POSIX compliant yet? Sweet. Let's all dive right into that one, right there. Pretty much you make the case that Windows has the capability to make progress technologically by way of compatibility, but the sheer fact that there isn't even native support for a foreign filesystem like EXT2 says that compatibility will never actually happen unless Microsoft can make lots of money off it.
What we can draw from this is simply this: put progress in the hands of someone greedy, and it won't matter how capable they are of fueling technological advance: nothing will budge until it greases their palms. The technological limit on Windows is greed. It will never be absent of Windows, and it will always be absent in free software.
See, if they dedicate the patent then they can't sue ANYONE over it. That's not very Microsoft-like. Pass up on the peanuts (hobbyists), and sue the cash cows (like the hobbyists that manage to make a successful product and make money).
Besides, the next few years will either make or break Microsoft. They'd be fools not to know that. If things go rocky, they'll do what all the other failed tech companies do: fire off their developers, hire lawyers, and just squat on their patents. If they dedicate their patents, they kill plan B altogether.
This has nothing to do with TFA and probably won't interest anyone but you. The reason some programs don't appear in your "start" menu is because the package maintainers forgot to put a shortcut in there for you. To figure out how to run the program, open up synaptic, find the package, right click it, and select "installed files".
From there, look down the list for anything that's in "/bin", "/usr/bin", or "/sbin", and those are the commands to run the program(s) it installs. So if you see "/usr/bin/programx" you can hit alt+f2 to open the "run command" dialog, and type in "programx" and that'll run it for you.
It was flawless for me. Mac Mini, x86 1.66 ghtz. Beryl, AIGLX, everything: working perfectly. My classmates, seeing all the crazy features my desktop had, assumed I switched to the OSX that the machine came installed with. When I showed them the features that OSX still doesn't have (how's that skydome/cube going for ya, OSX?), they were mystified.
The problem here is that Linux doesn't have a multibillion dollar marketing team lauding all the cool features it has on the desktop. I'm off topic.
Ahahha... That was a good one. Microsoft Office dialogs not confusing... tried turning on/off version tracking lately? How's that "accept all changes" working for you?
It will not. The idea behind Ubuntu's release pattern is "try something new... refine it... get it right... LTS... try something new... refine it..." etc.
Edgy is the "try something new" phase, and as such couldn't be supported as LTS.
I've used both a lot (I had Edgy installed on one machine during development for a long time). The only difference I ended up noticing were mostly related to the flexibility of the bootloader (not an issue if you're not running on a "Mactel", and Firefox 2.0. To be honest Firefox 2.0 bugs me because clicking the app launcher will just maximize the current open window rather than opening a new one, and the close button for tabs is on the actual tabs rather than over on the right side of the window. So from a picky person that uses firefox a lot: not really worth it.
If you want stuff like built in AIGLX and faster boot time then give it a shot.
Same story here man. I can pick on problems with different operating systems all day, but when all's said and done the one that frustrates me the least is Ubuntu every time, in every category. I wish OSX and Windows were as willing to just do what I want and do it right.
Expect a few hardware hurdles. I used to be a strictly FreeBSD guy, but when I looked up what it took to get it running on my HP ZV6000, I just threw my hands in the air and went to Ubuntu. It's been serving me really well ever since. If I had a server I'd probably throw FreeBSD on it, but for a desktop or notebook I'll likely never leave Linux: it consistently has more up-to-date Xorg releases.
It's written in C++ with Qt. None of this.net mono stuff. Using a Microsoft controlled standard is like taking candy from a stranger, with the small distinction that people have taken candy from strangers in the past without it biting them in the ass later.
"I also don't see Oracle pushing Redhat out of the market, because while it'll offer its Linux for half price, what they're after is Redhat's middleware stack (JBoss with PostgreSQL)."
Those are the kinds of examples I meant to use instead of XMMS and Gimp, I just couldn't think of any. I blame alcohol. That's my point, though: Redhat offers support for more than an OS and a DMBS, which is likely all that Oracle will offer. If you want to do anything but run Oracle on that thing, you're going to have to do so without official support most likely.
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In your sig, I think "developers" should be an array.
Back in highschool I made a car stereo for myself using a pentium 133. It took forever to get the infrared receiver working, but the little 4x24 text LCD didn't have drivers at all :-) I wrote them in assembly. Yes, I'm a sad, sad, nerd.
:-)
But if you think that's bad, while in an internship during college, I used the name of the company I worked for to make me sound important so I could order samples of various chips. I ordered a 100 MB NAND flash chip, an mp3 decoder (had all the analog->digital stuff built in: booyah!), and a few little stone-age microcontrollers and made an mp3 player from that. It sucked, to be honest, but it's still an accomplishment
I'm all about peoples' right to voice their opinions, but if we encourage everyone to speak up before they've really looked at the facts with an objective (as objective as a person can be, of course) eye, we encourage ignorant, rash decisions.
That is, unless that company has been convicted of intentional patent infringements and anticompetitive practices via their own correspondences (which, to ice the cake, they lied about in court). I encourage you to Google the proceedings of the late 90's antitrust proceedings. There is documented evidence of clear-as-day correspondence between MS executives to knife their business "partners" (Sun is an example) in the back, matched with sworn-in-court testimonies otherwise. I'm not trying to undermine you in any way here, but search a bit for that stuff and let me know if anything you find is still questionable in your eyes. I haven't looked up if /. has personal messaging capability, but if it does you're welcome to message me with your findings or just post them in a reply.
If it was just an arbitrary judgement without proof I would also be outraged, but the events in history seemed to line up to the plaintiff's evidence much more than the defendants' testimonies.
If someone wins a bike race by pedaling fastest I completely agree that nobody has the right to take that medal (that "private property") from them. If they win it by throwing a wrench in everyone else's spokes I can't imagine a fair world that would award them a medal.
The idea that just because someone currently owns something they deserve to is Machiavellian ("the ends justify the means") and is the philosophy of bullies, dictators, and all the people that our government should be protecting us from.
But then I'm either poor or a hypocrite, so what do I know?
You're right to be concerned, but I think in this case Microsoft is being punished not for the security vulnerabilities but for the security vulnerabilities that were made mandatory by anticompetitive practices. So... any damages you introduce as the result of illegal activity can be prosecuted, but if it wasn't caused by illegal activity, it probably doesn't fall under the precedent of this case.
All the Open Source stuff has going for it is word of mouth. Given that, it's a legendary accomplishment that it even managed to grasp the attention of the Big Dogs. Give fanboy asshat some credit here - he may be pissing some people off, but at least he's affecting change.
Hell, when I talk to people that haven't given Linux a shot, they often site that they would, but it doesn't have .... and it's had that feature for ages now, but there was never a 1/2 page ad taken out in their favorite periodical about it.
This doesn't apply to me, therefore is irrelevant. Can't you all see!??! What's wrong with you people?!?
Just... ick. The funny thing is that this post, encouraging the use of a Microsoft owned standard, occurs in a thread that exemplifies yet another reason we shouldn't. Go foresight.
The consensus seems to be that OSX is the most usable desktop OS, and when I bought my Mac Mini I was psyched to give it a shot.
Ended up bugging the crap out of me. If you want to do anything but the 10 things Apple thinks you want to do, it is like pulling teeth. Try setting up SSH accounts for 10 users, showing hidden files in Finder, etc... it is NOT usable.
I ended up wiping the mini and installing Ubuntu 6.10 instead. I get better eye candy (the cube rules!) with Beryl, faster startup times, sooo much more flexibility. It's just no contest.
"So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing."
... and where is any of this in practice? Other than running 16-bit explorer because they were too lazy to port it, of course. What you're saying is that Windows apparently has endless compatibility capabilities, and yet it isn't even POSIX compliant yet? Sweet. Let's all dive right into that one, right there. Pretty much you make the case that Windows has the capability to make progress technologically by way of compatibility, but the sheer fact that there isn't even native support for a foreign filesystem like EXT2 says that compatibility will never actually happen unless Microsoft can make lots of money off it.
You forgot your question mark. Anyway, here's an example: configure the Apple remote on an Intel Mac Mini. You could say this isn't a technical limitation - as a company has just to write drivers and it'll work, but it's still a limitation. Nobody WILL. It's not in Apple's interest to see their hardware work as well in Windows as it works in OSX, and it's not in Microsoft's interest to encourage the use of Mac hardware. Either scenario just encourages the competitor's sales. I got my Mac Mini remote working with 30 lines of ruby in Linux, and I have yet to find a way to get Windows to even recognize the presence of the device. This may not be a technical limitation, but it certainly is a practical one. The fact that "random dude x" (me) can get things working in Linux and nobody that I know of can get it working in Windows says something.
" I will even be kind enough to go first with a very basic example of something Windows can do that Linux cannot do at the core architectural level. Windows is based on the NT architecture, which is a hybrid kernel concept that allows it to host OS subsystems. This is also why the NT architecture has been called a client/server kernel concept. What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
*cut for brevity, but read the parent, it's interesting stuff*
It is even rumored that MS has worked on a non BSD based *nix subsystem for Windows that is Linux based and would be able to run anything Linux could run with no virtualization or emulation and it would also have the ability to talk to the other subsystems, like the Win32 subsystem.
Ok, your turn..."
What we can draw from this is simply this: put progress in the hands of someone greedy, and it won't matter how capable they are of fueling technological advance: nothing will budge until it greases their palms. The technological limit on Windows is greed. It will never be absent of Windows, and it will always be absent in free software.
See, if they dedicate the patent then they can't sue ANYONE over it. That's not very Microsoft-like. Pass up on the peanuts (hobbyists), and sue the cash cows (like the hobbyists that manage to make a successful product and make money). Besides, the next few years will either make or break Microsoft. They'd be fools not to know that. If things go rocky, they'll do what all the other failed tech companies do: fire off their developers, hire lawyers, and just squat on their patents. If they dedicate their patents, they kill plan B altogether.
This has nothing to do with TFA and probably won't interest anyone but you. The reason some programs don't appear in your "start" menu is because the package maintainers forgot to put a shortcut in there for you. To figure out how to run the program, open up synaptic, find the package, right click it, and select "installed files".
From there, look down the list for anything that's in "/bin", "/usr/bin", or "/sbin", and those are the commands to run the program(s) it installs. So if you see "/usr/bin/programx" you can hit alt+f2 to open the "run command" dialog, and type in "programx" and that'll run it for you.
Actually, it's too late. BTW, the government knows you like child porn.
It was flawless for me. Mac Mini, x86 1.66 ghtz. Beryl, AIGLX, everything: working perfectly. My classmates, seeing all the crazy features my desktop had, assumed I switched to the OSX that the machine came installed with. When I showed them the features that OSX still doesn't have (how's that skydome/cube going for ya, OSX?), they were mystified.
The problem here is that Linux doesn't have a multibillion dollar marketing team lauding all the cool features it has on the desktop. I'm off topic.
Ahahha... That was a good one. Microsoft Office dialogs not confusing... tried turning on/off version tracking lately? How's that "accept all changes" working for you?
It will not. The idea behind Ubuntu's release pattern is "try something new... refine it... get it right... LTS... try something new... refine it..." etc.
Edgy is the "try something new" phase, and as such couldn't be supported as LTS.
I've used both a lot (I had Edgy installed on one machine during development for a long time). The only difference I ended up noticing were mostly related to the flexibility of the bootloader (not an issue if you're not running on a "Mactel", and Firefox 2.0. To be honest Firefox 2.0 bugs me because clicking the app launcher will just maximize the current open window rather than opening a new one, and the close button for tabs is on the actual tabs rather than over on the right side of the window. So from a picky person that uses firefox a lot: not really worth it. If you want stuff like built in AIGLX and faster boot time then give it a shot.
Same story here man. I can pick on problems with different operating systems all day, but when all's said and done the one that frustrates me the least is Ubuntu every time, in every category. I wish OSX and Windows were as willing to just do what I want and do it right.
Expect a few hardware hurdles. I used to be a strictly FreeBSD guy, but when I looked up what it took to get it running on my HP ZV6000, I just threw my hands in the air and went to Ubuntu. It's been serving me really well ever since. If I had a server I'd probably throw FreeBSD on it, but for a desktop or notebook I'll likely never leave Linux: it consistently has more up-to-date Xorg releases.
It's written in C++ with Qt. None of this .net mono stuff. Using a Microsoft controlled standard is like taking candy from a stranger, with the small distinction that people have taken candy from strangers in the past without it biting them in the ass later.
"I also don't see Oracle pushing Redhat out of the market, because while it'll offer its Linux for half price, what they're after is Redhat's middleware stack (JBoss with PostgreSQL)."
Those are the kinds of examples I meant to use instead of XMMS and Gimp, I just couldn't think of any. I blame alcohol. That's my point, though: Redhat offers support for more than an OS and a DMBS, which is likely all that Oracle will offer. If you want to do anything but run Oracle on that thing, you're going to have to do so without official support most likely.