Posts by Wesley Parish

Microsoft's got problems. It's painted itself into a corner with its two cash-cows, MS Windows and MS Office. Gates was part of that - it was he after all, who painted MS Windows as an essential and inescapable part of the PC. It's a rerun of IBM's success with the IBM PC, which IBM failed to capitalize on because it didn't want to cannibalize its hugely successful mainframe and midrange computer series. Microsoft just doesn't have what it takes to survive away from the cash-cows.

What I suggest Microsoft does is open under the GPL v.3 the source trees of the MS DOS series, likewise the source trees of the MS Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 9x.x, and the WinNT 3.x and 4.x series; and also the likewise obsolete MS Office source trees up to 1997; also the source trees of the software development toolsets used to develop those products. Then persuade IBM to likewise release the OS/2 1.x, 2.x and 3.x source trees also under the GPL v.3; and persuade HP to release the likewise obsolete source trees of VMS unde the GPL v.3.

The purpose of that would be to break Microsoft out of the corner it has painted itself into. By putting the "software patents" that it uses to leech from Android, under the GPL, it would break it free from relying on those to make some return on its Mobile Phone division - remember that argument that the poor, by relying on the welfare, were losing initiative: it's the story of Microsoft, Windows Phone, and software patents - they've lost all initiative, because they're relying on leeching off Android's success. And by opening the obsolete Windows source trees, it would break free from the psychological necessity to follow that very well worn track - so well worn the trees are now growing over it. :)

Just my 0.02c, but any "Business Analyst" worth his plutonium would be charging like an angry bull ...

running scared

Damn. Where the Dunce-cap-wearing Gates and/or Ballmer icons?

Running scared. I've just found this little titbit on Linux Journal about Python including a builtin web server

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/tech-tip-really-simple-http-server-python

Brilliant for quick-and-dirty prototyping. Even better considering that Python's one of the FOSS scripting languages holding up the Net. And it even works on Windows, so if Microsoft does the BSA Heavy on whatever company employs me, I can take whatever I've done, and move it somewhere else.

I think that Microsoft will have to get a whole lot friendlier before I'll consider trusting them - as much of the MS WinNT 3.x-4.x source tree as is legitimately theirs, released under the GPL via Sourceforge, and maybe I can trust them not to come the BSA Heavy on customers/competitors ...

where's the armour?

All we need to make this the ultimate in tech warfare is to arm and armour it. Then we'll finally have some robotic overloads - oops, overlords - we can respect.

Anyone care to join the World's First Armed and Armoured Monocycle Antiterrorist Patrol - just the thing for places like Afghanistan under US overloadship?

What I for one, want to see Microsoft do

is release as much of the source of Windows (3.x, 9.x, and NT 3.x and 4.x) as it legally owns, under the GPL v3 - it's not using all that at the moment, and we may as well get the chance to see it and look at learn ... Microsoft makes a big noise about being student-friendly, but when you read their student source licenses, they're hardly friendly, particularly to themselves. (They won't like me saying this, but use of student or lecturer "Shared Source" license, is going to make it difficult to legally work at Microsoft, since there are all sorts of nice little tags preventing you from using the source and the knowledge gained, commercially ... foot-in-mouth, quick-draw foot-gun and blow off your own foot! :)

I'm not expecting Microsoft to actually release this source code under the license suggested, but it would enable people like me to write software for Microsoft Windows without fear of getting Microsoft's patent guns drawn on me for the temerity of (possibly) outcompeting Microsoft.

And damn, there isn't a Gates/Ballmer-with-Dunce-Cap-on icon, is there? Take it as read.

Knowing

How good is such a test if you know where the missile is headed? One of the most common criticisms of anti-ballistic missile defense I've read on the Net is that since the missile's path is already known, it's hardly the massive set of variables even a small number of launches is likely to present.

Then there's always the possibility that the launch folk will put something - say an ionic generator - on the missile head that'll coat it in the launch phase with a disturbed layer of air. And incidentally cut down the laser power by about a fifth, if not a third.

Then there's the reality - already pointed out - that such a large contingent of 747 laserjets (somebody had to say it! ;) on patrol has a lot of allure to it, and since 747s are hardly stealth aircraft, they'll be decimated rather quickly. (Hmmmm, how aerodynamic would such a laser device be on one of those B2s? My bet is that it'd flip it over the short axis and kill everybody on board.)

Porkbarrelling swampwards

My usual question whenever this sort of thing comes up is to ask: "Why? What is the purpose of this? What are you intending to use it for?"

I would have thought that in tough economic times, the need for that question would be redoubled. I mean, look, on both sides of the pond, people are wanting to porkbarrel their respective electorates - this isn't a similar case to the defense needs of the two stages of the European Civil War of the Twentieth Century, long may it be remembered in infamy! Back then, the defense "products" were generally more "mass market" - de Havilland, if I remember correctly, could subcontract out specific Mosquito parts to furniture makers because they weren't either highly aviation-specific, or highly security-specific.

Try that with either the F22 and F35, or the Eurofighter!

So, far from also serving a mass market, these aircraft, in this particular economic scenario, probably represent an opportunity cost.

So, what are they good for? What use are they, in some future war? And who would this "future war" be against?

Sheeeesh!!!

John Glenn's right, you know

Earth orbit's where all the action starts, whether you're going to the Moon or to Mars; where else? So why add to the hassle and stop over at the Moon? Unless there's a decent pub or corner dairy there ...

infrastructure/platform versus product

Microsoft's got to make up its mind sooner or later, and the sooner the better ... are MS Windows and MS Office infrastructure aka a platform, or a product? Ditto for MS Visual Studio ...

If they're a product, then it doesn't matter.

If they're infrastructure aka a platform, then the more open the better, and they don't need to make money off them as though they were products. Instead, they can make money off the people who make money off them. (Anyone remember The Space Family Stone, by Heinlein? Who makes the money in a gold rush? The miners? Or the pub-owners?)

If they're infrastructure aka a platform, then it would make sense for Microsoft to open their source code - and in keeping with keeping the leaf turned, releasing their source trees under the GPL version 3, with its anti-software patent language.

Just my 0.02c, of course ... VAT/GST/whatever, not included. ;)

@Glenn Turner

Oh dear, you'd put a short-range strike fighter with the Achilles' Heel of needing airtankers to go any serious distance - the F-35 -, up against a long-range air-superiority/strike fighter armed with HARMs - the Su-30?

I have suggested at least once, to the Australian and New Zealand governments, that ANZAC needs the Su-30. And that given the minor geographical details surrounding Australia and New Zealand - the Ocean Moat - it would make more sense to standardize on a cheap long-range strike fighter family - the Sukhoi S-30, Su-33UB, and the Su-34 - and manufacture it in Australia. Then once manufacturing had settled down, buy development rights to the airframe and turn it into a stealth strike fighter. It's already a strike fighter, a strike bomber-shturmovik, a carrier-borne naval defense fighter, and goodness knows what next it can be, so why not turn it into a stealth fighter.

Neither Canberra nor Wellington were impressed - mostly because it meant not buying USAmerican. Religious, in other words, not rational - like vi versus emacs.

summarizing

The military summary of the article is as follows:

aircraft carriers are capital ships.

capital ships are extra KEWL!

Us needs KEWL capital ships to conquer!

And two major problems with that:

One, the UK once used to have the world's best collection of capital ships. It also had a world-wide empire at the time, and most of those colonies and possessions didn't have their own navies, and barely had armies. I used to read the British comics - as well as the US ones - in PNG in the seventies when I was a kid there. There was one that was way over the top and happy to be nothink more than themselfs - perennial British Cockney humour; but there were some really sad ones in the magazines that were in mourning for the loss of Empire and seemed to exude the feeling that we wuz robbed!!!

The British Empire is no more, and the world doesn't seem to have minded. Britain is now part of Europe. The Rest of the World is much more worried about the Senile Dementia USAmericana; I'd much rather not get involved in that.

Two, making something obsolete is a matter of making something cost too much in relation to its value. HMS Dreadnought - the cost of the big guns outweighed the cost of the many smaller guns pre-dreadnoughts sported. The cost of the HMS Dreadnought's steam turbines outweighed the cost of the multiple-stage reciprocating steam engines. But the HMS Dreadnought could outrun and outgun any other capital ship in any other navy, so their cost was outweighed in relation to their value. And the process of weapons standardization meant that the British Empire could manufacture Dreadnought-class capital ships much, much cheaper than anyone else could manufacture pre-dreadnoughts.

Battleships' value was eroded and then demolished by much cheaper aircraft, which could do what they could - sink capital ships - and do what they couldn't - attack Beyond the Horizon targets.

Now, capital ships' value has been eroded by cheap missiles and cheap boats. The US can afford the massive support structure for supercarriers, though it seems the Pentagon is doing its damnedest to bankrupt the US.

In short, what use are they (these carriers), and why are they needed? NATO? That would be believable, except it's nowhere mentioned. US military adventurism? Why? One Boer War should've been one too many for us - why join the US in making BoerWars to order?

some points

One - military hardware's always going to be expensive. And it's got trade-offs connected with it - Guns and butter "Hurrah! The butter's all gone!"

Two - you can pay someone else to do it for you, or you can do it yourself. The US has traditionally gone for "do it yourself"; they don't like their allies taking that same attitude though. A trap for young players.

Three - if you've after the current best fighter-bomber, want to build and customize it yourselves, and so on and so forth, why not do what the PRC and India are doing, buy a production license for the Sukhoi 30, and give the US the finger? It'll probably cost less than either of the options I've seen in either this article or its comments. But we're not talking about "cost-effectiveness" are we - this is "alliance solidarity" which also means, letting the superpower-monopolist shaft us royally.

Microsoft practice

Microsoft usually rubbishes their previous release once they've got their "latest and greatest" out the door. It would make a wonderful project for some tech-literate art student to make an art deco set of posters out of a time-line of release-time Microsoft ads - so dig up your tech-literate art students and let's get going.

I've encountered Vista in the wild - someone wanted help with a digital camera driver. She had spent a lot of money to get the most up-to-date laptop she could; she didn't have the budget to get a replacement for her digital camera. I told her to take it up with the people she bought the laptop from.

FWLIW, I did say, way back when Microsoft was starting Vista ... oops, Longhorn development, that since Gates and Ballmer were rubbishing the FOSS development methodology, perhaps they should accept a challenge - release the source trees of MS Windows 9x and MS Windows NT 3.x and 4.x under the BSD license, and see which, Microsoft or the FOSS communities, would have something usable to bring out first. That was at least six years ago. Now Vista's out, and we still feel Microsoft is Vistabeting.