What is Digg?204 Comments
- matthekc, on 10/18/2007, -47/+242I'm just disgusted. I'm not even mad at Gates he just disgusts me as a human being.
- aussieNickuss, on 10/18/2007, -28/+211Gates is able to start up and give money to charities because he made that money by ripping other people off. I suppose its a case of Robin Hood, but it hasn't helped the computer industry move along as quickly.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -11/+180"From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 1999 8:41 AM
Jeff Westorinon; Ben Fathi
TO: Carl Stork (Exchange); Nathan Myhrvofd; Eric Rudder
Cc:
Subject: ACPI extensions
One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows
specific. If seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without
having to do the work. Maybe there is no way Io avoid this problem but it does bother me.
Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.
Or maybe we could patent something related to this.
"
This is quite possibly the most damning email of them all, and if there's _ever_ a question as to if Microsoft's being anticompetitive, this answers it. Not only speaking of making it hard for others to use, but including the possibility of patenting the technology to keep it out of the hands of others, "even if they are open". It's way past time for the Open Computer, no more of this ACPI *****, no more of Microsoft's designs influencing the way Linux users have to use their machines. This is quite possibly the scummiest thing I've read to date about Microsoft. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -14/+148"Um, every business does this."
No, they don't. Businesses write these things called "Standards" to comply to them and make it easy for everyone to support them. ACPI is one of such standards: it was _designed_ to make it easy for both hardware manufacturers and software manufacturers to build a computer that could be controlled by the same interface, so that you didn't have to code specifically for each and every board you ran into in the environment. And now we find out that Microsoft's head completely circumvented that Standard in order to get ahead of other companies, "even if they are open".
Let me use the ever-important Car metaphor to explain it better. Everyone in the car industry gets together and says "Hey, let's all agree to build batteries the same way so that all of our cars can use interchangeable batteries", and everyone signs it, agrees, smiles gleefully and goes about making their cars so they support this Advanced Car Power Interface. But, as it turns out, someone in the biggest battery manufacturer's out there has written entire sections of this agreement in Hieroglyphics, left out entire other portions, and signed agreements with all of the car manufacturers not to tell how the standard works to other companies (in exchange for money for advertising, clearer versions of the standard, and cheaper versions of their batteries). All the sudden, every other battery manufacturer is now at least 6-18 months behind on interfacing with these new cars and they're all left out in the dust.
No matter who you are, you should realize that what's going on there is wrong, downright fraudulent. So called "Open Standards" being corrupted so that one company can use it to gain a stranglehold on the market. And when that stranglehold is so tight, the legislators come in. This is _yet another_ time Microsoft is to stand before the government and defend themselves in a class action antitrust case. Any act of using their massive girth to squish other projects or companies is going to be damning. And this is the blood coated murder weapon with Microsoft's fingerprints all over it.
If every company out there was doing this, nobody would be rallying behind Apple for their championing of non-DRMed music, nobody would bother funding Linux at all (and Red Hat, Canonical, Novell in its current iteration might as well not exist). Most companies are too busy working to move forward rather than setting bombs for other companies to step on. - Futurepower, on 10/12/2007, -22/+121See this comment on Slashdot, about Bill Gates killing Windows XP:
Dr. Death strikes again.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230471&cid=18700381
"Sometimes it has seemed to me that Microsoft is not really primarily a software company, but primarily an
abuse company that accomplishes abuse through software." - scooper86, on 10/12/2007, -6/+91Instead of wasting resources on trying to stop the open source community maybe Microsoft could put more resources into a better operating system and beat them the good old fashioned way of having a better product, but I don't think this is going to happen.
- craz3d, on 10/12/2007, -5/+87@zippo.
ACPI is a set of standards that mainly define the way that the OS handles power consumption by the actual hardware. Among many other things (ie, Suspend&Hibernate modes, auto shut-off of devices, etc), this means that instead of the old time "It is OK to turn off your PC" messages you used to see with older versions of Windows, you can instead have Windows (or any other OS for that matter) turn off your computer automatically when it has completed shutdown procedures. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but ACPI has little (or nothing) to do with network protocols and the problems experienced when setting up multiple OS networks. - matthekc, on 10/12/2007, -12/+59i understand why it would make sense in a business to do things like this but i don't see how you can sit there and think of ways to screw with people trying to give away software. I would just feel wrong and dirty about it
- Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -5/+49That's nothing, you should see his source code.
- arbiterxero, on 10/12/2007, -6/+49ACPI wasn't created by microsoft, and the linux adaptation wasn't any code or anything ripped off of microsoft. Microsoft has NOTHING invested in this beyond attempting to crush a competitor by restricting their access. It's kinda like patenting ink. Printer makers didn't invent ink, but they sure make a buttload off it.
They just wanted to make it difficult to get common functionality in something they don't have their tax on. - Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -5/+47"Why would Microsoft help Linux advance on the research of MS?"
There's an important difference between 'not helping' and 'actively hindering'. - tvc15, on 10/12/2007, -12/+53@blaze03
Yes, it might be true that "every business does this" but not all of them are monopolies. Being one isn't illegal but doing things like this while being a monopoly is. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+43ACPI has always been a piece of ***** to support, especially in Linux. Google "ACPI Linux" and read through the thousands of mailings about people with ACPI support problems and nobody knowing which way was up in the standard. It's so convoluted, fragmented and horribly written that nobody's implementation "Just Works", and the whole codebase ends up looking like "//this fixes compaq bug #3342", "//this file supports toshiba laptops", "//can anyone explain to me what the hell these lines do?", "//awful cludge ahead", etc.
It's always been a ***** standard, and is reason #1 laptops running Linux don't get nearly the battery life as their counterparts running Windows (and often a sticking point for many people trying to move from Windows to Linux; "my computer froze when I suspended it! Help!") It's _way_ past time we fix this situation. - upsilonh24, on 10/12/2007, -7/+43Dugg for PDF warning.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -27/+63OMG I FOUND A NEW MEMO!!
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/8292/px03020nd8.jpg
THIS CANT BE TRUE!! IT JUST CANT! - jjesusfreak01, on 10/12/2007, -8/+41OK, lets be fair here. ACPI does not even work right on my Windows machine half the time.
- oliveroms, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35I wonder how much you would love your windos if you couldn't connect to the internet anymore, cause, yes, the internet was brought to you over tcp/ip. doesn't windos use the BSD networking stack? Oh why yes it does. And so there are many, some less subtle technologies they use. Your precious OS might end up being quite useless if they removed all the code they 'borrowed' from others.
- Yoshi39, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35Yes you're right microsoft have never gotten anything for free from the Open-source community
"software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft's Windows software, such as in the `TCP/IP' section that arranges all connections to the Internet."
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/6/19/05641/7357 - colonels1020, on 10/12/2007, -14/+43Hey...Mr. Gates!
***** YOU!
^_^ - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+30It's been entered into evidence in an antitrust trial. Its authenticity has most certainly been validated.
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -8/+33I believe I'm going to attach that email to every 7of7, naio, and flag post I see. OK, maybe not but it's tempting.
- aiten, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28It's called stifling innovation.
I'm all for business being a dog eat dog world, but purposely crippling something to prevent a competitor from innovating, especially a competitor which makes no money, is not business.
I would like technology to advance, not one company to advance and then give up, as they did with IE, when they feel far enough ahead. That is not technological innovation.
So, sorry, but i'm with the screw microsoft camp. Screw them and their weak, pathetic software. - ekso, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27Mmmm.... Have you ever heard of the Hague and Geneva Conventions?
- matthekc, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28if he tried to work with community on a fair and even field I'm sure he could get a lot out of it. would take a long time to build up trust though ms's track record isn't very good for partners.
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24Could you imagine a steering wheel manufacturing company that makes steering wheels that can't make left hand turns ONLY in a Ford?
Sounds funny, right? Well, Microsoft IS that steering wheel manufacturing company. - ray901, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25"Why would Microsoft help Linux advance on the research of MS?"
Rubbish. Do you even know what a 'Standard' is? - goodbeershow, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Must have worked. ACPI runs like ***** on my Compaq laptop booted to Linux.
- Ssullivan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20You better tell Red Hat and Novell that you can't make money off Linux.
- senfo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18Let me get this straight. Microsoft puts money into extending ACPI and Linux gets a "free ride" by being able to take advantage of it? I don't seem to remember hearing Microsoft bitching when they got a free ride by using the BSD implementation of TCP-IP. And who knows exactly how many other free rides they've gotten along the way?
- fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22"If they work on something, it is expected that they would want their competitors to not benefit from it. Yes, even if they are working on an open standard."
If it's an open standard, anyone can benifit from it, that's part of the nature of open standards. If they don't want that, they shouldn't make it an open standard.
"I mean, no open source license would make it impossible to use their code in a closed source system would they?"
Are people implementing the ACPI standard using code generated by MS or are they using their own code to implement the standard? Because there is a huge ***** difference.
Also, your OS of choice has no bearing on your rationale. - Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that anyone who uses the word 'fanboy' is actually deeply worried that the 'fanboys' are right.
- aussieNickuss, on 10/12/2007, -11/+27@UrsusMorologus
My comment wasn't specifically about ACPI....just Microsoft/Gates as a whole. I'm sure there are a lot of technologies that have been held back becuase MS got their grubby little hands on them and buried them. Look at IE....its only come into the 21st century because there was a sniff of competition from Firefox. Same with Vista....we'd probably still have square grey borders and buttons if it wern't for Mac OS X. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20"@tony134340 - and spelling mistakes "Maybe there is no way Io avoid this problem but it does bother me.""
That's an OCR artifact (and a fairly common one with typographic "l"s being "i"s, "t"s becoming "l"s, etc); when these documents are scanned in from xeroxes (that are themselves probably xeroxes of xeroxes), the quality drops and the OCR program can fowl up the conversion. - toddji, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17It's quite the opposite.
Do you know how many startups have sprung up using Linux as the base of their product? I have worked for several, and I know of dozens more. There are many high profile Linux devices being used today, you probably don't even recognize when you are using it (many DVRs, including Tivo. a growing number of cell phones. etc.) Just about every networking startup is using Linux for their product.
So, are we better off ensuring that Microsoft has a tighter lock on the market, and another few billion goes to Bill and his shareholders? Or, are we better off with thousands of new companies started, with hundreds of thousands of jobs, and all the associated commerce (and Microsoft still making many billions, regardless).
Linux, and other open source efforts like Apache, etc. have been an unbelievably positive force for innovation. - n0c0ntr0l, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20Well we all knew that bill will do whatever he can to make his billions into more billions.... why are you so surprised. He's after money so he ain't happy when people can create Os's and software that is better than his for free.... it puts his business in trouble.
- insovietrussia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16For the uninitiated, the ACPI spec was drafted in the mid-late 90's (?) by Microsoft, Intel and some others. It allows for a unified interface to common hardware components for software - mainly Operating Systems.
Basically it allows your computer to go into sleep mode where it can be woken by keypress and other interrupts. It also facilitates the Hibernate and Standby features. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17It wasn't solely the project of MS. This is an industry standard that MS contributed to and used their clout to essentially break the standard.
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Did you not read the damn article?
If Linux weren't a threat.....why would Bill Gates even be wasting his time? - Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -38/+52Wow, that's sad. No wonder networking on Windows is such a ***** pain in the ass.
I can't speak for Linux, as I've never really used it, but I know the people who have developed OS X have tried very hard to try and get Macs to network well with Windows... but here you have Windows developers purposely trying to make it harder for other OS' to network with it...
Disgusting. - ekso, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21Have you ever heard of 1929?
Free market colapsed before communism did. Neither of them work. You are free to try to figure out something else together with your ACPI specs. - diazamet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16"Three cheers for capitalism, stop whining about companies trying to make money"
Nobody can complain about a company making money but how about making money by making a better product, not by putting out ***** and then putting obstacles in everyone else's way. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14If people lose jobs you find more jobs spring up elsewhere. Such retarded comments assume a static economy.
As mentioned above though, many people make money from or are paid to develop OSS. Most developers are actually in house people who target specific tasks in any case. OSS does nothing to harm their job prospects and indeed reduces the cost of their work which means more money can be spent on their wages. - dwhitbeck, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Monopolies are not supposed to be a part of capitalism. Capitalism is supposed to have some amount of fair play and competition.
- Markus123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14If you actually read it, you would see that is was done before 2001, "January 24, 1999"
- matthekc, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16it's not like open source doesn't make it's fair amount of standards to share. I run windows and linux I don't think windows would automatically die if linux took off I like Xp. I guess i would like to pay about 60 dollars or less for it though. So if Linux took off i could see ms's profit margin eroding quite a bit.
- kipkeston, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12if that is bill, he has difficulty composing coherent sentences
- duality, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Unfortunately, monopolies are an issue with capitalist economies, just as deadlocks are an issue with operating system processing.
There are three techniques to deal with both monopolies and deadlocks:
* Set things up very carefully and intricately so that they are not permitted to occur.
* Allow them to occur, but then destroy them soon afterwards.
* Pretend that they don't exist, and just move on until something REALLY goes wrong.
Unfortunately, in both cases, it's the third option that is most commonly put to use. Nobody wants to write tough rules to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and nobody wants to take responsibility for the hard decisions that need to be made to fix this problem when it crops up. People have gotten complacent, and they see this kind of conflict as something that just has to be tolerated. Unfortunately, this type of problem, by definition, will not solve itself. It can only get larger and more expansive as time passes, and the more we wait, the more damage control we will have to perform when we actually decide that we need to do something! - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12"It's not like the Open Source community would do anything like this is it? I mean, no open source license would make it impossible to use their code in a closed source system would they?"
There is a huge difference between standards and implementations. If MS wanted to use my code they should damn well pay me for the privilege or respect the license. OTOH if MS came to 99% of people involved in low level development of Linux and said 'Hey, we want to develop an open standard for x with you.' barring the natural mistrust that MS has earned most would love to work with the industry leader on an open standard provided it made technical sense. The problem is that MS seems to be going in the opposite direction and is continually trying to scupper standardisation efforts with pseudo standards like OOXML. - SjRaptor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11My friend just tried printing this email out to show his co-workers... It hung the network printer.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9They've cleaned up their act? Balmer has been threatening SCO style lawsuits to anyone who uses Linux.
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