The 'Hairy Guys' Vs. Microsoft 145
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "The IHT is running the best write-up I've seen on the Microsoft vs EU Anti-Trust case, featuring quotes from tridge (Creator of Samba) and Carlo Piana (the FSFE lawyer). Nicely contrasts the difference between the Microsoft legal Team and the resources the FSFE has to work with. I was the FSFE witness for the initial hearing and the first trial, and this article nicely explains what it's like to be there." From the article: "The settlements left a group of computer programmers and activists, united under the banner of the Free Software Foundation Europe, with a bigger-than-expected role in supporting the EU's goal of loosening Microsoft's grip over the software industry. Only half-joking, one observer at the court this past week called some members FSFE and allies 'the hairy guys' - in contrast to the well- groomed legal teams fielded by Microsoft."
For your reading convenience (Score:1, Informative)
http://iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/
But speaking of hairy, I want an RMS pony! [slashdot.org]
OMG!!! RMS PONIES!!!
Rather Telling (Score:2, Interesting)
Good luck Hairy guys...
Re:Rather Telling (Score:1)
Re:Rather Telling (Score:1)
Re:Rather Telling (Score:2)
This language is of course the same old veiled threat from Microsoft that we've seen used so many times before. If I'm bad, Santa might
All suit and no action (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All suit and no action (Score:2)
Yes, but underfunded. I'm rather surprised that IBM isn't kicking a bit more into the kitty on this one. Seems like it would be a tiny investment with a potentially huge payoff.
Podcast of Ponytail and Sandal search (Score:2)
Re:Podcast of Ponytail and Sandal search (Score:1)
Obvious (Score:1, Flamebait)
Many people who write free software don't have money for haircuts. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Me too. It's a compliment, but...
incoherent, tangential rambling from an old coot (Score:2)
I rarely wore them anyway, but a few years back I swore of neckties altogether. When an occasion requires a tie, I wear a bolo tie, with plain (but shiny!) black western boots. I've recently bought a really nice embroider
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Loving what you do and being able to dress yourself in a socially acceptable manner are not mutually exclusive.
I don't know why the slashdot crowd seems to think they are.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
... "socially acceptable" depends heavily on the society concerned, as well.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Funny)
We're not talking about wearing a suit and obsessing over your nostril hairs. Nobody expects a geek to be a metro. But would it kill you to get your haircut every six weeks, or wear a shirt with a collar? The answer is, no, it wouldn't kill you. In fact, it might even feel good, instead of staying up all night coding and drinking mountain dew, or worse, taking drugs.
That's where this dressing like a slob and not getting your haircut leads you to, in case you didn't know. Drug addiction, insanity, and no date on a Friday night.
I'm free of false drugs. When I want to get high, I get my hair cut, shine my shoes, fill up the tank, clean the windshield and hit the open road. I swear to God that there's nothing that beats the feeling of having shiny shoes.
So, get your hair cut. It'll make your mother happy.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
I have shoes which would be ruined if I ever shined them...you know, trendy shoes. And why the hell should I wear a collared shirt? Now I personally do, sometimes, when I feel like it, but you make it sound as if the fact that I wear (expensive?) t shirts (under my suit jacket?) means I'm unwashed scum. And maybe I like my hair done up all luxurious like Fabio (I don't, but if I did you can bet your arse that if I wanted to, I would).
So fuck yo
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Right now, I'm contemplating shaving my head and letting my beard grow out to ZZ top length [170.171.253.91].
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
I really did snort coke with hot naked blondes this weekend.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
True story: My mom died in 1991, and I was depressed. I inherited some money, so I bought my first PC, a 486, and an eighth of meth. The computer was completely disassembled within 24 hours. It took me the whole rest of the week to put it back together.
I was a total noob, so I had no idea what I was doing. The reason I took it apart in the first place was because I "broke" it. Unbeknownst to me, the 200 MB HD was actually a 100 MB drive doubled under stacker. And the first thing I did when I g
Re:Obvious (Score:1)
I'm a geek. I'm scruffy. I'm also one of the top three members of technical staff at the company where I work, and am well respected for such -- when I tried to resign, the CEO himself scheduled a m
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Obviously, your low UID accounts for the entirety of your success. ;)
So that's it... (Score:2)
I'm free of false drugs. When I want to get high, I get my hair cut, shine my shoes, fill up the tank, clean the windshield and hit the open road.
Yeah, now we see why you REALLY don't do drugs. I could probably grow a pretty nice heroin addiction for what you spend on gas these days. =P
On a serious note, though. That may be what tickles your pink, but I have yet to find a collared shirt that I'd _like_ to wear around my apartment. El Cheap-o Cotton T-Shirt, however, is quite comfy. Unless I'm out to impress
Re:So that's it... (Score:2)
50 mpg, baybee, on my Honda Davidson. =)
OK, everything else was a joke, but the part about getting your boots shined. If you want to test my idea, experiment for a month. Every Friday (assuming you have weekends off, adjust accordingly if you don't), get your boots shined before going out that night. If you're anything like me, it will give you a tiny, but important, b
Re:So that's it... (Score:2)
Re:So that's it... (Score:2)
I think the issue is what to wear to court.
You MUST realize there's a difference.
Hell, even Judge Judy would tell you to cover up your belly button.
Re:So that's it... (Score:2)
I wasn't talking about court, that falls under the "Trying to impress people" bit. I was merely stating that most people don't seem to find collared shirts to be comfortable enough to wear around without a reason, unlike the poster above.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Funny)
That's so totally not true. I used to be a smelly shaggy IT guy with a cruel wife and a ton of self loathing, and my drug use was restricted to a little pot now and then. Now that I'm rid of the ol ball and chain and dressing nicely, my drug use has ballooned like mad. Now I'm doing things like taking esctacy and dancing till 7 in the morning
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
As Bill Clinton used to say, "I feel your pain."
Re:Obvious (Score:3)
I suspect that you're trolling, but in doing so (or not) you really come across as one sick mutherfukker, so ...
Here're you're labelling individuals who (arguably) are as successful in pursuing their chosen goals as you - perhaps more so (you're claiming the best high you can get is from a pair of shoes, after all - sounds like you might get along in law enforcement or the military, but amongst real people, that's just kinda frea
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
you need to learn something about Individualism and why it is a Good Thing
Heh. Conformist rebellion is soooo cute
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Thanks! I'm taking that as a compliment.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Unsurprising. Conforming to the dictates of a sick society would make one, by definition, sick...
Re:Obvious (Score:1)
Damn! I wish I'd read your post before I spent $3k on some excellent psychotherapy [aboudarham.com] in Silicon Valley over the past couple of years. Your insight is acute!
Personally I remind myself how much I now love myself (and loathe my mother as she was) when I brush my teeth and shave every last
Re:Obvious (Score:1)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
All time haircut classic (Score:1)
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one welcome... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I for one welcome... (Score:2)
You mean these guys? [wikimedia.org]
There was a time when Billy Gates was surrounded by hairy guys.
(There was also this one time, at a party, when I was surrounded by hairy guys... a memorable night, indeed! {wicked grin})
Re:I for one welcome... (Score:2)
I wasn't.
I mean, sure, I still had hair back then, but it was all neatly confined to the top of my head.
The IHT of this weekend... (Score:1)
Hairy Guys (Score:1, Insightful)
Your still young I take it (Score:2)
Does it matter? Well, it is all about what you care about. Presentation or substance. Not that looking like a mess means you got subtance or vice versa BUT I might just choose a lawyer who looks like he been up all night reading legal papers rather then just fresh from the spa.
Then again that could just mean the latter guy knows his stuff while the first is still study
Sam / tridge - invitation for beer or whatever (Score:3)
Something has to come out of this (Score:4, Insightful)
The US case was largely dropped due to a change of US leadership and a short sighted attitude that it's best to have a big US IT monopoly than let things go abroad.
The EU case could easily disappear for similar reasons, the EU commissioners aren't democratically elected and have been known to take backhanders in the past.
Re:Something has to come out of this (Score:2)
Re:Something has to come out of this (Score:1, Flamebait)
It doesn't matter what the FSF says. (Score:2)
I don't see any of your other arguments, clearly portrayed, which really ho
Re:It doesn't matter what the FSF says. (Score:2)
(None of this is news -- I used to work at an embedded development house with an engineering team composed primarily of kernel developers)
Re:Something has to come out of this (Score:2)
Really just read the license. It's pretty clear. If you hate the FSF so much then it's probably best not to use any GPLed code. Don't link against it, don't incorporate it into your own code. There is lots of code available under the BSD and public domain just use that instead.
Re:Something has to come out of this (Score:1)
Re:Something has to come out of this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Something has to come out of this (Score:1)
It's a matter of perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
The logic is at least partially self-consistent. The best and brightest people are those who have succeeded at the American Way - ie, the richest and most powerful. It's not right to punish success, success should be rewarded. View the Bush Administration's domestic actions in this perspective, and it all makes sense. It also makes a kind of sense on the morality front. Jesus Christ wasn't so hot on the wealthy, so the rich and powerful have to take a moral stand, and what easier moral stand is there to take than against the marginalized.
This of course presumes you agree with this perspective. Others of us have no problem with success, as long as you get there fairly. Some of us also believe that having been raised on the parent's silver spoon says nothing at all about your superior skills and wit - it just says you handed a better shot at success. Then again, read the 4 Gospels, and see the group who attracted the greatest contempt from Jesus Christ - the rich and powerful who look down on others' sins.
By the power of the EU.... (Score:2)
This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Having to pay a premium to get a box without Windows is the definition of arm-twisting.
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
And yes, it is as simple as that.
And NO! MS don't lose market share, because if Dell must ship NONE of their PC-s with Windows, almost noone will buy them. So, actually Dell is loosing money ;). If that is not arm-twisting, I don't hell know what is.
And there *are* other possibilies. I, for one, use Gentoo and Gnome. And even when I use windows I use firefox and open office and Gaim for messaging. It is not that hard, really. Plus, it is cheap and can do what I want to.
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
I think what the GP tried to say is that with tactics like this MS have been stomping all over competition in the IT industry during the last 10 years. Just think of how many times they have "unintentionaly" broken interoperability with Samba... Sorry it is about bashing MS, but ... don't you think they deserve it?
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:2, Interesting)
the same EU Commission is pushing for EU software patents. Effectively, if they succeed your argument would become "no one is twisting your arm to use computers", because the currently unenforceable EU software patents microsoft holds would become valid, so the only choice would be computer+microsoft software or computer with no software. And you try living in europe without a working computer and a mobile phone these days, it's a bit similar to the problems someone who can't drive in sub
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why does it hurt?
1. My kids go to school, where they run - guess what. They come home and insist they need MS Word, or Publisher, or Powerpoint, etc.. They don't say "I need to do so and so", because that isn't what they are taught. Oh, and guess who volunteered early on in the term of the present British government to provide IT training for teachers.
2. I do Unix support, and the machine I'm given to do it with runs - guess what. My working life is spent going through Win-to-Unix kludges to get needlessly limited access to the systems.
3. The kids come home, and want to play games. These come in versions that run on various proprietary consoles and
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
"In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service."
Only one entity, Microsoft, has the guts to produce, sell, and advertise said product. Apple can compete using OS X, but they chose to only use it for their hardware. Linux distros sit on FTP servers and rely on word-of-mouth. Get my drift?
I wonder why I come out as t
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
And that's ok...no, really. However, abusing said monopoly to ram Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger and Internet Explorer down our throats is another matter entirely.
Re:This could have been settled a long time ago (Score:1)
Do not call users names.
Love the user, make better software.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
buying their way out (Score:2, Interesting)
Pedigree (Score:1)
Re:Pedigree (Score:1)
Re:buying their way out (Score:2)
Short for Dr. Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell. Furthermore Dr. Tridgell is not hirsuite. In a business suit he could look quite respectable:
http://samba.org/~tridge/ [samba.org]
I also gather that he was a very impressive witness before European Court.
Re:buying their way out (Score:2)
But you have to admit that Turdge sounds kinda funny. Especially from Microsoft's point of view...
Furthermore Dr. Tridgell is not hirsuite.
But he does seem to have much hair...
And a cute lapdog ;)
Re:buying their way out (Score:1)
Re:buying their way out (Score:1)
Nothing is going away (Score:2)
Germany vs. Microsoft (Score:1)
Re:Germany vs. Microsoft (Score:1)
Can I come too? (Score:1)
It's not beyond the bounds of possibility ... (Score:2)
G
Re:It's not beyond the bounds of possibility ... (Score:2)
Microsoft would just sell an MS PC system and bypass other system builders. Blocking that would require blocking apple.
Hairy guys built the software revolution and the.. (Score:1)
I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, FWIW, I know one of the "smooth suited professionals" that Microsoft employs. And his opinion? That the arguments that Microsoft wanted deployed in court were, in summary "We are so important and so essential to the IT world that you must allow us to do whatever we want." Unfortunately, judges do not take warmly to this kind of argument. Judges like John Cooke have a clue about things like Firefox (and now knows a lot more about how kernels work and that Windows Embedded means that the Microsoft kernel need not be monolithic). They are also used to academic expert witnesses, and European academics can be very unusual indeed. I don't know what the outcome will be, but it is far from clear that the FOSS movement will lose, at least in the Eurozone.
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:1)
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2, Interesting)
The technical, legal, moral and ethical arguments will come to some point, quite possibly against Microsoft for abusing its monopoly in operating systems unfairly to influence markets in the server arena or the multimedia arena.
But that's not the end of the story.
What will happen is that this black-eye against a US corporation will give the Europeans a valuable poker chip to play against the US when it comes to protecting
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2)
And this IS the problem (Score:2)
Same deal with media players. Not a problem UNLESS a monoply is present, and the purpose of the preload is to obtain another monoply. In this case, its the WMA format.
And, the request made to MS was reasonable: document the links that IE and Media Player have with the rest of the OS.
Now, I believe that MS cannot do this, because the informa
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:1)
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2)
Why? That seems hardly fair?
Huh? Are you just stupid? They have a MONOPOLY. That is what's "not fair."
Was it fair when they used their clout to force OEMs to bundle only their Office suite and media player?
Was it fair when they poured money into Internet Explorer like water, just to kill Netscape, then stopped developing it for years because they had no competition?
That's why we have anti-trust laws: to deal with people who act unf
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft's not in trouble because they've bundled software. Microsoft's in trouble because they've abused their monopoly in one area (end-user operating systems and office-program file formats) to gain monopolies in other areas (web browsers, media formats, server operating systems etc).
It's not the fact that there's a media player integrated with the OS: As you say, that's been around since Windows 3.something, and Apple's OS X and most GNU/Linux distributions contain them by default. It's the fact that they're abusing their operating system monopoly to encourage a file format monopoly, which will then re-inforce their OS monopoly. (Think about it: Support on GNU/Linux music/movie players for the WMV format is limited. Knowing that, will you be less likely to switch?)
OTOH, all free software uses documented, easily understood and re-implemented file formats. Even if Red Hat got a monopoly on OSes and used that to try for one on music players with Rhythmbox, Microsoft could easily write a better music player that supports Ogg Vorbis files, and users could switch at no cost in terms of file formats.
That's why Tridgell, who develops Samba, software which allows communication with Windows file and printer shares from alternative operating systems, is there. Tridgell didn't have a viable business that was ruined by Microsoft bundles. He's trying to create a better file server that users can switch to at no cost in terms of client/protocol support, and Microsoft is trying to stop him in ways European society (it seems) generally does not approve of.
Inter Process Communication (Score:4, Insightful)
Right on. The REAL issue is not bundling. That legal strategy was designed by Real, Netscape and others to yield compensation dollars. The real issue is Inter Process Communication (IPC). A file is a form of IPC. A network message is IPC. If the details of the various forms of IPC are widely available products can interoperate and that is good. I believe that a product that is completely dominant in a market the details regarding it's IPC should be made available so as to reduce the liability associated with using that product. In this particular case that liability is the unfair business practice of forcing other companies out of a market by leveraging undisclosed IPCs. Secondarily there are a number of other very good reasons for having alternative programs that understand the same IPCs but it's not clear that they have legal bearing.
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2)
Microsoft's not in trouble because they've bundled software. Microsoft's in trouble because they've abused their monopoly in one area (end-user operating systems and office-program file formats) to gain monopolies in other areas (web browsers, media formats, server operating systems etc).
Uh, what monopoly? Last I heard, there were alternatives to MS in both operating systems and office software - and, get this - they're free, they don't const nothin'. How can a market that's that wide open be cons
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2)
Also the fact that most of Microsoft's major competition is free is not exactly an argument against considering them a monopoly.
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2)
Regarding the Unicode one-byte shift, I've never heard of that before. What encoding of Unicode does it affect (e.g. all of them, UTF-8, UCS-2,
Re:I won't waste a mod point on this (Score:2)
UTF-16 just uses bytes of 16 bits. Thirty-two bit characters are encoded using "surrogate
Re:The unfortunate little elf (Score:1, Redundant)
-Saruman
Calling an orc an elf might technically be true, but you might want to keep a reasonable distance from it...
About the parent post (Score:2)
Re:Sure the're hairy... (Score:2)