| Friday,
June 9, 2000 Ed Hume sends this with a note expressing
gratitude that Elian is safe at last:
I wrote this for a discussion group I'm in, but it seems appropriate
here. Understand, I don't find Microsoft all that admirable, and if I had
my druthers this industry would have gone a different way. Years ago I
argued that Microsoft ought to volunteer to publish all hooks and calls to
Windows the day that any Microsoft app made use of them; their Technet
would be the appropriate place.
But the right way to compete with Microsoft is to use technology; to
truly innovate. Note that no one complained when Microsoft gave away the
execrable Internet Explorer 1.0, or even 2.0; at 3.0 it began to be
competitive with Netscape but it wasn't until 4.0 that I got interested or
recommended it. What was Netscape (which was also FREE to anyone who
wanted to download the current "beta", each beta coming out well
before the free period of the previous expired --what were they doing?
Anyway, I wrote this and it may as well be put up here, but note it was in
response to some stuff I can't post.
The breakup or any breakup is wonderful for
Microsoft's competitors, which is what Macneely and the usual gang of
suspects who have made a career of both hating Gates and baiting him
("We're going to reduce Microsoft to a purveyor of buggy
utilities!" and other such mutterings, including explicit threats to
destroy Microsoft and force it into bankruptcy) have always wanted. They
can't compete in the consumer market so they want government to do it for
them. Thus was it ever. Adam Smith described the phenomenon.
But the industry moves so rapidly that none of
this makes sense. What's important here is the effect on the economy.
What's important is that this is yet another move by the bureaucrats to
get control of a sector of the economy that has been out of control, and
to humble the feudatories who dare act as if they are independent of
Imperial Washington. Microsoft isn't the evil empire. They don't have
police and SWAT teams and guns. What is at stake here is even the pretense
of a free sector of the economy.
As to the "proper" way to break
Microsoft up: it is impossible for any operating system that doesn't make
provision for working with the Web to survive for long now. When the silly
lawsuit started there might be a case for web browsers being a separate
program from the operating system, but not much. Netscape was publicly
saying they were going to have their product evolve into an operating
system independent of Microsoft; they were right of course, and Gates gave
them a 2 year head start by not immediately realizing they were right, and
that the ability to deal with and through the Web was key to survival as
an operating system company. At the time Netscape was effectively free, of
course: anyone who paid (and it didn't cost much) was made aware that you
could get "beta" copies of upgrades free, and if you hadn't paid
you still got Spam telling you how to get a renewable beta copy free.
Income from selling Netscape browsers was a tiny part of Netscape's
revenue. Why it was all right for them to give away a product which they
hoped to evolve into something that competes with Windows, but it wasn't
all right for Windows to give away a browser with the explicit goal of
incorporating it into the operating system is one of those things Penfield
Jackson, who understands nothing of this technology - he has to have a
clerk do his email for him - has not explained.
Any breakup should create fully functional
companies that compete with each other. Breaking off Windows from web
browsers assures that either the two companies cooperate, or each acquires
the other's capabilities. Meanwhile the Microsoft teams will have been
broken apart, and the less competent competitors who sparked this suit can
take a breather. They can also hope that an older Gates with children
won't be quire such an awesome competitor and they can get on with
yachting and the stuff they really want to do.
But competing operating systems is a bit like
competing cars with the driver seat on the left or the right. While you
can drive a car with the driving seat on the right on left-side traffic
streets, it's not easy. (And vice versa, one reason US cars don't compete
well in Japan). (Aside: Sweden used to drive on the left side but in order
to get into the US market their own cars had the driving seat on the left;
I rented one there once, and it was a terrible experience. But they
changed over to driving on the right. Of course they did so country wide
and all at once, not "gradually")
With operating systems it's a bit like that, It's
all or none. BEOS is a better OS for developing software applications, and
in theory major applications could be ported there. The problem is that
big corporate establishments, unlike my labs at Chaos Manor, can't operate
with two operating systems. All their people know Windows, warts and all.
Changing over would be horrible. So: to compete with Windows your new
system must either look just like Windows, and run all the same
applications in the same way, and either recompile the company's apps or
the new system must run the existing binaries. Has anyone here a clue as
to how difficult it will be to design and implement an operating system
that will run the present Windows apps in binary? Or to develop a suite of
apps that run all the old data files but do so in a new operating system?
And you would damned well have to GIVE AWAY most of those apps to people
who had Microsoft Office, since few would want to buy a whole new set of
applications just so they can use a new operating system.
None of this was considered by that judge.
But the biggest lesson was, do not ignore
Imperial Washington. Bill Gates had. Gates was stupid enough to think that
if he gave his 20 grand a year to the Democratic Party (his family is
historically Democrat, his mother being put on the Board of Regents by
Rossolini) - Gates was stupid enough to believe that he could be a normal
political player, give a bit of money to a Party, and otherwise forget
politics. He knows better now. And when Gates sets out to DO something he
DOES it. I would not be astonished to see him set up a lobbying system
competitive with the tobacco industry's; to see him buy Congresscritters
in half a dozen states. Or does anyone here think the critters aren't for
sale?
Look for Microsoft to throw
"information" sessions for Hill Rats and House Mice
(Congressional and White House staff) with free booze and lots of girls
supplied by modeling agencies at which there will be nominal displays and
announcements about Microsoft products. Look for big donations. Look for a
big Microsoft PAC. And this no matter what happens on the appeal.
Hurrah for Penfield Jackson. He has really made a
big splash in the American scene.
PLEASE READ THIS!
The link to the web site of the
man that had his domain name stolen and used for spamming was interesting.
From his viewpoint, and that of his web, he has done nothing wrong. But he
has enabled Ms. Garst 's identity to be stolen (which may or may not be a
crime). The other question of course if what he says is true or an
elaborate hoax meant to harm Ms. Garst. The pictures are for the most part
not flattering (and embarrassing for two of them). I do not know enough to
tell if the screen shots are valid. I trust that you did some research
before putting the link on your web site. You are a trusted site, even if
I do disagree with some of your views. Keep up the great fiction!
Don Scherer
Let me emphasize: I put that up for mature people
to look at and tell me if they know anything. I should have made it
clearer that I do NOT know anything about it, but I suspect my disclaimer
wasn't strong enough, and I'll go back and add another. I know this
and this only: the site URL was sent to me by two readers, one of whom I
have had good information from in the past. One claimed it had relevance
to the horrible Spam attacks I have been getting. I went there and
read through it. Some of the claims of this man's abilities seem both
overly dramatic and exaggerated, but of course any of my readers
will see that at once. But just in case anyone is deceived, I know no more
than you. I do have an agent looking in to one of the people listed to see
if there is any local information. Beyond that, I am as curious as you.
Thank you for the confidence and for reminding me
that I should not act in haste without giving the proper introduction when
I put up a URL I am not sure of.
And Mike Boyle sends this:
I suppose it is wicked of me to post it. And Mike Juergens is forwarding
this to all the honorable people he knows:
Subject: New Virus
This virus works on the honor system.
Please delete all the files on your hard disk, then
forward this message to everyone you know.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
Honor System Virus
He comments that the propagation of this virus
seems to work very well, but perhaps the payload implementation is less
than perfect... Bob Thompson reports he got it as a "Linux
Virus." I suppose one of the few known...
On "All Things
Considered" yesterday there was an interview with Judge Jackson. Most
of it was what you would expect ('Yes, I think I did the right thing. No,
I wouldn't change anything.') However, near the end of the interview, the
judge was asked if he had a computer at home. He replied that he did. The
interviewer then asked, 'Is it a Mac or a PC?' The judge's astonishing
reply was, 'I'm not sure what brand it is, but it runs the Windows
operating system.' I sat there, in my car, stunned by revelation that the
man who purports to be the final arbiter of what constitutes competition
among computer operating systems still, after months of testimony, does
not know the difference between a Mac and a PC. It will be interesting to
see if anyone in the trade or general press picks up on this.
Regards,
John DeVries
I think that says volumes. I didn't hear it.
Thanks!
But I got also:
I sent along this comment in your mail to my cousin
who owns an ISP and he forwarded to someone who checked it out at NPR.. and
could not find it in the transcript of the inter view. I too went to the NPR
website listened to the audio file and read the transcript and also couldn't
find the question. Is Disinformation being spread deliberately about this
case? By whom? Tom Weaver
So now I have no idea what's going on. But SEE
BELOW.
I offer the following without comment:
NETSEC ( www.netsec.net
) detected unusual outbound traffic from a workstation on our internal
LAN. Investigation revealed a new strain of “polymorphic” Trojan. This
Trojan appears to be a tool designed to cause widespread compromise of
unprotected PCs, most likely as a precursor to a potential Distributed
Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. The Trojan also can allow an adversary to
compromise the data and functionality of the infected PCs and its host
network.
See for the full story:
http://www.netsec.net/advisory.html
Does anyone know of a source for a font, preferably TrueType, of the
Old Germanic (which I learned to call Gothic when I studied German). I
mean the standard typeface in which German books were published until this
century...
THANKS to all who answered. I have the fonts now.
Thanks again. I am still trying to figure out how to use some of the
characters like the ss (I mean I know where they go, but how to make them
on the keyboard) and the f-like thing that is an s at the beginning of a
word ( a different s is used in the middle of words and at the end, and
there's a special character for ss) but I'll manage. Thanks to all.
I have a new Compaq 733 Dual Processor Workstation. It came with NT4
sort of installed: that is, I turned on the machine, and after giving it
the product number that came with the Full Installation Disk for NT 4 (but
not inserting the disk: I have that CD, but I never had to use it), it proceeded
to take over and go from there. It trundled for half an hour, but
eventually it came up with a lot of software and all was installed as NT 4
SP4. I then changed its name from some dismal number to REGINA, and told
it to join the Chaosmanor domain; that is done and she's rebooting now.
The video board is some special deal and I'll get to it shortly. Meanwhile
this is ONE FAST MACHINE, as you would expect. I'll upgrade to SP 6a
shortly, play with it a while, and upgrade again to Windows 2000.
Regina is to take over from Princess. Princess is a dual processor 200
from Compaq, and has served me faithfully and well from NT to Windows
2000. Princess has a Matrox board. I don't know what Regina's board is;
it's unhappy when I tried to change to 800 x 600, and clearly its drivers
are not installed. I guess I need to read the manuals and see.
INTENSE, that's what it says it is. The drivers certainly aren't
installed. And when I tried to change to 800 x 600 I blew the system up,
and had to restart in VGA mode of NT and reset to 640x480. But that
worked, and now I'll try installing the Oxygen Drivers that came with the
system. We'll see what that does.
Well, something odd is going on. The GLINT Oxygen drivers worked, the
machine comes up in 1024x768 -- but that is as high as it will go. The
monitor is capable of much more, and with the Windows 98 system and Intel
810 video (connected to the same monitor through a video switch) I can get
far higher resolution. But this is all I am going to get which seems
pretty odd for a big powerful workstation like this. Since there are no
manuals for this video in the box, my guess is that I'll need to talk to
Compaq. It may be an NT 4 problem. I am sure this video board will do
more.
Otherwise, what a fast machine!
I'll go to bed now. More fun with Regina in the morning. But so far
she's completely connected to the net, and behaves well indeed.
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