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Comment Monopolies minimize jobs & inovation (Score 3, Insightful) 106

by redbeard55 (#30614332) Attached to: Codeplex 100 Day Deadline Passes Unremarked

Ummm . . . have you considered how many jobs, and how many innovative projects (companies) the MS MONOPOLY has killed . . .

I think we have seen how much MS innovates when they don't have competition, all one has to do is to look at how much R&D they put in to internet explorer prior to Firefox presenting a threat to IE. Look at the history, MS has been convicted of innovating by taking/stealing others work, and copying good ideals of other. I don't have a problem with them copying others within the law . . . Apple, Linux ect. all take something from the other as far as general concepts go. MS does have some good products and I use them everyday, but I would not call them innovative.

Monopolies by their nature minimize the number of jobs produced and the number of advances they make. Advancements aren't necessary until something else threatens the monopoly's monopoly.

Monopolies are not good for anyone but the monopoly itself.
Databases

PostgreSQL 8.4 Out 191

Posted by timothy from the would-you-name-your-daughter-postgres? dept.
TheFuzzy writes "PostgreSQL version 8.4 is now out and available for download. The main cool features in this version are: recursive queries (for doing trees etc.), windowing functions (for doing reports) column-level permissions, parallel database restore, a beta in-place upgrade tool, and a host of administrative improvements. And, of course, better performance, mainly on reporting queries. Some of the over 200 new or enhanced features are listed here."
Microsoft

The Hidden Cost of Using Microsoft Software 691

Posted by kdawson from the badware-tax dept.
Glyn Moody writes "Detractors of free software like to point out it's not really 'free,' and claim that its Total Cost of Ownership is often comparable with closed-source solutions if you take everything into account. And yet, despite their enthusiasm for including all the costs, they never include a very real extra that users of Microsoft's products frequently have to pay: the cost of cleaning up malware infections. For example, the UK city of Manchester has just paid out nearly $2.5 million to clean up the Conficker worm, most of which was 'a £1.2m [$2million] bill in the IT department, including £600,000 [$1 million] getting "consultancy support" to fix the problems, which including drafting in experts from Microsoft.' To make the comparisons fair, isn't it about time these often massive costs were included in TCO calculations?"
GNU is Not Unix

Richard Stallman Says No To Mono 1008

Posted by timothy from the therefore-not-a-monomaniac dept.
twitter writes "There's been a lot of fuss about mono lately. After SCO and MS suing over FAT patents, you would think avoiding anything MS would be a matter of common sense. RMS now steps into the fray to warn against a serious mistake: 'Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use. .... This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. ... [writing and using applications in mono] is taking a gratuitous risk.'" Update: 06/27 20:22 GMT by T : Read on below for one Mono-eschewing attempt at getting the (excellent) Tomboy's functionality, via a similar program called Gnote. Update: 06/27 21:07 GMT by T: On the other side of the coin, reader im_thatoneguy writes "Jo Shields, a Mono Developer, has published an article on 'Why Mono Doesn't Suck,' why it is not a threat to FOSS, why it is desirable to developers and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default."
Portables

The Truth Behind the Death of Linux On the Netbook 406

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-a-horse-analogy dept.
eldavojohn writes "Groklaw brings us news of Microsoft holding the smoking gun in regards to the death of Linux on netbooks. You see, the question of Linux on netbooks in Taiwan was put forth to the Taiwan Trade Authority director, who replied, 'In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone or PDA to start again.' It's simple; fear will keep them in line. PJ points out, 'So next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people prefer their software to Linux on netbooks, you'll know better. If they really believed that, they'd let the market speak, on a level playing field. If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse really faster? If so, why shoot my horse?'"
Data Storage

What Data Recovery Tools Do the Pros Use? 399

Posted by timothy from the besides-waterboarding dept.
Life2Death writes "I've been working with computers for a long time, and every once and a while someone close to me has a drive go belly up on them. I know there are big, expensive recovery houses that specialize in mission-critical data recovery, like if your house blew up and you have millions of files you need or something, but for the local IT group, what do you guys use? Given that most people are on NTFS (Windows XP) by the numbers, what would you use? I found a ton of tools when I googled, and everyone and their brother suggests something else, so I want to know what software 'just works' on most recoveries of bad, but partially working hard drives. Free software always has a warm spot in my heart."
Space

Colliding Galaxies Reveal Colossal Black Holes 134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the duck-and-cover dept.
Matt_dk writes "New observations made with the Submillimeter Array of telescopes in Hawaii suggest that black holes — thought to exist in many, if not all, galaxies — were common even in the early Universe, when galaxies were just beginning to form. Astronomers have found two very different galaxies in the distant Universe, both with colossal black holes at their hearts, involved in a spectacular collision."
Portables (Apple)

Hands-On With the New MacBooks 128

Posted by timothy from the nice-look-see dept.
Paige Philuer writes "Macworld has a hands-on article examining the new MacBook and MacBook Pro — not a quickie look from Tuesday's event, but a lengthy, in-depth look with laptops they actually have in their offices. Some interesting observations: No FireWire on the MacBook; the TrackPad doesn't feel like you're running your finger across a pane of glass, though that's what it is; and switching between graphics cards in the MacBook Pro requires you to log out." Reader Bourbon contributes three links at CNET related to the new models, too: a positive written review (giving a score of 8/10 to the new MacBook), a video review, and a behind-the-scenes look at how the new models are machined.
Censorship

Submission + - Courageous Blogger Wins 1.5 Year Legal Battle! (fixyourthinking.com)

Submitted by
FixYourThinking
FixYourThinking writes: "After nearly one and a half years of harassment from a relentless attorney, it seems that quietly a blogger in South Carolina has won a monumental ruling in favor of bloggers. In a summary judgement requested by the Defendant Philip Smith was able to obtain a special sanction after the Plaintiff attorney put a "notice of lien" (called lis pendens) on Smith's residence. The judge also reprimanded the Plaintiff attorney for abusive deposition and court procedure. The case set forth the following; "It's not the format; it's the content and intention that make text journalism / reporting""
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SFLC Completes Review of Linux Wireless Code (softwarefreedom.org)

Submitted by redbeard55
redbeard55 writes: The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has carefully reviewed the lineage of the open source Atheros wireless driver for Linux and determined which portions can be distributed under the ISC license (also known as the 2-clause BSD license).

The two general papers, as well as a detailed document explaining SFLC's review of the Linux Wireless team's ath5k driver, are available at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/

Ultimately, all the copyright holders of the Linux ath5k-driver code, derived from ar5k, have been contacted and have agreed to license their changes under the ISC license, thus allowing improvements to be re-incorporated into OpenBSD. One of the three historical branches of the code reviewed by SFLC, however, included portions that are only licensed under the GPL, and SFLC has determined that it would be very difficult to re-incorporate that code into OpenBSD.

"We're pleased to help bring clarity to the Linux Wireless Developers as they work towards inclusion of their code in the Linux kernel," said Karen Sandler, SFLC Counsel.
. . .
Slashdot.org

Introducing the Slashdot Firehose 320

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-wants-to-drink-from-the-firehose dept.
Logged in users have noticed for some time the request to drink from the Slashdot Firehose. Well now we're ready to start having everybody test it out. It's partially a collaborative news system, partially a redesigned & dynamic next-generation Slashdot index. It's got a lot of really cool features, and a lot of equally annoying new problems for us to find and fix for the next few weeks. I've attached a rough draft of the FAQ to the end of this article. A quick read of it will probably answer most questions from how it works, what all the color codes mean, to what we intend to do with it.

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