Microsoft vs. open source

[Arthur Dent]

Bill Gates is Evil. More Proof?

The company's very public campaign against the idea of freely sharing its software blueprints, called source code, came to a head early last summer. Microsoft's notoriously outspoken chief executive, Steve Ballmer, told a reporter that a competing "open-source" system called Linux was "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual-property sense to everything it touches."

So, when does Lindows come out? Come on. Sombody's go to figure out how to play DirectX in Linux and everything else.

[Keyser Soze]

You mean like that cancer called Windows?

[AdolescentMasturbator]

How many times must it be said. The functionality of Lindows is there with any half-decent Linux distro. You people get all excited about being able to run MS Office in Linux when you can already do it. DirectX is the hard thing since they have to reverse-engineer an entire API.

[Arthur Dent]

DirectX is the hard thing since they have to reverse-engineer an entire API.

Until DirectX works, most of my games won't. Therefore, I won't switch until then.

[2 tired 2 give N F]

I have one problem with Linux. My roomie just installed linux and his speakers won't work. The company doesn't make Linux drivers and so if he wants to listen to music when he's in linux he'd have to write his own drivers. I don't want to go through that hassel.

[AdolescentMasturbator]

You know if you were windows and you had no drivers you are just basically fucked completely. Funny this ever since I went to 2k I would get only 2 of my speakers to work in 2k but all 4 work in Linux for some reason. Oh well I guess an upgrade of the sound card might fix that.

[Arpikarhu]

i just like to pop in every once in awhile to remind you that you are nerds. nerds!

[AdolescentMasturbator]

You know I don't go into a topic about beastiality and bother you about it.

[Sluggo]

No...You just read and spank your little monkey.

[Galt]

Do you all bow to Bill Gates and thank him every night for the fact that computers are so prevalent?

Piss and moan about him all you want for stealing, producing a second rate product, or anything else you people may think, but the fact is, he was the one who saw the commercial possibilities and potential demand years before anyone else. Windows is the most popular system not because it is technically the best (the most technically sound solution is rarely if ever the most popular) but because it is the easiest to use. Whether that means easiest interface, most compatible, easiest to find products, replacements for, or any of the other reasons is up for debate. The fact is, it's the most popular because it's the most beneficial to the most people.

YEAH BILL GATES. YOU ARE A FUCKING GOD!~!!

[AdolescentMasturbator]

Now it's the most popular because OEM's put it on the computer and people use whatever they get.

[Kid Afrika]

<center><font size="-2" color="red">HACKERS MANIFESTO



The Conscience of a Hacker



Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.

"Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal",

"Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...damn kids. They're all alike.



But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's

technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did

you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what

may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter

than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

damn underachiever. They're all alike.



I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers

explain forthe fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I

understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it

in my head..." damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.



I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second,

this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake,

it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...

Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass...

Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.



And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing

through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an

electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day

incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..."

I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...



You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you

did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been

dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that

had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are

like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch,

the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already

existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't

run by profiteering gluttons, and you callus criminals. We

explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge...

and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without

nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.

You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie

to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're

the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they

look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that

you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this

individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.



+++The Mentor+++

</font><center>

Open source is ridiculous. The argument against Microsoft and their policy with open source is laughable. However, I did lose quite a bit of respect for Microsoft because of the security attempts implemented with XP. Previously, there was basically no protection against copying their OS's.



Edited By Kid Afrika on April 18 2002 at 6:46

[AdolescentMasturbator]

Open source is bad? The basic underpinnings of all software comes from open-source. When there is a security problem in Linux someone notices it and makes a patch. In Windows Microsoft KNOWS there is a problem. But they won't do anything until it hits the press and then they will have a patch. Open-source inherently is more secure.

[Arthur Dent]

Linux:Windows::Healthy Ingredients:TV Dinners

[Arthur Dent]

Bill Gates on the Stand

Mr. Kuney also questioned Mr. Gates's testimony that Microsoft already goes to great lengths to disclose technical information so software developers can write programs that work well with Microsoft products. He produced an internal memorandum from Mr. Gates instructing employees to stop trying to make Microsoft Office documents work with rival Web browsers.

"We have to stop putting any effort into this," Mr. Gates wrote in the December 1998 e-mail message. "Anything else is suicide for our platform."

"You read it correctly," Mr. Gates said, bristling just slightly.

In many ways, Mr. Gates's objections to the states' proposals echo the same philosophical and technical disputes that have been at the core of the case since it began. Microsoft has long maintained that there is no clear line between what is in the operating system and what is a separate product because it is all a collection of the electronic 1's and 0's of computer code.

[lent]

i think open source is great. programs are improved greately via the discoveries of other programers.
i believe this very board's software is open source software.