zumbrunn.com - The Unix wars

The Unix wars

"In their day, Pyramid, SCO, Apollo, DEC, Sun, Silicon Graphics, Gould and others fought ferocious scorched-earth wars trying to win customers' minds and money."

"Why is all this relevant? Because the UNIX wars didn't end and, consequently, the "last man standing" is still Microsoft / Intel. "

"Windows is a monopoly because short-sighted open source geeks and UNIX weenies were too busy squabbling over whether RPM was better than build-from-source or Gnome versus KDE, etc, ad nauseam."

"Let me make a prediction for you: The open source movement is not going to hurt Microsoft to any significant degree. But it'll put Sun out of business. Good move, guys! Now, do you hear the sound of distant laughter from Redmond?"

http://www.ranum.com/editorials/divide-conquer/

07.03.2005, 19:20

EU-Council adopts software patent directive

Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement Against Council's Rules. Opponents are furious that the EU Council has approved the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive .

• Luxembourg negated the Council's own Rules of Procedure, which state that a B-item (which is at the same time a request to remove an A item) can only be rejected by the a majority of the Council, and not just by the Presidency. (art 3.8)
• The objecting countries seem to have forgotten to request removal of the A-item from the agenda. Rules 3.1 + 3.7 would have given any single country the right to have the A-item removed, because the Luxemburg presidency had failed to insert it more than 14 days earlier. This is how Poland has removed A-items from the Agricultural & Fishery Council twice in the past.

Here's the full Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure statement.

The directive will now be passed to European Parliament, which can reject or amend the proposal, for a second reading.

And what will Switzerland do if this really goes through?

07.03.2005, 15:40

FreeBSD baby step "1j"

http://czv.com/zones/beastie/freebsd/freebsdweb1j.gif

06.03.2005, 21:05

Never trust a man who can count to 1024 on his fingers

Signature quote of the day:

"Never trust a man who can count to 1024 on his fingers"

But it begs the question: Why?

06.03.2005, 19:59

Visiting the world's smallest city

It does not take more than a few minutes to stroll around the whole city and meet half its residents ( see video ).

06.03.2005, 13:04

Finally some non-MS, non-nonsense SPF news

SPF hasn't been doing a very good job to fight the FUD Microsoft is spreading lately. So this article published by the Computer Business Online Report is a gasp of fresh air .

http://tinyurl.com/5dy2m

05.03.2005, 10:05

Swiss cows banned from eating grass

You just have to love that headline. The move has provoked strong opposition from farmers using the plant, while some experts have cast doubt over the evidence used to enforce the ban of hemp as fodder for livestock , resulting from fears that traces of cannabis are finding their way into milk.

01.03.2005, 21:32

Ludivines, the "Green Fairy" of absinthe

The Green Fairy was symbolically removed on Tuesday from the police station in the town of Môtiers in the Jura mountains.

The ban on the sale and production of absinthe, which was introduced in 1908, was lifted today . The drink earned a reputation for being the tipple of choice of artists and writers.