Linux-Advocacy Digest #355, Volume #35 Mon, 18 Jun 01 08:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: The usual Linux spiel... (was Re: Is Open Source for You?) (Greg Cox)
Re: Why homosexuals are no threat to heterosexuals (Ed Cogburn)
Re: More micro$oft "customer service" (Woofbert)
Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU! (Svein Ove Aas)
Re: New BSD Advocacy site! (Ed Cogburn)
Re: Just when Linux starts getting good, Microsoft buries it in the dust! (x@------)
Re: More micro$oft "customer service" (macman)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Greg Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: The usual Linux spiel... (was Re: Is Open Source for You?)
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 11:12:25 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> Said Greg Cox in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 14 Jun 2001 02:06:43
> [...]
> >I distinctly remember third party mem drivers but I can't remember when
> >exactly they were available. I believe several memory board
> >manufacturers included them with their board so you could fully utilize
> >the memory.
> >
> >>
> >> There was certainly no multi-tasking process manager available for DOS3.31,
> >> as there was for DRDOS7. Taskmax I think it was called.
> >
> >Again, I remember there were third party products to fill this hole. In
> >other words, I don't think DRDOS introduced any enhancements that
> >weren't already available for MS-DOS from third parties.
>
> Pointless quibbling. DR-DOS had it, MS-DOS didn't.
So what?
>
> >You CAN
> >rightfully bitch that you had to spend extra money on third party
> >solutions to bring MS-DOS up to what DRDOS had out-of-the-box.
>
> And you can, and we do, rightfully question why MS-DOS maintained
> monopoly-level market share, despite the fact that their product was
> clearly inferior in at least this one regard, particularly given the
> fact that the issue was obviously important, given the third party
> driver support.
So MS-DOS was inferior on this one issue. That you could so easily get
the necessary drivers from third parties made this a non-issue for most
people.
>
> Now, if David Petticord were following this discussion, I would hope
> that he would manage to recognize that this consideration is similar to
> his idea that the section 1 tying conviction should be thrown out on
> appeal. Was DR acting anti-competitively by tying their memory solution
> to their DOS, rather than selling it as a third-party add on to MS-DOS?
No. Just adding a feature to your product that your competitor doesn't
have can not be considered illegal. If it were illegal, then noone
could ever release a new version of a product with an added feature that
didn't already exist in a competitor's product.
>
> An a priori consideration that reduces the matter to a gedanken
> experiment is unnecessary. We need only look at the market share, and
> recognize that DR's market position provided them no chance whatsoever
> to wield monopoly power.
But according to your previous rants, *any* anti-competitive action by
anyone is illegal, whether you have monopoly power or not.
> Microsoft had the vast majority of the market
> locked in with PPLs (and, soon, tying DOS to Windows). Was it a matter
> of marketing strategy, or incompetence, that their product needed third
> party tools to become an acceptable alternative?
I don't believe this was a period of time when extended memory managers
were considered a critical feature for OSs in that market. And if you
did need them they were readily available.
I just think that this was a feature that IBM and Microsoft hadn't
gotten around to yet. As far as I know this was included in the next
release of MS-DOS - 4.0.
And when, exactly, did Microsoft "had the vast majority of the market
locked in with PPLs"?
>
> >Microsoft was definitively behind the ball on this. Here is a good
> >example of where competition in the market forced Microsoft to get off
> >its butt and put out better, more complete, products.
>
> They used PPL contracts and other leverage and threats and FUD to
> destroy DR-DOS's market. Sure, they also bolted some very poor memory
> management into their product, but that was just to kill off the third
> party add-on market. They needed Windows to be the only way to get DOS
> to work well.
Yea, Microsoft probably did some shady things to help kill off DRDOS.
It probably wasn't necessary since I doubt DRDOS would have ever made
much of an impact in the marketplace anyway. It was only a clone of MS-
DOS after all...
>
> >> There was definitely no GUI, DRDOS came with Viewmax (aka Gem).
> >
> >If you thought Microsoft stole the "look and feel" from Apple for
> >Windows just look at GEM sometime.
>
> True, Windows does look a lot like GEM in some of the widgets. But
> certainly the look and feel of Windows is generally all Macintosh.
>
> >Apple sued DRI. I seem to remember
> >they settled with DRI changing some stuff and paying Apple some $$$.
>
> That would be surprising; I didn't know anything about any such claim.
> Chances are DRI just settled before it ever got to be a real suit, and
> Apple expected Microsoft to do so, as well. After all, negotiating
> payment for inclusion of your technology in someone else's product is
> how most intellectual property works.
Except Microsoft already had a signed contract with Apple that allowed
them to include certain aspects of the Mac UI in Windows. That's why
Apple lost the case with Microsoft.
>
> As for GEM being more derivative of Mac than Windows, as you seem to be
> claiming, I would say you are mistaken. I have used all three, and
> Win95 is certainly nothing more than a Mac clone, in large regard,
> whereas any other relationships between the three just come down to
> "well, they are all GUIs of substantially similar design".
We're talking about the Windows 3.x era, not the Win95 era. Compare Win
3.x to GEM 1.0 and the Mac of that era. GEM was almost a direct screen
clone of the Mac.
>
> >> You could run windows as a process in taskmax.
> >>
> >>
> >> If we're talking about the memory map issue, then that is surely a
> >> real-mode issue, fundamental to the rather broken design of MSDOS?
> >
> >No, the real-mode issue originated with the Intel 8086/8088 CPU design.
> >(The CPU was capable of directly accessing 1MB of memory.)
> >
> >But, again, Microsoft was WAY slow in coming out with an OS that took
> >advantage of protected memory.
>
> Doesn't that always seem the case?
I explained why in this case below...
>
> >I believe most of this delay was caused
> >by Microsoft's plan to leave the DOS world to real-mode and use OS/2 as
> >the product that fully supported protected mode.
>
> So eventually, don't all of these successive delay's caused by whatever
> random Microsoft plan you want to imagine mean that the industry is
> decades behind because of their monopolistic strategies?
If "the industry is decades behind" were really true then we would still
be using MS-DOS 1.0 on IBM PCs running the Intel 8088 CPU at 4.77MHz.
This isn't a plan I "imagined" Max. I was there. I saw what resources
Microsoft and IBM applied to OS/2 and I saw the product and sales
results when 1.0 shipped. You do realize, don't you, that the
development of OS/2 1.0 sucked up all the DOS developers at Microsoft?
You do realize that MS-DOS 4.0 was solely developed by IBM, don't you?
There is no way of knowing what the industry would be like had not
things turned out the way they had. Many have said that the industry
was stifled and would have advanced much faster had Windows never
happened. On the other hand, wouldn't the industry have been slowed
down had the marketplace been split between several competing
incompatable OSs? There was a certain advantage to the industry that
the market, for whatever reasons, concentrated around a single OS. In
any case, until someone invents a machine to look at parallel universes,
we'll never know whether we're better off or not.
>
> >DOS/Windows would be
> >left to low-end/home computers and OS/2 world be for high-
> >end/businesses. This is similar to the Win9x is for home and WinNT is
> >for the office plan they later settled on. OS/2 version 1.0 basically
> >worked but was a real pig on the hardware of the day. It also had poor
> >DOS backward compatability. It flopped in the market.
>
> If there had been a market, maybe it would have "flopped" as you say.
Of course there was a market. Do you think IBM would work spend that
much resources and money on a product for a non-existant market?
> As it is, it left MS with the same monopoly power of PC OSes at the end
> then at the beginning. How is it not, then, attempted monopolization,
> which, though it failed, is still illegal?
So, any attempt for Microsoft to introduce a new OS into the marketplace
is "attempted monopolization"? Max, you really are an idiot. If your
constant rant about Microsoft's "illegal monopolization" is so obvious
and correct, why did it take all these years after these "illegal acts"
for the DOJ to charge Microsoft (and that just having to do with the
inclusion of IE in Windows 98)?
> What makes you think that
> the entire industry being stuck with the more disfunctional product for
> years and years and years just because MS couldn't pull off their little
> technical coupe is an acceptable mode of competitive development?
>
> >In the meantime,
> >the Windows group at Microsoft shipped Win 3.0. It had a rudimentary
> >kind of multi-tasking and supported larger memory areas than plain DOS.
>
> It was all that Microsoft needed to justify calling it "advanced", with
> its rather nightmarish (but you don't have to put that in the ads)
> multi-tasking and its very rudimentary (again, you can just claim that
> is 'innovative'; when you have monopoly power enough to force the
> product onto almost every system, people will believe it) GUI.
If what you say is true about Windows being such a crap product then why
was it selling so well in the retail market? Remember, it wasn't pre-
loaded on new computers at this point in time. How did Microsoft force
those retail purchases?
> Therefore, MS decided to stab everyone else in the back, using the fact
> that their OS/2 bombed and their Windows was a surprise success`to
> secure even more monopoly power.
>
> At this point, their focus switched from anti-competitive OS licensing
> back to anti-competitive language toolset licensing.
>
> >It ran OK on the hardware of the day and its DOS compatability was
> >excellent (surprise!). It started selling like hotcakes. Microsoft had
> >OS/2 that wasn't selling on the one hand and Windows 3.0 that was
> >selling really well. Microsoft decided to go where the market led
> >(where the money was), dropped OS/2, and concentrated on Windows.
>
> An alternative possibility is that MS wanted to maintain unilateral
> control over the OS, and intentionally tanked OS/2 in order to screw
> IBM.
An alternative possibility is that, as usual, you have no idea what
you're talking about, so you make something up, anything, to put
Microsoft in a bad light.
> They worked very hard to get Windows multi-tasking and DOS
> compatibility to the 'less than completely disfunctional' level when it
> can be employed as monopoly crapware, fully intending to use it to go on
> to secure an application barrier to entry so that eventually they would
> be the only PC software company of any worth, and Bill Gates can enjoy
> the fruits of his megalomaniacal ambitions.
RANT ALERT *** RANT ALERT *** RANT ALERT *** RANT ALERT
>
> While telling press and partners that OS/2 was the platform they
> intended to replace DOS, they were actually implementing a strategy to
> prevent DOS from being replaced. In the dishonest way that breaking the
> law always seems to demand, when Windows was minimally functional, they
> first ensured it was already "successful" by tying it to OEM DOS sales
> (the same bolting onto their DOS monopoly that is the hallmark of
> Microsoft OS "development"; somehow fixing the technical failings is
> beyond their competence, but adding whole new bug-ridden packages is
> called 'improving') before admitting that OS/2 was dead, and Windows was
> the platform of the future.
>
> Honestly, I can understand your presuming that MS was incompetent but
> lucky; it's very fair of you. But after a while, it just seems
> dimwitted. They are quite competent at monopolizing, and that's all it
> takes to explain what happened at any point in their history. Arguably,
> the same could be said of any company with substantial market share.
> That doesn't mean the arguments in those cases would be convincing,
> though, and recognizing Microsoft's actions as illegal does not require
> a presumption that all other similar actions by other companies are
> illegal.
No Max, you can not just wave your hands around, declare all Microsoft's
plans and actions for all those years were solely intended to be illegal
monopolizing, and expect anybody with the least amount of knowledge of
Microsoft and that era to believe you. The facts I and many other
people personally know completely contradict this.
>
> Was MS caught by surprise at the success of Windows, or was it a
> carefully arranged outcome, made all the more convincing by the millions
> of people who know the facts only from what the trade journals repeated
> from Microsoft press releases and vague urban legends modeling corporate
> marketing strategy as the battle between gargantuan imaginary beasts?
>
> Well, as I've explained elsewhere, it really isn't difficult at all to
> tell the difference between competitive and anti-competitive actions.
> And you cannot establish or maintain monopoly power with competitive
> actions. If you're still skeptical about Microsoft's legal guilt after
> twenty years of evidence of anti-copetitive monopolization, you *are*
> dimwitted.
>
After reviewing the DOJ trial evidence I believe that Microsoft probably
stepped over the line and is guilty of some illegal acts. I don't for a
second believe there have been illegal acts for twenty years simply
because I was at Microsoft twenty years ago and know what the company
did and what the marketplace looked like.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Ed Cogburn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: soc.men,soc.singles,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Why homosexuals are no threat to heterosexuals
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 07:18:39 -0400
Aaron R. Kulkis wrote:
> jet wrote:
>
>>Aaron R. Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>>
>>>Rick wrote:
>>>
>>>>"Aaron R. Kulkis" wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>drsquare wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 19:39:01 -0400, in comp.os.linux.advocacy,
>>>>>> (Rick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>"Aaron R. Kulkis" wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>Perhaps this is why he never gets any sex.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I do...with WOMEN.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Women. Thats plural. Thats multiple sexual partners. Well, did you
>>>>>>>
>>know
>>
>>>>>>>your risk of contracting HIV is increasing exponentially?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>Which is also going against all the right-wing idealism he seems to
>>>>>>favour so much.
>>>>>>
>>>>>false premise.
>>>>>I'm NOT right wing.
>>>>>
>>>>>Right wing and Left-wing political views are BOTH a form of SOCIALISM
>>>>>
>>>>>and...since I'm a libertarian, and libertarians are opposed to
>>>>>
>>socialism
>>
>>>>>in ALL forms, that means that I am opposed to right-wingers just as
>>>>>strongly as left-wingers.
>>>>>
>>>>>Hope that helps, you politically illiterate MORON.
>>>>>
>>>>>--
>>>>>Aaron R. Kulkis
>>>>>
>>>>I repeat.
>>>>Women. Thats plural. Thats multiple sexual partners. Well, did you know
>>>>your risk of contracting HIV is increasing exponentially?
>>>>
>>>No, that would be LINEARLY, you idiot.
Pay attention idiot, having sex with multiple partners is the same as
having sex with everyone *your* partners have had sex with, and everyone
whose had sex with your partners' partners' partners. That is not close
to linear, its exponential.
>>>
>>>And that's based on the assumption that I engage in the SPECIFIC
>>>acts which make one open to infection.
>>>
>>Yeah, Rick, Aaron can't get AIDS though masturbation, even if it's to Blue
>>Boy Magazine.
>>
>>
>
> I guess it's because she can't attack the REAL me..
Ohh, there's no problem there, the REAL you is still an idiot.
--
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -- Voltaire
------------------------------
From: Woofbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: More micro$oft "customer service"
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 11:12:48 GMT
In article
<lYaX6.85755$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Daniel
Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Woofbert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dan
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snip]
> > I don't see it your way ... but you don't want me, a web site designer,
> > the luxury of *not* having my web pages defaced by additional
> > hyperlinks.
> >
> > Why do you have special privileges?
>
> It's a question of property rights. He owns
> the computer; he can say what it displays.
>
> You can, because of intellectual property
> rights, forbid him from obtaining a copy
> of your web pages- though as a technical
> matter that's hard to enforce.
>
> But if you do permit him to view the page,
> you do not thereby gain any rights over his
> computer.
I don't pretend to be a lawyer. Nor do I pretend to understand how
current copyright, intellectual property, or property law affect
SmartTags.
What I understand is this: SmartTags change the content of my web sites
in ways I cannot control. I don't like that. I don't know what legal
remedies I have or would want to exercise.
--
Woofbert: Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
email <woofbert at infernosoft dot com>
web http://www.infernosoft.com/woofbert
------------------------------
From: Svein Ove Aas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Microsoft - WE DELETE YOU!
Crossposted-To:
alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 13:12:44 +0200
>
> You get a nice pretty picture when you start up!
>
Um.. use Mandrake?
Or was it SuSe?
I can't remember... oh well.
--
I had a signature, but it got lost.
------------------------------
From: Ed Cogburn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New BSD Advocacy site!
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 07:45:15 -0400
Richard Thrippleton wrote:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Bracy wrote:
>
>>In article <9gjroh$2tg$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Actually, the BSD camp has good reason to think that linux sucks...
>>>
>>>Because it does, in comparison to BSD. :)
>>>
>>The very fact that the BSDs aren't GPL'ed makes them inferior to Linux.
>>
> Oh dear.... an RMS fanatic. The BSD license is also 'free', in that
> it has all the freedoms of the GPL, but isn't quite so restrictive (or
> 'viral' as some say). You can incorporate BSD code into anything, as long as
> author credits are preserved. That sounds like free to me.
> As to the MS 'stealing' code, under the terms of the BSD license
> it's called 'using'.
No, its stealing. Some people don't want to spend a lot of effort at
developing something, only to see a corporation take the code and
immediately start using it in a commercial setting, with no hint to the
user that BSD free code is responsible for the existence of this
software the new user is using, and no giving back to other developers
assistance such as bugfixes and new features for this BSD code.
Its a difference of opinion, some people aren't bothered by that
possibility, some are.
--
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -- Voltaire
------------------------------
From: x@------ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Just when Linux starts getting good, Microsoft buries it in the dust!
Date: 18 Jun 2001 04:00:54 -0700
In article <9gklgr$sv3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Edward says...
>car, telephone ---> single use tool
>
>computer ---> multi use tool
>
what a moron.
an application is the tool. the computer is just something to run
the application on. Think of an application as the phone. You have
one application to do one task. Then you can start another application
to do another task. A user does not need to know how the PC works to
use the application, they just need to know how to use the application
(point and click to start it).
So, in the end, a PC is just a tool. Why idiots like you can't understand
that a computer is a tool is a sign of how out of touch of the real world
you are.
got it into your thick head now?
------------------------------
From: macman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: More micro$oft "customer service"
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 12:08:42 GMT
In article
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dan wrote:
> >
> > In article
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> > GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > > I take it tho that you responded to this ng currently with a Mac?
> >
> > Yes. I like MT-NW 3.1! Actually, I'm running it under Classic on OS
> > X.
> >
> > > So if you set the default to OFF will the above page still work the
> > > same?
> >
> > YES!!!!!!!!!!!! It's just a display option.
> >
> > > If not do users of other systems be SOL??
> >
> > NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's a local display option only. No one else is
> > affected. It doesn't change anything.
> >
> > Dan
>
> Well, I can't be a judge yet, but I have read the thread on smart-tags.
> But I know nothing about the smart tags. If I have a vax using netscape
> 3.0 will I still be able to view all of the contents of a web page with
> smart-tags on it??
> Just making sure.
You'll be able to view the original page the way the author intended it
-- not the Microsoft-vandalized version.
------------------------------
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