Posts by Ben Ruset

Ubuntu Firefox shuns Google for Yahoo! search

Re: Thanks Microsoft

Do you strip out the 20k lines of Microsoft code included in the Linux kernel for Hyper-V support, too?

Microsoft sees no silver lining in Sidekick server snafu

Danger

How many people does this affect? 12? Who still uses the Sidekick platform anyway? I imagine there's a lot of really upset 13 year olds right now.

Bush tests Castro with mobile phone gift barrage

Toasters

By the time the Cubans can buy toasters, many of us in the states won't be able to afford them either.

Paris coz she has warm buns.

US gov may forbid BAE Eurofighter sale to Saudis

Let them have the planes

After all, if the planes are built in the UK they'll probably rust and fall apart -- just like every British car exported to the states has.

-- Former owner of a 78 MGB, 81 Jaguar XJ6, and a 95 Range Rover Classic.

Major HTML update unveiled

Browser Support

And in 10 years maybe most browsers will get around to supporting it.

Microsoft tries to CTRL-W WordPerfect lawsuit again

WP was Awful

WP has always been a user-unfriendly package. From the days of WP 5.1 on through the Windows versions, it's always been harder to use than Office.

Wordperfect was the dominant word processor, but they lost market share because Office was easier to use and offered more features. There's no reason that the GUI version of Wordperfect that was used in Win 3.1 would not have worked in Win95 anyway.

I wish companies would try to write good, usable software instead of wasting money that could be put into development in a lawsuit.

Mandriva and TurboLinux unveil 10-person strong Manbo

United Linux

Hey it's like United Linux all over again.

Samsung enhances Q1 Ultra UMPC performance

XP Tablet Edition

The article says it has XP Tablet Edition, but the screen shot shows Vista.

Opera hits Microsoft with EC complaint

Lets not forget

That Opera is a commercial company, with a vested interest in getting their software on more desktops. Additionally, if they win this case, they'll get money. Right off the bat, you have to wonder about these commercial companies filing lawsuits to "benefit the consumer" -- if there was no financial benefit to them, then why would they go through the pain and expense?

Secondly, there's a lot of talk about how bundling is bad. That, because Microsoft makes it so easy to use their "proprietary technology" (which, in this case seems to be ActiveX) to build web apps, that they're making it hard for 3rd party browsers to compete. Well, sure, Microsoft developed their own language, invested time, money, and development resources on it, and rightly does not want to share their IP. Nothing in the world is stopping Opera, Netscape, or Mozilla from doing the same thing. The problem is really with the people writing the apps.

If they developed their apps under, say, Java, that would mean that (at least theoretically) that the web app would work under any browser so long as there is a JRE present. Same thing for Javascript. So isn't it really the fault of the application vendor who is writing apps for only one platform?

To follow that example further, lets say that I make a piece of Windows-only software and it gets really, really popular. It doesn't work on anything but Windows. I have no desire to port it to another OS. Does that somehow make Microsoft responsible for my app not being portable? Sure, I developed for the prevalent operating system - Windows. I could have used Microsoft tools and a Microsoft language to write it. Following Opera's logic, that means that Apple can sue Microsoft because their code is not portable to their smaller marketshare alternative operating system.

I am a huge fan of Open Source. I much prefer to deal with Linux. But lets be real here. Microsoft is a company that exists to make money. They've bundled a browser and made their own language. Nobody is forcing anybody to use it. It's just so easy/convenient that people do. Instead of developing a better/easier to use product, they'd rather just sue Microsoft.

It's not about the consumer. It's not about choice. It's about Opera seeing that they can get money out of Microsoft.

Brazilian physicists boycott Dell

Dell is a US Company

and ultimately has to comply with US Export rules. It doesn't matter if Paulo Gomes wants to boycot Dell or not. He may not have to follow US policies, but the US based company he is dealing with does.

Simple solution -- buy a system from a non-US vendor.

IBM and Novell push out new SLED

This is great but...

where does it mention a new SLED? All this article talks about is a new *yawn* Notes client for Linux. Big deal.

Masturbating lag cops 60 days' extra porridge

Puritans

Re: Cameron Colley

Just be glad that England kicked the Puritans out. 200+ years later and America is still held by their moral standards.

Dell tries to squeeze into small business space

Whats the point?

They already have the Latitude line. Why not just make budget priced Latitudes? It seems like all they have done is taken the Inspiron, made it black instead of silver, and got rid of the bloat.

Dell, if you're trying to fix yourselves, launching new product lines that overlap other ones is not the way to do it. Use what you have, launch new products that fill the need, but don't muddy up what you have already.

Dell dances out with desktop Inspirons

Why Inspiron?

What does Dell have to gain by taking their laptop brand and slapping it on a desktop? They already have an established brand for their consumer level desktops - Dimension - which arguably is more well known than Inspiron. In any case, I don't see anything so special about these machines anyway.