Microsoft Office On OSX, *BSD, *nix? 238
aliya writes: "Microsoft has announced Office and IE5.5 for Mac OS X in mid-2001. Given that OS X is based on BSD, what are the ramifications for those trying to get these apps on unix? Seems like a generic OS X-to-unix API translation would be a lot easier than Win32 API-to-unix. Not that I'm a big fan of the MS Office monopoly or the broken IE5 implementations, but it seems like this is going to have major ramifications for any application ported to Mac OS X." Of course, Microsoft promised products before which have mysteriously failed to appear, but still...interesting.
Not surprising, physicists and bad grammar (Score:1)
A more interesting comparison would be between, say, physicists at a party (hard to find, I know), versus others at a party.
Re:BSD and OSX (Score:1)
BSD 4.4 is neither FreeBSD nor OpenBSD (nor NetBSD for that matter). However, it was the last official release of BSD by Berkeley, and is the code that today's BSD's are based upon (with quite a few twists and turns along the way).
For a excellent, if a bit dry, history of BSD check out: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution [oreilly.com]
For a more narrative, though less inclusive, story of BSD try: BSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code [salon.com]
Re:Bad Grammar (Score:1)
But this would also apply if your eyes stop because the author uses a different dialect to your own, or if your eyes pause momentarily because the author uses a different register of formality to what you expected. It doesn't neccessarily mean the author should change their writing style.
It's wrong in standard American and standard British English. I believe it's valid in Black American Vernacular; it's certainly valid in some British dialects. Who are we to force an arbitrary dialect down the throat of a speaker who uses another one? Obviously it's no good if people just choose phrases from lots of dialects *because* they are different to Standard (American|British). But if [adult native] speakers use constructs which "feel" valid to them, there's little validity in correcting them just because Standard (American|English) is different. To a linguist,
a construct is valid if it is "attested", i.e. if it gets used by native speakers who don't consider it erroneous.
Of course, completely different rules apply if writing formal language or deliberately attempting to speak in Standard (American|English).
An interesting aside: some linguists did a study of grammar as used by physicists at conferences, and compared it to Black American Vernacular, as spoken on the streets of many American cities. They found that the BAV speakers were using grammar which was far more regular and consistent than what the conference physicists used.
Re:Will you communists never learn? (Score:1)
feature which the existing RFCs don't cover, I'm required to go through a lengthy process of getting what I'm doing "approved"
by a bureaucratic process.
Use existing RFCs if they're there; otherwise, create a new one, but leave it OPEN so other people can interact with your products.
---
Re:Cool ! (Score:1)
You don't use Outlook do you?
When you MINIMIZE it, it unloads most of itself, and takes about 1 meg of memory.
Sure Outlook has its faults, but I haven't noticed it sucking up resources and memory like you claim.
Re:Bad Grammar (Score:2)
In view of your evidently limited, in particular US-centric knowledge of grammar, you have made a poor decision.
Why...why do so many people insist on mismatching plural verbs with singular nouns?
Probably because by doing so, they are speaking proper English within the dialect of their culture, and hence there is no "mismatch" at all. This is indeed ungrammatical in the US dialect, but not in the dialects of English spoken in most places in the world, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand and in Africa.
In these dialects, nouns denoting collectives, such as corporations, sports teams, committees, nations, rock bands, what have you, are paired with plural verbs, even if the nouns themselves exhibit a singular form. Thus they will say things like:
These sentences are ungrammatical in North America, where the verb would have to be singular ("has"). But they are grammatically correct almost everywhere else English is spoken.
The differences between "American" and "British" English are really not that extensive -- the pronunciation and spelling are famously different, and there are some idiosyncratic (albeit entertaining) differences in the vocabulary, such as in expressions for toilets or women's underwear. But there are very, very few genuine differences in the grammar. This one -- the number agreement of collective-denoting nouns -- is one of those very few differences, and by far the most noticeable.
I, too, have many pet peeves about language -- I recently complained on Slashdot about people writing "loose" when they mean "lose". But what I find much worse are people who make an overbearing post about something while getting the facts embarassingly wrong. The post to which I'm replying was an example of just that.
Re:I have a confession... (Score:1)
No serious spreadsheet user would choose Gnumeric over Excel (unless they had a very tiny budget). Gnumeric is far more buggy, has far fewer features, and is slower than Excel. The advantages are that it runs under unix and is free. Perhaps in a couple years Gnumeric will be close to where Excel is now, if the development team works very hard on it.
This is not to say that Excel is all that great. It is just the best general spreadsheet out there because Microsoft eliminated most of its competition in spreadsheets through its bundling practices. This is quite unfortunate. The loss of competition has left Excel stagnant (but still far, far ahead of Gnumeric).
Re:please. nobody uses IE on unix...... (Score:1)
High level != easy to port (Score:2)
I've just ported a small (10000 lines) application from MFC to Qt, and I must say that anything that's made for m$ windoze is hard to port to any other system. MFC may be called "high" level by the m$ bunch, but it's so involuted that, if you don't have MFC in the target system, it would be almost easier to redo the whole GUI from scratch in a typical application.
Re:I have a confession... (Score:2)
KOffice [kde.org] and GNOME Office [gnome.org] are coming.
As far as Excel being "the best spreadsheet app of its type", have you really used Gnumeric? You probably should try it. I mean the latest versions, too- maybe if you're up to it, you can research Bonobo and/or KParts while you're at it, and get *really* excited. Or not.
Re:Will you communists never learn? (Score:3)
the government mandates that someone bigger or stronger than you faces grave consequences for killing you and stealing what you own. it hasn't always been that way -- in the animal world, you would have a much shorter life than you have in our modern, western society.
when the government fails, it's because people like you turned their back on it and let the system run rampant.
like it or not, there is a place for government done well, and it screws up sometimes.
many companies develop kick ass standards and let others license it. they make great profits off this, and the consumer benefits as well.
by the way, as much as i hate correcting you monkeys, the RFC process is not monitored by a beauracracy. there would be no IRC, mail, ftp, http, etc. w/o the the RFC process. All of these protocols help different computer systems interoperate.
many standards processes are not monitored by a bureaucracy, and do quite well. products throughout your home, on the desk in front of you, in your car and on the road are proof.
you say it will lead to ruin, i'm a commie, etc. the truth is, you are an unthinking name-caller like the first poster. sometimes government makes mistakes, sometimes industry makes mistakes. the truth is, i'm not pleased with the size of our government, nor with many of it's decisions. but there are many functions it provides on a daily basis that keeps us safe, and from being ripped off by companies like microsoft.
imagine gasoline companies and auto manufacturers colluding to make engines fail early by adding contaminants to fuel. the only way to stop such a thing is through government regulation and monitoring. you think the free market will "protect" us from such a thing -- some gas company will come clean, some car manufacturer will do the right thing. history has shown you to be pitifully wrong.
example: car companies secretly buying all public transporation in los angeles and destroying it to sell more vehicles (GM did this, and was fined $1).
there are countless examples of the medical industry falsifying records to make medicine seem more effective or less dangerous. do you want your loved ones taking that medicine? (presuming you love or care about anyone).
if you still don't think the government has the right and duty to take from the privileged (in some cases) and give to the public, if your point of view is that it is always wrong, go study the phrase "riparian rights". if you still don't understand, your brain is defective.
Re:Remember the Solaris/HPUX "ports" (Score:1)
<P>
I might add that it didn't work at all. Outlook Express did work, though.
Re:Alterior Motive? (Score:1)
This was a couple years back, I heard that Microsoft had released IE4 for Unix. I was very curious to see what kind of application Microsoft could make for Unix (and surprised that they'd even try!) so I went to the Unix lab at my university, downloaded it, and tried it out. I ended up running it on a remote machine and displaying on the one I was sitting at (running on ultrasparc, displaying on an old sparc).
Anyway, to sum up, IE4 actually crashed the sparcstation I was sitting at! Not even the one it was running on! It crashed the machine is was merely displaying on! I could not believe it. Prior to that, a crash in Solaris was utterly unheard of to me, but somehow Microsoft managed to find a way to crash it. Froze the machine solid and I had to cycle the power.
Microsoft never ceases to amaze me.
Re:don't mean nuthin (Score:2)
Well, yes and no. It wouldn't mean the other *BSD folks were close, but I think it might mean they were closer. Then again, I know this sounds linuxcentric (Don't bother me, I just bought the obsd 2.7 CD, and the 2.6 tee shirt) but I think it would be more likely to show up on linux.
Mind you, being closer doesn't mean you'll get there at all. However, since doing things on MacOSX should be at least a little more unixish (I really just don't know the architecture there, so feel free to correct me) and that will give the team that does the port some experience on that platform. It's just more likely that they'll hire someone or buy some company with some unix skills anyway, if that experience is needed.
One of the things Microsoft does is hire people and pay them well just so they don't go to some other company and develop good competition -- A plan that has worked for many, many companies for an extremely long time. I suspect that when two groups of neanderthals were out on the plains slaughtering whatever big meaty shaggy quadrupeds they ate, they'd all be offering the beast hunters some extra giblets to come over to their hunting party.
So Microsoft will be sitting here with these people with unix experience, and it's not like Windows CE is exactly cornering the embedded systems market or anything, so they're obviously not going to be able to kill linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or anything else, really, right now. Since everyone they deal with seems to get the short end of the stick (their own faults, really) then I'm sure some people have seen the light and are looking for alternatives.
Anyway, I digress, that's a different rant. The point is, Microsoft has got to realize at this point that they can't go off on a unix-killing rampage or they'll get split more than two ways just to make sure their reach is a little shorter. So they might even think about doing a linux port if they could get a secure enough system. PCs don't really nodelock, so I'm not sure how they'd be sure that people weren't warezing office. Even if they couldn't secure it, the thought of crushing some competition and becoming heroes to a subset of the unix population would likely appeal.
Does this mean I think Microsoft is going to port Office (or even a subset) to unix? Nope. Does it mean I think there's hope? Well, yes. Just a glimmer, but what the hell, it's less pressure than hoping for world peace.
Apple. (Score:1)
I think (Score:1)
OS X doesn't have X (Score:5)
Regarding the suggestion Microsoft will be porting to the Carbon APIs, I just don't see that as likely. Microsoft actually supports Macintosh really well. They wouldn't be taking a year to port to carbon. The next version they deliver will probably be built for carbon as well. Remember, the Macintosh version of IE 5 is the only standards compliant browser around that supports Java (ruling out Opera).
I really like what I've seen of OS X. If only I didn't have to buy the hardware from Apple, I might consider going to a Mac for my next machine. I wonder when we're going to get SMP G3+'s from IBM running Linux or BeOS.
The Big Apple (Score:1)
Apple has always made MSFT more money than any other platform. Less piracy (unless you count people like me ripping the French Microsoft Word because they wouldn't sell it to me when I had a Mac) for example.
But, the point is, they could port it. And, if they are broken up, they probably will once someone gags Bill G.
[usual caveats about owning MSFT and RHAT]
punchline (Score:1)
Yeah, yeah...
Re:don't mean nuthin (Score:1)
Ports of programs with graphical interfaces to Mac OS X will be dependent on Apple's closed source APIs. This means BSD users are no closer than they would have been before OS X saw the light of day to getting these apps.
The fact that this Ask Slashdot was posted shows great ignorance on the part of nik. Anyone who has bothered to visit Apple's Mac OS X website or read any of the technical articles on it (i.e. the Ars Technica article linked from
In brief: GTK, Tcl/Tk, Qt and the other cross-platform graphics libraries will be made avaliable to Mac OS X. OSS movement people can write software for these and make it compile on Mac OS X and any other UNIX. But it won't be reciprocal for Apple's graphics libraries. Not until Apple open-sources them, or releases binaries (unlikely as hell) can software that relies on these libs be cross-platform, unless they are reverse-engineered, or cloned, or something (still pretty unlikely, but possible, think WINE).
Re:Pinochle / pneumo..coniosis (Score:1)
Re:our web page (Score:2)
>package that "depends on" (your phrase) glibc,
>for example.)
in all honesty, i know nothing about programming on MS products, except for the two and a half years i spent writing ODBC/C++ clients for NT. That was years ago, and COM/DCOM/active-x were just starting up.
our web based apps, written by the IT dept., *require* IE to work. I've tried them under Netscape and they do not work. They sent out an email saying everyone must use IE if they want to access the system from home, or participate in the upcoming work-at-home projects. As you say, they must have written them purposefully to break under netscape.
Since I have not written any code for MS for nearly three years, I actually don't know or care how they did it...hate to say that, but it's the truth. I simply don't want to use or write code for microsoft...anything.
>Did you actually read what I wrote?
Yes, I did. I'm not sure why you made this comment, there are a couple MS/Linux types at work (not MS-haters, not MS-lovers) who looked at the pages and said "...they broke netscape by using active-x..." other than that, I can't say.
so, i guess MS standards are not really effective or something, i'm not really qualified to judge in this case, except for the reasons i've mentioned (exchange is closed, active-x can be written to break netscape).
thanks for not cursing me or calling me a commie.
Re:binarybits : one or two must have slipped... (Score:2)
>He was advocating that the government step in and
>*mandate* that all standards that are used be
>open.
and...
>the poster was advocating that intermachine
>protocols be open and standardized.
...are the same thing? you can't be. that would be a grotesque distortion. a variety of standards are already legislated, and compliance monitored.
I don't want to go that far, what I'd like to see is the threat of legislation force MS to participate more fully and earlier with other companies like they did with DHCP and ODBC, as opposed to what they did with SOAP, writing it internally and dumping it on the standards committee at the last minute so they could claim innovation.
but if the software companies don't enter into meaningful standards, early and inclusive, on the issues of intermachine communication and open peer-peer/client-server applications, then a legal solution would be fully acceptable to me.
as i've said elsewhere, your example of firewire is an open standard. IEEE has codified it and published the results. apple makes money licensing it -- although many people consider the fee too high. MS should (for example) license the exchange protocol in a fair and inclusive way.
you (AND OTHERS OF YOUR ILK) keep implying i am somehow trying to impose a bureauracy on the s/w industry. this is a false assertion someone made early on. it just isn't true, and reading my responses and the various other comments shows i never made that jump. that "velocinews" guy did it when he was calling me names, which lead to other people calling me a commie. just unfair and wrong, that's all.
>You can't have it both ways. Either the
>government mandates open standards or companies
>are free to have closed standards. Which is it?
actually, legally and historically, you can have it both ways. Example : some companies, based on their size, are exempted from certain city, county and federal regulations (race, gender, inspections) while others are not.
in our last few exchanges, i have tried to explain to you where you have distorted my words, and also where you have made misstatements, yet you never admit an error.
you seem to have real problems admitting your mistakes.
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:1)
How can it get used in any applications other than your own if you don't let other people use it?
---
more closed systems?? (Score:4)
MSHAFT's strategy is to develop as many closed protocols as possible, and foist them on their corporate customers, hoping it will lock up the home market.
Imagine your company decides to let you work at home. If you use non-ms products at home, you night not be able to get your email or access the company web pages. You're screwed.
My main concern is the way they develop closed protocols and make workplaces "Microsoft Only" -- if the exchange server has Microserfs administering it, no mail client will work except outlook.
If the company does webpages with active-x, no browser works except IE.
The situation sucks. The only hope is that I keep seeing more ads on the job boards for Linux developers and admins.
I'm a firm believer that legislation should be enacted to force all inter-machine communication protocols to be open and documented.
2001 ? (Score:1)
PS: and as we know m$, "mid 2001" == "around 2002"
+++ATH0
ports are unlikely (Score:2)
a) you rewrite everything from scratch; but that defeats the purpose of a port.
b) Apple open-sources the rest of their OS (not just the kernel), which is highly unlikely right now.
Critisizing IE5? (Score:2)
Re:Ad homs galore... (Score:2)
>repeatedly say things like "people of your ilk,"
>"people like you," "no reasonable person," "no
>thinking person," etc, implying that I am a
>member of a group of unreasonable, unthinking,
>and uninformed people. The fact that in this case
>I'm making a similar argument to a certain
>group of people does not mean I share all of
>their views. And the fact that I disagree with
>you does not make me stupid, uninformed, twisted,
>or evil.
oops, there you go again. i never made the assertion you were twisted, stupid or evil, nor did I ever say you share all the views of some group.
however, i do beleive you tend not to think when you post, that you are uninformed about several subjects, and when you post you say unreasonable things. Additionally, several other posters in the thread are like you, in that they exhibit the same behavior.
the opinions you espouse are ones that tend to be held by a vociferous herd that, in all honesty, fails to take in the facts. there's nothing wrong with being ignorant, but to maintain the opinion once certain facts have been revealed to you is a mark of someone who has some maturing to do.
ignorance is not a bad thing, as long as you learn. unfortunately, you seem to have problems admitting when you are wrong, even when faced with evidence to the contrary.
Your comments on the FCC, Microsoft "standardizing hardware" and FTP being a closed standard were completely false. Yet you fail to admit you were ignorant of the facts and admit it. To cover your ignorance, and the fact that I point it out, you start claiming "ad hom, ad hom". It's not ad hom, if you and other continue to exhibit herd ignorance.
You also keep saying I advocate the government "regulating standards" or "overseeing standards". Once again, you (and the herd like you) tend to hear the word "legislation" and inject "regulation" and "oversight". This is simply not the case -- some types of legislation are merely advisory, and have nothing to do with bureaucracy or the creation of a government standards body.
Try to relax for a minute -- I never said those words! That "velocinews" guy, a couple others, and you created a number of falsehoods and ascribed it to me.
That, binarybits, is the mark of an unthinking herd. And you are a member -- you and your kind.
Some thoughts... (Score:2)
1. "contain
This should be interesting. I would like to see if Microsoft has taking any hints from Open Source efforts in these areas, largely from Evolution and the KDE PIM environments. They've used a lot of MS ideas, and maybe turnabout is fair play, eh?
2. "PowerPoint 2001 will incorporate a new tri-pane interface
Wow. I mean, honestly, that really isn't much "innovation", does it? A user can do that with any GLADE-type GNOME/GTK+ program. I think. Anyways, I don't understand how in the anti-trust trial, Microsoft has kept bringing up its right to "innovate" when this is the sort of evidence available. How much "innovation" has gone into any recent MS products? And I don't mean things that were implemented somewhere else first.
3. "However, Office 2001 will not feature support for synchronizing data with Microsoft's Pocket PC
This is pretty lousy programming. Assuming good file and database backends, this should be a trivial thing. Why would and upper management let the press get ahold of something like this? It'll make great publicity for the Palm platform, though
Dave
P.S.: Yeah, I know that I used '"innovate"' too much
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
like him, you failed to read the posts. remember, reading is more than recognizing the letters on the screen. reading also implies that you understand what was posted.
i would very much like the government to force microsoft to participate in a standards group for all future protocols. many other industries, worldwide, have to participate in standards groups.
like the original poster, you made the incredible error of allowing your mind to place text in my post that was not there. you think i said "let the government write the protocols", your error, your mistake, not mine.
also, like the original poster, you claim i "should go get another job". actually, i think my employer should adhere to open standards. they did when i was hired. don't get me wrong, i know i'm on the losing end of the battle, but i will continue to voice my opinion that it is unfair and wrong.
microsoft people, people like you, want to take that away. "don't like microsoft? don't use it -- leave your place of employment." if anything, you're the one who sounds like a communist -- one choice, for all.
Proposed Legislation! (Score:2)
Whereas, Microsoft, a Corporation of that great State of Washington has been found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act;
And furthermore, such actions have harmed to a great extent both the population of these Great States and the global community;
It is hereby ordered:
The Microsoft Corporation shall participate fully in a Intermachine Communications Standards commitee for a period not less than ten years;
Any and all protocols used for intermachine communication shall be fully disclosed, documented and approved of by the committee before implementation;
The standards committee shall be composed of not less than twelve persons or corporate leaders from the fields of software or electronics.
A steering committee shall choose the initial membership. The steering committee shall be composed of William Gates III (Microsoft Incorporated), Richard M. Stallman (The Free Software Foundation), Robert Malda (SlashDot.org), Steven Jobs (Apple, Inc), Robert Young (RedHat Linux) and Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems).
Each member of the steering commitee may nominate two individuals or corporations to serve on the initial committee. After a service of two years, committee members may assign their seat to an alternate, with approval of a majority of the remainder of the board. If a majority cannot be made after three rounds of nomination, the replacement shall be selected by a simple majority of the board.
At the end of the ten year period the Microsoft Corporation may remove its prescense from the organization, and the organization may be disbanded according to the wishes of the remaining members.
This board shall have one mandate : preserving for the future that all internetworking machines be able to seamlessly communicate through industry standard protocols. The very foundation of the internetworking community was built by industry leaders agreeing on protocols and sharing enough information such that disparate machines and software could intercommunicate.
It is the sole intent of this law to restore that spirit of teamwork back into an industry that has fallen to the mere pursuit of greed at the expense of the communicating community.
Check out the press release... (Score:4)
What's actually scarier... Follow the link on the bottom of that press release to this. [microsoft.com]
Word 2001 introduces the Data Merge Manager, a feature available first for the Mac that simplifies and consolidates into a single window the entire process of using data to conduct mass communications via e-mail or letter. Tight integration with the new e-mail and personal information manager makes it easy to merge contacts from the Address Book into a bulk mailing.
Eeeek! Is it me, or does it sound like Microsoft is giving every Mac user who buys Office some mass spam software?
-- Kevin
Please!!! (Score:2)
These app's will leverage the advanced PDF based abilities of the Quartz display layer to do things well (even M$ developers know to put the best face on their product!).
If Apple opened these elements, even in a general way, life would be good for those of us who would like to see the efforts Apple has made benefit the OSS community. I doubt that will happen.
Apple will advance things, but our benefit will still be at their hands!
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
like the original poster, you made the incredible error of allowing your mind to place text in my post that was not there. you think i said "let the government write the protocols", your error, your mistake, not mine.
Actually, I don't recall asserting that you'd said that. What I saw you say is that the government (or some other body) should force opening of the protocols. Did I read it wrong?
also, like the original poster, you claim i "should go get another job". actually, i think my employer should adhere to open standards. they did when i was hired. don't get me wrong, i know i'm on the losing end of the battle, but i will continue to voice my opinion that it is unfair and wrong.
And I will defend (not to the death, but still) your right to do so. I'm not trying to shut you down.
microsoft people, people like you, want to take that away. "don't like microsoft? don't use it -- leave your place of employment." if anything, you're the one who sounds like a communist -- one choice, for all.
Um, no. There's plenty of other choices out there, and they only need to be supported. What I'm saying is that we are the industry, without the tech types it cannot exist. If people regularly demanded higher salaries if they had to work in a microsoft shop (Which is what I've done, BTW, though not by as much as I'd have liked) then when this was taken to extremes, companies would have to take a look at what it was costing them in a different way.
The problem with that is a lack of solidarity, and that not everyone agrees with that outlook. Some people just see the microsoft way as the right way, and that set of people doesn't include me. Others don't really care as long as they can put in some work and get a paycheck out at the end of the day, so you're probably right, that way of doing buisness probably isn't going to provide us much return.
But I certainly don't believe in promoting closed standards over open ones. I'm just saying that they developed them, they can be considered a trade secret, as part of their buisness plan they are a major line item (and it's not like microsoft is the only one who hasn't published their formats, or failed to publish updates to their formats, or what have you) so I don't see why we should be able to force them to open them.
There ARE other solutions out there. I'm as dismayed as you at how many companies go microsoft just to comply with other companies, but there are others doing just as well with their open source and open standards-based solutions. With the continuing trend of strong standards support for Apache, including XML, SOAP (recently, thanks to IBM... thank you, IBM!) and the like, it's getting better all the time. The trick is to support microsoft as little as possible, and to support open standards as much as possible, thereby gradually tipping the balance, or at least achieving it, eventually.
I have a confession... (Score:2)
I know this costs me on the linux geek cool scale (just when I was feeling good about explaining to the IBM employees how to install SuSE on a 770...), but I can't tell you how happy I when I first got X up and installed StarOffice. I don't know any of the Tex/Latex stuff, so it was great to be able to work with something fairly familiar.
We have WP9(Corel2000) for linux, but I still have some residual resentment against the wall of key commands they used in their early days. I haven't tried applix yet...
Anyway, I'd like to see them port MS Office to Unix. I've seen all the complaints about bloat and monopolies, etc... but Excel really is the best spreadsheet app of its type, and Word is just so easy to pick up at the basic Cut/Paste/Bold/Italic level... Maybe they could port the basic parts of each app (including Visio!), cutting the size in half, and then replace the VB macros with C scripting.
That would, I think, be a great compromise. Especially if there were some way to uninstall Outlook.
-jpowers
Yehaw (Score:2)
I've waited for the day when i could use MSIE and MS Office in linux!!! no...wait...that's one of the fucking reasons i switched!!!
Doesn't it seem odd to anyone that a shit ton of people are heralding the arrival to linux of the apps/os they originally were trying to get away from??
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
--
No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
Re:Will you communists never learn? (Score:2)
>>shorter life than you have in our modern,
>>western society.
>Points for medicine, not government. A strong >individual could live as long without government >as with government, assuming he can get the >medical benefits (by force, if necessary). A
>smart one probably as long, if he can make others
>dependent on him (as a medic, for example).
>A weaker individual without saleable talents or >the social skills to market them would die, >Nature considers him/her not worthy. I think >that's your point, but you
>didn't make it, I have to guess.
Actually, your post is hideously contrived in many areas, but I'll limit myself to the inaccuracies above for the sake of brevity.
You claim that a longer lifespan in western society, as opposed to a shorter lifespan in a strictly laissez faire "animal" society is restricted strictly to medicinal benefits.
You then go on to give an example of a "smart person" living as long (or longer) regardless of government.
What you fail to recognize is that the government protects both individuals and groups, through the rule of law, to prevent them from competing in what our society considers inapproporiate ways.
Example: A group of disgruntled programmers drug and hypnotize an Air Force pilot such that he napalms Bill Gate's island mansion.
There is no "medicinal" influence here. It's just a matter of doing things within the law. In the animal kingdom, ganging together and removing a strong/unfair leader from power is a social victory. (Babboons occasionally do this when a troop leader is monopolizing power).
Your second point is that "Nature considers some unworthy". Ah, yes. You're one of those "Kill the 'tards" people, aren't you?
Perhaps if you grew up with a brain damaged brother or sister, you might have more compassion, but your inability to project your existence into that of the less fortunate counts strongly against any such expression of compassion. Truly an animalist.
I'm cheering for the first baboon with the guts to take a swing at you, and I hope the rest join in bravely.
Re:Agghhhh! Nobody has explained this right! (Score:2)
send flames > /dev/null
Bad Grammar (Score:2)
Why...why do so many people insist on mismatching plural verbs with singular nouns? It's right in the heart of this article:
My friends, no matter how many people work at Microsoft, there is only one company (for now). Microsoft is an "it". Not a "they". Don't follow the herd. Just because the staff on Slashdot can't seem to figure this out doesn't mean that everyone has to do it.
Since virtually all of the communication through this site is written, doesn't it make sense to make the most of the language?
I thought so...
=h=
Re:Ad homs galore... (Score:2)
the problem here is your poor reading skills. if i were to call you a name, the sentence would resemble something like "oh, that binarybits, he's a poopy-pants"
the way you and your ilk continually claim that i want to see the government write the standards is ludicrous. i never said that.
what i said was, taken in context of the story posted to, is that exchange is a closed protocol, and Microsoft's latest strategy is to create proprietary protocols designed to lock up the client and server as a pair.
what you and your ilk have twisted my post into, is that i want the government to create some kind of "Ministry of Protocols". that's ridiculous. you people cut the last sentence out of my post, hold it up on it's own, and say that i intend to allow no company to create a proprietary protocol.
no thinking person can read the story, and the post, and not understand what the comment meant. you are taking it entirely out of context, and literally pissing on all the people who use RFC to insure all our computers can talk together.
i also never said standards can't exist in a free market -- most of them were created without any government influence or intervention -- remember, binarybits, you are the one making the claim i said that. i never did.
microsoft was a driving force in standards when they wanted the desktop. ODBC, DHCP. They wanted all the unices to participate...but now that other want in, it's a quick about face.
you claim microsoft is losing market share in in server space. this is a half-truth. in the server space we can measure, portions of the internet, this is the case. in many places of employment, this is false.
Example : an employer has mutiple divisions, each with their own exchange server. One division's admin decides to close pop3 and go exhange protocol only. another division keeps opens the mail server to all clients, since some want to use other mail clients, and they don't have a problem with that.
whos right, whos wrong? the feeling on slashdot, as expressed by people like you, is that i should get another job. i think that should be the last resort. i have years of relationships built with the customer. why should i have to sacrifice that? so you can feel good that "corporate rights" are being protected?
by the way, you spent a lot of time saying i'm trying to assert that "i'm smarter than you" (again, i never said that--you did). let's go take a peek at some of the assertions in your posts, shall we?
>> soviet union, china, nazi germany
>Funny, these are all governments. That's not a
>coincidence. It's also not a coincidence that >government regulation of the airwaves and cable
>has lead to restricted freedom of speech and less
>diversity than would otherwise exist. If you say
>something on the air that the FCC doesn't like,
>they can yank your liscence.
binarybits, you are wrong again. they are not all governments. China is a country. Anyway, one thing they all have in common is a government-controlled path of communication through some type of monolithic organization.
the point here is that, without an iron grip on communications, it would be very difficult for a totalitarian state to rise and maintain power. having one corporation control the client and server side would make that job easier. the restrictions i mentioned would prevent any one company from assuming or maintaing such a position.
Oh, the FCC can't "yank your license" if you say something they don't like. First of all, someone has to complain, and second, the speech must fall under a very small set of specific rules; for example, espousing the murder of an individual.
>Ironically, Microsoft is a good example of this.
>The reason that the PC beat the Mac is
>primarily that the PC was an open,
>commodity-based hardware system while Apple tried
>to keep their platform closed.
binarybits' version of history : Microsoft created the PC.
>Will the Feds force me to take down my FTP server >until I publish specs?
Newsflash for binarybits : the specs for FTP have been published for many years, via the RFC mechanism.
>Your attempt to equate standards exclusively with
>the government is absurd
Never, ever did that in my posts. that bit must have bubbled up through your brain cells somehow...
>The computer industry is full of standards that
>were created with no help from the
>government--Unix, FireWire, USB, SCSI, IDE, ADB,
>etc.
Actually, wrong again. Unix matured from some good ideas from the posix group, which had a lot of funding by the government. And your assertion is pretty grey here, as most of the electronics and software we use were originally funded by the government through contracts. For example, the IEEE is an NGO, but many of their members reap huge profits through government funding.
>The rest of your post is a string of irrelevant
>ad homs and weak "philosophical" ramblings.
i did pretty well in my philosophy classes. especially the parts where we talked about the demonization of communism in the USA, and the reasons for it. that was really interesting.
>"I'm smarter than you are"
>"If you weren't such an ignoramous you'd
>understand"
i find it fascinating that you put these in quotes, and you request i stop making the statements, but i have never made those statements in any of my posts. therefore, you are falsifying my statements -- in other words, you are lying. if you are lying, you are a liar, right? is that an "ad hom"? did i call you a name, or state a simple fact?
Re:Bad Grammar (Score:3)
<sigh> Why do you care? Even if you were correct about your grammatical point, and what you say didn't fly in the face of widespread accepted contemporary usage, what difference does it make? This is a news site, not a grammar site! The amendment you suggest doesn't make the paragraph easier to read.
Do you object every time "data" is used as a singular noun? Do you insist on referring to countries, cars and ships as "she"? If so, you're missing a profound point: language usage changes! It changes due to the unconscious use of new constructions by native speakers. And so it should. English is designed to be parsed by humans, not SGML parsers. Its grammar is not only more flexible, but also more dynamic, than that of SGML. When you ask people to "make the most of the language", you're really trying to persuade them to end this dynamic adaptation and relegate the language to something like SGML.
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
>your history classes and your philosophy
>classes...
Maybe I did too. Or maybe not all history/philosophy/sociology/anthropology faculties are sworn enemies of Adam Smith.
>anyway, when you control the medium, you control
>the content. that's history. soviet union,
>china, nazi germany...in fact, that's why we
>have laws (strong laws)
And that's precisely the point libertarians use for deregulation: monopolistic control of the medium leads to complete control of the content, and the entity that has (or gives) monopoly of control of the medium is the government.
>You would probably no be a happy camper if none
>of your network cards would talk to each other.
Probably not me either. Probably that's why I use a SoundBlaster-compatible card, which became a de facto standard way too long ago, even when it wasn't the only or strictly superior technology.
Probably the card is SB-compatible for the same reason all cars would be Honda-compatible: it can be done, it makes sense, and people will buy it over yet-another-propietary-standard.
Would they care that the standard was made by Honda to corner the market? Not really. Would it make a difference? Only if Honda were stupid enough to come up with the PS/2 and try again.
(Now that's an incoherent mix of metaphors!)
>And what of philosophy? We're stronger together
>than apart. One of the basics of philosophy, and
Basics of philosophy?! There is no such thing as a "basic of philosophy" in that sense! That's like saying "fundamentals of religion".
Not all philosophies follow that precept, and to pretend that it is part of the essential structure of philosophy only gives the impression that you slept through your philosophy classes too.
I have to guess you mean its basic for your philosophy, or for those that appear more convincing to you, or that it is "evidently obvious" for you. People can differ on that.
>why government exists. Forgot about that, eh?
>You must have been too busy calling me names to
>think about any of this.
Er... I think the one who called you a communist was someone else on another post. The only one who's has called names on this particular thread is you.
>Probable result : discrimination that would be
>very hard to prove.
Discrimination?!
Nope. The probable result is that you would be required to use MS when you work at home and the company would have to cover the cost it if they want to use the program, or you would have to if the company is not covering software/equipment.
That's not discrimination any more than against those who don't have computers at home. Now if you don't WANT to use MS, then that is quite simply not the problem of the company. You may not WANT to use that silly uniform in McDonalds, just don't work there.
>When a gang of thugs starts breaking down your
>door to get at your wife and daughters, guess
>who will be calling the 911 line "Oh, help,
>nanny help
That would be because he wanted to pay his taxes for the government to protect him from thugs. What he didn't want was to pay taxes for the government to protect him from incompatible standards. The cops would still have to come with compatible or incompatible cars.
If he argued for zero-taxes, no-government or no-law-enforcement you would have a point. He didn't, therefore there is no point here.
>so your toaster doesn't have to be made by the
>same company that made the power generation
>plant).
That's not the reason there is a standard there; electric energy companies would be stupid to try to monopolize electric appliances (they couldn't feed as much energy consumption a competitive market).
Electric standards exist for safety, so that your toaster doesn't kill you for no reason.
It is curious that you ignored one of the strongest points for government endorsed standards here: safety of personnel, safety of data, etc.
Where industry is much more willing to take risks on that side, government usually has stricter minimum safety standards which the commercial alternatives in the end have to surpass.
Particularly in the health area, that's a good reason to have government put annoying pressure on industries.
Bodrius
IE5.5 broken? Since when? (Score:2)
What are you talking about? Every single review of IE5.5 on the Mac I've read raved about it - especially about it's standards compliance. In some areas it is even more standard compliant than Mozilla (I believe some CSS2 issues)
It's easy to talk tough about MS, but that is just FUD.
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
anyway, when you control the medium, you control the content.
---
Yes, but the question is not who controls the medium, but who put them there? If the vast majority of the population using computers chooses a specific standard, then who are you or I to say that they should change? We can come out with competing (and open) standards that will succeed, and in cases (HTTP, POP3, etc) that has been done.
My point is that this is not a choice or ethics or morals like some people try to make it. It's a market decision. What you are doing is complaining in the same way a person who voted for the losing candidate in an election might.
---
Or if your Honda (you seem like a honda owner, dunno why) had proprietary rims, such that you could only go to the honda dealer for tires. standards again.
---
If this were an issue, I wouldn't buy Honda (and didn't, but not for that specific reason). Simple.
What if I don't like some sort of proprietary standard in each and every automobile out there? Then I can build my own. If I can't do it, too bad for me. Obviously the market - of which I am a part of - did not decide that the same features I require are necessary.
---
And what of philosophy? We're stronger together than apart.
---
True.
I'm not debating about open standards. I agree that open standards are usually inherantly superior to the same standard if it were closed.
My point isn't about open vs. closed, my point is that it is not our right to expect anything to be open or closed (unless we enter into a contract or something). That's a decision for the vendor, and it's up to you whether you wish to support that vendor with your pocket book.
---
You must have been too busy calling me names to think about any of this.
---
Where did I call you a name? Please provide quotes. I'll wait.
---
It's not a physical gun, but it is a virtual one -- if you don't use microsoft at home, you can't take advantage of the work-at-home program I mentioned.
---
Then either live with it, or work elsewhere. That's your choice. Remember, you work for your company - not the other way around. If you can't use their software, then politely talk to your management. If you still can't, either grin and bear it or get a different job. I'm assuming that nowhere in your contract does it say that your employer promises to support each and every tool that its employees wish to use. If it's that big of a deal, get another job.
And yes, there are companies out there that support multiple platforms pretty well. My company has users running Windows, MacOS, Linux and BeOS as primary operating systems. If they switched to Windows-only for some god forsaken reason, I could either live with it or quit. It's not my company.
And yes, the 'open' nature of the company was part of my reason for deciding to join it, as I like to choose my tools. But you don't see me telling other companies that they should be forced to be like my employer, either.
---
Hmmm...I've dealt with your type before. When a gang of thugs starts breaking down your door to get at your wife and daughters, guess who will be calling the 911 line
---
This is where your argument falls off of a cliff. You talk like using a proprietary standard is akin to rape, which is complete bullshit. If anything, this is more akin to the 'Honda hub cap' theory you came up with. I don't have to buy a Honda, I can go elsewhere, or build my own car if it comes to that. Millions of people have bought Hondas, so it's obviously not that big of a deal to most people.
---
How can you be so ignorant.
---
*sigh*
---
I'm not saying companies can't innovate, or that they all have to write the same OS, all I'm saying is they make protocols using the existing RFC mechanism or something like it.
---
Go for it, then. Ask! Ask all you want. That's your right. Tell them that they won't get your cash until they change. If they tell you that only
But it's not your right to force anyone to bow to your 'needs'. We aren't talking about some sort of crime against humanity here, we're talking about fucking software - software with alternatives.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:I was under... (Score:2)
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
This person is talking about a situation in which everyone must choose between a non-functional computer and a computer running Windows. That is not choice.
---
Sure it is. You can choose to work elsewhere.
It all comes down to that. Unless the employment contract specifically states that his choice of software will forever be supported, it is strictly their decision as to what will and will not be supported.
This exact sort of thing was a factor in me leaving my last job and moving to my current one. I have the right to be employed elsewhere, and I exercised that right. It's up to the employee to weigh the benefits of choosing his own tools with the problems of switching to another job.
As I said, no gun is pointed to his head. It's a trade-off, sure, but unless someone promised him that his home computer would be usable with his company's systems, it's not their problem. It's his.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:OS X doesn't have X (Score:2)
You're wrong about X, not that it matters in the present instance. John Carmack of id fame is working on porting the X windowing system to Darwin and hence to OS X.
Your paragraph about Carbon isn't too conherent, but I'll just assume you didn't contradict yourself and that you do agree that MS will be porting it via Carbon -- with the choice of Carbon and Yellobox/Cocoa, it's a nobrainer for them (which is a perfect opportunity for a cheap shot, but I'll let it pass).
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:4)
I'm a firm believer that legislation should be enacted to force all inter-machine communication protocols to be open and documented.
---
Do you support mandatory diapers for everyone to prevent accidental leakage?
Nobody is putting a gun to your head forcing you to use any given product or standard. The market has decided, and no matter how inferior the choice may be, it's not the government's place to decide. Let the people do that.
Obviously if a company does something terribly immoral to hurt consumers, that's one thing. But a closed standard isn't immoral - it's just not optimal. There's a difference.
Jesus, no wonder we have such an overactive nanny culture in this country. People don't want to take responsibility for their own choices...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Well DUHHH!!! (Score:2)
I hate to say it, but the people here are just a teensy, little bit focused on linux sometimes. The BSD's are really something, and anyone who doesn't recognize by now the fact that there's room out there for _lots_ of OS's which each suit a different segment of the population, then you've forgotten that we used to be a people that did things any way we liked until TV came along and taught us all how to imitate each other so well...
Now, is it DEFINITELY going to happen? Of course not. Even if Linus was _sure_ that this or that module would be available in time for a certain kernel release, we'd still have to take that with a little grain of salt, now wouldn't we? But it seems likely now, and how can we know today what tomorrow brings us, eh?
Re:Check out the press release... (Score:2)
Well, every feature that has a use also has a mis-use, and vice versa.
Examples:Select everyone in my addreess on the foo committee to receive the meeting agenda; send e-mail to all friends: "it's a boy!"
The problem is that use and mis-use can only be characterized at the semantic level. Thus the model of "innovation" based on stuffing software to the gills with features inherently produces insecure software (e.g. the love bug).
Re:Critisizing IE5? (Score:4)
I like how in this article they point out that very little code is shared between the mac and windows teams. That much is obvious, since IE5 on windows conforms so poorly, yet the mac one is just fine. Perhapse Microsoft doesn't need a lesson from us, they need a lesson from some of their own people.
binarybits : one or two must have slipped... (Score:2)
>standards.
this is true, the poster was advocating that intermachine protocols be standardized.
>He was advocating that the government
>step in and *mandate* that all standards that are
>used be open.
wrong. the poster was advocating that intermachine protocols be open and standardized.
for example, what was firewire is now an IEEE standard, that can be licensed for a reasonable cost and used by anyone.
microsoft, as far as i know, is not licensing the exchange protocol to anyone, and there are free and open solutions that provide similar functionality.
in other words, microsoft is using a proprietary protocol to maintain their monopoly. when you support this type of behavior, giving corporations the ability to mandate what OS people use at home via a closed protocol, you are treading pretty heavily on civil liberties, whether you intend to or not.
and before you say it, i know the rallying cry of you and your ilk -- "Don't like it? Go get another job".
well, binarybits, as much as you and your pals want to write me off as a kook, a commie, or whatever, the fact is I have several years invested with my customers, and i enjoy serving them.
i don't see why that relationship has to be destroyed by microsoft's desire to control the software we use. the company i work for wants to keep the employees happy, but the fact is, in this division, we have a microsoft nazi who want microsoft everywhere. he runs the exchange server.
in another division, where i know a few people, the admin is totally different. he lets people use whatever mail client they want -- he keeps pop3/smtp open.
the company lets divisions handle things the way they think best. should i leave the company? should i change divisions? why should i? all i want is for the company to give people some freedom and choice.
there are a variety of laws on the books regulating when and how a employer can listen in on their own phone systems, let you refuse to allow MS to be forced to adhere to standards.
i think it's wrong to make me get another job so i can have a bit more freedom in my workplace. i also think a company that gives it's employees a bit of freedom and choice has happier employees and more production. in the long run, it's better for the company, the employee and the customer.
so, before you complain that i should get another job, you might want to consider that i'd like my workplace to be better, and i'd like to keep working here, for my customer base, with a bit more freedom.
>In other words, he wanted to *ban*
>closed standards.
wrong. the effect, to some extent, would be to *ban* closed intermachine protocols. but calling it a *banning* is a stretch. that's like calling calling FDA inspections of food products *the banning of kangaroo meat in hamburger*
our web page (Score:2)
so, i question the qualities of your "Microsoft Standard".
If something uses active-x, and it only works with Microsoft products, it's not much of a "standard".
If one entity writes the "standard", and publishes it after the fact so everyone else gets to play catch up on a moving target, that's not much of a "standard" either.
so, i was aware of what you mentioned, it just doesn't really have much of a "standard" flavor to it.
Re:IE5.5 broken? Since when? (Score:2)
Try checking out the Solaris version of IE. An unmitigated disaster (quelle surprise).
Schwab
Re:OS X doesn't have X (Score:2)
Also, by supporting them, you support closed source programming APIs. While Cocoa is by far the most ideal API to code for, it's not worth the hassle when the owner of a closed source program "deprecates" what you need the most. NeXT was notorious for dropping and changing APIs left and right, and Apple doesn't have a much better track record. Consider the very recent news about GameSprockets being only slightly supported in Mac OS X. Remember the ongoing pain unix users go through when trying to play a QuickTime movie.
The probability of Apple opening Cocoa or Carbon is relatively small, as those are intended to be their next generation APIs.
I suggest GNUstep for coders who want to use an API very similar to Cocoa. While probably a bit tougher to get into because of the lack of an integrated development environment specifically made for GNUstep, there are things in development (Project Center, Interface Builder) that will eventually make writing apps (or whatever) simpler.
Just to confirm: Carbon will be used to port from Mac OS. IE 5.1 is already ported to Mac OS X, and is included on the DP4 distribution.
Maybe, but (Score:2)
I bet there isn't much demand for it, so you can't really blame MS too much for not putting too much effort into bug fixing it.
IE5.5 on Mac is pretty good by all accounts, though, which was my original point.
Psychological Warfare (Score:2)
Anyway, with the price of Word® hitting $280 / user we just may be forced to bite the bullet and retrain people on something else that doesn't have a hook set in their jaws for the vendor to yank on when then need more fish!
Will you communists never learn? (Score:2)
You want to dictate how people do things. You had your chance in the former Soviet Union and the enter Eastern Bloc. You failed miserably. The reason communism failed miserably is that when the government decides to actively intervene in all aspects of society, it takes away the motivation of individuals to excel - why would I try to develop a kick-ass product and corner the market if the government is going to come and take that away?
In the absence of a motivation to excel, the motivation to produce and contribute to society, technology and advancement in general disappears.
This might seem like a great idea in a short-term myopic view, but history has taught us that in the long run this will only lead to ruin.
And please don't pretend there is a difference. You want protocols to use existing RFCs. So every time I want to add a new feature which the existing RFCs don't cover, I'm required to go through a lengthy process of getting what I'm doing "approved" by a bureaucratic process. The result? Stagnation. (Of course if I go ahead without waiting for the approval, you're gonna scream "embrace and extend").
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
And why shouldn't I buy from Borders?
eh (Score:3)
And btw, do yourself a favor and download and use icab [www.icab.de] instead of IE.
Re:eh (Score:2)
-Dusty Hodges
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
- A company belongs to stockholders, or is privately held. Either way, there are people who own it - much as someone owns a house. Quite likely this is not you, otherwise you could probably choose your own tools.
- As an employee, you choose to work at the employ of said company - basically doing their work on their terms for a certain degree of compensation.
- Obviously, there are limits: said company cannot ask you to do anything illegal, as you (and they) would be breaking the law. Last I checked, lame-ass proprietary software isn't against the law any more than your average substandard piece of office equipment.
- If you have a problem with what they ask you to do, or the tools they provide you with to do your job, that's your problem - not theirs. If you don't like it, you don't have to work there. Unless you own a significant chunk of the company, you have no say. Period.
This is as much 'coercion' as someone threatening not to pay you if you don't hold up to your part of a contract, which is *exactly* what this is. The only difference is that you keep the cash you've already earned at the company. You only get paid when you are of value - that's how it works.
Get it? It's not your company. You don't have the right to use your favorite tools. The company has the right to choose what it feels will maximize its value, not you. If you are lucky, you may have the privilege, but it's not a given. Unless it says otherwise in the employment contract, of course. Did it? Didn't think so.
And really, is being asked to use company standard software and such anything like having a gun put to your head? Having your house burnt down? Probably not, even for the most rabid GNU zealot. It ranks somewhere between having your toe stepped on and someone farting in an adjacent cubicle. In other words, you're making this into a giant issue when it's not an issue at all. This bitching makes about as much sense as someone complaining that their company requires them to wear a certain attire or requires them to fill out the occasional form. Yeah, you have the right not to work there if that kind of stuff is important to you, but you do not have the right to make demands.
People in this country seem to have a real problem distinguishing between 'rights' and 'privileges'. These people assume they deserve something that, if anything, is a bonus of sorts. Life isn't about getting everything you want - don't sign into an employment contract with someone unless you are willing to play by their rules.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:OS X doesn't have X (Score:2)
The real issue the other poster was driving home, though, was that porting to MacOS X in no implies "porting to UNIX," regardless of whether a X server exists for MacOS X.
Remember the Solaris/HPUX "ports" (Score:2)
MS essentially ported the entire Windows API, and had IE4 running under emulation. On an Ultra 2 it would consume a full 2/3 of the system resources, and then proceed to leak memory from there.
If they don't do better than that this time, I say don't bother trying to make it work under BSD
Regurgitation. (Score:2)
I have been told "If you don't like it there, get another job". When one admin of one division allows any client to work wih the exchange server, and another admin of another division (mine) decides to close out all non-MS clients, why should I be the one to "get another job"? Why should I have to transfer? By company policy, admins are allowed to run their servers as they see fit. Yet I am no longer allowed to use my mail client of choice? To me, this sounds much more like communism than anything I have written. "Don't like our shoes? Go barefoot." That's not freedom.
This "communist" has worked for this division for 7 years, cultivating relationships with the customer, insuring quality and satisfaction at every cycle of the process -- and my record shows it. I am often requested by name when things go awry, since I never "drop the ball". So that makes me a "communist"?
Somehow, a number of posters have insisted that my post demands the creation of some kind of Orwellian "Ministry of Protocols". Ridiculous. My post says nothing of the sort, it simply states that the protocols be open and documented -- my interpretation of "open" is that a variety of entities can attend, without undue discrimination. For example, there's no reason to let Lars Ulrich in, but Sun representatives should nt be disallowed.
One poster brought up the subject of firewire, as a standard created without government intervention. Note that the companies involved did not need coercion by the government -- they wanted to spread it's use. Firewire is now an IEEE standard, anyone can get it, and must be licensed for use.
Microsoft used standards when it suited them -- ODBC and DHCP let them get on the desktop in most corporations -- but now that they control the market, they refuse to let anyone license exchange.
Another poster states COM/Active-X are open standards. I'm glad someone brought this up. Increasingly, companies like Microsoft and Sun pervert the standards process by inviting one or two NDA participants, creating and stabilizing everything, then releasing the "standard" after they have a huge head start. I really question this kind of "standard" -- while everyone tries to implement version 1.0, you're already debugged and running it, and working on version 2.0. This moving target, with a small group of NDA participants, is hardly an "open, documented standard". Add on to that the widespread use of Active-X controls that work with no browser except Netscape, and you have something, but it's not really a "standard".
I think there are real threats to our civil liberties in the making here, folks. When a company makes a change that essentially forces the employees to use Microsoft products at home, and the best your peers and management can say is "Go Get Another Job", there is something deeply wrong with the way the software industry is working and the way Management is thinking.
Corporations once had the right to listen in on your phone calls, on company property, without any regulations or hinderence. They cannot do that anymore, by law. This is a case where corporate america had to take a loss of power for the sake of individual rights.
All I'm asking is that solutions be found to insure companies cannot be in the position to force the use of Microsoft products or services at home. I proposed a solution that makes sense to me. If you have a better solution, that doesn't involve my changing jobs or putting me in a deathcamp for being some kind of "communist", I'd like to hear it.
That's the subtle question (Score:2)
Certainly people who innovate should be allowed to collect the fruits of their labor - but there's a fine line between innovation to improve something and using a dominant position to lock out competitors. The question boils down to (to me) did Msft make proprietary changes to the open Kerberos standard to improve it (I'd love to hear exactly what those changes made better for the consumer) OR were those proprietary changes made to make other vendor's open std Kerberos products incompatible in an attempt for FORCE the consumer to switch to an all Msft shop? If the private altered standard adds no value for the consumer, but locks out competitors, Msft has a serious problem. If it does add value but, opps sorry, has the side effect of locking out competitors they can probably get away with it.
Re:"Mirosoft"? Is this an abbreviation? (Score:2)
Ya- the irony is killing me :)) (Score:2)
Funny, these are all governments
Ya, those of us who don't favor complete degegulation (probably includes legalizing drugs, gambling and prostitution, peddling bleached meat and autos with known defects as well) are branded with a govt political label, while the open standards which the Internet was built on and laid out in the RFC's were largely govt sponsered and came from defense dept projects!!
Re:MS on *nix (Score:2)
The upshot is that porting Office to Mac OS X will do little if any good in efforts to port Office to other unices. The fact that it has a similar core does you no good if your code makes most of its calls to higher-level API's that are not supported on other platforms. You'd have to implement Carbon and Aqua on top of Darwin before you'd have any chance of running Office on it.
Re:Completely wrong (Score:3)
Not bloody likely (Score:2)
*nix, it's not just for servers anymore...
...
Agghhhh! Nobody has explained this right! (Score:5)
Coccoa, which is the revised OpenStep API with a few new tricks.
Carbon, which is the OS 7,8,9, etc API minus the cruft, which allows software makers to create native OS X apps with only minor modification (Photoshop was ported within two weeks). It is not an emulator.
Classic, a OS 9 Virtual Machine is used for running Classic MacOS apps.
Microsoft would port to either Carbon or Coccoa. They wouldn't even touch the BSD innards. Now a simple trip to http://www.apple.com/macosx/ could have answered this question in about 30 seconds. Next time Slashdot should use some care, not just post anything that includes "Office, ported and BSD or Linux" in the same message.
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:3)
True, a hundred years ago, this couldn't have happened. If Smith & Weston made a crappy revolver, then people would have bought from somewhere else. Unfortunatly, now there are many industries where the only game in town has all the power. Such people/corporations gained so much power, originally, because they has something to offer their customers.
You say that the government should stay out of these cases. Well, let's examine that further. You say this, probably, because the government shouldn't be allowed to control too much of any populace. Most people in the western world(of which I am a member) have grown up with the idea of the People's Power. It is our patriotic duty to keep our governments in line, whether it be by voting, demonstrating, or in rare, extreme cases, revolution. What I assert is that the things you're trying to prevent are happening right NOW, but not by your government. The control has left the hands of the elected and leap into the hands of the corporate powerful.
So, next time you wish to express your belief that large organizations should not tell us what to do and where to do it, you should also take into account the fact that these days, the government doesn't control us nearly as much as commercial enterprise does.
Thank you.
Dave
Re:OpenStep ran on WinNT (Score:2)
B) No kidding. I mean, they get a lot of their competitive advantage with Office and other products from being able to weld the software and the OS as well as they do. There's no way they'd use anyone else's APIs. Just look at their SQL server and the file IO APIs added with service pack 3 to support it.
Re:Portability (Score:2)
"Broken" IE5? (Score:2)
To clarify... (Score:2)
Aqua is just Apple's name for the look and feel of its GUI. It is not an API. Apps don't write to Aqua. They write to Carbon, and then Carbon causes your app to look Aqua-ish.
Carbon is also not the only available API. There are three major API's. (4 if you count Java) Carbon is one of them. The second is Classic, which is pretty much the existing Mac OS running inside protected memory. It will allow execution of existing Mac OS binaries. The third API is Coacoa, which is the brand new, NeXT derived, object oriented API designed for new apps. It is built around ObjC and is said to allow rapid development and highly abstract code.
So no one ports anything to Aqua. They port to Carbon and Coacoa. Aqua is just how they look when they've done this.
Re:Yehaw (Score:2)
i suppose next time i'll just put my eyeball directly against the monitor.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Um, Solaris?? (Score:2)
See it here [microsoft.com].
Re:I was under... (Score:2)
Re:Completely wrong (Score:2)
If Apple does their job right, there will be only one user interface. Users will be unable to tell which API each app is working. What there will be is 3 API's, meaning developers will see three different interfaces. But the user shouldn't have to know anything about them.
one of which is Carbon and provides legacy compatibility for all the thousands of MacOS apps out there now.
Not so. Off-the-shelf Mac software that exists now will not run in Carbon. You are thinking of Classic, which is the compatibility box. Carbon is a stripped down subset of the current Mac OS API's that provide a gentle migration path to the new OS. But it does require rewriting some code and it does require a recompile.
This is the API MS is using; their code won't take advantage of any of the two newer APIs in the OS.
If they are using Carbon for this realease (and odds are they are) then it will have access to new OS features. This was the whole point of Carbon-- to strip out those functions that prevented apps being reentrant, multi-threadable, memory-protected, etc. Apple is planning on providing API's to access most if not all new OS features through Carbon.
There is only one other API (not counting Java), and that's Coacoa. Coacoa is a Next-derived, object-oriented API designed for new apps.
Re:"Mirosoft"? Is this an abbreviation? (Score:2)
Not me, I ain't. The burden of being careful about proofreading falls entirely upon those who choose to nitpick on the format people choose to express their ideas. I agree with eecummings that spelling and capitalization is irrelevant, as far as it doesn't conflict with proper semantic uderstanding.
I'm not saying that good text formatting is completely irrelevant. Read Edward Tufte's books on this and related subjects if you think it's so important. The idea I wanted to express is that it's ridiculous to criticize a particular form of spelling if you aren't so careful about your own spelling and proofreading.
All I ever needed to know, I learned at WWDC... (Score:2)
Now, here is what I understand to be true (much of it has been said here and there already).
First, Aqua (the Interface) is totally Apple propriatary. It won't get opened and it's completely different from X. Anything coded for Aqua won't port anywhere else.
Second, There are basically 4 ways to code a program for OS-X.
--Classic (old Apple APIs running in emulation)
--Carbon (new APIs, similar to Classic APIs but supported in OS8.x, 9.x, and OS-X). Benefit: Same binary for both OSes and access to OS-X features like Protected memory.
--Cocoa (Native API set for OS-X. Full access to all OS-X core functionality, the prefered way to program new applications)
--BSD (Code written for BSD (freeBSD) can be compiled to run from the command line. BSD code has no supported interface APIs so X Applications will not compile)
Now... What will Microsoft do? Well, they have already bundled a developmental release of IE 5 in OSX DP4 and it's a Carbon App. No Unix code at all. The conversion from Classic APIs to Carbon APIs reportedly took 2 weeks to finish. Odds are that MS will make all Mac products Carbon compliant for the forseeable future because it allows the Mac group to develop in a familiar API and it allows them to release the same application to both Classic OS 8-9.x and OSX at the same time with no (or very little) modification. This means absolutely not help to the Unix community.
Even when Apple cans the existing OS line, MS will be able to keep coding in Carbon.
Even when MS eventually starts moving to Cocoa (if they ever do), it's still an Apple API from start to finish so it won't translate to any other platform. Programming for Aqua is completely different from other interfaces (I don't know of any other Display PDF interfaces... not to mention it's Apple's implimentation of a Display PDF interface).
Sorry... This isn't any good for anyone except us Mac users.
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:3)
anyway, when you control the medium, you control the content. that's history. soviet union, china, nazi germany...in fact, that's why we have laws (strong laws) controling who controls how mauch bandwidth, particularly in radio and tv.
it makes it much easier for people/companies to compete when you have standards. that is, someone can't take over networking by coming up with some oddball networking standard --- the IEEE takes recommendations and codifies them. You would probably no be a happy camper if none of your network cards would talk to each other.
Or if your Honda (you seem like a honda owner, dunno why) had proprietary rims, such that you could only go to the honda dealer for tires. standards again.
I'm taking about between machines -- a natural place for standards. they are often placed in this position.
And what of philosophy? We're stronger together than apart. One of the basics of philosophy, and why government exists. Forgot about that, eh? You must have been too busy calling me names to think about any of this.
As far as "...no ones putting a gun to your head to use any given product or standard...", you are literally correct. It's not a physical gun, but it is a virtual one -- if you don't use microsoft at home, you can't take advantage of the work-at-home program I mentioned. Probable result : discrimination that would be very hard to prove.
Hmmm...I've dealt with your type before. When a gang of thugs starts breaking down your door to get at your wife and daughters, guess who will be calling the 911 line "Oh, help, nanny help, I'm not strong enough to deal with these thugs. Please send over the police I paid for with my taxes, driving on standardized tires and armed with lots of standard weapons!!
There are standards all around you, that get you through every one of your days. Goverment and international standards, on poer tranmission (so your toaster doesn't have to be made by the same company that made the power generation plant).
How can you be so ignorant. I'm not saying companies can't innovate, or that they all have to write the same OS, all I'm saying is they make protocols using the existing RFC mechanism or something like it.
Office for Mac (Score:2)
Re:So are you. Why Cocoa? (Score:2)
You've got a point. But Microsoft themselves said they were going to use Cocoa, and while I don't tend to trust Microsoft on anything major I think this one's probably true.
Heck, it probably is a ploy to make users upgrade their computers, I won't argue that one.
Anyway, for an office suite, Carbon would do just fine. This is not to mention that there are millions of pre G3 Macs in that won't run a Cocoa version (no G3, no OS X, no Cocoa), but will run a Carbon version (which can run on any Mac OS back to 8.1).
Not strictly true. It's well-known that OSX DP4 runs on quite a few pre-G3 Macs (though if it's NuBus-based you're definitely out of luck). Further, it's quite possible that Apple may back-port OSX to the earlier machines (this is already true of Darwin, and it's stupid of Apple not to take advantage of that). Once you've got a basic OS going, porting it to different motherboards with the same architecture isn't that difficult. Writing the software from the ground up with that support, however, can be a very taxing task. The "G3 only" requiirement has been generally agreed to be just a trick by Apple to get the OS out more quickly, with backporting to follow in the spare time between OSX GM and January 2001.
How many secretaries do you think are going to be given shiny new G3s and G4s to run OS X just to use MS Office?
Not many, though be sure to consider that Office is a major app in the workforce, and this sort of thing has happened before. However, there's a greater chance of them being given iMacs (or the rumored "iBoxes") as an upgrade, and these can also run OSX.
don't mean nuthin (Score:3)
Even if they did port this all to "Aqua", it still a completely different windowing environment, and wouldn't mean squat for any of the other other *bsd environments.
Actually won't help UNIX that much at all. (Score:3)
Good for nothing without Carbon (Score:2)
Re:more closed systems?? (Score:2)
look who was the darling of standards when it suited them -- microsoft (ODBC, DHCP) -- when they needed to get on the client side of unix.
look who refuses to accept standards, and like you, calls anyone who thinks standards can be good a "communist", or someone who needs a "nanny" -- that same microsoft, now that other companies would like to expand onto the desktop.
standards go wrong sometimes. people like you take that fact and say all standards are bad.
governments go wrong sometimes. people like you take that fact and say all governments are bad.
corporations like microsoft refuse to promote or use the standards process when it means holding or gaining market share and limiting consumer choice. people like me want it to stop, and if it means asking the government to hop in to help, i'm for that.
when a corporation throws billions of dollars of it's invester's money away, people like you claim it's the price of progress. those dumb investors should have known better.
you never realize that the waste of tax dollars happens sometimes, too. you think all government is bad, all regulations are bad, all standards are bad.
you are woefully ignorant, like the original replier, who doesn't even realize that with inches of his face are dozens of standards that made his pc cheap, easy and safe to use -- many of which are mandated and inspected by the government. (insulation, wiring voltages, etc). the 2x4's in the wall next to you, the medicine in your cabinet, the plastic in your monitor.
for some reason, people like you and the newsboy think i want the government to *write* or *create* the protocols. nothing could be further from the truth. all i'm saying, is that for the good of the free market, more than one entity be in the process, and privy to any intermachine protocols.
if it takes government intervention to make that happen, i vote yes.
i don't understand how people can interpret my original post as anything other than forcing the protocol process to be open. someone, your twisted mind seems to think i wrote "make the government write them". you have a very poor language parser there.
MS Sense of Humour? (Score:2)
"Undocumented systems are like the New York subway without a map."
[pause]
"You just don't go there!"
This is a joke, right?
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Re:I have a confession... (Score:2)
If you said "...the windows 3.0 Write is so easy..." I would agree with you. Unfortunately, Word has so many stupid default options that I can't say it's easy at any level at all. Have you ever tried to write "MSWindows95" in Word? It will "correct" you to "Mswindows95"...
Re:Will you communists never learn? (Score:2)
It's just that when I see people ready to take from the rich "because no one deserves to have as much as they do" that I fear.
In spite of the quotation marks, I said no such thing, or even anything similar. The law currently guarantees certain consumer rights in various fields; drugs, food, automobiles, houses, etc. A supporter of laissez-faire would say that the things these laws require would be guaranteed by the free market, but the fact of the matter is that the laws were enacted because the market failed to guarantee them. Mostly these are life-and-death safety issues, but I see no reason why consumer rights regulations should not also apply to things such as software, when it seems appropriate. It has absolutely nothing to do with taking money away from the rich. It's about consumer rights.
Completely wrong (Score:4)
Don't get your hopes up.
The OS X MS Office ports are written such that OS X basically emulates the OS 9 operating environment for them. There is not an ounce of Unix code in these ports.
MacOS X has three user interfaces, one of which is Carbon and provides legacy compatibility for all the thousands of MacOS apps out there now. This is the API MS is using; their code won't take advantage of any of the two newer APIs in the OS.
--
What about GUI toolkit? (Score:2)
------
Porting Ms Apps (Score:2)
(1) OS X APIs (Carbon, <sp>Coca</sp> etc) are not Open source / known to officaly be proted to other OSs.
(2) only the kernel and most of the CLI of OS X is OpenSource, the GUI is prety much 100% Apple only.
[theory 1]
(1) MS will probably use Carbon which is a pre OS X compatablity layer think of it as a WINE type program for going between OS X and Mac OS 7-9.
(2) Carbon is not currently portable off OS X (no implementations for linux etc) and it is not anything like Open source or even free(beer) software. and it doesn't look like it's going to be.
Re:Critisizing IE5? (Score:2)
One sad, thing however, is that I've heard that recently, the Mac IE team has been moved over to the WebTV division. I hope this won't negatively impact the next version of IE for Macintosh.
Re:Proposed Legislation! (Score:2)
I can see Gates waking up in a cold sweat from a nightmare about this on a regular basis.